Athletes
Jamahal Hill: Return of the King
Former Titleholder Talks Recovery, Road To UFC 300, And Plans To Rule The Light Heavyweight Division
Jamahal Hill had it all mapped out and then disaster struck.
After defeating Glover Teixeira to claim the light heavyweight title at UFC 283 at the outset of last year, the Dana White’s Contender Series graduate felt primed to embark on a reign of destruction and mayhem that would etch his name in the history books and bring calm to what had been a turbulent division for the previous 12 months.
Six months after claiming the title, Hill was playing in a basketball game with other UFC personalities during International Fight Week. He moved to cut through the center of the lane and felt a pop, falling to the floor. When he stood, his foot wasn’t working the way it should and he knew almost instantly that he had torn his Achilles tendon.
“The main thing I had to deal with was my own disappointment, my own expectations,” said Hill, who officially vacated the title on November 11, 2023, the night that Alex Pereira, the man he faces this weekend in the main event of UFC 300 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, stepped in against Jiri Prochazka, the previous champion who had similarly abdicated the throne due to injury, at UFC 285 in New York City.
“I thought when I won the title, to me, this is where the belt had come to rest for years. There wasn’t going to be any other championship lineage until I was done. That was my my plan. In my mind, that is how I saw the future moving on.
“I had the Jiri fight, and it was there and presented to be given to me. I had Alex on the way up, so I was in a position to establish my reign in a way that would start to put me in a better position as far as resume, with the fans; blow my name up. Those are things I had to come to terms with, readjust to those.”
A few decades ago, a torn Achilles tendon basically meant the end of your athletic career, but with advances in medicine, surgical procedures, and a host of other contributing elements, the former career-altering injury is now something that sidelines an athlete for anywhere from nine to 12 months, depending on how things go with the procedure and rehabilitation.
Hill had his surgery performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache, an expert in the field and the man that fixed the same injury for both the late Kobe Bryant and New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, amongst others, and credits being in a good place mentally with allowing him to focus all his attention on his recovery.
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“I had the best doctor, the best team available, the best medicine available to me, so even then, it was never ‘Oh my God — this is it for me,’” explained Hill, who carries a four-fight winning streak and a 6-1 mark with one no contest into his headlining clash with Pereira on Saturday night. “Everybody that I talked to told me, ‘You’ll be good. This not the same injury it was 10, 20 years ago.’ I just had a lot of things that were handled for me right away, so I didn’t have to worry about it; my mind was already shifted on the goal.
“The goal was to do everything right with recovery and make it back as soon as possible, in the best health that I could. That was the challenge; all that other s*** got pushed out of the way for me. It was just about doing the right things in recovery.
“When the injury happened, I was in a really good place mentally in my life, so it was devastating and it hurt — I had some things that I had to come to terms with — but I was in a good spot mentally, so I was able to come to terms with them really quick and focus on the goal.”
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Now, 10 months post injury, he’s ready to return; champing at the bit to once again make the walk to the Octagon and step into the fray.
“That’s a hard question to answer because this is a situation I’ve never been in before,” Hill said when asked about being on the verge of returning to competition. “I’ve never had a major injury that has taken me out, taken me away for a while and had to work my way back like this.
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“I’m definitely excited, I’m definitely ready to come back and perform.”
Some of the excitement is about a return to normalcy; going about things in a familiar manner after dealing with an injury that left the long-time athlete unable to work, let alone train or compete.
But another piece of it stems from a burning desire to prove people wrong, while simultaneously showing that his grand designs for a lengthy reign atop the division were far from far-fetched.
Throughout the preamble to this weekend’s main event clash, Hill has positioned Pereira as a fill-in, a substitute; the person keeping his seat warm while he’s been unable to occupy the position himself.
He’s mentioned how the Vice President would fill in for the President if something sidelined the Commander-in-Chief temporarily, but leaned heaviest on the term “steward.”
“Kings have had stewards sit in since the beginning of time,” he said, a smile lighting his face. “The king needed a break, so we let the steward take over.”
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While Hill sees his weekend adversary as a temporary shepherd of the division, many fans and pundits have viewed Pereira as the potentially dominant, stabilizing force Hill was hoping to be before being sidelined.
The 36-year-old Brazilian has been in the UFC for two-and-a-half years, and in that time, “Poatan” has won both the middleweight and light heavyweight titles, amassing a 6-1 record with wins over four men that have previously held championship gold at some point in their UFC tenure.
Folks that marveled at his ability to make the 185-pound middleweight limit recognize the danger he presents competing up a division, and see a more physical, more filled out version of the punishing kickboxer that stopped Sean Strickland and Israel Adesanya in back-to-back contests and claimed the light heavyweight strap by stopping Prochazka in the second round in November.
Of the two men vying for the gold this weekend in Las Vegas, it’s Pereira, not Hill, that is viewed as the fearsome figure set to become the first champion in the last four to successfully defend the title and enjoy an extended stay atop the division.
And Hill wouldn’t want it any other way.
“I love it, bro, because it gives me a really great opportunity to make this a true, true moment,” he said, still beaming while detailing what this fight represents for him, personally and professionally. “Fights come along every so often and when it’s done — fight week is huge, fight night is huge, maybe you get a couple days after, and that feeling while you’re in it, you want to enjoy it as much as you can.
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“What’s greater than the whole f****** world doubting you and trying to tell you that you can’t do something, and then you go out and show them they don’t know nothing?”
From the time he touched down in the UFC at the start of 2020 after earning a contract with a third-round stoppage win over Alexander Poppeck on the third season of the Contender Series, Hill has told anyone that would listen — and some that wanted to tune him out — that he was different; that he was a unique talent that was going to climb to the top of the division and stay there for an extended period of time.
It took him three years to make the first part happen, as he claimed the belt three years, less four days, after he debuted. Injury prevented the other part from happening, but this weekend, Hill believes he’ll remind everyone of the first piece once more and begin a second attempt to rule the division for the foreseeable future by dominating the man many believe is poised to lord over the light heavyweight ranks for the next several years.
“I’ve never been dominated in the striking game,” Hill said emphatically. “I’ve been caught, I’ve had my s*** rocked, some people have had some moments, but nobody has ever dominated me in any facet of striking, ever, in my life. So for me to be having this fight now and to come in and that’s all this dude does — they say he’s the best striker in the world, possibly of all time. Hell yeah I’m excited for that, because I feel that’s a title I hold; that’s a level my name should ring on.
“Throughout the whole time I’ve been fighting, it’s grapplers; I’ve been fighting wrestlers,” continued the former champion, who earned stoppages wins over Jimmy Crute, Johnny Walker, and Thiago Santos prior to defeating Teixeira to claim the title. “They can strike, but they would rather take me down.
“This dude don’t have that f****** option. He don’t have that option of ‘I’m gonna see if I can take him down.’ He grabs me, he’s f****** done! He grabs me, he’s done. I’m not Jan. I’m not Jiri. I’m not one of these dudes that got you on the ground and laid on you. When I get you down, I get on top of you, I f*** you up, period.
“Only thing that he can do is strike with me,” he added, taking an exaggerated look away to accentuate the point he was making. “Shut up. Shut up, bro. He’s been pieced up before. We’ve seen him pieced up. We’ve seen him dominated. We’ve seen him knocked out. We’ve seen him rocked. We’ve seen your level. We’ve never seen my level. I’ve never even seen my peak level.”
Asked to expand on that statement, Hill said, “I’m already levels above what people see and what I’ve had to show. The level I’m truly, truly on is way above what people have seen; not just from myself, but from others.
“I’m dominating these guys and I haven’t scratched the surface.”
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Saturday night, Hill intends to close out UFC 300 by reclaiming the title he never lost in competition and embarking on the lengthy reign he was unable to begin last year after being forced to the sidelines.
He’s fully aware of the considerable task in front of him, but confident he’ll navigate things with aplomb, and put the rest of division on notice at the same time.
“I’m locked in. I’m not looking past Alex; I don’t care what anybody says,” he said. “I’m not looking past him at all, but once I put him down, and my hand is raised, it’s a wave of destruction and pain coming for this entire f****** division.
“Every single person in this division who says, ‘I want to be champion,’ I’m gonna give you a lesson in what you’ve gotta go through to get to that.”
UFC 300: Pereira vs Hill took place live from T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on April 13, 2024. See the final Prelim and Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC Fight Pass!
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