Ryan Hall finally has what he has been asking the UFC for since last summer: his next fight.
Hall, a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu with an unorthodox style, will face Ricardo Lamas at UFC Oklahoma City on May 2 at Chesapeake Energy Arena, the promotion announced Tuesday.
Hall has had difficulty getting other featherweights to agree to fight him. In five years with the UFC, he has fought only four times.
“It’s been a little bit of a struggle to find an opponent,” Hall said on Ariel Helwani’s MMA Show on Feb 25. “I’ve been directly turned down or been told that they’re unavailable from [ranked fighter No.] 12 all the way down to [No.] 6. … I can’t say I’m being frozen out, but maybe effectively frozen out.”
Hall (8-1) is coming off a unanimous decision win over Darren Elkins at UFC Sacramento last July. Before that, he defeated BJ Penn by first-round submission at UFC 232 in December 2018. Hall fought once in 2015 and again in 2016 — but that’s the extent of his UFC career.
Hall, a 35-year-old Virginia native, has not lost in MMA since his first foray into the sport in 2006.
Lamas (19-8) is a perennial featherweight contender in a recent rough patch. “The Bully” has dropped three of his past four and is coming off a first-round knockout loss to Calvin Kattar at UFC 238 in June 2019.
Lamas, 37, fought Jose Aldo for the featherweight title in 2014 and lost by unanimous decision.
UFC Oklahoma City will be headlined by a middleweight fight between former champion Chris Weidman and contender Jack Hermansson.
Also on the card, former women’s strawweight title challenger Claudia Gadelha faces upstart Marina Rodriguez.