As Ryan Hall continues his own climb up the featherweight ranks as one of the UFC’s top grapplers, he can’t help but pay homage to those who came before him.
Of course, the UFC was founded in large part as a way to expose the world to Brazilian jiu-jitsu by way of the famed Gracie family but that tradition hasn’t stopped as the sport of mixed martial arts has continued to evolve and grow over the past 30 plus years.
More recently, grapplers such as Demian Maia and Ronaldo “Jacare” Souza carved impressive paths through multiple divisions in the UFC, which never goes unnoticed in the jiu-jitsu community.