Back in 2011, Ryan Hall found himself in a tense situation at a restaurant that would later become a widely shared video online. Speaking on the Matt Serra podcast, the elite jiu-jitsu practitioner and former UFC star revisited the incident in detail, explaining how his training influenced every decision he made that night.
According to Hall, the trouble started before he ever got involved. Two men entered the restaurant and began harassing other customers.
“There were two dudes, very gentle-looking people sitting over at one table that they went over and harassed, trying to get money from, trying to get, you know, cigarettes or a lighter from,” Hall recalled.
Seeing the situation escalate, he decided to intervene calmly rather than aggressively.
“I remember being like, ‘All right, might as well get this guy’s attention and try to talk to him,’” he said.
Hall explained that his first instinct was de-escalation, not confrontation.
“I didn’t start by yelling at everybody,” Hall said. Instead, he tried to reason with the man directly. “Hey man, the cops are going to come. You should probably get out of here. It’s just not worth it. Have a good night. Nobody can help you here, but hit the road before the cops come over here and ruin your night.”
The attempt to calm things down failed. The man walked closer and began threatening Hall personally.
“That’s when he decided to walk up and threaten to bite my nose off and tell me he’d been stuck in a mental institution,” Hall said.
Even then, Hall was carefully weighing how to respond.
“I remember looking at him at the time, ‘Do I hit him? Do I do this? Do I do that?’” he explained. “He was getting close. I’m like, it’s not quite to that level.”
Hall also pointed out the danger of misreading a situation during a confrontation.
“I let him a little closer than I should because you never know if somebody reaches their back pocket, got a clip knife, they could put a hole in you,” he said.
Rather than throwing punches, Hall decided to use control instead of damage.
“I just double-legged him, sat him down, held his hand so he couldn’t do anything crazy,” Hall explained, adding that the goal was simply to neutralize the situation without hurting anyone.
However, things escalated again moments later when someone made a comment that reignited the tension. Hall said he then had to physically remove the man from the restaurant.
“He smoked his head on the hinge of the door,” Hall recalled.
At that point, Hall felt he had to act immediately before the situation spiraled further.
“I’m going to have to hit him if I let him go,” Hall said. “He’s going to get up and swing on me.”
Instead, he chose another controlled response.
“So I put him to sleep super fast and was fortunately able to get him out of there without hurting him,” Hall explained.
The story took an unexpected turn afterward. According to Hall, police released the man roughly 25 minutes later, and he returned to the restaurant. Hall expected another confrontation, but that was not the case.
“All he wanted to do was come back in, apologize, hug it out, and he put down 40 bucks for a dinner,” Hall said.
Looking back on the incident, Hall said he was simply grateful things ended peacefully.
“I feel fortunate that nobody got hurt, that everything was all right,” Hall said.
