Derek Brunson has made no secret of his disdain for Uriah Hall in advance of their middleweight showdown this Saturday. The Strikeforce veteran has spent the past few months lambasting his upcoming foe, even accusing him of PED-use on several occasions.
Unsurprisingly, Brunson’s verbal onslaught hasn’t gone over well with Hall, and in a recent interview with Fox Sports, Hall finally launched some return fire.
“Homeboy [Brunson] texted me and said ‘hey man I’m going to kick your ass’. What idiot does that?” Hall told Fox Sports, detailing Brunson’s latest attempt at talking smack. “He actually text messaged me. I don’t even know how he got my number.”
Hall went on to explain that he believes Brunson’s ceaseless trash talk is simply the manifestation of a lack of confidence.
“It clearly shows he’s not confident at all,” Hall said. “If you can do something like that, you are remotely far from being confident,” Hall said. “You don’t need to text your opponent. You guys are going to step inside the ring. It just inspires me more to go beat him up.”
“He’s scared and he’s weak-minded and he likes to pick on people he thinks are weak-minded and, in my defense, that’s the perfect thing you could ever do,” Hall continued. “I love underestimation, because not only can I prove you wrong, but I can embarrass you and that’s what I want to do.”
“He’s one of those verbal bullies. He tries to intimidate people. He passed by me this morning growling at me and I’m like OK, am I supposed to be nervous or something?”
According to Hall, Brunson’s mental weakness is nothing new. He believes it was this weakness that drove Brunson out of a planned UFC 200 bout with Gegard Mousasi.
“I mean look how many fights he’s backed out of,” Hall said. “Gegard [Mousasi] and all these other fights where he’s like ‘I’m sick, my tummy hurts, my period is this month’. He’s always complaining about some sh*t and then he’s going to criticize me about my wins and that I’m lucky?”
Needless to say, Brunson and Hall don’t like each other one bit, and this, of course, is likely to result in a dynamite fight. Luckily, the two dangerous middleweights are scheduled to square off in just over 24 hours, so there’s not a lot of waiting left to be done.
Who do you think will win when they meet in tomorrow night’s co-main event? Sound off, PENN nation!