Mixed martial artist and former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) light heavyweight champion “Sweet Dreams” Jamahal Hill is fuming against journalist Ariel Helwani. The fighter is seeing red, alleging the journalist took subtly offensive digs at him during an interview with Jiri Prochazka, another former UFC light heavyweight champion.
Ariel Helwani, the journalist, has extended an olive branch to the angry fighter. He has asked Hill to come on his show, The MMA Hour, and tell his side of the story. He has even offered to give Hill the entire interview to edit and post on Hill’s own YouTube channel.
Helwani told Hill, “You keep talking about being a man and all this stuff. I would like to extend an invitation to you, Jamahal Hill, who I have nothing but respect for and I think that your thoughts on the way that I think about you are very wrong. I’d like to extend an invitation to you to come in the studio on my program and we can hash it out, mano a mano, man to man.” said an article on sportskeeda.com.
“We can talk about the issues and hopefully we can squash the beef,” said Helwani in his message to Hill. “I know you just had surgery. I know you just got injured. If you’d like to come on via Zoom, I would love to have you on. Pick a day next week. Pick a day the following week. I would love to have you on to figure this out, to settle this, because I think there’s a lot of misinterpretation.”
Instead of taking up the offer, Hill has been raging against Helwani.
Why is Jamahal Hill so worked up against Ariel Helwani
Here’s the background to his beef against the journalist.
Jamahal Hill tore his Achilles tendon, requiring rest and recovery, and therefore had to relinquish his title.
Jiri Prochazka, the fighter Helwani interviewed, had to give up his title, too, when he suffered a serious shoulder injury ahead of UFC 282 in December 2022.
When Hill was injured, Prochazka sent him well-wishes.
However, Hill was unhappy with the interview Prochazka gave to Helwani.
Procházka’s interview on The MMA Hour initially made headlines for his suggestion that Hill’s injury may have been caused by him being overweight.
That stirred up Hill, who took it out on the journalist. He raged, “This message is for Ariel ‘Ho-Whiny’. Now, Ariel and Jiří got together last night and had an interview. And as a lot of you already know and have seen, Ariel’s dirty, sneaky tactics that he likes to use to get over on fighters. And he does this all the while being completely – man, just a punk…”