It's pretty hard rubber. Now that i think of it, I may have used some tougher tools, like a chisel. I just can't remember.
Hey Mark! thank you!, So... after inspecting it further, it looks that there's still a thick rubber section on the top that's still stuck on the actual balancer, so the ring is not able to come between the rubber and the fan.
If you know of a small tool that can help me "peel/file" the rubber on the top, let me know haha.
I'm thinking there must be a spikey-metal flexible wire or something that I can wrap around the balancer to get that rubber out haha.
PD: also it seems the problem started after the initial attempt to pull it out a few days ago. The guy helping me was going at it, and while prying the ring off, he pulled it from below instead of uniformly forward. This action caused the top part of the ring to go behind, making hard to slide back in now, since there's some rubber on both the ring/HB that doesn't match.
What I'm going to attempt tomorrow is to peel the rubber from the bottom of the HB as well, in hopes that I can get the ring back into place from below, and then hopefully I can pull it forward and then down haha!