By: Sean Crose
“I’m closing out my profession,” former WBO featherweight titlist Heather Hardy tells me over the telephone. “I actually needed to profit from my final yr of preventing.” Hardy, who has been on the forefront of ladies’s boxing for a decade now, is definitely discovering new worlds for herself to beat. For this Might the Brooklynite will likely be making her debut with the Naked Knuckle Preventing Championship (BKFC) . Her opponent? None apart from undefeated flyweight champion Christine Ferea. “I reached out to Christine,” Hardy continues. “She’s all the time been actually supportive all through my profession.” Ferea can also be about as huge a BKFC problem as Hardy is apt to search out. Not that she minds.
“I undoubtedly picked up the hardest one of many bunch for a cause,” Hardy admits. “I’m searching for the place the cash fights are.” As Hardy says: “In terms of preventing, it involves incomes.” And being profitable has allowed Hardy to make a full time profession out of being a boxer. So far as Hardy is worried, it’s so simple as that. “I didn’t begin boxing as a result of I like the game,” she states brazenly. “I began boxing to get my daughter out of the outdated neighborhood.” Together with her daughter now away at school, the outspoken Hardy has a couple of extra targets she desires to perform, one among which is succeeding within the powerful as nails world of naked knuckle boxing.
“There’s a whole lot of variations,” says Hardy, evaluating mainstream boxing with naked knuckle boxing. “In terms of accidents (in naked knuckle boxing) you’re extra prone to pores and skin breaking,” she says. “It’s extra accidents that may very well be detrimental to a win or a loss.” To Hardy, naked knuckle fight is an all out brawl, whereas “boxing is a gentleman’s sport.” Nonetheless, when requested outright what her favourite sport to compete in is, Hardy leaves little question. “Boxing,” she says, “as a result of my father helped me see the sweetness in it.”
Hardy additionally appreciates the final perspective to be present in boxing, versus naked knuckle boxing, and even MMA (which she has additionally competed professionally in). “I can say in my historical past taking part as a coach and a fighter…boxing is rather more about mother and pop operating the present. Fuck round and discover out. They don’t play video games.” Probably the most attention-grabbing issues about Hardy is her openness. She doesn’t doesn’t maintain again. Maybe most significantly, although, the veteran fighter is a realist.
“Am I going to fall in love with this sport?” she asks rhetorically of taking part in BKFC. “Most likely not.” I ask if she intends to return to MMA. “I’m coaching,” she says. “I’m again at MMA.” After which in fact there’s boxing. Does Hardy, who was final seen within the ring in August making a failed try to take away Amanda Serrano from her undisputed championship, nonetheless lengthy for ring success? “WBC inexperienced belt,” she states merely. “The WBC on the finish of the yr.” And when her preventing days are over? “I’ve had ideas,” Hardy says. “Do I open a health club, do I change into a supervisor? I don’t see myself falling out of 1 specific space.”
Whereas this may increasingly actually be Hardy’s closing yr {of professional} preventing, it’s onerous to think about her being utterly faraway from the battle sport. She’s merely an excessive amount of part of the material of it at this level.
The Christine Ferea-Heather Hardy battle will likely be happening Might eleventh on the Mohegan Solar Resort and On line casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. Will probably be streamed stay on BKFC+
