By: Sean Crose
“I’m closing out my profession,” former WBO featherweight titlist Heather Hardy tells me over the cellphone. “I actually needed to take advantage of my final yr of combating.” Hardy, who has been on the forefront of girls’s boxing for a decade now, is actually discovering new worlds for herself to overcome. For this Could the Brooklynite shall be making her debut with the Naked Knuckle Combating 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 be about as massive 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 in search of the place the cash fights are.” As Hardy says: “In the case of combating, 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 overtly. “I began boxing to get my daughter out of the previous neighborhood.” Along with her daughter now away in school, the outspoken Hardy has just a few extra objectives she needs to perform, certainly one of which is succeeding within the powerful as nails world of naked knuckle boxing.
“There’s loads of variations,” says Hardy, evaluating mainstream boxing with naked knuckle boxing. “In the case of accidents (in naked knuckle boxing) you’re extra inclined to pores and skin breaking,” she says. “It’s extra accidents that might 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 doubt. “Boxing,” she says, “as a result of my father helped me see the wonder in it.”
Hardy additionally appreciates the final angle 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 collaborating as a coach and a fighter…boxing is way more about mother and pa working the present. Fuck round and discover out. They don’t play video games.” One of the vital fascinating 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 collaborating 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 after all there’s boxing. Does Hardy, who was final seen within the ring in August making a failed try and 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 combating days are over? “I’ve had ideas,” Hardy says. “Do I open a fitness center, do I turn into a supervisor? I don’t see myself falling out of 1 explicit space.”
Whereas this will really be Hardy’s remaining yr {of professional} combating, it’s laborious to think about her being utterly faraway from the struggle sport. She’s merely an excessive amount of part of the material of it at this level.
The Christine Ferea-Heather Hardy struggle shall be happening Could eleventh on the Mohegan Solar Resort and On line casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. Will probably be streamed reside on BKFC+
