“I Definitely Picked Up The Toughest One Of The Bunch For A Reason.” Heather Hardy Ready For BKFC Debut Against Christine Ferea
By: Sean Crose
“I’m closing out my career,” former WBO featherweight titlist Heather Hardy tells me over the cellphone. “I really wanted to make the most of my last year of fighting.” Hardy, who has been on the forefront of girls’s boxing for a decade now, is actually discovering new worlds for herself to beat. For this May the Brooklynite can be making her debut with the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) . Her opponent? None aside from undefeated flyweight champion Christine Ferea. “I reached out to Christine,” Hardy continues. “She’s always been really supportive throughout my career.” Ferea can also be about as huge a BKFC problem as Hardy is apt to search out. Not that she minds.
“I definitely picked up the toughest one of the bunch for a reason,” Hardy admits. “I’m looking for where the money fights are.” As Hardy says: “When it comes to fighting, it comes to earning.” And being profitable has allowed Hardy to make a full time profession out of being a boxer. As far as Hardy is anxious, it’s so simple as that. “I didn’t start boxing because I love the sport,” she states overtly. “I started boxing to get my daughter out of the old neighborhood.” With her daughter now away at school, the outspoken Hardy has a couple of extra objectives she needs to perform, certainly one of which is succeeding within the powerful as nails world of naked knuckle boxing.
“There’s a lot of differences,” says Hardy, evaluating mainstream boxing with naked knuckle boxing. “When it comes to injuries (in bare knuckle boxing) you’re more susceptible to skin breaking,” she says. “It’s more injuries that could 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.” Still, when requested outright what her favourite sport to compete in is, Hardy leaves little question. “Boxing,” she says, “because my father helped me see the beauty 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 history participating as a coach and a fighter…boxing is much more about mom and dad running the show. Fuck around and find out. They don’t play games.” One of probably the most attention-grabbing issues about Hardy is her openness. She doesn’t doesn’t maintain again. Perhaps 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. “Probably not.” I ask if she intends to return to MMA. “I am training,” she says. “I’m back at MMA.” And then in fact 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 green belt,” she states merely. “The WBC at the end of the year.” And when her preventing days are over? “I’ve had thoughts,” Hardy says. “Do I open a gym, do I become a manager? I don’t see myself falling out of one particular area.”
While this may occasionally actually be Hardy’s last 12 months {of professional} preventing, it’s laborious to think about her being utterly faraway from the battle recreation. She’s merely an excessive amount of part of the material of it at this level.
The Christine Ferea-Heather Hardy battle can be taking place May eleventh on the Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. It can be streamed stay on BKFC+
