“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 profession,” former WBO featherweight titlist Heather Hardy tells me over the cellphone. “I actually wished to take advantage of my final yr of preventing.” Hardy, who has been on the forefront of ladies’s boxing for a decade now, is actually discovering new worlds for herself to overcome. For this Might the Brooklynite will probably be making her debut with the Naked Knuckle Combating Championship (BKFC) . Her opponent? None aside 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 huge a BKFC problem as Hardy is apt to search out. Not that she minds.

“I positively 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: “With regards to 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 “I began boxing to get my daughter out of the outdated neighborhood.”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 needs to perform, one among which is succeeding within the powerful as nails world of naked knuckle boxing.

“There’s lots of variations,” says Hardy, evaluating mainstream boxing with naked knuckle boxing. “With regards to accidents (in naked knuckle boxing) you’re extra vulnerable to pores and skin breaking,” she says. “It’s extra accidents that could possibly 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 overall 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 collaborating as a coach and a fighter…boxing is rather 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. “In all probability 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 preventing days are over? “I’ve had ideas,” Hardy says. “Do I open a gymnasium, do I develop into a supervisor? I don’t see myself falling out of 1 specific space.”

Whereas this may increasingly actually be Hardy’s remaining yr {of professional} preventing, it’s exhausting to think about her being utterly faraway from the combat sport. She’s merely an excessive amount of part of the material of it at this level.

The Christine Ferea-Heather Hardy combat will probably be taking place Might eleventh on the Mohegan Solar Resort and On line casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. Will probably be streamed reside on BKFC+