Filed under: DREAM, FanHouse Exclusive, Japan
Lenne Hardt, Japanese MMA ring announcing icon, says her one-of-a-kind fighter introductions were actually developed out of boredom.
Nicknamed “Crazy Pride Lady” or “Screaming Crazy Lady,” Hardt has built a cult following with her incomparable introductions. The Alaska-born Hardt, fluent in both English and Japanese, was hired by Pride in 2000 as the English ring announcer. The Pride GP events in 2000 were a defining time for the promotion, but with MMA in its relative infancy at the time, she entered the job with little to no knowledge of the sport.
“To tell you the truth, I got bored because I didn’t know what was going on,” Hardt said Thursday on MMAFighting.com’s The MMA Hour. “There’s a lot of time in between [matches]. You don’t really know what was happening so you’re just there twiddling your thumbs. And I thought, I want to participate in this. I want to understand it.”