UFC welterweight Dan ‘The Outlaw’ Hardy (23-7, 1NC) has seen his career reach as high as a UFC title match with current champ Georges St-Pierre back in March 2010, all the way down to being the target of vindictive fans who are quick to criticize the fighters Tweets for not training after losing four straight in the Octagon.
What seems more hurtful to the British fighter is the fact that he sees a steady stream of fighters being released from the UFC after two losses while he still remains under contract.
In a very honest interview with MMAFighting.com, ‘The Outlaw’ talks about some of the guilt he feels at seeing fighters go, being punked by Anthony Johnson after the two had talked at length of a standup war and then having ‘Rumble’ wrestle him for three rounds, plus a lot more.
If your a Dan Hardy fan, or not, the article offers an interesting look into the current mindset of ‘The Outlaw.’
Here’s a few quotes.
“If I ever tweet something that’s not about training or fighting — anything, whether it’s about a movie I’ve seen or I’m out on the [Las Vegas] strip and see something funny and send a picture of it — I’ll always get some jackass tweet back, ‘Oh, don’t you think you should be working on your wrestling?’” he says. “Every. Time. That really winds me up… ”
“I got in there just expecting this blaze of glory,” he says. All the way through training camp he’d exchanged emails and direct messages on Twitter with Johnson, both of them talking about what a slugfest their fight would be, how they’d steal the show in Seattle. But Johnson was the superior wrestler, and he knew it. Why trade bombs with Hardy if you didn’t have to? And why not let him think he was walking into a kickboxing match, since that would only make him easier to take down.
“He punked me,” Hardy says. “And he punked me good.”
After three rounds of far more wrestling than slugging, an exhausted Hardy sat back in his corner and let the disappointment wash over him. He didn’t need to wait and hear how the judges had scored it. Nobody did. Three in a row, he thought. That ought to do it. When he looked up, there was Johnson strolling over to him like a kid who’d just cheated his best friend out of his lunch money.
“He came over to me right after the fight was over and he hugged me and said, ‘I’m sorry, man. I love you like a brother.’ And I thought, dammit, he punked me. He knew he was going to do it all the way through training camp. He properly played me.”
What’s worse, he couldn’t even really stay mad at Johnson afterward. If anybody understood that desperate need for a win — a desire so strong you’d spend weeks lying just to get it — it was Hardy.
“[Johnson] did the calculated thing. Whether you agree with it or not, he felt like he needed a win and that was the smartest way to get it. I know he got a lot of [expletive] for it, but he got the win and now he’s progressing, in a good place in his career. And me? Not so much.”