Greg Hardy talks candidly about the cheater accusations thrown at him after his controversial UFC debut in January.
Former NFL standout Greg Hardy was already facing heated criticisms before his UFC debut in January, all of which connected to his previous domestic abuse allegations. To make matters worse, his fight against Allen Crowder ended via disqualification from an illegal knee, adding even more controversy to his already tainted name.
Hardy was able to reflect on what had happened two months ago, which he admits was quite a pain to deal with.
“In a game where it all lies on what you do in that cage, it’s hard to walk out a loser,” Hardy told MMA Junkie. “I’m not one – anybody can check out my history – I’ve dealt with it terribly in the past, and I’ve dealt with it great before, but it’s all the same outcome. I hate losing. I’m not a loser, I’m not a cheater. I said when I first came into this business: I earned everything that I have right now.
“I’ve taken every opportunity. Anybody that wanted to stop me could’ve jumped in my way and knocked me out and took care of business. That’s how I do things.
“It kind of shook me to my core when I came out the ring and everybody’s standpoint was, ‘He’s a cheater,’” he continued. “It kind of threw me off a bit.”
Hardy attributed his disqualification loss mainly to wrong timing, but after dealing with this experience, he now promises a better version of himself as a fighter.
“That’s the cool thing about me, I advance fast,” he said. “I worked my whole life to be an athlete, to be physically capable of whatever a coach needs me to be capable of. I adapt very fast. In this couple of months, we’ve trained hard, we’ve focused on the fighter instead of advancing just the individual skills like we always do. You guys could hope to see a calm Greg Hardy, a Greg Hardy that’s here to fight.
“There’s no more searching for a knockout. I’m claiming to be ‘The Prince of War,’” he added. “We’re going to be here for war. Let’s fight it out. Whatever he wants, wherever he wants to go we’re going to make it pretty, we’re going to entertain.”
Per the UFC’s official poster for its Fort Lauderdale event on April 27th, Hardy will be co-headlining the card against Dmitry Smoliakov.