Hardy: Marquardt is an illiterate charisma donor
My column for the Post last week, where I called for officials to be stricter on wrestling being used inside…
My column for the Post last week, where I called for officials to be stricter on wrestling being used inside the Octagon to stall and ride out the clock without actually fighting, caused a bit of an internet storm.
I was just expressing my view, as a fan of the sport as much as a fighter, and I was happy to see a lot of fans out there agreed with most of what I wrote.
Sadly, there were some people who clearly couldn’t grasp the points I was making.
The column wasn’t about wrestling’s place in MMA, it was about using wrestling purely to stall and avoid fighting.
Had I written the column after Kalib Starnes’s effort versus Nate Quarry, it could easily have been about avoiding fighting by standing and running. Both are against the ‘timidity’ rule.
One guy who struggled to keep up with the points I made was UFC middleweight and charisma donor Nate Marquardt, who always seems to have something to say about me, for no other reason than I once competed against one of his friends.
Sadly, we can now add ‘literacy test’ to the types of tests Nate has failed, because he either misread the whole thing or – like writers from AOL and Yahoo did – just read the first paragraph or two and had to stop because reading gives him a headache.
Ultimately, people can agree or disagree with what I wrote, but the facts are on my side.
The Nick Lentz fight at UFC 118, which was the catalyst for my column, was the only UFC Prelim fight to ever lose TV viewers.
That hurt the pay-per-view buy rate, it hurt Andre Winner’s career, it hurt lightweight Joe Lauzon – who had an amazing performance immediately after Lentz’s effort, which fewer people witnessed because of Lentz – and it hurt the sport as a whole.
No one watching that Lentz fight was entertained, no one turned to their buddy and screamed “Damn! This fight is so awesome! He’s holding the hell out of him!”
You have to seize these chances in your career and I am working very hard on giving an explosive performance against Carlos Condit in London on October 16 at UFC 120.
It is another huge chance for me, and, unlike some, I will fight my heart out.