The Heat discusses her MMA debut at Bellator 180
Heather Hardy: “I’m 35 and I still have a lot of fight left in me, but I want to make sure it’s going to the right place.”
The Bellator NYC pay per view in Madison Square Garden will feature the long anticipated pro MMA debut of wrestling and combat sports prodigy Aaron Pico. The Spike televised Bellator 180 undercard will feature another pro MMA debut. In her first MMA fight, WBC International Female Super Bantamweight titleholder Heather ‘The Heat’ Hardy will fight 4-5 Alice ‘The Soccer Mom’ Yauger, who also came to MMA via boxing.
It’s definitely not a switch, said Hardy to the Brooklyn Daily. I’m going to stay in boxing and I’m going to stay co-promoted in both sports. I’m really not switching because I love boxing too much to ever leave it. But it kind of got where boxing isn’t paying me and it was two steps forward to take one step back, it seemed like, every fight.
It’s more training, so it’s more physically hard. I’ve been eating better, not drinking as much — there’s no two glasses of wine every night with dinner. That just wouldn’t fly and I needed to be prepared to do all this physical stuff.
I’m 35 and I still have a lot of fight left in me, but I want to make sure it’s going to the right place. So I’m staying in boxing and keep on keeping on, but at the same time, if I have to get another job, it might as well be this.
Hardy had been scheduled to fight on the online undercard, but moved up to the Spike prelims when Keri Melendez got hurt.
It’s a tremendous opportunity and I’m so thankful that Bellator has chosen my fight to be on TV, said Hardy. I say this a lot. The fight in boxing wasn’t so much that I wanted to be on TV, because I wanted everyone to see Heather Hardy. [It was that] I wanted to women to have the opportunity to fight because we weren’t allowed. So to say I finally got what I wanted doesn’t do justice to what I was trying to do over the last four years.
I don’t know that I’m opening doors so much as I’m making noise. I think any time anyone is in a position to speak when you get the microphone and the opportunity you have to. You have to say what people are thinking and not saying.
It’s just really about trying to stay sharp. I’ve done this 20 times before and I know the business end…I won’t really hit those fight nerves until I’m doing my cage walk.
Bellator NYC/Bellator 180 will take place on June 24, 2017 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
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