Ultimate Fighting Championship fighters are always trying to balance the sporting end, that is – winning the fight the best way possible – and the entertainment end, which is delivering a great fight.
At times the two goals are contradictory.
Dan Hardy (23-7, 1 no contest), who faces Carlos Condit (25-5) on tape delay Saturday night on Spike TV as part of UFC 120 from London, U.K., opened up that can of worms a few weeks back. In a column in This is Nottingham, a home town publication, he was critical of fighters who were trying to win without, in his mind, trying to actually fight
Some immediately branded his article as sour grapes, given Hardy’s last fight, on March 27, saw Georges St. Pierre take him down and render him useless for almost all of the five-round fight for the UFC welterweight title. But Hardy was quick to say that while he wasn’t happy about how his fight went, that was not what he was writing about, and had nothing bad to say about St. Pierre, who was constantly trying to finish him. Hardy’s complaint was about fights like the Aug. 28 match in Boston on Spike TV, where teammate Andre Winner lost a decision to Nik Lentz, who mainly pushed Winner into the cage and tried, and failed, to take him down for three rounds. The match kept spectators fighting to stay awake and television sets clicking off to other programming.
Hardy blames such fights on judges who overrate takedowns and fighters then working for a takedown, not to lead to trying to finish, but to trying to avoid fighting.
“Lentz didn’t come to fight Andre, he actually came to avoid one at all costs, like he’d be short listed for the Nobel Peace Prize and didn’t want to mess up his chances of winning it,” wrote Hardy, who compared Lentz’s aggression in the fight to Ghandi. “He couldn’t take Dre (Winner) down or get anything going on the ground. He didn’t want to strike and he didn’t go for any submissions, he just clung to Dre’s thigh like a sailor to a mast during a storm.”
Hardy, who noted he’s a fan of the sport, said that unless he’s in training for a fight, watches all the UFC events live in the U.K., which isn’t as convenient as it sounds given they air from 3-6 a.m. on Sunday mornings, and fears that too many boring fights will cause an erosion of the fan base.
“These guys who have boring fights, if they happen too frequently, they will run off fans, that means less people will want to pay to see us on pay-per-view in the future, and that affects how much we earn,” he noted.
So Hardy wants to put on a good fight, particularly since he and Michael Bisping are the two draws on Saturday’s show, which sold tickets at a faster rate then any UFC event ever held in Europe. But his other goal, to get back into the cage with St. Pierre, is dependent upon beating Condit in a battle of two fighters who are both generally considered top ten in the world at their weight.
Since the St. Pierre fight, Hardy has had almost seven months to work on the weaknesses showed in the loss.
“I think, to be honest, I think anybody watching the fight, it’s pretty obvious,” Hardy said. “I mean, my wrestling wasn’t up to scratch and my offensive jiu-jitsu wasn’t there. I couldn’t threaten him on the ground at all, and I could hardly get back to my feet. So they are the things I’ve been working mainly on. Just working solid on my jiu-jitsu and traveling around working with different wrestling coaches and just getting some good input on that.”
“I’ve just spent three months on my wrestling in the U.S.A., and I can tell you we all work very hard on all aspects of our game,” Hardy said. We are all improving all the time and the reality is me and Paul (Daley) lost to the two best wrestlers in the sport in GSP and (Josh) Koscheck.”
Condit was the architect of Saturday’s fight. He did an interview where he specifically asked for Hardy, figuring Hardy as a fighter with notoriety coming off the St. Pierre fight, and UFC matchmaker Joe Silva heard the interview and followed up on it.
“Joe Silva came to me and asked me if I wanted the fight,” said Hardy. “I liked it. I thought it was a good idea. Condit always brings it. He doesn’t mind standing there and trading punches.”
“A fight of the night bonus would be a nice addition to my bank account,” he said. “I mean, if it’s up to me, I’d just stand on the Bud Lite logo right in the middle of the Octagon and throw punches. I’m confident with my power and with my chin. So if that’s the way this fight goes, then I’m all for it. But like I’ve been saying, I’ve been working out on my wrestling, my jiu-jitsu and don’t be surprised if I take him down and put him to sleep.”
“Guys like Condit that bring it in every fight are going to have a job a lot longer than guys who don’t come to fight,” he said. “Look at Jorge Gurgel, he lost several times before he was cut.”
But Hardy was wary if Condit’s style will change to a more conservative game plan now that he’s under the tutelage of Greg Jackson, whose speciality as a coach is in devising winning game plans, that aren’t necessarily entertaining game plans.
Even though Hardy got no effective offense in on St. Pierre, being on the wrong side of a dominant performance, his personality in building the fight made him a far bigger star even with the loss. But no matter how well he promotes fights, without a win on Saturday he may become a mid-card novelty act.
And he was certainly not lacking in providing promotional material in recent days, saying that Condit fights wild and that he could close his eyes and throw a punch in any direction and it would hit Condit in the face.
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