All Gas, No Brakes, Heather Hardy’s Boxing Journey Continues – On The Safe Side Of The Ropes

Heather Hardy isn’t bitter. She has every right to be, but she’s not.

Let’s get that out of the way.

But the summer of 2024 looks a lot different for Hardy than the summer of 2023 did. Last year, Hardy was getting the big fight she craved, an August rematch with Amanda Serrano for the undisputed featherweight title at American Airlines Center in Dallas. It wasn’t Hardy’s official goodbye, but most assumed it was in terms of getting another title if she didn’t get the job done in Texas.

The fight went as expected, Serrano dominating en route to a shutout victory, but Hardy refusing to go away. It was the story of her career in a nutshell: all heart, all gas, no brakes.

It’s why the fans loved her and cheered her on, win or lose. But the cheering stops when a fighter gets back to the hotel and is seeing double.

Hardy called her longtime promoter, Lou DiBella, and he sent her to a doctor. The Brooklynite passed her cat scan and her MRI was clear. The diagnosis: the aftereffects of a severe concussion, with instructions to not get hit for the next six to eight months.

But Hardy’s vision never went back to normal.

“My vision never came back,” she said. “I just kind of got used to it being bad.”

And fighters fight, so Hardy picked one with bare-knuckle champion Christine Ferea and got it for May 11 in Connecticut. 

“I started training, not realizing what was going on in my head. I took it as don’t get hit, but I was training with the double vision, and by the end of my training sessions, it was like I was looking through a paper towel holder. It was just bright lights and it would take hours to get back to normal.” 

She lost weight, was throwing up and having headaches. But she kept everything to herself. 

“I didn’t tell anybody what was going on,” she said. “Everybody’s just thinking I was having a nervous breakdown and I finally told (Gleason’s Gym owner) Bruce (Silverglade) and they sent me to the doctor. Long story short, I can’t even jog anymore. I fucked up my head so bad I can’t even go running. I can’t hit the bag. So that was the end of that.”

The cancellation of the fight took place on April 24, and Hardy took to Instagram with a post entitled, “Update I’m not fighting May 11 I have brain damage.”

It was as honest and gut-wrenching a post as you’ll ever read as Hardy explained why she would never fight again. These days, a little over a month after her announcement, she’s equal parts blunt, emotional and defiant about her diagnosis. But she’s not questioning what she heard from respected physicians in New York.

“If I got into a car accident and that was my diagnosis, I for sure would want someone to confirm that I can’t go running,” Hardy said. “But we’re talking about doctors from the New York Athletic Commission that have known me for 15 years. And I have had the equivalent of probably 300 minor car accidents between my sparring and my professional fights. I had over 30 professional fights. So when someone tells me you can’t get hit anymore, you’re going to fucking die, I don’t need nobody else to tell me. They said that every time you get a concussion, a piece of your brain dies, and you never get it back and you lose everything that was inside that piece of brain.”

There are no bright spots in this story, but if you really want to dig for one, Hardy was told that her situation won’t get worse, but they don’t know if it will get better.

“We don’t know how much this can get reversed,” she said. “And then the doctor grabbed my face and said, ‘Can you not get hit in the head no more? You think? Did we say it loud enough this time, Heather?’ So that was it. I told Bruce and told my mother, and I’ll give you my mother’s famous line. I called my mom and I’m crying and I’m telling her what the doctor said. I said, ‘What am I going to do?’ And she said, ‘Well, it sounds to me like you’re going to need a dog and a stick.’”

We both laugh, a much-needed moment of levity that is usually the case when Hardy’s mother Linda is involved. I tell her that a reality show with mother and daughter would likely solve any issues with life after boxing, but in the meantime, the 42-year-old prepares for the next chapter in her life.

Not surprisingly, she’s not really preparing for anything; she just jumped into the fire. As documented on BoxingScene in March, Hardy was interested in advising fighters, mainly from her home gym, Gleason’s in Brooklyn. Today, she’s all-in as a manager, with one of her first clients a boxer die hard fans of the sport will certainly know: interim WBC flyweight champion Kenia Enriquez. It’s the perfect project for “The Heat,” who is well aware how the talented Tijuana native has been largely ignored by the wave of popularity enjoyed by the likes of Serrano, Katie Taylor, Claressa Shields and Seniesa Estrada. So Hardy’s already hard at work, lobbying the WBC for Enriquez’ shot at full champion Gabriela Alaniz, hoping to get that fight made for an August show in New York City, hitting social media for her fighter, and working with an immigration attorney to get her papers in order.

In other words, Hardy is managing like she fought – all gas, no brakes. There are the Cottrell sisters from Hawaii, 2-0 Elijah Allison, and an MMA star with ambitions to box Colombia’s Alejandra Lara. So why should a boxer sign with Heather Hardy?

“It’s more like, ‘Why should I sign you?’” she said. “And I don’t say that to be cocky, it’s just being honest. I know what doors I can open, and I know from being a coach at Gleason’s for the last 10 years that a lot of people want it. Well, they say they want it, they think they want it, but then when they see what it takes to get it, they’re a pain in the ass and they cost more money than anything else. These kids have their own coaches and their own training camp, but I’m making them train with me because I want to know that when you shake someone’s hand in a meeting that you’re going to speak respectfully and properly and represent me the right way. I want to see you train, I want to see you train with my team so that I know how you box. I’m not going to be a manager in my office just doing shit. I’ve already told Kenia she has to come train with me. I have another girl, Alejandro Lara, who is a pro MMA fighter who is looking to cross over into boxing, and I told her the same thing; you’ve got to come train with me. I’ve got to see who you are and how you’re going to represent me before I call and say, ‘Hey, can you do me a favor and put my girl on the card?’ People do business with me, I know I’m not full of shit and I’m not going to sign anybody that’s full of shit or represent me as such.

“It doesn’t matter how good you are as a fighter if you’re hard to deal with,” Hardy continues. “That means if you have a coach who is well known in the industry for pulling out their fighters because they don’t feel good or they don’t think they’re going to win, then that reflects on you. If you have a manager who doesn’t get medicals in on time or always returns tickets, it doesn’t matter how good you are. So me being your manager is me telling you exactly how we get to the top. And it has nothing to do with boxing.” 

The fire and enthusiasm are clear when Hardy speaks about her new endeavor, and it’s almost like she doesn’t need boxing anymore, at least as a competitor. As for the rest, it’s still her life, because quitting it ain’t easy, especially when she sees what it’s done for the kids she’s mentored in Gleason’s. That’s led her to start the Porch Light Foundation in the wake of her retirement.

“I’ve been working with the Give A Kid A Dream program for about 11, 12 years,” she said. “And what happens is, when they graduate, they leave the program. And I always told the kids, ‘Mom’s porch light is always on. When you want to come back, you come back.’” 

She pauses, takes a breath, then continues.

“And over the years, I’ve had kids that I can’t let go of and I take care of their gym dues and I teach them for free, get them there. Sometimes they just need help getting a job, and I had to let them all go because I don’t have the fights anymore. And so I finally asked for help because I’m Irish and we don’t fucking ask for help; we just do everything. And I finally asked for some help with the kids and someone inspired me to start a foundation. So the kids always know they can come home. So many times, I see them, and they come as kids and they’re so hopeful, but they get roped back in. So you just keep bringing them back because every second that they’re there, they’re not getting hurt or hurting somebody else.”

I let Hardy know that anyone else in her situation would not be thinking of others.

“I know,” she said. “The thing of it is, it does help me because it gives me something to go to the gym and work towards every day.”

It used to be preparation for the bright lights that brought Hardy to the gym. And if not for this forced retirement, maybe Hardy wins a bare-knuckle title and starts a new chapter in her fighting career. Maybe she returns to boxing, gets a couple wins and a big money fight comes again. Or maybe she just gets that payday that allows her to keep helping the kids in Gleason’s who need a hand. But those things won’t happen now, and it hurts. 

“I had Bruce there for me and Lou there for me and the doctors there for me,” she said. “But it’s that feeling of, wow, I left everything to boxing. I gave them my sight, my heart. I can’t even go for a jog anymore. I gave that to boxing and I don’t even have a fucking house and I got to think about a full-time job. That’s not fair. I was a world champion. I was a pioneer in different sports. What the fuck am I doing? I can’t even jump rope anymore. Boxing just left me, and nobody wants to help me. So I’ve got to help myself, like I did my whole career.”

Real. Honest. Defiant. And not bitter. Hardy makes it a point to say that, and you believe her because she’s never been one to lie. In a lying business where the only truth is between the ropes, Hardy was a unicorn because she stayed true to herself in and out of the ring, warts and all. That hasn’t changed, with the exception of the in the ring part. Those days are over, and she sounds like she’s accepted it. 

Has boxing? Or has boxing ignored it, putting it in the news cycle for a few days before letting it disappear? If this former world champion who broke down doors, was known globally and featured in big fights televised on premium outlets was a man, I’m guessing the reaction would have been a lot more widespread. But in women’s boxing, apparently paydays aren’t the only area where the ladies get shortchanged. And that’s sad, because if hearing Hardy’s story could change the trajectory of one fighter’s career, that would be the silver lining here. Instead, boxing has already moved on. But Hardy, classy through it all, refuses to point fingers or blame at an industry that let her down. My words, not hers.

“It (the reaction) has gone all over the place,” said Hardy. “A lot of people feel sorry for me. Some people think that I’m trying to make people sorry for me. So, it’s been mixed reactions, but I guess, at the end of the day, I’m the only one who knows all the things I’m dealing with. It’s not just the end of my career. My health is really bad and I’m kind of making light of that, but I can’t leave the house for more than five hours a day. I was riding past the piers, and anyone who’s a runner knows that when it gets nice out, you have that relief, like, shit, I can go today without my jacket; I can finally run in the sports bra. And then the feeling sunk in that you can never do that again. And I was so sad. But then I had to remind myself, bitch, you’re not in a wheelchair. It could always be worse. I am on the right side of the dirt and I’m dealing with a lot of shit: my gray hair, my retirement, my kid in college. Man, but the old lady’s trying.”

And Heather Hardy is going to be all right. 

For more information on the Porch Light Foundation, contact Gleason’s Gym at (718) 797-2872