Part Reptile: UFC, MMA and Me

by Dan Hardy

  Hardy versus Izidro 2 was put on as the headline act of the first ever Enter the Rough House show, an event dreamt up by Cage Warriors and held in Nottingham due to the growing strength in depth of the Rough House team. It took place in the Harvey Haddon Sports Centre in the same hall in which I had frozen in my first taekwondo tournament as a six-year-old, and I warmed up in the same room in which I took my yellow belt grading at the age of eight. I felt at home, and walked to the cage wearing my Nottingham Panthers ice hockey jersey to emphasise Izidro was encroaching on my turf. I have been a huge fan of the Panthers for many years. Living next door to the arena, I attended all their home games and occasionally travelled for an away day. That was the one break I allowed myself from MMA during training camp. I treated watching other fights as homework, so it was nice to go to an ice hockey game and enjoy the sporting environment without being truly invested in it. Of course, like everyone in the arena, I loved the fights that broke out when a team’s enforcer decided to seek retribution. Supporting a team, we all become so passionate about each player, especially when they are trading punches with the opposition on the ice. Those hockey fights are very real. They are heat-of-the-moment conflicts, the realisation of very genuine human emotions. What goes on in a ring or cage or Octagon is all manufactured to a certain extent, but on the ice someone snaps, it kicks off, and everyone watching reacts with an equally visceral outpouring of emotion.

  It was a tough fight this time around as Izidro threw every submission he had in his arsenal at me. I was by now known in Europe for my stubbornness in resisting submissions, but I needed all the knowledge and skills I had picked up at my training camps in the US to keep this jiu-jitsu master at bay. At one point in the opening round he caught me in a guillotine so tight that I actually passed out for a couple of seconds. Luckily, the ref didn’t spot it and when he moved to tighten it again, it somehow snapped me back into the land of the living. But I controlled the stand-up range and often had him either backing away or trapped up against the fence. At times he would create a scramble and test my takedown defence, but when he had some success I would look to reverse and ground-and-pound from guard, knowing that he would rather work from his back than attempt to trade on his feet. It was an even contest as it moved into the third round and he went for a tight footlock. Sensing the danger, I forced all my weight onto Izidro to prevent him securing my heel in the crook of his elbow and isolating my knee. With my weight on top of him I was able to land heavy punches, causing him to release my foot and push away to escape more damage. I chased and held my top position, this time pinning him against the fence as I unloaded. Seeing the Brazilian incapable of intelligently defending himself, the referee stepped in to save him and declared me the winner by technical knockout.

  It was a great win for me and I was elated. I walked to the centre of the ring and knelt down to soak it all in. Then, from nowhere, I was being hauled to my feet by my dad of all people. I had no idea that he or anyone else from my family were in the arena that night. To be honest, I had always insisted they not come along to my fights. It would have just been extra pressure on my shoulders knowing they were close by and watching. But with this one being in Nottingham, they had snuck in and watched the action from the bar area through a small window overlooking the cage. As soon as I won, Dad went tearing down the stairs, bustled his way into the cage and was jumping around like a madman trying to lift me up in jubilation. I always knew how proud he was of me but it was a beautiful moment to see it up close in his eyes.

  • • •

  I began 2007 with a few Thai boxing matches to keep me ticking over and then received news that the Japanese promotion Cage Force wanted me to take part in an eight-man tournament in Tokyo, with the winner allegedly guaranteed an Ultimate Fighting Championship contract. By now, the UFC had won the battle for supremacy over its Asian rivals and installed itself as the globe’s pre-eminent mixed martial arts powerhouse. Ever since Dana White made his brash $250,000 bet that the UFC’s Chuck Liddell would beat the PRIDE superstar Wanderlei Silva and ended any chance of genuine, lasting collaboration between America and Japan, the two promotions were set on a collision course that could end well for only one of them. When Zuffa, the UFC’s parent company, bought PRIDE in March of that year, any doubts about who would become the dominant force were dispelled. My heart had been set on PRIDE, but now my sights were firmly fixed on reaching the Octagon.

  The first fight of the Cage Force series was scheduled for May, so I thought I had better squeeze in an MMA fight to shake all the Muay Thai out of my system. Enter the Rough House 2 had already been announced for April and Cage Warriors were happy to put me on the bill against Willy Ni from the Netherlands. Ni had lost only three of his eighteen contests and was considered to be very proficient on the ground, but when I looked down his record I realised that, although he had compiled an impressive run of victories, he hadn’t beaten anyone of note. The truth is, I didn’t regard Ni as any sort of threat to me and treated the bout as a warm-up for the real deal in Japan. Willy reaffirmed this mind-set when he asked for a photo together at the arena on the afternoon of the fight. He was just happy to be there and wanted to enjoy the thrill of starring in a big British show. He had brought his brother over with him to act as cornerman and, more importantly it seemed, film as much of the experience as possible. It all fed into what was a lazy and poor performance from me. For the first and only time in my professional career, I took no pleasure in hurting my opponent. I took him down in the first round and was landing some heavy shots when over his shoulder I saw his brother pressed against the cage recording everything with his video camera. It was bizarrely unsettling and I subconsciously pulled back and allowed him to survive the opening five minutes. But during the sixty-second interval I resolved to go out and end it early in the second. I realised I was just going through the motions, a little like that first taekwondo bout all those years ago when I failed to engage and ended up defeated on the floor. The last thing I was going to do was miss out on the Japanese tournament due to a moment of carelessness against Willy Ni. As soon as the second began, he shot under my wild head-kick and tried to charge me across the cage, but I manged to wrap his neck in the rush and secure a guillotine. I then paused to consider my options. My preference for beating an opponent into unconsciousness or submission rather than twisting their limbs or restricting their airway has been well documented, but at this moment I was no longer invested in the fight. I didn’t feel like I could get anything else out of it and I didn’t have the rage in my heart to cause Ni serious damage. So, standing with his head secure under my arm, I decided to finish the contest the cleanest and simplest way possible. I jumped guard, holding tightly onto his neck. From there, I pushed with my legs to elongate his body while at the same time wrenching my forearm up and into his throat to cut off the oxygen supply to his brain. He started tapping just as he fell asleep and, to this day, Willy Ni remains the only submission victory on my record.

  One month later, I was in the Far East as one of eight fighters vying for a single spot in the UFC. There were four Japanese fighters, Yoshiyuki Yoshida, Hidetaka Monma, Daizo Ishige and Akira Kikuchi, and four overseas opponents flown in to be sacrificial lambs. In the first round of fights, Yoshida was drawn to face Matt Cain of Australia, Monma got Janne Tulirinta of Finland, Kikuchi drew Jared Rollins from the US and I was left with the tournament favourite, Ishige. Ishige was a very strong judo guy, had a 20–2 record in MMA, and was the current welterweight king of Pancrase, a promotion second only to PRIDE for prestige in Asia. As expected, everything was weighted in the locals’ favour and it was no surprise when Cain, Tulirinta and Rollins all lost their bouts. I got flown in late for my own fight, arriving at 4pm on the Thursday after a twelve-hour flight. I was to weigh in just twenty hours later and still had 10lbs to cut. I immediately sourced a nearby sauna, but was refused entry on account of my tattoos. Tattoos are associated with the underworld in Japan and the average sa
una in the country doesn’t want that particular class of clientele on their premises. So I bought a roll of black bin bags instead, wrapped myself up nice and cosy, and set off for a hot and sticky run through a humid downtown Tokyo. I just about sweated the extra pounds off in time, but the effort drained me and I was probably only operating at 60 per cent when ordered to fight at 7pm the following evening. Despite that, I started off strong, dropping Ishige twice in the first round and cutting him badly. But by midway through the second, I was basically exhausted. I kept landing cleanly on him with everything I had, but he wouldn’t drop. I practically used his head as a punchbag for the full fifteen minutes, striking him far more than any fighter should ever be struck, but was unable to summon the strength to knock him out and finish the fight. It was exactly like a recurring nightmare I often have in which I’m given multiple free shots at a rival but can’t knock him out. That feeling of futility in the cage is my ultimate fear. But the beating was so one-sided that, even allowing for home field advantage, a unanimous decision in my favour was the only possible outcome.

  It was only the next day I learnt that my punches did in fact knock him out. Unfortunately it wasn’t until he was back in his changing room that he collapsed, however. Unconscious, he was rushed to hospital where they found substantial bruising on his brain. With the obvious communication barriers, I wasn’t sure what was going on as I boarded a flight back to the UK but I was relieved to later hear he made a full recovery. I chatted to him about six months later and he appeared to bear no lasting damage, but his career as a fighter of any description was over. It was a worrying episode, but I remember thinking the promotion had brought the tragedy on themselves by trying to screw me over on the weight cut. Had I been afforded adequate time and facilities to lose the ten additional pounds, I would have been in peak condition in the cage and I would have knocked him out cleanly in the first round. I blamed whoever booked me that late flight for the punishment Ishige was forced to endure. Certainly, I saw no moral implications for me to ponder; Ishige chose to enter that cage and he deserved to be there fighting me. It was an organised and fair fight, not an outmatched street brawl, so I had no problem whatsoever with my actions, regardless of their consequences. The potential for tragedy is present in many sports and we as athletes must deal with that. Knowing what I know now about fighter safety, I might find it difficult to support an MMA event that is not as prepared to handle injuries as it should be, but I have little time for moral objections to two athletes participating in their chosen, legal profession. From a purely selfish point of view, I also flew home feeling I had just taken a huge stride forward in my career. I had made a big statement by beating the tournament favourite so convincingly but, more than that, I had beaten a Japanese fighter in Japan. Before that night I had lost every time I had left England, so it felt like a monkey off my back, a major obstacle overcome. It also ensured I couldn’t wait to return for the semi-final.

  That was Hidetaka Monma in September, so I had the whole summer to prepare specifically for the challenge he would pose. Monma was a huge man, a middleweight really who cut ridiculously hard to get down to 170lbs. He was well known for his excellent guard game and the ability to work submissions off his back, and was particularly fond of the rubber guard technique developed and perfected by Eddie Bravo. Bravo is a one-of-a-kind jiu-jitsu instructor in California. He learnt his trade under Jean Jacques Machado, who was in turn nurtured by the Gracie family, so his pedigree is unquestioned. A strong proponent of the benefits of marijuana, Bravo attributes smoking the plant to a lot of his creativity, including the development of the rubber guard and twister system. He teaches both out of his 10th Planet school in Los Angeles, counting top fighters like Tony Ferguson and Ben Saunders and the UFC commentator Joe Rogan among his alumni. I knew that if there was one way to get inside Monma’s head before we fought it was to fly out and spend a few weeks with Eddie.

  And so that is what I did. I travelled to California and spent just over a month on the mat, attempting to tie training partners up with my arms and legs as if I were an octopus dragging its dinner to a watery grave. The idea is to develop the flexibility and dexterity in your hips and legs to make them an extra pair of arms and hands to choke and submit with. My priority was actually to practise reverse engineering it in case Monma tried it when we met, so every day I grappled with Bravo’s top students until I felt comfortable that I had the knowledge to free myself from any submission attempt that Monma locked on.

  It turned out to be time well spent, for Monma’s Plan A, B and C was to submit me from his back. He entered the cage with the mind-set that he was either going to submit me or lose. And, despite everything suggesting it would be the latter, he persisted with his doomed strategy until his bitter end. In the opening twenty seconds I rocked him with a right cross, then dropped him with a jab and he basically didn’t get up, save for the one-minute respite between rounds. The fight consisted of me in his guard, comfortably defending ever weakening submission attempts, and then punishing him with massive punches and elbows. He was extremely slow getting to his feet at the end of the second and I sensed he didn’t have much left. Five seconds into the third, he was on his back again, sent there by a right-left, right-left combination in which every blow landed clean. I jumped on top of him and split his brow with a vicious elbow, draining the last ounce of fight from his body. Immediately, there was blood everywhere and the sight of it sent him into a panic. I could see it in his eyes and his corner obviously did as well, for the white towel came over the fence seconds later. Save for an awkward post-fight interview in the cage, conducted via a particularly attractive Japanese translator, my work in Tokyo was done for another three months.

  Waiting for me when I returned for the final in December was Yoshiyuki Yoshida. Yoshida was a fourth dan black belt in judo and known as a hard striker and early finisher. Six of his previous seven victories had come by way of first round KO or TKO and I anticipated him coming out hard against me and putting everything into getting another early stoppage. My aim, therefore, was to see through the first safely and then rely on my superior conditioning to beat him up in the second and third. And after five minutes of rather scrappy, uneventful action, everything was going to plan. He pushed as expected, but I easily absorbed what he had. It was a fifty-fifty round but, being Japan, I imagine he was given the benefit of the doubt. The important thing was I knew he was now tired while I was fresh as a daisy and ready for a ten-minute war. When the ref ordered us to commence the second round, Yoshida approached fast and I aimed a low kick to the inside of his leg. Unfortunately, at that exact same moment he level changed, causing my foot to land on his thigh and then rise into his groin. It was clearly accidental, and his thigh bore the brunt of the kick, but I knew he’d been caught in a tender area and so I held my hands up in apology and moved to a neutral corner while he recovered. I’ve received similar blows in the cage on countless occasions and while you certainly feel a little winded and perhaps sick for a minute, the 300 seconds you are afforded to fully recuperate are more than enough. But as those seconds ticked away, Yoshida remained lying on the canvas in apparent agony. There, he was surrounded by an ever-growing gaggle of stony-faced medics and observers who looked like they were contemplating calling in a priest to administer the last rites. At one point he rolled over and attempted to stand up, but after a barked order from his corner, he gave up and lay back down. By now I was sure he was milking this for all it was worth, perhaps hoping he’d win the sympathy of the judges in case it went the distance. It wasn’t a direct hit, and we wear protective cups anyway, so I knew he couldn’t have been in as much pain as his anguished expression and prostrate form suggested.

  Not long after the aborted mission to rise, the referee made a motion with his arms to suggest the fight had been called off. I was still standing in the neutral corner, with no idea what was happening. Unbelievably, a stretcher then appeared and a tearful Yoshida was delicately lifted on an
d carted away, presumably to collect his Oscar for best dramatic performance in an MMA arena. With everything being conducted in Japanese I didn’t have a chance of understanding what was being said around me, but I was thinking that the absolute worst-case scenario was that the bout was declared a no contest and a rematch organised for as soon as Yoshida’s balls recovered from their glancing blow. It was only when I saw the Cage Force welterweight belt disappear down the aisle after him in the hands of his coach that the penny dropped. I’d been disqualified. He’d been announced the champion. And, most importantly, he was the one going to the UFC, where he’d eventually win two and lose three before being cut from the roster.

  Now I felt like the one who should be crying. I was absolutely livid and called my manager from the hotel that night to tell him I was on my way home and wanted to fight as soon as possible. The fifth Cage Warriors’ Enter the Rough House instalment was taking place in Nottingham the following weekend and I had been planning to go to support my teammates and show off my shiny new belt. But after that travesty I now wanted to be there hurting someone and expelling the rage building inside me. I was desperate. ‘Anyone with a winning record,’ I told him. It was short notice, but he managed to find me a sacrificial lamb in the form of Manuel Garcia. The Spaniard had won twelve of his eighteen MMA bouts but I watched a couple of videos of him, saw him tap out from punches, and knew he had neither the heart nor the strength of mind to live with me for fifteen minutes. In the end it only lasted 120 seconds, but I punished him for the duration. At the first sign of pressure he looked to clinch but I kneed him in the face and then sprawled on a poor takedown effort before he lay back and allowed me to secure half-guard top. When I caught him with a clean shot, I noticed him turn away and, sensing he was looking to tap out, I unloaded until the ref had to trail me off him. He deserved those extra two or three strikes because I have no respect for a fighter who taps out from punches like that unless they are seriously injured. The victory hardly lightened my mood, however, and I was a nightmare to be around for a few months. The UFC had been so close, only for a stray foot and a pair of over-sensitive testicles to ruin everything. Just like after the Petz robbery, I felt like I was doing everything right but the universe was conspiring against me. But after a while I stopped feeling sorry for myself and started looking ahead with a more positive attitude. I had been extremely close to the UFC, so there was no reason in the world why I couldn’t get back there. What I didn’t expect was to be given another bite of the cherry so quickly.