“Nobody is tougher than me!”
-Former champion Heather Hardy in a 2019 interview with the Daily News
The boxing ring has always attracted bright lights, fame and the occasional big payday; the sport’s gutter has always been cluttered with broken promises, broken dreams, and the remains of long-since broken fighters.
Some permanently reside in the gutter goo and have accepted their fate, while others are wondering, How the hell do I get out.
Brooklyn’s Heather “The Heat” Hardy, former champion and now former boxer, is using all her strength and courage to climb out of her medical morass and back into the light.
The problem is the brightness has gotten fuzzy after her championship fight with Amanda Serrano, the undisputed featherweight champ, in August 2023.
“After I fought Amanda [in a rematch], I noticed I had double vision,” says Hardy from her office in Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, where she trains fighters and clients, her Daily News championship Golden Gloves hanging around her neck. She lost the 10-round decision to Serrano and days later, her eyesight had gotten worse. Everyone said it was normal. Not really. “Then [my eyesight] split, then blurred.”
The bad eyesight was just the beginning of Hardy’s health woes. It has gotten so bad that she can’t even do basic boxing workouts.
“I would start training and I couldn’t see anything,” she states.
Hardy was preparing for a farewell fight versus a bare knuckle champion (she needed the money for her daughter’s tuition) when she noticed she wasn’t getting any better. She had to cancel the fight.
Now?
She can’t spar, train or even jog because the movement will rattle her damaged brain. Hardy’s issues seem like some sort of macabre grocery list.
Bad vision? Check.
Nausea? Check.
Weight loss? Check.
“I lost 30 pounds and my lowest was 117,” she declares.
Bad balance? Check.
“I trip over f—— everything,” she says with a laugh. “I can’t ride my bike because I keep falling off and hit people.”
Racing heart? Check.
She tried to figure out how many concussions she had had during her career. Her doctor told her a concussion is like a minor car accident.
“If you think in terms of my over 30 professional fights, my 50 something amateur fights, my thousands of sparring sessions, there are probably close to 300 minor car accidents,” she reveals. “The doctor said that when you get a concussion, a piece of your brain dies, and you don’t know what you ever lost because your brain just goes on without it.”
Through it all, Hardy is surprisingly upbeat.
“I’m so grateful to be alive,” she declares and don’t feel sorry for her. So, no pity party?
“Hell no!” Hardy spits out with that old fire. “I’m sliding into my 40s and I realize fighting is over.”
Even doing simple pushups are a task.
“You get to three and it hurts,” states the youthful 42-year old. “Can’t do it anymore. This is a harder transition than looking in the mirror and seeing my gray hair and please don’t make me sound bitter.”
Far from it. Even with the bad hand that boxing has dealt her, there is still a need for it.
“I love boxing,” she admits. “I love how it changes people’s lives. It saves more than it takes, and I wouldn’t do a thing differently.”
Dealing with adversity seems to be Hardy’s trademark. She lost her trainer, her mentor Hector Roca in January of last year due to a heart attack.
“My [ring] second Martin Gonzalez visited Papa in the hospital, and he told him to look after Heather,” she says, as the tears appear because of the love she had for her ring father figure. Life coach may be the best description for the no nonsense Roca.
Still, she moves forward.
With all that’s happened to Hardy, from the brain damage to the loss of income, she plows ahead, odds be damned, just like how she fought.
Only now she’s on a mission to help her “kids.”
Sure, the single parent takes care of her 20-year old daughter, Annie, a sophomore at SUNY Albany, studying education, but she has another family right smack in Gleason’s.
They are part of her Porch Light Fund. She started it 15 years ago with Bruce Silverglade, owner of Gleason’s, Lou DiBella, her long-time promoter, attorney Phil Braginsky and the always giving of their time and money, trainers Blimp, Cat, Chicken and Martin. Also getting involved is STEM activist Rhonda Vetere.
The goal was to help six young adults who were at-risk children at one point.
Now?
“They’re adults who are just trying to get by,” she divulges. “You give a kid a dream and show these kids love.
“We put the Fund together in two days.”
They all box or teach the sport.
They are her babies and with her love for them comes tears. She’s proud of them but worries like a mother hen that all her babies will make it back to the safety net known as Gleason’s.
Why care?
Growing up in the Gerritsen Beach section of Brooklyn may have had a lot to do with it.
“My mom used to say if they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can make something out of you,” she exclaims.
Her mom Linda, who works in a retirement home, and her father John, a preacher, reside in South Carolina, but the lessons are never far.
“It’s years of how my mom raised me right. My mom taught me to be honest and disciplined, committed. She told me not to lie, not to cheat. The basic values,” says Hardy about lessons also passed on to her younger siblings Colin (37) and Kaitlyn (36).
She captured her world title, the vacant WBO featherweight crown, versus Shelly Vincent in 2018. She lost the title in her next fight, the first one against Serrano.
Hardy posted a career mark of 24-3 with four kayos. Two of her losses are at the hands of Serrano. She states she may not be the best, but she will be remembered as a champion because she always gave her all, her passion, desire, guts and blood (a lot of it her own).
She even tried her hand at Mixed Martial Arts, going 2-2.
Her boxing future is still cemented in the confines of the squared circle as she now sports a manager’s hat.
“I forgot more about boxing than most people know,” she admits.
The long-time Yankees fan (“I have a tattoo on my back of the Yankees logo and Wu-Tang), Hardy is working with WBC interim flyweight champ Kenia Enriquez (28-1, 11 KOs) from Mexico.
The former WBO flyweight and WBC light-flyweight champ, Enriquez has been waiting in limbo for her shot at unifying the WBC title against titleist Gabriela Alaniz.
She was going nowhere until Hardy called the WBC and petitioned for her to get the fight.
“The WBC was ignoring her calls and I figured with all my ‘brain damage’ and as a pioneer with no health insurance, I thought it might help,” she explains.
It must have worked, as the WBC told her Enriquez is getting the shot.
The date, of course, is TBA.
She even states that a couple of female champions have reached out for representation.
Hardy’s long-term future is anybody’s guess.
“I take a lot of vitamins for brain health,” she announces and does drills to keep her brain active. “I do crossword puzzles and word searches.”
She had to slow down her workouts because she can no longer do intense world champion workouts.
“My doctor said you’re going to die if you don’t listen to me,” she says and has tried her best to slow down.
Hardy admits some days are better than others, but she has help from her fiancée Tyquan Jackson who kept busy during her interview hanging boxing belts on the wall.
“Sometimes I get nauseous and just won’t eat,” she says, “and Ty will say to me, ‘Ice Cream? Pizza? Burgers? Tacos?’”
And then she smiles.
Hardy enjoys the little things like trying to find a comfortable spot on the couch with purposely crooked glasses so she can watch “my Sopranos.”
The smile turns hard because “The Heat” is burning to get out of the gutter no matter who stands in her way.
“For 15 years all I did was talk about equal pay [for female fighters] like it was a sales pitch,” she points out. “Now look at me. I can’t box, my sight, my heart. I can’t even go for a jog again. I really gave them everything.
“I chose not to leave boxing at the point when it turned its back on me,” she says, defiantly. “I’m gonna shove my face in it until it loves me back.”
Hopefully, that won’t be too long a wait.