Combat sports veteran Heather Hardy has announced she is stepping back from fighting due to repeated concussions and resulting brain damage, effectively ending her career.
Just a few weeks back, Heather Hardy was gearing up for a bare-knuckle brawl with BKFC champ, Christine Ferea. Now, it seems her fighting days are done and dusted.
Heather, a seasoned 42-year-old combat sports pro, was a boxing regular before she took a four-fight detour with Bellator MMA. She’s now decided to hang up her gloves, citing multiple concussions and resulting brain damage as the reason. She was all set to go toe-to-toe with Ferea for the BKFC title on May 11, but got yanked from the fight mere days before the event.
Heather’s finally breaking her silence about the medical diagnosis that’s put a full stop to her career. “My fight for May 11 is off,” she shared on Instagram. After her last summer’s fight with Amanda Serrano, her vision stayed blurry for days. She got an MRI and an eye check in Texas, and the diagnosis? Post-concussion effects.
She was told she’d be fine in six to eight months. But she needed a fight, and her condition didn’t improve. She’s a single mom, her daughter’s in college, and despite what people think, she didn’t make millions from her career. She was living paycheck to paycheck, trying to give her kid the best life possible.
Training for Christine made her condition worse. She was down to 123 pounds, couldn’t eat or sleep, and was weak. She kept it from everyone, even her boyfriend and coaches. She thought she could make it through a ten-minute fight. But after a light sparring session, she couldn’t see anything for two days.
She didn’t eat or sleep from Friday to Monday and realized she was too weak for this. A doctor confirmed she’d had too many concussions. Each concussion kills a part of your brain, and it never comes back. Imagine that? After ten years, she’s had too much brain damage. She can’t risk any more, or she won’t be able to see. No running, no jogging, no jumping rope, and definitely no more blows to the head.
She never actually said the word “retirement,” but she ended her statement with “so I said the thing … you know what that means.” Her video caption read, “I’m not fighting May 11, I have brain damage.”
Heather started her boxing career late, at 28, back in 2012. But she had an impressive undefeated run in her first 22 fights, bagging several titles. Her first defeat came in 2019, at the hands of Amanda Serrano.
In a rematch last August, Serrano handed her a crushing defeat, landing 278 punishing punches over ten rounds. Heather’s MMA stint was brief, with a 2-2 record in Bellator. Her last appearance was a 2019 loss to Taylor Turner by first-round TKO.
If this is truly the end, Heather bows out with a 24-3 record with one no-contest in boxing, a 2-2 record in MMA, and a history of kickboxing and Muay Thai bouts. Quite a rollercoaster, huh?