By Neil Davidson
THE CANADIAN PRESS
It may sound odd, but English welterweight Dan (The Outlaw) Hardy moved to Las Vegas to escape distractions.
The 29-year-old mixed martial arts fighter had been dividing his time between his native Nottingham and Los Angeles. But he left the West Coast for Sin City in May, joining forces with friend and local heavyweight Roy (Big Country) Nelson.
One of the best talkers in the sport, the popular Hardy is hard to miss with his red Mohawk and punk sensibility. But after three straight losses in the UFC, Hardy (23-9-0 with one no contest) knows he has to up his game.
“It was just a case that the timing was right and my career needed it,” Hardy said of the move to Vegas. “I’m kind of backed into a corner now and I need to make some drastic changes in order to keep a job with the UFC. So that’s my motivation. I’m here to work for my job and Vegas is the best place to do it.”
While he loved living in Los Angeles — with his American girlfriend, a graphic designer — Hardy tired of sitting in traffic jams commuting from one gym to another.
“And there’s just so many distractions in Los Angeles … I know it sounds crazy moving to Vegas to get away from the distractions.”
Hardy doesn’t drink or gamble and, like many Vegas locals, rarely visits the Strip.
“I’m out of the way, I’m off the Strip and I’m in a little neighbourhood and I’m training at a local gym,” said Hardy, whose girlfriend Elizabeth has joined him in the desert in Vegas. “It’s just like being in Nottingham, apart like it feels like the surface of the sun most of the day.”
Plus he knows Vegas offers a wide array of easily accessible gyms and talented training partners.
Hardy isn’t the only Brit to look to America. Middleweight Michael (The Count) Bisping, who along with Hardy has been the face of English MMA in recent years, has also moved eight times zones west.
Bisping wraps up filming of Season 14 of “The Ultimate Fighter” this weekend in Las Vegas. He is also renting a place in Huntington Beach, Calif., and plans to bring his family over from England when the kids get out of school.
He will divide time between California and his home in Clitheroe in northwestern England.
Bisping, who has long been affiliated with the Wolfslair MMA Academy in Widnes, England, has American ties through Quinton (Rampage) Jackson.
The former light-heavyweight champion has trained with Bisping in England and recently opened his own gym, the Rampage Fitness Academy, in Mission Viejo, Calif.
Hardy, a founding member of Team Rough House in England, had thought of moving to Vegas some years ago but took the plunge after developing a friendship with the quirky Nelson.
After losing to champion Georges St-Pierre in March 2010, Hardy and his girlfriend were on a road trip down the east coast of the U.S. when they stopped in North Carolina to take in a UFC show that featured two of his English teammates.
Nelson was on the same card, fighting Dutch heavyweight Stefan (Skyscraper) Struve.
“Just a real nice guy,” Hardy said. “A real down-to-earth guy, very quiet and not at all like I imagined he would be after watching the show (a brash Nelson won Season 10 of “The Ultimate Fighter”). And we just stayed in contact.”
Said Nelson: “People said he’s a good person and so I introduced myself. And he was a good person. I hang out with good people.”
Nelson, who had Hardy in his corner at UFC 130, offered to help him train in Vegas.
“I came out a couple of times and trained with him at his house and I learned a lot. And it just seemed like the right thing to do.
“He’s willing to put time into it and to really help me out. There aren’t many people in the sport that are willing to be that generous with that time and with their knowledge.”
Hardy can already thank Nelson, a native of Las Vegas, for dissuading him from moving into one of the city’s lesser neighbourhoods.
While an accomplished striker, Hardy failed to defend any of St-Pierre’s 11 takedown attempts at UFC 111. Last time out in March, he was taken down four of five times by Anthony (Rumble) Johnson and lost by decision.
In between, he was knocked out in the first round by Carlos (Natural Born Killer) Condit at UFC 120.
His next test is Chris (Lights Out) Lytle (40-18-4) in the main event of a UFC televised event Aug. 14 in Milwaukee.
“I really feel like I’m making a lot of progress, so I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s going to add to my game,” said Hardy, who spent the first month of his training camp in England before returning to Vegas on Wednesday to continue his preparations.
“I’ll always have a base in England. Obviously my family’s there, my team’s there and my coaches and stuff. But Vegas has a lot to offer as well, so I need to divide my time wisely and get the most out of it.”
Hardy feels some regret still from the Johnson loss. In the leadup, both men talked of keeping the fight on the feet, a strategy Johnson ignored once the cage door closed.
“If it was stuff he was just saying to the media — it was going to be a standup war — I would have taken it with a pinch of salt, I wouldn’t have paid too much attention to it,” Hardy said.
“But we were actually talking back and forth via private message on Twitter and he was saying the same thing to me. And we’ve always got along well, we’ve always been pretty good friends. … I was annoyed with myself in particular. Because I like to think myself as being a little bit smarter than that. But he got me good, he punked me good and he got the win.”
Still, Hardy said he came into the fight confident in his jiu-jitsu if the fight went to the ground. But Johnson’s size proved to be a X-factor and Hardy said he had an off night.
“I didn’t perform. I didn’t feel myself, it was a poor performance. Yet again I let myself down. That’s something that keeps me in the gym every day and it’s going to be a factor that spurs me on in the future.”
Hardy accepts full blame for the Condit loss, saying “ego came into it.”
“I had no fear for the guy and no respect for him,” he added. “And I paid for it, because I had no concern about his power or his striking ability.
“I mean if I fought that guy 10 times, I would beat him eight or nine of them, I’m confident of that.”
Hardy may be doing Condit a disservice. The Arizona fighter is currently on a four-fight win streak and followed up his Hardy KO with an impressive decision over South Korean Dong Hyun (Stun Gun) Kim.
Lytle looked sluggish in a decision loss to Brian Ebersole at UFC 127 but had won his previous four. A banger on his feet who rarely fails to out on a show, he also has a an effective submission game.
After Johnson, Hardy says he has no idea what to expect.
“I can’t expect anything from anybody anymore, I’m over trusting people. I learned that lesson in my last fight. Obviously, Chris Lytle isn’t the kind of guy that would want to disappoint the fans and kind of hold somebody down for 15 minutes, I can’t imagine the fight’s going to be like that.
“But either way I’ve got to be prepared for it. Like people keep telling me, it’s mixed martial arts not kickboxing and I need to be a wrestler as well as a striker. I’m going to work on everything, regardless.”
Still Hardy says he has wrestling and takedown defence in his arsenal.
“The reality is I’ve been in this sport a long time and I’ve stopped a lot of takedowns and I’ve taken a lot of people down. It just so happens that the two fights that I did lose were to good wrestlers and they were on national TV.
“I’ve been training wrestling and jiu-jitsu since I got into the sport. It’s just something that’s not always been available to me. It’s something that I’ve made an effort to seek out and now I’ve really got to switch my focus and put some more time into it.”
