Last night’s Undisputed featherweight title fight with Amanda Serrano and Heather Hardy in opposing corners was like something off a movie screen, carrying a personal significance to both women that far outweighed the tallies on the judges’ scorecards.
Many supposed pundits didn’t give Heather Hardy a snowballs’ chance in hell of finishing the fight on her feet, or even hearing the bell for round two, and urged her corner to throw in the towel late in the bout. Those people may know boxing on a more than elementary level, but they don’t know the first thing about Heather Hardy. To the unbelievers she offered a succinct and sincere “Fuck yourself” this morning on social media.
Watching the uplifting post-fight scene play out between Hardy and Serrano in the center of the ring made me think of the ending to the first Rocky movie where the theme music begins to swell and a bloodied and battered Balboa is frantically beckoning for Adrian, drowning out the verdict of his one in a million challenge against Apollo Creed which is being read by the ring announcer.
Whether Rocky won or lost was purely incidental, the result something that needed to be recorded as an academic formality. What mattered was that he went the distance with the best in boxing and proved his worth to the world. And to himself. The same held true for Heather Hardy. Despite the odds, she has never been counted out in the ring. Nor in life. Hardy and Serrano have been through a lot, together as well as individually, and their shared struggles all came full circle in Dallas.
“I got very, very lucky where I was able to come spar with her, show her that I’m tough, I want to learn, I just want to get better. So to be able to have her grab my hand and say come on Heat, let me help you because I know what you went through, it just means everything,” Hardy said with her arm around her friend Amanda after the two had just spent twenty minutes beating the daylights out of one another.
“I gave everything I had today. I gave everything for three months. Everything,” exclaimed Heather, the tears she had been choking back coming forth in a torrent not unlike the blood that had coursed down her face during the last two rounds of the fight, the fans displaying their appreciation both for Hardy’s gutsy resilience and raw emotion with loud, sustained cheers. “I have no excuses,” she cried, emptying herself out soulfully in the same passionate manner with which she had just exerted herself physically. “That was everything.”
Humble and genuine as boxers come, Amanda Serrano responded to Heather’s outpouring of vulnerable gratitude with heartfelt sentiments of her own. “This is why we need to come together as female boxers and work together,” said Serrano, who personally saw to it that Hardy was given this massive opportunity to fight for her title and take home the first six-figure payday of her eleven-year career. “Don’t degrade each other. Let’s work together and make this beautiful sport of women’s boxing grow together.”
This sequel to their 2019 fight more or less followed the same script. Little in the way of unexpected surprises and no twist ending. In no way did this make it any less entertaining. Serrano came out of the gate throwing heavy leather, unleashing merciless body blows and hooking with both hands, punches that had Heather hurt within the first thirty seconds and bleeding by the end of round one.
Hardy maintained the mental wherewithal to fight her way off the ropes so as not to become a sitting duck for Amanda’s vast array of power punches, but the champion would stalk her prey and cut off the ring, not permitting Heather the benefit of time to hit the reset button between exchanges.
By the end of the third round, Hardy was not only still standing but beginning to fire back with a renewed sense of confidence, landing a succession of nice right hooks and nodding her head in Serrano’s direction as if to say, ‘I’m here for a fight, so let’s fight.’ Obliging this unspoken request, Amanda closed out the stanza with a trio of head-snapping right hands, two crosses and a hook.
In round four, Serrano added to her already impressive punch selection by throwing left uppercuts into the mix, two of which hit their mark with Hardy backed against the ring strands. True to her leave-nothing-behind personality and work ethic, Hardy exhibited no resistance to standing and trading with the heavy-handed champion when a lesser adversary might have chosen to duck and cover if not run for the hills or lie down and accept their inevitable fate.
In fact, Heather had her best rounds as the bout progressed past the halfway mark despite the cumulative punishment she was sustaining. At the end of each one hundred and twenty second-long frame, the two gunslingers would touch gloves or bump elbows as they crossed paths on the way back to their respective corners in a show of friendship and mutual respect.
Prior to round nine, the ringside physician consulted with a banged-up but battle-ready Hardy before he would give the go-ahead for the fight to proceed. Not only did she answer the questions to his satisfaction, the feisty Brooklynite returned to action with an incredulous smile and ‘Do you believe this shit?’ kind of shrug.
Amanda dispelled whatever lingering notion any doubting naysayer might have had that she was taking it easy on her friend by bringing the fight directly to Hardy at the commencement of the penultimate round, looking like she was intent on getting the stoppage. Serrano being one of the best finishers in women’s boxing notwithstanding, Heather being Heather, a premature end to the bout was highly unlikely.
But not so fast. With twenty seconds remaining in the ninth, Hardy was again summoned to visit with the ringside doctor, this time to check the severity of a cut on her hairline caused by an accidental clash of heads. After a few anxious moments, Heather was declared fit to fight. This revelation was not exactly worthy of a front page headline to Hardy, who beat her chest in King Kong-style defiance before resuming hostilities with Serrano as the crowd roared its approval. Amanda grinned from ear to ear, pounding both gloves against Hardy’s, and they picked up right where they left off.
Heather and Amanda embraced at center ring before the tenth and final round when it was again time to begin bashing each other’s faces, slugging away toe to toe with the crowd on its feet as if the decision was somehow in question. What couldn’t be questioned was Hardy’s fortitude and tenacity which, more than just muscle memory and a granite chin, kept her vertical even when she was driven back into the corner on wobbly legs after three straight lefts from Serrano.
‘The Heat’ refused to be extinguished and came out swinging. Serrano did too, however, nailing Hardy with another left hook during the final exchange which brought the house down with a well-deserved standing ovation for the two warriors who shared one more hug, this one drenched in blood, sweat, and tears, after time expired and Heather had absorbed 278 punches.
Their sisterhood springs eternal, the source of which lies at a place unseen by most. The secret point of origin where bonds are formed not merely of gender and geography but common life experience in the way of professional struggles and personal sacrifices carried out in the name of conjuring what Morgan Freeman’s character Scrap Iron Dupris in Million Dollar Baby calls “the magic of risking everything for a dream nobody sees but you.”
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