Brooklyn’s brilliant boxer is Hardy by name and by nature
Her second opponent, Unique Harris, was brought to Manhattan from Philadelphia in late October. I was at the Roseland Ballroom that night to see Long Beach light heavyweight Seanie Monaghan but Hardy stole the show with her frenzied four-round unanimous decision victory.
The Irish colours of her trim added to the intrigue and so I tracked her down the following day, congratulated her on her victory and inquired about her Irishness.
“I’m in Gerritsen Beach,” she said. “It’s a small Irish community off Jamaica bay in Brooklyn. We all have much the same story — I’m just a single mom fighting to make a life.”
Four days later, when the Sandy flood waters destroyed her parents’ house and almost 2,600 other dwellings in that working class community, she was losing her home for the second time this year.
“My neighbourhood was essentially wiped out in the storm,” she told me by email 36 hours later, just as the full destruction of the city and the beaches became truly apparent. “We are all homeless, pretty much living out of the church.”
Her intense training and work regime at Gleason’s Gym never lapsed and three weeks ago, she got back up and won again. Happily this was around the time her parents regained access to their home.
By the time the contractors finally get around to making their house truly liveable next summer, she will have fought a handful more times, fearing no one and desperate for every new challenge.
That’s mainly because every time she walks into the small office she shares with her friend Alicia Ashley, a fellow professional and trainer, she sees the WBC female world super bantamweight belt hanging from the cluttered wall.
That’s Ashley’s belt and Hardy wants it.
There are a multitude of different Brooklyns and many of its layers of humanity are split by streets and avenues along the 10-mile diagonal that cuts from working class Irish-American Gerritsen Beach on the southeastern tip of the borough through Jewish Midwood and Caribbean Crown Heights all the way up to Gleason’s under the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges in trendy DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass).
I went to see Hardy the other week at the world famous gym to explain that my way of honouring Ireland’s sportsperson of the year, Katie Taylor, would be to make her the sportsperson of my year.
Despite the struggles of 2012, this will always be the year she turned pro and won that first bout, just as Taylor was making history in London. But in between all that, a fire at her apartment sent her to her mother’s couch.
No wonder she calls Gleason’s “home” too. No wonder she introduces Arturo Gatti’s former trainer Hector Roca to me as “papi”. She points to the ring in the corner by the main windows and tells me that’s her office. “I train there and I train kids. That’s where I lost my first two amateur fights too.”
She loved the fight game from the start and didn’t find it hard to get up again and keep going. No wonder she has taken a boy from the troubled Brooklyn ghetto of East New York under her wing, an 18-year-old who was referred to her by police officers in a bid to reform him after a stint behind bars.
“They have to show an effort but he’ll come in every day. I would share my breakfast with him, my lunch. We go for jogs together on the bridges. He’s like my son.”
Her days are long, up and out of Gerritsen Beach before 5am for the long commute and never out of the gym before 8pm. After her most recent win, she was back in the following morning at 8am, ready to keep pushing.
“People tend to stay in Gerritsen Beach. Not many of us have got out. Everyone knows each other. You walk down the street, you say something wrong and you get a smack off five different mothers.
“I always knew there was something more out there for me, I just didn’t know what it was until I found boxing. It’s my life now.
“I don’t have the money or the fame to show for it but everyone knows me or knows about me. Even though I’m so new, I’ve already made a huge mark.
“I’m not famous. I sleep on my mom’s couch. But I can go into a gym in so many different places and most of the people there will shout ‘The Heat, Heather!’ The boxing community is so strong, it feels good.”
Alicia Ashley, her inspiration and rival, sat in her corner for the Unique Harris victory. As the usual thoughts raced through Hardy’s mind, her friend pulled her aside and offered some oddly appropriate perspective: “That girl ain’t gonna do like I do.”
That was all she needed to hear, she tells me as she stares into the last bits of evening sunlight from her dark Gleason’s office.
“I have to stay busy. I see that belt every day and I don’t care what it takes to make it mine.”
