Athletes
Veronica Hardy Understands Herself Better Than Ever
Heading Into UFC 309 On A 3-Fight Winning Streak, Veronica Hardy Believes She Has All The Right Things In Place
New Yorkers will always be New Yorkers. That means if there’s a bright sunny sky, we’ll find the cloud. If we find a five-dollar bill on the street, we’ll complain that it wasn’t a twenty. So it’s always good to see the city through the eyes of someone else to remind us that it is a special place.
Someone like Veronica Hardy, who has made the Big Apple a second home as she’s prepared for her UFC 309 bout against Eduarda Moura.
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“Every time I come here, I get a deeper understanding of how this is the world's greatest city,” said Hardy, who has been training at the Renzo Gracie Academy with her husband, UFC vet Dan Hardy. “It's like an onion of layers of greatness that I discover a little bit more every time I come.”
It’s enough to make you feel guilty for complaining about daily life here. Hardy doesn’t have to experience those feelings, because she’s not a complainer. If anything, she’s just grateful to be alive and be where she’s at in her career.
It wasn’t always this way. There were dark days after her 2020 loss to Bea Malecki where she wondered if she would ever fight again. The 1-4 start to her UFC career wasn’t great, but those growing pains could be explained away. Health issues, not so much.
“I didn't retire,” Hardy said. “I never was like, yeah, I'm retired. I just couldn't do anything. It was a bit of a difference there. I was just so bad that I couldn't even do normal day activities.”
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That was frightening on so many different levels. Not just on a day-to-day basis, but long-term, with the idea that something she loved since she was a child was being taken away from her.
“I wasn't on this win streak where everything was going great and then now, I had this injury and I'm going to push through it,” she said. “It's like, first of all, you're doing horrendous and maybe this is a sign that this is not for you. And fighting through that and just being like, yeah, but I've done this since I was eight years old, and I love it. Winning or losing in MMA doesn't defy what martial arts means to me, but now is that going to be taken away from me? It’s who I am. It's part of what I do and it's ingrained in me. So win or lose, that will never change. But it was extremely difficult.”
But time heals. And three years away from the sport she loved healed the former Veronica Macedo, whose marriage to Hardy also played a pivotal role in her eventual return.
“He's wholeheartedly changed my life and if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have this optimism because I wasn't very optimistic before,” she said of her hubby, a former welterweight title challenger. “It was something that I tried to be, but I wasn't. And now, I have him, so everything else is a bonus.”
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That’s in life. The bonus is that Hardy made her return to the Octagon in March of 2023 and has proceeded to rip off three wins over Juliana Miller, Jamey-Lyn Horth and JJ Aldrich. It’s one of the more remarkable comebacks of recent years, and while most look at 2020 as a year they’d like to forget, Hardy truly has a reason to dump that year in the proverbial trash can. But she’s not going to put a negative spin on everything in her past. She’s only looking forward, while being grateful for everything.
“I’m on a win streak, and you start thinking about the next and the next, and then the other day I just stood there, and I realized, dude, a few years ago you didn't even know if you were going to be able to compete again, or if you were going to be able to even experience this. The nerves, the training, the bond you get to create with people, the struggles, everything. You thought that may never come again. And here you are, nervous about winning or losing and having those normal feelings, the feelings about being able to perform, but you are performing. That gave me such an appreciation. And thanks to the fact that I was at such a rock bottom, I am able to enjoy every part of it, even the ones that are a struggle.”
Sounds like win, lose, or draw this Saturday and beyond, the 29-year-old Hardy is playing with house money.
“It obviously sounds a bit exaggerated, but I was on my last lifeline, and it looked like it was it, and then, all of a sudden, everything else seems like extra time,” she said. “Three, four years ago, if somebody would've told me that in four years’ time, you're going to be on a three-fight win streak, about to fight at MSG, and you're going to have incredible people around you, people that help you, that sacrifice so much just because they love you, just because they want you to be safe; not for any sort of personal gain, just purely because they care about you and you guys are a team. If you would've told me that, first of all, I would've thought you were crazy. I was like, yeah, there's no way. I've been looking all over the world for the past 10 years, where has that been? And now to have it, it makes me so grateful, man. Just so grateful.”
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So what’s the secret to all this success and, more importantly, getting a grip on life before the age of 30? Hardy doesn’t hesitate to respond.
“I think understanding myself is a big part of it,” she said. “I feel fighting, and everything surrounding it, is one of the true expressions of who you are as a person. And I got signed when I was 20. What did I know about myself? I didn't know anything. I'm not saying that I know everything now, but I sure understand myself a lot more and I'm sure less apologetic about it. That's helped tremendously. And I've only been able to do that because I've been surrounded by people who are encouraging and that don't let me fall into anything else but myself, that keep me honest, that tell me things as they are and not as I want to hear them or how it would benefit them.”
She pauses, not for reflection, but emphasis on her impending mic drop.
“So, the secret is to have the right people around you and be ruthless about taking the ones that do not benefit you out. It doesn't matter if they're related. It doesn't matter if you've known them for 20,000 years. If they do not add to your life, remove them. Ruthlessly, viciously, just rip them out.”
There’s the fighter in Veronica Hardy, who is sounding more and more like a New Yorker every day.
We both laugh.
“Have no remorse,” she reiterates. “Just rip them out of your life, because you deserve happiness. Everybody does. And don't let anybody tell you that you don't, because they're wrong.”
That’s some secret.
“I wish somebody would've told me that earlier. But we live and we learn.”
UFC 309: Jones vs Miocic took place live from Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York on November 16, 2024. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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