NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTS: Heather Hardy Headlines in Brooklyn May 18

The struggle to get women’s boxing up to speed, on par with the men, it has been a fight quite appropriate for the mentally and physically rugged ladies who are trudging through the quagmire of indifference and closed minds.

Folks like Heather Hardy put in the same time and effort, often even more, being that it is even less likely for a female fighter to be able to subsist on purses alone, as the guys, and the progress she makes isn’t of the leap and bound variety.

Inroads are being made, but the slog, it’s slow. She and Amanda Serrano and the others outside of the region, like Layla McCarter, signed to Mayweather Promotions, they go through that mire with reservoirs of mental strength that dip down and then surge up. Nevertheless, they persist.

Fighters, they are, by trade and by comportment. It’s in their DNA, to persist, to not surrender when doing so would have been quite understandable. Stubbornness, in the best of ways.

Hardy persists, fights on, and in fact headlines an event May 18, at the LIU Paramount facility in downtown Brooklyn, which is owned by the Barclays crew.

It should be a vibrant event, with an aura of triumph and a mood of resolve permeating. That’s not just because Hardy continues her trek to parity, and seeks to go to 20-0 in a rematch with Edina Kiss (age 27; born in Hungary; 14-3). The battle of blonde pummelers tops a Lou DiBella card in Brooklyn, and that is a big damned deal. Dibella has been, like other folks who run “club shows” in NY, unable to do these promotions because the NY commission implemented a regulation which raised the cost to insure pro bouts to a sky high level. It makes earning a profit on such a show a tough get, and Dibella said that this one is pretty much a one off, an event meant to signal he won’t surrender, and to get some of his stable some work near to their home bases.

Hardy, who trains out of the famed and fabled Gleason’s Gym, sounded pumped to be topping the slate.
“Fights are always exciting! I’ve been in the gym working on new things, and I’m looking forward to putting on a show, bringing the local boxing scene in New York back! So many of my fans talked about missing the last fight since I was out so early,” she said of the March 4 tango, which she won via UD8. “So we decided to to it again. She was a tough opponent, with knockout power, so you just never know.”

This I do; Hardy persists.

Falls, stumbles, gets tripped, nevertheless, she persists.

It’s why, hello, boxers make some of the best role models you could ever hope to follow.