An Interview With a Boxer Who Is Paying the Price
Heather Hardy, and "too much dead brain."
New York City loves fierce homegrown fighters. For the past decade, no one has embodied that more than Heather “The Heat” Hardy. A small blonde woman from Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, her pure aggression and indomitable will to win propelled her to the highest reaches of the boxing world. She won the New York City Golden Gloves, and later a professional world title. She fought in Madison Square Garden, on Showtime and HBO. She had a devoted fan base. Her reputation for toughness was so well known that she once made a guest appearance on the sitcom “Louie,” in which she beats up the show’s star at a bus stop.
In August of last year, Hardy fought fellow New Yorker Amanda Serrano—one of the best pound-for-pound female boxers on earth—for the second time. After a hard ten-round loss, she found herself afflicted with vision problems. Tests revealed she had serious brain damage, and her professional boxing career (24 wins, 3 losses) was cut short. She now has serious health problems and an income that depends on working as a trainer at Gleason’s, the storied Brooklyn boxing gym, where she and I have both gone for years.
Today, Hardy is trying to piece her life back together. She has been through many wars, and her body finally hit its limit. The glorious and blood-soaked moments that fighters like her have in professional boxing rings are often accompanied by an unseen cost, which she is now forced to pay. The swiftness with which she was left with almost nothing is also emblematic of the failure of the sport of boxing to take care of the people who give everything to make it go.
Last week, I sat in a cramped office in Gleason’s and spoke to Heather about her life, her fighting career, and where she is now. Whether you like boxing or not, her story is worth hearing. Our conversation is below.
Hamilton: Tell me why you became a pro boxer.
Heather Hardy: I was going through a divorce at the time. I was a single mom. I was living with my sister. We both had our kids, no child support. I was working six jobs. And my kid sister gave me a gift certificate to go try a kickboxing karate class. And they said, “Oh, somebody just fell off the fight team, do you want to try?” And I was like, “cool.” I beat up the girl, and the rest is history.
How’d you go from that to boxing?
Hardy: I beat up everyone in kickboxing except for one girl. This girl, she beat me in a kickboxing fight with a jab. She just jabbed. I heard she was training at Gleason’s [a boxing gym in Brooklyn]. I went to my kickboxing coach and said, “I gotta get better. I want to rematch this girl.” And my coach was like, “Nah, there’s nothing else you can learn. You either got it or you don’t, and you didn’t have it. There’s no going back to fight this girl.” So instead I went to Gleason’s, and I literally beat the shit out of everyone.
What do you remember about your first pro fight?
Hardy: Man, I bit the dust. I hit the canvas in the first round of my first pro fight. They didn’t even want to put me on the card. But Blimp [one of the trainers at Gleason’s], said “Yo, I told [promoter] Lou DiBella you just won nationals, and you can sell tickets. He said sell $10,000 in tickets, we’ll do it.” So I’m like, “What? How the fuck I’m gonna sell $10,000 in tickets?” And Blimp said, “Look, you don’t gotta do it. You just gotta tell them you’re gonna do it.” But I ain’t built like that. I sold $12,000 in tickets, and I think I made $600 that night.
In the first round, I remember my ass hitting the canvas, and I could just hear my mother’s voice in my head saying, “If you don’t beat her ass… you made me come all the way to Roseland fucking Ballroom this late at night.” And I did. I got up and I beat that bitch like she was stealing my money.
So you had family, friends, neighborhood people, everyone there watching you?
Hardy: Yeah. I sold tickets to drunk people in bars. I’d go to every Irish bar, do some guest bartending, and then show off my Golden Gloves. Sell some tickets. They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
At that point, did you feel like this was just a fun thing you were going to do? Or did you think you were really starting a new life as a pro boxer?
Hardy: It was never a question. I saw an opportunity to not have to work six little jobs. I was a college graduate, working six jobs. It was absurd. I saw boxing as my way to eliminate all six. I wanted to quit all my jobs and be able to raise my daughter as a boxer. I found out I’m good at this. And then they go, “Oh wait, but you’re a girl.” And I go, “Wait a minute.” Because when I was a kid I dreamed of pitching on the New York Yankees. But I couldn’t, because they said I’m a girl.
It seems to me like nobody goes into pro boxing unless their life outside the boxing ring is harder than a life inside the boxing ring would be.
Hardy: For sure. My mother taught me, “nobody will beat you like your mother.” And she almost didn’t lie. She didn’t know [fellow Gleason’s pro] Alicia Ashley was walking around. Alicia beat me like my mom, so she called the bluff on that one. But I mean, nobody ever scared me. What are you gonna do with your two hands?
During your career you were fighting about four times a year. You were very active. So you were always either fighting, or coming off a fight, or training for a fight.
Hardy: From 2011 to 2023 I got hit in the head at least once a week, because of prepping for a fight, or just prepping to prep. There was never time off.
Was there a time during those years when you felt like that was taking a toll on you, taking something out of you?
Hardy: No. Head down and I sprinted through every door. Through every “no.” I just put my head down and sprinted. So much that when the doctors finally ripped me out of the ring, and [Gleason’s owner] Bruce [Silverglade] nailed me to the floor, they had to put a sock in my mouth. I was 111 pounds, crawling into the ring. I would have died doing it.
Tell me about your last fight—how you felt going in, how you felt afterwards.
Hardy: For me, it was about camaraderie. Amanda [Serrano] and I held hands and walked through New York City boxing. And I handed her the torch in 2019, and she fucking sprinted. It brings tears to my eyes. I could cry. I am crying.
I had big plans. I had plans to do three sports in 2024. I wanted a bare knuckle fight, and then I was this close to getting Amanda to do an MMA fight with me. And then I wanted the 126-pound [boxing title fight] to end the year.
It’s a fight. It’s a fight. It was never, “What was that boxing match like? How did you feel boxing?” I don’t know. You dropped me in the pit, that’s what it felt like every time I was in the ring. Like my mother would say, “I want you to act like they dropped you in there with a tiger, and only one of you is getting out alive.” That’s what it felt like being in there. It was a tiger, and an old lady. But man, I got no stop in me. I’m not scared of no fucking tiger.
I’ve seen a lot of your fights. You have a naturally aggressive style. Did your coaches ever try to make you a more defensive fighter, someone who takes less punches?
Hardy: Of course they wanted to. In Gerritsen Beach, they call us beach rats. If you grab that beach rat by the tail, you could drop it in a garbage can ten feet tall. It’s getting out. It’s either gonna knock it over, or wait and climb up the garbage.
You can only put so much stuff in the computer. We put stuff in the computer, and you hope it sticks. So they would just keep on putting stuff in the computer, and then put me in the ring and see what came out. I could only be polished so much. But shit, I got far, didn’t I?
You’ve said that your MMA fights were some of your hardest fights. Why did you decide to do MMA in the first place? It’s an entirely new sport to learn, it doesn’t seem like something you can just pick up in a few months.
Hardy: Because I wasn’t getting enough attention from boxing, and it was the only thing I could do to show all these fucking boxing people that, hey—if you give me the platform, I’m gonna do the right thing. And they never would. So I went to Bellator, I gained all these followers and did all this shit with Bellator, and then boxing was like, “all right, she did enough now.”
When I had my first MMA fight, I was like, “Oh shit, I think [my opponent] owns a karate school.” And my mother was like, “If she stole your wallet, are you gonna ask if she owns a karate school? Or are you going to beat the living shit out of her?” You’re right. So I went in there like she stole my wallet.
And you had a bare knuckle fight scheduled to take place after what turned out to be your last fight. You didn’t have any concerns about doing a bare knuckle fight?
Hardy: I needed to pay the bills. I got hurt in the Amanda fight. I was barely able to teach, to work, to do anything. Travel, everything was very hard for me. I took the bare knuckle fight for survival. I wasn’t willing to let my daughter come out of school. I remember my old manager said, “I can’t stand behind this, because you’re willing to go blind just for the paycheck.” I’m like, “What don’t you get? I’ve risked my whole life so my daughter could have a better life. I’m not going back to Gerritsen Beach now, fuck you. Yeah, I will go blind, and I will die.” That’s my kid. That’s what I did all this for.
After your last fight, how long was it before you knew something was wrong?
Hardy: Immediately. Because my vision was split, and double, and bloody. Sometimes that happens after sparring, you get a headache, but now it had lasted two days. So I went for the MRI, because fighters know that’s when you go to the doctor. You have health insurance for 30 days [after a fight]. So I went, I got my MRI, I went to the eye doctor. That’s when they told me that I can’t get hit in the head, ever.
The MRI basically showed brain damage causing the vision problems?
Hardy: Yes. There was swelling, likely around the optic nerve. There’s a lot of research that was done with fighters who’ve lost their sight, and the things that happen with those kind of traumas, combined with multiple concussions. They explained that every time you get a concussion, a piece of your brain dies, and you just go on living without it. And I’ve had too much dead brain.
I’ve had concussions in sparring. You feel weird for a while, and then you just go on. Were there times in your career when you really knew you had bad concussions?
Hardy: Oh god yeah. There was an amateur fight at the Olympic trials. The second day, I fought Mikaela Mayer. She hit me with a jab, and I didn’t know where I was. That’s not a lie. It didn’t hurt, I wasn’t stunned, but I was aware that I didn’t know where I am. So I lost that fight—by decision, I boxed the full fucking three rounds with that animal—and I remember I got to the car with [my coach] after, and he was screaming, “Why did you do this and that?” And I had to tell him: “I don’t know where I am. When did we get here. Why is my grandma here?” Because I fought in nationals like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I fought five days in a row to win my national title. Took a week, came back to New York and did some sparring, and then I went to another national where I had two fights back to back.
Were there ever times in your pro career when you thought, “I’m taking some time off?”
Hardy: I couldn’t. I couldn’t take my foot off the gas until I almost died.
Because you thought it would hurt your career?
Hardy: Fuck my career. My daughter. You gotta understand, when you’re in New York, you go to the school where your zip code is. 11229 is not it. My daughter was not going to Sheepshead Bay High School. I moved to 11201, so she could go to P.S. 8 and M.S. 8 and go interact in the art community. She’s an artist. My daughter had a job teaching kids. I gave my daughter this beautiful life that people from 11229 don’t fucking dream. My mother calls me Heather Kardashian.
This ain’t for me. Look at me. I’m wearing a $12 jumpsuit. My socks don’t match. My Timberlands are four years old. But my daughter’s at SUNY-Albany.
So at the prime of your career, when you were fighting on HBO and Showtime, how much money would you be clearing from a fight?
Hardy: I made 20 grand when I boxed as the co-main event at Madison Square Garden the night I won my world title on HBO. I sold $36,000 in tickets, and I got a $20,000 paycheck. And [my opponent] Shelly Vincent sold out the other half of that card. Me and Shelly would sell out so much that twice, we were put on after the main event, so the crowd would be on TV. Because they knew that once we fought and the crowd left, they got crickets.
The promoter is nothing but a bad boyfriend. That’s all the promoter is. He’s just telling you lies, saying women’s boxing doesn’t sell. You’re right, Lou. Here, take this $40,000 check and go tell the 220 people outside with my face on their shirt that. But no, we believe the lies. We say, “You’re right, it sucks. Women’s boxing don’t sell. I guess I gotta work harder.” That was the prime of my career, on HB fucking O.
In one sense that was your big break, but there wasn’t a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. Did you start making a lot more money after that?
Hardy: No, it never really got easier. My last fight with Amanda was the biggest paycheck of my career. But anyone who’s in boxing knows that 25% of that goes to your corner. So the higher the check, the more everybody’s getting paid. It don’t mean I walked away with six figures. You end up leaving the boxing arena with half. Basically, by the time you take in all the late bills, all the restaurants, the flights, everyone came in, right? You’re looking at half. And that winds up being the price on my life, apparently.
Over the course of your career, were you able to put money away for retirement?
Hardy: No. Look at me. I look like this so my daughter can do what she did. I need to maintain the lifestyle that I gave my daughter. So, yeah, I did the right thing, and I’m not gonna stop. It’s for my kid.
How is your health now? You’re here in the gym training people, but how are you feeling?
Hardy: [Long pause] Who said it’s better to look good than to feel good? Physically, the results of the brain injury, I have an official letter of disability from multiple doctors. Because between the PTSD, I can’t even begin to tell you the physical stuff—I’m in bad shape. But I will say I’m in a safe place. So I’m feeling okay. I’m on the mend. I have about four outside hours a day before my eyes hurt. The only time I go outside is to teach my girls. I come to Gleason’s. It’s like a mental health check… it’s hard for me to hold pads, but all of my girls have kind of huddled around to make sure mom can get through four hours of work.
Are you doing physical therapy, mental therapy now?
Hardy: When I got hurt, I wasn’t getting any help from the boxing commission. Because I didn’t have health insurance, I didn’t get the MRI. I wasn’t aware that all I needed to do was pay $1,200 and I could have got it. NYU Langone saved my life. They gave me an MRI, they gave me a therapist, they gave me a regular doctor, they gave me an OB-GYN. They’re gonna help me file for disability. I can’t work. I can’t concentrate. I have to smoke [weed] just to kind of relax my face. I have no peripheral vision. I have serious PTSD. And having no peripheral vision, if you can imagine, it’s my brain, not my eyes. So my brain didn’t understand that I couldn’t see any more. I would walk to work, and I had bruises all over my arms from walking into stuff. My legs were covered in bruises. This scar was from falling down stairs. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see something.
You could imagine sitting in a train station, and now hearing noises, and not see anything. So I literally walked around [constantly looking back and forth]. I was riding the bike for a while, and I would be throwing up and falling off it. It wasn’t until I had a panic attack that the emergency room, they said, “Baby, it’s not your eyes, it’s your brain.”
How long was it after your last fight until you got a real diagnosis?
Hardy: I fought in August of 2023. By February of 2024 I had decided I needed to do this bare knuckle fight. And by April 11, I had the diagnosis that I could never get hit in the head again. And it wasn’t until September that I got health insurance and got my own MRI. Because for all that time, the commission was just sending me to the eye doctor. And that doctor was so nice, but he kept saying, “It’s not your eyes, it’s your brain.” They were slapping glasses on my face.
Let me tell you, CTE is a real thing. TBIs, traumatic brain injuries, are a real thing. I was leaving messages, asking for a therapist. Because I kept saying, when you think of CTE and people getting really angry—like Aaron Hernandez killed those people. He also killed himself. You know, you get very angry, and then very sad. I kept on saying that I was the First Lady of Brooklyn boxing. I’m the First Lady of brain damage. Look at me, study me, help me! Like, do something for me. They had wanted to send me to some Cleveland Clinic in Vegas, where they weren’t even going to help me. They just wanted to take notes. And it just felt like, am I even a person? Is this real life? Was I not the First Lady of Brooklyn Boxing?
When you were a pro fighter for all those years, did you have regular health insurance?
Hardy: No, never. Because you gotta understand, I was pushing to get my kid further ahead. I didn’t do nothing for myself. I didn’t do anything for myself. My daughter had health insurance. That’s all I cared about. Every fight, you have a 30 day window. You could see a doctor. Something hurts? You say it happened in the fight, you see the doctor. So I was medically taken care of that way.
So your manager or your promoter is not buying you health insurance?
Hardy: I managed my boxing career myself. And I remember when I signed with Lou DiBella, I asked him if I could have health insurance, and he explained no, because then that would mean I worked for him. He said, “You don’t work for me. You’re an independent contractor.”
When you look back on your boxing career now, do you think differently about it because of how it ended?
Hardy: Everybody asked me, “Would you do it again?” I would not do a single thing different. Because nobody ever did it before. So who the fuck is gonna tell me I did it wrong, or I should have did it another way? Nobody did the shit I did. They said, “No Heather, you can’t do it.” I said, “Got it. I can’t do it? Let me show you how I can.” I won a world fucking title on HBO. What? I’m a little beach rat. If I can do that, I can fucking do anything.
When you train fighters, do you talk to them differently because of what you’ve been through?
Hardy: Yes, I’m much more careful when it comes to brain health. You know, I’m a mother. Mothers don’t care about themselves. But, you know, do what I say, not what I do. I am very careful that my girls will not cut weight. We are going into the fight hydrated. We are not sparring crazy. If you get hit in the ring and I don’t like it, there’s no pride in stopping it. We’re gonna explain why it happened so it don’t fucking happen again. I make my girls talk to each other when they shadow box, because I want them to put a face to the brain that’s inside the headgear.
What could the sport of boxing do differently to try to make sure that what’s happened to you doesn’t happen over and over again?
Hardy: I was very surprised. I don’t know what I deserve. A lot of people, you know, you don’t get your flowers until you’re dead. I’m fine with that. My daughter will be at the service one day. I know what I did. I don’t know what the sport of boxing could have done different, but I know that the First Lady of Brooklyn boxing, the First Lady of DiBella Entertainment, never should have spent 2024 the way I did.
It’s easy to say, “Oh, she had concussions, oh, she had brain damage, oh, she made bad choices, oh, she signed the contract.” I broke down those doors for us.
I couldn’t not do it. I didn’t have a fucking choice.
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Related reading: In New York, Some Legends Still Fight Underground; On Punches.
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This was great. Keep doing stuff like this. Had a very Studs Terkel feel to it. So much in common with former football players I talk to.