Heather Hardy’s Fight Beyond the Ring: Battling Brain Damage and Boxing’s Broken System
Heather Hardy put everything she had into fighting. Now she’s paying the price for it.
Despite being a relatively small and unassuming woman out of Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, ‘The Heat’ was one of boxing’s most fierce females. While some MMA fans may remember her run under the Bellator banner, it was inside the squared circle where she truly shined, building an impressive 24-3 record and capturing the WBC world featherweight championship.
Sadly, Heather Hardy’s career came to a crashing halt in August 2023 after going 10 rounds with former undisputed light-welterweight queen Amanda Serrano. Immediately following their fight, Hardy knew that something was seriously wrong.
“My vision was split, and double, and bloody,” Hardy said in an interview with Hamilton Nolan. “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.
“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.”
Before getting the diagnosis that would end her career in an instant, Heather Hardy had planned on competing in three different sports in 2024, including a bare-knuckle fight and a potential mixed martial arts bout with Serrano.
“By February of 2024 I had decided I needed to do this bare knuckle fight,” Hardy continued. “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?
Hardy received no help from the Association of Boxing Commissions, leaving her little option for medical treatment. Fortunately, she was able to get help through NYU Langone, one of the nation’s premier academic medical centers.
“When I got hurt, I wasn’t getting any help from the boxing commission,” Hardy said. “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 anymore.”
Hardy revealed that she was eventually classified as disabled, noting that she can’t be outside for more than a few hours each day before it affects her vision — an affliction that makes it very difficult for her to continue training the next generation of talent at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn where she originally cut her teeth.
“Physically, the results of the brain injury, I have an official letter of disability from multiple doctors,” she said. “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.”
Heather Hardy Wouldn’t change a damn thing
Asked what she believes the sport of boxing could do to prevent more fighters from ending up in her position, Heather Hardy had a hard time coming up with an answer.
The only thing she knows for sure is that nobody should have to go through the pain and suffering that she has and continues to experience on a daily basis.
“I don’t know what I deserve,” Hardy admitted. “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.”
As for whether or not she would do it all over again, Hardy didn’t hesitate to answer that question.
“Everybody asked me, ‘Would you do it again?’ I would not do a single thing different,” Hardy said. “Because nobody ever did it before. So who the f*ck is gonna tell me I did it wrong, or I should have did it another way? Nobody did the sh*t 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 f*cking title on HBO. What? I’m a little beach rat. If I can do that, I can f*cking do anything.”
