On Saturday night, in the co-main event of UFC Fort Lauderdale, disgraced NFL veteran Greg Hardy picked up his first victory in the UFC’s Octagon, thumping the outmatched Dmitrii Smoliakov to a TKO win.

In the wake of this victory, Hardy is very excited about the future holds, and believes he’s capable of realizing mammoth heights in the cage.

“I’m the fights sports’ athlete version of what Michael Jordan could be,” he said at the post-fight presser (via Bloody Elbow). “This is just getting started. We’re scratching the surface, basically.”

Given his past, Greg Hardy is not particularly popular among fans, but according to him, that’s starting to change.

“If you really listen, there’s less and less boos, man. All I hear is the crowd. All I hear is the people that appreciate me,” he said.

“People are gonna boo, it happens. But all I heard was cheers, man. I heard people that love me, I heard my crowd, my fans, the people that I’ve embraced came down here, people who’ve been living here for two, three years accept me and enjoy what I put out.

“That was the best feeling, just to know that they enjoy what I put out,” he concluded.

What do you think the future holds for Greg Hardy after UFC Fort Lauderdale?

This article first appeared on BJPENN.COM on 4/28/2019.