Dan Hardy will be fighting again as he is set to box Diego Sanchez on July 2.
Hardy has talked about returning for quite some time, this after health issues had forced him to retire. After receiving his UFC release, ‘The Outlaw’ was in talks with ONE Championship and then flirted with the idea of doing a boxing match with Tyron Woodley. However, this week news came out that he will box Diego Sanchez on Ricky Hatton’s undercard.
The news came as surprise to many, but not for Dan Hardy. The Nottingham native says he and Sanchez have been linked together for years so he wasn’t the least bit shocked. He also expects to not only win but get a big KO victory.
“Diego and I have been on a bit of a collision course for a long while. I think it was back in like 2006 when we got a faceoff when we were fighting in Holland,” Hardy said on his YouTube channel. “It’s always been on the cards. I mean, we’ve always been in the same weight class. He was slightly ahead of me in his UFC career. So, like, as I signed with the UFC, I was watching him fight the likes of Clay Guida at the Pearl at the Palms. I’ve got some good memories of Diego’s fights. You know what you’re going to get with him. He’s an animal. He comes to scrap every time.
“This is big gloves boxing, this is 16-ounce gloves over eight rounds so we can beat the hell out of each other and have a lot of fun with it,” Hardy continued. “I’m still confident I’m gonna be able to stop him inside the distance, but it’s gonna be a bit more difficult with the 16-ounce gloves and with just one skillset, but this is a good place for me to start, get myself back in proper condition, proper fight shape and then we’ll see where we’ll go from there. I think there are other options with Diego, assuming I don’t beat him up too badly in this boxing match. We might be able to do MMA, or bare-knuckle, or something afterward. This is the first step in the rung of the ladder if that makes sense.”
Dan Hardy has not fought since 2012 and this will also serve as his boxing debut. But, in MMA he has shown off his power as he has 12 knockouts in 25 wins. However, on the flipside, Diego Sanchez has only been knocked out four times in his career so knocking him out will be easier said than done.
Do you think Dan Hardy will KO Diego Sanchez?