Part Reptile: UFC, MMA and Me

by Dan Hardy

  My mind was effectively made up, but a trip to Lorenzo’s private physician in Beverly Hills sealed the deal. Lorenzo’s doctor was actually suggesting the same as the previous las Vegan medics, but fortunately he had brought in a specialist from UCLA who he had presumed would back him up. On the contrary, this guy, one of only seven doctors in the entire US who specialise in electrical currents in the heart, made it very simple for me. There are only three possible reasons for you to consent to surgeons embarking on a scavenger hunt in your heart, he said. Firstly, because you are presenting worrying symptoms. I was not, and that actually meant that my condition is WPW pattern rather than WPW syndrome. Secondly, because you have a fear of sudden death. I did not. Thirdly, because it appears to be the only way you will ever be allowed to fight in the Octagon again. Number three was the only consideration to provoke a slight pause for thought, but it was still clear to me the decision I had to make. There was no way I was going to undergo what I considered to be unnecessary heart surgery just for a chance of a couple more fights with the UFC. I’m fine as I am, thanks, I thought as I drove out of Beverly Hills that day.

  Before I left California to return to Vegas I had a stop to make, however. I had driven in from Nevada in a pretty foul mood that morning. Knowing your career and passion was being taken away from you is not a nice mental state to be in. For miles and miles I was cruising along behind a large truck with, as is an American trucker’s wont, a selection of bumper stickers on the rear. One caught my attention and I stared at it for almost an hour. ‘No Bad Days’, it read. I called in to see a tattoo artist friend named Chris Stuart and there and then had him ink No Bad Days onto my leg against the backdrop of a California sunset and palm tree. It acts as a constant reminder to stay in the present and appreciate the fact that I am alive and, in my opinion, perfectly healthy.

  • • •

  I found little comfort back home in Nevada where the apparent demise of my UFC career mirrored the very real breakdown of the relationship I had been in for seven years, the final twelve months of which were spent engaged to be married. Looking back I can see we had been on separate paths going in very different directions for a couple of years, but as the wedding day approached our incompatibility began to shine brighter. My fiancée was very much focused on her career and setting herself up within the traditional social construct of modern-day America, whereas, partly influenced by my experimentation with psychedelics, I was more interested in the metaphysical dimension of life. She also showed little or no interest in my career, perhaps always a little jealous of the easy access I had to recognition or appreciation by just logging into a social media account while she was bogged down in the rat race, trying to keep busy as a graphic designer. I remember leaving the euphoria of the MGM Grand the night I beat Duane Ludwig and, still on a high, walking into our front room to be greeted by absolutely nothing. She hadn’t watched the fight and didn’t even get off the sofa to congratulate me. We were due to be married the week before the scheduled Matt Brown bout, but with a fortnight to go we sat down and agreed we couldn’t go through with it. Family and friends were already flying in to Vegas so we decided to have the planned party without the actual wedding ceremony, but it was an uneasy time, with neither of us really knowing what was around the corner. The pressure, expectations and attitude of her family didn’t help in the slightest either. Her mother in particular never really warmed to me and always had an arsenal of handy tips on how I could improve myself.

  One was the suggestion that I get a real job which, given the fact my apparently fake job had recently done close to a million pay-per-views for the GSP fight, was as ridiculous and uneducated as it was insulting. Another was that I fix my teeth, particularly the front right central incisor, which has admittedly seen better days. Back in 2005 I was shadow-boxing in the small ring of the Majestik Gym when I heard a commotion emanating from the big ring on the mezzanine floor. Tony, the sixty-something Jamaican guy who ran the boxing side of the Majestik, was up there with a group of eight or ten so-called troublesome teens from the local estates, trying to instil some discipline in their lives. Tempers had flared in the midst of a body-sparring session and Tony found himself struggling to keep two of the larger kids apart as they swore at and threatened one another. I got there just in time to see one throw a punch so I grabbed him to control him until everything calmed down. Unfortunately, just as I got my arms around him, the return punch from his foe arrived and caught me square in the mouth. I was holding the kid against the ropes as he continued struggling and screaming blue murder, and all the while I could feel my mouth filling up with blood. When it was safe to release him, I walked to the mirror, spat out the blood, and saw that my tooth had been knocked back and was now lying flat against the roof of my mouth. I pushed it back into place, held it there with my tongue and drove straight to the dentist, but by that stage the gums had reclaimed my pearly white and it was stuck fast. It was discoloured due to the blood seeping into the enamel, and clearly not exactly where it should be, but it was secure enough for the dentist to suggest we leave it as it was until it started causing me discomfort. It never did and so to this day it maintains its prominent position in my winning smile.

  Further distaste was shown towards the tattoos that were quickly spreading to encompass most of my arms, back, front and a significant portion of both legs. The idea of them being lasered off was even floated at one point! Needless to say I didn’t even dignify that one with a response. I always knew I would have a lot of body art and as a kid I was either scribbling on my skin during lessons at school, or sketching and designing ideas. It is true that I have a lot, but each and every one has a personal and very important symbolism attached. There are two wolves on my chest for my two heartbeats. One is calm and mellow and the other is snarling intensely, like my vision of the last wolf on the British Isles during my ayahuasca experience. There are antlers representing strength and a part-human, part-reptilian eye looking out from the centre of my torso to represent the beast inside that I had grown so close to during those late nights in the MushRoom. On my right arm I have a Japanese sleeve inked by the LA artist Sung Song. Within it, a coy fish swims up a waterfall cascading out of the mouth of a skull to represent the importance of keeping focused, motivated and determined until the end. The cherry blossoms dotted around the falls embody the fleeting nature of life and remind me to live in the moment and enjoy each day. The artist Tim Hendricks then inked my other sleeve. Britannia is scrawled down my left forearm alongside a clipper sailing out into a storm. I also have a compass on my elbow and inside my bicep a bluebird flies over the White Cliffs of Dover. This arm is all about my origins and leaving the British Isles on adventures to face danger and eventually be guided back to the place I will always consider home. I have skulls and crossbones on each leg and inside my lip as a nod to my love of the anarchist ways of olden-day pirates. Then there is a mug of tea on my left calf in remembrance of my grandad, and a little Ska man from The Specials’ album cover on my opposite calf because I have great memories of listening to that music in the back of my dad’s Ford Cortina as a young boy. My most recent work is a chameleon on an ayahuasca vine which symbolises my adaptability and growth, and I’ve plenty more ideas in my mind before I cease having my body inked, if ever that day comes. The process of getting tattooed always feels very ceremonial to me and is essential if I am to feel true ownership of the permanent, skin-deep art. After a few hours in the chair, when the adrenalin has worn off and your body has become hyper-sensitive to the pain of the needle, it can be truly excruciating. Just like lengthy fasting and self-flagellation, it is another way to put your body through extreme stress to reach an almost psychedelic state. I’m also very selective about who I go to for the tattoo. They need to have their own style, to own their art and appreciate the ceremonial aspect as much as I do. I don’t want to walk into a high-street studio with a picture and ask if they can replicate it. I prefer to discuss ideas and themes and see
what unique vision the artist comes up with. In a nutshell, my tattoos mean a great deal to me and no potential mother-in-law could ever force me to remove them.

  It was a huge relief when the faux-wedding day was over. With the uncertainty swirling around my heart condition and future as a fighter, I just felt like I had bigger things to worry about. Unfortunately my ex didn’t agree and she rarely asked about what was going on. With my family over 5,000 miles away I could have done with her support, but in these months I was increasingly finding it from another source, my yoga instructor Lacey. She was the only person totally removed from the mess my life was then in and as we spent more time together we grew closer and closer. When I came out of a hospital test and checked my phone, the only messages asking how it had gone were from Lacey. A few days before I should have been entering the Octagon to face Brown, Lacey and I attended an ayahuasca ceremony together and quite a few things clicked into place in my mind. I saw that she was in line with where my life was heading and she was giving off the type of energy I needed. I knew that my time with my ex had passed and the only thing to do was to make a clean break there and then. A fortnight later I was sharing a house with Lacey, nineteen months later we were married, and two and a half years on we are settled back in the UK and still a constant source of motivation for each other to continue our personal journey of growth and understanding of ourselves as beings.

  • • •

  I kept myself busy in the immediate aftermath of the diagnosis and was still in and around gyms every day. It was hard walking into Frank’s gym in Vegas because it was almost like pretending everything was okay, so I spent a lot of time in California and helped coach my friend Mac Danzig for his upcoming fight. But it was strange, going through the motions without a definitive personal target to aim for. I enjoy simply expanding my skill-set within martial arts, but there is a different urgency involved when the reason for doing that is to save your face in a cage. Without that looming threat, the willingness to put myself through pain and discomfort while training drained away. I grew frustrated and a little bitter at times too, becoming secretly jealous of others working towards their next fight. Worse than that was the frustration at seeing training partners not giving their all when they were in a position I was dying to be back in. To be around someone preparing for a fight but not taking it seriously infuriated me. I’d seen it before when I was fighting but just dismissed it: They can do what they like with their lives and it’s no skin off my nose, I always thought. But now I took it personally. My frustration peaked one night with my old Rough House teammate and friend Andre Winner after he was beaten in London. It was a fight he should have won ten times out of ten, but he just sat back and gave it away.

  ‘What the fuck was that, mate?’ I demanded in the changing room.

  Andre just shrugged and offered a lame reply. ‘It was all right,’ he began. ‘I did some things well, it’s not too bad, I’ll learn from it and move on.’

  Inside I was stewing. I was thinking, You don’t know what you’ve got. I would love to just shrug and move on to the next one, but there is no next one for me. The fact that it was Andre, a guy with all the natural ability in the world, magnified my exasperation. He is an incredible athlete with speed and power and agility I’d kill to have. I was looking at him thinking, You have everything you need to fulfil my dreams, and yet you don’t even seem bothered. It was so frustrating.

  At this early stage, there was still a part of me convinced that the heart thing was something I was going to quickly overcome. I was still expecting to simply speak to some doctors in the UK, get the all-clear from them, and be back in the Octagon before the end of the year. But reality gradually descended over me and it hit me pretty hard when I had to finally face up to the fact that the UFC were not going to take any chances based on what their doctors were telling them. I struggled badly with it all for a time. I was obviously disappointed, but I felt truly lost as well. For the first time in my life, I did not know what was coming next. There had been uncertainty before, particularly while the consecutive losses were mounting, but even then I felt like I was in control of my own destiny to a large extent. Now I was just being told I couldn’t fight any more. I couldn’t stop thinking of the ayahuasca ceremony only a few months earlier in Peru. Of the visions of a previous life as the last wolf in England or the shaman chanting, ‘Spirit of the wolf’ while beating my chest with his ceremonial branch. Then there was the wolf sitting next to me throughout each ceremony. Even my nickname, the Outlaw, chosen many years earlier, became scarily prophetic. Caput gerat lupinum was a Latin term used in the old English legal system which translates as ‘Let his be the head of a wolf,’ the wolf in those days a feared and hated beast whose skin could be used to pay taxes. It referred to anyone the law considered an outlaw and basically allowed for that person to be killed on sight as if they were a wild animal. It was almost too weird and coincidental to be true, but I was reassured by it in a way. This is who I am, I decided. All of this is part of the person I am. I started referring to my condition as Wolf Heart to make a distinction in my head between the people who suffered with symptoms, and myself, healthy and asymptomatic.

  I distanced myself from MMA for a few months and began doing a lot more yoga and trail running in the canyons. I also spent a lot of time in a CrossFit gym in Las Vegas, powerlifting and generally pushing myself to the absolute limit there. It was only in the midst of an interview that I realised what I was subconsciously doing during this time. After giving so many interviews in and around the same topics, I often find that my answers to repetitive questions become delivered as a stream of consciousness. I begin speaking on auto-pilot without first having thought it through, and sometimes it is only when I hear myself make a particular statement that the penny drops. I realised that, because I had been told I was defective and unable to fight, I was pushing myself to find a breaking point, searching for that moment when my heart would fail me. Because I was so convinced that it never ever would. I became so appreciative of that pulsing organ in my chest, of all my body in fact. It sounds very narcissistic but during mushroom ceremonies around that time I got into the habit of sitting in the bath and moving my focus from one joint and limb to the next, thanking it and appreciating it. I’d rub my knees and think of all the wear and tear I had forced upon them, and yet they’d never failed me. I thanked them. And you, my friend, looking at my hands and fingers and knuckles and marvelling at the damage I had caused them and the risks I had taken with them, and yet they were always there for me, healthy and ready when I needed them. Everything, ankles, wrists, brain and lungs. Even things that had been injured and went wrong. My jaw for example: Thank you for healing yourself, I said. It was my fault for not being utterly focused in sparring one day, I was responsible for that, and yet you repaired yourself for me.

  • • •

  One day during that summer of 2013 I called into the UFC headquarters in Vegas for a meeting with Lorenzo. It was just a catch-up really, a chance for me to tell the boss where I was in life and what I was thinking. As with every meeting I have ever had with Lorenzo, it went well and he still appeared to be very positive about my ongoing relationship with the UFC. On the way out the main doors I bumped into Dana, who was in his usual excitable, loud and swearing self.

  ‘I’ve got the perfect thing for you, my friend,’ he started. ‘I’m so fucking excited about it.’

  He went on to explain his plan. I was to move back to the UK and become the main media face of the UFC in Europe. Basically, he wanted me to do all the commentary, analysis and interviews for everything this side of the Atlantic. I was going to be his English Joe Rogan with some added responsibility and a few more strings to my bow. My gut instinct told me this was as good a way as any to bridge the gap while I sorted my future out so I immediately expressed interest in the proposal. One thing I remember saying is that I would need some media training before I could get in front of the camera as anyt
hing other than a fighter.