UFC's Dan Hardy - Shaolin Temple trained!

[Frost]

On any given day, everyone has a chance.
As Frost mentioned, GSP has learned to fight his fight and won't be making too many mistakes.
BUT, he is, at heart , a striker and as much as he likes to grapple now, maybe Dan can sweet talk him into it, who knows?

i hope he can because i know who i back in a stand up fight... but GSPs camp is very clever...still should make for a fun fight

[GeneChing]

There's so much buzz for this fight. I hope it delivers.

Dan Hardy: I've got nothing to lose as underdog against GSP
Mar 17 2010 By Iain Hepburn

BRITISH star Dan Hardy insists he's in a no-lose situation when he makes history next weekend as the first UK fighter to land a UFC title fight.

The Nottingham-based MMA fighter will go up against Georges St Pierre early next Sunday morning in Newark, New Jersey - where he will bid to become the first British champion in the fight league's history.

The 27-year-old Brit is unbeaten since making his UFC debut in 2008, but St Pierre's formidable record and reputation has seen him labelled as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world right now.

"I’ve got nothing to lose,” he admitted. "I’m in a situation where I can go and have a good time and be myself and make a fight out of it.

“Marcus Davis was supposed to put me out. Swick was too fast for me. I’ve heard it all the way through my career.

"I’m stepping into this fight a bigger underdog than I’ve been before, which is just going to make me perform even better. I take that pressure and I deal with it better because it raises my game. It forces me to fight better.”

Hardy has made his name with an impressive stand-up game, including a first-round knockout win over Rory Markham last February, but admits going against the well-rounded ground skills of the Canadian would test his ground skills.

"No one’s really been able to force me to a ground game yet and I’m hoping Georges is that guy because I have a lot more to show," he said.

[GeneChing]

I'm not sure if I'll be able to see the fight live. I'll probably have to catch the replay.

Dan Hardy ready to make history in UFC world title fight against George St Pierre
When he was studying fine art at Nottingham Trent University, Dan Hardy followed the traditional wisdom that artists should always stick with what they know.
By Jim White
Published: 6:34PM GMT 22 Mar 2010

So Hardy, a black belt in taekwondo who first engaged in martial arts at the age of four, did the following: he hung a large panel of perspex from the ceiling of the university's art studio and alongside it installed a punchbag. He then invited observers to watch as he created the performance part of his piece, which consisted of him subjecting the bag to six hours of non-stop bare knuckle pummelling.

That, though, was not the end of it. As much sweat from his brow, spittle from his throat and blood from his suppurating knuckles as he could collect during his exertions, he smeared across the perspex. He then hung the sheet on the wall of a gallery. As far as modern art goes, not even Tracey Emin could top that.

This week, Hardy's blood, sweat and tears will be shed in more traditional manner. He will become the first Briton to fight for a UFC world title when he takes on Canadian George St Pierre for the welterweight crown.

The Premier League of mixed martial arts, which allows fighters to employ all the skills from wrestling through kickboxing to karate all at the same time, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is currently the flavour of the month in pay-per-view television: its last major outing of intense cage fighting attracted 150 million paying customers across the globe.

Even if defeated, Hardy is expected to pick up around £150,000; victory could see him trouser double that. Which is rather more than he ever received for his artistic efforts.

"I know, it sounds a contradiction, a fine art student fighting in UFC," says the 27 year-old, who gave up his degree course to pursue a life in the cage back in 2004. "But I'm not that unusual. Because it's a young sport, the participants are coming at it from all sorts of backgrounds. If they come from wrestling, well that's a very college sport in America. I've fought a maths teacher, one of my sparring partners has a degree in biochemistry; there's a lot of brain in the octagon."

And he doesn't mean splattered across the canvas.

"The difference between a successful fighter and the rest is that the successful fighter is smarter," he adds. "Believe me, the best mixed martial artists are smart fighters."

If Hardy, the fighting artist, who combines sporting a vibrant red Mohawk haircut and a stomach load of tattoos with a keenness for German expressionist art, sends out ambiguous signals, then he is in keeping with his sport.

UFC is innately contradictory. With its arena presentations replete with pounding rock music, hyperbolic commentaries and a huge steel cage as its glowering, fearsome centrepiece, it trades on an unspoken hint of lawless brutality. Yet its participants are anything but street thugs. Successful UFC fighters are predominantly bright men schooled in the disciplines of martial arts.

"Actually, there's not a coincidence there," says Hardy. "I'm a firm believer that the power of the mind can overcome pain. Confidence is so important, and that's entirely a mental construct.

"I trained with Shaolin monks in China and I faced a lot of limitations I had to get over. I got hurt, I got injured, I got tired, but I always came back for more because my brain told me I could overcome it all. It was a mental puzzle I was being asked to solve. You know what they say about jiujitsu? They call it 'physical chess'."

Besides, he adds, it takes a heightened mind to appreciate the sport's subtler attractions.

"It's a very special place," he says of being inside the cage. "Time really does slow down; everything is enhanced, from the smell to the feeling of the canvas under your toes. As the adrenalin pumps, so time slows, so your reactions sharpen. You do have time to think things through. The truth is, in the ring you live a heightened life. Yes, you're frightened. Yes it's terrifying. But people would pay a lot of money if you could bottle the high you get in there."

But some might argue, though, given the urgent requirement of your opponent to separate you from your senses, the intelligent thing would be not to go anywhere near the place.

"No, the opposite," he insists. "You can't really appreciate how good water tastes until you've been dehydrated. It's the same in the ring: you don't know how good life is until you have overcome the fear of facing someone trying to end it for you. You feel like an alpha male in there: strong, dominating, going to a place above the ordinary. I guess going in that ring validates you as a man in a way doing a fine art degree just doesn't."

However incisive his analysis, though, Hardy is not above using his brain for a less elevated purpose. Before his victory over Marcus Davis in Cologne last June, for instance, he engaged in the kind of crafty verbals that would not have looked out of place in the court of Muhammad Ali in his prime.

"I apply the psychological side with mind games," says the Mourinho of the cage. "If you can, before a bout, you try to throw somebody off their game plan. I completely undermined Davis by the way I was in the build-up. There was a lot of trash talking going back and forth. I started it and stirred it, and he responded just as I hoped.

I didn't let it affect me, but it really got to him. He hated me. He came in the cage wanting to kill me and that played into my hands. The one thing you can't be in the cage is angry. Davis is still ****ed off with me. He posted a comment on Twitter the other day saying, 'I hope Hardy catches Aids and dies'. I'm embarrassed for him, to be honest."

But does Hardy himself not feel a little uneasy? Apart from accusing the Irish-American Davis of being "a plastic Paddy" whose website looked like a "St Patrick's Day gift shop blow up," he encouraged his supporters systematically to question Davis's sexuality via the sport's burgeoning internet chatrooms. It was hardly fine art.

"I have no qualms," he says. "It's part of the armoury. You've got to put a distance between reality and tactics. There's a big difference. People try it on me, Davis did, but because I employ it myself, I can spot it. While he got mad, I enjoyed it. It was a game. It was fun."

There has, however, been no repeat of it ahead of Hardy's bout with St Pierre in New Jersey on Saturday night. Largely because, the challenger insists, there would be no point trying it.

"GSP is such a nice guy the only way he'd be cast as a villain was if he were to fight Jesus Christ," he says. "He wouldn't rise to bait like Davis did, so only a fool would waste energy trying. That doesn't mean I haven't got a game plan. People tell me he is invincible. I've never come across anyone I see as invincible. The more I study someone, the more weaknesses I see. From a fan's point of view GSP looks amazing. But it's my job to read the body language, study the moves, make a game plan. I have the plan."

According to those who know their UFC, were Hardy to win this week it would be the equivalent shock of Lloyd Honeyghan defeating Don Curry in 1986, the mouthy British upstart overwhelming the best of his era. And like Honeyghan, ahead of his date with destiny, Hardy sees no reason why he won't succeed.

"The thing that makes a person dangerous is having nothing to lose," he says. "I have nothing to lose. And he has everything."

And if the former art student does win, could there be another work of art in it? "Probably not," he says. "I'll be too busy celebrating."

[MasterKiller]

TORONTO -- English welterweight Dan (The Outlaw) Hardy's stomach tattoo was airbrushed out of the UFC 111 fight poster because it is "anti-Chinese government stuff," according to UFC president Dana White.

"I'm trying to get into China," he told fans at a question-and-answer session Tuesday. "I don't need anti-Chinese government stuff on my fighters."

Hardy, however, says the tattoo -- the fighter's favourite -- is a Tibetan Buddhist prayer written in Sanskrit.

"It's basically just like a prayer for focus," Hardy said. "It keeps me walking the path that I should be walking without veering off and distracting myself."

Apprised of that explanation, White said: "That's not what I heard."

"This thing popped up and I heard that it was anti-Chinese government, so I ripped that thing off it. I'm not going to put him on a poster with anti-Chinese government writing on it when we're trying to get into China. . . . I don't what this stuff means, so I've got to be safe."

Hardy challenges Canadian Georges St-Pierre for his UFC welterweight title Saturday at UFC 111 in Newark, N.J.

[sanjuro_ronin]

What does it say?

[MasterKiller]

What does it say?

Maybe "o mani padme hum"?

[GeneChing]

Here's something equally funny to me.

Must See: Dan Hardy Training with the Shaolin Monks
Thursday, 18 March 2010 12:35 | Written by Dallas Winston

Don't let the levity of the photoshop above skew the fascinating truth of this story.

For anyone who hasn't watched the "UFC Primetime" series featuring Dan Hardy and Georges St. Pierre and their impending collision at UFC 111 on March 27, a segment of the show is posted after the jump in which Hardy divulges that he journeyed to north China at a young age to take in two months of isolated training with the one and only Shaolin Monks, complete with home video footage.

I would say that this is clearly the most cogent piece of evidence to refute Georges St. Pierre's statement that Dan Hardy is not a martial artist.

[Frost]

I really can’t understand GSP’s comment, I mean hardy has a black belt in TKD and a back ground in Thai, has trained in china and has a BJJ purple belt (ok so it’s with Eddie Bravo so doesn’t mean that much but it still just about counts) what else does he have to do to be a martial artist?!

[Lucas]

beating other martial artists asses apparently doesnt count either....

[GeneChing]

jibengong sweep

Line of palm strikes

wubuquan variation

concluding sequence


If Hardy can take out GSP with one of these moves, it would be way up there with Gisele Bundchen endorsing kung fu to keep her figure after pregnancy.

Event Date: 03/27/2010 UFC 111: St-Pierre vs. Hardy

EVENT OVERVIEW
NCM Fathom and Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC®) are making history by teaming up for the first time to present UFC 111: St-Pierre vs. Hardy LIVE in over 300 movie theaters nationwide on Saturday, March 27 when UFC welterweight champion Georges “Rush” St-Pierre takes on Dan “The Outlaw” Hardy, and former heavyweight champion Frank Mir goes for the interim UFC heavyweight title against Shane Carwin. Both world titles will be on the line in this one-night event broadcast LIVE from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey at 10:00 p.m. ET/ 9:00 p.m. CT/ 8:00 p.m. MT/ 7:00 p.m. PT. Experience the action alongside other UFC fans as the entire Pay Per View event, through the co-main events are shown LIVE like never before – larger than life in high-definition on the big screen.

TICKETS
Tickets on sale NOW! Enter your zip code above to purchase tickets for the event in a movie theater near you. Limited seats available – buy your tickets early!

Participating theatres. Please check back often as additional theatre locations may be added.

EVENT DETAILS
Two world titles will be on the line for the first time in 2010 when the Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC®) returns to the East Coast. UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre has been unstoppable since regaining the title in 2008, and he aims on extending his reign and his six fight winning streak against British bomber Dan “The Outlaw” Hardy, who is unbeaten in the UFC. Also, former two-time heavyweight champion Frank Mir will attempt to make history when he squares off against number one contender Shane Carwin in a clash of the titans that will leave the winner with the interim UFC heavyweight championship belt.

Fighters throughout the country will be hosting the evening with Q&A, autograph and other fan sessions at select movie theatre locations. Check back often as new fighters are being confirmed.

UFC 111: St-Pierre vs. Hardy LIVE, Saturday, March 27th in Select Movie Theatres Nationwide.

[Lucas]

hey thats cool with the movie theater thing.

[goju]

I really can’t understand GSP’s comment, I mean hardy has a black belt in TKD and a back ground in Thai, has trained in china and has a BJJ purple belt (ok so it’s with Eddie Bravo so doesn’t mean that much but it still just about counts) what else does he have to do to be a martial artist?!

i didnt like how hardy whipped out the tkd and kf training in that episode

its obvious he still doesnt keep up his tkd training look how long ago he started it and hes onlya 1st degree?and he only did two months of kung fu

[Lucas]

i didnt like how hardy whipped out the tkd and kf training in that episode

its obvious he still doesnt keep up his tkd training look how long ago he started it and hes onlya 1st degree?and he only did two months of kung fu

i did wing chun for 5 months....does that mean i'm a wing chun guy now?

[GeneChing]

I'm just happy to hear of someone coming from something other than BJJ and MT.

If you trained Wing Chun on the rooftops of Hong Kong for that time, Lucas, that would definitely be something to add to your martial vitae. Two months training at Shaolin is pretty intense, certainly not something to just pass off as trivial.

[goju]

i did wing chun for 5 months....does that mean i'm a wing chun guy now?

i personally believe youre a stylist of a certain art when youve been at it an kept it up for years