Dan Hardy is never short of an opinion. Amidst the controversy surrounding the oblique kick that brutally ended the Khalil Rountree vs Modestas Bukausas fight on the weekend, Dan Hardy took to Submission Radio to share his thoughts.
“We say it all the time, it’s not a tickling contest. You’re trying to take each other out. A knee injury is the least of your worries in there when you’ve got people throwing elbows and knees and spinning kicks at your head.
Dan Hardy Against Banning Oblique Kick: “it’s not a tickling contest”
Like, don’t complain about fighter safety and talk about knee injuries, cause people from all over sports that suffer knee injuries all the time are not complaining. It’s a silly thing to talk about.
I can’t even believe that it’s been brought up as something that we should consider banning. It fries my brain. Honestly, it does. And the fact that professional fighters would come out and say it, you’re in the wrong sport. You’re doing the wrong thing if you’re concerned about picking up a knee injury. You know what you’re doing when you get in there.
You sign a death waiver when you’re stepping in there to fight! Suck it up.” Dan Hardy continued, pointing out the hypocrisy of banning certain moves for their career-ending potential but leaving others in the game.
“It’s a part of the sport. We are literally in there to try and take each other’s head off. You’re not pulling punches.
You’re not thinking about what the damage is doing to the person’s brain when you’re kicking them and elbowing them and those kind of things. I would much rather be dealing with a knee injury than a serious concussion. They’re the kind of things that we really have to take into consideration.
Superficial damage, knee injuries, elbows, those kinds of things, I have no problem with them at all. It’s a part of the sport, it’s a part of the industry, it happens all the time in other sports and fight sports first and foremost is about destroying other human beings.
Let’s not water it down and sanitize it, let’s note it for what it is. It’s professional violence and that’s why we love it so much because it’s on the edge of life-threatening.”
While Dan Hardy may have a point regarding the nature of combat sports, many still believe fighters have a reasonable expectation to personal safety while in the Octagon.
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