Dan Hardy is looking forward to his upcoming exhibition boxing match against Diego Sanchez, pointing out on The MMA Hour that the fight not only makes sense, but dollars, too. In fact, Hardy is predicting that he will earn more from this fight than all his previous UFC appearances put together.
“You could add all my paychecks together from the UFC and I’m still making more doing this.” Hardy continued, explaining why he’s choosing to box Sanchez now.
Dan Hardy: “You could add all my paychecks together from the UFC and I’m still making more” to box Diego Sanchez
“The honest truth is this is a good middle ground financially, because what we were being offered for MMA was pitiful, and what was being offered for bare-knuckle was three times what we were being offered for exhibition boxing.
I could either fight him in MMA, and we’d have to fight four or five times to make the same money, or I could fight him in bare-knuckle and do lots of really serious damage to him.
I’m fighting him in 16-ounce gloves over two-minute rounds. Most likely, I’m going to stop him with shots to the body, and he’s going to remember going down to the canvas.
I’ve got no interest in brutalizing Diego Sanchez, but we’re going to have a hard sparring match, and I’m going to try and hurt him as much as I can without doing permanent damage, and we’re both going to walk away with a lot of money in our pockets.
We’re not going to have to worry about the s*** we got paid by the UFC. So this is a big turning point for both of us, and I think he’s just as grateful for this opportunity as I am.”
Hardy once infamously criticized Sanchez’s relationship with self-appointed MMA guru Joshua Fabia. Add to that his public comments critiquing Sanchez’s MMA career, and Hardy knows that they will enter the ring with some bad blood.
“He’s always had that berserker mentality, and I think it’s because he got such a rise from the fans that it encouraged him to do it more and more.
I pointed this out in an interview, and ever since, he’s been very bitter toward me, and I’ve never meant to upset him. I just say what I see. And I’ve done the same thing about his old coach, the warlock, and that upset him as well.
He’s always been a little bit too sensitive to the words I’ve said, and maybe that’s why he wants to punch me in the face.”
Will Dan Hardy take Diego Sanchez out in July, or will Sanchez emerge the victory? Let us know in the comments.
