Tuivasa landed the cleaner blow, and Hardy was dealt a second consecutive loss.
“It’s been a hell of a career, man,” Hardy said, reflecting on his journey thus far. “Three years in, going hard. We’ve won a lot of fights and I’m happy that I put myself in a lot of good situations. I broke a record that first year — five fights in one year; the most active heavyweight — and came out of that year swinging and going hard.
“I took on COVID and then came to these grimy, rough opponents. I knocked out the first one, Maurice Greene, and then walked into Tybura and Tuivasa, and just kept learning. I would give myself a solid B+.”
Whether you agree or not with how he grades his efforts thus far, it’s not like Volkov, Tybura, and Tuivasa are out here getting turned aside by a whole bunch of fighters. The trio are a combined 6-3 since their individual wins over Hardy, with Volkov losing to Curtis Blaydes and Ciryl Gane, and Tybura losing to Volkov, while Tuivasa has added stoppage wins over Augusto Sakai and Derrick Lewis to move into the Top 5 in the heavyweight ranks.
“Matt Serra said it best — ‘A lot of people look too much into stuff,’” said Hardy regarding the way folks pick and choose what they focus on when looking at his recent outings. “What I’ve seen is me developing.
“The Marcin Tybura fight was a beautiful compilation of my work — I was throwing body shots, right hands, moving well. Everybody wants to talk about the takedown that got me, but nobody wants to talk about the takedowns I defended before that.”
Officially, he stuffed three of four takedowns, but the one Tybura completed in the second round proved to be his undoing.
