For weeks, Carlos Condit heard the talk from Dan Hardy. It's not something he went seeking out himself, but in this digital age of 24/7 news and social media, it came to him. Some days, Condit would log on to his Facebook page and see that his friends had posted Hardy's most recent words. While he was never lacking for motivation, something else always seemed to pop up and provide a little extra fuel.Always the quiet type, Condit never fired back verbally. But he did get the last and loudest word, scoring one of the great poetic revenge knockouts in recent MMA memory at UFC 120.
If you appreciate irony, you have to appreciate that the beginning of the end was authored by a crashing left hook, the punch that has come to be the calling card of Hardy.
In fact, the final sequence was a mirror image, both fighters firing off a straight right/left hook combination. Same combo, same time, and it was the guy considered the striker who went down.
Who knows what goes through the brain when you get knocked out, but Hardy might have flashed back to comments he made just before the fight. In a live chat with MMA Fighting, he voiced a concern that with Condit back in the fold at Team Greg Jackson, he would "run away for 15 minutes."
"It's not that I don't like Greg Jackson's style but I don't like fighting guys he trains because they always take the safest route and that gets boring," said Hardy, who lost a five-round decision to Team Jackson fighter and UFC welterweight champ Georges St. Pierre back in March.
Oops.
Perhaps Condit said that hoping to entice Condit into a war, but in reality it's never really taken a lot to do the trick. In 31 pro fights, he's only been to three decisions, a staggering percentage for someone who's been fighting in major promotions for several years now. Even Condit's most recent fight with Rory MacDonald showed he's willing to scrap with anyone and to the final bell, coming back in the third round after losing the first two with a submission with just seven seconds to go.
I spoke to Condit a few days before the fight and he said that he would never mind a fight that turned into a brawl, and that Greg Jackson would never alter a fighter's strength. Really, all along, Hardy was going to get exactly what he wanted, and that was a fight. Not point-sparring or positional control, but a guy looking to finish him.
"I'm not the same fighter, and I don't have the same style attributes that GSP has," Condit said. "We had a different approach to the fight."
Speaking of GSP, the soft-spoken Condit surprised a few people by reiterating a point that went ignored earlier this week; that he would fight his teammate if the UFC approached him with a title opportunity.
"We haven't discussed it very much," he said, "but I think it would be foolish of me to turn down an opportunity like that."
To that, UFC president Dana White broke into applause.
Of course, that's probably in the future, and Condit himself admitted it was really too early to worry about the possibility, targeting the winner of next week's Martin Kampmann-Jake Shields fight as a possible next opponent.
But if he fights as well as he did against GSP's most recent foe, it's within the realm of possibility that the boys in Albuquerque, New Mexico could be faced with a sticky situation.
Against Hardy he landed his punches at a 57 percent clip, according to Compustrike numbers (compare that to 40 percent for Hardy, who many thought would have the edge in standup). He flashed accuracy and power, and the victory made him a winner of 11 of his last 12, with his only loss a close split decision.
He was an underdog by the oddsmakers and outgunned in pre-fight hype, but Carlos Condit proved again that he who speaks last, speaks loudest. While Hardy talked a great game and fell short, at least credit him for taking his medicine with class. After a quick precautionary trip to a local hospital, he took it upon himself to ride back to the 02 Arena to attend the post-fight press conference, something he easily could have avoided with no criticism.
"It was a good punch, man," Hardy said, trying to look past White's podium and make eye contact with the man who'd just vanquished him. "Congratulations."
"Thank you," Condit responded politely, the quiet kid getting the final word for good.
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