Heather Hardy returns to the ring 17 months removed

Former featherweight champion Heather Hardy returns on Thursday to face Calista Silgado in NYC.

The boxing club shows are starting to slowly make their way back in the New York City area, and on Thursday, Boxing Insider hosts an event in Times Square called “New Beginnings.”  The main event will feature the uber-popular former featherweight champion Heather “The Heat” Hardy (22-2) going up against Calista Silgado (20-15-3). The fight is appropriately scheduled for six rounds, as Hardy will be 17 months removed from the ring once she hears the bell sound to start the fight.

Hardy embodies the definition of a fighter from NY as she has a tough attitude in and out of the ring and is accompanied by a witty character. She has shared the ring with some of the best the division has to offer and reached the mountaintop by earning a world title at one point in her career. Unfortunately, Hardy was successful during a time when women’s boxing wasn’t being respected, and they were grossly underpaid. With the rise of social media within the last ten years, things have shifted a bit in the women’s favor, where they are getting paid a little more and are getting those key slots within the events. It isn’t perfect, but it’s coming around slowly, and the opportunities increase with every year that passes.

With the rise of Katie Taylor, Claressa Shields, and others, who is Hardy within the current boxing landscape and life? Hardy told FanSided, “For the first time in my career, Heather Hardy is without child. I dropped my daughter off at her college back in August, and this is my first camp where I don’t have to come home, check homework, and deal with boy stuff. I’ve been resting and made weight easier this time. Man, all these people without kids have it easy!”

Heather Hardy vs. Calista Salgado streaming details will be soon released by the Boxing Insider website

The Brooklyn native has a daughter (Annie) who she’s had the difficult task of raising in NY independently. That meant Hardy had to juggle a ton of bowling pins to ensure the lights were kept on and her daughter had everything she needed. “Parents fight so hard for their kids to have more opportunities than they did. My mom didn’t go to college; I went to community college, so to be able to walk my daughter into a university humbled me and almost brought me to tears.” Hardy continued, “It made me realize that all the hard work you guys seen me put in was for this moment which was to give my daughter a chance at a better future than I had. It’s really satisfying that every fight at the Barclays, every poster I hung up, every stitch that went into my face (61 stitches total) was for that moment to walk her to college”.

Gearing the conversation back to boxing, it’s been over a year and a half since she last fought Jessica Camara (10-3) and dropped a decision against her, so Hardy must knock off the rust early in this fight. During the time in between her last fight and getting ready for this one on Thursday, Hardy worked at the world-famous Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn as a personal trainer and boxing coach. “I mentor young fighters and women, so I never really left the sport of boxing. It was really like, ‘hey, am I ready to go back on a diet again’. Everyone talks about that long layoff, but the fact of the matter is that if I was in the street and someone tried to throw me in the back of a van or something, I wouldn’t be like, ‘oh s***, I need to jump rope’. It’s a matter of when it comes down to it, when its fight time, it’s fight time,” said the former featherweight champion.

This training camp was different as not having her daughter at home allowed Hardy to get more rest, making for an easier weight cut. She also switched it up a bit and brought in some new coaching to help work on “different technical stuff,” which seems like Hardy is all in with her upcoming fight. Her opponent Silgado is no slouch and has taken world champions like Mikaela Mayer and Hyun Mi Choi to the limit, which means she will be there all night long.

Hardy told FanSided, “I don’t like to overlook any opponent. I just turned 40 this year, and I came back to boxing because there is finally money in it. I won a world title on HBO for $20,000, and now I’m seeing these girls making real money. Am I ready to hang up my gloves, or is there one more chapter left in me? At the end of the day, the one thing that is going to stop me from that is this girl in front of me. She is going to tell all of us if 40-year-old Heather Hardy can hang with these girls and fight for a world title. If I go in there and she ruffs me up, and it goes to a decision, and no one knows who won, then I have some questions to ask myself. It’s really ‘where is Heather Hardy, and does she belong making one more run’?”

While Hardy knows what the task is on Thursday night, she wanted to set the table for what fans can expect while also addressing her fans. “I just want to thank every last one of you guys for sticking with me during these long layoffs the last couple of years. Sticking with me during my stupid jokes and my day-to-day stuff, the fans are great. What you are going to get from me on Oct 13 is everything I got.”

Before getting off the call, I had to ask if she was contemplating a return to the cage. Hardy quickly told FanSided, “Oh, hell no! That s*** has a 40-year-old age limit. “