The photos on the wall of Heather Hardy’s small office inside Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn chronicle the former champion’s 11-year professional career. In one, she’s honoring her Irish heritage with a green fight kit. In another, she’s in warmup gear with red Everlast gloves hanging from her shoulder. In photo after photo, referees are raising her hand in victory.
Now a year into forced retirement after taking brain-damaging blows in the ring, the 43-year-old tries to hold it together as the photos stir up memories of better days. Then Hardy focuses on a particular photo that shatters her composure. It’s of Hardy when she was 21 with her daughter, Annie, then less than a year old.
“I feel so bad for her. I wish I could tell her nobody’s going to help you,” Hardy said as she teared up. “You’d have to do it all by yourself.”
She’s not talking to Annie. She’s talking to her past self.
These are perhaps the hardest times for the former World Boxing Organization featherweight champion, who has landed — and taken — more than her share of hard hits. The wiring in her brain just doesn’t seem to connect quite right anymore. Short-term memory comes and goes. Getting out of bed is a chore. Balance is tricky. Vision is fickle. Training fighters at Gleason’s, her main source of income, can be taxing.
Hardy says she wants to help reform a boxing-management system that has left many fighters feeling exploited and does too little to educate them on smart health and financial choices during their careers. The excitement of being in the ring and potential for bigger income too often distracts fighters from the warning signs of debilitating physical damage that can surface in retirement. By then, there’s little or no support system to back them up. That has to change, Hardy says.
“I had a nose that never got crooked. No scars on my face,” Hardy says, looking at the photo. “I didn’t even know what my life was going to look like yet. I thought at that point that I had saw bad stuff already.”
Tears fall behind her pink, heart-shaped glasses. Her voice quavers.
BOXING GAVE HARDY glory and a measure of fame but at a heavy price. Her hard-charging style — being willing to take hits in order to deliver more — helped draw fans and sell tickets. So did her ties to Brooklyn and Ireland, combined with a willingness to speak her mind in interviews. She added a flamboyant sense of style at weigh-ins with colorful outfits, red lipstick and fashionable eyeware.
“She got people excited about seeing women fight again,” actress and boxing fan Rosie Perez told ESPN. “Nobody gives her that credit. She really did.”
For half a decade, Hardy was one of the faces of women’s boxing — dubbed the First Lady of Lou DiBella’s boxing promotion and a Brooklyn star with a 24-3 record. She reached her prime just before the era of big prize payouts that brought wealth to current stars such as Amanda Serrano, Katie Taylor and Claressa Shields.
Hardy made more money than most women fighters of her era — she’s not sure her exact career earnings — but even as a world champion it wasn’t enough to carry her through retirement. Her top payday was $90,000 for fighting Serrano, a seven-division world champion, in 2023.
Last year, a neurologist diagnosed her with a traumatic brain injury after a 32-fight career of too many punches to the head, concussions and other damage.
“I am worried about Heather Hardy,” said Larry Goldberg, one of her former clients and promoters.
The past 18 months have brought erratic behavior and volatile mood swings. She sometimes forgets to eat. Vision and balance issues limited her ability to get around, even when it came to crossing busy streets.
Marijuana and alcohol help quell the symptoms, Hardy says, despite the medical community’s consistent warnings about alcohol’s negative effects on people with traumatic brain injury.
Stories like Hardy’s are commonplace for men in boxing. Bruce Silverglade, who has owned Gleason’s for 42 years, said Hardy is the first showing these symptoms among the women fighters he has worked with.
“I do not think she’s getting better,” Silverglade said. “I think she needs help.”
Hardy said doctors advised rest to help her brain heal. Her social worker suggested taking lots of pictures daily to help with her short-term memory.
Hardy didn’t have medical insurance when she retired. It wasn’t until September that a neurologist diagnosed her symptoms. With few employment options, she ekes out a living training clients and fighters at Gleason’s.
At Gleason’s, Hardy said, she found stability and a family-like sense of belonging — an escape from the physical and sexual abuse she has suffered outside the gym.
Hardy often seems quick to blame the power brokers in the sport — promoters, managers, athletic commissions — for her situation. It’s difficult to pin her down on personal responsibility when it comes to some of the choices she’s made.
Last year included some of “the worst months of my life,” Hardy said. “And I have had a life. And it didn’t have to happen, that’s the saddest part. Because all I kept thinking was: How could all these people not care that I could die?”
WHAT HELP LOOKS LIKE is complicated. Financial and medical assistance are the most urgent priorities, Hardy said, but she also wants help for a system that has failed to address inequities in promotion and representation, as well as the pay gap between men and women boxers.
Despite her current state, Hardy expressed reluctance to steer others away from boxing, saying she believes it helps more people than it harms. She said she’d pick the same career again.
“I’m the first person who has this awful, f—ed up, s—ty thing,” she said. When she reached out to others and said, “Hey guys, it didn’t work out, now you have to help me … they all turned their backs on me. That’s awful. That’s criminal. It’s diabolical.”
She singled out DiBella, her former promoter, for particular criticism. Then there’s the New York State Athletic Commission, or NYSAC, which sanctioned most of her fights.
The mention of DiBella prompted a string of curse words. She and her family members criticized the promoter for what they described as a lack of support after a long and successful partnership. Hardy said DiBella offered to set up a GoFundMe, which she declined because she didn’t want those who supported her career to feel obligated to give money again.
Silverglade said that DiBella was supportive at first and paid $4,000 to help her rent office space at Gleason’s. But the payments stopped, possibly because of insults Hardy posted online about DiBella.
DiBella declined to comment for this story other than to say he still loves Hardy and wishes her well.
It’s difficult to determine who’s to blame. Hardy made her own decisions. But in boxing, fighters are essentially contract freelancers. There’s no union, no league and no sustained system of protection. That has to change, she said.
“She feels that [DiBella should have done more] because she’s alone, however there’s no legal obligation,” Silverglade said. “Now you can say, what about the moral responsibility? Well, the only thing I’m going to say there is she’s not alone. Every fighter reaches this.”
NYSAC has no monetary fund to help retired fighters in need. The World Boxing Council provided her financial support through a fighter assistance fund. Goldberg and others chipped in.
At Gleason’s, trainers cover her clients if she needs time off. They also order extra breakfast to help her counteract weight loss. Clients have sometimes paid for training in advance and offered other financial assistance.
Brit Phelan, a client and filmmaker, cast Hardy in her latest Kickstarter-funded project, “Something Happened.” Hardy plays herself as a trainer of a group of female vigilantes banding together after being assaulted. Phelan is helping Hardy create an acting reel.
“These are all of my best friends,” Hardy said of the people at Gleason’s.
HARDY HAD TO sell tickets for almost every professional fight she had, including $10,000 in tickets for her first fight. As Hardy gained a following, demand rose. She became the first female to sign a long-term deal with DiBella.
She hawked tickets at the gym, around the neighborhood and in local bars. Gleason’s purchased blocks of seats.
She took Annie to school and worked at Gleason’s in the morning. If her upcoming fight was at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, she would knock out daily cardio by running in a plastic warmup suit to the venue. Then she picked up $10,000 in tickets on consignment, wrapped them in plastic Ziploc bags for protection and ran back to Gleason’s.
She organized seating charts and made sure her family sat together. Her sister helped collect money. Hardy sometimes prepared will-call envelopes herself — last name, then first name — and dropped them off at the box office on fight night.
“I used to say I was a part-time fighter,” Hardy said. “And a part-time ticket seller.”
Her ability to sell and draw a crowd elevated her local celebrity. She got an Everlast sponsorship. Yet she struggled to move up the card.
A 2015 fight at Barclays Center carried a particular sting. She had presold thousands of dollars in tickets. But on fight night, she fought early on the card. The bout started before the doors even opened. Fans, friends and family members couldn’t get in.
“Girl on Fire,” Hardy’s theme song, echoed through the hall as she entered. But no crowd. No cheering. She won the fight but never forgot the embarrassment. She said a prospective sponsor pulled out because of it.
“You felt bad,” said Perez, speaking of a separate instance of Hardy fighting early on the card. Perez said she began showing up early for Hardy’s fights. “There was nobody. It was sparse. It was tense. It was very, very tense.”
In 2018, Hardy said, she drunk-dialed an HBO executive and pushed to get her fetherweight title fight on TV. Before that big audience, she won her World Boxing Organization title by defeating Shelly Vincent. She slept on the couch that night, in her one-bedroom apartment, her belt on the table next to her. Annie got the bed to herself.
Finances, in part due to pay structure and in part due to her own choices, were always an issue. In 2017-18, she left boxing to fight MMA in search of bigger paydays. Had she made enough money, she says now, she might have walked away after winning the WBO title.
Silverglade said he noticed Hardy slowing down and tried to talk her out of fights. “It was like talking to a wall,” Silverglade said. “Because she needed the money.”
A combination of pride and financial insecurity kept her going she lost her title to Serrano in 2019. She returned post-pandemic in 2021, losing to Jessica Camara in Tennessee. She said her relationship with DiBella then began to sour. Goldberg and DiBella collaborated on her next two fights. Then she fought Serrano again.
“It’s like a bad boyfriend,” Hardy said. “It’s true. No matter how many times boxing breaks your heart, I still go back. MMA was like the boyfriend who had money and a good job. And I still went back to boxing, trying to make it right.”
A LITTLE AFTER 7 a.m. on a busy Tuesday last month, Hardy showed up at Gleason’s wearing white glasses, a white unitard, long pink socks and furry sandals. This has been a good morning. The insomnia, headaches, shakes and other symptoms had dissipated enough to let her work.
Hardy says her peripheral vision is poor. Hardy’s vision and brain damage make physical contact dangerous, keeping her from sparring and limiting her ability to use punching mitts. She has her clients take jabs at foam noodle sticks. She typically works for about four hours before the fatigue becomes too much.
Beneath a banner announcing Gleason’s as the “Home of World WBO Champion Featherweight Heather The Heat Hardy,” she laces up her first client’s gloves.
Between three-minute rounds of work, she asks them about life, school and spring break. She views her job as part-therapist, part-friend, part-trainer. Clients told ESPN they believe Hardy has made a difference in their boxing abilities and their lives.
Hardy moves from one ring to another to check on clients. She pauses to smoke marijuana outside, which she says helps alleviate her pain and face-twitching.
In the middle of one training session, Hardy sits down, dizzy. Her body temperature plummets. In an instant, she starts to sweat, takes off her glasses and leaves her phone on the side of the ring. She heads to the bathroom to vomit — a daily occurrence.
It’s 7:48 a.m.
HARDY ABSORBED 278 punches against Serrano in their 2023 fight in Texas, including an astronomical 242 power punches in 20 minutes. She lost by unanimous decision in a fight that wasn’t close. Hardy was in tears afterward. Serrano had nothing but praise for her longtime friend and sparring partner.
“Heather is a hell of a fighter,” Serrano said that night. “She’s as tough as they come.”
Serrano said she gave Hardy the fight to secure another payday and showcase for her friend.
Seniesa Estrada, a now-retired world champion, visited after the fight to congratulate her. “It’s actually inspiring, how much courage she has, win or lose.”
Estrada said she thought it might be Hardy’s last fight. Friends and family hoped it was. Hardy wasn’t sure. She had bills to pay. But one thing was evident at the time, she said: Her vision and her brain didn’t feel right.
Hardy’s mother, Linda, said she had seen her daughter take punishment before. But Heather wouldn’t tell her mom, a nurse, everything. This time, she was honest. She complained of double vision, a lack of peripheral vision and dizziness.
Linda said she didn’t want her daughter to fly home for fear of a blood clot or undiagnosed ailment, offering to drive Heather back to New York. Days later, still in Texas with her then-boyfriend’s family, Hardy called to tell her mother that she was in the emergency room, diagnosed with post-concussion symptoms. She couldn’t fight for six months.
Once back in New York, dizziness made training impossible. She began having seizures. A combination of stubbornness and lack of medical insurance kept her from seeking treatment. Her weight loss was obvious.
“Obviously, it was more than just a concussion,” said Ronica Jeffrey, her friend and fellow fighter.
HARDY WAS DESPERATE for money after being out of the ring. In early 2024, she was offered $50,000 for a Bare Knuckle Fight Club bout last May. It included a $10,000 advance. Glory days gone, she accepted it as a purely financial decision.
Associates urged her to pull out. “You have a kid. You have other things that you need to live for, but this ain’t it,” Jeffrey said. “… That shouldn’t be your story: You dying in the ring because you felt like you needed this thing.”
After days of not regaining her vision after light sparring, she finally saw a physician. Dr. Anthony Curreri, her ophthalmologist, told her the problem wasn’t just with her eyes — it was her brain.
To the relief of her confidants, Hardy decided to retire immediately.
The months after were filled with confusion as she sought a deeper diagnosis and medical insurance while starting to ask for financial assistance.
“There is no system for her to go to other than the goodwill of the WBC, but there’s 6,000 boxers out there,” Goldberg said. “And there’s zero to protect someone like a Heather Hardy. Or any of these fighters.”
Hardy eventually secured Medicaid coverage in September after having a seizure during a visit to NYU Langone Medical Center. It made neurological testing affordable. Her diagnosis: post-concussion syndrome, traumatic brain injuries, a recurrent major depressive disorder and insomnia. That helped explain her memory loss.
Finally, Hardy received the help her friends and family had begged her to seek. She has therapy appointments on Tuesdays, regular meetings with neurologists and sees a psychiatrist monthly. Access-A-Ride was set up to shuttle her to doctors and, eventually, work.
“I had … damaged parts that would never return,” Hardy said. “Which is terrifying to hear that you’ve lost pieces of your brain and you don’t know what they are and you’ll never remember. And they don’t know how to tell you to fix it.”
HARDY STARTED BOXING later than most high-level professionals. She had graduated from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2005 with a forensic psychology degree, walking to get her diploma with Annie in her arms.
Before Annie’s birth, she had considered applying for a job with the FBI or other law enforcement agencies. Now with a child, that no longer seemed possible. Then, in 2010, trouble developed in her marriage.
Her sister bought her kickboxing classes as a gift. When she walked into the first gym, it clicked. Hardy said she was meant to fight.
Hardy won amateur kickboxing competitions and eventually turned to boxing, leading to victory at the 2011 nationals at 125 pounds. After turning professional, she said she worked six jobs to pay the bills.
Hardy said Annie always came first. She sacrificed some of her own financial well-being — sometimes living outside her means — to make sure her daughter had a good education and everything she wanted. She paid for most of Annie’s college tuition.
People close to Hardy said financial management wasn’t always her strong point. Her choices of boyfriends also didn’t help, especially if they added to the physical and financial distress.
Given her fragile condition and sometimes violent domestic situations, Hardy said she had to make a choice: “I’m either going to fight for my life right now” or tolerate abuse and put her own survival at risk.
Hardy says her next fight is to help other abused women and campaign for improved protection of all fighters — extended insurance coverage, more comprehensive prefight physicals, union-style representation and better education on boxers’ rights and resources. Her attempts to enlist the New York City mayor’s office have, so far, yielded minimal results.
A city hall spokesperson said, “We support [Hardy’s] ongoing efforts and are currently reviewing the New York State Boxing Bill to determine whether any changes or expansions may be appropriate to advocate for.”
Perez credited Hardy with pushing for the advancements that are now benefiting women in boxing, even though she didn’t see as much benefit herself.
“I would say [to her] I see you and what you did for boxing,” Perez said. “I saw what you did for women. You made people pay attention to women and I want to shake your hand for that. … And finally, I would say I’m very happy that you are retired. And just know that you do have fans still.”
