MMA is a hell of a sport. On some nights you win, and you end up partying in the most exclusive clubs with some of the biggest celebrities in the world. On others you get finished in the first round and end up eating ice cream on a hotel toilet so the ice bags on your shins don’t wreck the room’s carpet.
That’s how highly touted Cage Warriors champion Harry Hardwick spent his night after UFC Paris. Hardwick stepped in on a week’s notice a weight class up to take on Kaue Fernandes, who employed a blistering leg kick attack to drop the British fighter to the canvas in agony just three minutes into their fight (watch the highlights here).
“Houdini” was so battered in the legs that he had to buttscoot over to Fernandes to congratulate him on the win.
Now Hardwick has released a statement on the loss, and he did it in an appropriately bizarre way for such a bizarre fight: he filmed his video on the toilet eating an ice cream with his shins wrapped up with massive bags of ice.
“I’m all right. That was s–t. I was s–t. But I’m all right,” he said. “Four days notice a weight class up. I thought, ‘Yeah, f–k it, I’ll do it.’ It is what it is, man. Never in a million years did I think that was how my UFC debut would go. It is what it is. I can stand. I’m all right. I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“I’m gonna try and find somewhere cleaner when the ice bags melt so I don’t have the world’s biggest ringworm. But I’m good.”
The Fernandes loss snaps the 7-0-1 run Hardwick was on in Cage Warriors before stepping into the octagon. We’re sure “Houdini” will have mastered the trick of checking leg kicks before returning for a follow up fight with the UFC.