This is my truth

Meathead

BBC Sport: 'I gave everything to boxing and still have nothing' with photo of a woman looking wistfully into a boxing ring through its ropes BBC

It seems that allowing yourself to be used as a punching bag for money is not a path to long-term good health. Or much money either, at least not if you're a woman; or just don't draw the crowds, I guess. Whatever. (shrug)

According to former WBO featherweight champion, Heather Hardy: every time you get a concussion a piece of your brain dies and you never get it back…I've lost so much of my brain that I can't afford to lose anything else. So she has to quit the ring now, before she becomes a doorstop.

Hardy had to take several jobs to support her career, in what one of the BBC's sport journalists, Bobbie Jackson, described as her Trying to make ends meat [sic] as a single mum. Presumably this was a Freudian slip, and not a deliberate reference to what remains of our plucky pugilist's cerebrum.

None of this boxing brain bizzo is new though, is it?


The highlight of her career is genuinely touching. Reflecting on a match at Madison Square Garden, and her fondness for fellow New York ex-boxer, Billy Joel:

"When I made my MMA debut and I knocked out the girl [Alice Yauger] I had fallen on my knees at one point and I was listening to everyone shout 'Hardy, Hardy, Hardy' and I looked up and thought 'Billy Joel sits here and they are singing my name'. "I never let go of that."

Heather Hardy, quoted by Bobbie Jackson, BBC Sport

Some memories are priceless. And speaking of priceless memories…

Trying to make ends meat as a single mum and working anywhere between two to six jobs at one time, Hardy first stepped into a boxing gym in 2010 as a way to get a break from the daily grind. It soon became a passion and potentially a way out as she strived to provide a better quality of life for her daughter. BBC
Stealth edit insurance policy.

As suspected, someone among the BBC's editorial staff did some editorialing. Still, we'll always have those memories. And the Wayback Machine.