Controversial ex-NFL player Greg Hardy made his official UFC debut on Saturday night, and it didn’t exactly go the way he or the UFC wanted. In the second round, a tired Hardy landed a blatantly and obviously illegal knee to the face of opponent Allen Crowder, and was disqualified as a result.
Many attempted to correlate Hardy’s turbulent past as a convicted domestic abuser to his conduct in the cage, but in an interview with Luke Thogmas on The MMA Hour, Crowder wasn’t going there. He believes it happened because of Hardy’s lack of experience as an MMA fighter (via MMA Fighting):
“I don’t think he was looking for a way out,” Crowder said. “I think it’s more inexperience. He’s not been doing this very long. He stepped out to the side. I believe in his mind he thought … I know he knew he’s not allowed to throw that knee with me on the ground. But I think heated up in the heat of the moment, he just forgot for a split second and threw that knee trying to get that finish. He just made a mistake. Another mistake of many mistakes that he makes. But I don’t feel like he was trying to cop out of the fight. He’s a tough dude. I think it was just an inexperience kind of thing.”
Crowder also explained why he yelled at Hardy in the second round, though he declined to state exactly what was said in the cage:
“Honestly, I was kind of hyped up in the moment, you know what I mean?” Crowder said. “I was basically just talking a lot of trash. The words I was saying I don’t really want to repeat. But basically I knew his punches were slow now, I knew they didn’t have the power they did before. I was trying to get him to throw. I wanted to counter and take him to the ground or counter and catch him with a big left hand.”