Issac Hardman is nothing if not a realist.
“People only remember you for your last fight,” the 27-year-old slugger tells Wide World of Sports.
And his last fight was – by his own admission – a shocker.
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Weeks of bitter build-up ended in Melbourne boxer Michael Zerafa knocking Hardman to the canvas and stopping their bout inside two rounds.
While the Queenslander was gracious in defeat, he was silently filthy at himself for letting emotion get the better of him inside the ring.
Hardman does trash talk well, but it’s not something he readily volunteers for.
In the case of Zerafa, he didn’t have to go looking for an excuse to dislike his opponent.
“The trash for me, it’s gamesmanship. The promoters ask you to do that,” Hardman explains.
“I said (to promoter Dean Lonergan) I’m not faking f—ing anything. I genuinely don’t like (Zerafa).
“The trash talk doesn’t get under my skin. He can call me a drunk boxer or whatever he did, I don’t care about that. It’s water off a duck’s back.”
But there was one jibe that Hardman couldn’t let go.
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Their feud exploded the day before the fight, when a weigh-in had to be abandoned after Hardman and Zerafa got in a punch-up, gloves off.
There was nothing fake about that sideshow. Hardman claims Zerafa called him a “racist” under his breath.
“He called me a racist. That’s a crazy accusation in this day and age, with social media it gets around so quick,” Hardman said.
“My wife is of colour. We’ll probably have kids one day, they will be of colour. She’s told me of days she’s come home from school crying because she had racial slurs (directed at her).
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“She’s seen the effects of racism, so I stood up for that. That’s what brought me undone, the emotion of that.”
And whether it was Zerafa’s intention or not, that sledge stuck inside Hardman’s head.
“The last thing I said to (my trainer) Blair (Studley) was ‘I’m going to walk straight up to this bloke and punch his f—ing head in’ – and essentially that’s what I tried to do,” Hardman confessed.
“I walked up to him like an idiot, trying to throw my hardest punches at him and it didn’t work. The emotion got me. I was brought undone by my own eagerness to fight him until he was unconscious.
“That’s a lesson learned, and it’s a good lesson learned now. I’d rather learn it now, when I’m relatively unknown on the world boxing stage, learn now so my next run is going to be the right run, all the way to a world title.”
Hardman has spent years now trying to convince the boxing world he’s a fair dinkum pugilist.
Coming from a mixed-martial arts background and with no amateur boxing pedigree to speak of, many still view Hardman as a brawler trying to fake it as a boxer.
He was well on his way to correcting that image, until being laid out by Zerafa in less than six minutes.
“We were so close to changing the narrative of being this MMA fighter who blocks punches with his head, and knocks people out. Then I walk up like a dickhead, like an MMA fighter, like a drunk boxer like (Zerafa) claimed I was, and got chinned.
“That annoyed me the most, because I was so close to changing that narrative.”
That’s why there was no time spent sitting around feeling sorry for himself after that humiliation in Melbourne.
Less than a week later, Hardman was back in the gym. Exactly a fortnight after the fight he got married.
He and his new wife, Jiville, had planned to jet to Fiji for their honeymoon, but then fight promoter Dean Lonergan’s number appeared on Hardman’s phone.
So the honeymoon was put on hold. His trainer, Blair Studley, cancelled holiday plans with his own family.
On Saturday night Hardman gets back in the ring, taking on Beau Hartas as the co-main event alongside Jai Opetaia’s IBF title bout with Mairis Briedis.
He was desperate to pull the gloves back on as soon as possible, because… well.
“You’re only as good as your last fight,” he says.
“They remember me for Zerafa, not the one before. When I get this done, come Saturday people will remember me for braining Beau Hartas and getting the win.”
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