Dan Hardy was one of the millions of MMA fans who tuned in to watch Chael Sonnen get choked out by former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Tito Ortiz at Bellator 170. Hardy to took Twitter (his tweet has since been deleted) to talk about his dislike of the fight:
“The #Bellator170 main event was more choreographed than a Brittany Spears music video. Shame really... It might have been a fun fight,” Hardy tweeted.
Hardy appeared on The MMA Hour afterwards after Ariel Helwani criticized him to discuss his controversial tweet.
“You’ve got to understand, I was being fatuous at the time,” he told said. “It was a rather flippant comment, but watching the whole build-up, and I’ll give you exactly my perspective, from an analyst’s point of view. I saw Chael Sonnen selling this awesome story about how much it meant to for him to beat Tito, and the whole family thing came up.”
Hardy also wasn’t a fan of Sonnen’s performance that night.
“When [Sonnen] got in there, he did a very, very basic single-leg takedown, which even me with awful takedown defense could have stopped, and I’ll allow Tito’s the bigger man, but Chael’s been watching him his whole career,” he said. “He’s been planning on fighting Tito for his whole career, so surely he would have prepped for that. Second of all, just the progression that he allowed Tito to get to mount, and the lack of defense of the arm. I mean, there was no hand fighting at all. And then the finish of the choke, it wasn’t even around his neck. If you put your own head in that same position when you watch the fight, it’s silly to believe that…there’s a space, on the right side of his face, between the right side of your face and your right shoulder. And anybody who’s been in that situation and that position knows that it’s uncomfortable, yes, but it’s not a choke and it’s not a tapping position.”
Hardy is currently a color commentator on UFC Fight Pass events and he is a longtime veteran of the UFC as well.
