Greg Hardy is at the center of controversy again after his Saturday UFC debut ended in a disqualification.
The former NFL defensive end delivered an illegal knee to Allen Crowder's temple while he was vulnerable in the second round. The ref immediately called the fight and Hardy went home with a loss.
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After the disqualification, Hardy claimed that he'd made an inexperienced mistake and was not trying to fight dirty.
"He was getting up, it was inexperience in mistiming it, man. But I (tried) to time it like I had just watched Donald Cowboy Cerrone do, like I saw everybody else do, and I thought it was the right thing to do at the time. And it was not. I messed up," Hardy said before apologizing to both Crowder and the fans.
Although he sounded mostly disappointed, Hardy became defensive when the idea of him being a cheater was brought up. He brought up his NFL career to make his point.
"Show me one of their favorite quarterbacks in history that I ever cheated against," he said. "Go ask Tom Brady if I ever cheated when I sacked him. I’m not a cheater. That’s not on my record, that’s not on my resume."
Hardy's NFL career ended in 2015 in a season marked by a multi-game suspension for violating the league's Personal Conduct Policy, which stemmed from his domestic violence case.
