Dan Hardy: Rumble Johnson 'punked' me

While an accomplished striker, Dan "The Outlaw"  Hardy failed to defend any of St-Pierre's 11 takedown attempts at UFC 111. Last time out in March, he was taken down four of five times by Anthony (Rumble) Johnson and lost by decision.
In between, he was knocked out in the first round by Carlos (Natural Born Killer) Condit at UFC 120.
Hardy feels some regret still from the Johnson loss. In the leadup, both men talked of keeping the fight on the feet, a strategy Johnson ignored once the cage door closed.
"If it was stuff he was just saying to the media — it was going to be a standup war — I would have taken it with a pinch of salt, I wouldn't have paid too much attention to it," Hardy said.
"But we were actually talking back and forth via private message on Twitter and he was saying the same thing to me. And we've always got along well, we've always been pretty good friends. ... I was annoyed with myself in particular. Because I like to think myself as being a little bit smarter than that. But he got me good, he punked me good and he got the win."
Still, Hardy said he came into the fight confident in his jiu-jitsu if the fight went to the ground. But Johnson's size proved to be a X-factor and Hardy said he had an off night.
"I didn't perform. I didn't feel myself, it was a poor performance. Yet again I let myself down. That's something that keeps me in the gym every day and it's going to be a factor that spurs me on in the future."
Hardy accepts full blame for the Condit loss, saying "ego came into it."
"I had no fear for the guy and no respect for him," he added. "And I paid for it, because I had no concern about his power or his striking ability.
"I mean if I fought that guy 10 times, I would beat him eight or nine of them, I'm confident of that."
"I can't expect anything from anybody anymore, I'm over trusting people. I learned that lesson in my last fight. Obviously, Chris Lytle isn't the kind of guy that would want to disappoint the fans and kind of hold somebody down for 15 minutes, I can't imagine the fight's going to be like that.
"But either way I've got to be prepared for it. Like people keep telling me, it's mixed martial arts not kickboxing and I need to be a wrestler as well as a striker. I'm going to work on everything, regardless."
"The reality is I've been in this sport a long time and I've stopped a lot of takedowns and I've taken a lot of people down. It just so happens that the two fights that I did lose were to good wrestlers and they were on national TV.
"I've been training wrestling and jiu-jitsu since I got into the sport. It's just something that's not always been available to me. It's something that I've made an effort to seek out and now I've really got to switch my focus and put some more time into it."

And where is Hardy training for his win or lose his job fight vs Lytle? In Vegas, where he moved recently from LA, to avoid the distractions.

Hardy had been dividing his time between his native Nottingham and Los Angeles. But he left the West Coast for Sin City in May, joining forces with friend and local heavyweight Roy (Big Country) Nelson.
"It was just a case that the timing was right and my career needed it," Hardy said of the move to Vegas. "I'm kind of backed into a corner now and I need to make some drastic changes in order to keep a job with the UFC. So that's my motivation. I'm here to work for my job and Vegas is the best place to do it."
While he loved living in Los Angeles — with his American girlfriend, a graphic designer — Hardy tired of sitting in traffic jams commuting from one gym to another.
"And there's just so many distractions in Los Angeles ... I know it sounds crazy moving to Vegas to get away from the distractions."
Hardy doesn't drink or gamble and, like many Vegas locals, rarely visits the Strip.
"I'm out of the way, I'm off the Strip and I'm in a little neighbourhood and I'm training at a local gym," said Hardy, whose girlfriend Elizabeth has joined him in the desert in Vegas. "It's just like being in Nottingham, apart like it feels like the surface of the sun most of the day."