Call me old-fashioned, or maybe just old, but I’ve always believed that the greatest compliment you can pay someone who steps into a boxing ring is that they’re an honest fighter.

Heather Hardy is an honest fighter. 

Sure, she’s been a world champion, been in big fights in big venues on big networks and received a ton of media attention, but it’s her honesty that remains her shining virtue. So after back-to-back losses, a pandemic that kept her out for a year in between, and then an injury that scrapped an important fight with Terri Harper early in 2022, Hardy had to be honest with herself about what her next step was going to be.

“In the pandemic, I swore that I was gonna retire, and then the opportunity for (Jessica) Camara came up and I took it,” said Hardy, who was outpointed by Camara in May of 2021. “That whole camp was losing quarantine weight. It was like, 'Wow, can I hit '35 again? Can I ever hit '35 again?' It was a hard weight cut, but I did it, and I didn't win the fight. Part of it was that I showed myself I could get back in shape, and then I really got to thinking. I'm sitting here on the sidelines watching all these girls finally make money. I won all my titles when there was no money in boxing. I won a world title in Madison Square Garden on HBO for $20,000. Am I really okay giving it up?”

She wasn’t, so on Thursday night in her New York City backyard, the Brooklynite will enter the ring for the 26th time to face Calista Silgado at Sony Hall. The card is billed as “New Beginnings,” and for the 40-year-old Hardy, it is, as she will be making the walk with Hector Roca and Henry Deleon in her corner. It was their confidence in “The Heat” that convinced her that there was still something left to give and left to get.

“It was a combination of having someone like Hector believe in my abilities, and then having someone like Henry telling me every day and reminding me that if I try, I can do it,” said Hardy. “It's kinda like I lost my heart for a little bit in the sport of boxing. I got a little too business-minded with it. I had to bring myself back to why I walked through the door at Gleason's in the first place.”

When she first walked through the door of the iconic Brooklyn gym, Hardy’s attitude was one instilled in her by her mother, Linda, where she had two minutes to get her wallet back from her opponent. That method led Hardy to 22 victories without a loss, an epic two-fight series with Shelly Vincent, the second of which earned her the WBO featherweight title, and garnered her a legion of fans that packed venues in the Big Apple to see her fight. All the while, Hardy worked, raised a daughter who is now in college, and opened doors for women in the sport not only locally, but around the globe.

“It definitely takes a village, and there were a lot of women like me who laid down for other people to walk on our backs,” she said. “We crawled so you could run - that kind of thing.”

And like others who paved the way, Hardy became the one left out when the big paydays started arriving in the last couple years. A loss to Amanda Serrano in 2019 cost Hardy her title, the COVID-19 pandemic cost her a year of her career, and if she would have defeated Camara or faced and beaten Harper, she may have been fighting for a title right now. But she won’t deal in the “what if” game.

“My mother taught me when I was young, you don't say 'if,'” said Hardy. “If, if if. If my mother had balls, she'd be my father, right? (Laughs) So I don't worry about no 'if.' There was a piece of me that said, are you willing to end on this note? Are you willing to end your career on two professional losses? Are you willing to let that be your last chapter? At the end of the day, I just wasn't. So it’s a combination of the money, wanting to end on a high note, and wanting to feel that feeling of being a champion again. I'm not ready to close the book.”

Of course, it all rides on Thursday and her bout with Silgado, whose 20-15-3 record won’t scare anybody, but that slate is deceiving, as the Colombian veteran has fought everyone, from the Serrano sisters and Hyun Mi Choi to Mikaela Mayer, Vincent and Yazmin Rivas, getting stopped only three times in those 15 losses. Hardy knows what she’s in for.

“Everyone's like, ‘How's this girl?’ She's a veteran, she's fought everybody, she's durable. And it's like this: if I don't win the fight, if this is a hard fight, if I walk out with stitches and bruises and a bloody lip, then I really gotta think, is this game for me still? Am I still in it, am I still here, do I still belong running with the big girls? Do I get the chance to make some money, or is my time over? This is the mile marker.”

But is it mile 13 with another 13 to go in a marathon, or mile 26 with the finish line approaching? That’s up to Heather Hardy to figure out, and knowing her, she’s going to fight her heart out in the process.

“This is what God gave me,” she said. “How am I gonna leave some in the tank? This is what God gave me to make myself, to make an impact, make a difference. How much of a difference did I make just by boxing - for little girls, for amateurs coming up. This is what I do. I can't stop until I can't do it anymore.”