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Hardy admits takedown concerns ahead of UFC 120

Dan Hardy believes too much importance is given to the takedown © Getty Images

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Dan Hardy is hoping the judges at UFC 120 will not become too heavily influenced if Carlos Condit succeeds with the occasional takedown attempt at London's O2 Arena.

Hardy has been extremely vocal recently about the value of a takedown, insisting certain fighters are employing their wrestling abilities to avoid a fight. That criticism has not been aimed at Condit though, whom Hardy respects for his relentless attitude towards the fight game.

However, Condit trains with Greg Jackson, who helped Georges St-Pierre establish the perfect gameplan to beat Hardy at UFC 111, consistently putting the Briton on his back. Condit even failed to deny he would try to do the same during a recent interview with ESPN.

Hardy has been training hard with world class jiu-jitsu practitioner Victor Estima ahead of Saturday's fight, and while he does not fear a ground battle, he is adamant judges should reward the right aspects of the ground game.

"We all saw at UFC 119," Hardy told ESPN. "Takedowns are scored far too highly, even when they're not used for anything. I'm a striker and I'm fortunate because the fight starts standing up, so it starts in my area. If you're a wrestler or a jiu-jitsu guy, you need the fight on the floor where it's in your area. So if you're gonna take somebody down into your area, that's a transition.

"In my opinion, if you take somebody down and they get straight back up again, the takedown's nullified. There's no value to that takedown if they pop straight back up because there's no damage done or there's no submission attempt. So where's the value?"

Hardy singles out UFC 119 due to the fight between Sean Sherk and Evan Dunham, which saw Sherk handed the decision despite receiving some fearful strikes in rounds two and three. Hardy disagreed with the decision, and he insists judging must improve over time.

"The Sean Sherk v Evan Dunham fight is a great example. I'm a huge Sean Sherk fan and he has been a great example of a wrestler who uses his talent to his advantage. Like Matt Hughes, they both use their wrestling to take people down and beat them up. They put their opponents in situations where the ref is either gonna stop it or there will be a submission.

"But I thought Dunham won that fight. The only thing Sherk did in the second and third rounds was secure takedowns, which I don't think cancel out the submission attempts and strikes of Evan Dunham. Fair play to Sherk for escaping the choke, but he was defending. Whereas when Dunham got taken down, he popped straight back up which nullifies the takedown.

"I've been a victim of it in the past. I had a fight in Ohio [against Forrest Petz], and how they gave the fight to him I will never know. The fact that at the end of the fight he had to get stitches and his nose was broken, and I finished the first round in mount, yet they gave him the fight for more effective striking. On that occasion the judges were too heavily weighted towards boxing.

"The only way to improve things is to employ ex-fighters as judges. Fighters with no allegiances to the fighters involved."

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