Dan Hardy explains Niklas Backstrom's cursing, name flub at UFC Fight Night 53

UFC commentator and onetime welterweight title challenger Dan Hardy visualizes before he straps on the headset to call fights, and he sees himself making the walk from the arena to the cage.

It gets him pretty close to the mind frame of competition, even if he hasn’t stepped in the octagon in two years.

Yet Hardy (25-10 MMA, 6-4 UFC), whose heart condition has left his career in limbo, acknowledges the experience of describing the action and interviewing fighters is one that occasionally rattles him. It’s that particular kind of pressure that can lead to gaffes, the ones fans seize upon and drive into the ground.

Internet message boards flickered Oct. 4 when Hardy commented on the crowd’s reaction following Mike Wilkinson’s knockout of Niklas Backstrom on UFC Fight Night 53’s preliminary card. But they lit up when he misidentified welterweight headliner Gunnar Nelson, who lost a split decision to Rick Story earlier this month at Stockholm’s Ericsson Globe.

“To be honest, I don’t do very well at multi-tasking,” Hardy told MMAjunkie Radio. “I’m a one-track kind of person.”

It seemed clear that Hardy meant to call Nelson by his name – and not his opponent, Story – during a post-fight interview. But the semi-retired fighter said he simply mixed up his pronouns as he tried to take cues from the producers talking to him in an earpiece and also come up with questions for Nelson.

“I’ve got Rick Story on one side of me, and I interviewed him first, and all time I’m getting cues in my ear – ‘OK, make sure you interview both of them’ and then I’ve got both of them next to me, and then (they say), ‘No, interview them one at a time.’ So at the same time, I’m trying to put questions together in my head,” he said. “There’s so much going on. My adrenaline’s crazy, and these fighters were both beat up after 25 minutes, and it’s just a very stressful situation to be in. And obviously, I’m feeding off their energy, as well, because I remember what it’s like to be in that situation.

“So I had a quick chat with Rick. Gunnar and I are friends; we’ve had long conversations before and after the fights, and he’s a great guy. We were chatting, and what I meant to say was, ‘You’ve not seen the last of Rick,’ and I was saying it, someone was talking to me in my ear and I said, ‘I’m sure we’ve not seen the last of Rick,’ so it sounded like I was talking about Gunnar as opposed to to Gunnar.

“And then I called him Rick afterward, so I don’t know. I’ve been punched in the head a lot.”

Hardy, meanwhile, doesn’t fault Backstrom for cursing into the microphone after getting punched into unconsciousness. The Swedish fighter appeared angry at Hardy for starting his post-fight interview with Wilkinson by observing, ‘I’ve never heard an arena go quiet like that.’ Backstrom interrupted to say, “That’s f-cked up, man.”

While fans jumped to the fighter’s defense, Hardy said Backstrom wasn’t angry at him, but rather the situation.

“He was talking about the fact that the fight was stopped, I think,” Hardy said. “I think some people confused it because I said to Mike Wilkinson, ‘I’ve never heard a crowd go as silent as that’ or something along those lines. I mean, that’s what happened. The crowd went completely silent, and I think some people thought he was speaking to me directly, and he wasn’t. And he apologized after to me, as well, for cussing. He’s a very, very passionate guy.

“He put out an apology, and he actually apologized to me at the hotel, as well. He said he didn’t remember doing it. He was told by his team afterward.”

Hardy said he is often so amped up after commentating, it takes him four or five hours to sleep. He said he’s constantly watching fights in order to educate himself as much as possible before an event. Still, he said the job is so unpredictable that there are times when he’s simply doing the best he can.

After all, he can never know whether a particular fighter will be talkative or combative, or whether he’ll make the right call in a split-second sport with so many ways to win and lose. But, he added, “I am working on it. Believe me.”

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 53, stay tuned to the UFC Events section of the site.

MMAjunkie Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show, available on SiriusXM channel 92, is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.