Bellator 185's Heather Hardy, Ana Julaton start the dance toward eventual fight

UNCASVILLE, Conn. – It’s probably not by accident that Heather Hardy and Ana Julaton are fighting on the same Bellator 185 main card Friday – just not against each other.

Hardy (1-0 MMA, 1-0 BMMA) fights Kristina Williams (0-0 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) in a flyweight fight; Julaton (2-2 MMA, 0-0 BMMA) makes her promotional debut at flyweight against Lisa Blaine (1-0 MMA, 0-0 BMMA). Bellator 185 takes place at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn. The main card airs on Spike following prelims on MMAjunkie.

The two professional boxers-turned-MMA fighters recently started a dance around and toward each other, and while Bellator matchmaker Rich Chou and other promotion officials were mum about whether or not they’re eyeballing a Hardy-Julaton matchup, and soon, it’s not hard to imagine that being the thinking. After all, the classic signs of fighter beef and budding rivalry are there.

It’s been a slow build on social media, Hardy said, but when she read a story about Julaton in The Telegraph that quoted Julaton saying Hardy is running from her, all bets were off.

“I believe Heather is avoiding me,” Julaton told The Telegraph. “She did in boxing. We both want the belt, but I want to fight her too. We will meet. She can run, but she can’t hide.”

And naturally, that set Hardy off when MMAjunkie asked her about it in Connecticut on Wednesday.

“Oh, now it’s a fight that’s going to happen,” Hardy said. “It’s not down (the road) – it’s going to happen as soon as possible. I never had beef. I always respected her. When I started pro boxing, within that first year of me getting acclimated to the scene and learning the girls, she had made the transition over to MMA as a professional. To me, she was one of my idols – this was a world champion. She was so outspoken and eloquent for women.

“And now all of a sudden I’m reading this (expletive) about how I’m running away from her. I’m like, ‘Who the (expletive) is she? I haven’t even heard her name in eight years.’ Right now, the focus is on Bellator 185. We can talk more about this at the post-fight press conference (Friday).”

Julaton rolled through to talk to MMAjunkie not long after Hardy did, and she was plenty happy to hear that Hardy was interested in making that fight happen – whether it be in Bellator’s cage, or in the boxing ring.

For that matter, Julaton would be fine if it was both. Both fighters have the freedom in their Bellator deals to continue their pro boxing careers when the opportunities are there, or to fight for Bellator if that’s the best option at the time.

Hardy made her pro MMA debut in June with a third-round TKO of Alice Yauger at Bellator 180 in New York. Julaton is returning after a layoff of nearly two years and is making her Bellator debut after four pro MMA fights for ONE Championship in Asia.

“It’s nice to have someone like Heather actually following in the footsteps with me – where I have a dual contract and I can fight both MMA and in boxing,” Julaton said. “It’s nice to actually have a counterpart. In the combat sports game, (Muhammad) Ali wouldn’t be Ali if it wasn’t for George Frazier and Sonny Liston. You have to have names in a division. … This is what us women need – this is what I need. So if she wants to get down, let’s get down. That’s why I’m calling her out. We want to get the show on the road. We want to get people involved. We put in a lot of work, and we want to showcase it.

“My boxing promoter, Allan Tremblay, is working alongside her boxing promoter, Lou DiBella. It’s something we’ve been trying to establish for a while. Obviously there are a lot of things that go on in the fight game, and hopefully we can materialize something as soon as the end of the year. It hasn’t been done, it’s untapped territory, and if there’s any time to take the opportunity, it’s right now. So let’s do it.”

But Hardy was a little more outspoken about the thought of running into Julaton this week, given they’re fighting back-to-back on the same card.

“These conversations have been pressing for weeks, and I’ve tactfully ignored them because I do have (Williams) to train for, and my life is like – I just got a new job, I have a kid going into high school, and then I have some pipsqueak telling me that I’m afraid to fight them,” Hardy said. “We will deal with that when it’s relevant, right? But you ask me now: I’m cranky, I haven’t eaten, I’m thirsty, I’m tired. I just read an article about how I’m running away from her, so now I’m like prime pissed off. I just said to (the Bellator PR staff), ‘I hope I don’t (expletive) see her, because I am a nasty bitch right now.'”

Bellator’s women’s flyweight division is just getting rolling, and the inaugural title is up for grabs in two weeks when Ilima-Lei Macfarlane fights Emily Ducote at Bellator 186. The winner of that fight seems like she’ll have some company at the top of the heap for attention-grabbing, though, provided the new Hardy-Julaton rivalry doesn’t die on the vine.

Check out the video above for more from both women.

And for more on Bellator 185, check out the MMA Rumors section of the site.