In my corner: One leg, two fists, huge heart, the story of Brad Hardman

IN my corner: A one-legged boxer walks into a bar and asks for a fight. And then another and another and another. This is the story of Brad Hardman.  

Johnny Lewis

A ONE-legged boxer walks into a bar and asks for a fight. And then another and another and another.

It was that way for 10 years as Brad Hardman tried to drown his sorrows with drink; wash away his rage in the blood of anyone who’d bump into the angry, thickset young man limping along on a prosthetic leg.

The rage stayed with him long after the pain and shock of losing his limb in a car accident at the age of 15 when his promising rugby league career was torn apart just like the airborne Holden Calais in which he was joyriding.

Brad was sandwiched between two mates in the backseat when the car hit a power pole on Sydney’s outskirts at 200km/h. One of his mates was killed and another suffered a brain injury.

"The car split in half," says the 31 year old father of two.

"I went with one half of the car and my left leg went with the other one. I spent months in hospital and it took me years to get over the shock. I was angry at the world and drinking heavily. Alcohol was my crutch. I’d walk into a pub just waiting for someone to make a racist remark or spill a drink on me. Then it would be on."

Hardman, the surname says it all, is at the All Sorts gym in inner-city Sydney - talking about the biggest fight of his life: to have boxing included at the Paralympics.

He spends much of his time these days lecturing angry young Aboriginal kids, like he once was, about the benefits of knuckling down and making a go of life through sport and is proof of what the human spirit can achieve.

Hardman dabbled in boxing as a kid while playing rugby league for the Windsor Wolves, in the Hawkesbury district of NSW, but thought his sporting career was over after the car accident.

"I was in a rage for years but a friend encouraged me to take up golf," he says, "and there was a day at Cronulla for amputee golfers. I went along and met Geoff Nicholas, who had won the world amputee title 12 times."

Hardman credits the Gold Coast-born Nicholas with changing his life. Both won sponsorships with the golf company Mega and Nicholas showed Hardman that he could still have a career as a sportsman despite the accident.

"Because of Geoff I won a couple of golf championships – including the Australian Amputee Nett at Royal Pines on the Gold Coast and I played in Japan and Korea in 2008 and 2010."

Nicholas, 51, knew all about Hardman’s rage.

He is a victim of the morning sickness drug Thalidomide. His right leg was amputated below the knee when he was 14 and his left one was reconstructed.

Not long after recovering from the operation he made his first halting steps onto a golf course at Kareela in Sydney’s south and shot 147 for 18 holes. Within 10 years he was breaking par. In 1994 he shot a course record 67 at the Singapore Open.

Last year he won the Gold Coast Senior Open at Helensvale.

"Golf was so important to me as a kid because it made me concentrate on sport rather than what had happened to me," he says.

"It was the same for Brad. Sports are so important to the disabled because they show you that you can still achieve great things regardless of what you might have suffered in life."

It was at a charity golf day that Hardman met Australia’s most successful boxing coach Johnny Lewis, a figurehead he had idolised most of his life. 

"I found out later that Brad had been a handy boxer as a kid," Lewis says. 

"I invited him to train with me. I didn’t realise he wanted to fight again."

They started training together in October and before long Hardman was moving around the ring with world champs Billy Dib and Vic Darchinyan and other heavy hitters Lenny Zappavigna and Garth Wood. 

The prosthetic leg gives him balance problems when he has to change direction quickly but Lewis declares "he is a very, very heavy puncher."

In December Hardman lost his first fight as one-legged boxer to an opponent he says was "25kg heavier and a foot taller". 

But that only made him more determined.

"I stopped a guy in March in the first round and then in April I won a points decision in an open air fight at the Windsor Wolves where I used to play rugby league." 

He wants to fight again in the next few weeks but in the meantime he and Lewis are fighting just as hard to see boxing become a sport at the Paralympics.

"Boxing is one of the few sports that has been at every Olympics for able bodied athletes," Hardman says. 

"It’s about the toughest sport there is physically and mentally.

"It’s the training and discipline that I really love about boxing. It toughens the mind and body like nothing else.

"It also teaches you to pick yourself up and keep fighting no matter what."

Twitter: @GrantleeKieza