The 2025 Cage Warriors calendar is fast approaching its final date and, anticipation is building for one of the years’ most top heavy cards. With two title fights loading up the last bill before CW 200, it’d be easy for everything else to feel somewhat overshadowed. But while there’s no gold on the line, a lightweight showcase pitting George Hardwick against Daniel Konrad is shining just as bright as anything else on the card.
Tickets for Cage Warriors 199 are availible here!
Cage Warriors Play-by-Play man Brad Wharton explains why it’s one of his favourite fights of the year, both professionally and personally.
Europe’s Leading MMA Organisation is currently in position of an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the potential and possibilities in its lightweight division. If you wrote all the names on a wall, closed your eyes and chucked a few darts at it, you’d be a long time coming up with a paring that didn’t warm the cockles of your heart.
And while there’s obviously a lot more to it than that (besides, our landlords wont let Ian Dean throw darts at the office walls, we’ve asked), next Saturday’s scintillating scrap between Konrad and Hardwick does feel like it could have been conjured by chance. There’s no ‘beef’, manufactured or otherwise. There’s no backstory, no score to settle. It’s just two guys with the same goal on the same path, and people are excited for it simply because they’re both double-hard bastards with no reverse gear.
Konrad and Hardwick are the kind of guys who make me swear a lot – far more than than I’m allowed to do here, and some of the really bad swears too – when describing why I love watching them so much. I discovered what we now know as MMA in the late 90s and in the years since I’ve sat through far more organised violence than any man reasonably should. That’s not a complaint, its just to illustrate the point that it takes something pretty special to get my blood pumping these days…and my blood is currently pumping.
Like many, my first exposure to Daniel Konrad was his Cage Warriors debut. The ‘Swiss Army Knife’ (and lets just take a second to appreciate a genuinely elite-tier nickname) joined the organisation to compete for the then vacant welterweight title in his debut, which is plaudits enough.
When you add to that the fact that his opponent was the human battle tank that is James Sheehan, and that the fight was in Dublin no less, you can’t help but to admire the cojones on display.
Fine, anyone with a big enough set can accept a fight. And while courage is commendable, its what happens when the cage door closes that you’ll ultimately find yourself judged on. Konrad gave as good as he got against the home favourite. They carved and busted each other up for minute after bloody minute, engaging in exchanges that would have made you wince if you weren’t far to engaged to look away.
And while when all was said and done it was Sheehan leaving with his hand raised, it was one of those fights where both men could walk away with their heads held high, not having lost an ounce of stock.
Which is wild, in a way, because Daniel Konrad is not a welterweight.
Back at his natural home of 155lbs against one of the trickiest young veterans of the game in Aiden Lee, I remember thinking that if noting else, Konrad would never be accused of shying away from the tough fights. But even I was left picking my jaw up off the floor when he went through Lee like the proverbial hot knife through butter last November. It was one of those ‘come to Jesus’ moments that left you certain you’d seen something special, something that was just a precursor for even bigger things to come.
All of which brings us to next Saturday night and that ‘bigger thing’: A bout against the former king of the division, a former champ looking to reclaim his crown, an opponent who could change his career forever.
George Hardwick is very much one of Cage Warriors’ fans most known and beloved quantities. From his amateur days to his return during the pandemic and an all time classic title run, the younger Hardwick has picked up fans like a Katamari; a gaming reference I’m sure he’ll appreciate.
And while that’s no doubt in part due to his affable personality, I’d argue that a bigger factor is that any fight fan going in completely blind could pick a Hardwick fight at random and be relentlessly entertained.
Whether it was matching through a beast like Łukasz Kopera, leaving his soul in the cage after a blood and guts war with Kyle Driscoll, piecing up Chris Bungard, cleaning out Yann Liasse or going down to the wire against Samuel Silva, Hardwick has spent his career turning in the kind of performances that don’t just entertain fans, they create fans.
Hardwick is the fighter you show your friends when they ask you to pull a fun scrap up at a house party. He’s the hook-up for people looking to get into the sport. He’s the guy you show to people previously unconvinced that MMA might have something to offer them.
He’s the kind of guy that a true sicko like me, someone who’s seen enough fights to last a lifetime, would buy a ticket to see without even knowing the opponent.
From a purely professional point of view, well I guess we all like things that make our jobs a little easier, right? I’ve called a couple of Daniel Konrad fights and a whole heap of George Hardwick fights and the lads have never left me struggling to fill the air.
Something tells me that December 6th is going to be a very easy night at the office.