UFC fighter Dan Hardy finds inspiration at Bruce Lee's grave

Dan Hardy was caught by an emotional punch he didn't see coming.

The Englishman who dyes his Mohawk red and bears the nickname "The Outlaw" was at Lake View Cemetery on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon, seated in front of the grave of Bruce Lee.

"I owe him a lot," Hardy said.

He stopped, clenched his jaw and waited to keep the tears from overflowing.

"He helped a lot through my journey here," Hardy said.

Turns out there is a soulful side to fighting, one that Hardy embodies quite poignantly. He spent years taking martial arts classes as a kid. He traveled to Northern China to train for two months with Shaolin monks at the age of 20. And on Thursday he went to the grave of one of the most famous martial artists and by chance met Lee's close friend, Taky Kimura.

The result was an afternoon that was unexpectedly moving for Hardy.

"I don't want this to sound disrespectful," he said. "I kind of treated it as a bit of a sightseeing kind of thing, to see Bruce Lee's grave. But to be here, I kind of got something else from it."

Hardy, 28, has become one of the Ultimate Fighting Championship's most exciting fighters, someone with heavy hands and a sharp wit. On Saturday at KeyArena, he will fight Anthony Johnson in the second-to-last bout of the evening and one that very well may be the most entertaining.

But on Thursday, Hardy set out like a tourist to see the grave of a man who died nine years before Hardy was born. Lee's legacy, though, spans generations.

"To contribute so much, to be inspiring people that were born many years after him, is just amazing," Hardy said. "We all aspire to something like that."

For all the tough talk and head kicks of mixed martial arts, there is a spiritual side to this business. It requires discipline and demands respect, and somewhere at the core of every fighter is the desire to test and improve himself.

Hardy read books by Lee. He watched DVDs. And Lee was a large part of Hardy's training with his grandfather, who died last year.

Hardy began taking martial arts classes at the age of 6 because he loved the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." He kept training as he grew up, moving on to taekwondo, then kick-boxing.

Before training with the Shaolin monks in China, he had been an art student at Nottingham University, never leaving home for an extended period. Suddenly he was on the other side of the globe, in a whole different world.

"This was staying in an old castle on the side of a mountain, training in a forest," Hardy said. "It almost seems more like a movie that I watched than something I did myself."

It may be hard to see the UFC's eight-sided cage as the modern embodiment of ancient fighting traditions, but elements of different fighting disciplines are woven throughout the sport.

"The art is within the fights themselves," Hardy said. "I'm an athlete, but first and foremost I'm a martial artist."

Anyone who doubts that should consider the reaction of Kimura, who was one of Lee's closest friends and the best man in his wedding. By chance, Kimura was at his friend's grave Thursday when Hardy arrived and was only too happy to meet him.

It was a reminder, Kimura said, of just how strong his friend's legacy truly is.

"Even after all these years that Bruce has been gone, it just brings it back into focus again," Kimura said. "Because Bruce was a guy that was one of the greatest martial artists on the face of the earth."

It's that legacy that moved Hardy to tears Thursday when a tough Englishman with the red Mohawk experienced a powerful moment on the backside of Capitol Hill.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com