If you thought the discussion over Dan Hardy’s wrestling comments might come to an end, think again.

In his latest column for the Nottingham Post, Hardy fights back against some of the criticism he’s received.

The column wasn’t about wrestling’s place in MMA, it was about using wrestling purely to stall and avoid fighting.

Had I written the column after Kalib Starnes’s effort versus Nate Quarry, it could easily have been about avoiding fighting by standing and running. Both are against the ‘timidity’ rule.

Hardy then decides to question UFC middleweight Nate Marquardt’s literacy.

One guy who struggled to keep up with the points I made was UFC middleweight and charisma donor Nate Marquardt, who always seems to have something to say about me, for no other reason than I once competed against one of his friends.

Sadly, we can now add ‘literacy test’ to the types of tests Nate has failed, because he either misread the whole thing or – like writers from AOL and Yahoo did – just read the first paragraph or two and had to stop because reading gives him a headache.

As I mentioned in the previous story on Hardy’s comments, his points were quite clear, and I don’t think they’ve been misinterpreted by most people.

Yes, we know he wasn’t criticizing performances of guys like Georges St. Pierre or Chael Sonnen, who use wrestling to control their opponent and then try to score damage or look for submissions. But the point was, as boring as Nik Lentz’s performance may have been, it’s Andre Winner’s job to stay off of his back or use an aggressive style of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to counter Lentz’s tactics. It might be nice if referees were more consistent in standing up fighters when the action comes to a halt, or if judges did a better job of always putting takedowns into the proper context when scoring a round. But, first and foremost, it’s the fighters job to keep it from happening.

It’s also unfair to criticize Marquardt. He was asked about Hardy’s comments specifically as it pertained to wrestlers using lay and pray tactics. At no point did Marquardt suggest or insinuate that Hardy’s comments had anything to do with the GSP fight or his loss to Sonnen. He lost to Sonnen because Sonnen outwrestled him, and while it wasn’t a case of lay-and-pray, Marquardt used the loss to point out that it was his responsibility to improve and keep that from happening.

His point was simple and applied perfectly well to the Winner-Lentz fight: if a guy is outwrestling you — either to stall or kick your butt — take the bull by the horns and take the fight where you want it instead of whining.

As Joe Rogan said on the latest episode of Inside MMA, if a guy like Sean Sherk (no offense, Sean) can take you down and hump you for 25 minutes, tough s***.

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