Jared Hardy

From The Great Outdoor Fight

Jared Hardy (1844-1894) was born to a family of high means in Georgia, and he never quite grew tired of having life handed to him on a silver platter. His decision to enter the 1891 Great Outdoor Fight was mostly, he admitted, on a lark; he was curious to see what the "gentlemen's fracas" was about.

He was thrashed. Not lightly, either; he was one of the first victims of the Gullied Trousers, having bowed out and proved a "nancy-boy" with a single swift blow to his nose, finishing an unfortunate 2994th Man Standing. It lightly disfigured him; he hadn't even noticed it in the moments after the blow, but his nose was crooked and seemed, to some, a little "loose," as if it had been pushed backward and never quite healed together again. Needless to say, he received more than his fair share of ribbing about how, perhaps, "Mr. Hardy was indeed not so hardy after all!"

He signed up for the 1892 qualifiers, but decided to forfeit; this built the rumors of his glass jaw even higher, but by this point he was beyond them. He spent the year intensely training his body, but even moreso training his mind and his mouth. He had to build an army like the Gullied Trousers, but at the same time be smart enough not to be suckered as it eventually had been.

The man returned to the 1893 Great Outdoor Fight with a dead-set purpose; his first step was to find every single surviving member of the Gullied Trousers and defeat them in single combat. He killed only one of them, only bringing them to the point of surrender, up until the last; Jared's first Fight kill came in the form of one Jim Edgington, a champion boxer. Meeting one of Edgington's punches with his own, he shattered the bones in the boxer's hand and proceeded to messily slit his throat with the parts of those bones which had begun to protrude through the skin. This brutal act rallied an army around the man once considered soft, and one after one, his opponents began to fall.

What leads some to hold Jared's victory as sullied and Ellsworth Rosensteel's as justice is the brutal manner in which, as his opponents waned, he systematically decimated his followers to anywhere from one and a half to two times their opponents' remaining number, always maintaining his advantage without leaving an army powerful enough to easily defeat him. It is through this systematic method that he won the 1893 GOF, which culminated in him delivering a jaw-breaking uppercut to the last member of his army, and cemented his reputation as cold-blooded. Perhaps it is this that caused so many to find the concept of Jared sneaking a knife in so plausible, even though he denied it.

His jubilation was not long-lasting, however; he strode in casually the next year, riding his own reputation. It nearly succeeded, save that his men were less competent and he more readily killed or maimed his own strongest, hoping not to compete with them. This left him tired, and so he began to rest just as the infamous knife attack happened. He immediately denied any involvement, and went back to resting. When Rosensteel's rampage through both armies began, he was still tired, and though he mustered a decent fight, he was doomed. His last finish was a near-mirror of his 1891 loss, though Rosensteel's blow was much harder and delivered to an already-softened nose.

[edit] Record

• 1891 - Eliminated on Day 1, 2,994th man standing.
• 1893 - Champion, last man standing.
• 1894 - Eliminated on Day 3, 5th man standing. (deceased)