Amateur boxer Thomas "Truth" Hardy makes history on Cape Cod at age 14

HYANNIS — Having four older brothers as a young boy is not always a bad thing. Yes, there is a lot of fighting, but what if all the headlocks, wedgies, and knuckle sandwiches were worth it?

Stick with me.

Thomas Hardy always had boxing gloves lying around due to his love of the actual sport and having four older brothers. One day, Hardy decided to pick those gloves up and do something with them. It wasn’t to hit one of his brothers.

Let me explain.

Hardy, who is a freshman at Barnstable High School, played sports like most kids his age − baseball, football, and basketball − but it was something else that intrigued him even more. Boxing.

Hardy started boxing at the age of 12, and had his first official amateur fight at 13. Fast forward to Jan. 6 of this year, and Hardy won the New England Silver Gloves (110 pounds) and became the first amateur boxer on Cape Cod to advance to the National Silver Gloves at the age of 14. To make his win even better, it was against an opponent he had lost to in December.

“I knew I was going to win because we went in with a gameplan and I trust my trainers and my teammates, and I was pretty ready for that fight,” Hardy said. “I stuck to my gameplan the whole fight, made one or two little adjustments, and that was it. I dominated the fight, too.”

Hearing that your child wants to take up boxing is not your everyday topic of conversation, but Thomas' father John Hardy was onboard from day one. He just had one condition.

“I wanted him to learn it the right way. Get a good trainer,” John Hardy said.

Insert Jesse Barboza.

If you're seeing Barboza’s name and thinking to yourself it sounds familiar, you're not going crazy. Barboza is a professional boxer out of Hyannis with a record of 11-4-1, with his last fight being in 2016.

Since then, Barboza has been training people who want to learn about boxing, as his love for the sport carried outside the ring. He said he had an obligation to fill.

“Quite frankly, I owe it to boxing,” Barboza said. "Boxing has given me so much in my life that I feel like I got to give a little back for it.”

Barboza ordinarily does not train younger kids, so he wasn’t going to give Thomas Hardy a shot, who was 12 at the time. Seeing him in action changed Barboza’s mind.

“I couldn’t tell what it was, but I could tell he was serious and had a certain work ethic about him that I admired,” Barboza said. “I let him stick around and the rest is history.”

Barboza compared Thomas Hardy’s work ethic to that of a seasoned vet. On Friday nights when the older kids were out hanging with their friends, Thomas Hardy was in the gym grinding like no tomorrow.

“It’s paying off. He’s able to do things a lot of guys can’t do in the ring,” Barboza said.

John Hardy said he knew his son was special when he saw him sparring for the first time.

“He started going up against grown men, and I thought to myself, this kid’s pretty good. I was a little nervous, but was fine once I saw him holding his own,” John Hardy said.

One day when Thomas Hardy was training, Barboza said “that kid is the truth.” The word “truth” stuck and became his ring name. To make the name mean even more, Thomas Hardy had red shirts made that read “Truth” and the numbers “8:32” below it. The numbers represent the Bible scripture John 8:32 which reads: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Thomas Hardy is now 3-2 in his amateur career, and will travel over 1,000 miles to Missouri for his next fight in the National Silver Gloves on Feb. 1. With his upcoming bout, he is ready to do what he did two weeks ago.

“Stick with the game plan and run with it. I trust my boxing skills and I trust my trainers," Thomas Hardy said. "There’s always a little bit of nerves, but I just roll with it. Once I’m in the ring, I’m chillin'."

Contact Courtney Jacobs at cjacobs@capecodonline.com. Follow him on X/Twitter: @CJ_Journalist.

Thanks to our subscribers, who help make this coverage possible. If you are not a subscriber, please consider supporting quality local journalism with a Cape Cod Times subscription. Here are our subscription plans.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Hardy becomes first amateur boxer on Cape Cod to win Silver Gloves