Difference between Difficult and Hard Fought

DIFFICULT vs HARD FOUGHT: ADJECTIVE

Not easy; requiring great physical or mental effort to accomplish or comprehend or endure
Requiring considerable effort or skill; not easy to do or accomplish.
Not easy to endure; full of hardship or trouble; trying.
Not easy to comprehend, solve, or explain.
Not easy to please, satisfy, or manage.
Not easy to persuade or convince; stubborn.
Hard to do or to make; beset with difficulty; attended with labor, trouble, or pains; not easy; arduous.
Hard to manage or to please; not easily wrought upon; austere; stubborn.
Hard, not easy, requiring much effort
Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome; eg. said of a person, a horse, etc.
Hard to control
Requiring much effort and trouble

Not easy
To make difficult; impede.
To perplex; embarrass.
Synonyms Difficult, Hard, Arduous (see arduous), laborious, toilsome; obscure, knotty.
Hard to understand or solve; perplexing; puzzling: as, a difficult passage in an author; a difficult question or problem.
Hard to persuade or induce; stubborn in yielding; obstinate as to opinion: as, he was difficult to convince.
Hard to please or satisfy; not compliant; unaccommodating; rigid; austere: as, a person of difficult temper.
Hard to do, perform, or overcome; attended with labor, pains, or opposition; laborious: as, a difficult undertaking.
Not easy; requiring or dependent on effort; hard; troublesome; arduous.

Thorny, Trying, Unenviable, Delicate, Awkward, Rocky, Rough, Troublesome, Problematical, Arduous, Hard, Problematic, Challenging, Tough, Tricky

Mob, Licked, Beat, Desperately, Unabated, Struggle, Lead, Stiff, Saratoga, Amicable, Tarawa, Hard fought, Encountering, Encounter, Duel

Thorny, Trying, Unenviable, Delicate, Awkward, Rocky, Rough, Troublesome, Problematical, Arduous, Hard, Problematic, Challenging, Tough, Tricky

Address, Action, Struggles, Strait, Mob, Licked, Beat, Desperately, Unabated, Lead, Stiff, Saratoga, Amicable, Hard fought, Encounter

It certainly can make for a difficult marriage.
Find it difficult to get around your bathroom?
Metaphors are more difficult to teach than similes.
Times have been so difficult in recent months.
The use of cryptography is complex and difficult.
Slow and difficult process to retrieve boarding pass.
Calamity player, pure summoner would be insanely difficult.
You are saying it is more difficult, music is more difficult?
Some dailies are more difficult than others, a lot more difficult.
Advancing racial equity is already difficult, but then you add the scope and it becomes more difficult.

Grantsville rolled to a hard fought triumph over Hunter Nov.
Negotiations were at arms length, hard fought, and frequently acrimonious.
His representation helped us win a hard fought case.
Chess legend Vishwanathan Anand after the hard fought victory.
Freshman come up short in a hard fought game.
Louis Cardinals in a hard fought seven game series.
IUPUI in a hard fought midfield and defensive battle.
The post is likely to be hard fought.
My suggestion is to work extremely hard, get the good grades, and have enjoy the spoils of a hard fought victory after you graduate.
That is the ground where equality has been fought, hard fought for.