The gloves are off, but can bare-knuckle boxing hit the mainstream?

Bare-knuckle boxing is best described by its many contradictions. It has been touted as the world’s fastest-growing combat sport and, simultaneously, an ancient practice whose origins have been lost to prehistory. It is bloody, yet arguably less harmful for the brain than its gloved counterpart. In terms of fan numbers, it remains a relative minnow in the world of professional sports, but is nevertheless doing impressive box-office numbers in the US, UK and elsewhere.

“It’s humane enough to be mainstream, but it’s borderline brutal,” says David Feldman, founder and president of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC). Bare-knuckle boxing is exactly what it sounds like. Two fighters enter a ring without gloves and, over a series of two-minute rounds, attempt to punch the other athlete into unconsciousness. Winners in fights that don’t end in knockouts are decided by judges. Most fighters do wear cloth wraps around the wrist and thumb to reduce the risk of injuring their own hands, but their fists’ striking surfaces – their knuckles – remain completely free of protection. It makes for compelling spectator sport, even to this initially hesitant observer.

Gloveless fists draw blood quickly. In the BKFC, cuts emerge on fighters’ faces and hands early in nearly every fight. It makes for cinematic imagery. Cameras capture the boxers’ bloodied hands resting on ropes between rounds and fighters’ blood-smeared faces as they focus on their opponents’ movements. It’s all reminiscent of the dramatic closeups fictional gladiators receive in sword-and-sandal epics. Feldman, whose own life story seems drawn straight from a Hollywood movie (and the younger brother of a notorious celebrity boxing supremo), recognizes the BKFC’s visceral appeal.

“Let’s face it,” he says, “If they’re watching a fight, they like blood. … We have blood.” He’s quick to claim, however, that the BKFC’s surface-level damage does not translate into higher rates of long-term damage. Yet another contradiction at the heart of the sport.

“I never say ‘safe.’ Anytime you get into a ring, a cage or anything, and your object is to knock the [other] person out, it’s not safe,” Feldman says, adding that it’s “no more dangerous than any other combat sport”. Most BKFC fights, for example, don’t feature anything as one-sidedly violent as, say, the “ground and pound” submissions found in mixed martial arts promotions like the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Feldman and other BKFC officials go on to suggest that brain injuries, such as concussions, are less prevalent in bare-knuckle fights than in gloved boxing matches.

The logic goes like this: in addition to damaging an opponent’s body, punching hurts the puncher’s hand. This is particularly true of punches to the face, where there is little muscle covering the skull’s hard bones, as well as teeth evolved specifically to tear into flesh. Boxing gloves protect a puncher’s hand, thus permitting fighters to hit harder without increasing the risk of damaging their hands. Harder punches lead to increased risks of causing the brain to move within the skull after impact, causing concussions. The argument may seem convoluted, or even counterintuitive, but it’s supported by evidence.

Although a 2021 study found lacerations (particularly facial lacerations) to be more prevalent in bare-knuckle boxing, it also determined that only 2.8% of fighters studied experienced concussions with symptoms. In gloved boxing, that number can reach as high as 12.3%. It is certainly tempting to take this information with a grain of salt – after all, the 2021 study’s lead author, Dr Don Muzzi, is also the BKFC’s chief medical officer. Experts unaffiliated with bare-knuckle boxing, however, claim that the study’s conclusions are sound.

Dr Nicole Reams, an Illinois-based neurologist who serves as the Medical Chair for the US Intercollegiate Boxing Association (a gloved boxing organization) as well as an independent neurological consultant for the NFL’s Chicago Bears, has stated the study’s claims are “reasonable”. She also notes that data comparing actual impacts between gloved and bare-knuckled matches (ie the number of strikes to the head a boxer receives in a given fight) would help clarify the matter further. Given bare-knuckled boxing’s relative novelty, the number of peer-reviewed studies remains low.

In reviewing the 2021 study, Reams specifically draws attention to the reduced fight times in bare-knuckle boxing as a potential reason for the sport’s reduced concussion rate. BKFC matches consist of five two-minute rounds. For comparison, championship bouts in men’s professional (gloved) boxing are typically scheduled for 12 three-minute rounds, meaning that BKFC fighters are exposed to their opponents’ fists for less than one-third the time as gloved boxers.

“[The BKFC] was built for action,” says Feldman. “That’s why we only do five two-minute rounds.” Increased action is further encouraged by the BKFC’s relatively small fighting space. Prowling around a circular ring with a 16ft diameter, BKFC fighters compete over an area noticeably smaller than even the smallest rings used in traditional professional boxing, and several times smaller than the octagon used in the UFC.

The combination of condensed rounds, close quarters and bare knuckles has successfully caught the attention of combat sport fans, including former UFC champion Conor McGregor, who now is a part-owner of the BKFC. What started with a single event featuring eight fighters in Wyoming has since grown into a multi-continent brand organizing multiple events per month. BKFC 66, a fight card scheduled for Friday night in Hollywood, Florida, marks the 100th event the organization has put on since its 2018 founding. (Some fights, such as those for new prospects, aren’t included in the running tally of numbered events.) Such growth, however, hasn’t come without the growing pains of increased visibility.

At a prospect fight earlier this year in Canada, BKFC debutant Sam Polk’s victory was celebrated by white supremacist organizations. Polk, who sports a pair of tattooed neo-Nazi symbols on his chest, knocked out fellow BKFC rookie Jake Craig in what one known white supremacist leader declared a “Total Aryan Victory”. Feldman made it clear in a conversation with the Guardian that Polk’s views are not representative of the BKFC.

“I’m Jewish,” Feldman says. “Like, I’m not supporting someone wearing swastikas. … We didn’t know [about Polk’s affiliations]. We found afterwards and then we, obviously, banned him from fighting. We don’t support any of that kind of stuff.”

Politics aren’t entirely absent from the BKFC – the organization sells T-shirts which read “Make America Brave Again” – but Feldman claims that the relevant merchandise is unrelated to party politics and, instead, a nod to free speech.

“Make us brave again – stand up for yourself, man. Don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind because a different group might get mad at you. You should be able to speak your mind. … Be brave enough to hear it, not even be brave enough to say it. Be brave enough to let someone say what’s on their mind and – look, if you don’t like it? Don’t listen to it.” Feldman goes on to mention limitations to such freedoms, such as around hate speech, that mirror his response to the Polk incident.

Polk aside, the BKFC features a number of likable athletes drawn from a wide range of fighting disciplines. American Ryan Reber, an undefeated bantamweight fighting in BKFC 66’s main event, comes from a traditional boxing background and has demonstrated extreme resilience in previous fights – he weathered multiple purposeful (and illegal) headbutts against Jack Grady in BKFC 32 on the way to his current 6-0 record. (Owing to the sport’s novelty, fighters’ bare-knuckle win-loss records are all relatively short. No fighters on the card at BKFC 66, for example, have more than 10 BKFC fights under their belt). Tonight, Reber has a chance to become BKFC’s bantamweight champion. To do so, however, he must defeat reigning champion Alberto Blas of Cuba, who Feldman describes as “a buzzsaw”. Even that strong comparison may be an understatement.

Blas fought MMA prior to joining the BKFC, going undefeated as an amateur before earning a losing record in the Titan Fighting Championships, a now-folded MMA promotion. Since transitioning to bare-knuckle fights, however, Blas has become unbeatable. Not only is he undefeated, like Reber, but Blas has yet to encounter a BKFC fight’s second round: all of his bouts have ended in first-round stoppages. Keith Richardson, Blas’s most recent opponent, was so dazed after 70 seconds with Blas that, in his confusion, he began trying to fight the referee. Reber, conversely, has had multiple fights last the full five-round distance.

“If [Reber] can withstand the punishment, or the onslaught, of the first round,” says Feldman, then “he’s got a good shot.” Based on Blas’s record, that’s a big if. A clash of two undefeated boxers with different fighting styles certainly makes for an appealing main event but, when asked about fighters who have the best chance of becoming breakout stars, Feldman refers to BKFC 66’s undercard.

“We call him the ‘Bare-Knuckle Tyson,’” he says of Leonardo Perdomo, a Cuban heavyweight fighting against the heavier Steve Banks before this evening’s main event. Like Blas, Perdomo has won each of his BKFC fights by first-round knockout. As a heavyweight, however, Perdomo is nearly twice Blas’s weight (literally) and, if bare-knuckled boxing’s heavyweight division proves to be the most marketable (which is often, although not always, the case in gloved boxing), then Perdomo seems poised to become the face of the BKFC. If he does so, his timing couldn’t be better.

Six years in and with a track record of growth, the BKFC appears to be in rude health. The promotion’s success, however, begs the question: if stripping away traditional boxing’s rules has proved successful, isn’t the BKFC likely be overtaken by yet another promotion that strips away even more rules? The threat isn’t merely hypothetical. The still-in-development Dirty Boxing Championship promises to mix traditional boxing’s focus on punching with MMA’s smaller gloves and ground-and-pound techniques. The Enhanced Games, scheduled to start next year, plan to include combat sports in which fighters can use steroids and other currently outlawed perform-enhancing supplements. Feldman isn’t worried by the potential for competition.

“I wish everybody good luck because it gets more and more people in love with combat sports,” he says, before adding, “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and we have a very good recipe here. … People don’t understand what it takes to build [a sport]. … It’s not easy. It’s hard. It’s no joke, man. It takes a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of work, a lot of effort to get it there.” When asked to identify the specifics within bare-knuckle fighting’s “good recipe”, Feldman suggests that the barrier to entry (for fans, at least) is lower in the BKFC than in other combat sports.

“It’s just relatable,” he says, before comparing the BKFC’s vocabulary to some of the more niche jargon that saturates MMA promotions. “[If] I’m pitching an investor or something, I go, ‘You know what an omoplata is?’ [They say] no. You know what a D’arce choke is? No. ‘You know what a bare-knuckle punch is?’ Yes.’”

“Imagine a really good street fight,” Feldman says, “but with two really badass fighters that are trained to do this, not guys off the street.” He’s right – the fighters’ clear training does remove some of the potential for unregulated violence that one might expect to see. At the same time, the previously mentioned, regular presence of cuts makes it so the ‘B’ in BKFC might more accurately stand for “bloodied,” possibly putting off many potential viewers. Then again, if future studies corroborate previous research on the relationship between bare-knuckled boxing and concussions, “bloodied” is probably preferable to “brain-damaged”.