Inaspect the brutal world of bare-knuckle boxing in Britain – EXCLUSIVE

When you hear the phrases bare-knuckle boxing, what do you suppose? For many, it conjures up the picture of two juiced-up bruisers knocking lumps out of one another in a run-down barn surrounded by roaming chickens. The type of scene you’d anticipate to see in Guy Ritchie’s hit 2000 flick Snatch. And for a time, this was the case. But that might all change in 2015 when two males, Jim Freeman and Joe Smith-Brown, launched into an arduous journey to carry the game again to the lots.

You see, again within the 17^th, 18^th and far of the 19^th century, pugilistic contests had been fought with unbandaged fists. Like gloved boxers of right this moment, these males had been heralded as champions of the folks and obtained widespread acclaim from politicians, royalty and teachers of yesteryear.

The rematch between bare-knuckle legends Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux at Copthorne Gap, Surrey in 1810 was attended by 15,000 spectators. Bare-knuckle boxing was a booming enterprise and amongst Britain’s hottest sports activities.

However, it could fall out of the limelight with the publication of the Marquess of Queensberry guidelines in 1867 which launched the formalised code accepted in trendy boxing. The new laws insisted on gloves – however to guard the palms, not the mind – with reoccurring breaks and fractures typically reducing a pugilist’s profession quick.

The gloved counterpart continued to develop and evolve into the 20^th century, being launched to the Olympics in 1904. Meanwhile, bare-knuckle boxing was pushed additional and additional underground, turning into the forgotten, unstated aspect of the game.

Most of the bare-knuckle bouts within the 1900s had been fought between travellers to settle household feuds though there have been unregulated contests staged for leisure as effectively. It was at one in all these reveals that Freeman and Smith-Brown met and started to plot a plan to breathe new life into the once-popular pastime.

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING

“We met at a show down in Wales when it was still in hay bales,” Freeman informed Express Sport. “I was working the bar and Joe was helping promote the show with someone else. There was an expectation that there would be four hundred people there but in reality, about fifty turned up and me and Joe just got talking.

“I said: ‘Listen, I think I can offer a bit more and together we could take this sport places’ and that’s how it started really. We decided no haybales, put it in a ring and run it to a professional standard.”

Smith-Brown added: “Back then bare-knuckle boxing was very much underground and surrounded by crooks. There was clearly an appetite for bare-knuckle, but it just needed to be moulded into something that could appeal to a more mainstream audience. We always knew it had potential and to be honest I always thought it would grow the way it has.”

Together they rebranded the game below their new promotional banner BKBtm. The firm grew to become an virtually on the spot success and was quickly placing on reveals throughout the nation in famend venues such because the Liverpool Echo Arena and their present house, The O2 Indigo.

But it wasn’t all plain crusing. Along the way in which, the game got here below immense scrutiny and needed to leap by means of a whole lot of hoops to get to the place it’s right this moment.

“We have a lot of people that don’t like us and want to shut down our shows,” mentioned Freeman. “We’ve had bomb scares in Newcastle, and at a recent show in Birmingham. When we first got the O2 Indigo, the British Boxing Board of Control’s [general secretary] Robert Smith wrote a letter trying to shut down the show – I still have the letter today. They won’t let BBBofC trainers and fighters get involved with our shows and threaten to take away their licenses just for training with BKBtm athletes, it’s ridiculous.”

“It’s got a lot better though,” Smith-Brown added. “It used to be meetings after meetings with venues trying to persuade them that it was safe and above water. I’ll go back to our first show at the O2. Not only did we have various entities trying to shut us down there, but we also had resistance from the O2 themselves.  

“We must have had about 12 meetings to get the green light from them and then the Manchester bombings happened about five weeks out from the show. So, we had another dozen meetings and all of the O2 executives wanted to have their say as well. Given the long-standing reputation of bare-knuckle, they weren’t keen on the safety aspect, but we got there, and we’ve had an excellent relationship with the venue ever since.”

After promoting out reveals within the United Kingdom the subsequent logical step for BKBtm was to go international. Since professionalising the game in 2015 a number of different bare-knuckle firms have propped up all over the world.

You have BYB and BKFC in America, Gromda in Poland and Top Dog in Russia as essentially the most notable examples. BKBtm has gone on to staff up with the previous and is now sending their fighters all over the world to compete.

Since becoming a member of forces with BYB, BKBtm has co-promoted reveals in America, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates – the first-ever bare-knuckle present to be hosted within the Middle East. Along the way in which, they’ve signed a number of main worldwide tv offers together with broadcast partnerships with Qatar’s beIN Sports, Russia’s Match TV and Ukraine’s XSport.

BKBtm reveals now exit to 40 totally different international locations and pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide. “BKBtm goes all around the world, there are some very surprising countries that broadcast the events like Cambodia, The Philippines and even Tanzania,” mentioned Freeman. “We’ve done Russia for about two years now, Croatia really likes our product as well but outside of the United Kingdom, I’d say we have the biggest fan base in Thailand having felt it now.

“When we went out there, we were in four newspapers, the posters were everywhere you went, and everyone was talking about it. They’d see your top and go: ‘BKB, BKB, Saturday’, posters were even on taxis, it was mental.”

Much of the game’s development has been as a result of elevated high quality of the fights and fighters representing the model. At the start of the fashionable age, bare-knuckle boxing in Britain was principally made up of native robust males and unlicensed boxers.

Now, the BKBtm roster is stuffed with ex-gloved champions, former UFC fighters {and professional} athletes from a wide range of disciplines. Notable names which have fought below the promotional banner embrace UFC icons Joe Riggs, Melvin Guillard and Brad Pickett in addition to former boxing world title challengers Edgar Puerta and Jean Carlos Prada. Meanwhile, there have additionally been loads of long-serving champions which have continued to combine it with the perfect the game has to supply like BKBtm Hall of Famers Barrie Jones, Jimmy Sweeney, Sean George and Eric Olsen.

“It was a lot of windmilling and low-quality fights when we first started but now, we are attracting big names from the world of combat sports which has helped us bring legitimacy to bare-knuckle,” mentioned Smith-Brown. “There have also been many great fighters that have grown with the company like Jimmy Sweeney, Barrie Jones, Sean George and Eric Olsen. All of these lads have worked their way up the ladder and now we are having to bring in top talent from around the globe to face them.”

“It’s been light and day in terms of quality,” added Freeman. “You had a lot of guys in the early days who are so-called bare-knuckle legends, but let’s be honest they would have had their head punched off them against any average pro boxer and that’s why they didn’t go pro. So, to me, it’s light and day from the street fighters to the proper professional athletes. When we got into the O2 and the Echo we started to attract these better-quality fighters like Joe Riggs and Travis Dickinson.”

As the game continues to develop in Britain, the long run appears to be like vivid. Going ahead Freeman and Smith-Brown need to proceed pushing their product to worldwide audiences however they’re additionally happy with the progress they’ve made thus far.

“In the next five years, we want to be putting on more international shows and be seen as an international company,” mentioned Smith-Brown. “We will grow and continue to grow; it’s continuing to get better and better.”

“I don’t think we are a million miles away from where we want to be in truth,” added Freeman. “If you said to me ‘Jim, where would you go if you had an unlimited pot of money’ I don’t think there is that much more we could do at this stage.

“I think we’d get a couple of bigger names and improve our production quality but we’re not far away from where we want to be. It’s a niche market but there’s certainly a place for it. If you’ve not seen the shows and you’re a combat sports fan, come and watch it and make your mind up for yourself.”