There are a number of legitimate things that give MMA a bad name. For example, bad match-making is often picked up on because of the Iron Man reputation of open weight fights and the Hollywood fiction of rigged fights and corrupt promoters, but nonetheless, bad match-making exists. One thing that MMA is often called up on but is as much of a story as Substance D is that it is a cruel and sadistic sport in which fighters use smaller gloves in order to cause maximum damage to their opponents. You don’t have to be Christopher Langan to figure out that this reasoning smells as bad as a five day old chimichanga. Guess what? The gloves are there to protect the fighter’s hands, not the other dude’s head. Wearing 10lb gloves means that your punches pack more weight and cause more damage. In addition, bigger gloves mean you can punch a hard object, such as a skull, repeatedly with a lot less damage than if your hands were bare.
Despite bare knuckle fighting being as human as eating, sleeping and sarcasm, there hasn’t been an official bare knuckle boxing match since 1889. While this fight ended after 75 brutal rounds, former IBA Cruiserweight Bobby Gunn and promoter Dave Feltman are setting up a modified London rules fight with 10×1.5 minute rounds of fantastic bare knuckle goodness. Gunn will take on South African Chris Thompson who has an official record of 0-1 in Arizona on August 5th. Promoter Feltman is looking to bring further bare knuckle events to America and was quoted as saying:
“I think the way that we’re doing this, making sure everybody’s medically cleared and having everybody train the right way, I just think that we have something that’s going to eventually take off a little bit. I think it’s going to be a nice sport. People are always looking for the most extreme thing and how do you get more raw and more pure than bare knuckle boxing? I think it’s something that people will want to see… In October, we have some bigger names on the horizon, like Ken Shamrock and a couple other guys who are interested in doing this too”.
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