Dave Hannigan: Conor McGregor eager to weigh in on the side of bare-knuckle fighting

The scene was a carbuncle on some distant moon in a dark corner of the sports galaxy called BKFC 41.

Having just defeated 38-year-old Luke Rockhold in the second round of a bare-knuckle contest in Bloomfield, Colorado, Mike Perry called out Conor McGregor, who just happened to be sitting ringside, swilling a bottle of his off brand proper rotgut by the neck.

Dutifully climbing into the squared circle, the Dubliner faked outrage in that hammy WWE wannabe meets failed Fair City audition way of his and got right in Perry’s face. A pantomime so staged and hackneyed the erstwhile spectator somehow came through the ropes with a toytown championship belt freshly slung across his shoulder, a prop to help him find his way into character.

“I’d fight ya,” said McGregor. “I’d fight ya, no problem.”

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He must have recognised himself in Perry. Aside from regular interactions with police, ugly incidents with women, and accusations about racial slurs, the men have much in common.

Both washed out of UFC (only the deluded believe the Irishman ever makes it back there) where each lost three of their last four fights. Both have dabbled in boxing to embarrassing effect, suffering defeat in their lone outings. And both have got in trouble for punching ould fellas in bars.

Little wonder their chin wag culminated in McGregor praising the retrograde form of human combat he’d just witnessed, the arse-boxing exhibition having been stopped because Rockhold’s teeth were cracked by Perry’s knuckles.

“It’s an incredible set-up,” said the former UFC champion turned rapid-pattered brewery rep. “Incredible matchmaking, incredible story telling. I had to come here. I flew straight away. I was not going to miss this and it did not disappoint. All these fighters that step in here are warriors, and all have my respect. I’m in this game. I’m into this.”

He liked it so much he bought the company. Or a chunk of it at least. Twelve months down the line, McGregor Sports and Entertainment owns an unspecified piece of BKFC, the world’s leading (because the competition is surely so fierce in this space) bare-knuckle boxing promotion.

Just when you thought SlapFight was the lowest this waning civilisation could go in the name of so-called sport, here we have an entity trying to make fighting without gloves a thing again. A barbaric throwback to the much-maligned values of the good old 19th century. Designed to titillate frustrated incels pining for the flailing haymaker aesthetic of the pub brawl, it’s a protein shake of violence porn for brainless brolics who think Fight Club a documentary.

Like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson and every other grifter exploiting this unfortunate demographic, BKFC figures enough of these young men, increasingly inured to the thuggish tomfoolery of MMA, will thrill now to the satisfying splinter and crack of bone-on-bone action.

OnlyFans, a key sponsor of the enterprise, agrees and that company’s algorithm surely knows these boys better than anybody. Aside from bringing in McGregor, an all-time great at separating pigeon-chested rubes from their money, they’ve filled their roster with UFC discards growing long in the tooth and needing to make bank.

Having earned $1.3m in 15 bouts for the notoriously parsimonious Dana White, Perry, now trading as “King of Violence”, received $600,000 for his bare-knuckle knockout of Thiago Alves, another octagon refugee, in Los Angeles recently. Nearly 7,000 paid in to sample that tawdry fare at the Peacock Theatre, and other purses on the undercard went all the way from low six figures down to $500 for one of the female contestants. Numbers that demonstrate this is not some underground ramshackle affair, but a slick outfit trying to make the repugnant respectable, turning jerky call-out video fare all corporate.

“The dozen years between the Sullivan–Hyer fight in 1849 and Heenan–Sayers in 1861 was the golden age of American bare-knuckle fighting,” wrote Elliot J Gorn in his book Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting.” . . . “the prize ring with its attendant culture of gambling, drinking, and carousing represented an anti-Victorian world. The great boxers were avatars of masculine toughness, their pictures hung in countless saloons in Northern cities. The ring was part of a web of male institutions, including volunteer fire companies, ethnic gangs, urban political wards, unions, fraternal organisations, brothels, saloons, and gambling dens.”

Some would gladly have us return to that primitive time. The rebirth of the bare-knuckle genre is part of a larger rewinding in American society, a sustained and serious attempt to turn back the clock and to erase much of what we might reasonably call progress.

Aside from attacks on voting eligibility and women’s rights, 57 kids aged 15 and younger died in workplace accidents here between 2018 and 2022, and 16 states are actively trying to relax laws governing child labour. There are repeated calls to repeal smoking prohibitions, and the political war on environmental regulations combating pollution is ongoing.

Children dying on factory floors. Second-hand nicotine tar ahoy. Smog in the air. And bare-knuckle fights at weekends where one combatant in the show pockets a “toughest motherfxxker” bonus.

Our long-suffering ancestors must be so proud of how hard we are working to recreate the very worst of the world they endured.

“We are now owner of the fastest growing sports promotion in the world, @bareknucklefc,” boasted McGregor on Instagram. “Take off the gloves and fight bitch.”

A man who has found his calling. And his level.