wandshogun09

Bout order’s been reshuffled. Still not an amazing card but it looks a bit better now they’ve rightly bumped the Despaigne fight and Ferreira vs Rebecki to the main card. I don’t even think it’s that bad overall for a Fight Night card, it’s the main event that’s dragging it down more than anything. Stick an actual decent headliner on this and it’s fine. All the main card fights minus the main event should be entertaining enough and - even on the prelims - Hooper vs Slav, McKinney vs Ribovics and Hadley vs Johnson could be a lot of fun. Honestly, if it was up to me I’d have just pulled the trigger and had Lewis vs Despaigne headline. Fuck it. At 35, time is of the essence with Despaigne. Chucking him in there would’ve been better than anything involving this Nascimento ham and egger.

Fight week face-off. Pretty cool.

In fairness, a lot of these guys are coming into Bare Knuckle when their career is already on its last legs. If it was possible put a guy like Thiago Alves into BK when he was at his physical peak and still young and hungry, it might well have been a different situation entirely. Not saying he’d definitely have won but I don’t think he’d have folded as quickly and easily as he did here. Obviously Bare Knuckle is a different game and it’s not for everyone but I think in some of these cases it’s not so much a that they weren’t ever cut out for BK and more a timing thing. Like we said before the show, on this very page, Alves was making all the wrong noises this week and was clearly enticed back purely by the money. Of course they’re all prize fighters and they’re all in it for the money, but to really excel in something as barbaric as this that can’t be your only motivation. I think you almost have to be a bit barmy and actually love it to do well at it. Which is why a knuckle dragging loon like Mike Perry is having the best period of his career right now in BKFC. I wish Wanderlei Silva was still young and fresh enough to still go. He was bouncing bare knuckles off fools heads in IVC in Brazil when the pay was probably a beer and a hot dog. He loved it. It’s a shame that he’s past it now there’s finally money to be made in this filth. Wandy of 98/99 vs Perry of today in BK would’ve been bonkers.

Yeah, Francis tweeted this just. Heart wrenching.

This one’s came around quick, hasn’t it?

Yep.

Saw a quote from Thiago Alves saying he was pretty much retired until the offer for this Perry fight came in and said “money talks”. Doesn’t bode well. Never like to hear that kind of talk going into a fight, especially Bare Knuckle. If you’re only hanging around for a paycheque, there’s gotta be easier ways than BK. I hope Alves proves me wrong and chins him. Always liked him and Perry’s a fucking weapon. But I’ve got a bad feeling about it.

Even the early start time isn’t polishing this turd for me. Not feeling this one at all.

Sorry to bump this but Max Holloway was on Rogan’s podcast and he talked about the ‘phantom’ knockdown that wasn’t scored as a knockdown for Gaethje. And even Max says it’s bullshit that it wasn’t counted. First off, again, all class. I get that it’s easy to throw the other guy a bone when you’ve already got the win in the history books. But most fighters wouldn’t have said this or admitted they were legitimately knocked down. Also shows that the stats are so unreliable. People bring them up a lot when arguing who should’ve won rounds and stuff but those stats are quite often all over the place. Knockdowns not getting counted, takedowns not getting counted, what constitutes a ‘significant strike’ being mostly open to interpretation. They’re not a solid metric to go by. No-one will ever convince me that Gaethje didn’t knock Holloway down. He threw the punch, it landed, Max legs went from under him and he hit the deck. However brief he was down is irrelevant, he was knocked down. I know it’s insignificant now in terms of this specific fight. Max won and it was one of the greatest moments in the sports history. But they need to sort that shit out or just not use stats at all. Oh and for anyone who wants to watch it, here’s the full episode of Holloway on JRE;

Haven’t seen it in years but I’ll be watching that again later. Cheers Ian!

Buckley managed to get on the card in the end. New co-main… I’ve updated the opening post and redone the poll.

This is such a good fight. Taira was supposed to fight Tim Elliott and Van was set to fight Su Mudaerji. Shame those fights fell apart, both sounded fun, but this is still somehow an upgrade in my opinion. Really liking these prospect vs prospect matchups they’ve been doing a bit more of recently. Just over the last month or two we’ve had Christian Rodriguez vs Isaac Dulgarian and Payton Talbott vs Cameron Saaiman. Now this. I’m all for it.

It most likely won’t negatively impact sales here no, I fully expect this to sell out regardless. But it will have a positive impact on US sales being on PPV in a prime time slot over there. If they’d had this show on a Euro friendly time zone it’d mean an afternoon start time in the US and would’ve hurt the buys. So I get the decision from the UFC’s POV. It’s just shite as a fan that a UK card isn’t gonna be on at a decent time in the UK. Always the chance it has a negative effect on the crowd as well. No doubt a lot of them will be on the piss in the early evening and will be tanked up by 11 when the prelims start. By 3am when the main card kicks off, it’s probably safe to assume a fair percentage of the crowd is not gonna wanna do anything but either fight, vomit or sleep.

I guess the positive is that they’ll have to bring a stronger card than the usual Fight Nights they do over here. And I usually enjoy the UK shows anyway, to be fair. Gotta be a double header with Tom Aspinall and Leon Edwards defending their belts, right? I’m guessing it’s almost certainly gonna be Leon vs Belal 2, and maybe Aspinall vs Blaydes 2. I read the other day that Ciryl Gane was offered the Aspinall fight and turned it down again because he’s supposedly gonna be in some movie. I’ve found Gane quite likeable on the whole but his blatant ducking of Aspinall has been ridiculous. It’s gotta be at least 2 or 3 times now he’s rejected offers to fight Tom. The fact he was even being offered an interim title fight again, after going 0-2 in his last 2 shots and coming off one win over Spivac, was a bit much IMO. I hope Blaydes gets the fight. I think it’s a more interesting fight plus it’s unfinished business with how the first fight ended.

Not a specific fight announcement but it’s been confirmed everywhere that UFC 304 will be in Manchester on July 27th. On a bastard US time zone! Prelims start at 11pm, main card at 3am. And no doubt they’ll still whack it on Box Office.