Real Bare-Knuckle Boxing is Back for the First Time in 130 Years

Source – Just minutes into a two-hour workout, Reggie Barnett Jr. hit the wall.

It was brick and impervious to the punches of a super featherweight boxer like Barnett – or any boxer, for that matter. …

It sounded painful. It looked painful. But it’s necessary training for what Barnett is undertaking.

Saturday in Cheyenne, Wyo., Barnett will fight on the first state-sanctioned bare-knuckle boxing card in the U.S. since the days of John L. Sullivan – a span of 130 years. It’s a case, as his manager says, of the oldest sport becoming the newest sport.

As Barnett himself says, there will be blood. But to those who see bare-knuckle fighting as the new low in a combat sports industry trending toward barbarism, advocates hit back with counter-arguments. …

In bare-knuckle fighting, which has to this point been an underground sport contested in warehouses and garages, no one gets banged on round after round, proponents say. Fights tend to end quickly, when someone lands a solid shot. Injuries are mostly superficial: busted lips, broken noses.

In becoming the first U.S. state to sanction the sport, officials in Wyoming said it is safer than mixed martial arts, in which fighters can be hit by knees, shins and elbows. They believe blows in bare-knuckle fighting will produce less blunt-force trauma and fewer concussions and other injuries.

That sound you hear – other than Reggie Barnett Jr.’s fists slamming against solid brick – is the death rattle of the Pussification of America. In a nation in the grips of a multi-front war on Masculinity, on Boyhood, on Competition, on Contact Sports and on American Manhood itself, bare-knuckle boxing could be just the counter-offensive to send the delusional Safety Cultists to the ash heap of history where they belong.

And they succeed, I guess we have underground Fight Clubs to thank for it? In one of those life-imitates-art things, the movie actually tapped into something that is part of human nature that polite society tried to take away. So a grassroots movement grew. Word spread. And now the great state of Wyoming is the first government to sign off on it. It’s a beautiful thing.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, since the dawn of civilization, people have paid to sit in circles and watch men fight. With swords and shields. With lances and horses. With pistols at ten paces. With bare fists then gloves. Now with bare fists again. Because time is a flat circle. And while the Rough and Rowdy decision-making goes on way above this blogger’s pay grade, I’d love to see us get to Wyoming and in on the ground floor of what is about to become Sport of Kings. Again. Let’s do this. And party like it’s 1888.

Thanks, Tyler Durden.