Bare-knuckle fights ring out in Daytona Rockville

Blood4Blood, a bare-knuckle boxing and music event, is scheduled for the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach at 7 p.m. on May 6, the day before Rockville. It features four fights, with abbreviated performances by four metal acts in between. Tickets are on sale now, starting at $37.

“We’re excited to bring together live music and combat sports in a way that creates a different type of experience for fans, while also connecting with the energy surrounding the festival,” said Ocean Center Director Lynn Flanders. “It also allows us to welcome visitors to our venue and offer something that complements everything happening in the community that week.”

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The event is a joint venture between BKFC, the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, and Welcome to Rockville promoter Danny Wimmer Presents.

Who will be part of Blood4Blood in Daytona Beach?

Alex Terrible, a Russian-born deathcore singer, will be pulling double duty, performing with a band and in the ring.

Terrible is the frontman for Slaughter to Prevail, who headlines the Vortex Stage in Rockville on May 10. That gives him just four days to recover from any damage he may sustain in a light heavyweight fight with Cameron “The Bull” Delano, a professional bull rider who won his first bare-knuckle fight last year in Fort Worth, Texas.

BKFC announces Alex Terrible as “Alex The Terrible” after the heavily tattooed rock star wins his first fight in seconds.

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Other fights on the card include BKFC veteran and London native Jake “Brutal” Bostwick (4-2-1 in BKFC, but also 18-10 in MMA) against Roderick Stewart (2-3 in BKFC) in a middleweight bout. Stewart, from Abilene, Texas, is nicknamed “Ice Water.”

Sergey “Kratos” Kalinin (1-0), another Russian, will face 40-year-old former MMA fighter, the “Alpha Dawg,” Brock Walker (1-1) of Stone, Virginia, in a heavyweight bout.

In a women’s flyweight bout, Taylor “Killa Bee” Starling (5-4) of Rock Hill, South Carolina, takes on Sydney “Sundance” Smith (1-3).

Heavy metal band Black Label Society, which will perform at Rockville’s Apex Stage on May 7, will also play the Blood4Blood event, along with Crowbar and Malevolence.

Fighting bare knuckles… is that even legal?

For more than 100 years, bare knuckle fighting was a sport dating back to the 19th century, when it largely became illegal.

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In 2018, BKFC became the first organization to obtain legal authorization to organize a legal, sanctioned and regulated bare knuckle fight in the United States since 1889.

Blood4Blood is their 152nd event.

Bare knuckle fighting in the strictest sense (boxing without gloves) remains illegal in Florida. The Legislature did not change that law, but the Florida Athletic Commission created a regulatory loophole for the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship and other organizations. Fighters must wear gloves, but the gloves can be modified to expose their knuckles.

Bare-knuckle boxers then began punching each other starting in 2019, and several fight nights a year have been held across the state since then.

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“The way Florida legalized bare-knuckle boxing was certainly comical, if not downright embarrassing,” said Erik Magraken, a Canadian lawyer and author of the blog “Combat Sports Law.”

In an email to The News-Journal, Magraken has followed developments in bare-knuckle boxing for years and defends it.

“BKB is bloodier than boxing with gloves. More cuts. More blood,” he said. “But probably less brain trauma. Traumatic brain injury is the real danger in combat sports. To that end, I have no problem with BKB being a legal and regulated combat sport.”

This article originally appeared in The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Bare-knuckle fight in the rings at Ocean Center in Daytona Rockville