Today VICE premieres Bare Knuckle, a documentary with unique access to Britain’s bare knuckle boxing scene and the men that have come to define it, the latest in VICE’s award-winning Rule Britanniaseries.
In Bare Knuckle, VICE’s Clive Martin finds a community of white and blue collar working men – from labourers to IT technicians to solicitors – who are all obsessed by the anarchic and archaic glory of bare knuckle boxing; penned in by hay bales and throwing unprotected punches until their opponent is bloody and unconscious.
This legal but ungoverned sport has enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years thanks to the work of promoter Andy Topliffe, whose B-Bad promotions outfit aims to bring legitimacy to this forgotten sport with a slew of crowd-pleasing bare knuckle bouts.
The jewel in his crown is orchestrating the first UK vs US bare knuckle fight for over 150 years, between Jason “The Machine Gun” Young and James “Gypsy Boy” McCrory, a charming Geordie traveller whose match preparations consist almost solely of drinking up to twenty five pints of Guinness a day to meet his required match weight.
Watch Bare Knuckle on VICE.com here
At 32 and with 200 fights under his belt, James is a relative youngster on the scene compared to Seth Jones, a drug-smuggler turned solicitor fighting men half his age in Colwyn Bay, North Wales. VICE explore the mental strain of a life dedicated to fighting when Clive meets James Lambert, an undefeated fighter turned life-coach and self-styled “Mr Happy”, a man now so disgusted by his violent past he refuses even to ball his fists anymore.
Bare Knuckle uncovers a subculture of honour, pride and violence, and with Young Vs McCrory becoming the biggest event the scene has known since it went underground in the 19th Century, Clive tries to find out if violence is a cause or effect for angry young men.
Bare Knuckle is the latest in the award-winning Rule Britannia series, a strand of distinctive documentaries from VICE that offers unflinching, honest and powerful insights into Britain’s untold stories. Watch the previous film, Debt Collector, on YouTube here.
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