Conor McGregor names the UFC star he would love to see fight in Bare Knuckle Boxing
Associated PressConor McGregor has revealed his “exciting” vision for Bare Knuckle Boxing and has named Justin Gaethje as a UFC fighter he would love to see make the cross over into the BKFC promotion.
It was announced during April’s BKFC Knucklemania 4 card that McGregor Sports and Entertainment had become a part-owner in the promotion alongside its majority shareholder, Triller.
McGregor even had a face-off with bare knuckle star Mike Perry, before signaling his intention to one day compete in the promotion.
It won’t be in the immediate future, given the former featherweight and lightweight champion still has two fights left on his UFC deal and is headlining June’s UFC 303 card in Las Vegas against Michael Chandler.
But having seen first hand the growth of UFC under the leadership of Lorenzo Fertita and Dana White, McGregor is hopeful he can have a similar impact on BKFC.
“The matchmaking is what got me excited about it, so I began discussions with my team internally, visited a show and met Feldman himself. I believe in David Feldman as well, he has a great vision,” McGregor told The MacLife.
“The matchmaking has been stellar and what he’s been doing with it has been amazing. We came together and had a good discussion and decided together we will be a force in this industry.
“I came up as a protégé of Lorenzo Fertita and Mr Dana White, I spent ample time with these gentlemen, we travelled across the world.
“Their thing was to get people to the live event because they knew their live product had that ‘wow’ factor, they had all the bells and whistles. And inside the cage it was ‘wow’. You get the fan into the arena – they are there for life then. I believe in Bare Knuckle we have that.
“It’s almost daunting, you walk into the arena and see the bells and whistles of the high-end promotion; the lights, the ring girls, the theatrics, the fireworks and then you see the walk-ins, and then they come out with no gloves whatsoever and it has that ‘wow’ factor.
“It has exactly what Lorenzo was speaking on. So I relate to that and I say ‘I’ve got that now with Bare Knuckle – what they had with the UFC’.
“And also what was frequent in discussions with Lorenzo and Mr White was the characters we had, the fighters we had, the stories they could tell. Their life stories. Very interesting characters.
“There’s no more interesting character than an individual who is willing to go into the ring and fight Bare Knuckle, that is a point blank fact.
“We’ve got the ‘wow’ factor at the live events, now it’s about building the athletes, getting their stories to the people, which I’ll be playing a part in.
“And then getting people to the arenas and then just keep growing it. Bare Knuckle is only in its growing stage, so it’s very exciting and I’m very happy to be a part of it. The eyes of the world are now on the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship.”
As mentioned earlier, Perry is one of a number of former UFC fighters who have made a successful transition to BKFC and McGregor believes UFC lightweight star Justin Gaethje would be a brilliant addition to the Bare Knuckle game.
“We’ve seen former UFC champions or UFC veterans move to other mixed martial arts promotions. We’ve seen them fight MMA all their career and now they still fight MMA. It doesn’t pop for me,” McGregor added.
“Now let’s take Justin Gaethje, who is a UFC veteran, former BMF holder, interim belt holder – take him, let’s put him in Bare Knuckle. That’s exciting, that’s really, really exciting. Now let’s take him and put him in another MMA organisation, not so [exciting].”