Lucas Browne showed off a couple of his favorite tattoos while Elie Seckbach filmed with two phones at the Friday night weigh-in for the BKB Bare Knuckle Boxing show Saturday in Pembroke Pines, FL, topped by a heavyweight title battle.
Browne, age 46, lives in Perth, Australia, and this isn’t his first rodeo. So, while he acted convivial in showcasing his ink to the longtime fight game video chronicler, he admitted that he knows his foe, Gustavo Trujillo, from Cuba, is esteemed in “these” circles. “There will be blood,” the heavyweight hitter, who held the WBA gloves-on title in 2016, stated matter of factly.
“His? Or yours, or both,” I asked the 31-7 pugilist, who last gloved up just six weeks ago in Germany. “Both,” he responded.
I saw the scarred tissue above Browne’s left eye, and the 6-5 hitter admitted that he expects to leave some of himself on the floor of the trigon, the three-sided containment ring which encourages mixing it up.
“No bicycles allowed in there,” said BKB fight caller Benny Ricardo, the former kicker who enjoys status as the first Paraguayan to make the NFL. He demanded I get in to get the feeling for the tight angles in the ring. He’s taken heavily to the product for the same reason BKB has upped their output schedule for 2026; watchers/consumers are enjoying the lack of dilly dallying and shall we say excessive goodwill found in too many pugilism contests.
Anemic volume in high-profile events pitting contestants seemingly more entranced by the promise of paydays than testing their mettle and giving their all in entertaining fashion is but one of the ailments that leaves an opening for a BKB to make inroads.
“I’ve got the mindset of, let’s just do it,” Browne said when offered a shot at the champ Trujillo, allowing he knows the 32-year-old favorite is a feared and respected practitioner with a 7-0 (7 KOs) mark in BKB (9-0 (9 KOs) in “regular” boxing).
The call came four weeks ago to be featured on the Night of the Four Kings card. This will be Browne’s second BK battle.
Heard one insider speak of Trujillo in a hushed tone and say they don’t think the Aussie knows what he got into.
He won’t know until fight night, of course, which screens on Vice, teleSport, and Telemundo, but he is aware no Trujillo foe has made it past round one. “It’s not a great thing, but it doesn’t worry me,” Browne said.
No butterflies at the weigh-in, the ultra pro Browne is courteous and charming in doing media. There will be nerves, the good kind, tomorrow, he shared. “I think I’m suited for this,” he stated. “But he’s earned where he’s at. I’m a tough nut, though, I enjoy this. I think the people he’s fought are more so brawlers where I bring the technical aspect. I’m gonna push him to his limits, and see what happens.”
This will be the first time the fighters will be wearing sensors which will measure velocity and give fans a little hook to hang on. Owner Mike Vazquez said he recognizes the success being built in BKB, which he also enjoyed in his previous time in the NASCAR world, which he helped bring to Mexico. The businessman Vazquez started this endeavor in 2014, with Dada 5000, a Floridian who built up backyard bouts to a level that suggested an appetite for this rugged rumbling.
Interestingly, Vazquez fired me some stats which indicate that the brutality which critics cite is overstated. A fighter is less likely to sustain a concussion in a BKB event than in regular pugilism, which sees the brain pan rattled more often than occurs in the trigon. “We’re building a skyscraper, with a great foundation,” he said.
The fighters are starting to get it, understanding that one has to make a possible viewer intrigued by your presentation out of the trigon as well as inside. Cub Hawkins, age 27, from Chicago, stole the fight week with a cheeky barb tossed at 40-year-old Wales man Barrie Jones, when he said, “I take care of old people, I dress them, I wipe their butt, and I feed them. And it sucks that I gotta take out someone as old as you. It’s gonna happen.” Jones allowed himself a small grin, and the light heavies will soon sort it out.
The messengers are present in Pembroke Pines, as CEO David Tetreault oversaw the goings on, among them the UK fight game fixture Gareth Davies.
His Beatlemaniac flair attracted attention at the Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua presser, which ran after the BKB am weigh-in. Davies invaded with cohort Danielle Moinet, ex-WWE diva and QB in the Lingerie Football League. Davies, a natty dresser and amped up commentator, summed up his take on the product.
“In 35 years, radio, newspaper, TV, the first time I watched BKB, I felt a level of addiction and thrill. The last time I felt this way about a new sport was covering UFC, the early days 2005,” said the Daily Telegraph and TalkSPORT fixture, “where an exploding perception shift and new eyes on the sport made a new phenomenon. I believe we are at the same place with bare-knuckle, dare I call it ungloved boxing? It’s the perfect time for another entertaining fight sport, with the back stories of the fighters, to become the new fastest growing combat sport.”
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