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Chris Lytle remembers the first time he heard of bareknuckle fighting.

“I thought it was crazy,” Lytle recently told MMA Junkie. “I said, ‘What’s wrong with those guys? Who would do bareknuckle fighting?”

Lytle first saw bareknuckle boxing in 2017 when he came across a clip of friend and fellow UFC alumnus Joe Riggs chucking knuckles with opponent Christian Evans in Coventry, England, under the BKB banner.

At the time, bareknuckle boxing was not sanctioned by any state commissioning body in the United States.

“I like Joe (Riggs) and was like, ‘What the hell is wrong with him?’ I watched his fight and halfway through it, I said, ‘I need to do a fight.’ My mind totally changed,” Lytle said. “As soon as I watched it, I was like, ‘This is not what I thought. This is not what it sounds like.’”

Lytle made an international phone call. Twelve months later, he fought for BKB. When bareknuckle was finally sanctioned in a handful of states in the U.S., Lytle was one of the first MMA notables to raise his hand.

“Unfortunately, I’ve realized I have the heart and the mind of a fighter,” Lytle said. “I always have. That’s not going to go away. But eventually, you have to stop doing that. The human brain should only do so much. There is a finite number of punches you can take before there’s a problem. … I’d fight until I’m 80, but you can’t do that. I love the bareknuckle for one reason that people don’t give it enough credit for. It’s so much easier on your body to train for a bareknuckle fight.”

BILOXI, MS – AUGUST 25: Chris Lytle fights Drew Lipton during the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 2: A New Era at Mississippi Coast Coliseum on August 25, 2018 in Biloxi, Mississippi. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)

As he got more involved, a part of Lytle’s conscience from years prior was tapped into. A veteran of 20 fights under the UFC banner, Lytle was scratching and clawing his way in the Wild West of MMA in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The rejection of a foreign violence form is similar to that of what the UFC underwent, Lytle explained. BKFC is an acquired taste, but Lytle thinks it only takes one sitting to realize you want to indulge more.

“I feel like I went back in a time machine in some ways,” Lytle said. “I was around. I fought for the UFC for the first time in 2000. That was before Dana White and Zuffa was involved, and I started fighting for them regularly in 2003. I saw the growth. I saw it come from nothing, an underground thing people thought you were a lunatic for doing, to the mainstream. It’s amazing. I was there for that transition. Now, I see so many parallels and so many similar trajectories that we’re going through with BKFC. I feel like I went back in time. Like, who gets to be at the creation of a sport twice in their life? That’s such a rarity that this happens. I feel like I’m a unique position to help guide this and help avoid some pitfalls. I feel like it took the UFC a lot longer to make it. For us, it’s going to be much faster.”

BILOXI, MS – AUGUST 25: Chris Lytle fights Drew Lipton during the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 2: A New Era at Mississippi Coast Coliseum on August 25, 2018 in Biloxi,

Author: Staff

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