\u201cWe have had successful campaigns against coward punches and \u2018One Punch Can Kill\u2019 \u2013 and yet promoters of bare-knuckle fighting want to promote it,\u201d Griffin said.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
Fighters attending the event on Thursday had varied reasons for getting involved in the sport.<\/p>\n
Heavyweight boxer Ricky Rowles-Brown said boxing helped him get sober and \u201cfiguratively and literally saved my life\u201d.<\/p>\n
Muay Thai champion Brad Walton said competitive fighting \u201cchanged his life\u201d after a rough upbringing led him to drugs, incarceration and homelessness.<\/p>\n
Former rugby league player turned professional boxer Curtis Scott said boxing was a motivator after his professional football career ended.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a competitor, and when the rugby league door closed, I needed something to keep me motivated and keep me on track,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoxing has given me a lot of purpose [and] a lot of discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott shared Mundine\u2019s sentiment that bare-knuckle fighting could be safer than other combat sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of pride in boxing where people want to see how tough they are, and they take a lot of shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this [bare knuckle fighting], it\u2019s going to be short and fast \u2026 you either knock out your opponent or give them a nasty cut, or you\u2019re going to break your hand, and I\u2019m assuming it\u2019ll be over from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
Mundine\u2019s World Bare Knuckle Fighting is not the first to attempt a large-scale event in Australia, with US-based Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, co-owned by McGregor, applying for a fight night at Perth\u2019s RAC Arena earlier this year.<\/p>\n
While AMA\u2019s WA president Michael Page called it the \u201chuman equivalent of dog fighting\u201d and warned against the proliferation of more sports that could cause head injuries, the state\u2019s sport minister said she saw no difference between bare-knuckle boxing and UFC cage fighting.<\/p>\n
The event was ultimately scrapped by the state\u2019s combat sports authority who said the proposal did not meet its criteria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe have had successful campaigns against coward punches and \u2018One Punch Can Kill\u2019 \u2013 and yet promoters of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-20636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}