{"id":46912,"date":"2025-08-06T02:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T02:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/46912\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T02:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T02:21:10","slug":"ex-ufc-star-set-for-bare-knuckle-debut-in-conor-mcgregors-promotion-aged-48","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/46912\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-UFC star set for bare-knuckle debut in Conor McGregor’s promotion aged 48"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former UFC title challenger Yoel Romero will make his bare-knuckle debut on September 12 under the BKFC banner.<\/p>\n

The promotion announced on Tuesday that ‘Soldier of God’ will fight Theo Doukas, who is also making his debut, at BKFC 80 in Hollywood, Florida.<\/p>\n

\"McGregor<\/a><\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

McGregor unveiled former UFC title challenger Romero as a new BKFC signing in JulyCredit: BKFC<\/p>\n

BKFC is part-owned by UFC star Conor McGregor<\/a>, who announced at the inaugural BKFC 2025 Champions Summit<\/a> last month that Olympic silver medallist Romero had signed for his promotion.<\/p>\n

The Irishman also revealed former MMA fighters Derek Brunson, Thiago Santos, and Aspen Ladd, as well as ex-boxers James DeGale and Jamel Herring had signed on the dotted line with BKFC.<\/p>\n

Romero went on an eight-fight winning streak following his UFC<\/a> debut in April 2013 to earn his first shot at gold.<\/p>\n

He lost an interim middleweight bout to Robert Whittaker at UFC 213, but bounced back with a stoppage win over Luke Rockhold in his next fight.<\/p>\n

The Cuban-American fighter then went on a three-fight losing skid before leaving the UFC and fighting under the Bellator and PFL banner five times.<\/p>\n

‘Soldier of God’ lost a\u00a0middleweight title bout to Israel Adesanya<\/a>\u00a0in his final UFC bout before leaving Dana White<\/a>‘s promotion.<\/p>\n

He is now set to face unknown former MMA fighter Doukas in his BKFC debut.<\/p>\n

Doukas has mixed it up four times in MMA, going 2-2 in the sport, with his last fight ending in a second-round submission defeat.<\/p>\n

McGregor became a co-owner of BKFC in April 2024<\/a> and has since been actively involved with the promotion while remaining out of action in the UFC.<\/p>\n

His last fight was a defeat to Dustin Poirier<\/a> in the summer of 2021, although the Irishman has stated he wants to make a return <\/a>to fight at the UFC White House card.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Romero<\/a><\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

Romero tried his hand at Dirty Boxing after giving up MMACredit: Dirty Boxing<\/p>\n

The 37-year-old made several other big announcements when speaking at the Champions Summit in July.<\/p>\n

He, alongside BKFC President David Feldman, revealed a new World’s Baddest Man tournament, with a whopping $25million of prize money.<\/p>\n

The tournament is set to feature 32 fighters with open-weight rules, meaning fighters weighing between 185-265lbs are eligible for the tournament.<\/p>\n

The winner will take home a whopping $15m, with second place receiving $1m.<\/p>\n

Third and fourth place finishers will take home $500,000 each, and the remaining athletes are set to walk away with $300,000, $200,000, and $100,000, respectively.<\/p>\n

McGregor’s promotion also announced that equity in the organisation will be distributed to the promotion’s champions for the first time in the history of combat sport.<\/p>\n

\"McGregor<\/a><\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

McGregor has played a key role in promoting BKFC since his involvement with the companyCredit: BKFC<\/p>\n

“Do you understand how incredible that is?” McGregor said, speaking on BKFC’s new fighter equity programme.<\/p>\n

“For our combatants to be rewarded in that way and truly, truly be on board with us.<\/p>\n

“For me, I gave everything to the rise of a company and got nothing. Now, here we are. We give back to the fighters who bleed for us.<\/p>\n

“Welcome to the owner’s table. We are in this together. David Feldman, that is how you do it!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former UFC title challenger Yoel Romero will make his bare-knuckle debut on September 12 under the BKFC banner.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[22721,21625,2560,714,716,26341,26340,101,715,56,54,55,26339],"class_list":["post-46912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-bare-knuckle-boxing","tag-bkfc","tag-boxing","tag-conor-mcgregor","tag-mma","tag-romero","tag-soldier-of-god","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-yoel-romero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}