Ken Shamrock: Expect “True Bare-Knuckle” at Valor BK 2
Ken Shamrock is the promotional figurehead of Valor Bare Knuckle and readies for the company’s promotional return with Valor BK 2 on October 27th.
Shamrock appeared once again on Bowks Talking Bouts to discuss why the UFC pioneer sees Valor BK as true bare-knuckle, the current landscape of the sport with Valor returning for their sophomore show after a few years of time in between, and so much more. Excerpts from the chat are below.
Ken Shamrock
I’m noticing in some of the promotional material leading into Valor BK 2 that the verbiage is oriented to Valor being true bare knuckle. Like no ropes, no cages, no gloves, the lack of tape on the hands. Are those the main aspects of why this constitutes true bare knuckle? Why does Valor BK represent true bare knuckle maybe more than some of the other BK leagues?
“Yeah, I think you go back to the original roots of fighting you know. When you have two guys stand in front of one another back in the 1800s, 1900s. They just stood there and they went at it. You didn’t have to go into a locker room and tape your hands. Put a boxing glove on and go through all that stuff you know. It was just true grit, god-given talent. So that’s kind of what we’re doing. Just bringing it back to the real fighting, the true bare knuckle.”
“Because again I always ask the question I mean how good would a lot of these fighters you know like a (Floyd) Mayweather, ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard and I love those guys, man. They were awesome but what if you would take that glove off and take the tapes off and make them fight bare knuckle? How good would they be? So there’s the question right? Does it matter? I mean like I really want to find guys that have that god-given talent. That true toughness you know. When you look at them and you say, man, that dude’s a badass. I mean that’s what boxing should be.”
Valor Bare Knuckle
Ken Shamrock continued, “I think boxing is dying because they got so many rules and you know they got this big old pillow on their hand. Where we’re at with fighting right now with no holds barred or MMA, mixed martial arts, and now bare-knuckle, boxing’s being left behind because of what they’re doing with those gloves. Obviously, even the clinching where we took that out.”
“Because I felt like that was the most boring thing in a standup fight is when someone lights another fighter up and the first thing that fighter does is grab them so they can recover. To me, I was like man that’s cheating. You’re not allowing guys to finish each other because one guy can hug him. So yeah it’s really about that. Just bringing it back to the beginning and making it pure.”
Valor BK 2
It’s a very interesting time for Valor to be back in the landscape as it seems to be a different one relative to the first Valor show. Just in as far as BKB had just put on its 18th show. BKFC had put on its seventh. I think BYB Extreme was a couple of events in at that point. So what are your thoughts on the overall bare-knuckle landscape here as Valor returns for Valor BK 2?
“I love it, you know. I mean I think these guys have done a tremendous job at really being able to expose Valor. Not Valor but expose the bare knuckle. Valor has a chance to come up behind them. Look and see the things that have worked and haven’t worked and take advantage of that. So sometimes like I said a lot of people want to be first but sometimes that’s not always best. So I think we have a great opportunity to really come up in behind and really look at things that work and don’t work.”
Ken Shamrock continued, “We made some rule changes because of some of the things that I saw and some of the other ones that truly aren’t working. Then there’s some things that are that we’ll adopt. So again like I said I’m very, very happy for those organizations and how successful they’ve been and I think competition is good.”
