BKFC 92 preview: Joe Lauzon and bare knuckles at Fenway Park

Sixteen years ago Joe Lauzon walked into TD Garden, submitted a man in front of his own people, and took home another Submission of the Night check. On Saturday he walks into Fenway Park, across town and one career later, to punch someone in the face without gloves on.

That sentence should not parse. It does, because BKFC 92 is putting a bare-knuckle ring on home plate at a ballpark that opened in 1912, in the promotion's first card in Massachusetts. Prelims at 6:00 p.m. Eastern, main card at 7:00 p.m., streaming on BKFC+.

I want to be honest about my angle here before I start: I find the whole idea slightly ghoulish and I am going to watch every second of it.

Two undefeated men and a belt

The main event is Kai Stewart against Harry Gigliotti for the featherweight title, five rounds, and between them they have never lost a bare-knuckle fight. Stewart is 9-0 in the promotion and holds the belt. Gigliotti is 6-0 and is the local, which at Fenway is not nothing.

Stewart is the more interesting problem. He is a Montana wrestler by background, a three-time AA state finalist and a state champion in 2018, and wrestling credentials in a sport with no takedowns sound like a punchline until you watch what that base does for a man when someone is throwing at his chin. Nine fights in this promotion, nine wins, and the belt.

Gigliotti is 6-0 without gloves and has not yet had to find out what he does after losing one. That is a shorter scouting report than a title challenger usually gets, and it is the reason the fight is worth your evening: two unbeaten records go in and only one comes out.

Prediction: Stewart by decision.

The co-main is the better fight

Christine Ferea is 11-1 in bare-knuckle, has been fighting this way since 2018, and is the reigning women's flyweight champion, which in a young sport makes her something close to an institution. She meets Sofia Landi, who is 5-5 as a mixed martial artist and has not yet fought without gloves.

On paper that is a mismatch, and on paper it usually is. But bare-knuckle is the one combat sport where the paper lies most often, because the equipment that normally protects a chin and a set of knuckles is simply absent. Ferea has been hit by everyone and is still standing. I will take the institution.

Prediction: Ferea by TKO, round 3.

The Octagon rejects, and what they are actually doing here

Photo: Cpl. Stephen McGinnis / Public domain

This is the part of the card I keep coming back to, because it is a very specific kind of story about how fighters get old.

Joe Lauzon is 28-15 and fought 27 times inside the UFC, going 15-12. He also collected a post-fight bonus on sixteen separate nights, which is a number so absurd it deserves a second look: Fight of the Night seven times, Submission of the Night six, Knockout of the Night twice and Performance of the Night twice. The arithmetic gives you seventeen awards over sixteen nights because at UFC on FOX in August 2012 he took Fight of the Night and Submission of the Night off the same fight. He has not fought anywhere since October 2019. He makes his bare-knuckle debut against Braeden Kuykendall, who is 0-2 in the promotion.

Charles Rosa went 5-8 across thirteen UFC appearances between 2014 and 2022, seven of those losses by decision, and is 18-8 overall. He lost his last three in the Octagon and has not fought there since July 2022. He is also making his bare-knuckle debut, against Charon Spain.

Peter Barrett won on Contender Series in 2019, went 0-2 in the UFC proper, and has since gone 2-0 without gloves. He fights Elijah Harris.

Then there is the one I like best. Rico DiSciullo got knocked out by Montel Jackson on Contender Series in June 2018 and never got the call. He is now 4-0 in BKFC and 11-2 as a professional mixed martial artist. His opponent, Tray Martin, is 2-0 in bare-knuckle, 6-10-1 as a professional boxer and 0-5 as a mixed martial artist, which is the sort of split record that tells you a man has finally found the room he belongs in.

You can read that whole block cynically, and plenty of people will. Four men the UFC finished with, taking a fight where the medical downside is measurably worse, in a promotion that pays less than the one that let them go. That reading is available and I am not going to pretend it is stupid.

Here is the other reading. Lauzon walked away with a body that had absorbed 27 UFC fights and, on the evidence of sixteen bonus nights, was never once in a boring one. Barrett got two Octagon fights and two losses. DiSciullo got a single Contender Series knockout loss and then eight years of nobody calling. None of them got to leave on their own terms, and home plate at Fenway on a Saturday night is a considerably better exit than a phone that never rings.

Prediction: DiSciullo by TKO, round 2. Lauzon by decision, and no, he cannot armbar anybody this time, which is precisely the thing I am nervous about.

The rest of it

Taylor Starling (6-4) against Kathryn Paprocki (2-1) is a ranked strawweight fight and the best women's matchup on the card after the co-main; Paprocki lost her own Contender Series bout to Maria Silva in 2021 and has rebuilt here. Patrick Casey and Dallas Davision is a middleweight scrap between men who are a combined 9-6 in the promotion, which is to say it will be terrible in the good way.

Three prelims round it out at 6:00 p.m.

Twelve fights, no gloves, home plate. Whatever else you want to say about it, nobody involved is going to have to wonder whether anyone was watching.