Former boxing champion James DeGale claimed a debut win in the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship – but only after surviving a headbutt in a vicious contest.
DeGale, a two-time IBF super-middleweight champ, beat Matt Floyd on points in Manchester as he returned to fighting after six years away.
The Brit, 39, last fought six years ago when he lost to Chris Eubank Jr via unanimous decision, missing out on the IBO super-middleweight title.
But he signed with Conor McGregor’s BKFC promotion in July and made a strong start to his new pursuit on Saturday night. His first opponent was Australian Floyd, a former vigilante pedophile hunter who took up boxing after going to prison.
DeGale and Floyd slogged through five two-minute rounds, each as brutish as the last. Floyd was docked points for a headbutt, punching after the bell, and putting his opponent in a headlock, while DeGale also had one taken off for hitting after a clinch.
But the judges weighed the scrappy affair 48-43, 48-43 and 47-44 in ‘Chunky’ DeGale’s favour.
James DeGale (left) won his Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship debut aginst Matt Floyd – but only after being headbutted for his troubles
The former boxing champion was congratulated at the end by BKFC co-owner Conor McGregor
He said: ‘It’s bare-knuckle boxing, it’s highly different. The holding, punching, it’s crazy! Crazy stuff.
‘But do you know what? I’m 1-0 in bare-knuckle. JD [Burns] is second coming.
‘He’s tough, he’s game. In boxing, that’s his best move, holding the back of the head and uppercutting. He always gets warned.
‘In a boxing fight, he won’t last two rounds. So I thought, let me have a bare-knuckle boxing make it more even.’
And the 2008 Olympic gold medallist was even congratulated by McGregor himself, who said: ‘It’s an interesting puzzle in the bare-knuckle. The habit for people is to reach, we all do that, frames, yeah. I wanna see frames.
‘It’s different, as he says, this man is an Olympic gold medallist and a former two-time world champion and he enjoyed it. It looked like he f***ing enjoyed it.
‘Matt Floyd, great fight. That was a great fight. It’s an interesting puzzle, bare-knuckle. It’s not boxing, it’s bare-knuckle fighting.’
In the BKFC81 Co-Main Event, Aaron ‘The Joker’ Chalmers – a former Geordie Shore personality – beat Love Island winner Jack Fincham.
DeGale’s most recent other fight came back in 2019, when he lost to Chris Eubank Jr
Chalmers, who now has a 2-0 record in the Squared Circle, called for a clash with Mike Perry in his post-fight interview.
Lower down the card at the sold-out AO Arena, Jonny Graham from Leeds stopped Navid Mansouri in the second round to claim the first United Kingdom Lightweight Championship.
He wants to take his title global. ‘I’ll beat them all. Who’s the BKFC World Champion? It will be mine,’ he said after his fight.
Meanwhile, one of Floyd’s recent training partners, Mikey ‘El Animal’ Henderson, went 2-0 in his BKFC career as he beat Ben Lowe after a heated build-up.
Henderson scored the only knockdown of the fight and emerged victorious with scores of 48-46, 48-46, and 49-47 from the judges.
