“she beautiful, oh she’s beautiful! Mabel is beautiful. It’s a baby, oh, it’s a puppy! ”
Watching bare-knuckle boxing legend Bobby Gunn dote on my 7-month-old French bulldog/Boston terrier mix makes me regret we weren’t in the same room. . I have a feeling they’ll get along very well. But even through his laptop screen, his true love is evident.
I showed Gunn Mabel after I found out that she had her own French bulldog, a 12-year-old dog named Max, who would take her everywhere. Gunn is equally enthusiastic, sharing this trivia about Mabel’s terrier side.
It’s as if you can’t help but recognize your fellow combatants beneath the cuteness. According to author Staton Bonner’s book, “Bare Knuckle: Bobby Gunn, 73 wins, 0 losses, no losses. Father. Dream. Fight like you’ve never seen before.” ” was released on Tuesday, but Gunn’s softer side never surfaces, even in the harshest of circumstances.
“The first time I met Bobby, I went to see him training at Ike and Randy’s gym in Paterson, New Jersey,” Bonner recalls. “It wasn’t Equinox here. We had to walk past some pit bulls and go through like a chain link fence. It was an old auto body shop. But he brought this little dog. , was taking his little dog and preparing a bowl of his food.
“So I was talking to some of the other fighters there and they said this is what Bobby would say.” [a fighter], “Here’s how to really beat a guy when the referee isn’t looking.” Give him all these little tips. But then he put him to bed and asked him if he had accepted Jesus into his heart. ”
This was evident during my 40-minute conversation with Gunn. Gunn speaks quickly and has a thick Irish accent (he is an Irish Traveler who grew up in Canada). He calls me “sir” and mentions God frequently. He choked up many times, marveling at how far he had come.
He was raised in extreme poverty by a violent father who taught him how to fight. By the time he was 11, it was the same father who made him fight grown men for money in motel parking lots. Today, he has calmly retired from fighting and devoted himself to his beloved wife and beautiful daughter, giving them the life they have never had before.
And now, with the help of former Rolling Stone editor Bonner, the underground sport he dominated is gaining mainstream legitimacy and potentially huge incomes. I’m trying to tell the story of my life.
black stone
Gunn competed in his first legal bare-knuckle match in 2018. Since then, the sport has grown into a $411 billion business.
Based in Philadelphia as we speak Bare Knuckle Fighting ChampionshipThe organization, which bills itself as “the first promotion to be allowed to hold a legal, sanctioned, regulated bare-knuckle event in the United States since 1889,” is excited to announce its latest pay-per-view brawl, “Knucklemania IV”, which will take place this Saturday. We are preparing for “. In Los Angeles. Mr. Gunn will serve as one of the commentators.
Gunn’s bare-knuckle career also saw him fight for the Russian Mafia and biker gangs, but he claims he enjoyed it more than his work in mainstream professional boxing.
“Sir, the underground world was better than the boxing world. The boxing world was more corrupt. Corruption, oh, believe me, I had to fight referees and judges. It was the enemy against you. The underground world was much more fair.” Quite a shake. ”
While the sight of men fighting each other with their bare fists is undeniably shocking, Gunn points out that it’s actually safer than boxing. First, matches rarely last long. Early knockouts are common.
And when you wear boxing gloves, “you’re holding a weapon in your hands,” Gunn says. “My hands are protected, so I punch as hard as I can. … You can’t hit as hard with bare knuckles, sir. I only hit 30%, 40%, and I try to do lighter shots. I’m going to go with my body.’ Make it harder because I don’t want to break my hand. ”
That’s not to say they didn’t take some damage along the way. Gunn takes his hand and presses his nose to his face. He turns around and shows his profile. It’s completely flat. “Do you think the little scar on my nose bothers you?” he laughs.
Gunn appears to be approaching this stage of his life with the same calm determination that brought him a 73-0 record. “I fear no one, but respect everyone,” Gunn told me. “When I go to fight, the light switch goes off right away. When that happens, you have to kill me to defeat me. That’s all I have.”
click Click here for an excerpt “Bare Knuckle” provided by: Blackstone Publishing.
