BKFC 6: Malignaggi vs. Lobov

R5: 10-9 lobov.

Could go either way, I have it lobov at least 3-2.

Yeah, that's the right decision.
Told ya folks. Bareknuckle fighting and pro boxing aren't the same deal. MMA will prepare a fighter better for bareknuckle than pro boxing. Paulie didn't know how to be in there.

@cartel it's pretty crap really. I'd rather watch a pro boxing match any day TBH. If you want to see great boxing, you won't get it in bareknuckle fighting.

* Edited at 06.23.2019, 12:10 AM ET *

Paulie says he didn't get hit while a ****** on its moon cycle is leaking on his forehead. Ok bud.

* Edited at 06.23.2019, 2:06 AM ET *

@free don't underestimate just how much of a difference no gloves vs 10's or 8's truly make.  Modern boxing as you know it literally looks the way it does because of PVC/Latex gloves. You could literally put Lomachenko  in a bareknuckle fight and he would look terrible for this reason. Well, he might not look terrible, but he sure as **** wouldn't look how he does in pro boxing. Before quality shock absorbing gloves became a thing, boxing looked totally different. Even gloves stuffed with horsehair like the old timers like ray robinson used made boxing look a certain way--specifically, more like bareknuckle boxing. You had to try and hit people in places that hurt them, and didn't break your metacarpals.All these fancy elliptical strikes where fighters try and land behind the ear or on the crown of the head were never seen, Too risky. Lots of standing and slugging straights or hooks, less footwork. Less rolling, more scotting and slinging **** straight up the pipe. The ability to catch and return, the way guards are utilized, the types of shots that can be thrown, everything is primarily made possible by foam gloves.

Paulie was never going to be able to 'box' lobov the way he did his opponents in pro boxing. It's impossible. Cannot be done. Even when Artem gave him the space to do it, he couldn't do it, because he was hurting his hands too much.


You put a pro boxer  ( ESPECIALLY a point fighter, there were no point fighters as we know them before foam gloves) who has trained and competed their whole life in a bigger ring, with nice flexy ropes, and nice padded gloves they can catch a lot of shots on with the backs of their hands in a little circle with stiff ropes and no gloves, different clinch rules, and the whole deal is going to feel alien to them. Even the damage they take is going to throw them off. Boxers as a general rule aren't accustomed to getting cut, sc****d, gouged and split. If a pro boxer experiences something like this, their instinct will be to become tentative, because in pro boxing it means, 99% of the time, they been hit with something unusually nasty. An MMA fighter who is much more accustomed to this type of damage is gonna kind of shrug it off. This is compounded by the fact that MMA is five rounds max and Boxing is twelve. 

 It's a different type of damage. I've never trained nor sparred nor competed in MMA gloves, but I have had my bell rung in boxing gloves a number of times and I have no doubt getting hit with an MMA glove vs a boxing glove feels different and requires a different type of training/ psychology to deal with. You know, getting hit in foam gloves hard isn't so much painful as it is something else. When I was kid, I got pulsed by an electric fence. The two are quite similar. You have this kind of moment of blankness, a 'frozen' sensation and  instant,rapidly sort of weakness all over your body. But it doesn't hurt in the way falling off your bike and ripping your skin up does. I imagine getting cut in an MMA fight feels something more like that.

Really, the type of cut Paulie had is only going to occur in pro boxing as a result of a head clash. Sometimes they do happen by strikes, but it's incredibly rare.

Now, all that said: If you put malinaggi in a pro boxing match with Lobov, Paulie would smoke him, in all probability, because it goes both ways. Pro boxing is most of the time about drowning your opponent slowly. It's about accumulated brain trauma over lots of rounds, and it is an horrifically unhealthy martial art because of this.

Some pro boxers would transition to bareknuckle better than others. Ruiz Jr, who just smoked Joshua would probably destroy the entire roster on a single night, because his style is perfect for it; he gets up in the grill and just straight up relentlessly smashes face. Bareknuckle is a dirty boxer's game. Doesn't try and box, just outgrits, outworks, and outgrinds. He'd be a bareknuckle monster. Unfortunately, he's never gonna slum it for peanuts in Bareknuckle. Basically, the long and short of it is, the classier a pro boxer is, the less well they are going to do in bareknuckle fighting. And paulie IS a classy boxer, but there's no room for classy boxing in bareknuckle fighting.

* Edited at 06.23.2019, 6:41 PM ET *