In a sport filled with combat sports veterans, BYB has a firm hold on the next generation.
During its first few years of mainstream recognition as a sport, a good chunk of bare knuckle’s attention has come from the participation of crossover stars from other sports. Names like Paulie Malignaggi, Mike Perry, Eddie Alvarez and more have helped raise the profile of the sport, but also the curiosity of fans from boxing and MMA who might want to add another discipline to their weekly viewing schedule. As successful as those crossovers have been, for the detractors of the sport, it’s also created the image that bare knuckle is a place where aging fighters can go to extend their careers.
Prominent figures such as UFC star Sean Strickland have contributed in furthering this narrative. Right or wrong, and whether that’s actually a bad thing or not, it’s certainly a PR issue that the sport has to contend with. More than that, there’s a practical issue at play. The sport of bare knuckle can’t always rely on a queue of curious fighters from boxing and MMA to prop up the rosters of the two major organizations. For the sport to truly thrive, it needs to create its very own new, young stars.
Enter Julio Tanori.
At just 20 years of age, he made his bare knuckle boxing debut for BYB in Tampa, back in November of 2022. At that point, Tanori had never taken part in a professional fight of any kind. In fact, growing up, Tanori dreamt of becoming a baseball player, not unlike former boxing champion Omar Figueroa. But as happens to athletes of all kinds, Tanori found that his physical frame might not support those dreams. At 5’9” and 135 pounds, unless he had otherworldly skills like Jose Altuve, he was probably going to be too small to make it to the Majors. In fighting however, it’s structured specifically so that you only compete against people your own size.
It cannot, however, accommodate only fighting people your own age, but clearly Tanori didn’t mind. At the age of 20, he decided to bypass gloved boxing and just go directly into bare knuckle in a fight against Toby Misech.
“I surprised a lot of people with my first fight. I was ‘the bait’ in my first fight,” Tanori told Edward Fowler on YouTube earlier this year.
Tanori felt as though he was being fed to Misech, simply a warm body willing to take the gloves off and help fill up the card. Whether that was the case or not, by the time he’d knocked Misech out in two rounds, BYB knew they had something on their hands with the Mexican-American slugger.
Photo Courtesy: BYB
In December of 2023, Tanori’s life would change forever. His win over Mark Irwin would turn out to be one of the most breathtaking displays of violence and courage ever seen in a bare knuckle ring, earning him a list of accolades unheard of for a fighter of his age and experience level. The fight earned him a plaque in the Bare Knuckle Boxing Hall of Fame, alongside legends like John L. Sullivan. The victory in the fight netted him the BYB Lightweight title, making him the youngest combat sports world champion in the world at the time, even younger than boxing superstar Bam Rodriguez. And the damage he inflicted on Irwin, the waterfalls of blood and the horrific cranial swelling that made “The Shark” look like a hammerhead version of his namesake made him go viral, drawing the attention (and the ire) of Stephen A. Smith.
Tanori admitted afterwards that when he was sent the Smith clips analyzing the fight, that he didn’t know who Smith was. But his charming youthful naiveté didn’t stop there. He would also also stop just short of telling Fowler in the same interview that his youthful advantages might have bailed him out a little bit in training camp leading up to the fight.
“I should have trained smarter,” admitted Tanori. “There was certain stuff I should have been doing in camp that I didn't do. So, I just wanna lock that all in in together. And then just stay a little cleaner, just be a little more aware of what I'm doing throughout my days.”
It would seem that Tanori has matured between then and now. He admitted to being exhausted in the final rounds of the fight, and also that he probably took more punishment that he wanted, or needed to in the fight.
Photo Courtesy: BYB
This weekend, Tanori has an opportunity to fix those “mistakes,” and make life easier on himself as he rematches Irwin in the main event of BYB 31: Stockyard Brawl. If indeed he was getting away with certain things in training camp, he and his team ensured that could not possibly be the case this time around, making radical changes to his training camp, literally moving into the Vegas Kombat gym in Las Vegas to hone in on the task at hand.
"When Julio came out here he wasn't expecting to live, eat, sleep in the gym," said trainer Danny Cruz. "That type of training, that type of old school training cannot be replicated anywhere. He breathes it and lives it every single day, and that's the mentality that he's got now. His IQ is up, his mentality is up, his thought process is up, his thinking on the fly. He's pushing the limits beyond anything anyone has ever seen, including his last fight."
Despite the months of work, Tanori is convinced that he’ll only need to use about a few seconds of that young energy in the rematch.
“They should have stopped the first with that big ass hematoma on his head,” said Tanori. “I’ll make sure he won’t feel much pain in this one. I’ll tuck him in and put him to sleep. One-punch KO. Like It happened in our first fight. Literally, the first punch to land.”
Top Photo Courtesy of BYB.
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