BKFC Bringing In WWE Wrestlers To Train Fighters

BKFC is selling some solid fights with former UFC stars, but could use a little help building up their home-grown stable of talent.

BKFC 56 went down on Saturday night from the Maverick Center in Salt Lake City, Utah and it featured a main event between two former UFC fighters: “Platinum” Mike Perry and Eddie Alvarez. Perry would survive an early onslaught from Alvarez to break Eddie’s orbital bone at the end of the second (watch the highlights here).

Further down the card, Bec Rawlings lost a one-sided decision, and Jeremy Stephens put a beating on Jimmie Rivera. There was a lot more action from the event, but too few fans are paying attention.

BKFC has had a hard time developing stars outside of ones they’ve poached from the UFC near the end of their careers. It’s gotten to the point where Bare Knuckle FC president David Feldman says he’s going to bring in some help from former WWE pro wrestlers to change some of the no-names on his roster to stars.

“I had a long talk with [BKFC middleweight champion] Dave Mundell,” Feldman said during the post-fight press conference. “And we’re gonna start doing some things with Dave Mundell and we’re gonna start creating a real good character with him and taking him out of his shell.”

“People don’t know — as good as he fights, as tough as he is, and he’s knocking people out — he’s a really shy guy, and we gotta take that out and make him a little bit of a character. So, people want to see him more and we’re gonna do that, we’re gonna do that with a lot of fighters.”

“We’re bringing in some former WWE pro wrestlers in here just to do character development because I think the only thing we’re missing right now is a little bit of that,” he continued. “And we’re gonna do that, we’re focusing on that in 2024. We’re focusing on that, we’re focusing on the reality show, we’re focusing on a series we’re doing around the tryouts and prospect series for 2024. We’ve got a lot of really good fighter development things going on in 2024.”

BKFC draws some real crazy mofos and it would be cool to see some of them get a shine. One dude that stood out to us on Saturday was Esteban “Mohawk” Rodriguez, who KO’d his opponent halfway through round two. The guy looks like he stepped right out of Double Dragon or something.

In a world full of promotions dreaming to run alongside UFC, BKFC sounds like they’re starting to realize they need to position themselves with a little more pro wrestling. We’ll keep tuning in for the wild UFC veteran scraps. Put some entertaining WWE-trained guys and gals on the undercard, and maybe we’ll stick around for more.