After 65 professional MMA fights, Joe Riggs still feels butterflies getting into the ring or cage to throw down, and that might be while he’s still in the fight game 17 years after he made his pro debut. I may be different than other combat athletes in that I have competition anxiety, he tells us ahead of his October 20 Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship contest in Biloxi Mississippi.
In fact, Riggs is likely only more honest than many of his peers, all of whom still feel nerves heading into bouts. The fighter’s self-awareness and eagerness to repeatedly face his fears are certainly remarkable, though, and why switching rule-sets to bare knuckle boxing recently didn’t faze Riggs as much as it may have others.
I get the same nerves whether I’m fighting MMA, boxing, or lining up for a foot race, he admits.
As always, however, Riggs enjoyed the battle once it got underway, and scored an impressive bare knuckle win in his debut. I loved it, he continues.
Former Ultimate Fighter champion Kendall Grove also quickly took to the ring under this throwback ruleset in his debut Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 3. He fights on the same card later this month as Riggs and seems to relish recounting how his love for this new and old sport was sparked.
Honestly, it caught my eye. It looked very, very sketch in a good way, if that makes sense, the Hawaiian chuckles. That’s more my language. It sounds worse than it is but for me it was exciting. Exciting, sketchy, oh s***. When I got there and fought it was more than I thought it would be and I loved it because I knew I could only improve. I knew what I had to do to be better at it.
Even before Grove himself got into the ring to try his hand at fisticuffs, he tells us that watching fellow UFC veteran and friend Joey Beltran’s bloody fight that night before his hooked the island warrior.
What did it for me, my ‘holy s***’ moment was when Joey Beltran fought before me, he begins. He took one punch in his eye and it fucking split him open and he needed like 14 stitches over five different cuts. Now, I felt bad for him because you feel bad anytime anyone gets any injury that will sideline them for a while, and because he’s a friend. But at the same time I thought, ‘Wow, yes. I love it. Wow. Shit just got real.’ It happens in any sport but that was just one punch, and it wasn’t even a hard punch, he just took a fist right on the eye.
Grove said that feeling of danger, uncertainty, and newness is how mixed martial arts made him feel in his youth. The ability to recapture that sense, the opportunity to harness the unknown, seems to have lit a new fire in the 35-year-old, who admits to having a sour taste in his mouth over the way the business of MMA has treated him. For fighters like Grove and Riggs, who accomplished just about everything one could in elite MMA short of a world championship over long careers, boxing in bare knuckle contests is giving them new mountains to scale.
My fight went well. I fought perfect, but I’m going to get into a fight like that one day, Grove continues, remembering Beltran’s brutal outing. Maybe it’s the next one coming up. My opponent is tough, athletic, scrappy.
Riggs insists that he’s not really fighting for money at this point in his career. Fighting just gives him something he needs.
I’m very fortunate that I don’t have to fight to make a living. I’ve been able to make good decisions with my money and can do things other than fight, he assures.
Riggs considered being a police officer but decided against it.
I can’t be a cop. I don’t want to see bad things like they have to every day and be burned out by 50, he explains. I love fighting. Part of it is that I’m a recovering addict. It isn’t that my family doesn’t satisfy me, but I like having an outlet that is exciting and challenging and thrilling. When I retire from fighting I’ll have to have some other activity to take its place.
About the author:
Elias Cepeda is a host of Sports Illustrated’s Extra Rounds Podcast, a staff writer at FloCombat, and has a regular column for The UG Blog.
