BKFC: Big trouble at Tingley — but for whom?

Friday night, Albuquerque’s Donald Sanchez will climb into the BKFC’s circular ring to do bare-fisted battle against David Mundell, that organization’s No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter.

Is Sanchez in trouble? If so, he believes, it’s the good kind — not the sort of trouble using his fists sometimes got him into as a youth.

Back then, he sometimes paid for it. Now, he gets paid for it, and not just in dollars. It’s decades of hard work, on his body and his mind, paying off.

“It’s come full circle,” Sanchez said Wednesday during a BKFC media “scrum” at Jackson-Wink MMA. “And here we are.”

And here Mundell is, the holder of the BKFC middleweight title belt he’ll risk against Sanchez.

For Mundell, no believer in false modesty, it’s not much of a risk.

“The only thing I know about Sanchez is that he’s tough,” Mundell said during Wednesday’s session. “(But) I think there’s levels to this game, and I’m way past his. I think that’s gonna show for itself (on Friday).”

When told Sanchez was somewhat angry by Mundell’s dismissive attitude, the champion responded, “I don’t give (an expletive) what he thinks.

“They keep giving me these bums to beat up,” added Mundell, a 33-year-old Floridian with a 9-1 record in the BKFC ranks, suggesting he believes Sanchez (4-1 BKFC) falls into that category.

Regarding Mundell’s disrespect, Sanchez said he’ll file it away. But, he added, he needs no motivation other than the opportunity itself.

At age 40, after 50 MMA fights, nine professional boxing matches, an unrecorded number of kickboxing and/or Muay Thai fights and who knows how many scraps behind the gym after school, having fought in at least five foreign countries, Sanchez sees bare-knuckle — BKFC — as his competitive fountain of youth.

His loss by unanimous decision to Jeremy Smith in his August 2022 BKFC debut, at the Rio Rancho Events Center, was a wake-up call.

“I learned that, you know, this is real,” he said. ”This is a real fight. You can’t take it lightly.

“MMA, I was taking lightly. Boxing, I was taking lightly. It was just another day for me. …(The Smith fight) lit a fire under my butt, and it showed me this is my sport. This is what I love.”

HIGHLY THOUGHT OF: Albuquerque’s mile-high elevation was a topic Sanchez and Mundell both addressed on Wednesday.

If Mundell isn’t taking Sanchez seriously, not so with the city’s thin air.

“I’m not even worried about him,” Mundell said. “I was worried about the elevation out here, and I made sure I did everything I needed to do to be prepared for this fight.

“I came here 10 days out. Outside of that, at home with the camp, I’m always wearing that elevation mask, pushing my cardio.”

Sanchez isn’t buying.

“I know he thinks 10 days is enough out here and (that) his stupid mask is gonna help him,” he said. “But I live and breathe it out here, I’m gonna put pressure on him, and we’re gonna keep it up.

“He hasn’t been on his heels like I’m gonna put him on his heels. So you feel that altitude. …I can push the pace.”

THE WEIGH-IN: Sanchez weighed on on Thursday at 174.8 pounds, just under the BKFC middleweight limit of 175. Mundell weighed in at 174.4 pounds.

Cruiserweght Murat Kilimetov, a Russian who trains in Albuquerque at Jackson-Wink, weighed in at 204.8 pounds for his co-main event cruiserweight fight against Leo Bercier of Missoula, Montana.

Albuquerque rivals William AlBrecht and Kyle McElroy weighed in at 184.8 and 185 pounds, respectively, for their light heayweight grudge match.

BREEZY MMA: In New Town, North Dakota, Jackson-Wink MMA fighter Chris “Breezy” Brown (11-5) is scheduled to face Californian Randall Wallace (23-10-1) on Friday for the Cage Fury FC interim middleweight title.

The CFFC card is scheduled to be streamed on UFC Fight Pass, starting at 7 p.m.