Fear the Trigon: BYB Extreme makes its Duke City debut

Clearly, the bare-knuckle fighting world is big enough for two thriving promotional companies.

Is Albuquerque big enough?

We’re about to find out.

Don’t bet against it.

On the heels of five successful BKFC shows in the Albuquerque metro area, here comes BYB Extreme.

“We’re real. We’re raw. We’re authentic,” BYB Extreme co-founder Dada 5000 (real name Dhafir Harris) said on Thursday during a media event at Jackson-Wink MMA Academy in advance of Saturday’s card at Revel Entertainment Center. “No smoke and mirrors, no gimmicks.”

The circuit’s trademark triangular “Trigon” ring, BYB CEO Greg Bloom said, is no gimmick. It’s billed as the smallest fighting surface in combat sports.

“It eliminates the ability for a fighter to run,” Bloom said during Thursday’s session. “… With the Trigon, if you’re put into a corner, the only way out is going forward. So it really presses the action.

“It keeps the decisions out of the hands of the judges and really puts it back into the hands of the fighters.”

Neither man shrinks from comparisons with BKFC, a wildly successful enterprise that has promoted wildly successful shows in Albuquerque — establishing attendance and gate-receipt records for the circuit in its shows at Tingley Coliseum.

“They might be the more well-recognized company,” Bloom said, “but I believe we are the better company.”

BYB Extreme had its origins with Dada, who made a name for himself with a series of backyard bare-knuckle events in south Florida — the subject of a well-received 2015 documentary film, “Dawg Fight.”

“We created a platform in the backyard,” Dada said, “and I prided myself on getting corporate America to trade in their suits and ties for baseball hats and tennis shoes to come down to sunny south Florida to give these (fighters) an opportunity.”

The backyard brawls (that’s what the acronym BYB stands for) led to Dada’s forming of BYB Extreme with Mike Vasquez, a former owner of a NASCAR team. Bloom, a sports and entertainment lawyer, first came on board as a legal representative, then took on the role of CEO.

BYB Extreme staged its first event in 2015, three years before BKFC’s first. But its second event didn’t occur until 2019, by which time BKFC was promoting regularly.

But BYB Extreme hit its stride, post-COVID, in 2021 and hasn’t let up. The company staged 10 shows in 2024, and Saturday’s at Revel is No. 35.

Bloom said he and Dada are keenly aware of the success BKFC has had in Albuquerque. Saturday’s show, Bloom said, is about BYB Extreme establishing its own footprint here.

“Albuquerque is a tremendous fight town with a tremendous fight history,” Bloom said. “Guys like Johnny Tapia and everyone they have coming through Jackson-Wink.”

BKFC’s success here, he said, “definitely showed us that this is a town where fans like bare-knuckle fighting and that (the fans) could have an appetite for an even better product than our competitor.”

NEW MAIN EVENT: A misunderstanding between BYB Extreme and the New Mexico Athletic Commission, Bloom said, resulted in a change at the top of Saturday’s card.

The scheduled main event, a BYB super welterweight title fight between South Africa’s LT Nelson and England’s James Connelly, is out. The previous semi-main, matching St. Louis’ Javon Wright and Argentina’s Walter Saravia for the circuit’s vacant welterweight title, now becomes the main event.

Typically, Bloom said, BYB Extreme title fights consist of six three-minute rounds in accordance with Association of Boxing Commission bare-knuckle rules adopted in 2023. But he was informed the New Mexico commission has not approved the ABC rules and that NMAC rules don’t permit six-round bare-knuckle fights.

Wright and Saravia accepted their fight at the distance of five rounds, but Bloom said Nelson and Connelly could not come to an agreement.

A heavyweight fight between Los Lunas’ Cody East and New Orleans’ Dylan Rush has been elevated to co-main event status.