On February 7th, the Xfinity Mobile Arena will be packed with Bare Knuckle fighters looking to claim the name “Bare Knuckle Champion.” Bare knuckle fighting was largely discouraged through the MMA boom, and outright illegal throughout the 1900s. Creator of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, David Feldman is largely credited with bringing bare knuckle to life.
Fighting at BKFC Knucklemania VI is 26 year old South Philly native Patrick “the Irishman” Sullivan, who spoke with the Philly Plain Dealer at Stateside Live during the Eagles Vs. 49ers Playoff Game.
Sullivan is a 6 foot tall welterweight oozing with confidence and fight experience dating far beyond his time in BKFC. Sullivan says he got into fighting early into his life “I got into Bare Knuckle just growing up in South Philly. I was always just throwing Bare Knuckle for free. Now I just woke up one day and I’m getting paid for it. So now I fight for Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship and no one in the world could fucking beat me. And ain’t no one. UFC, boxers, none of y’all can fuck with us because, you know, we don’t have no gloves.”
Sullivan is 1 and 1 in his professional career, getting knocked out in his first match and knocking out his opponent in his most recent bout. Feldman, the creator of the BKFC comes from a fighting family – his brother Damon is the founder of Celebrity Boxing and their father Marty is in the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame.
The Feldmans have a flair for spectacle, Sullivan got his start in Damon’s promotion before jumping to David’s “I was actually supposed to box one of Bare Knuckle’s, who were Tekashi 69’s bodyguard or Jake Paul’s bodyguard, and I was supposed to jump weight classes. So I fought, the dude pulled out on Feldman’s brother, Damon’s promotion, and he put me in there with a guy with like 16 pro fights, and I knocked him out in a minute and a half. And it was a pretty incredible fight.”
The 26 year old from 2nd Street grew up in an Irish section of South Philly and has been training in his neighborhood for years. “I started training at Marion Anderson Rec Center at 17th and Catherine. Marion Anderson till I die. And I started boxing and I started, you know, I ran up a really good record of boxing and then, you know one thing led to another… now I have a fight coming up at the Wells Fargo Center (Xfinity Mobile Arena).”
Sullivan says that people wouldn’t expect his kind demeanor because of his career “they always say, I’m the nicest fighter. You know, I’m the most approachable. I don’t like hurting people. I just get paid for it. I’m just a very nice guy, and that’s why I started boxing and training when I was a kid, because everyone would always take advantage of my kindness.”
South Philly is in The Irishman’s veins. Sullivan said growing up in South Philly “made me a man at a young age. It taught me a lot. It also taught me of how you can end up in the wrong path really quickly, you know, and it’s a dark hole. It just showed me life, like real life, all the struggles that people go through, that I went through, that, you know, around the world, they wouldn’t understand, you know?
They wouldn’t understand real life problems. While that could be walking in a corner store and you’re always turning around doing circles, looking, or, you know, just the importance of a dollar.
People would fucking, be breaking through cars for change, you know what I mean? Like people don’t understand that.”
Patrick Sullivan has big plans for his fighting career and is one of a handful of Philly fighters you can root for at BKFC, as well as a handful of UFC alumni.
“In about a year or two, the whole world will know who I am, so, I appreciate your interview, and I appreciate everything. You know, Bare Knuckle just started a couple years ago, and it just became legal recently… so we’re getting there.”
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