How safe is bare-knuckle boxing as it struggles for mainstream appeal?

Although bare-knuckle boxing appears to be more brutal than its gloved counterpart, Tetreault claims that misconception exists.

“Fighters have to take care of their hands. They can’t hit that hard,” he said.

Whereas professional gloved boxing events involve a maximum of 12, three-minute rounds, bouts in BKB involve a maximum of six, three-minute rounds and BKFC bouts involve two-minute rounds.

Tetreault cited the short duration of bare-knuckle fights as another mitigating factor when answering safety concerns.

“The difference is it’s not constant punching,” he said.

President of the Association of Ringside Physicians. Louis Durkin, also a stitch doctor at BKB, shared data from a survey conducted by ARP in 2025. It looked at 2,000 fighters across BKB and BKFC and compared injury rates to previously conducted studies from gloved boxing and MMA.

The study found that the percentage of concussions was lower in bare-knuckle boxing (5% in BKFC and 4.76% in BKB) than in gloved boxing (12%) and MMA (14.7%).

Conversely, injury rates were significantly higher in bare-knuckle boxing (34.3% in BKFC and 35.9% in BKB) than in gloved boxing (8.7%) and MMA (13.5%).

However, consultant neurosurgeon Peter Hamlin says there is a general lack of data on bare-knuckle boxing.

“Hitting someone with equal force with a gloved fist delivers more force to the head, more brain trauma,” he explained.

“But, then you’ve got all those confounding factors — it hurts your hand, so you tend to hold back a little bit, and the number of hits there, the number of rounds.

“When you add it all together, you actually end up with a conclusion that reads something like, ‘I don’t know.'”

Hamlin also noted that it is difficult to make definitive decisions about brain injuries in the short term.

“The difficulty we’ve had in sports is that the data doesn’t emerge until they’re later in life,” he said.

The progress is unequivocal.

“If you’re intentionally trying to hit the brain to win a bout, it can’t be right,” Griggs said.