Bare Knuckle Fighter Develops Second Head During What's Being Called Fight Of The Year -- 'I Will Be Back'

File this under extreme examples of 'Do Hard Things.'

My old Internet buddy Don Povia came to me approximately a year ago announcing he'd taken a job handling marketing and press for BYB Extreme Bare Knuckle Fighting and he wondered what it would take for the sport where fighters are punching each other with closed fists to make it onto mainstream sports blogs.

"It needs to be special content," I told Don. "It has to be compelling."

Don's a savvy media vet who knows what I need. He gets the Internet. He has a job to do. I have a job to do.

I told my old buddy I'd throw him a bone here and there in Morning Screencaps when he had some decent standalone content, but for a post, I'd need the goods.

This morning, like the pro that he is, Don was launching texts into my phone with news of what went down Saturday night in Denver, Colorado between Mark 'The Shark' Irwin, the most marketable face and hair in BYB, and 21-year-old Julio Tanori inside the unique triangle ring where there's nowhere to run.

Irwin's lightweight championship belt was on the line. By the end, it was Tanori leaving the Stockyard Event Center with Irwin's belt and BYB owning what Irwin believes is the sport's fight of the year. It's believed Tanori is now the youngest current world champion in boxing or bare-knuckle fighting.

Irwin left with hematoma, the collection of blood outside the blood vessels, and the hunger to get right back into the ring to get his belt back.

I've blogged about a ton of crazy moments in sports and pop culture. I've never posted a blog on a guy growing a second head after being repeatedly punched upside his melon.

"Congrats to my opponent, it takes two in order to put on a fight like that. I will rest and heal up and my team and I will be back in 2024 to win more fights, awards, trophies, and world titles," Irwin wrote on Instagram Monday.

Give Irwin a ton of credit here.

He could've said enough is enough, I'm getting a 9-to-5 job slinging investments for Edward Jones or gone the safe route and said he was starting a gym and retiring from having his head punched. Not Irwin. The guy chose Doing Hard Things for a living and now he's known on the Internet as the bare knuckled fighter who grew a head.

That's the type of content that lives on for decades on the Internet.

Povia knew it when he went nuts texting me this morning like the marketing genius that he is. I knew it the minute I saw the content.

Readers are savages. Despite what they might say, they want unique and compelling content that challenges their brain to understand how they would've handled adversity like taking punches off the cranium.

Today, BYB Extreme won the content game.

Written by
Joe Kinsey is the Senior Director of Content of OutKick and the editor of the Morning Screencaps column that examines a variety of stories taking place in real America. Kinsey is also the founder of OutKick’s Thursday Night Mowing League, America’s largest virtual mowing league. Kinsey graduated from University of Toledo.