Did you hear the news? Ice Wars, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship’s even niche-ier combat arm, is making a return in October. This is a good thing if you like your hockey fights without the burden of hockey.
And if I learned anything from attending the inaugural Ice Wars event in June, it was that there’s a healthy fetish out there for on-ice fights. A few thousand people stuffed into the Soaring Eagle Resort and Casino’s vast ballroom in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan to watch dudes in skates have their jerseys tugged over their heads while getting punched in the mouth from close range.
Nary a puck nor stick were to be found anywhere on the premises, a happy omission that just happens to be part of the tagline that the Ice Wars promotion flaunts.
No sticks. No pucks. No goals. No gloves. Just fights.
The italics, of course, are mine. It struck me as advertising a margarita as being, “no mix, no lime, no Triple Sec, no salt — just tequila!”
What really they’re saying is, “Who needs the foreplay, right?”
Among the onlookers that night was none other than Thomas “The Hitman” Hearns, who never donned a hockey jersey in his life, yet who made the Kronk gym in Detroit hallowed ground in boxing. It was an interesting spectacle. Former UFC fighter Ian Heinisch was the Dana White of the festivities, operating as the president of Ice Wars, and he doubled as the house emcee alongside fellow UFC veteran Chris Camozzi doing the play-by-play.
Though I thought the first one was a spirited affair, a few things stood out that could’ve been better. For starters, the most exultant moment in an actual hockey fight — meaning, one that breaks out during an actual hockey game — is when they drop the gloves. That is a signal that we’re about to veer out of bounds and rack up some penalty minutes. Sometimes fights like that occur after volcanic tempers flare, when two chippy fellows in the heat of the moment just tear into each other. Sometimes it’s almost like a gentleman’s agreement when they line up for a face-off, and casually drop their gloves to settle some old beef, or just to lift some spirits.
In most cases, it’s a bonus to whoever bought a ticket to the hockey game.
Yet in the first couple of Ice Wars events — as the promotion did a second show a couple of weeks later in Edmonton — the gloves didn’t fly off. In fact, fighters arrived to the so-called “Ice Box” wearing four-ounce MMA-style gloves, which took away from the … what … the impulsiveness of an actual hockey fight? The deviated emotion of it? Whatever it was, it gave the undertaking too much civility.
The other thing was that the Ice Box had a sheet of synthetic ice contained within the boards, which was essentially white plastic. It looked like ice, but it was a slick fib. If you asked any of the trio of rinkside judges in Mt. Pleasant — Detroit Red Wings legend Darren McCarty, and former on-ice tough guys Jon “Nasty” Mirasty and Frank “The Animal” Bialowas — if having real ice makes a difference, they'd regale you with stories. They’d tell you about positioning and digging their skates in and leveraging, the things that make up the “skill” for a seasoned enforcer.
For Oct. 10, the Ice Wars has gotten the memo. The gloves will come off, as the guys — and gals, as it turns out — will use the bare knuckle to try to dispose of their opponents. When you’re associated to the BKFC, it’s only logical to expose the knuckle. And with a promotion that is seeking viral knockouts, this is the only step to take — that first event only produced a couple of finishes on a 10-fight card.
They are calling this one “BKFC Ice Wars: Bare Knuckle Brawls,” and it’ll happen at Amerant Bank Arena, where the NHL’s Florida Panthers play in Sunrise, Florida. Real ice. As it should be. Blood on the ice can’t be so easily squeegeed off. Hockey fights needs a Zamboni.
So, this time it’s the true niche within the niche of combat sports.
Does all this translate into a winner? It’s not a defenseless spectacle, like Power Slap, though I think the Ice Wars execs would love to see knockout clips making the rounds on TikTok. Nor is it as mushroom trippy as something like car-jitsu, or any of those subterranean offshoots. It’s really just fighting in hockey uniforms, mixing former pro players with former MMA practitioners (like ex-UFC fighter Charles Rosa, who is making his debut against a dude from Saskatoon) and boxers (like Christina Barry, who will fight hockey’s Valerie Ruley in the first women's fight).
But you get the sense that something like this can only take off with the emergence of stars.
At the first event, there was clear evidence that a couple of characters could morph into early candidates. The brothers — Nick and Will Laporte — have a certain unnerving calm about on-ice violence, to go along with good looks. Nick, who hails from North Bay, Ontario, and who has the nickname of “The Gorgeous One” to distinguish himself from his brother — is in the main event against a Quebec league fighter, Sébastien Lafferière.
If you see accents like that in a name coming from that league, you can guess at the levels of sadism.
(Will Laporte, it should be mentioned, goes by “The Body Bag,” as he brings an actual body bag to the ice in which to figuratively store his vanquished foe.)
Particularly, there was a Siksika heavyweight named “Chief” Catlin Bigsnake who materialized as if off a northern wind up there in Michigan. He got the biggest pop for his knockout of the American Zach Hughes. He, too, returns against MMA’s Corey Allen.
Real ice, and bare knuckles. They’ll do it on skates this time to find out if this thing has legs.
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