Tuesdays With Brock: Bareknuckle by Bartley Gorman with Peter Walsh

It's called Bareknuckle: Memoirs of the Undefeated Champion, and it's a sad story. Bartley Gorman, the so-called "King of the Travellers", was the barefisted fighting champion of the United Kingdom from approximately 1972 to 1992. His life story is early UFC meets Fight Club meets The Fighter meets Unforgiven, and it's really a cautionary tale about violence, poverty, education and class.

I never knew this, because I'm just an Ugly American who hasn't spent much time in Europe, but apparently there is a significant subculture in the U.K. of "Irish Travellers", people of ethnically Irish descent who travel through Ireland, Britain and Scotland in their caravans of trailers, making their socioeconomically marginal livings on the fringes of conventional society, primarily as migrant laborers and traders. (Holy crap, there is apparently even an Irish Traveller population here in the U.S.) It sounds like something out of medieval times, but this subculture still exists today, and it maintains a tradition of bareknuckle fighting that extends back hundreds, if not thousands of years, possibly to the days when the Celtic tribes ruled pre-Roman Britain. Into this tradition was born a red-haired boy, Bartley Gorman, and he grew up to become, in his day, the best bareknuckle fighter in all the land. But what did it gain him?

Bareknuckle fighting among the Travellers is like a proto-UFC. Mostly it involves striking with the hands, but clinches, knees, trips and throws are all allowed. The main difference between their way of fighting and modern MMA seems to be that, on the one hand there is no kicking or submission fighting among the Travellers, but on the other hand, there is sometimes biting, eye-gouging, and groin strikes. In one memorable fight that Gorman tells us about, the loser had one of his testicles ripped off. Gorman seems not to have gone in for the dirty fighting, having been primarily a boxer, at least per his own obviously biased recollections, but the previous champion, Uriah "Big Just" Burton, was a vicious mother who would do whatever it took to win. For example, in one fight aganst "'Big Jim' Nielson, a travelling man from the North who for many years had been acknowledged as a top bareknuckle fighter . . . witnesses say he [Burton] was losing until he bit Nielson's tit off -- actually chewed off one of his nipples -- and forced him to give best." Jesus Christ Almighty. "His pride was insane: he refused to be beaten. A rich traveller named William Lee, who was great pals with Burton, told me how he would take your guts, liver and lights out, and was an animal unleashed. 'He is the dirtiest fighter in the world,' said Lee. 'Beat him to death. Do not let him get going, or you will never stop him.' And this was his best friend!" Perhaps because Burton was such a vicious fighter but also seemed to genuinely like the younger, up-and-coming Gorman, the two men never fought. When Gorman made a public challenge for the title at a large travellers' fair, Burton conceded without a fight. It was, I think, a way for the older man to give way without injuring either his pride or his younger protege.

So Gorman (who, by the way, has the same last name as a judge I had a case in front of one time back in Jersey -- Judge Gorman, of course, is best known for having a sandwich, "The Honorable", named after him at the Rio Station restaurant and bar -- but I digress) became the barefisted fighting champion of the Travellers and held the title for the next 20 years. But although Gorman was apparently an excellent striker, and obviously a bright guy, he was relatively uneducated and he never made any money out of his fights, that's the tragedy. Most of the fights were bet on, but there were no purses for the combatants. They fought for pride. Which, although I understand it, having my fair share of testosterone, was kind of dumb. The working man is entitled to fair compensation for his labor. And these Travellers were poor! It's not like when Al Gore's son fights in an amateur boxing match on Wall Street for the honor of Strategic Capital Partners against the best man at Oppenheimer Funds. I mean, shit, when the day came that Gorman finally decided he wanted to build a proper house, he couldn't afford it even though he already owned the land. Nor was Gorman able to make a go of both bareknuckle fighting and professional boxing, though he tried. He had some amateur boxing matches, and then when he applied for a pro license, he was told to take a few more amateur fights first, which he refused to do because he thought he was better than that and it wouldn't be fair to the amateurs, him already being the bareknuckle champ by that time. Similarly, Gorman at one point entered a pro boxing contender's tournament, but backed out under pressure from other Travellers, who thought he would be dishonoring himself by fighting lesser men. The sin of pride. It restricted Gorman to being a big, but poor, fish in a small pond when maybe he could have been more. But I don't blame Gorman, really. Of course he was proud: when the elites treat you like crap, of course you hold onto your accomplishments that much more tightly. It's all you have to call your own. And of course you devalue what The Man won't let you have as not worth having anyway. Fuck them anyway, right?

Anyway, Bareknuckle isn't a bad read. I don't recommend it too highly -- Gorman and his ghostwriter, Walsh, together aren't half the writer Sam Sheridan is, being unable to offer the insights Sheridan does, but if you've got the time this book is an interestingly obscure piece of combat sports history.