Austin Trout Eyes Transition To Bare Knuckle Fighting As Boxing Landscape Shifts

Austin Trout battled future Hall of Famer Canelo Alvarez and Hall of Famer Miguel Cotto during his boxing career. Together with those stars, he battled Erislandy Lara, Jarret Hurd, Terrel Gausha, and the two Charlo brothers, Jermall and Jermell. In his weight division, he faced a limited number of elite fighters.

Austin Trout(37-5-1, 18KOs) from US is yet to finish his career . Even though he’s no longer a boxing championship challenger, he defeated Omir Rodriguez in an eight-round decision on October 14.

Trout, a 38-year old boxer, stated that although he isn’t prepared to give up fighting, boxers have limited opportunities because fewer media outlets are covering boxing.

When Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship(BKFC) originally started, Trout witnessed a fight and expressed his desire to try it out if the pay ever reached a respectable level. That has been achieved, he continued, and it will be a fantastic substitute for boxers searching for contests and a good wage.

“The way I see it, Dave Feldman has positioned himself into a great space. Boxers are looking for opportunities. Showtime just shut down. All that’s left right now is ESPN and DAZN. Amazon’s going to do some [Premier Boxing Champions] fights, but it seems like boxing is scrounging for a home. That means a lot of boxers scrounging to get a home. There are going to be a lot of boxers because, from what I understand of this Prime deal, they don’t have too many dates [and need the exposure of a televised fight],” said Trout in media reports.

“It’s not like there are a lot of dates coming from Prime so there’s a lot of boxers who need fights. There are a lot of boxers in their primes who need fights. It seems to me like [BKFC] is the only home they can go to that’s outside of boxing. You know how hard the politics [in boxing] make it to get anything done outside of BKFC and Team Combat League. So we’re going to see a lot of fighters coming to these outlets and that’s going to change the came, I think,” he added.

(Additional reporting provided by Miriam Onyango)