BATTLED-SCARRED but still unbowed, Paul Hilz describes what it’s really like to go toe-to-toe in the bare-knuckle boxing ring.
“It’s the noise people don’t anticipate,” the fighter known as Soul Snatcher tells me. “It’s bone on bone — really eerie.
“If you connect the punch with nerves on the chin, you’re knocking a man out. If you connect on the forehead with your bare knuckle, it’s a cut and that can mean a technical knockout.
“You have to accept in bare knuckle that you are going to get damaged, win or lose.”
Bare knuckle — once the preserve of fairground booths, back-alley brawls and traveller camp face-offs — has gone mainstream.
Legal and playing to packed halls and a growing streaming audience, it’s touted as the world’s fastest growing combat discipline.
Yet Paul simply calls this bloodiest of gladiatorial sports his “therapy”.
Born with a curvature to his spine, the Southend brawler was told by medics he could be in a wheelchair by the age of 25.
As a schoolboy he’d ask his mum to write sick notes so he didn’t have to undress in front of the other boys and show his back.
Paul, who has scoliosis as well as Scheuermann’s disease, which makes his upper spine curve outwards, revealed: “For years I wouldn’t take my top off.
“I was that conscious of it at school that I used to wear a jumper and T-shirts under my shirts so it made me look like I was fat. I didn’t want anyone to see the shape of my back.”
Later running a security firm at Essex nightclubs and raves, the dad-of-four fell into a life of booze and drugs including cocaine and LSD.
‘I started selling drugs when I was 12’
“I started smoking at eight, I was on weed and selling drugs at 12. I was hanging around with people on the wrong side of life.”
GBH, assault and theft convictions followed. But after a friend survived a shooting, Paul decided to become “a good father and a good fighter”.
Aged 28, he switched from bodybuilding to boxing.
“My back specialist said I’d never be able to box because of the rigorous training needed. So I set a challenge to do it.
“I had this mad dream to turn professional.”
After 21 unlicensed fights, he became a pro boxer.
After retiring from the ring to concentrate on his landscape gardening business, Paul heard bare knuckle bouts were being held at London’s O2 Arena.
He said: “I couldn’t believe it was legal. I’d grown up around travellers who fought bare knuckle. Now it was at the O2.”
The pugilist contacted promoters BKB Bare Knuckle Boxing, telling them: “I can knock out anyone — I’ll fight anyone.”
First competing aged 38, he admitted: “Taking knuckles in the face is when realism kicks in.
“I knocked my opponent out in 40 seconds and that gave me the buzz.”
Now Paul holds the record for the quickest BKB knockdown — a mere 2.4 seconds after the first bell.
On September 6 he takes on Dean Paterson at the Bristol Brawl fight night at the city’s Ice Arena which, like BKB’s other promotions, is screened live on talkSPORT’s boxing YouTube channel.
Such fighting is legal if both fighters consent. Local authority and police permission is sought for bouts.
Now aged 44, Paul considers himself a winner every time he enters the ring shirtless, despite internet trolls labelling him a “hunchback”.
In a thick Essex accent, he admits: “My challenge, with the shape of my back, was to have the guts to take my top off in front of hundreds of thousands of people.
“As an unlicensed gloved fighter, I was the local f***ing hardman and used to bring three or four hundred people to watch me. Everyone knew about my back.
“There were no cameras, there was no internet at the time. But as soon as my fights went on YouTube, I was getting abuse.
“People called me a hunchback and said, ‘Why the f*** is he fighting? He shouldn’t be fighting.
“Look at the state of his back’. I’ve put up with it all through my childhood.
“It’s nothing — it’s how you know what you’re made of. To be in the ring is empowering.
“I’ve had everything against me and I perform under pressure. I turn up, I’m proud of that. And that’s in life and in fighting.”
A glove absorbs a lot of a shot. With bare knuckle, even a body shot really hurts.
Bare-knuckle fighter Ashley Brace
An ancient sport beloved by aristocrats and knaves, the first recorded bare-knuckle match in England was in 1681, when the Duke of Albemarle’s footman fought a local butcher.
But when gloves were introduced in 1892, the bare knuckle sport was increasingly marginalised.
Perhaps surprisingly, the often brutal spectacle — it has a 90 per cent stoppage ratio — is deemed less dangerous than its gloved cousin.
Gloveless fists draw blood quickly and big swings can hurt or break the puncher’s hand.
This means the blows struck are usually softer, meaning concussion is less common than in gloved boxing.
A 2021 study found cuts to be more common in bare knuckle while only 2.8 per cent of fighters experienced concussion symptoms. In gloved boxing, that figure rises to 12.3 per cent.
‘I got hurt, so I’ve learnt to do more dirty stuff’
Many of BKB’s fights take place in the world’s smallest combat sport arena — the so-called “Mighty Trigon” — and the action is unrelenting.
The fights that don’t end in knockouts are decided by judges.
Local authorities grant licences to promoters for the contests.
The discipline isn’t governed by a regulator in the UK but BKB says it adheres to the highest safety standards required by such sporting bodies.
In a little gym festooned with punchbags in Sirhowy in the Welsh Valleys, Ashley “The Storm” Brace works out, head down as her quick fists fly.
A tough woman in a brutal sport, she too is on the card for the Bristol Brawl.
Classroom assistant Ashley, 35, has had one previous bare-knuckle contest — which she lost — revealing: “I got a thumb in the eye in my last fight.
That hurt, so I’ve learnt to do more dirty stuff.
“My nose was also split. It was the most painful thing I’ve experienced in my life.
“A glove absorbs a lot of a shot. With bare knuckle, even a body shot really hurts.”
Of the combat sport’s technique, she added: “You fight with open hands before making a fist as you land the punch, a bit like Bruce Lee. It’s much quicker.”
The former European boxing champ — who is taking on Dutch mixed martial arts fighter Hatice Ozyurt in Bristol — took up fighting after being bullied at school.
She says: “You know what kids are like. If you don’t look the way they think you should look or do the things they do, they bully you.
“So my mum took me to kickboxing. Now I coach kids who are being bullied like I was.”
Ashley — who shares a ten-year-old son Reagen with partner Nikki — sparred against boys and later men as she grew older.
“Boys are harder than women,” she says. “So the way I see it is that it’s going to be easier when I fight women.”
After quitting gloved fighting, Ashley lost purpose, and said: “I’ve fought since I was eight, so it’s the only thing I really know.
“So when I was out of the sport for eight years, I was kind of lost.”
Like Paul, she loves the discipline and camaraderie fighting offers.
‘If you go swimming, you’re going to get wet’
In a gym amid a derelict factory complex in Stoke-on-Trent, Simey Doherty air-boxes as he prepares for the Bristol Brawl.
Staring out over the Potteries’ industrial landscape, the bare-knuckle warrior tells me: “They love a scrap around here. Any excuse in Stoke for a few punches.”
And the dad-of-one’s tactics inside the trigon?
“F***ing hit first,” says Simey, who talks as fast as his fists.
“I try not to get hit. I’ll get cut here and there, but if you go swimming, you’re going to get wet.
“Surprisingly, you get hit a bit more with gloves because you’re probably not as aware of things.
“When you get hit with bare knuckle, it’s bone on bone, so you’re going to be split open like a tin of beans.”
Known as “The Smoke from Stoke”, Simey has his own tale of redemption. Three years ago, the now svelte boxer weighed almost 19st, thanks to junk food binges.
Now he’s fighting against Joe Smith in Bristol at around 10.5st. “I’ve lost nearly half my body weight,” he adds. “I trained hard.”
It takes a special character to enter the bare-knuckle ring as the blood and adrenalin flow.
While none of the fighters I spoke to would reveal their purse/prize for the fight, all said that cash was a factor.
Yet, look into their intense eyes as they describe the thrill of the “hurt business”, as Simey calls it, and you realise that it’s not all about the wonga.
The 29-year-old, who works in the building trade, added: “It’s weird because you’re sitting there in the changing room looking at people coming in after their fights and they’re all busted up.
“You think to yourself, ‘Why the f do I do this? What am I doing here?’
“Then you look outside and you see that crowd chanting your name and that feeling’s just unbelievable. It’s such a rush.”