On a turbulent Friday evening in Cardiff, rainwater steadily fills the buckets placed beneath a leaky roof. Amidst this chaotic scene, a medic works diligently under the dim glow of a single lamp, striving to stem the flow of blood on the floor of his makeshift clinic.

Dorian Darch’s face is in dire need of repair. The lacerations around his eyes are severe, particularly a deep, red gash stretching two inches across his left cheek. Yet, these are easier to mend than the crescent-shaped wound carved into his forehead by a friend’s bare knuckles.

The sight is unsettling. Neither Anthony Joshua nor Daniel Dubois ever left Darch in such a state during his days as a gloved journeyman boxer. For his wife, Kate, this is the breaking point.

This is an odd kind of devotion. Bare-knuckle boxing, devoid of gloves, not only exposes flesh but also provokes numerous questions about propriety, boundaries, and regulation. Darch embodies these ongoing debates.

It has been five years since Darch transitioned from traditional boxing to a form of professional fighting that has resurged over the past decade. In fact, it was in this very venue, the Vale Arena, that a Ukrainian heavyweight split his left ear in half 15 months ago.

Pictures from that night in August 2024 are grim beyond description and snowballed into a detail I was told recently by two informed sources – Darch’s last application for a regular boxing licence, several years back, was rejected by the British Boxing Board of Control after too many hard defeats.

So here we find him on a December evening, having earned a few extra quid in a format that presents lower barriers to entry. A third-round stoppage at the hands of Troy Palmer, who counts his fellow Welshman as a ‘friend’, was Darch’s sixth loss in nine bare knuckle fights.

Was the damage worth it for a four-figure pay day? His wife isn’t sure the purse will cover what it cost to take the time off work, but it’s his life. His passion. His face.

And that’s why the medic has so much work to do. His name is Mike Hughes, an emergency care practitioner, and it will take him and a doctor the better part of an hour to stich up eight different wounds on Darch’s head. ‘Worst of the card so far,’ he tells me.

Through it all, Darch sips from cans of Strongbow and is mostly silent, watching as the next fighter strides past him towards a tiny ring on the other side of a black screen, where 2,000 fans are waiting.

There are 22 men who make that walk across the night, including Jake Marshman, who fought in Afghanistan for the army and at Madison Square Garden for the UFC.

Among others, there’s also a landscape gardener, a Commonwealth Games medallist and, top of the bill, a world champion named Liam Rees who used to be in Swansea City’s academy before cocaine and alcohol took him to a dark place. He says bare-knuckle fighting saved him, which may or may not also be true of the Polish welterweight with ‘psycho’ tattooed across his chest.

Next month, in Mississippi, a card will be headlined by two female combatants. 

It’s an eclectic group at the heart of a brutal phenomenon that is rising fast on either side of the Atlantic. Multiple ageing boxers of note have been lured out of retirement for another purse and, according to one astonishing conversation I had, talks have taken place with the unified heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.

Most will wince at the sound of that. As do I. But a concept that is viewed by many in boxing as an ugly, dangerous, step back in time is being trumpeted by its powerbrokers as a safer alternative and the future of combat sports.

Could that really happen? Or is it all too grotesque and primal? Maybe both are true.

There is no love from the son towards the father. Those who run boxing in this country grimace at the resurgence of a pursuit that came before it and seemingly expired in the 1800s. The last major world heavyweight champion with a bare knuckle was John ‘Boston Strong Boy’ Sullivan, in 1889.

For one, the British Boxing Board of Control want nothing to do with bare knuckle fighting, which originated in the form we know it now in 17th-century England. As Robert Smith, their general secretary, told me: ‘The sport moved on more than 100 years ago, so why would we go back?

‘A lot of people who take part in these shows are ex-boxers who have had licence applications refused by us.’

For now, those objections have provided only a moderate hurdle. In the past 15 months, the streaming giant DAZN has signed a three-year broadcast deal with the Conor McGregor-backed BKFC, the larger of two bare knuckle franchises at the forefront of this bloodsport, and talkSPORT has committed to the other, BKB – the organisers of the event in Cardiff.

Combined, the followings of BKFC and BKB on YouTube, Instagram, X and TikTok number a little over four million. It’s a significant figure, as was the record 17,762 crowd drawn to Philadelphia for a BKFC event in January – that would stack up well against the majority of non-stadium boxing shows.

The key point is that bare knuckle has only been staging sanctioned fights in the US since 2018. In the UK, the first regulated show occurred three years earlier and in February there will be a BKB card at the O2 Arena in London.

Like moths to a flame, prominent ex-boxers have noticed. James DeGale, the former Olympic and world champion, fought in September aged 39 at the Manchester Arena, six years after his retirement. He won but won’t try it again – too many headbutts, low blows and punches to the back of the head, he said.

Another to venture down the rabbit hole was Paulie Malignaggi, 45. A two-weight champion in boxing, he sustained a terrible cut to his forehead and fought half-blind after being poked in the eye during a BKB event in Leeds in October. He has no plans to quit and was part of the commentary team at the BKB show in Cardiff.

I first arrived a day earlier, when 22 fighters weighed in.

It’s where I met Mike Vazquez, a tobacco businessman, former NASCAR team owner and current chairman of BKB. He was leaning against a triangular ring called a ‘Trigon’, that his group boast is the smallest fighting area in combat sports – working off the back-foot and avoiding a slugfest are nuances deliberately curtailed in a discipline where 90 per cent of fights end in knockout.

Many of the rules in that domain are similar to boxing, but the ability to punch in the clinches lends itself to an entirely different contest. Vazquez borders on evangelical when he discusses it.

‘There’s something natural in the human spirit of combat,’ he tells me, before pivoting to the sell.

‘Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt, but the injuries here are more superficial. There are more cuts, but we are much lower in concussions and broken bones than boxing or mixed martial arts, and we have the data to show that.’

That claim derives from a 2021 study, which found 2.8 per cent of bare knuckle fighters from their sample showed concussion symptoms compared to 12.3 per cent in boxing. The lead author was Dr Don Muzzi, who, according to his Facebook page, happens to be BKFC’s chief medical officer. His findings have not been disputed.

‘It’s the truest form of combat sport,’ Vazquez adds. ‘We’re finding that it appeals to male and female fans as well male and female fighters. We still feel we’re about a year or two away from mainstream acceptance like MMA. You had senators in the United States calling it human cockfighting, but look at what it has become.’

The mention of cockfighting will have many querying the distinction. I’d count myself among them.

There is no doubting that some high-end production has been applied to these bare knuckle shows – notwithstanding the leaking roof, the Cardiff event had all the lights and hoopla of traditional boxing. Nor can you disparage the technical skill of many fighters.

But it is impossible to disguise the excessive bloodlust that drives the bare knuckle world and requires a far higher threshold for violence among its followers.

Mine was breached emphatically by the scale of Darch’s disfigurement. Likewise, when Keiron Harding, a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist for Wales in 2010, spat out torrents of blood from a deep gash inside his mouth while beating Scotland’s David Winiarski.

The latter was declared the fight of the night and the striking visual of his injuries, and those of Darch, felt like a major chunk of the objective. Proponents of bare knuckle fighting will see it as boxing without the boring bits and a demonstration of free will.

‘You can feel like a gladiator in there,’ Paul Hilz says. Aged 44, he’s formerly a pro boxer and highly likeable. ‘I just love it,’ he adds. ‘It’s the honesty of the fight, mate – no safe zone, just real.’

Hilz is a landscape gardener by day, but has a face covered in scars from almost 20 bare knuckle assignments and ‘all of them came from this, not boxing’. A video on his phone shows a gash on his forehead that he says ‘went right through to my skull’.

When he gets asked by clients about new wounds, he sometimes fibs that he is still a regular boxer.

‘If I was 21 I’d shout it from the rooftops,’ he says. To Hilz’s side is Hazel, his girlfriend. Turns out she’s a paramedic. ‘Every punch I’m thinking about scans and stitches,’ she says.

Answers to the question of why will always hang awkwardly in chats like this.

One of the organisers told me the highest purse would be ‘around £30,000’, which compares favourably against the rank and file of boxing, if it’s accurate for an event where 2,000 tickets were sold for between £40 and £70.

As it transpired, the man fighting Hilz, the seven-time UFC veteran Jake Marshman, later indicated to Daily Mail Sport that some here ‘could’ be taking closer to £10,000 from a bout.

A big-name convert still active in boxing would doubtless fetch substantially more. Usyk, who reportedly earned close to £100m for his rematch win against Dubois this year, is one that receives a surreal mention from the head of BKB, David Tetreault.

‘I have a very close relationship with Egis Klimas, his manager,’ Tetreault tells me. ‘We’ve had those conversations. He’s interested. There’d (have to) be guaranteed seven figures, plus equity probably, so it’s a big step.’

It seems remarkably far-fetched and messages seeking comment from Klimas have not drawn a response. Either way, Tetreault is convinced bare knuckle boxing is primed to capitalise on the social media era.

‘If you look at the boxing audience, it’s aged over the last 25 years as the millennials jumped into UFC,’ he says. ‘Now our analytics point to Gen Z. They love our quick action and knockouts. It tells us we’re on the cusp.’

Whether that’s a good thing will depend entirely on an individual’s point of view.

As fight night neared its conclusion, I bumped into Hilz again as he departed.

He lost to Marshman inside the first round, but it wasn’t gory compared to most of the 11 bouts. For that reason he wanted to draw a positive.

‘I’ve got four kids and just told them on the phone the good news is I won’t be speaking funny over Christmas,’ he said.

Naturally, Hilz doesn’t see bare-knuckle boxing through the same lens as its critics. To him, it’s about choice. But the need for tight regulation is both clear and a loose end.

For instance, it is alarming that fighters have breezed in after being denied licences in boxing, which itself is no barometer for great governance. Ten of those competing were 35 or older.

Hilz moves to temper some concerns, pointing to the requirement for combatants to undergo sporadic MRI scans and he mentions the existence of drugs testing. Evidence on the ground is mixed.

At this event, there was no obvious sign of anti-doping personnel. Nor has there been an answer to my question to organisers of whether any tests were performed.

Other areas hold up better to scrutiny. Specifically, there is a medical team of eight here, including an ambulance crew and two doctors, but, unlike boxing in this country, no private space for them to work.

The stitching station is a table stacked with supplies and two chairs in full view of a crowded assortment of fighters warming up.

At one stage, Hughes, the stitcher and long-time hero of these events, became exasperated when a content creator got too close with his camera as the needle hovered near the eye of a beaten man. It was an absurd scene.

A paramedic would later lament to me that the footage gathering had taken precedence. It’s a worrying thought.

For the time being, there is no global governing body to police the margins – in BKB’s case, they pay a fee to the Wyoming Combat Sports Commission to sanction their overseas shows.

In the eyes of many watching in the arena, those are details of lesser importance. For them, blood is enough and their night delivered.

When the last of the 11 fights was over, with only three going the distance, I walked through the backstage area to leave. Rees, the super-welterweight champion who lost his belt to Filipino Rolando Dy, was sat bleeding in the space vacated by Darch.

A day earlier, he told me how bare knuckle fighting gave him purpose in a life that had gone south; 24 hours on he was yelling in pain while Hughes’s needle worked on the mess of his left eye.

The future? It feels too much like the opposite.