A bare-knuckle boxing promoter has recalled being at Nottingham Forest as a youngster and playing cricket in Africa before launching a fight sport promotion
Jim Freeman hasn’t led the most conventional life.
The fight boss played at Nottingham Forest during Brian Clough’s reign and accidentally graced international cricket before defying gangsters to get a bare-knuckle boxing promotion off the ground.
On Saturday, he will oversee a huge weekend of bare-knuckle fighting as Wolverhampton hosts BKB 38. The bill will be headlined as US star Lorawnt T Nelson, who tops BKB’s pound-for-pound rankings, faces West Midlands fighter James Connelly.
It’s one of the biggest shows in the history of BKB, which was bought out by US-based BYB promotion last year. It’s been quite a journey for Freeman, 44, who was on Forest’s books as a youngster during the final days of Clough’s illustrious reign in the early 1990s.
“Everyone who knows British football knows Clough was a genius,” says Freeman. “But by the time I was at Forest, he had lost some of his aura. The zest has gone. He seemed defeated. His face was bright red. He had wine cheeks.”
Freeman eventually left Forest, later becoming a businessman, which inadvertently led to him playing international cricket. He explains: “I had some money in the bank a few years ago after selling my Domino’s pizza franchises and was a bit fed-up with football.
“So thought I would go somewhere hot for Christmas. The idea was to go to Gambia for six weeks, but I ended up running a casino! I didn’t know how to run a casino, but the owner said, ‘I just need you to look after the money’, so I gave it a go.
“I used to go to the local Indian restaurant, and the owner asked me if I liked cricket and wanted to play a game. I thought it would be a local match, but when I turned up, I was playing for the Gambian national team against Mali!
“We got absolutely spanked, but I did score eight runs and take a catch. The standard wasn’t the greatest, it was only like playing for the Red Lion, but it still counts as an international match.”
Freeman had been a big boxing fan but tired of seeing too many mismatches, he moved into bare-knuckle fighting by launching BKB with business partner Joe Smith-Brown, with the idea of making the sport mainstream.
That didn’t sit well with those who wanted to keep the sport underground. He says: “I used to get anonymous calls every day from people saying, ‘Leave bare-knuckle boxing alone – or else’, that sort of thing. They wanted to keep it underground and didn’t want us giving the fighters good money and exposure.”
Speaking to the Daily Star in 2023, Freeman recounted how the opposition to his plans to grow the sport even led to death threats.
“I’ve had armed police at my house saying there were credible death threats because a lot of people didn’t want it to become a recognised sport,” he said.
“I’ve had my family abused online with horrible messages. We had bomb threats at early shows. It’s calmed down because I think we’ve broken the mould and people have realised those old days are in the past.”
Saturday’s show at The Hanger in Wolverhampton will be shown in 30 countries across the world. Freeman said: “The thing with bare-knuckle boxing is that you either love it or hate it. If you like combat sports, you will like it.
“What you get in bare-knuckle boxing is two evenly-matched fighters trying to prove who’s the toughest – and it usually ends in a knockout.”