Does a hockey fight need a game around it? Bare Knuckle Ice Wars will find out with ESPN deal
If you’ve been to one of those sports bars with 25 screens, you’ve seen what happens when a fight breaks out in the middle of a hockey game. People pause a second to watch it play out, the way they do when strolling past somebody on a slot machine in Vegas who’s hit an unexpected bonus.
There’s no guarantee that a fight will break out in a hockey game, of course, but it always feels a little lucky when one does.
This is what the Bare Knuckle Ice Wars, which officially debuted in 2022, built its premise on. To do away with the hockey and focus just on the fights. Some people go in for the toe drags and odd man rushes and game-altering shorthanded chances, but the only goal here is to do away with the puck. To give people just the fights they crave, the game within the game, without the distraction of a game.
To some this might seem like just extracting the cream filling from a Hostess Twinkie. But you know who understands a good on-ice fight, which has been a bonus attraction to the professional hockey ranks for more than 100 years?
ESPN, that’s who.
On Wednesday, Ice Wars announced it has signed a partnership with ESPN to air a deliberate dropping of the gloves come Aug. 8 at 10:30 p.m. ET. Four fights that took place live on May 14 at the River Cree Casino just outside of Edmonton, Alberta will be aired as part of half-hour broadcast on ESPN8: The Ocho.
Last summer, “BKFC Ice Wars,” as it was then known, held an unsanctioned event at the Soaring Eagle Resort and Casino in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, which featured gloved fighters on synthetic ice. A year later those fighters are using their bare knuckles and skating on real ice, in the original spirit of the enterprise, with a big-time broadcast partner.
“It’s been about three, four months in the making,” says Ice Wars president and former UFC fighter Ian Heinisch. “It was difficult because we couldn’t leak it. We had to tape the last show. We had to pull four fights off the show. We couldn’t tell the fans why, but it’s cool to see that ESPN has us on their radar and we think it’s going to move the needle for them, bring more people than they expect, and we’re hoping to get a distribution deal off this.”
That’s because this first show is a one-off, a taped and edited icebreaker of sorts to see if there’s an audience for jersey-pulling fisticuff between enforcers.
The four bouts were chosen from the 12-fight card at the River Cree back in May, meaning only eight fights were shown on the Fight Network when the card originally aired. Only those in attendance that night in Edmonton saw the four fights that will air on The Ocho, handpicked to show the potential of what Ice Wars’ founder Charlie Nama refers to as a “new sports league,” rather than a new “combat league.”
“This deal gives us the exposure we needed for people to understand what Bare Knuckle Ice Wars is, and how it’s evolved from hockey fights in a game to an exclusive sport,” he says. “This is for the enforcers to showcase their talents, and for the fans, too, who sometimes have to go to 10 games just to see a fight.”
Of the four fights that will appear on the half-hour block, one features the former enforcer Brad Pawlowski, a bearded Ontario native who has 55 fights catalogued on the “Hockey Fights” website, against Divyne Apollon, a player who has just one goal in 96 pro hockey games spanning three seasons, to go along with 652 penalty minutes.
Apollon, both Heinisch and Nama believe, could be a star.
“We want to crown some championships soon, but also as this sport grows, paychecks grow, clout grows, you’re going to see these NHL stars want to come in and prove themselves, test themselves,” says Heinisch. “That’s basically what BKFC did, right? With these retired MMA fighters. And I think they will also be stars in this promotion.
“Hopefully we find a Mike Perry type guy who’s going to come in and dominate.”
Unearthing a star is the first pivotal piece in all things combat (or sport).
As I reported from Ice Wars’ show last summer in Michigan, there are some who naturally fit the bill. The LaPorte twins, Will and Nick of Canada, stole that first show by bringing the crowd to life in scoring their on-ice victories. Since then, Valerie Ruley has made a few waves, beating Christina Barry last October at the Amerant Arena in Sunrise, Florida.
Nama says that heavyweights Nick Fitzpatrick and Zane Briggs have star potential too, as they throw haymakers with a fan-friendly sense of abandon, and we’ve seen some UFC fighters lace up the skates, like Charles Rosa.
“But we also want to grow the personalities and let the fans know who these fighters are,” Heinisch says. “And that’s what we have. [Comedian/sports commentator] Jonny Laquasto has joined the team and he’s going to help tell the stories of these fighters, because that’s what fans need. They need a connection with the fighters, and the cream will rise to the top, and we want to build some stars as well.”
Back in the day, the UFC coveted the 18-34 male demographic as it carved out a place for itself in the broader world of sports, based on Dana White’s favorite premise that “fighting was in our DNA.” These days that demographic has expanded along with the UFC’s now $7.7 billion business, which has operated as a blueprint for all enterprising combat leagues ever since — including the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC), of which Ice Wars was originally a creative arm of in the way PowerSlap is to the UFC.
Bare Knuckle Ice Wars operates independent of BKFC nowadays, though Nama and BKFC president Dave Feldman still work together.
But airing on ESPN is a big deal, and it’ll go a long way to determine just how far this sport, as Nama calls it, can go. The next live Bare Knuckle Ice Wars is set to take place back at the River Cree on Sept. 5, and there are plans to return to Florida for another show in the States later in the year.
When asked where Ice Wars might be in five years, Heinisch says he can imagine people not only dropping gloves, but plenty of cash into the realm of on-ice fighting.
“In five years or less — and I would say less — I see this being over a billion-dollar company,” he says. “PowerSlap right now is a billion-dollar company.
“I think we can blow this up, having the crossroads to so many different fans between hockey and combat sports. So yeah, I want this to be recognized as a sport. We maybe want to do something like the World Cup of Hockey Fighting, where we take a team of hockey fighters from every country and make it kind of like an Olympic thing. We want this to be a staple recognized as a new sport and be in the billions of valuation.”
