Gamebred Bareknuckle Produced Three RNCs On One Card — Remove The Gloves And Grapplers Just Choke Everyone

When Gamebred Bareknuckle MMA ran its return show on Friday the 10th at Ovalo Feria Ganadera in Santo Domingo, something remarkable happened. Ten fights. Three submissions. All three were rear-naked chokes. (Combat Press)

That wasn't a coincidence. That was the format showing its hand.

The results, in case you missed them

Anthony Smith — the same Anthony Smith who fought Jon Jones for the UFC light heavyweight title at UFC 235 in March 2019 — choked Chase Sherman in the first round, 3:28 in. It was Smith's first fight after his UFC release. He didn't try to outbox the man. He worked through some combinations, got the fight to the mat, and took the neck. (Yahoo Sports)

Luis Pena, the ex-UFC lightweight who goes by "Violent Bob Ross," choked Carlos Alexandre at 2:44 of round one. Same finish.

Michael Polanco needed a little longer — 3:38 of round two — to choke out Trevor Schurpnel. Same finish.

Three different fighters. Three different opponents. Three identical finishes. In a promotion that puts the absence of gloves in its name.

The format revealed what BJJ had been saying for thirty years

Gamebred Bareknuckle MMA was not bareknuckle boxing. BKFC is bareknuckle boxing — striking only, no takedowns, no submissions, the action stays standing. Masvidal's promotion ran full MMA rules. Strikes, clinch, takedowns, ground-and-pound, submissions. The only difference from a UFC card was the missing four-ounce gloves. (MMA Mania)

Which meant it was the closest mainstream stress test anyone had of the original premise: what happens when you keep all of MMA but pull the gloves off?

What happened was that grapplers stopped pretending to box.

MMA gloves are not just knuckle padding. They're frames. They create structure on the inside of a grip fight. They put extra material between a forearm and a carotid. They give the defender something to wedge and peel when a hand comes under the chin. Take them away, and what's left is skin on skin. Skin on skin is where the RNC lives.

The BJJ community had talked about this since 1993, when Royce Gracie won the original UFC tournament wearing a gi and no hand protection at all. The argument had been the same ever since: gloves protect the puncher's hands more than they protect the punchee's head. Take the gloves off and a striker had two options. He could clinch — where a grappler eats him. Or he could keep punching and break his hands on someone's skull. Either way, the math turned against the guy who came to throw bombs.

You could argue with the theory. You couldn't argue with three rear-naked chokes on the same card.

The Anthony Smith part was the tell

Anthony Smith was not a guy who picked grappling. His career identity was built on power striking. The majority of his finishes were knockouts. He fought killers on the feet for fifteen years and beat most of them. He challenged Jon Jones for a UFC title.

His first fight without UFC gloves on, on short notice, against a heavyweight, he changed levels and went straight to the back.

If a former UFC light heavyweight title challenger — a guy whose tape was half KOs of dudes named Volkan, Hector, and Anthony — looked at the bareknuckle rules and decided his best path to a finish was the same submission blue belts hit on Tuesdays, you took that as a coaching message. Whatever a corner was whispering when it saw no gloves on its fighter was the same thing every BJJ instructor had been saying about street self-defense for thirty years.

Hit them. Get hold of them. Make sure they can't hit you back.

Smith's finish was the cleanest example of why the choke won this format. Sherman gave up his back on the canvas. Smith cinched it in with no resistance. No glove to wedge under the chin. No foam to create space. Just a forearm across the throat and a squeeze.

The marketing was the gloves. The product was what happened when you removed them.

Masvidal's branding for this promotion was the violence of bare hands. The poster art was knuckles. The talking points were about "real fighting." The promotion's name had "Bareknuckle" in it before it had "MMA." The whole pitch to the casual fan was what happened when you took the safety equipment away.

The actual product, on the data that card produced, was closer to ADCC with strikes than it was to BKFC. Three of ten fights ended by submission. All three were rear-naked chokes. The other seven ended by KO, TKO, or decision. Zero arm-locks, zero leg-locks, zero guillotines, zero neck cranks — just back take, hooks in, palm to palm, opponent goes to sleep. The most fundamental finish in the sport, the one your professor showed you in week three, was winning at a 30% clip against grown men in a promotion designed to sell punching. (DraftKings Network)

That wasn't a knock on the format. It was the format doing what the format was always going to do. If you kept MMA rules and took the gloves away, you did not make a more striking-friendly sport. You made a more grappling-friendly one — because gloves were the last thing holding the striking math together. Gloves gave you knuckle protection so you could throw a hundred punches a fight. Take them off and you could throw maybe twenty before your hand stopped working. Twenty punches against a guy who was actively trying to take you down was not a striking advantage. It was a window.

Every grappler on a Gamebred Bareknuckle card right then was fighting with a structural advantage and the promoter was selling tickets on the punching part.

What it meant for everyone reading this

If you trained and you had ever had the "would BJJ work in a real fight" conversation with a non-grappler at a barbecue, this was the card to send them. Not Royce Gracie 1993. Not the Gracie challenge tapes. A card from fifty days prior, in 2026, run by a former UFC fan favorite, broadcast on DraftKings Network, full MMA rules, modern fighters in their prime, no gi, no compliance — three rear-naked chokes on one ten-fight card.

The striker who spent fifteen years building a brand around hitting people the hardest in the room watched the gloves come off and chose his back take. That was the part to tell your buddy. He'd have a hard time with it.

Three RNCs on one card. Anthony Smith — one of the better strikers his generation produced — chose a choke. Luis Pena chose a choke. Michael Polanco chose a choke.

The marketing was the gloves. The product was what happened when you took them off.

Bareknuckle was the brand. Choking everyone was the business model.

This post was generated by AI. Sources are linked below. Follow @bjj-problems on YouTube for the weekly video digest.

Sources

• Gamebred Bareknuckle MMA Results: Smith Submits Sherman in Round 1 (Combat Press)
• Anthony Smith destroys Chase Sherman for nasty finish in first post-UFC fight (Yahoo Sports)
• Gamebred Bareknuckle MMA fight card, start time, date and location | Smith vs. Sherman (MMA Mania)
• Gamebred Fighting Championship: Full Card, How to watch (DraftKings Network)