Paulie Malignaggi wants BKB to change its rules. Five months after Rolando Dy stopped him in a super welterweight title fight, the former two-division world champion told Bloody Elbow that the promotion’s tight ring and permissive clinch rules let fighters strip the boxing out of bare-knuckle boxing.
He knows the awkward part. Malignaggi still fights for the company.
“It’s kind of a tricky conversation for me because I work with BKB, but I’ve also discussed my opinions on it as well.,” he told the outlet.
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His fix is a choice between two options. “In my opinion, bare-knuckle boxing should be either in a bigger space and allow the clinching or keep the space tight and disallow the clinching, which I think is an amazing experience,” Malignaggi said. Leave it as is, he argued, and the product drifts somewhere else entirely. “It’s bare-knuckle wrestling with some fighting.”
The complaint centers on BKB’s Trigon ring, a small surface that makes life hard for anyone who wants to work at range. Malignaggi said that during one stretch of the Dy fight he spent 30 to 40 seconds tied up, trading little taps and wondering if that was the whole plan for the night. “This is the fight? That’s it? This is what we’re gonna do tonight?” he recalled thinking.
The guy who beat him
Dy doesn’t sound apologetic. The Filipino fighter went 15-13-1 in an MMA career that ran from 2011 to 2025, including a 1-3 stint in the UFC from 2017 to 2018 before stops at Brave CF and UAE Warriors, where he won a title. Bare knuckle has gone better. In seven bouts he has won a BKB world title and defended it, with Malignaggi and Roberto Duran Jr. on the list of names he’s faced.
He told Bloody Elbow his game plan against Malignaggi was simple: “Paulie, I just knew his weakness. You just need to grab him and fight him like it’s not a boxing fight.”
BKB CEO David Tetreault, speaking to EssentiallySports, chalked the result up to style. He said Dy came in with heavy pressure and clinching while Malignaggi wanted to box, and called that “the beauty of what we can do.” So don’t hold your breath on a rulebook rewrite.
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Dy, now 35, headlines BKB 60 in Newcastle on Saturday, defending his super welterweight title against Scott McHugh, a bare-knuckle veteran who has held five different BKB belts. Dy said he expects McHugh to be tougher because he’s bigger. Former boxing champ Joseph “JoJo” Diaz faces Brian Hyslop on the same card, so the clinch debate gets another live test right away.
What’s next for Malignaggi
Malignaggi meets fellow former world champion Victor Ortiz on December 5 in Los Angeles, according to Tetreault, who admitted the matchup should have happened years ago back when he was at Golden Boy. Malignaggi told Bloody Elbow the fight made sense from the moment both men signed with BKB.
Credit Malignaggi for saying this out loud while cashing the promotion’s checks, because most guys just mumble about the ref. He’s also half right. A ring that small rewards the guy who grabs, and Dy said as much. But Malignaggi lost to that plan, and the promotion’s CEO just called the plan a feature. Ortiz is a boxer who wants to box, which means December 5 should give Paulie exactly the fight he’s asking for. If he can’t win that one, nobody is changing the Trigon for him.
