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In The Arena Blog

Diego Garijo Bare Knuckle Boxer

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Watch The Arena’s Diego “Dos Postolas” Garijo as he KO’s his opponent in the first Bare Knuckle Fight Promotion since 1889, with Boxing Coach Joe Vargas in his corner.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Diego Garijo:
My name is Diego Garijo, Dos Pistolas. I’m an MMA fighter that’s going to try my hand at bare-knuckle boxing. I’m working with Joe Vargas on my boxing. He’s a very experienced coach. He has a lot of undefeated pro fighters. There’s a lot of future Olympians here at the arena and it just gives me a lot of confidence to work with this caliber of people.

Coach Joe Vargas:
Working with Diego has been an awesome experience. He reached out to me, I told him that I would train him only if he did exactly what we asked of him and he said, “Yeah.” He agreed to it and came into the gym and had a great work ethic. I always had to kind of like restrain him a little bit from going too much. It was sometimes he felt like he had to do more, and I’m like, “No, you listen, and you do what I tell you.” We started from A, B, and C with him and it worked out perfect.

Diego Garijo:
The promotion I’m fighting for is the very first sanctioned bare-knuckle boxing in the United States since 1889. A lot of people don’t like it and they think it’s a step backwards, but I disagree. Bare-knuckle boxing was outlawed, and a great reason had to do with promoters wanted to keep fighters around for a long time and they would bust up their hands, so they introduced boxing gloves. You know, it’s really to protect the hands and not the athlete.

Coach Joe Vargas:
Diego went out and he just went at it. 30 seconds into the fight Diego’s eye’s swollen, and he has about three cuts. They all settled down. Caught the guy with a beautiful hook. Dropped the guy. I thought the kid wasn’t going to get up. He jumped up. Diego caught him with the left coming in and knocked him out cold for a good minute.

Diego Garijo:
I’m not fighting for money. I’m not fighting for fame. I’m fighting because I love it and I missed it so much when I stopped fighting. I thought it was the right thing to do for my family, but I think from my personality, I need to do this for a few more years until it’s completely out of my system.

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