BKFC Title Challenger Excited for Jamel Herring to Take Off the Gloves: “He’s a Sharp Boxer”

Jamel Herring will be making his bare-knuckle boxing debut over the weekend, and a BKFC title challenger has weighed in on the gloved boxer’s looming foray into gloveless combat. Dustin Pague is the combatant in question and will fight for Julian Lane’s welterweight belt at the BKFC Mohegan Sun card in the headline attraction over top of Herring’s bare-knuckle debut.

The Olympic boxer and former WBO junior lightweight champion is dropping the gloves for January 17th when he takes on Matt Guymon. While Guymon has had multiple competitive efforts within bare-knuckle boxing, this will be the first time in this surging combat sport for ‘Semper Fi’ as Herring aims to make an impact in this new game. When it was referenced that Jamel Herring’s bout was an interesting fight on this card, Pague said [via Bare Knuckle Bowker],

“Yeah, absolutely. He’s sharp. I was looking up some of his videos today, actually. He’s a sharp boxer. I’m excited to see him take the gloves off and put in the work.”

For Herring in BKFC, Pague wants to “see that unfold and see how he adapts to it”

One’s first fight in BKFC can be a telling moment, with some leaning too heavily into whatever their prior base was and not adapting their game enough to the unique considerations of bare-knuckle. When touching on the Herring situation being a bit of a microcosm in terms of how much the debut bare knuckle effort can be such a telling moment for one’s trajectory in the sport thereafter, Pague stated [via Bare Knuckle Bowker],

“Yeah, absolutely. It’s definitely exciting to see that unfold and see how he adapts to it. But, like Austin Trout did a great job of the transition. So maybe he might have picked his brain a little bit or, you know, has been gearing up for this for longer than we we think, so. Yeah, definitely interesting to see.”