Phil Hammond, a traffic warden in his late fifties, is about to enter the Pit. As his ring-walk music begins to play — “Oops Upside Your Head” by The Gap Band — the master of ceremonies stands on top of some hay bales, gyrating as he whips up the 500-strong crowd. Behind him, the soft hills and farmhouses of the Huddersfield countryside bask on one of the hottest days of the year. Two men who have just fought are still embracing. Bodies mottled with sweat and straw, they are bloodied but buzzing.
While the ring announcer continues to dance, Hammond has Vaseline applied to his face by Christian Roberts, founder and impresario of Spartan Bare Knuckle Fight Club. Known as “the boss”, Roberts is a lean 50-year-old with tattooed arms, intense foxlike eyes and a pale bald head that, in his words, requires “Nasa sun cream”. He has an earthy wit and a deep north-west baritone. He’s not a man to suffer fools.
The first rule of fight club is well known, but Spartan are not secretive about theirs. The rules are similar to boxing, except hands are wrapped, knuckles left exposed. Bouts last a maximum of five two-minute rounds but are stopped if a fighter gets knocked out or suffers a cut bleeding into the eye, or if the referee or medical team deem they can’t continue. Fights rarely go the distance.
Licensed bare-knuckle events take place in rings across the UK, but Spartan is the only one to fight in an eight-feet by eight-feet pit. Roberts designed the club so that “every fight is going to end in a knockout or someone getting hurt bad”. But it has another purpose too. Grudge matches were Roberts’s initial motivation for setting up Spartan. He wanted to offer young men the chance to settle their differences without going to jail or even losing their lives to a surge in knife violence. The only thing he insisted on was that fighters left any bad feelings in the pit and shook hands afterwards.
“Everybody that gets over them bales that you see, they’ve all got problems,” he says. Often these involve drink, drugs, homelessness or ill mental health. In England, estimates for alcohol dependency and use of drugs such as crack are significantly higher across the north and Yorkshire. The vast majority of these users are men. According to Samaritans’ figures from 2022, male suicide rates in the north were the highest in England, at more than 20 deaths per 100,000, almost twice as high as in London.
At Spartan, Roberts believes men can find respect and a sense of achievement by doing something not many would. “Win, lose or draw. You did it,” Roberts says. “You got in an eight-foot by eight-foot space and had a human cockfight.”
With three people inside it, the Pit seems an impossibly small space for a fight. Anxious-looking medics sit on the other side of the bales ready to intervene. Hammond’s opponent must be 20 years younger than him. But, flexing his arms like an old-school boxer, the older man appears undaunted. “Come on,” he shouts before jumping off the bales to fight.
It wasn’t my first time watching bare-knuckle pit fighting. In March 2023, I arrived at The Bradford Hotel in West Yorkshire for an event billed as “Spartan Warz 13”. The Bradford is flanked by another hotel, The Great Victoria, which was built in 1867, the same year that saw the Marquess of Queensberry Rules introduce boxing gloves to the sport. The era of bare knuckle had been equally popular with kings and the working classes, but after the new rules came in, it fell out of fashion and became a subculture associated with the criminal underworld.
In the hotel’s function room, Roberts had taken delivery of some hay bales, which were wrapped in fireproof plastic and being set up to form the pit. He was polite but preoccupied. The council had sent a team to do a health and safety spot check, and he had to show them he had the correct licences in place, proper insurance, door staff and medics. He’d already sold 500 tickets and invested about £10,000 to put the show on. He frantically corralled people, cursing and organising.
Roberts hasn’t always been a promoter. In his early thirties, he worked as a doorman in northern nightclubs. He started doing “bits and bobs you shouldn’t be doing”. That eventually led to him working as a “taxman”, the name given to those who steal from drug dealers. He said he had no criminal record, but was still embarrassed about his past. When others in the crew turned on a close friend, Roberts realised he couldn’t trust “that strength in numbers bullshit”.
He told me he’d been on the “right side of the fence” ever since. After a stint managing a pub, he began running Spartan full-time seven years ago, from his base in the north-west. The club draws in fighters from abroad and across the UK, but most are from Yorkshire and the north-east of England.
Paperwork in order, Roberts received the go-ahead from the authorities. As guests took their seats at the VIP tables, the DJ pumped out techno mixed with the “This is Sparta” line from the film 300, in which the Greek king, played by Gerard Butler, takes on a Persian army 1,000 times bigger than his own. I was introduced to one of the fighters, Gary, a friendly heavyweight from Newcastle with two guns tattooed across his chest alongside the words “No Remorse”.
Bare-knuckle fights are visceral and bloody. Cuts open easily. Smaller fighters go at each other like spinning tops, disappearing beneath the bales when caught with a punch. Heavier fighters clump shots into one another. Tonight’s beef fight was between Adi Doherty and a rival of his, two men who had already served prison time for assault. Doherty played rope-a-dope against the bales, inviting his opponent on to him by taking seemingly endless punishment. When his opponent tired, he suddenly uncovered his face and knocked the other man down with a right hand. A febrile roar went up from those watching. At the end, the fighters shook hands and embraced in the pit. The ring announcer told the crowd, “The beef is settled.” Indeed it was. I discovered the pair had later become friends. “I’m glad we did it,” Doherty told me.
It was winter when I next met Roberts at his local pub in Crewe. A pleasant end-of-week hum filled the room as people wound down away from the February cold. Roberts had recently been unwell and was struggling with chest pains. It turned out he’d had two heart attacks without realising, but he was fine now, he said. “We’re a different breed, us Spartans.”
Opting for a Coke rather than a pint, he spoke at length about how Spartan had evolved its focus from “beef fights” to giving people trying to turn their lives around a chance in the pit. “Look, all your life you’ve been a tearaway. All of a sudden, you’ve got a chance. Not only are [fighters] getting in there and doing something that only 1 per cent will, but then they start getting respect off people online and that, and start feeling good about themselves and think, actually, ‘I’m not a waste of fucking skin.’ You know?” This can help instil newfound focus and discipline, he said. “By just not going out and getting wrecked every weekend because they’re training for a fight, so all of a sudden they’re not on the sesh every week, right?”
Gloved boxing, the closest equivalent to bare knuckle, is often seen as a panacea to crime and disorder. But according to Dr Deborah Jump, senior lecturer in criminology at the Manchester Metropolitan University, the evidence is anecdotal and rigorous evidence-based studies are needed to properly determine its effects. She told me that for those that have suffered some form of trauma, part of boxing’s appeal is the chance to reclaim ownership of their body and avoid repeat victimisation. “It’s this idea that if violence is going to affect me, I’m going to make sure that I am in charge of it.”
I asked Roberts if there was a tension between the desire to help the fighters and how Spartan was set up for maximum violence. To my surprise, he told me he struggled to watch some of the fights. “Listen, until that last bell rings, I can’t breathe,” he said. “Because when that last bell rings, I know every fighter has come out alive. Because believe me, it will take one death in the UK, and they’ll shut the fucking lot.”
Though he put his faith in the Spartan referees and medical team, he readily admitted you could have “Doctor Zhivago” in there but “if that guy hits him in the wrong place . . . there’s nothing he can do.”
Roberts said he firmly believed in the fact that Spartan was less about boxing skill and more about heart and determination. He loved the simplicity of it. “Two men enter, one man wins, both leave with respect and their lives.” One fighter I met had described Spartan as one big therapy group but, said Roberts, “we’re a community of people who deal with things this way”. He knew the Spartan method wasn’t for everyone. “If you’d rather go and get 20 milligrams of sertraline [an antidepressant], then I certainly wouldn’t knock you for that,” he said.
With the next fight drawing close, I decided to visit the fighter I’d seen jumping into the pit the previous summer. Phil Hammond credits Spartan with helping him turn his life around. A divorced father of four, he lost his business and, for a time, any semblance of a life to a 30-year battle with drug addiction. He started to get clean through the 12-step programme a decade ago. But one day at work as a traffic warden for Sheffield council, a member of the public punched him. “When I got home, I thought, ‘Do you know what, I fucking enjoyed that.’” After taking part in some white-collar boxing, he came across Spartan on Facebook and signed up.
On a Saturday lunchtime, I met Hammond at his flat, south of the city centre. A sharp dresser, he sported an immaculate vintage Fila jacket. His tower-block flat, which had sweeping views over Sheffield, was tidy and unassuming but there were tell-tale signs of his fighting alter ego, including weights and an exercise bench. On the walls were glossy photos of his Spartan fights. One showed him, arms raised, after his only victory in 10 fights. At the Huddersfield fight fest, he’d lasted to the second round before the heat got to him. “I’m not an athlete. I don’t think I’m fucking right hard. I’m five-foot-three. I’m a little fat old bloke,” he told me in between sips of tea.
The buzz of fighting had been better than drugs, he said. He talked about the pit in almost mystical terms, eyes widening, fists clenched as he described it. For a few hours, it feels like being a celebrity. “It’s fucking madness.” He talked about how, for some reason, it sorted his head out, “I’ve always said that the therapeutic value of somebody punching you straight in the face is beyond parallel.”
I asked whether he felt there was an element of self-punishment, for what he put his family through during his addiction. “Definitely, for all the things I’ve done bad, and all the things I’ve done wrong, and all [the] things I could have done better,” he said. Recently that feeling had diminished and he found space for a bit of self-acceptance. He liked the sense of brotherhood too. “You get in that pit with anybody, and you’re a mate for life.” I asked why. “Probably because you’ve tried to kill each other.”
He said the coming fight might be his last, but he has said that before. It can be challenging for Roberts to find appropriate matches for Hammond, but this time he would be fighting 45-year-old James Menzies. The pair are friends and well matched. But a belt was at stake and Hammond was determined to claim it. “I need it for me flat.”
Two days before the fight was due to take place, Roberts called with bad news. The venue had withdrawn its licence for the event. We arrived at the same pub to find him visibly stressed. His phone rang constantly. Tickets had been sold, hotels booked. A Mexican fighter he was flying in for one of the main fights was already in the air.
Within 24 hours, he’d found a replacement venue in Wigan but they’d pulled out too. This kind of aggravation consistently hindered him getting licences, Roberts said, and proved there was still a taboo attached to bare knuckle. “It’s frowned upon, but MMA is OK?” he said in sheer exasperation. “You can knee someone in the skull, you can kick someone in the face, but you can’t punch someone in the face?”
Unlike boxing, bare knuckle doesn’t have a regulatory body to whom Roberts can apply for a licence so he must apply for what is known as a Ten licence (temporary events notice). This can be refused if police or environmental health object to it on health and safety grounds or if they believe it will incite violence.
His phone rang again. When he returned he told us his options: he could run things underground, or he could put the fight back four weeks and try to get a licence elsewhere. Eventually he chose the latter but there were further complications. Due to health and safety issues, the new venue, a hotel in Huddersfield, didn’t want the fight to go ahead in the hay bales. To avoid cancelling again, Roberts agreed to use a conventional boxing ring. But not everyone was satisfied by the compromise. Shortly after, Phil Hammond called to tell me he was pulling out. He didn’t feel he’d be fit enough to fight in a ring. Anyway, it just wasn’t Spartan. “There’s something special about being in them hay bales,” he said.
Fortunately for Roberts, Andrew Anthony, a former amateur boxer for Great Britain, was still on board. Anthony, who now works as a pile driver, told me about the first time he’d seen a Spartan fight. Although it was mad, he realised it would suit his up close and personal fighting style. Since joining Spartan, his only loss in nine fights had come from a cut above the eye, but he won the rematch. Anthony held the Spartan heavyweight world champion title. When I asked what the differences were between the pit and conventional boxing, he told me it was like being hit with a glove and a brick. There was no time or space for tactics, he said. “If you’re not first, you’re last.”
Money was also part of the draw. There are no appearance fees, but Spartan fighters earn 50 per cent of their ticket sales. Being a big ticket seller at the top of the card, Anthony could make about £2,000 for a fight. At 39, however, he felt this fight might be his last too. His children were upset when he came back with cuts, and his partner wanted him to stop. His next opponent was someone he’d been due to fight for years, and there’d been needle in the build-up after social media comments made about Anthony’s partner and children. Anthony told me there was no respect between the two fighters. “He’s gonna get it, so either way, it’s gonna be a bad day for him.”
The night before the fight, we had dinner at the new hotel venue in Huddersfield. Also staying there was Nathan Aldus, the Spartan featherweight world champion from South Shields, near Newcastle. Friendly and warm with bright blue eyes, Aldus stood at just 5ft 4in. According to Roberts, he had problems like all the fighters, including having served prison time, but he’d asked to join Spartan to try to turn his life around and avoid further sentences. Other fighters had talked about his knockout power.
The next afternoon, the lobby began to fill with Spartan fighters and fans — the men were mostly burly and tattooed, the women often glamorous. Anthony and his partner walked past, both wearing custom-made Spartan T-shirts with “Who is the baddest mother fucker?” printed on the front. The BMF belt for Spartan’s toughest fighter was just one of several he held. Tonight he would be trying to add the “Guvnor” belt bequeathed to Spartan by “Stormin’ Norman Buckland”, a notorious undefeated fighter from the days where all bare knuckle was unlicensed.
Amid the crowd, the high-cheekboned Mexican fighter Gilberto “El Azteca” Aguilar sat on his own, wearing a bright green tracksuit. A former professional boxer and MMA fighter, he liked coming to England, said Roberts. “We took him to Chester to see castles and cathedrals,” he grinned. “Took him to an old sweet shop and all that. He loved it.”
The opening bouts were largely uneventful. Even so, a white towel by the side of the ring used to mop up blood quickly turned crimson. Anthony, now shirtless, remained seated at a table with his supporters, muscles rippling.
Things came to life in the 10th fight when Aldus showed why people were in awe of his punching. He hit his opponent so hard that they were out cold before hitting the canvas. The referee put the downed fighter in the recovery position as medics dived into the ring. About five minutes later, he got up still looking decidedly groggy. The knockout went viral on TikTok with more than 400,000 views.
By early evening, there was a party atmosphere in the room. After Aguilar and his opponent fought to an exhilarating draw, I watched Anthony knock down his opponent after just 15 seconds before himself being caught flush with a huge right hand on his left cheek. As he struggled to get up, the fight was stopped and medics again climbed into the ring to help. Anthony’s partner stood at the ringside, her face etched with concern.
Eventually Anthony got to his feet and embraced the victor. Backstage, he said he was gutted, but that was bare knuckle. Roberts told me later that his opponent had apologised in person to Anthony’s partner for the offensive social media posts. Once again, beef had been settled.
Nathan Aldus took his own life a few weeks after the fight. When I spoke to a devastated Roberts on the phone, his voice was broken with emotion. “Sometimes they lose the battle, you know, and that’s the hardest bit to swallow, that, you know, we’re a family here,” he said. Other members of Spartan had been in touch to tell Roberts he had helped save more fighters than he’d lost. He’d spoken to Nathan’s mother who told him, “He loved you, Christian.”
Aldus had been due to defend his belts last month in Huddersfield. A blustery, cloudy Yorkshire day began to clear as I made my way down a track where horses from a nearby livery whinnied at each other. Dandelion borders fringed the road as it swept down to the field where gazebo tops and hay bales were being arranged once more. I bumped into Hammond, back on the card, who told me how much of a tragedy Aldus’s passing was. Roberts, who had done a reading at his funeral only two days before, said: “Listen, I run the ship and I’m crazier than them all, you know. But we’re there for each other and that’s what it’s about.”
A short memorial had been arranged for that day. The sun came out as fans and fighters alike gathered closely around the pit while the DJ played a favourite song of the club, “Spartan Soldier”, a Jamaican dance hall tune. Loud applause intermingled with the lyrics as Aldus’s mother and fiancée walked into the pit carrying his belt. Adi Doherty and another fighter carried a Leeds United flag emblazoned with his name.
Afterwards Roberts told those who had gathered, “That was in memory of Nathan Aldus, one of the best pit fighters I’ve ever seen in my fucking life.” When he finished speaking, it was back to the MC. Spartan Warz 18 was about to start. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “put your hands together. Stamp your feet and make some noise. This. Is. Sparta.”
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