Grayson Wells battles Tyler Tremblett on June 19th as part of Havoc FC 22 for their heavyweight bare-knuckle boxing title. This is a belt that Grayson Wells never lost and previously vacated after a history-making win over Steve Roy. As the former Havoc FC MMA champ and bare knuckle champ explained why he came to vacate the latter crown, Grayson Wells said [via Bare Knuckle Bowker],
“Yeah, man. I technically didn’t lose the title. I gave it up. I won the title and then they asked me to fight a couple times and I was working in film at the time. Working on a TV show and I didn’t think it was fair that I held it up and sit on it, right? So, I didn’t want to hold up the championship. I thought I’d let two other guys fight. So, Lee Mein and Tyler fought it out and I believe Tyler got the knockout in the first round or the finish or whatever. So, he got it that way, my vacated title. Now I’m coming to get it back.”
There was a classiness in how he gave up the belt, but the promotional stalwart is clearly not content in resting on laurels, as Grayson Wells stated [via Bare Knuckle Bowker],
“Yeah, thanks man. I appreciate that. Yeah, I love fighting for Havoc, man. Jesse and Ryan and Tara. Like you said, this will be my 11th fight, which I believe is the most out of any fighter in the organization. With Jesse and Ryan, they’re former fighters themselves. So, they have a little understanding and they just really make it feel like home there. When I got the opportunity to fight for the first bare knuckle title in Canadian history, I mean that’s just a bucket list type thing, right?”
“So, I wore that proudly and that’s the thing with bare knuckle is that there’s a lot of people that say they want to fight, right? A lot of guys want to fight. Very few people do. Out of the ones that do fight, very few, even fewer want to do bare knuckle. So, it’s a pretty small category.”
“The funny thing is, as you probably already know, on the card there’s Lee Mein and Steve Roy are going to be fighting each other bare knuckle. We’ve all fought each other, Lee and Tyler fought each other. So, it’s like there’s just so few people doing it that you kind of end up all fighting each other. So, it’s a fun workplace, that’s for sure [laughs].”
Grayson Wells notices Tremblett’s size and speed, but is emboldened to dethrone the hulking champ
Tremblett is the kind of heavyweight who needs to cut down to make the limit, and while Wells is a former HFC BK heavyweight champ, he is coming in closer to that 230-pound mark. Breaking down the specifics of the machinations of this matchup by way of their differing physiques, Grayson Wells quipped [via Bare Knuckle Bowker],
Well, I mean, as Mike Tyson once said, everybody has a plan till they get punched in the face, right? [laughs] So you can you go in there and you have like a game plan, you have some strategies that you’ve been working on, but I mean especially when it comes to bare knuckle, it’s like once you get cracked a couple times, like things can go out the window pretty quick. I looked at, when I was researching bare knuckle and what other bare knucklers had to say about it is that it hurts a lot more than you think it would.”
“That checks out, my friend. So once you get cracked a few times with bare knuckles, I mean, you can have a strategy, but it can all go out the window, too. So, it basically comes down to who can show up on the night, who can be composed, and who can put the game plan together the best.”
Analyzing the championship bout through the lens of fighting skill and broader strategic considerations, Grayson Wells said [via Bare Knuckle Bowker],
“Well, when I watched him do bare knuckle, he’s definitely not afraid to engage. He seems like more of the aggressor type, right? Which is pretty scary for a guy that’s that big, right? Another thing that really surprised me about Tyler was his speed for being that big. So he can; if you’re you’re taking shots from Lee Mein and you’re not going down then you can obviously take a punch.”
Obviously he can give them back too. So I find myself; I always take pride in like trying to fight the toughest guys that I can, right, and Tyler’s no different. So, it feels good to challenge myself against somebody that is as big and as strong as he is and is on a few fight win streak. But that just motivates me to train harder.”
