Harrison Aiken

Harrison Aiken won the first sanctioned bare knuckle fight in the state of Georgia, and got sober before he did it.

They met in a car wreck. Banyas got hit from behind, was being shoved forward, and spent the slide trying not to hit the very nice Tundra in front of him, which belonged to Aiken. Aiken had no idea who the guy was until afterward, when he looked him up. A few months later he was in the studio, on his way out afterward to go train a kid, three weeks out from the biggest fight of his career.

He wrestled at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville and placed second in state, then served, then started MMA at twenty. Two championships followed, both by knockout, one of them in Alabama where the crowd got rowdy enough that the police escorted them out. Bare knuckle came later and asks for something different. He calls it controlled chaos, and says the men who swing for the fences turn it into a bloody mess, so he stays technical and composed and wins that way instead. He does bare knuckle push ups on pavement, which calluses the knuckles and builds the wrists that hold everything together. Sparring at his Gainesville gym is full contact in sixteen ounce gloves, because if he cannot take a punch in gloves he has no business taking one without.

His father struggled with addiction and did time. Aiken grew up with his mother and brother, fought constantly, got suspended constantly, and later went down the same road his father had. In his first MMA fight he was picked up, slammed and had two ribs broken, and his first two fights were losses ugly enough that people told him it might not be for him. Fighting for the state light heavyweight title against a man now in the UFC, he spent the third round losing and then got hoisted two feet off the ground in a standing guillotine, went red and then purple, and would not tap. He lost on the cards and says he grew more from that night than from either belt. Later, in his first fight on a BKFC card, he was dropped ten seconds in, the first time he had touched the canvas in more than twenty fights. He got up and brawled.

The medals go straight to his daughters, who are ten and six and tell their whole school that their daddy fights on TV. The last fight purse went on bills and a set of bunk beds, because that is what the girls wanted. He keeps his DMs open for strangers who are where he used to be, and says the most relatable thing between two people is pain. In the meetings he goes to, they say one day at a time.