Logan Tucker

Logan Tucker went from parking lot scraps in small town Alabama to a bare knuckle debut on the biggest card of the year.

He was the first guest Salty's Fight Talk ever booked. Cason Banyas had him in the studio near the end of camp, and the two already had a night in common. Both had been ringside in Atlanta when Harrison Aiken won Bare Knuckle 69 wearing a SALTYmf hat. Tucker had since started working with Kelly Davis, who is Aiken's coach. He told Cason it was the first time they had ever sat down together and that the crew already felt like brothers.

The camp ran six weeks and started back home in Alabama. Tucker fights at 175 and spent the last of it on footwork, on pivots and rolls, on planting his feet long enough to throw power and still get off the line afterward. Defense took most of the rest. With no gloves on there is a hard limit to how many times a man can get hit clean. His regular coach is Michael Bradford at Warrior MMA Academy in Clanton, where his teammate Devin Scott had a pro fight of his own coming in February. A local nutritionist, Peach Nutrition, wrote his meal plans and cooked for him through the last week. He works seven to five at Thomas Hole and burned vacation days to get to Philadelphia.

He was blunt about what the six weeks cost him. He hates every session. He had been throwing up and bleeding most days, because nothing the other guy throws will be worse than what camp already has. The harder part is being away from home. His last fight, earlier that year, did not go the way he planned, and he got choked out with his girlfriend Caitlin watching from the crowd. He grew up never backing down from a fight, and one of the first ones he tells about ended with a knife pulled on him. He thinks about the damage every day. His coach told him that morning that dying is not the worst outcome in this sport. Sponsors covered his camp fees and some of his food, because two weeks out of work is two weeks with no pay.

Back in Alabama there is a small farm waiting on him. Two cane corsos he misses, chickens and peacocks that Caitlin feeds, two ducks, and a three legged turtle they found out in the woods. He wants the belt at 175, and he wants bare knuckle to come back to Alabama so his own face can be on a main card there. Until then he is fight number two in Philadelphia, walking out in salty gear, some kid from Alabama.