Alberto Blas signing with BKB Bare Knuckle Boxing while still the reigning BKFC bantamweight champion sent a ripple effect through the world of gloveless combat with two prolific pugilists in the space offering up their thoughts on the undefeated Cuban combatant defecting to the rival promotion in the space.
Both of these standout bare-knuckle combatants appeared on separate episodes of Bare Knuckle Bowker and offered up their thoughts on Blas with Harry Gigiliotti and Travis 'The Animal' Thompson weighing in on this Blas situation. When the BKB super lightweight Police Gazette Diamond champion was asked about Blas defecting to BKB while he was still the reigning bantamweight champion in BKFC, Gigliotti said,
"Huge, yeah. Absolutely huge. I mean he was the 135, what, BKFC champ recently. But now he's coming over here and he's kind of gonna make his mark here. We'll see, maybe I'll go to 135 and try to take a pickin' at that too at some point. So a lot of people asked me at the end of the fight [at BKB 43] like what do I want to do from here?"
"I said I could go to welterweight, I could fight Carlos Guerra. Or I could go down to lightweight and I could fight [Julio] Tanori, Jarod Grant or even Alberto Blas. So there's a lot of interesting things that are happening as the sport kind of grows."
BKFC 1 Vet offers up his thoughts on the Alberto Blas situation
It recently passed the seven-year mark in early June since Thompson's BKFC 1 fight with eventual BKFC bantamweight champion Reggie Barnett Jr. Thompson has also gone on to fight eventual interim and lineal bantamweight champions throughout BKFC history like Jarod Grant and Dat Nguyen, respectively. When offering up his thoughts on the news of the Alberto Blas departure and the BKFC bantamweight belt now being vacant, Travis Thompson stated,
"Yeah, I mean it was crazy. I really wanted the chance to fight [Alberto] Blas because no one has alsted a roudn with him. You're not going to put me out in a round, I don't give a s**t about who you are. He has nothing I haven't seen before and honestly I really wanted that fight. But he left and good luck to him. Do what you want to do but I'm BKFC through and through, one hundred percent. I'll be coming for that title."
