By Matt Bozeat

THERE’S a fight in Florida next month for what’s described as “the No. 1 belt in the world.”

In Pembroke Pines on December 6, Richie Leak, a 45-year-old removals man and father of four from Blackpool, fights for the Police Gazette Diamond belt in a heavyweight bareknuckle contest.

The last British bareknuckle fighter to get this close to a shot at the belt was Jem Smith in 1887.

The Shoreditch fighter faced Jake Kilrain for the right to challenge John L Sullivan and they battled for nearly three hours in front of 79 spectators until a draw was declared due to failing light on the insistence of Smith’s 74 backers after the Londoner was dropped.

The expectation is, Leak will have his lights turned out next month.

Gustavo Trujillo is the latest heavyweight to hold of the Police Gazette Diamond belt, revived by Scott Burt, President of the Bareknuckle Boxing Hall of Fame, in 2016.

‘The Cuban Assassin’ – also a 6-0 (5) pro gloved boxer based in Miami – has won all six bareknuckle fights in the opening round.

“I wish I can get to the second round,” said the 31-year-old Trujillo, “but they are too easy! 

“It is not on my fight plan to go out looking for the first round KO, it just happens.”

Trujillo has shown the shot selection and defence of the Cuban amateur boxer he wasn’t.

“I was not a boxer in Cuba,” he said. “I was a Greco Roman Olympic wrestler.”

Which wasn’t going to make him rich.

Trujillo left Cuba a decade ago with the intention of becoming a millionaire.

Gloved boxing is likely to make him more money than bareknuckle, but BYB Extreme are keeping him busier and the audience is there for a sport in which 96 per cent of fights end inside the distance.

Leak knows he is expected to be on the receiving end of a KO next month and shrugs off the danger in the matter-of-fact way of someone who was working on the doors in Blackpool as a teenager.

Leak gives the impression that, whatever Trujillo does to him, he’s had worse nights.

“I started working on the doors when I was 18 because I could always have a row,” he said, “but it’s a horrible job. 

“Local lads can’t behave too badly because we will bar them or bump into them, but the ones who come for the weekend think they can do what they want because they are on the coach on Monday morning.

“They don’t care – and they’ve got 20 mates behind them.

“I was stabbed when I was working on the door – but luckily it was in my fat arse so there was lots of padding !”

Leak looks very much the Victorian bareknuckle pugilist with a beard that has earned him his ‘Viking’ nickname.

“It doesn’t help me absorb punches,” he laughed. “If I thought it did, I would grow it even longer.”

His beard was stained red with blood after the first round of his fight with Dan Podmore in March.

As happens in bareknuckle boxing, Leak found the punches to turn the fight around and win in the third round.

That brought him the BKB heavyweight championship.

BKB have since been bought by BYB Extreme and their champion is Trujillo.

The champions meet at the Charles F Dodge City Center in the three-sided trigon, described as the smallest fighting area in combat sport, with Trujillo making the first defence of the Police Gazette Diamond belt first worn by Sullivan, the hard-living ‘Boston Strong Boy’ who claimed he inherited his Irish mother’s strength.

The belt was the invention of Richard Kyle Fox, a Dubliner who headed to America in 1871 when he was 29 years old.

He saved enough money to buy the struggling National Police Gazette and transformed a struggling publication that was dedicated to helping police find criminals into a colourful and controversial tabloid that handed out awards in reward for bizarre feats such as the longest frog jump.

Fox noticed his readers had an appetite for sport, especially bareknuckle boxing.

The sport was illegal in all American states and to counter this, the Police Gazette would only report on fights two weeks after they had happened.

Sullivan was regarded as America’s best fighter – and Fox backed Irishman Paddy Ryan to beat him.

He declared in the issue of the Police Gazette dated April 16, 1881, that Sullivan and Ryan would fight for “$1,000 a side, the heavyweight championship of America” and a “facsimile of the belt Heenan and Sayers fought for.”

Heenan was John C Heenan, and Sayers was Tom Sayers, who had been the best fighting men in America and England, respectively.

They met near Farnborough in April, 1860 and both were awarded belts after beating each other senseless for two hours, 20 minutes.

The Police Gazette belt would be at stake when Ryan, from Tipperary and based in Troy, New York, and Sullivan faced each other in Mississippi City on February 7, 1882 in a 24-foot ring under London Prize Ring rules.

“Back when Sullivan fought, you could throw your opponent and a round ended when a knee touched the ground,” said Burt. “Some rounds lasted a few seconds and some for 20 minutes.”

Fighters were given 30 seconds to recover from a knockdown and then the fight resumed.

“Officially, Sullivan had 51 fights,” said Burt. “If you include all the fights in bars it is closer to 500!

“He only fought three times in bareknuckle, against Paddy Ryan, Charley Mitchell and Jake Kilrain.

“He hated bareknuckle boxing. You were allowed to poke eyes and grab hair.

“It was boring to watch as well. People would leave fights. They would just fight until one of them gave up and there weren’t many punches thrown.

“Promoters talked to the fighters and they told them they were worried about breaking their hands.

“Promoters put gloves on their hands, so they threw more punches, there were more knockouts and it was better to watch.”      

There were still 5,000 there to see Sullivan battle Ryan, including outlaws Jesse and Frank James in disguise.

They saw Sullivan drop Ryan after 30 seconds with a right to the jaw and remembering the fight in ‘Reminisces of a 19th Century Gladiator,’ Sullivan said it was called off after 11 minutes with Ryan “so disabled that the best care of physicians was required.” 

After the fight, Fox found himself in the same bar as Sullivan and asked a waitress to invite Sullivan to join him for a beer.

According to Burt, Sullivan answered: “No reporter pulls me away from my friends. He will have to come over here.”

Fox heard – as was Sullivan’s intention – and was fuming.

Burt said: “Fox wanted to get back at Sullivan and got Jake Kilrain to challenge him.

“Sullivan refused because he thought Kilrain wasn’t in his league.

“Fox stripped him of the belt, put diamonds into it, called it the world belt and gave it to Kilrain.”

Kilrain, another New Yorker of Irish blood, therefore became the first holder of the Police Gazette Diamond belt – until Sullivan took it off him in 1889 after a fight lasting 75 rounds – or two hours, 16 minutes.

That was the last world heavyweight title fight under London Prize Ring Rules and subsequent holders of the Police Gazette Diamond belt during the gloved era included Bob Fitzsimmons before the rise of The Ring magazine and the decline and eventual demise of The National Police Gazette in 1932 meant the belt was uncontested for more than a century.

Burt decided to revive the belt in 2016 and presented it to Bobby Gunn, a former Canadian pro gloved boxer with his roots in the Irish Travelling community, to “get the ball rolling in the modern era.”

In 2019, Joey Beltran, a former UFC fighter from California nicknamed ‘Mexecutioner,’ became the first heavyweight to win the Police Gazette Diamond belt in a bareknuckle heavyweight fight since Sullivan 130 years previously when he beat Chase Sherman over five rounds in Mississippi.

AJ Adams and now Trujillo have gone on to win the belt.

Burt said: “It was the first belt that was passed from champion to champion. 

“There were other belts that were put up for fights after a match was made, but with the Police Gazette Diamond belt, you had to beat the champion to win the belt.

“It’s the No 1 belt in the world. There’s no other belt like it. No other belt’s history comes close.”