CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - A Wyoming bare-knuckle fight promoter has sued the Association of Boxing Commissions and its president, saying they’re wrongly encouraging the City of Riverton to outlaw his fights.
Promoter Corey Lee Williams says he’s staged 11 bare-knuckle fights in Riverton, the most recent in March, and he’s concerned the city is working with the commission on an ordinance that would ban such fights.
He said his events typically draw about 500 people to venues such as the local Eagles Club, a fraternal organization.
“I try to stick to the local guys if I can,” Williams said of the fight participants. “Their family and friends will want to come and see them compete.”
Williams said a typical fight card includes six to eight bare-knuckle fights as well as one or two with gloved fighters. He said bare-knuckle matches are actually safer because, unlike boxers wearing gloves, bare-knuckled fighters can’t punch each other in the head repeatedly without risking breaking their hands.
“It’s a low-level, small kind of a program,” Williams said. “We’re not deriving enough revenue to even justify the (Association of Boxing Commissions) getting involved.”
Williams said his company, Who’s Your Daddy Productions, has staged other fights around the state over the past 12 years, including in Casper, Cheyenne, Laramie, Torrington and Douglas.
His fights aren’t officially sanctioned or regulated, and many assume his bouts are illegal, he said Thursday. “But that’s not the case. It’s kind of frowned upon, obviously, given the situation I’m in at the moment.”
Williams represents himself in the 62-page lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne. In addition to the Association of Boxing Commissions, it names its president, Timothy J. Lueckenhoff, of Missouri, as well as the City of Riverton and its police chief and city attorney as defendants.
Lueckenhoff declined comment Thursday, saying he needs to have a lawyer review the complaint.
Williams is seeking a court ruling that the national association has no authority over bare-knuckle fighting. “Bare Knuckle Fighting is a separate, stand-alone sport that is a competitor to ’professional boxing,’” the lawsuit states.
Congress empowered the Association of Boxing Commissions to regulate aspects of boxing nationwide in the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act of 1996. The federal law says states such as Wyoming that don’t have boxing commissions must lean on other states’ commissions to provide qualified personnel in order to have officially sanctioned fights.
City Administrator Steven Weaver said Thursday that the city began considering regulating bare-knuckle fights after Police Chief Mike Broadhead noticed that a city resident had been injured in a bout.
Weaver said the city asked Lueckenhoff for input and said he agreed to testify by telephone to a recent City Council work session on its fight ordinance.
The Council has voted twice to approve the ordinance and a final vote is set for early June.
“The city’s not necessarily saying that we’re against bare-knuckle boxing,” Weaver said. “We just think that it needs to be regulated, because any other boxing match across the country is regulated by the commission to make sure that they are following proper procedures with medical, and all those kinds of things, to verify that they’re protecting the fighter.”
In an interview Wednesday, Broadhead said Congress was clear in its commentary on the boxing reform law.
“It talks about wanting to have a firewall between fighters and promoters, and another firewall between promoters and the sanctioning body to protect the fighters from exploitation and also to make sure there’s no collusion going on between any of the parties involved in that, to try to keep corruption out of the game,” he said.
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