Özyurt Expects a Fair Fight at BKB 61 After a Tough Debut

Hatice Özyurt fights again in the Trigon on November 14 at BKB 61 in London. This time she expects a fair weight match, unlike her bare-knuckle debut a year ago.

A rough first night

Özyurt, known as "The Turkish Delight," says she has been a professional for 27 years. She puts her record at 170 fights and 26 losses as a striker. She was on her way to Amsterdam to finish her preparation when she spoke to Bare Knuckle Bowker.

Her BKB debut was last year, and it came after more than six years away from fighting. Her opponent was an Olympic champion in England with boxing credentials. She was 18 pounds heavier, which Özyurt describes as four weight divisions.

She was angry about it. If you are professional, she says, you make sure your weight is on top. She took the fight anyway and says the bare-knuckle part was very hard to take.

Why this time should differ

For BKB 61 she says her opponent is a professional on the scale and at the same weight. That is why she believes the outcome will be much different. She says she can now move her hands the way she wants.

Gloveless combat is not entirely new to her. She holds a kyokushin karate black belt and has fought bare knuckle in tournaments, often against women around 90 kilos. What was new, she jokes, was tasting a bare-knuckle punch in the face.

Her message to other fighters is blunt: this is not a playground for clowns, and she calls it a very serious, very hard combat sport.

The Trigon, and the years out

She calls the Trigon small, with no time to run and no chance to go to the ground. The fighters stay on each other's lips, she says, and it feels like home.

The break began after she suddenly lost her mother at 50. Özyurt says her mother had been her cheerleader and her coach. She calls that loss the biggest KO she had to swallow. She deleted her social media and kept quiet about it. All the while she trained six or seven times a week and says she would have taken a fight any time her mind was ready.

Source: LowKickMMA.com