Inside the violent world of underground No Rules fight clubs
This article is an extract from Hanrahan’s upcoming book Gargoyle II, published through Soyos Books. It’s also a written version of the first episode of Hanrahan’s upcoming documentary series Away Days.
I’m stood in a derelict building on the French Riviera, waiting for two young men to have an illegal No Rules fight on concrete. It’s early. Six in the morning early. Avoiding the police early. There’s a crowd of around 15 boisterous lads waiting for the fight, all ready to go. They’re dressed in an assortment of balaclavas, caps, side-bags, and sunglasses. Some of them travelled across the country by overnight coach to be here. Everyone is clearly very excited for what’s about to take place: a new kind of organized violence with no restrictions. Literally anything is allowed. No Rules means no rules.
The crumbling venue for this fight has long been abandoned. It sits behind a locked gate and a spiked fence, with overgrown shrubbery in every direction. It’s a broken down concrete block with two floors. It’s maybe an old observation post. To get in, I had to climb through a gap in the fence that’s been pried apart wide enough to squeeze through. Inside, the building is covered wall-to-wall with random graffiti. All the windows are put through and some of the stairs are falling down. The floor though, is spotless.
A group of young French tearaways spent last night getting the place ready. They swept out the broken glass and piles of rubbish and mopped the concrete ground till it shined. They seem very proud of it. This is their first proper event as the recently formed “FPVS”—an underground No Rules fight club. What FPVS stands for is hard to translate properly into English, but it basically means: “Don’t come around here trying to suck our dicks when we get big!” No joke.
The two lads who founded the fight club are called Leon and Victor. They’re both 20-years-old. They look it. Neither have quite grown into their frames yet and they’re hardly the typical streetfighters you might think of, but they’re lean, alert, and they hold themselves in a way that shows they’re prone to mischief. Both of them are dressed head to toe in black, with face coverings pulled up to their noses.
Despite being up all night getting things ready, they’re still full of energy. Or cocaine. Or a mix of both. They cannot wait for the chaos.
“What is it about fighting that you love?” I ask, as they show me around the derelict building.
“The adrenaline, bro,” says Victor.
“You don’t have any other problems [when fighting],” Leon cuts in. “You just think about the fight—you concentrate. We love confrontation and to see who’s the best.”
Leon has an air of old school French arrogance about him when he speaks. He’s aloof. Shrugs a lot. Victor’s the opposite—he can’t help but be friendly and candid. They’re an odd duo, but it works. Both are well organized and highly motived. They both also love fist fighting in a world that thinks they shouldn’t.
“Fighting is a way to express myself,” says Victor. “You’re always being told to be calm in society. You can’t really explode … I don’t know what makes something art, but to me this is art.”
“You see this as art?” I ask.
“Yes. I don’t like Picasso, I like this,” laughs Victor, gesturing with his hand to the abandoned building, the fighters, the electric in the air.
“And when there’s No Rules and no gloves, you’re just free,” says Leon. “It’s the greatest thing. I think it’s the best.”
This combat style, organically coined No Rules, is a brutal new form of clandestine fighting quietly spreading across the European underground. Fights, arranged only through illegal organizations, take place in secret locations with no gloves, no rounds, and no rules. Biting, eye gouging, choking, head stamping, elbows, and headbutting are all allowed. If that wasn’t gnarly enough, authentic No Rules fights have to be fought on concrete only—good luck if your head hits the floor. The fight is only over when someone is totally incapacitated, or when the makeshift referee steps in and stops it. It’s wild, dangerous, and exhilarating for all involved.
I first heard about No Rules in 2022 through a friend of mine who’s a long time football hooligan. Not the original British kind where pub men suited in Stone Island and Aquascutum would fight throughout the streets, but the new European version, where well trained combat ready firms meet secretly to fight in secluded forests around match days.
Naturally, this hooligan friend of mine has his ear to the ground when it comes to organized violence. He showed me videos from some early No Rules events: a fight where a guy gets part of his ear bitten off, a fight where someone is headbutted unconscious, a fight where a screaming starred up neo-Nazi has his eyes pushed in with an eye-gouge. It goes on and on. Serious, ruthless, but consensual violence.
All of the fights in the videos were arranged by “King of the Streets” (KOTS)—essentially the Tyler Durden of contemporary underground fighting. KOTS is run by a group known as “Hype Crew”. Made up of hooligans, organized criminals, and seasoned street fighters, they pretty much birthed No Rules in 2018.
At first, Hype Crew filmed these organized fights on the streets in Sweden. On concrete, no rules, no federation, no protection. All raw. They uploaded the videos to YouTube under the KOTS banner. The channel eventually blew up, gaining over 1 million subscribers in the space of six years.
Hype Crew created what has now become one of the most hardcore countercultures to emerge in Europe for decades. Now, there are several No Rules fight clubs, completely unaffiliated with KOTS. I found them in Germany, England, Ireland, France, Denmark, Poland, and beyond.
***
The two lads fighting for FPVS in France—Louis and Warren, both in their early 20s—are up on the remains of the abandoned structure’s outdoor patio area on the second floor. They’re shadow boxing amidst piles of broken glass and concrete debris. From here, I can see the perfect blue of the French Riviera’s coastline in the near distance. Expensive private yachts bob up and down as the sun rises into a cloudless sky. Directly in front of me on the patio, two thrill-seeking lads are preparing to knock fuck out of each other as part of an underground fight scene. Even amidst the beauty of Côte d’Azur, the unapologetic ugliness of prearranged violence is most compelling.
Several FPVS members help the two fighters get in the zone—wrap their hands, hold pads, gee them up. Warren is about 6’2’’, muscular, lean, and has a fighter’s gait. Louis is about 5’9’’, skinny-fat, and already seems out of his depth. I ask Louis why he came here, why he’s decided to fight in such a hardcore manner.
“To prove myself,” he says. “To be a better fighter.”
“What about the concrete floor, are you not worried about that?” I ask.
“It’s part of it. I know what I’m here for. It’s no problem.”
He sounds prepared, mentally, but the odds don’t look good. Not from here. Warren is shredded head to toe and Louis’s pale body looks entirely uncoordinated. It’s true that muscles don’t win fights, and with No Rules anything can happen, but still, I feel a bit worried for Louis. I ask Leon what he thinks about the clear size difference.
“They weigh the same,” he says, indifferently.
Leon shrugs it off and reminds me that Louis put himself here. He contacted the FPVS guys via the encrypted privacy app Telegram. He told them he wanted to fight, so now, he’s here to fight. If you can find the right people and are genuine about fighting, it can be that simple.
Warren and Louis warm up. Warren is shadowboxing on the balcony. Louis is hitting pads with one of the FPVS crew, of which there are around half a dozen. All male. Otherwise they’re a mix, both ethnically and in age. They’re all around 18 to 22. Each of them is dressed in a black tracksuit with various different brands of trainers. They’re a blur of Nike Tech and Balenciaga, Burberry and EA7. Some of them have specially printed FPVS hoodies. They mill around helping fighters, chatting, and rolling spliffs. They’re the kind of lads the upper class of the Riviera probably cross the road from. They seem jovial enough to me though. I’m obviously an outsider in this world, but they’re all pretty chilled about it.
I sit chatting to one of the guys as he holds pads for Louis. Then it’s time. Leon gathers the fighters, and everyone heads down the half collapsed stairs into the main area where fights take place.
There are two pillars in the center of the room. Red and white caution tape is wrapped around them loosely as a means to cordon off the area where the crowd now stands. On the floor, in the center, the FPVS logo is spray painted onto the concrete—a wolf with red eyes. The air smells like weed smoke and stale sweat. Everyone inside is buzzing. Some are Warren’s friends, some are FPVS, and others are unaffiliated hooligans and streetfighters who’ve just come to watch the violence. The show is on.
Louis looks nervous. Warren, calm. He cracks his neck and bounces on his toes ready to go. Louis picks at the wraps on his wrist and clenches his hands tight. He looks extremely uncomfortable.
Leon walks into the center of the concrete room and signals that everything’s ready. The two fighters join him on each side and before the brawling starts, everyone in the room sings the French national anthem with their hand held on their heart—an unexpected show of nationalist unity amidst this underground scene. It goes on and on. Everyone in the room, both masked and not, sings along. Everyone but me of course. I’m British.
La Marseillaise ends, finally. The two fighters bump hands and head to opposite corners of the room. Leon signals by nodding at Victor. Victor gives the go ahead. It’s on. Fight.
The two fighters meet each other in center. Louis throws a badly timed roundhouse kick that bounces clean off of Warren’s leg. Warren throws two jabs straight into Louis face, catching his chin. He’s dazed. His guard drops. Warren shifts in, grabs Louis, picks him up, drops him down to the concrete. Louis tries to throw some defensive punches, but Warren is all over him like a dog. He rains down elbows into Louis face. Louis goes fetal, covering up his head. Leon moves in from the sidelines, ready to see if the fight needs to be ended. The crowd is wild with excitement. They want blood. Warren continues dropping elbows. A few miss, a few smash into Louis’ forehead and temple. Louis throws up his hands and taps the floor. He’s done. Leon grabs Warren and pulls him off of Louis. The fight is over.
Louis is helped up off the concrete by FPVS lads. Welts, bruises, and bumps already pattern his face. He’s got blood at his lips. He’s well and truly beaten, but he’s smiling. So is Warren. The two fighters embrace sincerely and the crowd cheers even louder. Win or lose, respect in this world is essential.
The fight lasted about one minute total. Louis got battered, but I’m not sure the outcome really mattered that much for him. He showed up, which counts for a lot when you consider the stakes. That’s part of the notoriety of it—there’s something uniquely daring about No Rules. It’s not sport. You could end up permanently disfigured, brain damaged, or dead.
I ask Louis how he’s feeling, as makeshift FPVS medics (whoever’s holding the plasters and antiseptic) tend to his wounds.
“Yeah I feel good,” he says. “I lost but that’s part of it.”
He’s got blood in his mouth and knuckles have grazed the skin around his eyes, but he’ll live. Could’ve been a lot worse. No serious damage.
Half joking, I ask what his family might think when he comes home with his face bashed up. Louis pauses for a second. Then he laughs and says, “Don’t tell my mother!”
In contrast, Warren is completely unscathed. Not a mark. He’s barely even broken a sweat.
“I travelled overnight for this,” he says. “I want to fight again.”
He’s a nice lad. They both are. Pretty normal other than this. Outside of the chaos of clandestine fighting, Warren works as a laborer on a building site and Louis is a waiter in a restaurant. These violent young men build homes and serve food. They keep the world turning.
— Jake Hanrahan is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker from the UK. He focuses on conflict, crime, and counterculture.
Photos by Jonny Pickup / Away Days