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Ding! The bell rings and all eyes snap back towards the bare-knuckle boxing ring in the centre of the arena. Alex Terrible, the Russian-born singer of Slaughter To Prevail, and Cameron Delano, an American bullrider built like a piece of farm equipment, rise to their feet, visibly exhausted, and step back to the centre of the ring. Both fighters are bloody, with faces swelling. Alex’s nose is broken, and he keeps wiping the blood from his face, yet, somehow, underneath all of it, he’s also grinning.

This is the climax of Blood4Blood, a meeting of metal and bare-knuckle fighting dreamed up by Alex and staged by heavyweight US promoter Danny Wimmer Presents at the 9,300-capacity Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida. The idea is straightforward: a line-up of bands and a full Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC) fight card, same night, same room, same crowd.

The bands, including Black Label Society, British metalcore heroes Malevolence, Crowbar and Slaughter To Prevail themselves, have been chosen by Alex and his bandmates. At the end of the night, Alex will climb into the ring for the event’s closing bout with Cameron Delano, a short, sharp shock of violence and viscera. That’s where we came in. For now, let’s go back to the start, when nobody in the building was bleeding yet.

6PM: The line at Ocean Center wraps a third of the way around the building. It’s mostly Slaughter To Prevail merch, but there’s a decent showing of Black Label Society gear, and a range of other metal bands are represented. Talking to a few people in the queue, two things become clear.

First, most of them are here for the bands. Second, most of them are also genuinely excited about seeing their first sanctioned bare-knuckle fight, including a few who say they wouldn’t have come for a fight card alone, and a few more who say the music is a bonus.

Hand-to-hand combat is a very old sport – one of the oldest. Two humans, no weapons, an audience. Alex has been a fight obsessive for years, training in combat sports. He’s already had one brutal professional fight in Russia, which left him with several serious fractures to his skull, air in his brain, and temporary blindness.

In spite of the pain, his love for fighting seems perfectly aligned with his pursuit to be the best version of himself.

“It gives you perspective,” he says. “You see things differently because it is serious. You could very easily die in there. Some people call me a poser or some shit like that. But you cannot fake it at all. It’s real as fuck.”

6.45: There are two focal points in the arena. One is a traditional stage at the far end. The other is the BKFC ring dead centre, with the crowd flowing around it. Local Florida band Chained Saint hit the stage in an arena that has no business being this full at 6.45pm on a Wednesday.

The music is classic thrash metal but the four people playing it are just kids, all less than 21 years old. Circle-pits are already going on both sides of the floor. The ring sits between them, fully lit, empty, waiting.

“Metal music isn’t all about being aggressive and high energy, but it is a big part of that style of music,” Alex says of his idea to bring these two worlds together. “It’s the same energy as in bare-knuckle fighting or in MMA in general. It’s so intense. It just fits very well.”

7.30pm: Pyro and strobes herald a condensed set of Slaughter To Prevail’s heaviest material. From the stage, Alex can look straight down into the ring he’s going to be fighting in shortly. In the photo pit, Cameron Delano is looking back at him with his arms folded, sporting a cowboy hat, completely still.

“From the moment I watched the band start playing, I knew the energy was gonna be crazy,” Cameron tells us later. “They brought the intensity the entire night.”

It’s a strange sight: a man calmly studying someone he’s about to spend three rounds trying to hurt, while that someone screams over breakdowns three feet above his head.

7.55pm: The first fight of the night lasts 66 seconds. Kratos, a Russian fighter making his BKFC debut with a moniker and ripped body both seemingly borrowed from the videogame God Of War, faces Brock ‘Alphadawg’ Walker. Kratos catches him clean inside the opening minute, and the referee waves it off. A few seconds later and it’s done. The Russian wins.

Most people in the room have never seen a sanctioned bare-knuckle fight up close. The sport was illegal in the US until 2018, when Wyoming legalised it after a 130-year ban. A growing number of states have followed. Florida is one of them, which is why what’s happening tonight, despite looking transgressive, is entirely above board, with ringside doctors, a referee, sanctioning bodies and a televised broadcast.

In contrast to other MMA styles, bare-knuckle boxing bouts are fast-paced. The fighters don’t wear padding to absorb blows. Knuckles cut skin in the opening exchanges. Blood is on the canvas within seconds. By the time you’ve registered what’s happening, somebody is on the floor. The fights are much shorter than traditional boxing bouts, so the intensity is cranked up to 11, and knockouts are common.

8.15: The early KO leaves time to fill, so the BKFC hosts come into the ring to throw t-shirts and work the crowd, eventually leading to an announcer crowdsurfing – reportedly a first for the organisation. Then Crowbar take the stage and slow everything down to molasses tempo. Alex is a fan.

“Every time we see a video of something cool on TikTok, it’s Crowbar playing in the background,” he says. “They are legends.”

8.50: The BKFC is often touted as a macho sport, but tonight’s card includes two veterans of the women’s division. Taylor ‘Killa Bee’ Starling is a dyed-in-the-wool metal fan, and her body is adorned with tattoos – a stark contrast to her opponent, Sydney Smith, who has none visible.

The lights cut, the spotlights come on, and the pair make their entrances to their own walkout tracks. Unlike the first fight, this one survives the opening round. Both women return to their corners, cut and visibly swelling. Round two ends at 1:32 when Taylor lands the shot that finishes it. She’ll spend the rest of tonight watching the bands.

9.10: Backstage, the contrast is striking. Aside from the rumble from out front, it’s as quiet as a quilting expo, though there’s a particular kind of nervous energy in the air that comes where people are about to do something they can’t undo.

Some fighters are getting their hands wrapped, others talk quietly with guests. Cameron Delano, Alex’s opponent, is here too, hanging out with his young daughter as though his televised fight won’t be talking place in less than two hours.

9.20: Malevolence are onstage, playing Trenches, and the pits are bigger than they have been all night. Zoltan Bathory and Chris Kael of Five Finger Death Punch – noted MMA heads – are watching from the floor. The crossover keeps writing itself.

9.45: Jake ‘Brutal’ Bostwick fights Roderick Stewart in front of a packed room that has fully accepted the format by this point. Bands stop, fights start, fights end, bands start again. Both fighters are tatted up and cast a menacing presence.

10.15: Black Label Society hit the stage. Zakk Wylde, in his plaid kilt, pounding out heavy riffs. By now, several of the night’s fighters are out on the arena floor in the crowd, bloodied and bruised, watching the bands. Taylor Starling’s newfound fans are getting photos taken with her battered, smiling face.

“It was a blast!” Zakk says after his set. “Fighting and heavy music go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

He’s not wrong. The metal community’s always embraced aggression – take a look at any moshpits. Bare-knuckle boxing is a natural extension of that. There’s mutual respect, too, before and after the bell, in a similar way metalheads knock someone down in the pit, and help them right back up.

10.50: The big fight. The one everyone’s here to see, or at least curious about. Alex Terrible vs Cameron Delano. The lights die and the crowd roars. The American walks on first – focused, narrow-eyed, the bullrider in him fully switched on. Then Alex, and the volume in the room peaks so hard you can’t make out his walkout track over the chanting.

“This is your main event of the evening!” comes the announcement, further riling the crowd up into a frenzy. The fighters meet in the centre of the ring. The bell goes. Ding! They start hitting each other. Within 90 seconds both men are bleeding from the face.

Round one is two solid minutes of trading: fists landing flush, knuckles opening cuts, the wet sound of impact audible over the crowd if you’re close enough. At the bell, the two men high-five through bloody teeth and walk to their corners. It’s a brutal opening round.

10.53: Round two. Alex lands a right hook clean on Cameron’s jaw and staggers him, but Cameron weathers it to the bell. Chants of “USA! USA!” and “AL-EX! AL-EX!” trade off in the rafters. There’s a Rocky IV-ish quality to it on paper – it was billed as The Russian Grizzly vs. The American Bull.

10.56: Twenty-nine seconds into the third round, Cameron counters with a clean right hand, and Alex goes down. He stands but his legs betray him and he wobbles to the ropes where the referee waves to signal the fight is over. Cameron takes the win by TKO.

Both men are wearing more of their own blood than seems possible. What most of the crowd doesn’t know is that Alex had been planning to play another short STP set after the fight, but the on-site doctor and the venue would not allow it. Presented with a man sporting a broken nose, several facial fractures and a suspected mild concussion, any competent medical expert would have firm opinions about the wisdom of headbanging in the immediate aftermath of all that.

The building, though, is in no rush to empty. Fighters are still mingling on the floor and fans are still photographing each other in front of the ring. Whatever Blood4Blood was supposed to be, it has clearly worked.

FOUR DAYS LATER: Alex Terrible is sitting backstage at Welcome To Rockville, where STP are due to headline the third stage this evening. The black eyes are something else. The voice is calm.

“To be honest, I’ve been asking myself that, and I still cannot find the answer yet,” he says, when asked why he fights. “It’s just something in my heart. We have this phrase: ‘Be a warrior means live forever’, and I believe I am a warrior, and my war is fighting fears and weakness. It makes me go to these places that I’m scared of going to and face my fears and try to build the best version of myself. Not only physically, but in all aspects of your life.”

He’ll fight again, he says. He might not perform on the same night next time, because he’s a competitor and he wants to win, and the split focus didn’t do him any favours. Other musicians have already been in touch about appearing on future cards. He says Pantera would be the dream get. Whether they came for the blood or the music, the fans in Daytona got both. For Alex, it was something simpler: a war he chose, fought and walked away from.

SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL HEADLINE BLOODSTOCK ON AUGUST 8, PLUS GLASGOW SWG3 ON AUGUST 10 AND 02 ACADEMY BRISTOL ON AUGUST 12