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The ultra movement is experiencing a boom that scares the world of football. And more and more matches are marred by violent acts. From the throwing of lighters at Courtois in the Metropolitano to the last incidents prior to Deportivo-Málaga. The truth is that the beautiful sport is increasingly full of people with criminal records and, in many cases, fighters in what is known as ‘Fight Club’a clandestine competition where you compete with your team’s balaclava.
A scene you know very well Abner LloverasSpanish fighter who has competed up to two times (in December it will be the third) en King of the Streets (KOTS). The Catalan attends AS to explain what is hidden behind the bloodiest club in Europe.
The doors of a bullring south of Madrid opened before Abner Lloveras, a fighter with experience in the best events on the planet such as the UFC, Bellator or M-1 Global. The video went viral in just a few minutes, even though this time he was not going to fight in an octagon, but rather In front of him he had an ultra from a soccer team. The floor was cement, something that “It was scary, because I thought that at any moment I could break my collarbone or my head.”. The rules are easy. So much so that they don’t exist. Everything goes here. The referee who regulates the fight appears with his face covered and in the stands there are other ultras who do not show their faces either.
From the ultra stands to the asphalt
Is called Kings of The Streets (KOTS) and it started in the south of Sweden. Amateur wrestlers from all over the world sign up, although the majority are ultras from soccer teams, which They wear the name of the club they defend on the evening’s poster.
The meetings are secret. There is no public call and it is broadcast by streaming after paying 20 euros. KOTS is very popular in Spain. Several well-known people from the Spanish ultra scene have participated, such as El Pirrakas (from Bukaneros del Rayo Vallecano), Guda or Estébanez (ultras from Alavés).
There are people who compete in KOTS who have been in jail, although the majority are hooligans
“People fight who are involved in matters that I neither know nor want to get involved in.. Most are hooligansthat if they are from rival teams, the tension increases, they are people from the street. For examplethe first one I was going to fight had been imprisoned and fled the country and finally we couldn’t fight. I remember when I was driving to the second fight and there was another trainer with a fighter who He had just been released from prison, he had been there for 11 years.. He told me: ‘Yes, eleven years, the laws are very strict.’ “I was in shock,” explains the Spanish fighter.
Although the clandestinity of this type of competition does not exempt it from having an audience. Of course, not just anyone goes: “No one goes who they don’t know is going. If you tell them, can my friend go?, then they ask you who it is and they tell you: ‘Give me the first name, last name and social networks’, they will check who you are going to take. They make sure you don’t carry weapons. They will control everything”. It is not surprising, therefore, that these events are not covered by any media. “There are newspapers that asked me to give them their contact information so they could attend and in the end they ended up writing to them directly and They replied that they did not want to know anything.”, assures Abner Lloveras.
Management is fast and efficient: “Many ultras write to them directly and tell them, ‘I want to fight with whoever, whenever’then they go the next day and stick. Then we are a few of us who come from the MMA, who look for us and there is now more organization, although not much.”
How does an MMA fighter get to fight with ultras?
“Some friends from Sant Andreu, Barcelona, who belonged to a soccer team. Shortly after the followers, the hooligans, wrote to me and said ‘we have a coffee, we have to tell you something‘” says Lloveras, about the day the doors of KOTS opened for him.
It was not new for him, because he already knew him before: “I had already seen things because he had become very popular, Franco Tenaglia and some other familiar faces had already fought there and it was having a lot of impact, although it hadn’t caught my attention either. So, they called me and said, ‘Hey look, we want you to fight Simon. The Savagewhich is one of the toughest in the competition’”.
At first, Lloveras was told that They could ask the organization for up to 15,000 euros. “They are going to pay you a lot,” they told him in that first contact. To which he thought: “15,000 euros? As if it were tomorrow”.
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However, the reality was quite different. “When the fight was already closed, the organization called me and told me, ‘no, no, the UFC will pay you 15,000 euros, but not us. In fact, If you lose, we don’t pay you’. I was amazed, because of course, I have seen it as a job all my life and not paying for work didn’t fit me.”
It was then that he decided to put the idea aside, until a bad moment in his career made that possibility re-emerge in his head. “I didn’t get good fightsthey didn’t offer me anything good, so I was the one who I contacted them again and told them, ‘Hey, look, let’s move forward.’”.
A real risk of death
The fact that there are no rules in KOTS leads to very aggressive fights. And here you can bite or grab your hair, something that, at first, scares even an experienced fighter: “I went without pressure, because it was not something that you said, ‘I need to win to get to the UFC one day.’ I went to Sweden to a very nice hotel and they took very good care of us. When you get to the fight you do get scared, because it is something different from what you have always done. You’re not wearing gloves, you see the asphalt, people with their faces covered, people so dodgy… it’s a little scary”.
The truth is that bloody, wild and illegal fights are attracting more and more attention. Thus, KOTS followers are increasing at a rate that is as fast as it is worrying. “I don’t know if socially I would support it, I don’t think it’s very educational. For young people who really need a good path, I don’t know if it’s the best. I do it as an athlete, because I like to fight. In the end it is a dilemma that depends on the person, the moment and who it is directed to,” he confesses.
I don’t know if socially I would support it, I don’t think it’s very educational.
On that first evening, Abner was 39 years old and faced a 26-year-old opponent. Without knowing it, he ended up becoming the protagonist of the best fight in the history of KOTSin a fight that lasted more than 20 minutes and fascinated the spectators and fighters of this clandestine organization. The crash so astonished the promoters that, for once, they made an exception and They paid about 2,000 euros plus another 1,000 euros in material to Abner Lloveras despite the defeat.
“I finished the fight destroyed. I went to a friend and said, ‘What a shame, I lost.’ And he was with a scared face, telling me, ‘It’s the best fight I’ve ever seen in my life’. That they value that even after losing is very gratifying,” says the fighter.
There are no two without three
In September of this same year came his second participation in KOTS, in a bullring south of Madrid. It was the adrenaline and the feeling powerful, which drew him back to the improvised battlefield. His mentality this time was that of a matador: “I didn’t want to make friends, I was going to win.” And he took victory against a Slovenian hooligan who “it was scary”. “I won that fight by KO, the video went viral because I knocked out a very strong hooligan. And the organization itself wrote to me two days later”explains the Spanish.
He will return, but “only to fight, because of the adrenaline it gives me” already far from those who compete every weekend in King of the Streets and those he calls “zumbados”. Because Abner’s daily life is very different. There are no hooded men who pick him up in high-end cars at the door of his house, nor a criminal record. He has his own fans and trains every day to be better. “Abner, we love you very much. If you want to come back, we already have fights for you whenever you want. Thank you”, is the message he received from the KOTS organization, after that last fight. “I already have this new fight closed for December or January”, he assures. The reality is that not even he knows how many more events he will participate in until his body tells him enough.
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