Underground Fights Near Me in California: What Actually Exists
Unsanctioned prizefighting is illegal in California, and the state has not licensed professional bare-knuckle boxing as of 2026. That is the honest starting point. The scenes that do exist around Oakland and Los Angeles operate either as semi-private fight clubs that frame themselves as community events, or as fully clandestine arrangements. There is no public venue you can buy a ticket to and watch an illegal fight in California. What follows is a description of the documented scene, the legal reality, and the way people actually make contact, with the safety framing this subject demands.
The legal reality first
California regulates combat sports through the California State Athletic Commission (CSAC), which licenses boxing, mixed martial arts, and kickboxing. Any prizefight, meaning a fight for money or prizes, held outside that licensing framework is unlawful. Promoting or holding an unlicensed prizefight in California is a misdemeanor under the state Business and Professions Code, and a fight that produces serious injury can expose organizers and participants to assault-related charges regardless of whether both fighters agreed to take part. California does not recognize a broad consent defense for fights that risk serious bodily harm.
Bare-knuckle boxing sits in a separate gap. The CSAC has not adopted the bare-knuckle rules that more than 30 other states now use, so there is no legal route to a sanctioned bare-knuckle event in the state. Promoters who have wanted to run bare-knuckle cards in the past have done so on tribal sovereign land, which sits outside state commission jurisdiction, rather than under CSAC.
Where the documented action is
Two California organizations come up repeatedly in coverage of the American underground.
Oakland: East Bay Rats
East Bay Rats Fight Night is the oldest documented club of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1996 by Trevor Latham as a motorcycle club, the Rats began holding boxing-style fights in their clubhouse courtyard in Oakland. The format is closer to backyard boxing than to no-rules brawling: gloves, volunteer fighters, a roped-off or fenced courtyard, and a crowd of regulars. Fighters are not paid. The club has been covered by mainstream outlets over its long run, which makes it the most visible and least secretive entry on this list. Even so, the events occupy a legal gray zone, and the Rats have historically framed them as private gatherings rather than public prizefights.
Los Angeles: Backyard Squabbles
Backyard Squabbles, founded in 2020 by Damian Gutierrez and Joshua Brito, runs amateur boxing and MMA fights with gloves in a backyard ring in the Los Angeles area. It belongs to the social-media generation of backyard promotions: fights are filmed and posted, fighters are local volunteers, and the appeal is built around personalities and rivalries rather than purses. The gloves-and-rules framing puts it closer to amateur combat sport than to the bare-knuckle, no-rules end of the spectrum.
Both of these sit at the milder, more organized end. The genuinely hidden material, fights arranged over encrypted chats with no public footprint, is by definition not documented and not something this page can point you toward.
How people actually find fights
The honest answer is that there is no directory. People who end up in California's informal fight scenes generally arrive through one of three channels:
- Combat-sport gyms. Boxing and MMA gyms are where most participants in clubs like the Rats started. Coaches and training partners are the usual social bridge to anything off the books.
- Existing communities. Motorcycle clubs, neighborhood crews, and online local groups carry word of upcoming events. These are closed networks built on prior trust, not open invitations.
- Public-facing promotions' own channels. Clubs that film and post, like Backyard Squabbles, recruit through their social accounts. That is the only "open" door, and it is for the rules-based, gloved end of the scene.
There is no phone number for an underground fight, and anyone advertising paid illegal fights openly should be treated with suspicion.
A note on safety
Unsanctioned fights have none of the protections that make licensed combat sport survivable: no pre-fight medicals, no weight matching, no ringside physician, no commission oversight, and frequently no insurance. The clubs at the organized end mitigate some of this with gloves, headgear, and experienced cornering, but the legal exposure remains real for everyone involved. Anyone drawn to this should weigh sanctioned amateur boxing or MMA, which California licenses and which carry actual medical safeguards, against an illegal fight that offers none.
FAQ
Is it legal to watch an underground fight in California? Attending is a lower-risk position than organizing or fighting, but spectators at an illegal prizefight can still be cited, and the event itself is unlawful. There is no clean legal way to attend an unsanctioned prizefight in the state.
Can I find a bare-knuckle event in California? Not a licensed one. The state has not adopted bare-knuckle rules as of 2026, so any bare-knuckle card in California would either be illegal or held on tribal land outside state jurisdiction.
Are East Bay Rats and Backyard Squabbles legal? Both operate in a gray area. They use gloves and frame events as private or amateur rather than as paid prizefights, which is part of how they have persisted, but neither operates under CSAC licensing.
