Francesco Ricchi is riding high into 2025.
On Saturday — after 19 months on the sideline — the former BKFC World Middleweight Champion returned to the win column with a dominant unanimous decision over Blake LaCaze at the sold-out Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, FL, LIVE worldwide on DAZN.
Ricchi sent LaCaze to the canvas twice, upping his BKFC record to 6-2 with the five-round victory.
“That wasn’t me at my best, but that was me having a lot of fun in there and enjoying myself,” Ricchi says.
Ricchi’s highly anticipated return to the Squared Circle coincides with BKFC’s announcement this week that the world’s fastest growing combat sports promotion will debut this spring in Ricchi’s birth country of Italy.
Ricchi contends that it wouldn’t be a proper Italian debut without the organization’s first — and so far only — Italian-born World Champion.
“I can’t wait, man. I’m already in the gym training for it, so I’ll definitely be ready for it,” the Rome-born Ricchi says.
“I’ve been waiting to fight in Italy since I started fighting. Since I started fighting for BKFC, through the stature and marketing of the promotion, I’ve gotten a ton of new followers in Italy who have been supporting me and paying a lot of attention.
“It’s not exactly easy for them to jump on a plane for 10 hours to come see me fight, so I couldn’t be more excited to bring the show to them.”
Ricchi has one word for what Italian fans can expect on fight night — “fireworks.”
“This sport is so raw and exciting. As I explain it to everybody, that’s the reason I haven’t gone back to MMA since I started with BKFC,” he says. “It’s a spectacle to go to a bare knuckle fight live. The punches are so loud, and it’s so raw. It’s such a raw form of fighting.
“This is the purest form of fighting that you can get.”
