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You're listening to the Away Days podcast on the ground outside reporting from the underbelly with me Jake Hanrahan. To watch Awaydays documentaries, go to YouTube dot com slash at away Days TV. This is part one, No Rules Is No Rules, Episode two. This podcast is a production of H eleven Studio and Call Zone Media. I leave the hotel at eleven pm and jump in the rental card that I've got. The guy at the desk said he'd upgraded me, given me a much bigger car for camp.
Turns out the streets and can a very narrow and the likelihood of scratching a car increases significantly when said car is upgraded to being much bigger. Clearly he was looking to pocket the deposit. Let me just tell you they really hate Brits here in the south of France. I take my time driving through the night, following the map to get to the destination this victor fella sent me earlier. I drive up steep hills and I can see the sparkling lights of the harbor in the distance,
where celebrity yachts bob up and down. The roads here are dark. The few street lights that are installed on this steep incline illuminate only big gates with high walls. This is a compound type community for people that make huge profits. Even in the dark. The area seems quiet, discreete, and affluent. After about ten minutes, are pulled to a stop at the location. It's a turning circle at the top of a hills, surrounded by fenced off wasteland, characteristic
for the opulence of the rest of this area. A message Victor, I'm here. He's seen it. No reply, though I sit around waiting. This is surely a ruse. They're laughing now about how they tricked the nosy reporter me into traveling to can into a rich gated community. No less to see a no rules fight on concrete. I'm sure of it. I get out the car and wander around the street. Lights are dull here, but enough to
illuminate the Waldorf housing compounds connected to the wasteland. It's the tail end of a wealthy street, but with a few strangely abandoned buildings on the wasteland, no doubt ready to be torn down by developers. My phone buzzes Victor. Two minutes. I head back to the car and wait. Sure enough, a small black VW pulls up the hill, headlights and blur faces.
Inside. The car is full.
It pulls to a stop near me, and Lad's dressed in all black hop out. They look around. They seem paranoid. A few of them are wearing black face masks. One has sunglasses on. Past midnight. I exit my car wearily and greet them. They nod, say hi, and then two of them tell me their names. It's Victor and Leon. Thank god, it's not a scam. I'm not allowed to record at this point, but in thick French accents, they explain in English that they just wanted to meet me
before the fight tomorrow. They seem more nervous than I am. But the fight is actually real and it will be taking place in one of the abandoned buildings behind the spiked fence of the wasteland. Honestly, I can't think of a worse place to hold an illegal underground fight. But they explain that not everything in can is Rolex and Hollywood. The palm trees, the yachts, the red carpets. That's all the rich folk to and can into a playground for themselves.
They say there's another side to the city. Though that's where these guys are from. Lower income, drugs and inequality. Due to the ultra wealthy buying up the land and the luxury bricks and water can property prices rise even for those living below the breadline. The richest ten percent of people in France owe nearly half of all the
money and property in the country. As you can imagine, the beauty of the southern French coast is a huge magnet for this abundant wealth, and so Leon and Victor explained to me that there's a deeper reasoning for them to hold an illegal, violent exit society type event inside the belly of the Beast. They tell me that this
is their way of taking back their city. Gentrification and movie stars might push them out of their own homes, but they won't stop them turning up and taking over one of their abandoned buildings for a no rules fight. There's some defiance to this, as they explain it, their focus isn't necessarily political. It's just a very straightforward fuck you to a society that's happy to abandon them.
I'm not gonna lie.
I quite like these lads already taking back something unavailable to them due to hyper plutocracy, even if just for a moment, is quite appealing. I've seen my own town back in England become more and more expensive while conditions get worse and worse. Why because rich yuppies from London are able to buy a nice but cheap houses near the train station and commute one hour into the city for work. Problem is they spend next to no money in our town and simply use it as a place
to sleep. We got all the negatives of a dying town and none of the questionable positives of gentrification. It's not exactly the yuppies fault, but it's nonetheless excruciating to see the council try to rebrand the shitthole as a business hub while working families from the area get poorer and poorer. I like the idea of Leon and Victor's fight club. I agreed to head back in the morning, very early in the morning, though, they said like in four hours. They want it to be low key before
the rich folk wake up. I head back to my hotel and set about ten alarms. After a few hours of trying to sleep, my first alarm goes off.
Great.
I couldn't sleep. Honestly, I'm pretty buzzing to see my first properly organized no rules fight club, as opposed to just two lads meeting up like Joey and Bashtid. I get ready, first down about a pint of coffee, and drive up to the gate community where the fight will take place. As the sun rises, the beauty of the is visible from every corner of the winding roads up to the fight area. The view alone must add an extra fifty grand to the house prices here must be incredible to wake up to that.
Every morning.
Drive up the hill and the total and complete contrast dawns on me, the safe, sanitized, wealthy neighborhood and the organized ultra violence that's about to take place. It's perfect. No rules is more than just fighting. I pull up to the wasteland and I can see it all now. A few broken down buildings behind, a spiked iron fence, overgrown shrubbery in every direction, a huge concrete water tower nearby. It's a strange mess at the highest point of what's
otherwise a beautiful place to live. One of the lads steps out from the makeshift fight venue, all in black, head to toe, balaklava hood up emotions for me to come through a bent out gap in the railings. So I jump out the car and off I go up.
How are you doing? No bad? Three? The gap is the arena fight over here.
Yeah, it's a crazy view.
There's a lot of people who around here. No worry about the police. You didn't catch that.
I said that, you're not worried about the police, and Victor said, we're gonna say proper delinquents. As for the building, it's a crumbling concrete block with two floors. It's maybe an old observation post. Everything 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, oh it's spotless. Whilst I was trying to sleep, this group of young French terrorways spent last night getting the
place ready. They swept out the broken glass and piles of rubbish and what the concrete ground till it shined. They're very proud of it. This is their first proper event as the recently formed No Rules Fight Club, which now has a name FPVS. What FPVS stands for is hard to translate properly into English, but it basically means this, don't come around here. Trying to suck our dicks when we get big. No, I am not joking. That is about the clearest interpretation you can get. Two lads who
founded FPVS. Victor and Leon are both twenty years old, and they look it. Neither of quite grown into their frames yet, and they're hardly the typical street fighters you might think of. But they're lean, alure and they hold themselves in a way that shows they're probably prone to mischief. Despite being up all night getting things ready, they're still full of energy or cocaine or a mix of both. Either way, they cannot wait for the chaos.
What is it about fighting that you love?
Sodri and Alindra, You don't have any another problem or you're just think to fight, concentrate and we love comportation and see who's the best.
Leon has an air of old school French arrogance about him when he speaks, he's quite a lot like the guy that upgraded me with the big car. He's aloof shrugs a lot, that's just him. Victor is the opposite. He can't help but be friendly and candid. They were not duo, but it works. Both are well organized, highly motivated, and they both love fistfighting in a world that thinks they shouldn't.
I can express myself nothing, the fact to help people, in the fact of extra vertin energy inside me. The society always you always be counted by people you can't really explore. And when there is no one, no rule, and no glove, you're just free, like you're just one and one, No no knife, no, just and one and one. And we see like it's the greatest thing. I think it's the best you.
Feel like you said that, like society is always telling you like calm down, calm down. Do you think there's something inside you that, like inside everybody that can't always do that?
I think, yeah, I think it's really important because here it's in a city where they want to show to people who they are. But there are nobody, you know, there is rich people in front of the beach.
There nobody.
You can't explode, you can't express way hourly inside of you.
So do you do you prefer it? There is a level? Yeah, I think I think.
I think it's it's grown adrenaline. You know, it's more magical, like you see when it's legal, like you need to add two A lot of foul, a lot of nile of paper. You need to do this to do this. No, no, we do what we want, what we want, we do. We don't have any restriction.
We like our.
Activities, we like our art, and this art it's much important if it does right away.
So you see this as like art. You think this is art. Yeah, that's really interesting. You know.
I don't know the definition of art. But when it's beautiful and you like it, you're crave it a little bit. You see it, you're happy a little bit. It's it's it's a shock for if you want to see people the body, but it's art.
It's I don't like the castle. I like this. You like fighting.
This is art. I don't like Pocasso. I like this for young lads like Leon No rules is a kind of art. The two lads who will be fighting for FPVS today in can I named Louis and Warren. The FPVS guys leave me up the stairs to meet them. The boys in the early twenty and are up on the remains of the abandoned structure's outdoor patio area, the 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, the sun has risen into a cloudless sky. The famous yachts at the harbor are twinkling, reflecting the light from the sun. Directly in front of me, though, 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 the court Desore, the unapologetic ugliness of
pre arranged violence is most compelling. Several FPVS members, of which there are around a dozen, help the two fighters get in the zone. They wrap their hands, hold pads, g them up. Warren is black, about six foot two, muscular, lean and as a fighter's gait.
Louis is white, about five.
Nine, skinny, fat, and honestly seems out of his depth. I ask Louis why he came here, why he's decided to fight in such a hard core manner.
Why are you going to do this myself?
To be about the concrete floor, You're not worried about that. It's quite dangerous, I know. Luck As for Warren, it looks fine, confident, ready to go. Not nervous, Yes, no, not nervous.
First time. Good luck.
From where I'm standing, the odds don't look great. And let me tell you, as a teenager, I got my head kicked in plenty of times. I'm speaking from experience. This doesn't look great. Warren is shredded head to toe and Louis looks entirely uncoordinated without any real conditioning. It's, of course true that muscles don't win fights. With no rules, anything can happen. But still I feel a bit worried for Louis. I asked Leon what he thinks about the
clear size difference. Indifferently, he just tells me they weigh the same. He shrugs it off and reminds me that Louis put himself here. He contacted the FPVS guys via 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 are still warming up with the FPVS crew,
Deryl Mail and all around eighteen to twenty five. There are a mix of several different races, and each of them is dressed in a black tracksuit with various different brands of trainers. They're a blur of night tear Can, Balenciaga, Berbery and EA seven. Some of them have specially printed FPVS hoodies and T shirts. They mill around helping fighters,
chatting and rolling splits. So the kind of lads the upper class of the Riviera probably crossed the road from They seem jovial enough to me, though when I get on well with them. Now, I'm obviously an outsider in this world, but they're all pretty chilled about it. No one has a real issue with me being there. I sit chatting to one of the guys as he holds pads for Louis, who is throwing wayward punches here and there. The FPVS guys cannot wait for the violence to start.
Then we hear a shout from downstairs.
It's time.
Leon gathers the fighters and everyone heads down the half collapsed stairs into the main area where fights take place. There were 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 FPBS logo is spray painted onto the concrete. A wolf with red eyes. The air smells like weed, smoke and stale sweat. Everyone inside is buzzy. Some are Warrent's friends, some are FPBS, and others are unaffiliated who guns and street fighters who've just come to watch the show is on. Louis looks nervous. Warren calm. He cracks his neck and bounces on his toes. Ready to go, Louis picks up 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 balling starts, everyone in the room sings the French national anthem with their handheld on their heart, an unexpected show of unity amidst this underground scene. He goes on and on and on. Everyone in the room, both masked and not sings along. Everyone but me, of course, I am British. I want to be sick now, many
joking a bit la masse ends. Finally, the two fighters bump fists and head to opposite corners of the room. Leon signals by nodding at Victor. Victor gives the go ahead.
It's on. Fight.
Two fighters meet each other in the center. Louis throws a badly timed roundhouse kick. The bounce is clean off of Warren's leg. Warren throws two jabs straight into Luis's face, catching his chin, his day.
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's face. Louis goes feetle 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's forehead and temple. Louis throws up his hands and taps
the floor. He's done. Leon grabs warr pulls him off of Louis.
The fight is over.
Louie is helped up offer the concrete by FPVS lads. Wilt's bruises and bumps already pat in 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 embraced sincerely, and the crowd cheers even Louder win or lose respect in this world is essential.
You're brave man.
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 this. There's something uniquely daring about no rules. You could end up permanently disfigured, brain damaged, or dead, way easier than every other combat sport. No rules isn't sport.
Ask Louis how he's feeling in as makeshift fpvs. Medics whoever's holding the plasters an antiseptic tend to his wounds. He tells me he feels good. He says he lost, but that's part of it. He's got blood in his mouth and knuckles of graze the skin around his eyes. Bit will live. Could have been a lot worse. No serious damage. I'm joking. I asked what his family might think when he comes home with his face backstop. 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. He tells me he traveled overnight for this and months to fight again. He's an ice lad. That 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.
The clandestine FPVS event was success. News of the fight club is spreading fast across France, already all across Instagram and Telegram. Afterwards, I head down to a pub in the city with Leon and Victor, out of one world into another. Hours ago we were in the bando watching two fighters try to incapacitate one another. Now we're in central can amongst Rolex shops, PALMDI or Smam and the
ugliest Italian sports cars ever built of Aguinness. The FPVS lads tell me how they're different to cots and that they never pay anyone to fight. No one involved gets a penny. If anything, they're in a deficit after preparing it all. It's just for sport, they say, somewhat ironically. However, Leon and Victor explain to me that whilst they're different from Cots, they are of course inspired by them. All of the new Noruls fight clubs across Europe wouldn't exist
if it wasn't for them. All roads lead to King of the Streets.
Before they start King of the Streets.
Hype Crew was one of many active football who look in firms in Europe. They'd meet mostly in the fields and forests of Scandinavia, fighting their rivals in pacts of ten against ten, six against six, fifteen against twelve, twenty five against twenty five, whatever was agreed on between organizers. This kind of activity takes place in secret all over the continent every single weekend. It's nothing new. Hype Crew, though, was when they started fighting. They were unique from the
get go. They were a football who look in firm without.
A football team.
They're just all about the violence. This is not as unusual as it sounds amongst the seeing. It's an open secret. The plenty of football who logans in Mainland and Europe don't actually care that.
Much about the football.
It's the aggression, camaraderie, and sense of belonging that they love. Football is a base to gather for young men looking to be part of something the world over. For hooligans, the fight and sets that in stone. No matter how advanced or progressive or civilized life gets, it will always be true that there is something primordally special about forging bonds of friendship through fighting together. People might say they
have your back, but do they. Perhaps your best friend remembers your birthday every year, calls you when you're lonely, and supports your endeavors. But would they stand and fight if you were attacked? Would they run? Would they abandon you to get your head kicked in the first majority of people will never have to find out and probably don't even think about it. And that's a good thing, I guess. But things like this don't matter until they do.
For hooligans, they already know their friends would stand and fight every single time. This is the foundation of their bond from the get go. It's almost like the course of a friendship in reverse. The most literal form of backing your friends is what they begin with. Anything else is a bonus to your average law abiding citizen. This is a horrible way to live. They have no decorum, etc.
Et cetera.
But honestly, who cares They don't They're choosing to live outside of society.
Now.
My point is, the reason King of the Streets is so clandestine, yet so well organized and so influential is likely because it started off from this base of arranged fighting hooliganism. Some Hype crew members were hooligans for various different firms in Sweden before forging their syndicate of what is essentially a freelance firm with no loyalty to anything but each other. This, I believe is a big part of what's kept King of the Streets so consistent and
so well respected in the underground. When I get back home to the UK, the lads from FPVS contact me and let me know that everything went well. There haven't been a rest. All the fighters are happy and their fight club is getting dozens and dozens of new applications to fight now that the footage is all across Instagram. All in all, despite the pretty basic fight, things were
a success. It also turns out the word has gotten out in the clandestine fighting underground that there's a reporter trying to make a film about no rules fighting.
Let an old me.
Some don't like it, some don't care, but others are pretty interested. It seems in general that these people trust what I'm doing and understand they don't have some snitch ulterior motive to out them as lunatics or whatever. I'm just interested. Also, to be honest with you, I don't really see what's wrong with grown adults deciding to fight each other consensually in private, in a controlled setting. That's their business. Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it's wrong.
There's also some irony in the way states condemn no rules. For example, one fighter who's undefeated on cots was banned from fighting in professional mma in his own country for doing no rules. The state decided he was too violent. Meanwhile, that same government sent millions to a foreign country to assist them in carrying out daily war crimes in the Middle East. You tell me what's more violent, no rules
fighting or bombing children. Now, I don't mean to be dramatic, but this is something else I find fascinating about no rules. It unintentionally exposes human nature's undying connection to violence. No rules is just unapologetically honest about it.
Now.
As you can probably tell, this is a male dominated scene. However, I've got words since returning from can that there's about to be the very very first female no Rules fight. It will be happening soon in Germany. More on that in the next episode. If you've been listening to the Away Days podcast next week episode three. To watch independent Away Days documentaries, subscribe to our channel at YouTube dot com slash at Awaydays TV. Your Wait Days Podcast is
a production of H eleven Studio for Cool Zone Media. Reporting, producing, writing, editing and research by me Jake Hanrahan, co producing by Sophie Lichtman, music by Sam Black, sound mixed by Splicing Block, Photography by Johnny Pickup and Louis Hollis. Graphic design by Laura Adamson and Casey Highfields
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