Get unlimited access to everything VICE has to offer.

Turn off all ads on VICE.com

Exclusive New VICE Documentaries

Member Exclusive Features & Columns

Turn off all ads on VICE.com

Exclusive New VICE Documentaries

Member Exclusive Features & Columns

Turn off all ads on VICE.com

Exclusive New VICE Documentaries

Member Exclusive Features & Columns

4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

English Ultraviolence: Why Extreme ‘No Rules’ Fight Clubs are On the Rise in the UK

Jake Hanrahan, host of new series Heavy Weekend, explains the allure of “black banner romanticism” and beating people senseless.

Share on X (Opens in new window)X

Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Facebook

Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard

While you were busy QTing some podcaster’s terrible opinion, two lads were plastering each other’s blood across the concrete floor of a warehouse and hugging afterwards. While you were fretting about the points on your license, a girl was hanging out the window of a drift car doing donuts around suburban Belgium in a hail of fireworks. The moral of the story is you never know what people get up to in their spare time, but a lot of them are probably having more fun than you.

Heavy Weekend is an Away Days limited series made in collaboration with VICE about those people. Created by Jake Hanrahan and Jonny Pickup, Heavy Weekend brings you drive-by dispatches from the outskirts of society. You’ll see underground fight clubs, illegal street racing, mysterious armed organizations, and other local countercultures that exist in total ignorance of over-managed, mass-surveilled modern life—or as a direct result of it. You can decide for yourself when you watch it.

The first episode, English Ultraviolence, looks into the rise of “no rules”: an extreme form of fighting that permits head stamping, choking, and eye-gouging. Getting to the heart of its growing popularity, the documentary spends some time with Urban Gladiators, one of the first “no rules” fight clubs in the UK, where fights are arranged in hidden locations and aired on private PPV. Explaining more about the phenomenon, Hanrahan stresses that this isn’t a combat sport. It’s “organized ultraviolence.” 

VICE: Underground “no rules” fight clubs are spreading rapidly across Europe. Why do you think that is?Jake Hanrahan: It’s only in the last five years that it’s been spreading. Before that, it was really just King of the Streets (KOTS). But it’s become popular now because people have seen it online, and there are a lot of young men that like the idea of fighting without restrictions, without regulations, without jumping........

© Vice