Vacated or Stripped: Why Isn’t Austin Trout BKFC Welterweight Champion anyone
What’s the Status of the BKFC Welterweight Championship?
The BKFC Champions Summit in July brought several landmark announcements from the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC), laying out key plans for the promotion’s near future.
Among the highlights was the launch of a four-man tournament to crown a new lightweight champion. The participants include current interim champ Ben Bonner, former champion Franco Tenaglia—who was stripped for competing outside his BKFC contract—former two-division champion and “King of the Streets” titleholder Luis Palomino, and former boxing world champion and current BKFC welterweight champion Austin “No Doubt” Trout.
The tournament semifinals are set to feature Bonner vs. Tenaglia and a rematch between Trout and Palomino—a rematch of their February 2024 bout in which Trout claimed the welterweight title.
BKFC founder David Feldman also announced that with Trout entering the lightweight title tournament, an interim welterweight champion would be crowned in the main event of BKFC 79, where Gorjan Slaveski will face Julian Lane.
Fast forward three weeks, and as we look toward the event in Sturgis, South Dakota, the official poster for BKFC 79 now reads “Vacant Welterweight Title.” The BKFC rankings reflect the same update: Trout is no longer listed as champion, but rather as the No. 1 contender.
This raises questions—especially considering Trout successfully defended the title just this past April against Carlos Trinidad-Snake.
Naturally, I had to ask: Did I miss an announcement? Was there a quiet press release?
I reached out to BKFC’s PR team for clarification on the status of the welterweight title. Their response:
“My understanding is that Austin vacated the welterweight title. Slaveski vs. Lane is being contested for the vacant BKFC Welterweight World Title.”
That’s a major piece of news to quietly slip under the radar.
When I asked Trout directly whether he had vacated the title, his response was:
“I expressed desire to fight for the 155 belt but never said I was giving up the title I just successfully defended.”
And when I relayed BKFC’s response to him, his immediate reaction was:
“Never!!!”
So, we’re left wondering:
If Trout did vacate the title, why was it kept so quiet—and why is he denying it?
And if he didn’t vacate the belt, was he stripped simply for wanting to become a two-division champion?
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