Tucker Eastwood headlines Crash Combat 8 for the second straight show, and he's doing it bare-knuckle. Saturday, September 5 in Overland Park, Kansas, he meets Thomas Thatcher, who stepped in on short notice fight week after Eastwood's original opponent fell out.

Eastwood is not a social-media fighter. He installs Google Fiber, trains at Rudy Bears Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in downtown Kansas City, and got into the sport at 20 after a friend's uncle needled him into a Sunday sparring session. He got disqualified in his first fight, kept showing up, and now says he doesn't think anybody on the roster wants to fight him without gloves on.

In this episode:

• Why he moved to bare-knuckle MMA: teammate Zeb Vincent's BKFC run, and "finding out who's gonna be meaner"

• The Nico Hamilton fight at Crash Combat 7: stuffed the takedown, finished by neck crank

• "Be the first one to hit, be the last one to hit" – how his game changes when the gloves come off

• On Thatcher taking the fight on a week's notice: "I wouldn't want to fight me"

• "If you're not getting butterflies, you probably shouldn't be competing"

• Training with Rudy Bears and Zeb: "I'm training amongst other badasses"

• Three trucks, a horse, and Cane Corsos: what fighting pays for

• Why the fight is on the Kansas side (Missouri's commission won't sanction bare-knuckle)

• His grandma's first time watching him fight, live in the building Saturday

• BKFC ambitions after this one

• Fearless prediction: "I'm gonna kick his ass. I don't know how else to put it."

Shout-outs: Live to Ship (sponsor), Rudy Bears, Zeb Vincent, Tanner Bieber, his parents and grandma.

Watch Crash Combat 8 live Saturday, September 5 on MMA Futures: https://watch.mmafutures.com

Tucker's fighter profile: https://mmafutures.com

Interview by Nathan Rogers. Recorded fight week, August 2026.

Paul "The Haitian Sensation" Karns was born in Carrefour, Haiti, one of eighteen

children raised by an Ohio missionary who arrived in the early 1970s and never left.

On Saturday he fights Kendell Ward for the 125 lb bare-knuckle Muay Thai title — a

bout he says would make him the first Haitian, and the first fighter out of Kansas,

to compete for one.

He sat down with us before the biggest night of his career.

In this episode:

• Growing up in Carrefour as one of eighteen

• Starting judo at fifteen — and switching to karate after losing a friendly

challenge match to a friend

• Why he'd rather strike than grapple

• Finding Lopez Boxing in Dodge City, and the coach who made it click

• Aaron Pryor, Sean Strickland, and what he took from each

• Fighting for legacy instead of money

• What he expects when the gloves come off Saturday

"I'm bringing that belt back to Dodge City."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

PAUL KARNS

Flyweight (125 lbs) · Dodge City, Kansas

Lopez Boxing Gym — Miguel Lopez

Instagram: @paulkarns

CRASH COMBAT 8

Kendell Ward vs. Paul Karns — 125 lb Bare-Knuckle Muay Thai Title

Saturday, September 5, 2026

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

MMA Futures — See Tomorrow's Stars Today.

Watch live: https://watch.mmafutures.com

Kendell "The Lion" Ward was born in Jamaica with an undeveloped right lung. He spent a month and a half in an incubator, nameless, and the doctors did not expect him to live. Every day his mother went to the chapel and asked God to make him a fighter — "if you're going to take him, take him now, so I don't have to deal with it later."

"He literally took her serious," Kendell says, "and he turned me into a fighter."

On September 5th, at 38, he fights Paul Karns for the first 125 lb bare-knuckle Muay Thai world title ever contested — a rematch he granted himself, because nobody ever granted him one. He talks about the anger he carried as a kid and the mother who told him to go outside and punch a tree, which is why his hands still don't swell when he fights bare-knuckle. About his daughter, who at ten years old told him to leave and focus if he ever wanted to be a world champion — and the promise he made when she sent him away. About arriving in Virginia with $1,800, no home, and his dog, sleeping in a pastor's boxing gym, and building a life there over four years while his children stayed 2,000 miles behind him.

He is also a chef, and he explains the two halves of himself through Bruce Lee: still water is calm, raging water destroys, and he needs both to be whole.

"Fighting just completes me."

Watch the fights: https://watch.mmafutures.com
Fighter profiles, records and fight alerts: https://fan.mmafutures.com

See tomorrow's stars today.

He comes into Synergy FC 30 off the first real setback of his career — a title loss to Tyler Janes at the Lake of the Ozarks card, in a fight where he dropped his opponent with the first punch he threw and then lost the thread. He's unusually clear-eyed about it: he knows exactly which split-second decision cost him, doesn't take anything away from the win, and calls this a bounce-back.

Cohen talks about coming up as a wrestler in Springfield from seventh grade, getting tired of losing in high school and driving to Drury and Nixa to get beaten up by college guys until he wasn't. He talks about Team Fusion, head coach Brad Montgomery, and a Springfield fight scene that's grown fast — helped along by Synergy returning to town and by teammate Julius Walker reaching the UFC.

He explains why he keeps travelling for fights when he could stay home: "You could beat as many cans as you want in your hometown. If you're not travelling and trying to fight the best of the best, what's the point?" He wants to be known as someone who never cherry-picked an opponent.

And he explains where "The Rooster" came from — a friend, an Alice in Chains song, his stepdad's tattoo, and a rooster now permanently on his ribs.

Watch the fights: https://watch.mmafutures.com
Fighter profiles, records and fight alerts: https://fan.mmafutures.com

See tomorrow's stars today.

In episode one, Kyven explains why he changed his mind — and it isn't the answer you'd expect. He co-owns Myriad MMA Academy in Ames, Iowa with Jake Bauer, and found he couldn't honestly coach fighters through something he'd never done. Wrestling practice teaches you to scrap when you see red. It doesn't teach you what it's like to choose a fight ten weeks out and walk toward a cage.

He talks about the translation problem every wrestler hits — "details, details, details" — and about the junior-college national champion who came in certain he was ready, ignored the game plan, and lost by TKO in under a minute. He describes the first time someone put a straight cross on his nose, and the first time he felt what a world champion feels like from the other side of it. He's honest about his rivalry with Kyle Snyder: 3-6 on the record, spread across six days, and he'll explain why he counts it differently.

And he makes the case for the regional scene better than most: these are your neighbors, solving problems in real time, often fighting for ticket sales rather than money. "These are just people that are warriors. They'd be on the battlefield."

Kyven talks about being surrounded by truth-tellers instead of yes-men, about a young fighter named Craig Omozeje finding his way, and about what he thinks he's actually for. He believes he's meant to be a star in this space — and that the point of the stardom is what he does with it.

Watch the fights: https://watch.mmafutures.com
Fighter profiles, records and fight alerts: https://fan.mmafutures.com

See tomorrow's stars today.