2019 Juggalo Fight Club

Every year  at the Gathering of the Juggalos the band Wolfpac hosts a radio show live during the day and every year they host a bare knuckle boxing event which seems to get more and more brutal every year. I ended up watching the last day of it which featured two preliminary rounds and a championship round. Plus they did a woman’s fight but no one would fight the one woman who volunteered so she offered to fight a dude. Someone agreed and she kicked his ass. Pretty great.

The guy who won the whole thing seemed very much like he knew what he was doing and I am pretty sure he broke someone’s nose in the final fight of the event. It was kinda great. 

The most important thing to know about these photos is that most of them are in black and white. I abhor digital black and white and I generally think that reason most people convert their color images to b&w is because they took bad color photos and they needed to fix it and that is exactly what is happening here. The fights happened in a red circus tent and it made everything red and horrible looking. It was much easier to make them black and white than to try to color balance them so here we are. At the end I took the final fighters outside for some photos that weren’t under the tent so they are still color. Deal with that.

Anyway, more juggalo photos coming soon, but enjoy these for now.

Click here to see all the fight photos from the 2019 Juggalo Fight Club. 

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

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2019 Juggalo Fight Club

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The Return Of Juggalo Fight Club

Last year at the Gathering of the Juggalos a guy named Nebraska Warrior volunteered to fight anyone, without gloves, during the live Psychopathic Radio broadcast hosted by the band Wolfpac. Before Nebraska all the Psychopathic Radio fights were done with boxing gloves and head gear and on roller skates. It started off as this funny thing but in 2013 he and a guy named Burnout went at it until they decided to take off the skates and gloves. It was one of the most brutal things I had ever witnessed and although Nebraska lost he instantly gained juggalo infamy at the Gathering.

Fast forward to last year and he beat everyone who challenged him and with my pals at the Riverfront Times in St. Louis we published this article about Nebraska. I also published even more photos of the fights on DBB over here.

So this year Nebraska was one of the first people I saw at the Gathering. I asked him if he was going to fight again. He was all about it. The next day I saw a juggalo bleeding from the face and I asked him what happened. He had just been in a fight at the Psychopathic Radio stage and lost. I asked him who he fought… It was Nebraska. I couldn’t believe I missed it.

When I saw Nebraska again he promised he was going to fight again and this time I wasn’t going to miss it. The next day I watched him destroy a much larger man who looked like a bruiser. In that guys defense he took everything Nebraska gave him and almost looked like he was enjoying it. When I saw that guy on Saturday he had a huge black eye but was still smiling.

I took a bunch of photos of the fight and Noisey ended up running them in this story about juggalo bare-knuckle boxing.

The next day I watched Nebraska fight a third challenger and made the guy tap out so quickly that I barely got any pictures. The ones I did get were too dark because by the time I figured out my settings it was over. I saw the challenger later that day and he told me he really won the fight because he made Nebraska’s nose bleed and he only tapped out because he didn’t like being choked… right.

When it was all over Nebraska had destroyed three dudes and his only wound was a slightly bloody nose that he told me he was glad to have finally received. On top of all that Nebraska is a great dude and is the nicest most peaceful juggalo when he’s not beating peoples faces in.

Now go look at this gallery of Nebraska Warrior taking on all comers during Wolfpac’s live Psychopathic Radio show. 

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

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Juggalo Fight Club

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Juggalo Fight Club

One of my favorite moments of Gatherings past was when Wolfpac while hosting Psychopathic Radio had people box blindfolded on roller skates. It seemed like a funny idea, but it wasn’t until two fighters decided to take off the skates, blindfolds and boxing gloves that it got good. I happened to be passing by on a golf cart when I jumped out to photograph the end of the fight. The winner didn’t matter because both fighters brutalized each other and hugged at the end. It was both brutal and inspiring.

Cut to a few years later one of those fighters was back. His name is Nebraska and oddly enough he is from Nebraska. He fought not one, but TWO fighters and beat them both soundly ending the second fight with a knee to the guts that made it pretty much impossible for the other fighter to breathe. Any fighter knows that it’s the gut shot that will put you down before the head shot and Nebraska worked the body after taking several shots to the head.

There was a fight in between featuring a Canadian grappler and a dude who seemed to relish getting punched in the face. It ended after four rounds with the Canuck giving up after realizing he was going to have to murder the other fighter if he wanted to end it. He ended up forfeiting rather than destroying the other dude which I am pretty sure he was capable of. He got made fun of but it was a pretty reasonable move.

The whole event was MC’d by Wolfpac & the Kottonmouth Kings and you can read a more elaborate play by play from my friend Drew Ailes who wrote about the event for the Village Voice. There’s a profile of Nebraska in there as well. He seems like a really good dude. Worth reading.

And lastly click here to see all the wild pictures from Psychopathic Radio’s juggalo fight club!

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Juggalo Fight Club

 

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The Rest Of The 2019 Gathering Of The Juggalos

And that’s a wrap. All my photos from the 20th annual Gathering of the Juggalos are up. I do have a couple more things coming that I did for other blogs but it sounds like they might not be up for a little bit so I will just add them to the links below when it is published, otherwise, this is everything. 

It was a wild year, and a bit of a throwback when things at the Gathering seemed a little crazier. I took a ton of photos and had a bunch of clients so it worked out really well. It was my 10th Gathering and hopefully next time you hear the word juggalo out of my mouth it will be because I am getting ready to publish my book cataloguing the last decade. I am pretty ready to retire from juggalo anthropology but you never know, they might just drag me back next year.

This gallery is over 300 images and is just everything I had left over. You can click below for that gallery, but then all my other juggalo coverage will be below that.

Complete 2019 Gathering of the Juggalos Coverage:

The Daily Beast: Inside the 20th Gathering of the Juggalos: A Weekend of Drunk Clowns, Public Nudity, and Total Mayhem

Boing Boing: Summer is over. Juggalos are forever. 

Brooklyn Vegan: Gathering of the Juggalos 2019: NSFW pics (ICP, GWAR, Geto Boys, more)

Merry Jane: Insane Cannabis Posse: Weed-Whacked Photos of the 2019 Gathering of the Juggalos

Cell Vision: The Gathering of the Juggalos

Driven By Boredom Coverage:

The Best Of The 20th Annual Gathering Of The Juggalos

Music At The 2019 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2019 Juggalo Fight Club

Mike Busey & The Busey Beauties Return

Night Juggalos

Burn Motherfucker Burn

The Rest Of The 2019 Gathering Of The Juggalos (This Post)

NSFW Juggalettes (Paid Site)

 

Now finally, click here to see the rest of my photos from the 2019 Gathering of The Juggalos.

Gathering Of The Juggalos

Gathering Of The Juggalos

Gathering Of The Juggalos

Gathering Of The Juggalos

Gathering Of The Juggalos

Gathering Of The Juggalos

Gathering Of The Juggalos

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Random Events At The 2018 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Okay, let me dump one more Gathering of the Juggalos post on you today. This one is sort of a grab bag where I put photos that didn’t make much sense anywhere else. The Gathering has a ton of events during the day and then at 6pm the main stage band start. They end sometime after midnight and then the after parties start. The issue for me is that during the day the sunlight sucks and people are kinda hung over so it makes more sense to show up around 4pm and work until 2am or something, but then at night the light sucks too because you are shooting with a flash and the people you are traveling with talk you into leaving early.

So long story short is that I have a handful of photos from a handful of things. I think there are maybe two photos from some sort of Prince themed party and a few from a “Juggalo Yacht Club” party because that’s a real thing that happened. There’s a few other shots from some other after parties too but the gallery is honestly mostly fights.

I have blogged about the Juggalo Fight Club a lot. It’s a day time event thrown by the band Wolfpac who run one of the day time stages. It started out with juggalos on roller skates boxing and then over the years devolved into straight up bare knuckles boxing before eventually becoming a little more organized with a makeshift ring and MMA style gloves and things like that. 

This year I only got to see two matches (well 2.5) and I had to leave before the championship round but I did get to photograph the first ever female juggalo fight club fight which lasted about 15 seconds before one of the girls hurt her ear and quit. Fortunately another juggalette jumped in and actually won in pretty convincing fashion. The girl who lost bloodied the winner but then got her own head blooded by the ring and ended up having to quit after one round. She looked a little concussed but seemed fine shortly after. Let’s hope she is and let’s hope there are more juggalette fights next year cause feminism.

Oh and the ICP seminar is in here but the photos suck because they held it under a red tent so not the greatest lighting situation around and I am not gonna convert my photos to digital black and white like some hack. You heard me.

Click here to see the photos from the random events from the 2018 Gathering of the Juggalos. 

Shaggy 2 Dope

Juggalette Fight Club

Juggalo Yacht Club

Juggalo Fight Club

Gathering Of The Juggalos

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2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos – Day 3

Okay, I promised two updates today but I lied. It’s 8pm already and no one wants a post at fucking 11pm so you get this one today, another one tomorrow and then back to naked people and party pictures on Monday. Let’s get into this shit.

Day three of the Gathering was my longest day there. I got there early cause I wanted to shoot a bunch of day time stuff for my “Juggalo Island” gallery. (Bonus content: watch this fucking video.) After being outside for an hour I wanted to die so I headed over to Psychopathic Radio to take some photos of the madness that Wolfpac’s gets into every day. The first event they had was a juggalo drinking contest. They had two juggalos take 10 shots each. One of them made it about two shots in before puking. The other crushed his. After he was finished and the other guy was done vomiting, the sick juggalo finished the rest of his shots. I saw him 45 minutes later and he had completely lost his fucking mind. Good times.  After that they had a round of the infamous juggalo fight club. Two brothers faced off and kicked the shit out of each other for three rounds. That was real fucking enjoyable.

At some point during all that my GOTJ date Gia Paige put stickers on her nipples which made the rest of the day interesting because every five minutes we’d be stopped by some juggalo who wanted to smoke weed with her or take her photo or in the case of a cop want to take her stickers off and put new ones on. Another cop just said “Niiiicee” to her which was creepier than anything the juggalos did. How delightful.

After that the bands started playing. I shot a mosh pit and ate a far too spicy burrito while waiting for Waka Flocka to go on. He played one of the best sets I have ever seen at the Gathering in 2015 and I was really psyched for his set. He did not disappoint. He called on juggalos to get him drunk and people threw beers at him which he caught and chugged. He then was handed a bottle of Fireball which he chugged as well. He jumped into the crowd and played several songs in there while juggalos and security chased him around. I jumped over the photo pit and followed him too. I even got off a couple selfies. After he got back on stage he brought some girls out of the crowd and that was fun too. Overall I took way too many photos of him and posted way too many of them here. Enjoy.

The night ended with fucking Vanilla Ice headlining. He was mostly promoting a home improvement show on the DIY Network or something. Honestly I stuck around for two songs, took some photos and went back to my hotel cause I was exhausted and let’s just say I wanted to hang out with Gia Paige more than I wanted to see a rap rock version of Ice Ice Baby. Sue me.

Now click here for a ton of mildly NSFW photos from the 2017 Gathering of the Juggalos in Oklahoma City. 

2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Waka Flocka Flame

2017 Gathering Of The Juggalos

Vanilla Ice

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And Now The Rest Of The 2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos…

Okay! This is it! The final 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos post and now I can go on vacation! Because I was just trying to figure out how to get these up as fast as possible this gallery is massive. This gallery has over 400 images and I am gonna scroll through them now and see if I see anything worth talking about. Let’s go!

Most of these are just random crowd shots and juggalo portraits that didn’t make it into any of the other galleries. I shot a lot of face paint and tattoos and signs for Noisey and the LA Weekly (links below) so there’s a lot of that stuff in here. Can you spot the selfie these girls made me take with them? There’s a bunch of Wolfpac and Busey Beauty stuff in here so lot’s of eye candy if you are creepy like that. There are some party photos in here too from the late night party tents they have set up. Also these images are all in order so you will get to night time photos and when day time photos hit again that’s the next day. That’s probably common sense but whatever.

Day three and day four have some juggalo fight club stuff in it. I have been covering that for years but it didn’t really deserve it’s own post this year. Sadly one of my favorite juggalos, Nebraska Warrior, finally lost his title to a wrestler named Strychnine which I assume he spells incorrectly cause that’s a real juggalo thing to do. It was a good match though. There are a bunch of photos from Miss Juggalette which I shot for the LA Weekly. It’s just girls standing on stage but there was a nice moment when the winner talked about her social anxiety and how she just entered to help get over her fear. Everyone started crying and hugged her. I was rooting for her because she did a Jessica Rabbit performance and was also not wearing underwear.

Anyway that’s kinda it. Lemme just throw up the links to all my coverage down here so I can come back to this later to see everything if I need to find it and you can lurk it as well if you haven’t already.

Driven By Boredom Coverage:

LA Weekly Coverage:

Noisey Coverage:

Chicagoist Coverage:

And now finally click here to see the rest of the photos from the 2016 Gathering of the Juggalos!

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

2016 Gathering Of The Juggalos

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