Meet three local fighters pulling no punches at Saturday’s bare-knuckle event inside the Wells Fargo Center

As recently as a decade ago, it was the underbelly of the fight game, held in an underground circuit of muted hues in indoor parking garages, abandoned buildings, dank basements, car shops, barren warehouses, and corner bodegas under car lights before a small circle of guys.

Fists were balled. Elbows were drawn. Punches were thrown. All without boxing gloves. Skin on skin. Bare knuckles.

In the late 1800s, the tableau took place on wooden river barges floating in city harbors, lit by tiki torches — at least until the local police came and busted it up.

No one is going to raid the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday night. What was once illegal is now legal, with the Pennsylvania debut of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship. The event, dubbed KnuckleMania V, is headlined by former UFC lightweight champion Eddie “The Underground King” Alvarez, who will take on former UFC lightweight-featherweight contender Jeremy Stephens.

In what is expected to be a crowd of 17,000 fight-crazed fans, three local boxers — John Garbarino, Zed Montanez and Pat Sullivan — will try and make their claim to stardom in a budding sport many still feel is barbaric. However, a growing number in younger generations feel otherwise about bare-knuckle boxing, specifically in areas of the world like the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America, where bare-knuckle boxing has thrived.

Garbarino, Montanez and Sullivan have similar backgrounds and common goals: become the next stars within BKFC’s ever-rising promotion.

“I think what really makes these guys unique is the fact that they want to test themselves in front of the largest crowd in Philadelphia combat sports history,” said BKFC founder David Feldman, Sr., who said that eight years ago he was personally on the brink of suicide. He has turned BKFC into a multi-million-dollar business. “They believe in themselves, and they think they can get stardom. That’s what makes these group of individuals that we chose very unique. We want to blow these guys up.”

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John Garbarino, 29, is a public adjuster who owns a claims company based in Philadelphia. He was born in South Philly and raised in South Jersey. In his formative years, he says he was kicked out of 12 schools — mostly for fighting. Garbarino, who originally aspired to be a chef, gets teary-eyed remembering the kid he used to be, one who drove his parents and everyone else around him up a wall. Seeing who he is now, it’s tough to understand who he used to be.

On Saturday, Garbarino will fight at 175 pounds, competing in five two-minute rounds against 40-year-old Apostle Spencer, who has an 0-2 boxing record.

“I had no focus, and I would act out,” Garbarino said. “There is a family history that I don’t want to get into, but I grew up around a lot of violence. None of it was domestic. I think I got dropped in my first school fight when I was 7 [years old]. I had a lot of energy, I always felt like I had something to prove. I would bait people into fighting. It’s not a good thing. I’m not proud of it. If I could walk through a time machine and see [myself] as a little kid, I would smack the hell out of me. What bothers me is the hell I put my family through. It still bothers me today.”

John and Veronica Garbarino, John’s parents, attended every meeting, every court hearing, and bailed him out of jail. He was first arrested when he was 11, for throwing pumpkins in the street when a police car happened to drive by. One of Garbarino’s flying pumpkins smashed the police cruiser windshield. The second time he was arrested came when he was 12. He was in the Pineland Learning Center, a detention facility in Vineland, N.J., and was caught sneaking in a weapon.

“I grew up around a lot of violence.”

He recalls his mother often crying. Veronica and his paternal grandfather, a Philadelphia cop, came to pick Garbarino up for the weapons violation. Veronica used an old Razr Motorola flip phone to snap a picture of John handcuffed to a bench in the Vineland police department, with the warning, “I want you to remember this picture.”

Garbarino found a calling at the Gloucester County Institute of Technology, where he began cooking. He started competing in national cooking contests while training in martial arts. He was the sous-chef at Del Frisco’s for a period of time.

It’s been a decade since he’s been in a street fight. Today, his fights take place in the gym.

Garbarino previously fought for Feldman under a different promotion. He thought he would give it another shot at the BKFC tryout on Nov. 3 at the 2300 Arena. He was one of 200 hopefuls who showed up.

“I was kicked out of 12 different schools for fighting, and now I’m getting paid to fight,” Garbarino said, with a laugh. “The same teachers who I would drive crazy now want to take pictures with me. I think it took me some time to grow and mature. But I wouldn’t change a thing. I like where I am today, and those experiences made me who I am. I see myself as a world champion one day.”

Sullivan, 25, is a fifth-generation operating engineer, as a tower crane operator. He is the guy in the cab 500 feet up in the air constructing skyscrapers, which, to think about it, might be more harrowing than getting punched in the face. It’s high-stress, high-pay precision work. There are no breaks — and that includes bathroom breaks.

“You can get sick up there from all the movement, and what is crazy is my greatest fear growing up was heights,” Sullivan recalled, laughing. “You climb a ladder all the way up. My first experience up there was when I was 19. We were building the [South Philly’s] Live! Casino. I got sick. The building was half-built, and the cab was rocking back and forth. I remember moving an [air-conditioning] vent, and I was horrible [because] I was scared.”

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But Sullivan showed up the next day. And the day after that and almost every day over the next six years.

“It’s a passion, something my family has done forever, and it did not go smoothly for the next four years, but it fueled a drive in me to learn it,” said Sullivan. “The scariest moment I ever had came in an old-school Cornell tower crane, which you operate with your feet. It was my first time running it. I have a heavy foot, and we were in the middle of Center City. I swung some things around the way I should not have. I learned quickly to ease up on my feet.”

Sullivan went to eight different high schools, mixed with some boarding schools. He started at St. Augustine Prep and aspired to play in the NHL. He started boxing when he was 10 because a kid urinated in his hockey bag and his mother wanted him to learn how to defend himself.

He still bears the scars from the numerous street and hockey fights during his formative years.

Dan Sullivan, Pat’s father and the head of the Operating Engineers Union Local 542, had a direction for his son that he did not want to pursue. At 19, Pat lasted initially three days as a tower crane operator. He still dreamed about playing in the NHL. That changed once he saw his three-day layoff check. He’s been up in the cab ever since.

“I always dreamed this moment would come. [Now], it’s here.”

Boxing took a more serious turn when he was 19. He has a 2-5-1 boxing record, with two knockouts. He says he’d been bugging Feldman about competing in bare knuckles long before it was made legal.

He’ll get that opportunity Saturday fighting at 165 pounds against 24-year-old Kaine Tomlinson, Jr., who is 1-0 as a pro boxer and has a 3-2 amateur MMA record.

“Kaine’s father fought in bare knuckle, and he’s a very good fighter,” Sullivan said. “But he quit on his stool in his last fight, which tells me he has no heart. I’m going to take his heart. My father absolutely hates this. We had some arguments over this. I understand he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to me. A few weeks ago, he was up on his roof and he saw the KnuckleMania billboard. I hope he makes it [to the fight on Saturday night]. My mom will be there. She’s just happy I stay busy.

“I always dreamed this moment would come. It’s here.”

Montanez, 32, works in the health care field and has been fighting professionally for six years. He was born and raised in North Philly and graduated from Esperanza Academy. He has a little more experience than Garbarino and Sullivan with a 5-0-1 MMA record.

But he has never fought bare knuckles.

He will fight at 155 pounds against 41-year-old Brandon Meyer, who is 1-1 as an MMA fighter, and 2-2 as a pro boxer.

He has many friends and family who went down the wrong path. Some were killed, others wound up in jail. His one constant, he says, was his father, Moses Montanez. His father picked him up many times early from school for fighting. He was in a racial mix of young kids who tried testing him.

“Boxing ... shaped my personality and character.”

“I grew up fast, and I had a lot of sense of right and wrong, even though I got into some trouble,” Montanez said. “I had some trouble with my mom [and her] mental health. She was deteriorating right in front of me. I saw her change, and I was too young to understand what was happening. I started to get attention in the wrong way, but I found the gym when I was 13. I grew up in a fear-based environment, and I just wanted to make it home. That shaped me early on. I didn’t want to get hurt or picked on. I wasn’t afraid to defend myself.

“I started boxing and began getting better at it. It shaped my personality and character. It’s why I keep to myself, even today.”

His stepfather, Willie Torres, a Philly boxing community legend, helped steer him straight. Gradually, Montanez found a new home, and that access energy was being spent productively. When he is not training, he takes care of his grandmother and has two children, who, he says, are not like him at all.

He prefers it that way — for their sake.

“I never looked for a fight, but I never ran from a fight either and that’s why I fought,” he said. “That’s where that fighting foundation came from. You have violence around you everywhere, you have to fight not to sink into it. Boxing and getting to the gym burned off a lot of that energy.”

Montanez made the BKFC November tryout wearing overalls, coming straight from Sunday church. He was running late with no training gear, just his boxing gloves. He still stood out. He had worked with Feldman before, and had been in Feldman’s ear for some time about an opportunity in BKFC.

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About a month before the event, Montanez looked in tremendous shape, weighing around 162 pounds.

“I never did time and I know people who have done time, and I know Meyer will come to fight,” Montanez said, asserting that his opponent has done time. “I will need to stay myself and find my own way because this guy has had a handful of bare-knuckle fights. He comes with more experience, but I know I will come with more skill. I’m sure I’ll be victorious.”