How to Use bare-knuckle in a Sentence

bare-knuckle

adjective or adverb
  • And to go bare-knuckle with the Chargers.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Mucha is known for her bare-knuckle style of dealing with members of the media.
    — Anousha Sakoui, Los Angeles Times, 22 June 2023
  • The brick building once housed mobsters and bare-knuckle boxers.
    — Alex Vadukul, New York Times, 26 Dec. 2023
  • Mullica said such bare-knuckle tactics aren’t a way to win votes, much less friends, in the building.
    — Nick Coltrain, The Denver Post, 13 Jan. 2024
  • The film’s tender moments sit alongside scenes of fast cars, hard partying, and bare-knuckle fights.
    — Stewart Clarke, Deadline, 11 Feb. 2025
  • But Prograis also flirted with the idea of bare-knuckle boxing.
    — Josh Katzowitz, Forbes, 31 Oct. 2024
  • And bare-knuckle fighting fans have likely tuned in to beIN to catch a broadcast of the sport’s bloody bouts.
    — Sarath Ganji, The New Republic, 2 Aug. 2023
  • Still, there was also a sense among some that Greene, for all her bare-knuckle politics, could have gone further.
    — Bill Barrow, Los Angeles Times, 4 Jan. 2026
  • The man who believed in the potential of bare-knuckle fighting, even when others doubted.
    — Jon Stojan, USA TODAY, 30 May 2023
  • Perry is a former mixed martial arts fighter and is 5-0 as a bare-knuckle fighter.
    — Dina Kaur, The Arizona Republic, 20 July 2024
  • The bare-knuckle-boxing bouts of Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 9 Jan. 2026
  • The descendants of the two founders, who died decades ago, are locked in a bare-knuckle fight for control of Korea Zinc.
    — Daisuke Wakabayashi, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2025
  • Tenaglia is back for his first defense against bare-knuckle boxing sensation Tony Soto.
    — Brian Mazique, Forbes, 10 Oct. 2024
  • It’s been a chaotic ride, even for those accustomed to the bare-knuckle politics of this North Shore city.
    — Jon Chesto, BostonGlobe.com, 21 Mar. 2023
  • He bare-knuckle punches with a split-second intensity that magnetizes the camera to his every move.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 26 Apr. 2024
  • This kind of bare-knuckle politics might explain why so many other GOP leaders are uneasy.
    — The Orlando Sentinel, 19 Apr. 2026
  • The bare-knuckle affair featured a bracket with eight competitors using eight different fighting styles.
    — Kyle Newman, The Denver Post, 13 Apr. 2024
  • As this race turns into a bare-knuckles brawl, follow all the campaign news on the ElectionLine hub on Deadline.
    — Ted Johnson, Deadline, 9 Aug. 2024
  • The result is a bare-knuckles portrait of a player who as a teenager rose to the pinnacle of his sport and peak celebrity in Germany, his home country.
    — Matthew Futterman, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2023
  • And his kind of bare-knuckle romanticism was reinforced in me by Roethke and early Ted Hughes.
    — Literary Hub, 12 Dec. 2025
  • The slow action drew boos from the crowd, who quickly diagnosed the whole affair as a sanitized version of what everyone had really come to see—a bare-knuckle street fight.
    — Stayton Bonner, Rolling Stone, 21 Apr. 2024
  • About freshman quarterback Finley Lucas, whose 41-yard score on the first drive let Mead know that this was going to be a bare-knuckle fight.
    — Troy Renck, The Denver Post, 7 Dec. 2024
  • Inside the city, the bare-knuckle brawl falls to Wagner, its recruits tasked with suicide dashes at Ukrainian lines to create openings for the rest to follow.
    — Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 11 Apr. 2023
  • Lester thinks that there’s some special alchemy in the way Brustein was simultaneously an avuncular, loving figure and a bare-knuckle scrapper.
    — Helen Shaw, The New Yorker, 1 Nov. 2023
  • Surviving and thriving during 50 years of bare-knuckle Massachusetts politics is proof of that.
    — Jon Keller, CBS News, 15 June 2026
  • His best bare-knuckle performance came in a 2024 win over ex-Bellator champion Daniel Straus.
    — Brian Mazique, Forbes.com, 19 Aug. 2025
  • For Republicans, despite victories in a bare-knuckle redistricting war, the House already looks lost.
    — Aidan McLaughlin, Vanity Fair, 29 May 2026
  • Kid is first seen in an ape mask fighting (and losing) bare-knuckle battles in an underground arena run by a sleazy South African (Sharlto Copley).
    — Ty Burr, Washington Post, 4 Apr. 2024
  • The film followed Chan Lok-kwun (Raymond Lam), a mainland refugee trying to pay his way to a fake ID by winning bare-knuckle brawls.
    — Marcus Lim, Variety, 29 Oct. 2025
  • The spectacle brought together two bare-knuckle brands that have been intertwined for years, and was symbolic of the pugilistic moment in American politics.
    — Zac Anderson, USA Today, 14 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bare-knuckle.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: