Joey Essex vs. Dapper Laughs Headlines Misfits Boxing in London

Misfits Boxing rolled into London's Copper Bank Arena on Saturday afternoon with a main event built for the celebrity-boxing crowd: Joey Essex versus Dapper Laughs over four rounds at welterweight. Both men walked in with momentum, each coming off a win under the Misfits banner, which gave the headliner a little more weight than the usual influencer scrap.

The subplot, though, lived on the undercard. Plinio Cruz, the coach who guides UFC light heavyweight Alex Pereira, made his Misfits debut against Gary Olive. Olive trains Chase DeMoor, who was originally slated to face Cruz before an injury forced the switch. So the fighters bowed out and the corners stepped in — coach versus coach, which is about as Misfits as it gets.

The Main Event Matchup

Essex and Laughs are both UK reality TV fixtures turned part-time boxers, and that's exactly the lane Misfits operates in. The promotion has made its name turning internet and television personalities into pay-per-view draws, and a welterweight main event between two names British audiences already know is textbook for the brand.

Neither man is a polished technician, but both had answered the bell before and come out ahead in their previous Misfits outings. That's the hook: this wasn't a debut novelty act. It was two guys with a point to prove and a win each to protect.

Coach vs. Coach

The Cruz-Olive booking is the one that'll get MMA fans talking. Cruz works with Pereira, the former two-division UFC champion who sits at #3 in the light heavyweight rankings with a 13-4 record and 11 knockouts to his name. Pereira's last outing didn't go his way — a second-round TKO loss to Ciryl Gane — and he's booked next against Sergei Pavlovich at UFC 335.

Pereira himself has waved off boxing speculation, pointing to a couple of factors that keep him out of the ring for now. His coach, meanwhile, was happy to lace them up. The grudge angle with Olive — the man who coaches Cruz's injured original opponent — handed the bout a built-in story the promotion couldn't have scripted better.

Around the Card

The rest of the card leaned into Misfits' gimmick-heavy format. There was a survivor tag match featuring Andrew Howson, Joey Knight, Lil CraCra and Charles Bennett, plus a tag-team bout pitting Lil T and Cracky Tokky against Nitboy and Kane West. It's not conventional boxing, and it doesn't pretend to be.

That's the whole point of Misfits. The promotion sells spectacle and personality over sanctioned pedigree, and the London card leaned hard into both. Whether you buy in or roll your eyes, the formula keeps pulling eyeballs.

The Bigger Picture

The timing is sharp. Celebrity and crossover boxing is having a moment at the top of the sport too — Anthony Joshua, 29-4 with 26 knockouts, recently stopped Jake Paul inside six rounds, and the Dana White-Eddie Hearn promotional cold war over a potential Tyson Fury–Joshua bout has been simmering all week. Misfits sits at the grassroots end of that same crossover economy.

For Essex and Laughs, a win Saturday keeps the ball rolling and likely lines up another Misfits payday. For Cruz, a strong showing against Olive is bragging rights more than career trajectory — he's a coach first. But in a promotion that thrives on storylines over sanctioning, bragging rights are the currency that matters most.