"This is where people say to me that I'm not right in the head, but the sound of a fist hitting a jaw is one of the most phenomenal sounds you'll ever hear in your life.
"To hear that bone on bone... a fist properly connecting with a skull.
"It's like no other sound you'll ever hear."
Even after seven years in the game, Sammy Morris still gets a thrill out of the sort of sights and sounds that would likely make a mere civilian recoil in horror. The blood, the violence.
But in this line of work, a certain level of blood lust is arguably an essential.
The 39-year-old mother of two is something of a trailblazer - one of the few women that's dared to step into what is undoubtedly an ultra-masculine domain. Sammy is, she says, the first 'cutwoman' to work for BKB, the leading promoter of bareknuckle boxing in the UK.
It's a sport that, for understandable reasons, is so often synonymous with the sort of anarchic violence and unforgiving brutality that many feel is incompatible with civilised society.
Perhaps the critics have something of a point. The very existence of Sammy's role is an admission of the potential dangers attached to this sport.
But as is often the case with these things, the reality isn't quite as simple as outsiders might think. After all, this is one of the world's fastest-growing sports, and Sammy has arguably been integral to helping it into a sleeker, more professional new era.
Whether you like it or not, Sammy clearly isn't the only one with an appetite for this sort of thing.
Crowds are so strong that BKB has effectively made the Indigo at London's O2 Arena its home, while boxing legends like Frank Bruno have put their name next to the brand, further endorsing its potential.
The raucous, testosterone-drenched atmosphere of fight night in central London is a long way from mid-Wales, where Sammy currently lives.
Originally hailing from Llandrindod Wells, she calls me from leafy Powys, taking a short break from moving into her new place. "I'm happy to have a break from moving boxes," she huffs, two cups of coffee down.
It initially feels like I'm intruding, but in fairness, Sammy's pretty used to being rushed off her feet, acting as the first line of support for some of the hardest men on the planet. She covers all bases come fight night. Whether it be providing clean towels (she tells me her laundry bill is often in the hundreds), wrapping hands before a fight, patching up wounds, even going out and grabbing a bottle of water or two.
"I'm basically looking after a bunch of ******* crybabies and drama queens," is how she jokingly sums up her job.
No night's the same, but there is one constant. Blood. Often lots of it.
Indeed, she seems to actively go in search of blood for much of the evening, like some sort of friendly, straight-talking vampire.
"During a fight, I'll be watching very closely and if there's a cut or any bleeding, I'm assessing that cut, assessing the damage before I've even got in the ring.
"He comes back to the corner, I'm usually the first one in then before the coach, and I have a look at the cut and try to stem the bleeding. We're not allowed to use adrenaline in this country to stop bleeding. It's a prohibited substance in BKB.
"If it's more than three inches long and half an inch wide, the fight has to be stopped because if they go back into the ring with a cut that big and got punched again, they'd end up needing plastic surgery because there are some cuts we simply can't stitch".
Those unfamiliar with this sport might be a little surprised to hear of such boundaries, but bareknuckle boxing has firmly moved on from the days of overweight, beer-bellied brawlers settling family feuds in car parks.
A vast majority of the fighters that step into the ring for BKB come from boxing or MMA backgrounds, and all train just as hard as any professional athlete.
That's not to say there's any less of a thrill when things get a little messy, mind.
"There's a really iconic picture of me and Sean George after one of his fights with blood everywhere. Then there was a time when Jimmy Sweeney burst an artery in his lip, it was a terrible cut.
"Blood was just spurting everywhere. You should have seen the state of my face after that one!"
The cuts and blood clearly add to the gladiatorial nature of this spectacle, but also probably fuel many of the preconceptions of critics. Then again, the worst injuries in the ring often aren't as visible.
"People find it hard to believe, but when you see it on the tele, most of the cuts are actually superficial, and they're healed in a week or two. The worst I've seen is boys with broken hands. That's probably the worst injury you can have, because most of these boys work as well.
"But I've seen one person break their leg in the ring, and then recently Dan MacGraffrin snapped his ankle.
"The cuts, in comparison, are nothing really. They look horrendous, but with proper care they heal within a couple of weeks. I provide all that after the fights."
That said, a cut can still be considered bad enough to end a fight and, after months and months of hard work, it's a devastating outcome for fighters - and indeed Sammy herself.
"It looks like I do one minute of work, but it's intense. People say you've got a minute to stitch them up, but actually you've got about 45 seconds. You've got 45 seconds to basically help a fighter win or lose a fight.
"I've been in fights where they have lost on cuts and I've come home and not slept, I've been depressed about it. At the end of the day, they put their heart and soul into training for this and so to have a fight stopped on a cut is devastating.
"But then again, to have a fight stopped on a cut is done for their protection."
One of the examples we discuss is Dorian Darch, who stepped into the ring with Anthony Joshua once upon a time, and saw his bid for a BKB world title ended by a gut-wrenching cut back in January. You can read more about that here.
"I managed to get him to fight on for a little while, but the doctor had a look at it and basically said that if got punched in there again, his whole cheek was gonna come off.
"He was disappointed, but I'd rather have his fight stopped for a cut than for him to be in hospital having a skin graft.
"But these boys... some of them would rather die in that ring than be stopped. Sometimes they're their own worst enemy for that."
It's perhaps quite patronising to say it out loud, but when watching all this chaos unfold, there's a question that will immediately pop into most people's heads.
What's it like to be a woman in this world of near self-destructive masculine bravado?
"It was intimidating at the beginning," she admits. "It was a little more old-fashioned in that the men fought and the women stayed at home sort of thing. That's just what it was like in the early days. As the company's progressed, more people have seen what I've been able to bring to this company and the level of care.
"That doesn't stop after the fight. If they've maybe lost a fight I can sometimes be a bit of a mentor to them. I've travelled all over the country delivering after-care for cuts. I've transported boxers to and from hospital. We're family oriented."
But while she's clearly had to find her feet, it's worth stressing that Sammy herself isn't exactly a shrinking violet.
"I was a bad girl when I was younger," she says. "I was fighting all the time, getting into trouble with the police all the time, and there just comes a point where you just think 'f***ing hell, you better sort yourself out'. I was quite good at fighting, so my mum said 'get in the ring'."
Boxing not only helped keep Sammy on the straight and narrow, it also eased her through some of her toughest moments.
"I've always been interested in fighting," she adds. "I did a lot of training for my mental health. Then I went through cancer treatment and was on a lot of steroids for that so ended up weighing around 16 and half stone. Then after I got the all clear I went back to the boxing training because that was the best way for me to lose weight and I lost three stone in three-and-a-half months.
"It was kidney cancer. I was lucky it was caught early, but I still had a partial nephrectomy, which meant I had a part of my kidney taken out.
"I had cervical cancer too when I was 24 and that wasn't very good either," she laughs.
"But you've just got to fight through it. That's the thing, there's people out there that just moan and groan about their lives. You have to just get on with it."
Sammy was dealt another devastating blow around a year and a half ago when she was forced to step out of the ring in the most unjust of circumstances.
After suffering at the hands of an abusive ex-partner, she was diagnosed with a brain injury that would force her to hang up the gloves.
It was BKB that gave her a second chance.
"I was doing hand-wrapping at shows for white collar boxing," she recalls. "It was then I stumbled across bareknuckle boxing. It wasn't our company, it was a company in Leicester called Raging Bull, and they were in a working men's club. I just thought, 'That's a bit of me, that. I'd like to go and watch that'. There were hardly any women there, I think some of the men were a bit funny about having a woman there.
"So I then became a hand-wrapper for them and cutwoman. Then he had some issues and the company folded, before Jim and Joe at BKB said they'd seen my work and asked if I wanted to come work for them. That was it really."
Sammy threw herself into it, spending thousands on medical training, travelling up and down the country in a bid to hone her trade and become the very best at her role she possibly could be. That enthusiasm for the job burns just as brightly now as it did then.
Some may feel there's a certain degree of irony in it all.
After all, it's still so easy to look down on this sport and dismiss it as glorified organised savagery. Yet for some, it feels less harmful and unforgiving than the outside world.
"People can say it's brutal and people often make judgements about the people in this sport," she says.
"But bareknuckle boxers are among the nicest people you'll ever meet. We give everyone the time of day. We're all family. If one of us is in trouble, we're always there for each other."
Future battles are already on the horizon. Sadly, Sammy's past may yet catch up with her, with the effects of her brain injury threatening to reach a nadir.
"I've been diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia now and I'm waiting for a big operation on my brain," she adds.
"So once I have this my days in this might be numbered. I've got a decompressed blood vessel in my brain, which presses onto my general nerve. I've also got a blood clot on the back of my brain that sometimes leaks and I've been in hospital a few times. I'm waiting to have MVD surgery. So if I have that operation, it might well be the end of days for me in this job."
Sammy understandably doesn't want to think too much about what might come next. Perhaps a time will come when she has to explore other passions. Indeed, when she's not patching up folks in the ring, she's a keen and talented angler.
"It's another male dominated sport too," she jokes. "When I catch a 30 to 40 pound sturgeon, all the blokes are there thinking 'oh my God'.
"I always beat the boys," she proudly proclaims.
As we approach the end of our chat, Sammy tells how she'd ideally like to get some of the BKB lads together for a charity fishing tournament, a smile-raising idea that hints ever so slightly at the more wholesome side to this sport.
When you scratch the surface, BKB feels more like a collection of friends rather than a roster of fighters. Yes, there's some genuine bad blood at times. But on the whole, there's an inescapable feeling that, with so many of them cut from the same cloth, most of its participants have each other's back.
Sammy embodies all of that.
"I'm not in this job for exposure. I'm not in this job for fame. I'm in this job to make sure these people go home safe to their families.
"As long as those boys go home safe to their families, are paid well and live a good life. That's all I'm bothered about.
"It's my life. I live and breathe it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."
