The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (56 page)

The key is to keep the muscles lengthened and well stretched, and to have perfect timing and accuracy. Arnie-type biceps are no
substitute
for a shot of speed and timing that your opponent never saw coming and carries the element of surprise. Remember heavyweight flop Bruce Seldon? He should have been able to knock a barn door off with the muscle he carried and so should Frank Bruno, but it doesn’t work that way. Evander Holyfield, my particular hero, may spend an hour training his arms but he would make sure he spent an hour-and-a-half stretching them back out again.

About seven years ago, I was pure muscle because in my free time I worked out in the gym. But I was as stiff as a board and my restricted movement actually decreased my punch power! Yet I have seen many a good fighter lose a fight before it started because he has seen the size of his opponent’s biceps! I have sparred with countless people and don’t think I have ever been in trouble with a body-builder sort. The most painful are the tall, sinewy, snappy, natural punchers.

You can’t put muscles on your chin. Bruce Seldon had huge built-up arms but no heart – it’s like a lovely looking car with no engine. So never underestimate a man by his muscle or general size, it’s a recipe for disaster. A man like Freddie Foreman is not a huge muscle-bound lump but he has the heart of five lions! If you want to beat him, you really would have to kill him. Now, that’s a lot more useful on your firm than a steroid-filled lump who in truth is only doing that to himself to try and cover some sort of insecurity in the first place. Why else would you want to take steroids, get to mammoth size and oil your muscles? It’s because you are trying to hide something or make up for the lack of something. The heart of men like Foreman cannot be trained into you, it is something you are born with.

Richy Horsley from Hartlepool fought on one of my shows and displayed all the attributes that a real fighter needs. In his second unlicensed fight he showed power, movement, mental strength and raw primitive courage. That’s pure fighting instinct. It’s not thinking – it’s just sheer, raw, caveman-type survival. Richy has had many street fights and I can imagine has done some real damage. Richy and I didn’t see eye to eye all the time but my respect for him as a modern-day fighting man is 100 per cent. There’s such a very small circle of respected, staunch men left who could be so strong together and make some real money, that I do actually find it upsetting when people in such a small, trusted group fall out. It’s a tragedy because you can’t just replace them, they are tried and tested and it’s usually misinformation or something stupid that screws up what should be a team!

On this occasion, Richy had accused me of things that must have been planted in his head because it came out of the blue and I honestly could not make sense of it. I was accused of getting him beaten on purpose. Well, only the fighter can win or lose, not the promoter, plus the fight was a classic and he lost – just! If I had wanted him beaten, I would not have put someone in who was going to struggle!

Also, I wouldn’t have put him top of the bill just to have him beaten as top of the bill means “we have plans”. The idea, as explained below, was for him to fight Charlie  Bronson and, as Richy knows, that would have made all of us. So why would I want him beaten in his second fight? I was pretty hurt that he thought I would do that, as we had been friends before and his opponent wasn’t even one of my fighters!

So I gained nothing from a Horsley defeat. But it takes a lot to lose respect for a fighter of courage and my respect for him as a fighter is still high. I hope Richy now knows the truth and that I really needed him to win! It’s a shame but Richy and I have never spoken since that incident.

At the time of Horsley’s fight on my show, my fighter Joe Smith was unbeaten and remains so. A lot of people asked me who would win between those two and could I arrange a fight. I could have set it up but at that time Joe was in full flight, fully fit, full of confidence and hungry, and time was on his side. Richy was still easing into the game after a very long lay-off, so it would be unfair to compare them at that time. And Joe, being a very well-liked gypsy with a huge following, would have had crowd advantage at that time. Then again, with Horsley’s heart, it may not have mattered.

It looked for a little while like the infamous prisoner Charlie Bronson would be released within two or three years (this
information
came straight from his legal team). Richy Horsley was the man Bronson wanted to fight. I don’t recall whether Bronson hated Richy or not but I know he was picked due to “disrespect”, so at this time they were not the best of friends.

It may sound stupid making plans for Charlie Bronson but he had an appeal coming up. He had not been in trouble for ages, he hadn’t killed or attempted to kill, and the staff at Wakefield, to a man, couldn’t understand why Charlie was still in there. We knew he wouldn’t get out straightaway but, if he stayed out of trouble, a three- to four-year release programme was all we needed. And knowing Charlie, if he had the fight to focus on he would have concentrated on that and stayed out of trouble. We wanted a couple of warm-up fights and then a big venue showdown with Richy. Harry Marsden, our dear pal from Newcastle, would prepare Charlie, and Richy already had a capable team around him. Now it seems like light years ago, but at the time it was a real possibility that the powers that be would give Charlie some leeway on his sentence. From then on, every letter I got from Charlie had a section about how he would destroy Richy. I remember on a visit he asked: “How is he going to deal with thirty years of rage, hurt and anger flying at him?”

Would the whole build up and atmosphere get to him so that he would crumble like Frank Bruno used to? Who knew? The problem for Richy would have been that there was bound to be an early storm – could he weather it? If he did ride it, the logical tactic would have been to let Charlie burn himself out and then open up. A stupid idea to some, but if it came off, we would be the ones laughing. It would certainly eclipse Roy Shaw vs Donny Adams in 1975.

Richy would certainly have needed to train and get strong. Richy is not a lover of training (a problem I encountered before with him) but I think he would have had enough motivation for this one. Charlie, of course, had been on the weights since his sentence started and he was as strong as an ox. It would be more difficult to guess his fitness in jail than his strength because, of course, there was not a great deal of scope for road work in Wakefield’s concrete coffin. Then, a few weeks later myself, Joey Pyle Sr, Charlie Breaker and a few others made our way to the Old Bailey to hear Charlie Bronson’s appeal.

On the second day, the place was full of more police with dogs and riot gear than I have ever seen in my life! By that, we knew that Charlie had been turned down on appeal. I admit, we all shed a few tears for Charlie (we had honestly forgotten about boxing in the drama of that courtroom). Charlie acted with amazing dignity and pride. His head held high, he thanked Judge Rose, who insisted on saying: “I would say to the parole board, that this is a very different man than the one who started this sentence.” He didn’t have to say anything but he felt compelled to tell the world that Charlie had changed. But how much longer must one man do? 

F
IRST OF ALL
, when we say a man is hard and we are not talking about his readiness for sex but his fighting prowess, what do we really mean? Do we mean that he is lean, muscular and hard of body? If so, there are many such men that cannot fight at all. Do we mean that he is hard and cruel of nature? Again, that is no
indication
whatsoever of an able gladiator. Or, as is more likely, do we mean that he is physically robust and resilient, and can absorb heavy punishment? Those qualities certainly provide an advantage to any combatant. Conversely, though, being “hard” in that sense does not necessarily mean that a person can actually fight
effectively
, and there are many very good fighters who are not extremely hard men at all, though they may have accrued the reputation as such.

Let’s take as an example the fearsome Mike Tyson, ex-heavyweight boxing champion of the world and reputedly at one time “The Baddest Man on The Planet”.

Tyson was born on 30 June 1966, and as a child was bullied because of his lisp and high-pitched voice. His father deserted the family when Mike was two years old and his mother died when he was sixteen. That neither parent witnessed him succeeding at anything has bothered him all of his life, and he lived his early years in the shadow of his older brother, Rodney, who was relatively successful at school and in his subsequent employment. In contrast, Mike had been arrested by the police a total of thirty-eight times by the age of thirteen, and regularly drank alcohol and took drugs alongside many who were physically weaker and less ambitious than him. Mike harboured the hope from an early age of eventually making something of his life, but to fit in with his contemporaries and local gang members, he brandished weapons, robbed people at knifepoint and did not think of himself as either hard or an able fighter. Indeed, he joined the gangs mainly for protection on the mean streets of Brownsville, his hometown. Only after being remanded to a state penal youth facility, where his innate
intelligence
drove him to seek more from life, did he discover that he did not need weapons or a gang behind him, but could fight with his fists alone. In the gymnasium and amateur boxing ring it was found that he had exceptionally fast hands and an urgency of purpose that allowed him to finish most of his opponents well inside the
scheduled
distance. His early mentor, Cus D’Amato, took these natural qualities and used them to mould the youth into a bobbing, weaving, constantly moving target who, once within range, could take his opponents out with vicious left and right hooks and uppercuts delivered with every ounce of the fighter’s powerful body behind them. After turning professional under Cus, he won his first nineteen bouts by way of knockout, twelve of them in the first round! Quite a start to his ring career and a change in fortune never expected by young Mike himself.

There is a theory that a man’s ability to punch devastatingly hard derives from an underlying, acquired anger leading to a desire to hurt others before he himself is hurt, possibly as he was as a child. Others say that it is simply a product of perfect balance, poise, timing and execution, and, indeed, Tyson possessed all of the components in both categories. Even his height at around five foot ten, which is quite short for a heavyweight, contributed to the compact, explosive package as his crouching stance allowed him to evade many punches thrown at him before uncoiling with lightning speed and accuracy to put away all those who opposed him, with intense combination punching. His reputation grew until his mere presence and gold-toothed snarl struck genuine fear into the hearts of many experienced professional fighters, some of whom were half-beaten even before the opening bell sounded. He easily became the youngest ever heavyweight champion of the world by knocking out the then title-holder, Trevor Berbick from Canada, in round two of their contest, when Mike was twenty years, four months and twenty-two days old. His projected persona soon became that of probably the most vicious, dangerous and feared man on earth, with more than a little justification.

But was Mike really a “hard” man? In my opinion no, he was not, not within the context of world-class professional boxers who, it can be argued strongly, are as a genre the hardest men on earth and have to be able to withstand the repeated pounding to head and body their occupation entails, not only in competition but also through the many hours of necessary sparring. Mike Tyson was an exceptionally fast, well-proportioned boxer who was able to consistently land precise, effective and very hurtful punches on opponents with either hand, usually without being hit in reply – the very essence of boxing. In addition, because of his speed, power and aggression, most of his fights were over quickly with the result being that he hardly ever took any punishment. He did not need to be a hard man to be successful!

When D’Amato died the weaknesses in Tyson’s mental makeup resurfaced and began to unravel the package that Cus had put together so well. As Mike fell apart as a person so did his
effectiveness
in the ring and eventually, on 11 February 1990 in Tokyo, Japan, he was knocked over and out by relatively light-punching Buster Douglas, who was in fact a 42 to 1 betting underdog. The defeat shocked the world and is still rated as one of the biggest surprises ever in the whole of sport. Mike Tyson’s halcyon days were over. A harder man might have been able to absorb the defeat and ignominy, rally to overcome his personal difficulties and fight back with confidence to regain his former invincibility in the ring. But Mike had no hope of achieving either goal and, indeed, at every point where he needed to show the true grit and hardiness of a champion as opposed to the dynamic and electrifying fighting ability which he possessed in abundance, he failed.

He won a few fights after the defeat but aficionados of the sport could clearly see that something was gone from his persona and professional makeup. As one commentator at the time quipped whilst one of the bouts was still in progress, “Mike Tyson as we know him, has left the building.”

He encountered further turmoil in his private life and rightly or wrongly (many believe the latter) was infamously jailed for a sexual assault on actress Desiree Washington.

Mike made a comeback after his release from prison three years later but ran into further trouble when his temper got the better of him in the ring and he bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear in retaliation for the continual but discreet head-butts Holyfield kept landing on him. The unknowledgeable amongst us might see this as a sign of hardness whereas in fact it is a clear indication of weakness. Would not a true hard man confidently accommodate this type of illegal foul, cope with it professionally and apply an appropriate solution which brought him out on top, particularly when being paid millions of dollars and being watched by the whole world? Instead, Mike resorted to the type of action he should have left behind in his youth, an action which relinquished the moral
high-ground
to Holyfield whereas it should have stayed with Tyson, and lost him the fight and credibility in the whole of the sporting world. It shocked ordinary people and also boxing “experts” who did not know the real Mike Tyson or the world he grew up in, and were too slow to see the provocation to which he was bound to react. One person who certainly knew all of the above was Evander Holyfield.

Pursued relentlessly by the ever-ominous taxman and urged on by his misguided “supporters”, Tyson’s craving to regain the respect that he had lost drove him back to the ring several more times before being knocked out by the UK’s Danny Williams in early 2005. On 11 June that year, whilst engaged in a contest with
journeyman
fighter Kevin McBride, Tyson quit at the start of the seventh round of what had been, until that point, a close bout. After losing the third of his last four matches Mike announced his official
retirement
, saying of the fight game that he no longer had “the guts or the heart any more”.

So ended the career that had earned Mike Tyson over $300 million.

A previous holder of the title known as “The Richest Prize in Sport”, won so emphatically and lost so disappointingly by Tyson, was Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay.

Ali is the only man ever to have been world heavyweight champion three times in an illustrious career spanning three decades. He exploded on to the professional boxing scene after winning
light-heavyweight
gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics, with a flashy persona, a unique line in self-praising poetry and plenty to tell the world about himself and how he was destined to become The Greatest of All Time, a destiny he arguably fulfilled, certainly amongst the heavyweights.

Ali’s boxing style was completely the opposite of that of Tyson. He did a lot of his fighting on the move, flicking out long left jabs and right crosses whilst back-pedalling or dancing around the ring with long tassels flying from his dazzling white boots. He kept out of counterpunch range with his hands held at waist height, invented the “Ali Shuffle” which was basically a gimmicky fast movement of the feet designed to confuse opponents and impress the
photographers
, and was an all-round showman and entertainer inside and outside the roped square. He brought the fans back to professional boxing in their thousands and, eventually, in their millions via worldwide television. He took the title from Mafia-connected fearsome “hard man” Sonny Liston in Miami, Florida, in 1964 and embarked on a scintillating career which made him by far the richest sportsman and most famous person on earth.

Ali is remembered by most as a great boxer and for his ring dancing, talking and flashy showmanship, but what they tend to forget is that after he returned to the ring following the ban imposed upon him for refusing to join the army and fight in Vietnam, he fought and beat some of the hardest and most ferocious punching men in history. Ali had originally volunteered for the military but been refused on some pretext. When he eventually received the
call-to-arms
he had decided that he no longer wished to fight or kill any Vietnamese people as they had not done him any personal harm. Indeed, he added, if he wanted to make war on a country it would probably have to be America, as that was the country which had done him by far the most harm. He famously stated, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong, they never called me Nigger!”

The US government did not sympathize with his philosophy and obligingly took away his living for over three years as they later did to Mike Tyson, though for a very different reason. However, the blanket-bombing campaigns, napalm sweeps and waves of young Americans coming home in body-bags eventually rendered the Vietnam war a very unpopular one, and Ali was hailed a hero by even the non-boxing fraternity for his stand against the government which initiated it and then later backed out with red faces and massive losses.

Ali commenced his comeback in 1970 by stopping the highly rated white fighter Jerry Quarry in three rounds and this heralded his campaign for the title then held by devastating left-hooker and undefeated champion, Joe Frazier from Philadelphia.

His ensuing three-fight series with the lethal Smokin’ Joe has been declared by experts to have been sufficiently physically draining on both fighters to cause lasting damage and to end the careers of most men. Of the first fight, staged at the boxing shrine of Madison Square Garden in 1971, Frazier said afterwards “I hit Ali with punches that would have brought down a building.” But Ali carried on regardless and the desperate, punch-for-punch battle was described by him later as “the nearest thing to death”.

He was decked in the fifteenth to suffer his first professional defeat.

The mutual damage inflicted by the three fights did effectively signal the end of Frazier’s career but Ali soldiered on, winning back the title that the government had taken away from him and shipping ever more punishment. Shortly after the second Frazier fight in 1973, Ali took on Ken Norton and suffered a broken jaw, but carried on to lose a split decision. On 30 October of the following year, 1974, after several successive wins, Ali challenged again for the title now held apparently invincibly by the awesome George Foreman, who had lifted Frazier cleanly off his feet with a scything right whilst flooring him six times in four minutes and twenty-five seconds to destroy the husk that remained of him. Big George was a very hot favourite to execute Ali in similar manner in less than three rounds. Early in the fight – dubbed “The Rumble in the Jungle” as it took place in Kinshasa, Zaire, and was the fight that brought Don King to global prominence as a promoter – Ali adopted a tactic feared by the vast majority of global spectators at the time, to be absolutely suicidal against such a massively heavy-puncher as Foreman. Ali simply tucked his elbows and chin in behind his gloves, covered up as much as possible and leaned back on the ropes in what he later described as his “Rope-a-Dope” trick, as big George launched a savage attack to head and body which he sustained round after round, and during which he threw literally hundreds of punches. The ringside audience gasped and media commentators winced as Foreman’s swinging punches thudded home time after time and even Ali’s own supporters expected him to crumble quickly under such a savage onslaught.

But he didn’t! He took the blows, withstood the pain and absorbed the punishment for seven rounds until, incredibly, Foreman punched himself out and came to a virtual standstill after trying so hard and expending every ounce of his energy on the mission to slaughter his opponent as he had so many before. But Ali was different, very different, and stood like the legend he was, unyielding and refusing to go down before Foreman’s ferocity until it eventually, as Ali knew it must, began to wane. When in round eight it did and it became obvious that George was not just taking a break but tiring rapidly and struggling to co-ordinate his still-lethal punches, the crowd stilled in silent amazement as Ali peeked out from behind his defences, jabbed out a left and followed up with a series of quick left and right punches which sent the fatigued Foreman wheeling to the canvas, from where he looked up in
bewilderment
. He rolled on to his back and sheer exhaustion as much as anything else prevented him from rising before he was counted out by the referee. Ali had reclaimed the title for an incredible third time at the age of thirty-two.