At this time, I started going to another boxing gym not far from where I lived. The trainer was Anth, the lad who had that fight with Tank all those years ago. I started going up there a few times a week to hit the bags and get a bit fitter. There was a lad in the gym called Andy Tucker who was an excellent boxer. He was in two National finals in the middleweight division, NABC, which he lost on points, and the Junior ABA, which he won. He was robbed in the quarter-finals of the European Championships against an Italian. I had masses of respect for Andy. I started sparring with him and gave him some good work, which brought me on a bit. I enthused at my progress and started wanting to have some fights. Andy had boxed for Young England a few times and had just been chosen as their captain against Young America. He was in full training and I sparred a lot with him. One day the TV people from the regional news programme Look North came with their cameras to the gym to interview him and also did a little profile about the club. I had a fight lined up the next night, but my opponent never turned up because he had seen the TV programme and saw me inflicting pain on the punch bag and said, ‘Fuck that, I’m not fighting him.’ I met another boxer at the factory where I worked, and asked him to try and get his trainer to line me up for a few fights, but nothing ever came of it.
Anth also did some bouncing, and asked me if I fancied getting into the racket myself. I started working the doors with Anth, Brian, Peter and Rick in a very busy pub with two floors and a disco upstairs. I learned the ropes from the lads: how to be fair but firm, how to be always in control and never flustered, and how to control the crowds and queues. We had a few fights, but generally things went fine and I had some good times working with them for about four months. The song ‘Footsteps’ by Womack & Womack was a really big hit at the time and reminds me of that place.
I eventually managed to get a fight against a big guy, who had won seven of his eight fights. His only loss was avenged by a knockout in the return match. A load of boys from the boxing and the bouncing came down to watch me. At the show, I could see the look of concern on people’s faces. Some of them asked if I was fighting the big man, concerned for my safety as he really was gigantic and towered over me. As well as these attributes, he looked a deeply terrifying man; he had an air of confidence about him, which I was determined to shatter. I wasn’t going to have any sleepless nights over the size of man, as it’s the size of the fight in the man and not the size of the man that matters. As the bell went, he came at me like a cannonball and tried to put me away. I took some good shots from him, a jarring left and a flinchingly painful right! I was going to have to take some of the steam out of him. I opened up with my arsenal of weaponry and we traded toe to toe. I had a burning desire in me to win and started to get him on the back foot. I was looking for that one special shot, but had to be patient. Then I put him down with the famous Horsley Muckspreader right hand … an unstoppable force. Incredibly, he got up and took the count. The ref waved us to continue.
I went after him and picked him off with a right, just like a predator. I was all over him like a rash! This guy was on a wing and a prayer when he threw a chopping right hand that whizzed past me – I was blessed it missed! I had to turn it on and step it up, because I was chicken fodder if he connected with one of those shots. I could see that his wasted efforts were tiring him. I boxed him from range and kept tying him up, swinging lefts and rights, all of them smashing into his head with an unrelenting ferocity. By now his face was covered in blood and he was about to go down when the ref stepped in and stopped it. I had won – I had defeated my Goliath.
I had my eyes set on the ABA title and was training hard for it. On the day of the ABAs, I was a little excited, as this was what I’d been waiting for. We arrived at Gateshead Leisure Centre and went to get weighed in. But the ‘jobsworth’ official in charge said the weighing in of boxers was over. A heated argument ensued, as he wouldn’t let me step on the scales. The official said that every club had been sent a letter saying that boxers had to be weighed in by 7pm, and it was now 7.15pm. It was the first time we’d heard of such a letter but he still wouldn’t let me step on the scales. My dreams of winning the ABA title ended right there, I was really devastated. Later, we found out that there was a letter, but it wasn’t sent to the coach like it should have been. It had instead been sent to the social club, where the treasurer had read it and stuck it in the drawer, forgetting afterwards to tell anyone about it. When I heard this I felt like pulverising his face with my Muckspreader. What made it worse was that I really believed I would have gone all the way. A silly incident like that destroyed a man’s dream. Not surprisingly, that done my canister in and I started to drift away from boxing.
Family life was more than a diversion; after all, I had three kids now (Jill, Donna and Terrance). I’d always take them out to the park, which they loved. I was a proper father and it felt great; those times are very precious to me. I wanted Jill and Terrance to grow up like brother and sister, so took Jill off Joanne’s hands as much as possible. Jill was getting taller and prettier all the time; a chip off the old block.
One night, I was woken by somebody banging on the front door. It was Anth, the boxing coach. I welcomed him into the living room. I hadn’t seen him for four months. He spouted out, ‘Richy, I’ve just been talking to a bloke from Blackpool on the phone. There’s a boxing show tomorrow night and they’re desperate for a heavyweight. Will you fight?’
I retorted, ‘Are you joking? I haven’t trained for four months; I’ll be blowing after thirty seconds.’
He pleaded, ‘Howay, man. It’ll be a night out down Blackpool.’
I made the point that I would be the one taking the punches. Anyway, maybe I’d taken too many punches round the head in the past, but somehow he talked me into it. The next day, five of us crammed into this little motor with all our gear in and headed west for Blackpool. After a three-hour journey – which seemed more like six hours – we arrived. We drove up and down the front a couple of times looking for the nightclub where the show was being held.
Outside the place there was a big banner announcing: ‘LVA Boxing Championships, Tonight 7pm’. It was 6.30pm by the time we got in. The place was big, and a large crowd was expected. The atmosphere was already hot and humid. I saw the doctor and got weighed in. I was to fight the 16th fight on the bill. I remember thinking, 16th, we’re gonna be here all night! The night dragged on and on, with the heat becoming unbearable. The place was jam-packed to the gunwales with between 1,500–2,000 people. I tried to have a kip but I couldn’t because it was too humid. Eventually around midnight, I was told to get ready and put the gloves on. I felt physically depleted and drained of energy, and had no get up and go left in me. I wanted a bed, not a boxing ring.
I started to shadow box and there was no oomph in my punches; I was very lacklustre. Anth put the pads on and I hit them. My mam could have done better, I was terrible. I was sluggish and drained and had no power. The heat had sapped all the strength out of me. The lads tried to gee me up, but to no avail. The bloke came and shouted, ‘You’re on.’ We made our way through the crowd and the mandatory cigarette smoke to the ring. A large proportion of the crowd were the worse for wear. A few were shouting ‘TYSON’ at me.
We waited about five minutes and the opposition still hadn’t showed; they were playing the waiting game. I decided to sit down on the stool and wait; after another five minutes they eventually showed. He was a local lad from Lancashire, and the crowd started cheering as soon as he appeared. In the first round, I tried to put him away but my punches had nothing in them – I might as well have been hitting thin air. It was then that I knew I had to really dig deep if I wanted to hear the final bell. I threw a clever little corkscrew right. A great shot, but it just didn’t have the power behind it.
My opponent was about 6ft 4in tall and in good shape – he couldn’t be pulled apart in the usual fashion. So I tucked my chin up and moved to the ropes to use them to fight off and draw him in. I also wanted to lean off th
e ropes to regain some energy. He didn’t throw many jabs, preferring to release combinations. I dug deep and summoned up every bit of strength. I had to gamble, and put all my energy in one punch, to try and hit the jackpot. I threw a cracking right uppercut. It just missed the bastard! I did hit him with a clever left hook to the body in the second round, which really hurt him, but I was too tired to follow it up. In the last round I was so wiped out that for the first time in my life I tried to get disqualified. He was throwing punches non-stop. I backed to the ropes, catapulted off them and BANG! I nutted him bang on his forehead. As he turned away in pain, I hit him with a good stiff jab! The ref jumped in and gave me a severe warning and deducted a point. He was the only person in the place to miss the nut, as he was on the blind side. The crowd had seen it all, and booed me for the rest of the bout. I made it to the last bell but lost on a unanimous decision. I’m sure that I would have beaten him inside of two rounds if I had been in shape.
It wasn’t long after that when I got back into bouncing, and made more good friends. I knew a pub landlord from the early days, who told his bouncing agency that he wanted me on his doors, as he knew his pub, The Clansman, would be in safe hands. This agency was called A1, and was run by two local lads, Mick Blackwood and Mick Sorby. They both said they knew my face when we met. I definitely knew Sorby’s as he had a nasty reputation. He was a proper battler. Not long before I met him, he had just had a fight with another hard man called Philly B. He bit his nose off – he took no prisoners. Philly B was certainly no pushover as he was a former boxer. I got on great with Mick, and he ended up being Best Man at my eventual wedding.
My bouncing partner at the pub was called Charlie. In the best of doorman traditions, his credentials carried some clout – he’d been to prison for violence, and shoving guns down people’s throats and the like. I knew him from the caravan site as a kid, and even then he was a high-profile nutcase. When Charlie worked the door, he wore a steel plate around his stomach so that if anyone hit him there they would bust their hands. We’d have a few sociable drinks and a good chinwag and everything would go all right. When gangs of unruly looking lads came in they were told in no uncertain terms that they’d better behave themselves; when you tell them like that it either goes one way or the other but most of them lose their bottle when they see that you mean every word, especially when said with fiery eyes shining at them.
But of course, there would always be a bit of trouble – why would you have bouncers if there wasn’t? One night, a bloke inside the pub had a bust-up with his woman and threw a massive wobbler. He started to smash all the glasses that were stacked up waiting to be washed, destroying at least sixty in the process. Charlie was out of earshot downstairs checking on the bar, but I managed to get back to the door in time as this psycho was just about to leave. He marched straight towards me with a giant snarl on his face. I stood in the way to block him. He threw a punch at me, but I slipped under it and snapped out a straight right that landed smack on the button. This hammer of a shot immediately put him down, and the floor show was over. He was lying on the deck groaning and covered in blood. Charlie returned and picked the guy up to take him to the toilets to get cleaned up. My hand was throbbing, so I looked down. There was a whopping great gash in my knuckles, right down to the bone, and claret was pissing out – I’d only gone and whacked his front teeth out! The teeth were stuck in my hand! I still have the scar to this very day. He went to the police a couple of weeks later, after he had heard he could get compensation from the Criminal Injuries Board. I got banged up for two weeks as a result.
The kids were my life and I loved them to bits. I wanted everything to be as normal as possible for them. We had birthday parties for them both where we’d invite their school friends and relatives. My mother would always have a big spread on for them: sandwiches, cakes, pop, crisps, jelly, ice cream, a birthday cake with candles on, and there’d always be games like ‘Pass the Parcel’ and ‘Musical Chairs’. For the adults, there would be plenty of lager. We had some great times. An old friend of my mam’s called Mary always called in with sweets for the kids and our dog Cassie was always licking the salt from her feet.
Life couldn’t have been better but, as sod’s law would have it, things started to get bad. I had a feeling that Gail was being unfaithful and it was just a matter of time before we split up, but it was going to kill me to lose the kids, so I kept my mouth shut for their sakes. They were doing well in school and had a happy home – I didn’t want any unrest for them. But at the same time I didn’t want to be played a fool. There’s an old saying that I’m sure most of you will be familiar with: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Well, I too could play that game, and it wasn’t long before I started seeing a young lass who came into the pub, a bonnie girl called Angie who was only 18. Another time I went back to a lass’s house when her boyfriend was out. I think her name was Jackie. I knocked on the door and within ten minutes we were in bed. She called me ‘Merlin’ because she said I was a wizard underneath the sheets. All of a sudden, Jackie said, ‘Stop, I can hear a noise.’ The boyfriend had returned and was only stood on the stairs listening to us. Talk about getting caught red-handed, I was caught red-ended! I could hear him trudge back downstairs and go into the living room. I think the only reason he never came in the bedroom was because I’d left my coat in the front room and he had a look at the size of it and thought, He’s a big cunt. I put my clothes on and went downstairs. The boyfriend said, ‘All right, Richy.’ I sheepishly and undiplomatically said, ‘All right, Johnny, I didn’t know she was your bird or I wouldn’t have or fucked her.’ That didn’t go down too well. I put my coat on and left. I didn’t know his full name, I only knew him as Johnny and I’d never seen him for years. I saw her a few days later walking down Church Street with two black eyes.
I was wanted elsewhere, so I worked in loads of different pubs. I worked the roughest bars in town, all the trouble spots. On Bank Holidays I would be guaranteed at least three fights. When there was trouble, I’d be straight in to sort it. Sometimes I’d have some rough and tumble and end up chinning a few because that’s the only language some people understand. I worked the doors with numerous lads: Andy, Philly, Trev, Marcel, Kenny, Eddie, Martin, Mick Sorby and many more. I had fought some tough cookies but the first real hard man I fought, called Big George, was when I was on the door. This man could fight and was in his prime, strong as an ox and about 17 stone of muscle and gristle. He’d had a grievance with the doormen of a pub one night and went off his head and knocked them all out. Then he exploded into a fit of temper and just went from pub to pub knocking bouncers out. We were called to a pub that had our doormen on. Big George had just wiped out all the bouncers; there were shirts ripped off, teeth knocked out, claret and glass everywhere. He had just left, and was heading in the direction of our pub.
I raced back before he got there and stood at the entrance with Blackie, one of the other bouncers. He turned up just at chucking-out time. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife. He had already pummelled ten bouncers. Straight away, Blackie started to fight with him, giving it his all. But then he started to take a thrashing, so I dragged the geezer off and threw him to the ground. A load of people were already in the street and plenty more were coming out the pubs. The crowd was there – I knew this was it and that I was ready.
He got up like the terminator and stood in the middle of the road and roared, ‘I want to fight you, now!’ I walked over and he came towards me. I moved in close and was ready for the clash. I clattered him with two sharp right uppercuts; both landed one after the other. Bang! Bang! Normally when you land an uppercut it’s all over, but this man could take a hell of a shot. He was still on his feet, so I battered him with a flurry of combinations: right, left, right, right, right and a sweet right hand. He went down. For good measure, I booted him in the head before turning around and quickly walking into the pub, away from the scene. Everyone in the place was buzzing at how quick I done him. A
fter we got everyone out, we had a lock-in. Soon enough, Big George came back and started banging on the windows, whilst waving a knife about. We wouldn’t let him in so he threw a wobbler and stabbed all the tyres on the cars outside. Not long after that, we settled our differences.
Around that time, two bodybuilders that fancied themselves came in to the pub. They were whopping big blokes – and didn’t they fucking know it? One of them kept weighing me up. I didn’t know whether he thought he knew me from somewhere or whether he was just staring because he was cocksure of himself. I personally hadn’t seen any of them before. The one who kept staring had overdone it on the sunbed because he was as brown as hell, with a David Dickinson tan. They finished their drinks and started leaving. You should have seen the walk on the pair of them, you’d think they were each carrying an invisible carpet under each arm. It looked stupid to me, as they portrayed themselves to be hard as nails. As ‘Mr Sunbed’ walked past, he stared at me with a smug look on his face, so I followed them both outside. I said loudly, ‘Here, Chippendale.’
When he turned around I said, ‘What’s your fucking problem?’
He went for me, trying to grab me so he could use his strength for some rough and tumble. But I was equally fast and unleashed a furious right uppercut on to his chin. His legs went from under him like a baby deer. They say, the bigger you are, the harder you fall and, in this case, that was correct! He hit the deck like a broken lift. Mr Sunbed’s mate threw his hands up and pleaded, ‘I don’t want nowt, mate.’ Sunbed was trying to pull himself together like a pair of worn-out curtains on the floor, but he was fucked and didn’t know what day of the week it was. I ordered the other one, ‘Pick your mate up and fuck off,’ and went back inside.
Born to Fight--The True Story of Richy 'Crazy Horse' Horsley Page 10
