Streetfighters: Real Fighting Men Tell Their Stories

by Davies, Julian

  One night, in another club, I go outside and there’s 15 or so of them waiting for me. Now I’m working on my own that night. Well, they come at me and I knock seven of them out, they are all just lying flat out when the police come. I’m on CCTV camera so I’m thinking, I’m fucked here, but the police are over the moon and love it.

  Before I came to those clubs there would be 50 or so kids outside the clubs at night throwing stones and bottles at the doors and the bouncers. Most were National Front skinheads and that. I thought, I’m not putting up with that shite. One night I ran out and whacked about three of them, I put this one on his arse and he bounced back up shouting that he wasn’t hurt. He ran into the road and his best friend’s car knocked down the silly fucker, breaking both his legs.

  Working one night, this big guy came down to the club and said, “I want to fight you.”

  I said, “Where, here or outside?”

  “I’ll fight you anywhere,” he replied.

  We step outside and he’s got all his mates with him. We square up to each other, I head-butt him and he finds his arse. I head-butt him again and down he goes again. I lean over him and tell him, “Look, I haven’t even punched you yet and you’re fucked,” so that was him done. About two years later, I see him in this club. This other guy comes over and says the big guy was worried in case I was going to do him again. I says, “Fuck me! He’s six foot three, about eighteen stone, what the fuck is wrong with him?” I go up and tell him that it’s all forgotten with and he says sorry. I never hold grudges with them; if I beat them, I’ve got nothing more to prove. You see, there’s no fear if I’ve beaten them, so I’d rather leave things lie. I’d fought every hard fighter from Scarborough to Newcastle, going through each town. I’m not being big-headed, it’s just the way things were for me. It’s the life I led.

  My mate John Black tells me one day that I would get on with a guy called Lee Duffy. John himself was a good bare-knuckle fighter and used to train Lee. “Lee is just like you, he was bullied as a kid, then started training. He’s beaten everyone, in all the jails he’s been to he’s beaten all the hardest there.” Later on I was with my mate Kevin and we had just been to this jail to see a friend who was on a murder charge. We are walking along the street in Redcar, I’ve got my middle finger on my right hand in a splint because I broke it, when Lee walks up to me. Now I was only 24 and a little bit naïve. Lee is about six foot three, around 17 stone and has been fighting since he was a kid. He comes up and says, “What they call you then?” Now I think he’s going to mention John, who we both know, and introduce himself. “My name’s Brian,” I tell him. All the time I’m watching his mate who’s drinking out of this bottle. I chat to his mate and I’m always watchful of someone with a bottle.

  Lee sneaks closer and hits me right on the chin, and Lee could really hit when he wanted to. I see stars and fall to my knees, dazed, disorientated. I grab hold of him and shake the punch off, lift him up and ram him into the wall. I have him trapped in the corner by a bay window. I was about 22 stone so my whole weight was on him. I butt him twice, knee him in the face, smash him with my forearm and pull him down. I hold him down and I realise there’s no way I can hit him with my right hand because of the splint. As I’m holding him his mate brings the bottle down on my head. I grab his mate and smash him into a car.

  I look at Lee on the floor and he’s still dizzy and his mate is fucked as well. I don’t want to fight the two of them with my damaged hand so I back off. I had a mate who lived around the corner, his name was Mickey, he’s dead now, so I try to make it to his house thinking I’d have a better chance there. I get maybe 300 yards down the road when they both come running up. I’m keeping my head down not to get another right hand. When we are squared up, his mate is trying to come from the side. As I back off I bump into one of the metal bollards they have on roundabouts and it wobbles. I rip it up from the ground and hit Lee with it and push him right back. I run at his mate with it and he runs off.

  I shout at him, “Wait till my hand’s better and we will have a proper fight, you can get John Black and we’ll meet in a field and sort it.”

  “Come down this alley here and fight us now. I just done you once,” he cries out to me.

  “What, so you two can jump me with bottles and that, and yes, you did put me down Lee, but you hit me from the side like. When I did you, you were screaming for your mate to get me off,” I shout back.

  Now time goes on and it’s about nine weeks later, I’d been training and my hand is better. I go off to Lee’s mate’s house. I beep the horn and his mate comes to the window. “Is Lee fucking there?” I shout. He comes out with a shotgun. I go up to him and he runs off back into the house, just trying to bluff me with the gun. Now nothing happened for a while because Lee had hit some guy and snapped his neck, so he was on remand. Lee had all these guys selling his drugs for him so I went out and taxed the fucking lot, took £15,000 off all these fucking people.

  Lee gets out of prison and I had this friend tell me all the time that I would kill Lee Duffy, so I was getting right wound up. I went out looking for him all day. We were driving through Eston [in Middlesbrough] when I spot this Sierra. Lee’s in the car, he’s calling me on, shouting things.

  I scream to my mate, “Ram the fucking car, ram it!”

  “No, it’s Lee Duffy, I can’t,” he tells me.

  “What? We’ve been looking for him all fucking day!” I scream.

  I get out of the car and run 40 yards down the road. Lee’s calling me on but they try to drive away. I dive on the back of the car and my sudden weight stalls the car. I’m punching and kicking the car, I even pull the wipers off, but they drive off and I can’t catch them.

  It must have been two weeks later I’m drinking in this pub when the phone rings and the guy behind the bar says the call was for me. Don’t know why, but before I took the call I told my mate that it was Lee Duffy on the phone. He looks at me strange but it was Lee.

  “I was out of order that night. We are the best fighters in the area. Why don’t we team up and make some money?” he tells me.

  “Fair enough, I’ll come and see you,” I replied.

  Down his house I go and he’s there with his mate and his family. He’s putting his boots on and he looks up to me and tells his family, “Look at the size of this fucker, and there’s me trying to fight him, I must be mad, me.” We hit it off really well, me and Lee. I go around with him for about three months. We used to go to all the drug dealers’ houses, just the scum ones; you know, the police-informer type ones. We would tax the cash off them. They used to call us “the Taxmen”. We would go all the way across Hartlepool right across to Teesside getting money.

  I love to have a good night out, and one night I was out with some younger guys. I’m enjoying myself, even showing off a little. They had me picking up the front of cars and that, just out having some fun. I turn around a corner and there’s all these doormen kicking some poor lad on the pavement, four of them. Now, I think you know by now that I hate bullies, I just can’t abide a bully. These bouncers were big guys and one of them, Steve, was about 20 stone. I fucking run up and lay into the first two, and I’m fighting like fuck when the police turn up and grab me. While they are holding me, the big fucker, Steve, runs up and hits me in the face, so I lose it. I shake the police off me as the bouncers run into the club. Then about 20 to 30 police turn up and all hell breaks loose. They manage to get me into the van but I kick the doors straight off the hinges. I get out but I won’t hit the police, you know I’m not stupid. They can’t get me into the van because I’m too strong, only five or six can grab you at one time and I just throw them off. They get me into another van and I once again kick the doors off. I also kick in the doors to the club. Now I don’t know if it’s because of me, but all the club doors there now have locks on them on the inside as well!

  The big fucker, Steve, was telling everyone how he had given me a go, which was starting to get to me. I was with Lee, we h
ad been out taxing and we had made a few grand each. We spot this Steve guy in a kebab shop. I walk up and say to him, “Come on then, you fucking gobshite. What you been saying about me?” He runs straight at me and, like I said, he’s 20 stone, right? I throw a straight right hand and you know when you’ve hit someone and you know if you’ve hit them good. I could feel the impact all down my arm and he went down with that one punch. Well, the prick grassed me up and I went away for three months. While I was away, Lee was killed in a fight. He was stabbed to death. I know for a fact if I had been out and we were together it would never have happened.

  I remember being in this house one night with him and I was really drunk. He said to me, “Remember that fight we had?”

  Now I don’t even know what day it was, I was so drunk. “Forget about it,” I answer.

  “Well,” he goes on, “you beat me that day, you know. I’d never do anything sneaky like that again. Thing is, when I hit people with that right hand, they don’t get back up. I couldn’t believe how fast you jumped back up. It done my head in and I couldn’t sleep for six weeks thinking someone had beat me. You’re my friend and you’ll be my friend forever.” Lee was a good friend to me and I still miss him today.

  I was approached one night at a rave club when a friend suggests I should fight for money. He informs me, “Look, you’ve beaten every bugger, why not fight for money? You have nothing to lose.” I tell him I’d rather just get on with people and not fight. It’s different when someone comes looking for you or a fight just breaks out when I’m working. He tells me, “I will put fifty grand up for you to fight Viv Graham, and we can get an empty warehouse and charge twenty pounds a man for them to watch. Do you think you’ll beat him?”

  “I think I will,” I tell him, “I’ve seen Viv fight and he was out of breath after a few punches. I’m bigger, stronger and a lot fitter.”

  He goes to see Viv and Viv sends his partner down and he tells us, “Viv doesn’t want to know.” Now I’d heard all about Viv but never really met him; he did wave to me when I was in prison once but that’s all really. His partner told me Viv wanted me to come up for a drink with him some time.

  I go for a night out in Newcastle. I’m just wearing my tracksuit and that. The bouncers tell me I can’t come in dressed the way I am but once they realise who I am they let us in. I’m sitting with my mate Stephen and a few others and there’s this guy next to me, he’s going on about how he’s a champion boxer and how he fought for England and all that. All night he’s bragging and going on and on. He’s asks me my name and I tell him Brian.

  “Well, what’s your second name?” he asks.

  “Just Brian, that’s all mate,” I replied.

  “Well you must have a second name,” he goes on again.

  I turn to one of the guys in our company and tell him, “If this guy wasn’t related to Stephen, I’d fucking bash him.”

  “He’s not, in fact I don’t even know him,” he informs me.

  This boxer is still going on in my face so I slap him with the palm of my hand and I knock him out. People around me are shouting how I knocked this guy out just with a slap. I didn’t want to do it but I just couldn’t take any more off him.

  I went to Holme House prison in Stockton first and there was this big lad there from Birmingham and he held the prison record for lifting weights. I think at one time he could full-squat about 500lbs. For a crack I went and front-squatted the same weight. Well, the big lad was a bully and he was always taxing stuff off the smaller guys; with this they all hated him. A few years before he had been picking on a mate of mine, so off I go to his flat. It was about three storeys up and I get up there with a friend and I kick his fucking door down. There’s nobody in the house so I walk up to the bed, and I can feel it’s still warm. That’s an old trick I picked up from years of taxing the druggies. I know he’s in the flat but I can’t find the prick, I’m looking everywhere and there’s no sign of him. I stop for a moment and I can hear breathing coming from the settee. The crafty fucker is lying tucked down inside it. I reach in and yank him out and bash the fuck out of him. To give him his due he is quite a strong lad and for a second I have to struggle with him. I get the fucker down and I remember these sunbed tubes in the corner of the room. I grab one and hit him with it. The bloody thing breaks and cuts me open above the eye and blood starts to drip down my face. I lose my fucking head and start to kill the fucker. I’m smashing ornaments, the TV and anything I can find down on his head. My mate Speedy who came with me is shouting, “Bri! Bri! Stop. You’re going to kill the fucker.” I’ve lifted him up and I’m going to throw him off the top floor but Speedy talks me out of it, thank God.

  Well, we don’t see this guy for a few years until I’m in this prison. I had already got the message that he had been training hard and said when I came there he was going to do me. Now he’s about 17 stone and, like I said, he’s the strongest in the prison and held all the records for lifting. I go out onto the yard at dinnertime and I’m trying to hold my temper when I spot him. I get up to him and left-hook him and give him a straight right hand between the eyes, which splits him open. He falls back onto the crowd and once again, to give him his due, he goes to come back at me. I’m right up for it now and I shout, “Come on then!” but he backs off. He gets stitches put into his head then goes and reports me, and the screws come up and tell me, “Bri, we don’t want no trouble, will you please come down the block with us?” Anyway, down the block I go. The governor comes to see me and tells me I’m not wanted in his jail. I tell him, “Well, I didn’t want to come here in the first place!” The governor then gets me sent to Durham Prison. Seems he banned me from his jail.

  When I get to the prison, the screws take a look at me. One gets up and tells me, “Here you are lad, you have a coffee and take my seat, I fucking hate that guy you bashed. You’ll have any job you want here.” One day out on the yard there were two kids and some of the other prisoners were trying to tax them for their gold sovereign rings. I stop this happening and shout to everyone there that from now on there will be no more taxing while I’m in the prison. The screws loved this, they were fighting to get me on their wing. Seems like one prison didn’t want me and then another can’t get enough of me. Things were going great until the screws noticed that all the top villains in the prison were following me around; they must have thought we were getting too organised so I’m moved out again.

  Of all the places to send me, they send me a place called Haverigg, right up in Cumbria. I’m in there a few days when the screw comes and tells me there’s a bench press contest going on in the prison gym. The idea was to see how many reps you could get out on the bench press. I think the weight was only 60 kilos or so; the guys had been training for about three months so they were up for it. One guy does about 30 reps, the other a little more. I went up and did about 77 reps and won this trophy, which I still have today. They thought I must have been a pro lifter and were shouting it was a fix, that I was a ringer. They were devastated but they took it in good heart and it broke the day up a little. In the whole prison I was the only one to not wear the prison jeans; I wore tracksuit bottoms the whole time. I told them to fuck off, I’m not wearing jeans, my legs were too big for them.

  I keep out of trouble in this jail and progress through the stages easy, I now have a nice little laundry job. The stage I was at was like a hotel – own room, use of the TV room and could stay up all night and that. I just wanted to do my time easy and not have to hit anyone. I didn’t need any more time added onto my sentence. When I first had use of the gym I got some lad to hold the heavy punchbag for me, then I off-loaded some punches. The word got around how hard I could hit, so nobody bothered me and I was free to train on the weights. I always try to get on with people and have fun but there was this one guy, a boxer from Blackburn, he looked in good shape. Mind you, he was taking some gear and looked impressive. The guy was getting a little cheeky, I’m trying to ignore it and not get in trouble. We used to watc
h this programme every so often; part of the programme was these lads would stand by a pool and some girl would push them in leaving only one standing each week. Well we would take bets on who would be left standing. It got very competitive each week, even to the stage of us all betting Mars bars on the outcome. This boxer was sitting next to me watching the show when he asks me to move along the bench we were all sitting on. I move a little and he edges up more. I move a little more, then I realise the arsehole is stretched out on the bench taking the piss. We start to argue and the daft bastard jumps up at me, so I left-hook him. Off they take the prick to the doctor, broken jaw and all.

  In this prison, no matter what you do wrong, you’re out, so they come to my cell and tell me I’m off to Walton Prison. I told them I wasn’t going and they had to make me go. All the screws in the prison turn up to try and get me out; I shout for them to come and try and that I’m not leaving. Well, this one screw comes into my cell and, to give him his due, he explains that I’m going to get more jail if I resist, so off I go again, to Walton Prison this time. Anyway, I turn up at the prison and it’s fucking massive. It looks like one of them old Gothic-type buildings. It had over 400 screws and holds about 1,700 prisoners. Soon as I turned up, I knew I was going to have trouble there, I just knew it.

  Now the screws are tidy with me, and I’m on reception, when this big lad comes in. He was about six foot six and about 17 to 18 stone, big lad but a bully with it. The screws were scared of him because he had taken a copper’s eye out with a bottle, so he’s doing a ten-stretch for that, but he’s out each day back and forth to court for an armed robbery charge. The Scousers there were sick of him because he was getting kids to bring stuff in for him; they would spew the stuff back up and the lads had to clean the mess up. The guys wanted to do him six-handed but that wasn’t my scene, so I went to the showers to sort it out. The screws knew this was going to happen and kept well away. He comes out of the shower, wraps a towel around himself and sees me waiting. I tell him he’s a wanker and he comes at me. I smash my left into his face and a straight right into his belly. He falls to the floor and shits himself. I couldn’t believe it, he was lying there in his own shit.