Streetfighters: Real Fighting Men Tell Their Stories

by Davies, Julian

  Over the years I’ve sorted things out for people in return for cash; after all, I have to live as well. A mate and myself travelled to Rotterdam to sort out this scumbag for a few grand, well for the money that I was offered I would have cut his fingers off. We were led to believe the guy was a lowlife who had caused some big problems. When we got there, we found that the guy had ripped someone off for a few million. Now with someone who has that kind of cash, you know they are going to have some good back-up and some big lads with them. Well, we still want to go ahead with the job but find that the guy who was going to identify him for us was on holiday in Spain. Well, we came for the money and they still paid us for our troubles, which was a good result. Money can get you out of a lot of trouble. You must remember if someone has enough money they can always pay to get their problems fixed. I don’t just take any job on. I have to believe that the people I work for are in the right.

  When I work the doors I need to work with other doormen who need the money, not guys who just stay back and don’t help out. When I take on a club I always take on the responsibility of hiring and firing. If a doorman’s out of order then he’s history, simple as that. You may also find other doormen out having a drink on their nights off turning up giving it the old “yeah, I’m a head doorman” routine. This involves them telling everyone within earshot just how hard they are, basically boring them all to death. This big doorman from Wolverhampton did this one night and before he could take a punch I belted him out. He decides to take me on with the police. A while later the police drop the charges but it was against this guy’s wishes; he wanted to take it all the way. One night I go around to a club that he was at and there he was with two other big doormen. I confront him, then I knock him clean out and he falls backwards, fracturing the back of his head as he falls. The guys with him just froze and let me get on with it. Normally I wouldn’t hit someone like him because I had already beat him, but he was the type who made other doormen look bad, so he had to have it.

  This big Irish guy turns up one night with a woman who had previously been banned. The guy had the rep of being one of Ireland’s hardest men but things like that don’t bother me, I just don’t care who they are, if I say they don’t come in then they don’t come in. He starts to perform on the front door and I don’t like to make eye contact with them, because if I think they are directing their anger towards me, then I will give it to them. Well, he starts swearing and moves away from the club, still shouting. About half an hour later this big Range Rover reverses up to the club. Now, I knew that the guy had pitch-forked someone a while ago, so I couldn’t take him lightly. The gaffer of the club goes out to him to see what his problem is. The guy’s out of the Range Rover and he comes at the gaffer with a pickaxe handle. The gaffer jumps back into the club, locking the doors so that I can’t get at the guy, who has now decided to smash the club windows instead. I run through the other doors to the club and straight at him. I throw my radio at him, which distracts him long enough for me to put him down. I get on top of him and start to lay into him, smashing lumps into him. The punters are all out cheering me on because they had seen it all. A police car turns up but don’t spot us, so I carry on doing the guy. The police drive away and I get up and look down at the guy lying on the pavement all smashed up. He was supposed to be this big Irish hard nut but he didn’t look so hard lying at my feet. I had to make sure I did a good job on him, otherwise if I had backed down then everyone would think they could bring a weapon to me and I’d bottle it. If they come to fight me then fight they will, no weapons are going to put me off, they either win or lose. I’m not going to back down.

  Some punters will put a glass in you straight away, without even thinking about it, it don’t bother them who you are or if you have family and kids. They have no remorse at all. If there’s one thing that gets under my skin, it’s glassers, I have no time for them whatsoever. I’ve seen it done so many times and the damage a glass can do is horrendous. A lad got glassed in a club I was running the door at. I search for the lad who had done it and find him. I don’t waste time, and drag him outside, all the time beating the shit out of him. My mate is also hitting him so I decide to leave it there because he has had enough. With that, all the other doormen start to kick lumps out of him, they are all on him kicking and punching the guy. I have to pull them all off him before they kill him, I just couldn’t let them carry on. It’s funny that I felt it was unfair for all the guys to batter him but he himself thought it was fair to use a glass on some poor victim. It’s a pity he didn’t possess a little of the morals that I hold.

  Gangs can cause a lot of trouble when they start to fight. It can be a bit scary for some people but I find I just take out the ringleaders and the rest don’t want to know. I was stopping one gang fight one night and this geezer sprays something at my face. I hold my coat in front of me so he can’t get to my eyes with this pepper spray or whatever the stuff was. I grab the guy and knock him out and start to beat the fuck out of him. At one stage I smash him against the side of one of the cars that were parked up. We manage to stop the fighting and chase the troublemakers away from the club. Later on, one of the other doormen starts to moan that someone has dented the hell out of the side of his car. I didn’t know what to say to him and he put it down to some of the gang that were outside. To this day I still haven’t told him that it was me that caused the damage. Maybe I will tell him one day.

  One place I worked at was sort of two clubs separated by a passageway. These two big stocky guys enter one night and I could sense they were trouble. These two kick off in the passage and start fighting. The other doormen don’t seem to notice this so I run up. I smack the first one and before I can do anything else someone sets off a CS gas canister. I nearly choke to death in there, it’s mental. I can’t breathe or see anything. I spot the guy I had hit, bang him one again, then I get out until all the smoke clears. The following week a dead pigeon was left on the front door to scare me, as if that was going to frighten me. Some of these guys have watched too many gangster films.

  I’ve worked over 20 years on the doors and never had any comebacks. I feel that I have always done things the right way and handled things fair. There have only been four times that I can remember getting hit; I guess there has been someone above looking after me. I speak quiet and always respect others, demanding respect for myself along the way. I have never really lost my temper to its fullest and feel there’s a couple of more gears I could move up to if needed. I’ve taken a while off the doors to start a family with my second wife and to just get some time to ourselves. I may start running doors again in the near future but after 20 years I think I may have a rest for a while.

  TYERONE HOUSTON

  London and Luton

  An awesome streetfighting giant who has punched and kicked his way through some of the country’s hardest, most respected fighters. On the way to becoming a professional Thai boxing instructor, Tyerone completely destroyed several bareknuckle champions in all-in battles. Never one to brag about his achievements, he takes each fight in his stride, considering it “just another day at the office”.

  I WAS BORN in Hackney, east London, and moved to Luton as a young boy of about five years old. I’ve got a brother and two sisters, in fact, I have family all over the world, from London to America. From as far back as I can remember I have always been training, some sort of physical exercise. My father used to box in the West Indies, his brothers were wrestlers or played American football. They were all big lads. My father and myself must be the lightest weight of the lot of them; I’m only 16 stone compared to some of them who are well over 18 stone. My father had fought bareknuckle fights and did boxing training down at Bethnal Green but with having a family and that, he gave it all up.

  My father brought me up to be independent, stand up for myself. I was always a strong child, mentally and physically. I can remember as a child fighting with some other kid in a sandpit and being too strong for him. I was sort of a hyperactive
kid, which sometimes got me into trouble. All the games I would love to play were fighting or wrestling games. I guess I got that interest from my father. To calm me down my father would take me on runs first thing in the morning, from the age of six upwards. He always stressed that I must look after my body, stay in a good physical condition. He would say, “If you treat your body right, then it will look after you in years to come.”

  I started boxing from the age of nine at the Luton Old Boys’ Club, which was an Irish club. First day that I walked in there, I was scared stiff. My father took me in and introduced me to a guy called Pat O’Kaye, who was the trainer there. I looked around this big hall with all these boxers skipping; the class hadn’t started yet and they were all just warming up. There were fighters of all ages in there, from ten-year-olds right up to 40-year-old men, all mixing in together. Even now, when I walk into a gym I immediately recall that first day, with that leather, sawdust and sweat smell in the air. In every gym there’s always someone who helps the trainers; in this gym it was an ex-fighter called Horace. He took me to one side and showed me how to skip, shadow box and things like how to throw my weight correctly when I punch. I’d always had a good punch for a lad but he took the time to improve it. I started going to the gym three nights a week. I think the reason for this was just to get me out of my mother’s hair for a while, just to give her a break.

  After about three months they started me sparring. I was nervous as hell going into that ring; the adrenalin would start pumping and I’d start to shake. After I’d taken a few shots I’d calm down and start to enjoy it. I was scared until I got hit, then I knew I had nothing to fear. I did alright as a boxer over the next few years, fighting and doing well in the ABA Championships and all. I started to get a little bored with boxing. I was bigger and physically more gifted than some of the kids I was facing, and felt I needed another challenge. I felt I was training harder than the other kids and my confidence had been built right up. I started going around other clubs, from karate to ju-jitsu, looking for something else.

  I was always one of the hardest in school. I think it was because I was one of the biggest; it was me that they all expected to fight. If someone wanted to fight then they would try to take me on to look good, but I would always take them on and beat them. My father worked hard and we were all quite well off compared to most families. At school my first real experience of fighting came when some kids from a council estate, kids my mother would call “rough kids”, wanted money off me. A few of them chased me through the school corridors. I ran at first but the one in front, Jason, was a good sprinter and he caught me as I was trying to get through some doors. My first reaction was to turn around and smack him one, which I did. I dropped him and when he got up I was shouting to him to have a go. I could see he was still in shock as his mates ran up to us, but he just shook my hand and we all became good friends. Now I was bothering with kids who loved to scrap, and I became like-minded.

  I started going to this wing chun kung fu class just to see what the crack was. I must have sat there each training night for about three weeks, just watching them all train. I noticed that the physical training was very hard, with them conditioning their bodies to take blows. This appealed to me and before long I was joining in the class. I found that the boxing that I had learnt didn’t help me at all; they had this close-in style and would stop my punches before I had time to move my hands. They were so fast that I just couldn’t work out how they could get me down on the floor; they were blocking my punches and using my body weight against me. I started to learn the techniques that they used and progressed up the ranks. There were guys from all types of styles coming to the old scout hut that we trained in just to get some sparring with us.

  In Luton at that time we had a lot of different cultures in the same area: there were blacks, Asians, Irish, English, you name it. Now my mate Jason had a fight with this Asian guy who was supposed to be the hardest kid around for his age. Well, Jason gave him a right beating. They later arranged a rematch for Friday after school. Outside the school on Friday afternoon there was eight of us in all waiting for this Asian guy and his mates to turn up. He turns up with ten of his mates, ready to fight, but around the corner came about 20 to 30 Asian guys to fight us. Now these weren’t kids, they were a lot older than us. They were grown men and guys who had left the school about five years earlier, most of them, carrying sticks and weapons. We stood our ground and fought with them. There were so many that I would knock one down and go straight onto the next guy, and get stuck into him. This was the first real time that I could test my boxing and wing chun in a real fight situation.

  This one man ran at me with this large piece of wood. I stopped the wood with my left hand, punched him with my right hand, turned him around and did a stamping kick to the side of his leg. I can remember him screaming at the time but was too busy fighting the next guy to check on him. The police came and we ran off before they caught up with us. Some of the older Asian guys got arrested but we were alright. On the way home we all started talking about the fight. Of course, I then found out that the guy with the wood was screaming because I had broke his leg. One of my mates had seen me hit him and saw the guy’s leg facing the other way, when he was on the floor screaming in pain. Afterwards I was angry that we had been so stupid to have been set up as we had been. Now the one thing that I felt good about was that I used the techniques I had learned, and they had worked for me.

  Along with the wing chun, I started going to tang soo do and became a national champion in it. One day this guy they called Master Ket came to the gym and said he was opening a Thai boxing club up and wanted to test people to see if they were good enough to train under him. He was from Bangkok and owned a Thai restaurant and was going around all the gyms basically poaching people for his club. I started to spar with Master Ket who was only a little guy and didn’t look a threat. He was so agile that I couldn’t land a good shot on him, and if I did hit him he would simply roll off it. He just kicked my arse and everyone else’s in the club as well, he was so fast and well conditioned, just unstoppable.

  I started to go to Master Ket’s Thai boxing class. There were 30 of us to start with but within a few weeks that had fallen to just five. The class was so very hard that people couldn’t keep up with it all. He would walk around with a length of bamboo and strike us on the heels if our feet were in the wrong position. I was being trained to use my shins as a weapon. A lot of people couldn’t cope with the pain barrier with that, but I stuck it out. I went on to win some local titles with Master Ket, who eventually went back to Thailand. I myself kept on entering martial art shows and worked my way up to national level.

  People started to recognise me as a fighter and, even though I was still young, I started to get a name for myself. Thing was, all I ever wanted to do was to study martial arts and keep fighting. I left school and considered going into the Forces – due to all the time I had devoted to training, I messed up my school exams. I decided to go to college to try and salvage an education. My mother had hopes for me to be a doctor or something important; my father just advised me to make money out of anything that I’m good at. I took work on the doors with a guy called Roger Joseph. He was the local hard nut and he had boxed a bit and was a quick, powerful man. More than anything he was a streetfighter who taught me a lot about realistic fighting for the street.

  I was about 17 and very independent. I would sometimes just hop on a train on the Underground and just see where it took me. I got off once in Southall just to visit the market and maybe do some shopping. I was just walking along when this little Asian lad says to me, “You can’t walk down here, only Bangladeshis down here.” He then proceeded to direct me to where the black community was. I had never faced anything like this before, so I told him to go away and walked off. Later, walking around the market, I noticed a few boys watching me and following me. Down the high street this old Granada car pulls up and it was full of all these guys. They told me that I was for it
and they were going to kill me. I walk off trying to find my way out of the area. I don’t know where to go, and get completely lost. Up this other road another car came racing towards me, full of more of these guys wanting to sort me out. Now I’m no fool and could see that I was onto a loser if I stood and fought so I started to run down this road and could hear the cars behind me. I’m met at the other end by this large empty warehouse. I’m trapped up this dead end with the cars getting closer. I noticed the windows of the warehouse were broken so I climbed in. I ran through to what seemed to be some sort of industrial estate. I thought I had lost them but they shot around in the car to meet me; others had entered the warehouse and were behind me. I had nowhere to go, I didn’t know where I was and couldn’t escape them.

  The car skids around and one of the doors starts to open. I had to make a move before they got to me. I run up and kick the door, which smashes on one of the guy’s legs as he tries to step out. The other doors open and they all have baseball bats, masks on, the full works. These guys wanted to really fuck me up. I’m fighting on instinct, hitting whoever I could. I manage to grab a bat. I clobber one guy with it. I then take a strike to the back of my head from another bat. I’m swinging the bat at anything that moves. I feel two sharp pains in my back where they stabbed me. I didn’t know that I had been stabbed, I had so much adrenalin in me that I couldn’t feel the pain. I was trying to stay on my feet and not go down. The blows to my head were so many that they sounded like hailstones coming down. I notice a flash of light and put my hand up as a guard; a knife slices into my wrist, taking the bone out as well. My hand felt strange at the time, I was aware something was wrong with it but couldn’t tell what. From the large gang around me there was now only a few left; two had run away and I had managed to knock some out. This one guy was on my back hitting me in the ear, I could feel his blows stinging me. I grab this one guy who was attacking me and bear-hug him and clamp my teeth onto his nose. We fall to the floor and the guy on my back now starts to stick the boots into me.