I was on the door once with this guy and these two known faces came to the door. I said, “No trainers or tracksuits.” One tried to grab my larynx and I knocked his arm away. So the guy said, “Are we fighting now, or what?” The 19-stone doorman next to me was visibly shaking. I said to the lad, “How can I fight you? Look at the state of this cunt.” Meaning my supposed back-up. And I let them in.
Another night, I was stood on the door and had had a run-in with this guy from a certain team the night before. I didn’t know he was from this team and he had mouthed off and was about to hit me so I said, “What’s up with you?” and while he was thinking about it, I knocked him out with a right hook to the jaw. The one he doesn’t see is the one that gets him. The next night, it was near Christmas, and they came with tickets for Christmas. I was taking these tickets on the front door, which they had paid £35 for. This guy came back and pushed my arm and said, “I have fucking got something for you round the corner.” I pulled my arm away and said, “You have got fuck all round the corner for me, dickhead.” The next minute, they all came out of the woodwork, seven of them, and started going for it. I had to fight my bollocks off to get back to the door. The reason I got there was because the sleeve of my suit came off with three of them holding onto it. When I got back to the door, the other doorman, who was from the same part of the city as this firm, said, “That’s what happens when you fuck with guys from our ’hood.” I thought, thanks very much, you bastard.
Steve Powell was a doorman in the town for ten or twelve years so I knew that what he was telling me, he had done. It wasn’t theory. He was the most frightening guy I had seen up to that point. He had this delivery system, the double-hip. Basically, you use the rotation of your hip to create a whiplash effect in your upper body and can generate enormous power for punches, elbows, whatever, without having to wind up your shot. And they were doing it from no guard, just however they were stood, and still generating massive power. The pioneer of it was a Japanese guy called Shigeru Kimura. He had a physics degree and put diodes on people to work out the most effective body mechanics. There are 13 different pointers to the double-hip delivery system. One story told about Kimura was that he was in America and a guy pulled a gun on him and he has done the double-hip and the guy just moved his head a fraction and Kimura’s punch ripped his ear clean off.
I was doing tae kwon do, thinking I can do a high spinning kick like Jean Claude Van Damme and knock people out, but then found that I was standing in a four-foot doorway with not enough room to spin a cat. Whereas Steve Powell was doing massive punches from a stationary start. And he was blending everything himself, all different styles of martial arts. The system that he taught me is still my basis in martial arts but I have added lots to it, from grappling, jeet kune do, Filipino arts, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, vale tudo and so on.
I remember when Ultimate Fighting first became big in the United States, where they match different martial artists against each other in competition. Me and some of my pals had already been doing something similar and called it “hard core”. We used to pad up and fight: boxer versus kicker, karate versus wrestler, do scenario work simulating knife attacks. We tried to make it as realistic and possible and put surprises in, so one guy would hide a knife in his trousers, then go to ground with a grappler and be in the worse position but then suddenly pull out the knife. The grappler wouldn’t know about it and would have to try to deal with it straight away. There is no best martial art. It is what is best at the time. Usually it is not the best art that wins anyway but the guy behind it.
If you go one-on-one, size does make a difference. A big guy can absorb the blows, put pressure on you because of their bulk and also put more mental pressure on you because they are bigger and more intimidating. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit. But fights don’t usually happen on a simple one-to-one basis. Usually nobody knows when it is going to go off, and then it is down to who is quickest to the gun, with the most power. My style on the door is, I always try to talk to the guy. But usually you can tell if it is no use. In the film The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, there is a scene where the bad guy, Tuco, is in the bath and a man comes in with a gun to shoot him. The guy goes into a big spiel about how he is going to kill him, then Tuco calmly pulls the trigger of the gun he is hiding beneath the bathwater and blows the guy away. Then he says out loud, “My friend, when it is time to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.” It’s who is quicker to the gun.
Then there are the big groups you have to deal with, rugby players, stag nights, whatever. When things turn nasty, what you want to avoid is them all kicking off and smashing the place up. You always get a ringleader, so the idea is to isolate him without causing all the others to kick off. What I learned to do was to go up to him and just say some gibberish into his ear. With the thumping music, the club packed full of people, he would think he had misheard you and would go, “What?”
I’d say exactly the same nonsense and, again, he’d say, “What?”
Then I would shout into his ear, “Come out into the hallway mate, and then I can tell you. It’s too loud in here.”
Then I would walk out and he would follow, curious to know what I had to say. His mates might see us but because I wasn’t dragging him out or looking confrontational, they would think nothing of it. Once in the hallway, we would jump him and sling him out. Then we would go up to his mates one by one and say, “There’s someone outside wants to have a word with you.” When they came out to the door, we’d just push them out into the street and slam it shut behind them.
My worst opponent was this guy who always used to pop up. He was just a big fat beer fighter but he couldn’t half give it and take it. He has tried to bite my ear off, my nose off, he pulled my eye out of its socket once, he has glassed me. I have knocked him out every time but each time, for the first 30 seconds it has been like fighting Tyson.
The first time I came across him, I was on the door and there was this absolute babe who used to come in the club called Angela. Well, her sister came to the door and said, “If you can meet Angela at about quarter to two, she will take you home tonight.” I wasn’t supposed to finish on the door until 2am but I swerved off early, as any man would. I met Angela and we were sitting on a wall: me, Angela, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. Anyway, this guy started flashing his arse in the street. Her sister said something to him and he came over and hit her.
I used to run a pub called the Cheshire Cheese in Manchester, by the old Daily Express building, and I knew this guy from in there. I intervened and he grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go of my coat. BANG, I front-kicked him. Then his mates came out of the woodwork. Two of them were easy. I had bought a bottle of champagne for my big night with Angela and gave it to her sister’s boyfriend to hold. As it was kicking off, he held the bottle like a baby, then threw it and one of our attackers grabbed it and smashed it to use as a weapon.
I end up on the floor with the guy who had started it all, rolling around. It was a bad situation. It was dark, late at night, I was knackered from fighting, I was tense anyway because of looking forward to going out with this girl, and I was down on the deck. Anyway, I got this guy in what is called a closed guard: me lying on my back but with my legs wrapped around his waist to control him. I was going for a choke and his finger came into my eye. He was also trying to bite me and his mate with the broken bottle was trying to hit me. Well, you can train in grappling for as long as you like but nothing is going to prepare you for a situation like that.
Just as his mate went to stick the bottle in my head, I moved the guy on top of me into the way and he got bottled. Then I bridged and threw him off. I got hold of the guy with the bottle and we were both locked on to each other, panting. Things had got out of hand now so I said to him, “Look, you and I both know a certain guy.” I mentioned this guy’s name. Let’s just say he is a very well-respected person in Manchester. “Drop the bottle now and we’ll have it one-to-one, otherwise I will come through your
door at four o’clock one morning and kill you.” He knew I wasn’t bluffing because he knew that I was a friend of the guy I had just mentioned. So he dropped the bottle. That’s real weapons defence for you, not the moves you see in books. Anyway, then I finished it.
The funniest thing that happened to me on the doors was a bit rude, but I’ll tell you. I was at the entrance to this nightclub, talking to the doormen, and this bird came up and said, “Listen, if I give you a blowjob, will you let me in for free?” I said, “Okay.” So we walked down the road to a dark spot and she gave me a blowjob. I zipped up my pants and, as I walked away, I looked back over my shoulder and said, “Missus, I don’t work there, it’s free to get in anyway, and it shuts in half an hour.” She chased me up the road, hitting me with her handbag!
I was the landlord and tenant of the Cheshire Cheese when the Manchester Bomb went off in the summer of 1996. It was my best day ever for trade because mine was the closest pub to the town centre that was still open. All the other pubs were either damaged or evacuated. It was a rough pub when I first took over. We used to get a lot of lads from Ancoats and also a lot of gypsies from nearby campsites. The gypsies used to love smashing things up: when it kicked off they would smash the optics, the windows, the tables and chairs, everything. They just liked wrecking things. We used to be running around trying to put things away before they smashed them. Occasionally you’d get some heavies in. One guy came once trying to demand protection money. I collared him and said, “I’m the protection in here mate.” He didn’t come back.
Manchester has a particular problem with people being “connected”. It has got a lot better because most of the “heads” have now moved out of town. Now it is the CCTV and the police you have to watch out for. There were clubs closing down because of one or other rival door teams, managers being terrified, landlords being leaned on. I have never been connected to any of the teams. I’m a firm believer in karma: what goes around, comes around. If you punch someone on the nose, sooner or later you will get that back. If you are nice to someone, same thing. But righteous anger, when you or those close to you are threatened for no reason, is justified. I have done “house visits” but I never did it unless it was personal. I have had a few run-ins with the law but you wipe the camera, get your story straight and get rent-a-witness and you are straight. But you can’t have a piss in Manchester town centre these days without a camera being on you.
The first time I saw a guy knocked out on the door it was a shock and the first time I got the threat of getting shot I nearly pissed myself. But one of the other doormen said, “Don’t worry mate, we get ‘shot’ every night here. You hear it all the time.” I just got used to it. You get desensitised. I used to wear a vest sometimes, when I thought it would be rocking: usually stab-proof. If it is a gun you are usually fucked anyway because they will stick it right in your face.
I have had guns pulled on me a few times. One time this guy came up. I had had a really bad fallout with my girlfriend. I was really upset and I didn’t give a fuck about anything. This black guy came up with his team and stuck a gun in my face. I said, “I’ve fallen out with my girlfriend and the pain I have got in my heart, if you pull the trigger you will be giving me a release. And if you don’t pull the trigger, you’re going to look bad in front of all your mates. So it’s up to you.”
And this guy looks at his mates and said, “This crazy white man, he doesn’t give a fuck. He’s got bad woman trouble.”
And all his mates start saying, “Man, I can relate to that,” and, “Oh, don’t tell me about that, I know where he’s coming from.” And they ended up sympathising with me. But I got a bad rep for a while with the other doormen around that period because I was a loose cannon.
I have done the door ten years. I am a professional doorman. I have been shot at, slashed, hit with bats, had someone try to kidnap me, had house visits, pub visits. Most doormen are show. Only a couple have impressed me. You won’t get many who will go one on one who aren’t connected with teams or aren’t violent men. But there was one guy: he used to wear steel toe-capped boots and he would kick them in the shin and when they bent over with the pain he would just boot them full in the face. End of story. I must have seen him do it 50 times and it never failed. I still do the doors nearly every night but my goal would be to get a full-time martial arts academy, teaching reality-based techniques.
Martial arts have changed my life. If you know you can handle yourself it makes such a difference. If you go to the pictures and the guy behind is kicking the back of your chair, you know you can tell him to stop. It gives you that personal confidence. Even just going in a restaurant and sending back your meal if it is not right. You read of all these road rages, anger displacement, people getting ulcers and having heart attacks from stress and tension. Well, if you train martial arts you just go to the gym, punch the bag and get it all out. Simple. I would recommend it to anyone: there would be a lot less violence. I think all girls should learn some self-defence and I think it should be mandatory in schools to combat bullying.
Rick Young is the best martial artist I have trained with. He is a full jeet kune do instructor under Dan Inosanto, who trained with Bruce Lee. He is the most frightening I have seen. He is also the nicest guy you will meet, but with a lot of these guys, when they tell you a story they start to relive it and you can see in their eyes that they are the business. They have what war veterans call the “1,000-yard stare”. I have trained with top guys like Erik Paulsen [former shootfighting champion from America] and Royce Gracie [legendary Brazilian jiu-jitsu exponent and winner of three Ultimate Fighting Championships]. Royce was a gentleman. When we trained, he was talking to some other guy while at the same time tapping me out for fun. He gave me my blue belt, at a gym in Manchester. I have trained with Dan Inosanto in America and I have instructorships under Ricky Faye and Larry Hartsell. I have also been to America in summer camps, training. Some people do martial arts. I am a martial artist.
Greg Hall teaches his own reality-based martial arts system, called G-Tek, at gyms in north Manchester. He is also working on a book about his experiences as a doorman.
DARREN PULLMAN
Swansea
Life dealt him a bad hand, and the boxing gym became Darren’s reason for existing. His harsh upbringing provided him with survival instincts second to none and the ability to turn from being a gentleman to a cold-blooded killer in nanoseconds. Although still young, he has packed in more action than men three times his age, leaving him with more stories to tell than many a war veteran.
LOOKING OVER MY life, I can’t say that my childhood was a good one. In fact some people would call it a nightmare. My father, who I don’t really know a lot about, was a drinker, and my mother had a lot of mental health problems. Due to my mother’s condition, she was always getting into trouble and, of course, the trouble sometimes followed her back home. I can remember being three years old and getting mauled by an Alsatian dog, quite serious in fact. I had bite marks all over my face and body. The same week as I was getting over the attack by the dog, the back door of the house was smashed in; it completely flew across the room and a few men rushed in and battered my mother senseless. It was a frightening thing for a small, defenceless child to witness. It was also one of the first malicious things I encountered.
There were times when she just wanted to take her own life. She herself had a bad childhood and it affected her. There were times when every window of the house was put through. On other occasions we found out she had tried to kill herself. It was a traumatic childhood; I don’t know how I managed to keep things together over the years.
Maybe the one thing that kept me from going down the wrong road was the introduction of the boxing gym in my life. I went to the gym with friends and would sit and watch the older kids training. I was too young to train but I’d sit and take in the whole atmosphere. The coaches would look after the young boxers, really taking an interest in them. It may sound crazy but as a youngster, wi
th all the problems I had at home, I found the gym to be the place that I related to as home. It was the only place I could relax and be at ease. And when the coaches started to train me, they were the only people who were taking an interest in my life at the time. If I’m ever feeling down or have a problem, then I always return back to the gym. It’s the only place where I really fit in.
It could be that, because I didn’t have anyone to stand up for me, the bullies found me an easy target. They would always be in gangs – it’s funny how they work like that, never on their own, always in a gang. I took some terrible hidings. They would get me on the way to school, in school and on the way home. I had all these things going on at home and to make matters worse the bullies took me to be their victim.
I thought things would change when my mum met this Army guy. He moved us to England for about two years. We moved frequently around England, so I was always the new boy, and of course, I had a Welsh accent, which made me stand out to the school bullies. In Southampton during the Falklands War, we had an area on the Army barracks that was cornered off, a sort of play area which was inside a large protective metal cage, the whole idea being to protect the kids from any bomb attacks if they did occur. The bigger kids were battering me each and every day. The teachers must have known what was going on but they didn’t lift a finger in my defence. It got to the point where I offered to fight the biggest bully in the cage. I thought if I could beat him it would stop all the trouble I was getting.
I waited by the cage for him to turn up and he did, bringing all his mates with him. It felt very lonely there on my own but I had to put an end to it all; even if I got beat, I just had to fight him. We entered the cage, both taking a corner each. They slammed the metal door behind us and all took their places, looking through the mesh at us. We ran straight at each other and started to grapple. I was taking a beating by this bully but I threw out a right-hand, left-hook and both connected. The punches took the fight out of him. I could see it in his eyes. He just wanted out of the fight but I just kept punching him to the floor. I pinned him down and all the hidings, all the trouble I had at home, everything that was bothering me came to my mind and I let him have it. His friends tried to pull me off him, so I got up and started to beat on them. I just exploded and anyone who was in range got hit.
Streetfighters: Real Fighting Men Tell Their Stories Page 18
