Streetfighters: Real Fighting Men Tell Their Stories

by Davies, Julian

  DECCA SIMPKIN

  Derby

  A no-frills fighter who has beaten the odds no end of times. On their own or mob-handed, it makes no difference to Decca. From unlicensed boxing bouts to nightclub brawls, he has often remained the last man standing. You would rather have Decca inside your tent pissing out than outside pissing in.

  I WAS BORN in Derbyshire in 1953. I come from a big mining family: my dad and both grandads worked down the mines. When I was young there was something like twelve pits around here but now there’s not one left. My great-uncle was a champion barefist fighter in the days when barges would come down the canals trading with each town. His name was Jack Carter, and he would get off the barge in different towns fighting for money. Must have been a hard way of life.

  I had a good childhood, doing the things that all young lads did. One of my fondest memories as a child was playing in a place called Dead Dane’s Valley. It was the place where, back in history, the Saxons slaughtered the Danes. As young lads we would get dustbin lids and sticks, make up two sides – either you were a Saxon or a Dane – and we would re-enact the battles. I always enjoyed this game, nobody got hurt and we would have a great time.

  People ask me why I became a fighter. Well, I put it down to the fact that I have all this energy all the time and get a little short-tempered if I can’t release it. I was always fighting in the playground as a young lad. One day I knocked this kid out and he said that it wasn’t a fair fight. The teachers knew we were going to fight no matter what, so they organised it in the gym for us. The headmaster even charged the kids a few bob to watch it. It was supposed to have been a sort of wrestling match but I went mad and smashed him up, breaking his nose and all. They couldn’t stop his nose bleeding for about a day and his eyes were all black and that. I loved the sound of the crowd when we were fighting and later after the fight they were all coming up to me saying, “You’re the best, you’re the hardest.” I thought to myself, this is alright this is, I like this.

  In my teens, I became obsessed with running. I would love to run but as I got bigger I found it was getting harder and harder to run as good as when I was lighter. I started knocking guys out and fighting all the time, so I found the best place for me was the boxing gym. I boxed as an amateur and also started boxing at unlicensed shows for about £50 a time. I was training one day in the gym with the Bodell brothers when Jack Bodell [former British Heavyweight Champion] said there was this unlicensed show where we could fight gypsies for money. I thought, right, I’m having some of that, and off we all go in the big van to Uttoxeter. I get to the venue and I go to my dressing room to get a little sleep. Some people can’t do this but I just relax and off I go.

  I’m fast asleep when this gypsy that I’m going to fight comes in and wakes me up. “Tell you what Decca,” he starts to tell me, “let’s agree to split the money between us no matter who wins, half each like.”

  I put him straight when I say to him, “Fuck off, I want all the money, I’m going to batter you.”

  He looks shocked and says, “Oh, you are, are you?”

  “Yes I am, now get lost so I can get some sleep,” I growl back at him and go back to sleep as the gypsy goes away. I’ve always been greedy, me.

  The fight starts well and by the third round I’m well ahead. I start to give the gypsy a right battering so he spins around and turns his back to me. I just carry on beating the shit out of his back; I thought, fuck him, and kept punching. There were three judges on the panel and they all stood up and shouted, “Disqualified!” All my crew, and there were quite a few of us, jumped up and threatened to wreck the place if that happened. Well they agreed to let me win. I think if I was on my own I would have got turned over by them all. The unlicensed game can be a hard one but if you’ve trained tidy and have your wits about you it can be okay.

  I started working the doors when I was about 19, so that’s almost 30 years of being a doorman. I went up to this club for work called the 76 Club. It was quite a rough club at the time. The manager told me there was no work available so I said, “Fuck it then,” and walked out. The head bouncer, Colin, said, “That big geezer looks like he can look after himself. You had better get him back. Looks like we have trouble in here tonight.” They got me back and the manager said, “Look you’ll be on five pound a night, but see that big geezer by the bar? He’s been causing us trouble. If you knock him out I’ll put you on seven pound a night.” Now that was good money in them days. I was right up for the job, so he had no chance. Up to the bar I march and give the big troublemaker a clip and drag him out by his ear. That was my first introduction to bouncing and I took to it like a duck to water, I just loved it.

  When you work the doors, sometimes in a fight you can hit a person a little too hard. You can never work out how much another man can take for certain. This happened to me once, in I think it was 1976, at the 76 Club. I’m having a quiet night when I notice this big Army guy beating some smaller guy up. I walk over to them and stop the fight but the Army guy wants it with me. I throw a straight right hand and launch him off his feet. Down he goes with his nose broke and all his front teeth smashed out. I swear I only hit the prick once, but the next day the police arrest me. “Decca,” the sergeant informs me, “we have you for assault, but if the guy don’t wake up you’re on for murder.” Turns out this guy hadn’t regained consciousness, just my luck. Well, after two days he decides to wake up, about time as well. He told them he was in the wrong and wouldn’t press charges, which was fair of him. Just goes to show you that your whole life and somebody else’s can be changed with just one punch.

  I’ve had some good boxing trainers in my time that really knew what they were doing. I was fighting down at the Bath House in London and one of my trainers, Les Bodell, was with me. I was fighting this big, fat guy called Smith. It got to the eighth round and I was battering lumps out of him. Les came to my corner to rub me down and that. Without warning, he dropped down dead as a doornail. I can remember us driving down to the venue and he complained that he had pins and needles in his hands. “My bloody hands are tingling Decca, what the hell can that be?” he complained to me. I told him, “You want to see a doctor about that shit, it could be bad,” and now there he was down on the floor dead with a heart attack.

  I shout to the promoter, “My trainer’s bloody dead, look, he’s gone blue.”

  The promoter says, “Carry on fighting, you don’t get paid if you don’t fight.”

  With that, Jack Bodell had to get in my corner and I had to fight on as they carried him on a board and put him in the back room. I couldn’t believe it. I fought on and knocked Smith out in the tenth round. How the hell I did that, I shall never know. He was my trainer and a good mate, he was a good lad Les as well. I don’t know if he was dead going into the back room, after all I’m no doctor, but when they pulled him out after the fight he bloody well was.

  I had a professional fight in Norway once where I was a bit worried about the referee being biased. Well I had nothing to worry about, they didn’t mind us, it was the Germans that they hated. I was fighting this big six foot six lad and I was ahead by the sixth round. A big right hand knocks the guy down. He gets back up and I come rushing in like a steam engine looking to finish him off. With that he butts me straight on my nose, blood everywhere and my nose was swollen right up. I still manage to beat him and I was expecting the judges to be on his side but, like I said, they were very fair.

  After a while I felt like a change, so I went up to a club called The Regency in Swadlincote. I walked in and asked for a job. The job was going fine until one day I threw out this Scottish lad, he was from a big family who were well known around here. The next day I got up and the club had been petrol bombed, the whole place went up in smoke. Bloody hell, I was out of work for six months. My good mate Izzy worked a club called the Rock House. They were getting some trouble from a group of bikers, and Izzy said, “Right, I’ll get my mate Decca and some friends to sort things out,” so I’m
back in work again. The bikers were called the Road Tramps; this was in the days before they amalgamated with the Hells Angels. Well, we battered fuck out of them and the club was under control again. Thing was with the bikers, once I beat one of their hardest they kept bringing harder and harder guys to fight me. I just kept beating them up so I sort of gained their respect over the years.

  Some bikers wanted to buy one of the clubs that I worked at. With me off the door, they could put pressure on the owners to get the place cheaper. They sent three guys round to sort me out. These guys spent the night at the club and got themselves a few drinks for Dutch courage. I’m sitting in my chair when they walk down the stairs to exit the club. “Could we have a word with you Decca?” the biggest biker says to me. Now I don’t know these guys but they know my name. I felt these guys were trouble, I could sense the nervous tension in the air. The other lads working on the door shouted over to see if I was okay. I told them I was and approached the three guys. They started talking about bike rallies and gangs that I may have known. It was all idle talk just to catch me unawares.

  “Never mind the bullshit, tell me what you really want,” I scream at them. With that, the biggest starts to pull out this huge knife; I just catch a glimpse of it as the light catches it. Without thinking, I hit the bastard. Before the knife is out, he’s on the floor, out cold and twitching in his sleep. The other two don’t want to fight and run off down the road. I look down the taxi rank outside and there are about 50 taxi drivers and customers, who are all clapping their hands. I’m feeling great now, right in my element. The prick with the knife wakes up and starts to go for his knife again. I inform him that if he does I will kick him to a pulp. He decides against it and fucks off. If he had pulled that knife out then it would have been a licence for me to do what I wanted, and he knew that. I was pretty lenient anyway. Most people would have kicked his head in.

  When I get someone who pulls a knife out on me, I never worry about what may happen. I hold no fear for that person, neither do I have any anger or compassion, just pure cold aggression. I work by moving up gears on each person who I fight: somebody who needs a clip I go to first gear, but someone who pulls a knife I go straight to fourth gear and want to completely destroy that person. All this shouting stuff just gets in the way; I just get straight in and smash them to bits as fast as I can. There are certain types of people who know they can’t fight me barefist so that’s when they come with weapons. I’ve had knives in my back, I’ve been hit by axes and knuckledusters in my head. These people are not real fighters and I have no respect for them at all. Show me a man who can fight with his fists face to face: these are the only fighters I respect. For somebody to want to use an axe on me just tells me how scared they are of me and in a way it’s a form of flattery.

  The culture of some of the bike gangs is such that they tend to carry weapons like guns, axes, knives and anything they can use on someone. This gang came up to the club one night looking to fight with a rival bike gang who weren’t in on that night. They had come into the club in two groups and met up inside. I had my eye on them most of the night. After a while they start to smash the place up. They smash a window and attempt to steal the till with all the takings in it. I run up and before I can grab them I hear a few coming at me from behind. I spin around as a meat cleaver smashes into the side of my head, ripping me open. I duck another blow and the cleaver takes off the very tip of my head, like a knife cutting the top off an egg.

  I get to the pool table and grab hold of a cue and go absolutely berserk. I’m right up for it now. These guys wanted me dead so nothing’s going to stop me now, I was in fourth gear. I battered the cleaver man with the pool cue, I just splattered him all over the place, and at one time I thought I had killed the arsehole. My mate working with me gets a knife right through his thigh; he was screaming in pain. Another mate called Harley gets three huge stab wounds down his head; he was a bald bugger like me so you can still see the scars. They really beat the crap out of him; I felt really sorry for him later. There were about 15 of these dickheads still trying to kill us. Three police officers turn up, take one look at the fight and fuck off down the road. There were two of us against all these bikers and the police decide to run away to get help, bloody great.

  I’m using the pool cue to put a few away. I shout to my mate Izzy, “For God’s sake, wipe the blood out of my eyes, I can’t see nowt.”

  “Decca,” he shouts, “there’s no blood in your eyes mate, it’s flowing down the sides, you’ve fucked your eyesight up.”

  I thought, the fuckers have blinded me. After a minute or so my eyesight comes back, thank God for that. I start to beat the rest of them up. At the end there were three ambulances full of these bikers all broken up and covered in blood. Then the police decide to turn up like Star Wars stormtroopers, all in riot gear, and there’s no one left fighting, they are either in hospital or home in bed by the time the police come. The police asked if I wanted to press charges and all that shit. I tell them, “Nah, it’s okay, I just fell over, that’s all. I never saw any fighting.” Funny thing was that all the bikers, customers and staff that got hurt said the same thing. The police wanted to know how we ran a club with blind bar staff, customers and doormen.

  Some people get the wrong impression of me and think that I’m going to be violent all the time and that I’m going to be unapproachable but that’s completely wrong. I’m a bit loud sometimes when I’m having fun and that, but aren’t we all? Once when I was working the doors in Spain, I took the night off. I don’t drink much but on that night I had a few. I got to the club I was working at and after a while decided to get up on the stage with the strippers. This stripper shouts to the other doorman, a big lad called Malcolm, to get me off the stage. He takes one look at me then runs out of the club and down the street never to be seen again. Well for God’s sake! He was in charge that night and all he had to do was ask me to get down. I’m a reasonable guy and I respect another doorman’s authority.

  One club I worked at I had this armchair set up by the entrance just for me. When I wanted five minutes to myself, I would sit there with my coffee. One thing about me and coffee is I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m having a cup. This one night, three Irish navvies came in. They were big lads, all brothers I think. They walked straight past the girl collecting money. They had no intention of paying. I watched them come in and carried on drinking my coffee. When I was finished, I got up and said to the girl, “Right, now I’ll sort them all out.” I’ve worked the doors for so many years now that I can smell trouble before it starts and I knew these guys were trouble.

  I walk up to them all and I shout to the biggest one, “Oi, boy! You haven’t paid.” With that, he turns around, real fast like, and throws a right hand. Soon as I see it come I tuck my chin down and he busts his hand on my forehead. I get the big one down on the counter and no sooner have I done this than his brothers grab both my shoulders. Now I was on my own and they were big guys so I had to go up a gear. I pick up a Newcastle Brown bottle and smash it down on him, splitting his eye open. Blood squirts over the mirror and the counter. I turn to his brothers, who are now legging it down the street. I pick him off the floor and stick three more into him. I drag him to the exit and smash his head into the wall for good measure. Once I throw him into the street, his brave brothers turn up and take him away. Now, once I beat a man, the fight’s over and I bear no grudges against them. I’m not the type to sit around all day seeking to beat them again, it’s sometimes just business and not personal. I just want to get on with my life and I’m happy for them to get on with theirs. A few weeks after I had beaten the biggest brother, he stood in front of a train and waited for it to hit him, which it did at about 100 miles an hour. So that was the end of him.

  Drug dealers try to take control of most clubs. I just won’t let them control any that I work at. One night one of my sons, James, was working the front door when these crack dealers came in, right rough-looking guys they were. Th
is big bastard pushes my boy and says, “Out of the way, I’m packing here.” With that he opens up his coat to show a sawn-off shotgun inside. Now my sons don’t mess around, they are big lads who know how to fight. James butts him straight on the nose and the guy staggers back but doesn’t fall. The guy shouts out, “I’m on angel dust, now you are for it.” With that, he calls his mates to smash the place up. Turns out they had come to the club to get the till, with about £7,000 in it.

  There were loads of them in the club by now and they all jumped on James, kicking the shit out of him. He was on the floor being kicked by loads of them. I was sitting down relaxing at the time when the manager comes up and says, “Decca, they are kicking your boy to bits.” My heart starts beating like hell and I run to where James has been standing. As I’m running to this crowd beating on James, this big wave of bottles and glasses comes flying toward me. Well I must have timed it right because I went under all of the glass. Now my other boy Luke and my mate Stan “The Man” get hit by all the glass because they were just behind me. I jump into the gang and start punching them out. I can’t see James and the gang start to jump on me so I disappear amongst them onto the floor. They are hitting my head with brass knuckledusters and anything else they can get their hands on. Luke picks up a fire extinguisher and throws it at the pile of arseholes on top of me. At that moment, I fight my way to my feet and the extinguisher hits me on the top of my head. It put a big dent in the extinguisher and my bloody head. I fall back down, dazed.