Streetfighters: Real Fighting Men Tell Their Stories

by Davies, Julian

  I stagger back to my feet and we all start to beat them up. James is now on top of the Rastafarian and is plucking out the guy’s dreadlocks like he is plucking a chicken. He shouts over to me, “Look Dad, I’ve scalped this one!” James had already had a real bad kicking but when they jumped on me they left him alone; he had got back up and dived straight back into the fight. Well, we beat the shite out of the lot of them. It could have been a lot worse than it was. The next night we are all back in work all black and blue, I have lumps and bumps all over my head from the knuckle-dusters and of course that fire extinguisher. I put it down to an occupational hazard, all part of the job, another day at the bloody office.

  A good few years ago I built my own house, right big place it was with six bedrooms, two bathrooms and everyone lived there: my sons, their girlfriends and some mates would stay over as well. It was set in a nice part of the countryside; the neighbours were pricks but I loved the place. One of my sons fell out with someone and the police called around, to search the house. There were about eleven coppers searching. I didn’t have anything to worry about and just sat back and let them carry on. One of the coppers picks up a loose patio slab and finds someone’s stash of drugs. Anyway, they arrest me and lock me up. Now the stuff weren’t mine but because I knew who they belonged too, I took the blame.

  When I was being arrested, they asked would I like to say something. I told them, “Yes, please. Don’t hit me again copper.” Which they didn’t find funny. My solicitor told me I was looking at three years. Of course, this started to worry me. I just sat in my cell meditating and trying to work out how to get out of the mess I was in. I had to go to Crown Court and asked for some books from the library and some of my old boxing posters and photos for evidence. I showed the court the books, which stated that sportsmen used the drugs to lose weight, also my boxing posters and some photos of me knocking the boxer Neville Meade out. The judge seemed to be a boxing fan and said it was a shame that I had resorted to using the stuff to lose weight. I couldn’t believe my luck when he gave me a £200 fine. The coppers were pig sick; they all looked gutted.

  You don’t get anything in this world if you let people walk all over you. My parents have never been the sort to complain about things, but me, I’ll argue all day if I’m in the right. A few years ago I went to the hospital with my mum and my sister, who, believe it or not, is a Sunday school teacher. My mum needed a hip replacement and we took her to see a consultant. The consultant told us that she could have a replacement in maybe two years. I start to swear and shout at the consultant that my mum could be dead within two years. He leaves the room and comes back a few minutes later. “She can have the replacement in two days’ time,” he now tells me. So I may be a bit loud but it’s the only way you can get things done sometimes. I sometimes wonder how many other people are out there waiting for an operation when, if they had stood up for themselves, it could have just taken a few days to sort out.

  I train every day of the week, it’s the only way I can get rid of all my energy. Our week starts with Monday, we lift weights in the morning and work on the heavy bag at night. Tuesday starts with a run for a few miles then later we go to Birmingham to spar a few rounds and some pad work. This is repeated throughout the week, we train hard every day and all push ourselves to the limits. When I’ve worked out I find I’m a more relaxed person. If I was in a prison cell with no training, I know I’d end up killing my cell mate. I’ve just got to have some sort of physical outlet; the doctor once told me that when I was knocked off my motorbike.

  That was a mad day, that was. I was driving down the road on my bike minding my own business when this van full of Pakistanis hit me. I flew through the air right over the top of this van and landed on my head, all 19 stone of me down on my head. Witnesses who saw this all happen thought I were dead, to them it looked like I snapped my neck. I awoke to find loads of people around me. I said, “Right, what’s cracking off?” With that, my arm started flapping as if it had a life of its own. “That will be the shock,” someone told me. “Where’s my fucking bike?” I asked. The ambulancemen told me not to move because they thought I had broken my neck. They explained that if I had tried to move, I could have severed my nerves and paralysed myself. I thought, right oh, I’m not moving, and they put a collar around my neck and all that shit.

  This all happened just down the road from the club where I worked. The police went to the club and asked if I worked there. Stan told them I didn’t because he didn’t know about the accident and thought the police were after me. He even said he didn’t know me. The copper said, “Yes you do, look, he’s lying down there on the pavement.” Stan sees me on the floor and starts going for the Pakistanis, thinking they had killed me. By now everyone is out looking; lots had scanners in their houses so they had heard it. Seems like everyone knew about it before I even got to the hospital. When I got to the hospital, apart from them having to glue some cuts on my head and a few bruises, there wasn’t any real damage, thank God.

  Now I couldn’t train tidy for a while so I was getting a bit short-tempered and that. So the fuckers send me on behaviour therapy/anger management course. I thought, bugger that, and even though my knee was playing up, I used a pushbike each day to get rid of the aggression. I was only using my one leg to work the thing; I must have looked mental riding on it. The worst part of all this was the fact that the Pakistanis had run over and destroyed my bike.

  The thing with being in such a high-profile job is that people think they can make friends with you and then take liberties. They may try to impress their girlfriends or boost their own self-esteem by giving people the impression that they are big mates of mine; they may even say or do something that only my close friends could get away with. Well, over the years I have learnt to keep these people at a distance: I don’t need any weak-willed person trying to cut branches off my tree. I treat people the way I expect them to treat me, and if they want to be rough then I can change gear and be rough as well.

  If there is one thing that life has taught me, that is, don’t plan for anything. Things have a habit of going up in the air, so I never plan too far ahead. I don’t think I want to go on fighting when I’m past 50 but who knows what may happen? There are some bareknuckle fighters who go on fighting until they are 60. It don’t really matter if it’s unlicensed boxing or bareknuckle fighting, when I get to a venue I feel it’s where I should be. I just love the whole atmosphere at the fights, there’s nothing like the fire in my belly that I get when I’m in the ring facing an opponent.

  NIGEL SULLIVAN

  Merthyr Tydfil

  Nigel is adept at reading people and within seconds he will have their measure. A gentleman first and foremost, he has another side ready for those who deserve it. With a sixth sense for impending trouble, he can react to any situation that’s thrown at him.

  I WAS BORN in South Wales in 1957. I was never a big kid but I could hold my own in a fight even back then. How I started with martial arts was through my mother. She worked on the line in Hoover’s factory and, through the sports and social, some office staff could use the canteen area for badminton at night. There were two guys, Alan Thomas and Dai Davies, who wanted to start a little judo club up. Turns out they were stopped because of the badminton; some of the women there weren’t happy and started a petition up – well, you know what women can be like. Before long they had the hall but, of course, there wasn’t enough people going to justify the class. One night my mother came home and said, “Right, you’re off to judo.” I had no idea I was going, it came as a complete shock. Off I go and just didn’t know what to expect. That was the first time I saw a black belt. I remember saying to the guy there, “Excuse me sir, but is that a real black belt?”

  I was petrified going there the first time. The thing that scared me the most was seeing so many kids I didn’t know. I didn’t know them or how they would react to me coming to the club. After a while some of the kids would drop out and we would be left with just the
ones who really wanted to learn. Of course, I had made friends with them all by then so I was having a great time.

  I started going to different clubs and learning different styles. I even went to boxing and trained at that for a while as well. I never lost a fight as a kid, what with boxing, judo, and all, it made me pretty fit and able to fight quite well. The only fight I can ever remember losing was when I was about 34 and I was drunk, to say the least. I was going through a divorce at the time and went out and got absolutely hammered. I was standing by the bar when the bouncer said, “It’s going to kick off in here now, give us a hand will you?” Me, like a fool, said yes. Thing is, he was getting paid for it and when it came to the fight, the git dropped me in it: I went outside with the two troublemakers and he stayed inside. I could barely walk, I was so drunk. Anyway, before the fight even started I trip and break an ankle, just my luck as usual. I manage to put the first one away but I couldn’t handle the second one in my drunken state. I got battered and I mean battered well. It serves me right. Being in that state, I couldn’t even see him.

  Back when I was ten, maybe eleven, I met this guy called Emrys Jones who wrote a book called The Secret Fear. It absolutely captivated me. He would train the adults in jiu-jitsu: this was back in the days when it was considered too dangerous to teach to kids. Now I was doing judo at the time but when I saw the sneaky punches and the gouging I knew jiu-jitsu was for me. I just had to find out all I could and I’ve been seeking knowledge ever since. When I started in jiu-jitsu I was training the same time as this big, 18-stone feller. I was only nine-and-a-half stone but we still had some right old wars. I wouldn’t back down with him. He was so heavy that when I used to take him down onto my knee it would tremble under his weight. The fights we had were right battles but we became friends through it all in the end.

  I was in a judo competition once and my dad drove me all the way up to Crystal Palace. I’d been training for months for this competition and was all keyed up for it. My first fight was at three o’clock. I was ready for it and, of course, my dad was watching, so it made it more important for me. I got on the mat at three o’clock, bowed and was down straight away. I had lost in a matter of seconds. Within minutes, we were back in the car going home. My dad wasn’t happy at all, he didn’t talk to me all the way back to Wales. You could have cut the atmosphere in the car with a knife.

  I then trained privately under a guy called John Warfield, whose brother used to be the bodyguard for Eartha Kitt and Johnny Mathis. He was something else. When he was 18, he had an operation on his stomach and had a pipe put in, but carried on fighting until he was 70-odd, which goes to show you what type of guy he was. John trained me well in the fighting arts but he also trained me to be humble as well. You see, at that time of my life I would fight anyone and wouldn’t care who I took on. It was through him that I learned to respect people more and try to walk away from trouble, unless of course things had gone too far. He had the strongest fingers that I had ever come across: once he grabbed you, there was no getting away. In jiu-jitsu it’s common to have some get knocked out, and when I was training under John I would regularly be choked out. Even this week one of my own black belts was choked unconscious by me. It just happens, it’s all part of learning to fight.

  I was in this local pub once and this big rugby guy was there; he was about 18 stone and I was just ten stone at the time. Well, the pub was chock-a-block at the time. I was just standing there with my brother having a pint. He barged past and bumped into me, tipping my pint over my brother. I look up and he just gives me this look, so before I knew it I had thrown a punch and he’s on the floor out cold. The guy wanted it and I reacted before he could, so he brought it on himself. I could tell by his body language what he wanted. I guess that just comes from years of training.

  In martial arts, we are trained not to go looking for trouble. I myself am always fair with people but sometimes even I have no option but to strike first. For instance, I was on holiday with my family and we were having a great time at this holiday camp. My boy was only about five years old at the time and was playing in this soft toy area. Believe it or not, the area had a bouncer who was always throwing his weight around. Now, these were really little kids so you can imagine what type of guy he was. I was talking to this guy in a wheelchair, both of us having a quiet pint, when up comes the missus with the little one crying in her arms. Turns out this bully bouncer had pushed over my son. When she complained, he gave her a right mouthful.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll go and have a chat with him.” I didn’t show her but I was going up to plant him. I have no time for his sort. I went up and told him he was out of order and did him in seconds: I bust up his nose, ribs and knee before he could move. He just lay there on the floor in agony. Well, up comes security, ranting and raving, so I did him as well. This other guy comes up the balcony and BANG, he has it as well. By then I was off it and there was no stopping me.

  I left there but the police told me they understood the problem but I should apologise. Well, I thought they were being fair so up I went. This was 20 minutes later and he was still there waiting for the ambulance. I tell him I’m sorry but he had hit my boy and that wasn’t on. Well, his mother happened to be there and she was a good sort, she turned to me and said, “Don’t worry, it’s all part of his apprenticeship,” which I thought was really funny at the time. Seems his dad was a right handful and the bouncer was following him that way.

  I got into training with an ex-SAS combat officer and that led to me doing a couple of bodyguarding jobs with my mate Jim. There was one job we did for a famous diamond dealer; his father was a renowned Impressionist artist. He done this one display, which was full of his son’s diamonds, about £250,000 in all. Well, we stayed up there for a while looking after the diamonds. We had to keep checking the display and watching out for trouble. The diamond guy had his mate with him and he was a right prick. Jim hated him, he really hated his guts. Well, we were there keeping our eyes peeled, I had a dagger concealed on me and, of course, Jim was carrying as well: even though it was “lady this” and “lord that”, we still couldn’t be sure somebody wouldn’t try something.

  After the show, the dealer’s girlfriend had taken the car so we had to walk. We thought it was better not to look suspicious so we put the diamonds in an Asda carrier bag. I walked all the way through London with all these diamonds in this carrier bag. No trouble at all. Got back to his house and got the diamonds into his safe. He had hired us both for the weekend and he wanted to go for a drink. A few drinks later and he was gobbing off about us being his bodyguards. Jim and myself weren’t drinking and we were getting some strange looks from the crowd in the club. We decide to get them out and walk home with them. No sooner had we started walking when the prick starts on Jim. The dealer’s girlfriend was now with us. “What would you do, let’s say, if I grabbed her tits, Jim?” he says, pointing to the dealer’s girl. With that, Jim steps forward quick as a flash and head-butts the prick, and he’s lying there spark out on the pavement. I look down at him and I’m thinking, bloody great, there goes our wages, and it’s up to me to carry the dick all the way back to the dealer’s house. We still got paid a thousand each, which I was more than happy with.

  The next time we worked for the dealer was up in Yorkshire, in this big private school which was run by monks. It was an antiques and diamond fair and we were hired for three to four days and we were bored stiff. There was this six-foot-odd ex-SAS guy, seems he was a big boxer and was on to me all week to show him jiu-jitsu. He wouldn’t bloody leave me alone about it. Now he was a big nasty bastard and one day when the place was cleared out we went in to gym. “Come on, show me in the ring,” he shouts. There we were, sparred up to each other, he moves toward me and bang, I hit him straight in the balls and down he goes to his knees. I step closer, grab him and choke him out. I can still remember Jim standing over him slapping his face to bring him around and saying, “I told yah, I fucking told yah.”

/>   Back when I was about 19, my brother took me to get chips at the bottom of town. This guy calls me outside and says, “Hey Butt, get me some chips.”

  “Get your own chips, Butt,” I tell him.

  With that, him and his buddy approach me and before I know it he has stuck the head on me, catching me off guard. I’m sitting on the pavement and as I get up the two of them run off. I tried over the course of the next few weeks to find out who they were but to no avail. Thing is, I still remembered what they looked like. I’m driving down the road one day a few years later and spot this guy thumbing a lift. I stop and he gets in. We are driving for a while, chatting away, when I realise he was one of the ones from the fish shop. I stop the car, get out and lift the bonnet up. I’m standing there, pretending to look inside, when he gets out.

  “What’s the matter, Butt?” he asks.

  “Come and look at this,” I reply.

  With that, he sticks his head under the bonnet. Soon as he does, I give him the finest hammering of his life. I battered the fuck out of him and left him on the side of the road where he fell. It must have been another seven years later when I spot the other one. I call him over and just clip him. Seems drugs were doing more damage to his body than I could do.

  I strongly believe that we should all have goals in life: my goal these days is to get my sixth dan and make my club bigger and better. The club is expanding each day with different techniques being taught, things like footwork, groundwork, throwing, sticking and grappling. I make my black belts evade, come in and use all these options. Fighting’s a passion for me and I still look for different styles and love everything about it all.

  BILLY CRIBB

  England/USA

  Billy Cribb (left) with former Kray henchman, Tony Lambrianou