One-Eyed Baz

by Barrington Patterson

  ‘I’m blind in one eye.’

  He was shocked because there are guys with two eyes who haven’t done what I’ve done. ‘How come you never told me before?’

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry myself, but he never mentioned it after that. Everything was normal.

  * * *

  I was in no doubt that this was a big fight. This guy Dennis Alexio – who played Jean-Claude Van Damme’s brother in a wheelchair in the movie Kickboxer – was originally from Los Angeles; the atmosphere was electrifying, with maybe 15,000 people crammed into the fight arena, and the promoter paid for everything: your full expenses, a little spending money plus your fight fee.

  DEV

  I know a few British guys have gone over there and just got knocked out in the first few rounds by Alexio – so I had calls from people to say, ‘Be careful with the “Terminator”.’ ‘Well we’re always careful in all fights!’ ‘Especially this one.’ Now, leading up to Alexio, they contacted me, they wanted a video of Barrington to sell for promotional reasons over there. In my head, I’m thinking, Yeah, I know what they’re up to. So I sent them the worst video of Barrington I could find. Afterwards, they sent it back and said, ‘The quality wasn’t good enough; can you send us something of Barrington training?’ So I said to Barrington, ‘I know what they’re doing, they just want to study you.’ So I made sure he did everything differently – different stance than he would normally fight in, different type of punches, different combination, and we trained in that way and then we sent them that video. So we knew – obviously they were training but when Barrington would jump in the ring it would be a different person altogether!

  On the way I stopped off in Los Angeles and then met Barrington and the others in Hawaii two days later. When I got there, they told me about the limousine waiting for them at the airport; they were going to press conferences each day and so forth. As usual, Barrington had already got fans following him around.

  Our hosts were great. If they said they were to pick you up at 11 o’clock, they’d be there at 10 to 11. Come the day of the fight, they were supposed to be there to pick us up at two o’clock; they turned up at three. The night before the fight, I asked the promoter, ‘Can I see the gloves?’ I like to see the sort of gloves our fighter is going to wear because you can’t wear your own; you have to bandage the hands as well.

  As I said, we were late. We got to the fight and it seemed they did everything to make us feel uncomfortable. We got to the changing room, we had no air con. They did. I put his bandages on – they sent us gloves that were like the second standard, not first-class gloves. The stitching was further down so it meant that his hands couldn’t go in: the stitching normally comes around the thumb but they were substandard gloves, so he couldn’t get his hand in. So they announced to the crowd that we had arrived late and were not ready; eventually, they gave us some gloves that had been used by somebody else and they were wet. We obviously had to take his bandage off and do it up again. So as we walked out the crowd all started booing, and then eventually Dennis Alexio came in – a guy with about a dozen world title belts and all of them were shown around the ring.

  Barrington was doing a lot better than they had expected. At the end of the first round, Barrington comes back and I’m there sorting his gum shield out and talking to him. You’ve got the red corner/blue corner and you’ve also got the two neutral corners. This ring girl literally pushed me out of the way and I said, ‘Why don’t you go to the neutral corner?’ And she said, ‘My boss said I must come here.’ She had to move me out of the way; we’ve only got a minute now so she’s pushed me out of the way to go round the ring. I think Alexio was confused because Barrington was a different person to what he expected. Obviously, he couldn’t do what he wanted in the fight and Barrington was clearly winning. Then, in the third round, he jump-kicked Barrington straight in the groin.

  About the third round, I was just jabbing away, jabbing away and coming forward. And, all of a sudden, he did a spinning back-kick that went straight in my groin! I just dropped straight away on the floor; it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I was on the floor, I was reeling around, I couldn’t breathe properly, the pain was probably going to make me crap my box. Dev was over on the floor talking to me, and then someone came into the ring and said, ‘If you don’t get up and carry on fighting, you ain’t gonna get paid.’

  DEV

  The heel is the most dangerous weapon you’ve got in martial arts. It’s like using a battering ram, because the action of the heel is directly in and that’s how he hit him in the groin. So obviously it got to the point where I thought, Impossible. You could see the pain he was in and I thought, You can’t carry on. The doctor came in and then somebody else came in and said, ‘You’ve got to fight.’ We said, ‘No, it’s impossible, he can’t fight, he can’t even stand up.’ They said, ‘You’ve got to fight; if you don’t fight you don’t get your expenses.’ That means the flight – we paid for it but they were supposed to reimburse us. They wouldn’t pay the flight, they wouldn’t pay the expenses. In some countries, they make it quite strict, but with amateurs it’s negotiable with expenses – so you can’t actually get paid as such. If you are popular, your status and the fact that you can attract a crowd will make them pay you.

  Now normally there’s a given time – different associations have their time, so let’s say after four minutes a decision has to be made. Barrington was down for at least 15 minutes. If somebody’s injured for that length of time, you can’t continue; you need the hospital or some other serious medical attention. You should have a winner, a disqualification or a no-contest. But they made him fight on! Barrington was like a punch bag – Dennis Alexio had him in the corner and he was dipping his body shots around the kidney area. Alexio’s a good boxer, he’s a very good fighter – I think out of 70-something fights he’s only ever lost one. It was painful watching from the corner, he was ramming those punches.

  It was painful. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t kick – I couldn’t do anything really. By the end of five rounds, the referee just stopped the fight.

  But I was in Hawaii for a few days. I saw many Japanese tourists and plenty of shops – which is a weakness for me, as I love to shop. (Japan is one country where I wish I’d had the chance to fight; I feel I would have made my mark there.) At the time, I was ranked number two in world kickboxing and had already been a top five world-ranked fighter for a period. I lost to Alexio after five rounds in Hawaii, but it was the experience of a lifetime for me.

  * * *

  I entered the 1995 British Kickboxing Championships in Nottingham, where all of the best fighters in England turned up and fought each other. You’ve got about seven or eight weight categories and I got to fight at heavyweight. The W.A.K.O. (World Association of Kickboxing Organizations) Championships are a series of competitions that run every year. There were about eight of us from Dev’s, a mixture of kickboxers and continuous fighters. You had to pay for your subscription and also your petrol to Nottingham. We all wanted to win in our weight divisions, including Gary Turner at light heavyweight.

  There was a white lad from London who I was fighting for the first time. It wasn’t much of a fight as it only lasted one round. I kicked him through the ropes and he didn’t want to know after that; his corner threw the towel in.

  You’ve then got to wind yourself down and go back to the changing room, but you’ve got to fight again in two or three hours, depending on how many people are in your category. I had to fight this other white lad only about an hour later, in three two-minute rounds. He was shitting himself when he saw me. The ref stopped the fight in the second round and I won with a technical knockout.

  In the third fight, I was up against a good up-and-coming young lad. He was lighter than me and I had to use some dirty tricks against this fucker. I was holding him even when the referee was shouting, ‘Stop, stop!’ But he was throwing some punches and kicks and I was thinking, Where the fuck are they coming from
? The guy was fast. I think he was from Newcastle, but I managed to beat him on points and I was crowned W.A.K.O. British Champion – for the fifth year in a row.

  Whoever wins in their weight division gets to fight for England in the World and European Championships. In 1995, the World Championships were in the Ukraine, where I got to fight for the heavyweight title in full-contact kickboxing. A couple of weeks before, I had to go around and get the things I needed ready. There was a place in London where we had to have team photos taken in shirt and tie. The Sports Council didn’t pay for any of our stuff; we even had to raise money for our fares to the fucking Ukraine! Altogether, there were about 30 fighters from England and the semi-contact karate lads were there as well.

  The Ukraine was cold. (Even colder than Russia would be later!) We were in Kiev, next to the football stadium, where we met up with this little 10-year-old boy. He could speak English and so he became our interpreter. In the evening, he’d go home, give his mum some money, then come back and stay at our hotel with us. Everywhere we went he’d come with us.

  I had two fights on the first day. The first was against a guy from Belarus, which I won, and then I fought a guy from Russia. He was a good fighter, but everyone I fought was a champion in their own country. I beat the Russian guy as well. There were about 15 guys in my category, but after the second fight you had to go and sit down for the rest of the day. You couldn’t really leave as you were part of a team and had to cheer them on. You got there about 9am and it went on till 6 or 7pm.

  The next day, I had a really hard fight. The guy just hit me and hit me and hit me. He kept hitting me with body shots but he couldn’t put me down. My body has always been toned so it didn’t really affect me. I think I just about edged that fight.

  The third fight arrived and I thought, I’m ready now! I was suffering a bit with bruising but it didn’t matter. I had to get on with my next fight. I fought this guy from Lebanon and beat him easily. I’d had three fights that day and they said to me, ‘You’ve got through to the final, you’re gonna fight at the final tomorrow.’ I just said, ‘No problem.’ I took my gloves and pads off, found my mates in the crowd and cracked a few jokes with them. Then I said, ‘Listen, I’m tired, I’m gonna get me some sleep.’

  I was sleeping on the top tier of the bunks. I’d been asleep for about an hour when, all of a sudden: ‘Wake up, wake up!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get up, get up, you have to fight now!’ this guy said.

  ‘They told me I’m fighting tomorrow.’

  ‘No, you have to fight right now or you will be disqualified!’

  ‘How the fuck am I supposed to fight now?’

  Dev came over and I told him what they’d said. He went to see the organiser and they said the guy was right. I had about 10 minutes to warm up, get bandaged up and put my gloves on. I got my kit on and they told me I was fighting some guy called Wladimir Klitschko. I’d never heard of him, but we know him today as one of the World Heavyweight boxing champion brothers.

  As I got into the ring, I said to Dev, ‘Look at the fucking size of him!’ He was up there and I was down here. Fucking hell! I was just under six feet tall and weighed about 16 and a half stone. He looked a full foot taller than me.

  I came out in the first round and wanted to fight, but my body wouldn’t do what I wanted it to. He was jabbing me and my head was flipping back. His front kicks went boom! – boom! – connecting every time and I couldn’t move out of the way. I was cowering against the ropes and he was bashing me. The guy was so tall I just couldn’t get out of the way. He was just tall and awkward. I couldn’t get in there; I couldn’t get a punch or kick in on him, to tell the truth. At the end of the first round, I went back to the corner and said, ‘Dev, I’m fucked!’

  ‘Shut up, man! Just get back out there and get on with the fight – shut up!’

  I came out for the second round and the guy was trying to take my head off with some jabs. There were some big fucking kicks too! The second round ended and he won that. Then he won the third round and took the fight.

  He won because I didn’t get a chance to prepare properly. They’d told me I was fighting the next day. But he didn’t knock me out. He won the gold medal and I took the silver, and I was happy with that. There were plenty of guys who came away with nothing. I was well chuffed with the silver; it put me up the world ratings ladder again. But, even on the plane, everyone was saying that they fucked me up and that I should have had the extra day’s rest. We tried for years to get a rematch with Klitschko but he just didn’t want to know. At least Dev said it was a job well done.

  * * *

  With me looking the way I do, bodybuilding has helped me with my kickboxing as well. Say you’ve got a fight; your opponent’s never seen you, he’s never heard of you, but, as soon as you come out in the ring and take your top off, he’s going, ‘Fuckin’ hell, look at this guy! Look at the size of him!’ You’ve beaten him mentally already. You’ve just got to go in there and do the physical stuff. I fought a guy in Northampton called Dave Sharpe and he was a big, muscular guy as well. He was some black belt in taekwondo but he couldn’t lift his fucking feet up. I went over to him and he was cowering down in the corner.

  DEV

  We went to a dinner show where he was fighting, in Northampton. He did his normal showboat stuff and he knocked this guy down and out, and he was just having a laugh – because Barrington is very, very respectful, there’s no question about that. Somebody at the ring, sitting at one of the tables of this dinner show, was shouting at him and calling him a wanker. After they announced the winner, Barrington stormed off to the changing room and said, ‘Right, I’m gonna get them,’ and he started taking his bandages off. I said, ‘Barrington, you can’t do it – you’re not doing it.’ And he says, ‘No, I am. I’ve never been disrespectful to you, I’ve always done what you’ve said – but I’m sorry, I can’t listen to you today.’ I thought, Shit, he means it! So I had to go find the door staff and say, ‘Listen, I don’t know if you saw what happened in the ring but Barrington’s coming out – I can’t even stop him and if I can’t stop him then you guys won’t.’ So then they’ve obviously got these couple of guys who shouted at him and escorted them out of the place.

  You’ll probably notice that most of these fights were abroad, on the international circuit. I have always managed him and decided who he’d fight, or how and when the fight would be, what the rules were, etc. This is because of the type of fighter that Barrington was; he was an entertainer and the British public just can’t cope with that, they don’t like it. Because Barrington showboats, people will pay extra money to get him over to their country to fight because they like how he does things – he has a laugh. But in this country they seem to take it as showing off. Even the kickboxing public who were watching didn’t like it. At one point, I just said, ‘That’s it,’ and he didn’t fight over here for a long, long time, we just went abroad.

  He fought in the 1996 European Championships and made it to the final. I think there were 29 countries at the time; like the Olympics, it’s a tournament and at the end you’re a champion. But you’re not a real ‘pro’, so he could fight as a pro amateur but still be in the amateur bouts. Barrington made it through to the final – he fought really well – but this Russian kid Almaz Gismeev was fast, hit him and run, switched. Barrington clearly lost the fight. But, after they announced it and Gismeev got his big cup, as they came out of the ring, all the kids ran to Barrington to get his autograph. He was surrounded! And this poor guy who had just become European Champion Heavyweight was standing there with his trophy on his own.

  When we went to Brazil in 1997 for the W.A.K.O. Pro Intercontinental, he had just as many supporting him. Barrington’s like the Pied Piper! It was live on TV, the same channel that films Brazilian football. We should have gone there four months before but they were filming the football so they couldn’t do it, they had to call the tournament off. It was their Independence Day so they allow
ed everyone to go to the sports centre for free; as you can imagine, it was absolutely rammed out with thousands of people. There was an area where they had demonstrations of capoeira, traditional karate and a great variety of martial arts – so it was like a big family day out and at night we had the kickboxing.

  Apparently, you always get two sides – you got the side that supported Paulo Zorello and the side that supported another fighter. So they were supporting Barrington automatically, he had a lot of support over there. Kickboxing is big in Brazil. The same people watch both traditional martial arts events and kickboxing, so there were thousands there. That was his sweetest knockout.

  My best result for England was in Brazil in 1997, which was the cream of the crop for me. The guy I fought was called Paulo Zorello, who had been in the Ukraine and told the W.A.K.O. that he wanted to fight me on Brazil’s National Independence Day. They gave me a couple of videos to watch: this guy had never lost a fight and he was a top boxer. But he didn’t want to fight Klitschko, he wanted to fight me. I’d got the fight, but when I was watching videos of him I thought, How the fuck can I get near him?

  I fought in Sao Paulo at the Morumbi stadium. It was Brazilian National Independence Day, so they let everyone into the stadium free. I looked around and thought, Imagine this place when there’s a football match, it’d be jam-packed. I went to the changing room and chilled out, and then walked outside with Andre, who’s also a boxing trainer. I don’t like sitting down any time before a fight. Some other fighters like to go to the changing rooms, put their bags down and go to sleep; I like to have a walk outside the stadium and get a feel for the crowd, to mingle and talk with friends. When I looked around this crowd, I realised that all these people were here to see me. Now I knew what it was like for all the boxers who fight in different countries. Everyone was there for the main attraction – it was fucking me!