No Ordinary Joe

My old gym was like a shack, there is just no other way to describe it. People used to come inside and ask, ‘How the hell can a world champion train in a place like this?’ Honestly, it was the mangiest little building you could possibly imagine. The ring wasn’t even a proper ring, just a carpeted area on the floor, and it was tiny. You could nearly stand in the centre of it and touch all four corners. It wasn’t even put up in a safe place. The river ran underneath the floor and the building, which went up in the 1920s and was made from wood and tin, was falling down. The rugby club wanted us out for years because they wanted to extend the car park but we had nowhere else to train, so we stayed put.

Four years ago we were able to buy a new building on a site just a mile or two away. The council gave us a grant to renovate the building, which again was situated at an old rugby ground, and we were able to buy all the equipment and a proper boxing ring. Until then, I’d always trained on that carpeted bit of floor, with ropes around it that were held up by broom handles. The ropes were only there for effect. If you fell into them, you almost landed on the floor, which was slippery and dangerous because of all the condensation and moisture. There was no heating, the toilets were bad and there were no showers. Dad had to put down several rolls of square carpet and nail it to the floor to stop us from sliding all about the ring. It must have been terrible for my lungs, training there from the age of nine. Coming out of the gym, I used to have to cough up all the dust I’d inhaled. The building was so old and the smell inside was something else. It was the pungent smell of leather from the battered old gloves that you get in all boxing gyms and you could also smell the sweat, but mixed in with that was an aroma from all the dampness and the wet and the place was so small and run-down that the stench of all those years could not escape. People think I must have been gutted when we moved away and they knocked the place down but no way. I’m hardly a prima donna but that was no place for anyone to have to spend a lot of time in. When they finally demolished it we were told that we were lucky the floorboards hadn’t given way a long time before. They just had to hit it once and the whole place fell, like a pack of cards. At least we’d have had a soft place to land in the river below and what a knock-down that would have been.

I was never able to move around the heavy bag, so my footwork had to evolve naturally. It wasn’t something I was able to develop in training. I’d clatter into the wall and it’s no wonder I picked up elbow injuries and all sorts from tripping over the buckets that had been left to catch the rain that leaked in. The gym I’m in now feels like a palace because I have a proper ring and I’m able to move inside it. I can even move around the bags. But I won a world title training out of the old gym and, for all its faults, there was definitely something about the place. I’ll always remember the day a really well-dressed businessman drove up in a Mercedes and popped his head in the door. He was wearing a dark suit and a light-coloured tie and all he did was close his eyes and take a deep breath. ‘That’s what I came for,’ he said and went straight back out the door. I didn’t know him and I never saw him again. He had probably trained in the gym years before, but that incident captured an essential element for me: for all the money that man had made, he never wanted to forget the smell or the memories.

From a young age, maybe twelve years old, I was being trained like a professional by my dad and I developed a huge desire to succeed. I just knew I was going to be a fighter and I believed that one day I could be world champion. The first time I went in the ring was an exhibition bout and I boxed well, confidently, and couldn’t wait for my first real fight. The first time I knocked anyone down in sparring was completely by accident. I had closed my eyes to swing a big hook and I caught the lad on the chin, a skinny little boy, and he fell over. His trainer told me off and I started to cry. ‘Did he not slip?’ I said. I was just so shocked by what I’d done that I didn’t know how to react. There were never many boys to spar with in our gym, so Paul Williams, the coach, used to have me skip over in one corner. I skipped so much that I grew to hate it, so I never do skipping now. ‘Why am I doing this?’ I used to ask. ‘I’m a boxer, not a skipper.’ I’d do four rounds of shadow-boxing followed by two more on the bags and that was my training, three days a week, along with the work I did with Dad, and at times I got frustrated. What I wanted more than anything was to do some boxing.

But I lost my first ever amateur bout by a majority decision against a guy called Chris Stock from Harlequins Boxing Gym in Newport. When the decision was announced I went over to the other corner, shook his trainer’s hand and stayed in the ring with my hands over my face, crying my eyes out against the ring post. Paul had to come and get me out of the ring after he’d finished shouting at the judges. I hated to lose and it broke my heart. Being a champion is never about finishing second, for there is no second place. Winning is what’s driven me all these years, though I’ve never forgotten the feeling of losing. I had four more bouts against Chris Stock and I beat him every time.

I did lose my fourth fight and I lost my ninth fight and after twenty fights I’d lost five times but out of 110 in total I lost only six more and I never got stopped or even put on the canvas in all that time. I took one standing count as an amateur against a guy I managed to knock out. In the beginning I put too much pressure on myself and fought wildly, putting my head down and firing bolo punches and big shots over the top. But I improved, became more poised, and almost every fight I lost as an amateur you could have made a case for me winning because they were all split decisions. I’ve never lost a fight clearly in my whole career and I’ve never come out of the ring having accepted that I was beaten, even in those early amateur contests.

Referees were always giving me public warnings and taking points away because of my crude style and constant showboating. I boxed a boy in Cardiff called John Lonsborough, who was about seven pounds heavier than me, and I stuck out my tongue at him, pointed to my chin, did the Ali shuffle and laughed, just like Leonard against Duran. The crowd loved it but the referee threatened to disqualify me. ‘Stop it now or I’ll throw you out,’ he warned and he very nearly did. I actually lost fights through showboating but the people in the hall enjoyed seeing a scrawny little lad being cheeky and having fun and this made me believe in myself a little more. When you get a positive reaction from a crowd of people it doesn’t half fill you with confidence. The flamboyance and entertaining only stopped when I realised I was getting penalised too much. Maybe I should have kept up the gimmicks, as these tend to get you noticed.

After I lost several of my early fights no one really gave me a chance of succeeding, but I won the Welsh schoolboys’ title in 1985 at the age of thirteen and this qualified me for the Amateur Boxing Association schoolboys’ championship at 36kg, the Junior A. My dad was on the road a lot at this time, playing in the band, and he missed the quarter-final and the semi-final but he was at the final at the Assembly Rooms in Derby with Uccio and Serge. Mine was the third bout on and I faced a boy from London called Ian Raby. I had lost in the Welsh final the year before but I’d been training really hard for the Junior A and my heart was set on winning. I boxed the quarter-final up in Worcester and won easily on points, but my semi-final bout had gone to a majority decision. Hardly any Welsh boxers won schoolboys’ titles, even the best ones, so I was a heavy underdog. A couple of more experienced boys said to me, ‘You’ll never win a British ABA title, you can’t win in England. They’re brilliant.’ I thought the kid I was facing was good too but I rushed out of my corner, completely overwhelmed him with my first flurry of punches and stopped him in thirty-five seconds, the quickest fight of the night. Unbelievable. I was wearing an old pair of orange-coloured shorts and a pair of trainers, as I had forgotten my boxing boots and I was the proudest boxer on the planet. Apart from winning the world title, I still regard it as my most satisfying moment in the ring. Dad and my uncles were ecstatic and it was just the kind of boost that any young kid needs. For taking part in the ABA finals, we got £7 spending money, which to me was a fortune. An official from the Welsh ABA would give you the money as you stepped on the bus from Newport and just staying in a hotel room, away from home, I thought I had it made.

Boxing was not just my passion now, I felt like I was a fighter and I trained twice a day, throwing all my energy into making myself the best I could possibly be. I would come home from school and my dad and me would go running together. Even in the snow, if I had to make weight for a fight, I’d go for my normal four-mile run after school, come back home and head straight to the gym. Every single day. Even when I left school, although we didn’t have much money, I didn’t go looking for a job because I already had one. That’s how much boxing mattered to me. My mum actually got me a job once in the bakery where she worked, putting stickers on these cakes, like a robot. It got to eleven o’clock on my third day there and I went on a tea break. ‘Don’t be long,’ the supervisor shouted after me, but I never returned. I did a week on top of that, sticking leaflets through letter boxes for my dad, who was selling windows at the time. I knocked on people’s doors but was too shy to speak to them, so I quickly kicked that into touch and went to work on a building site and lasted three days. I just didn’t want to work, I wanted to box and I allowed nothing else to get in the way.

The Rocky films inspired me and when he was in the slaughterhouse, punching the sides of beef, I was in a corner of the living room, punching the back of the settee. You use your imagination when you’re a kid, so I used to go in the kitchen, cut up some oranges and stick the peel in my mouth for a gumshield, come back to the living room and punch the settee again. It took more abuse than Jake LaMotta, our settee. I even drank a glass of five raw eggs after seeing Rocky do it in the movie.

The only time I was ever worried about an opponent was in my second year as a schoolboy boxer in the final of the Junior B. I lost, mainly because of the way the other guy looked. Darren Blumsom had muscles coming out of his muscles, a moustache and a bit of beard, he had big shoulders and arms and I was just a skinny little runt of fourteen who weighed 42kg. I psyched myself out and I hardly threw a punch in the first round. I had the flu as well and runny eyes and I couldn’t stop blowing my nose, but I overcame my fear to win the third round, though Blumsom got the decision. I’d felt a bit vulnerable that night and put it down to experience.

I was trying to accumulate as much experience as I could in club shows and championships, and I boxed in exhibition bouts, even one against Robbie Regan, who was also a schoolboy ABA champion who would later enjoy a successful professional career. We were supposed to be tapping one another but he started trying to beat me up and land a big bomb on my chin, so our ‘exhibition’ turned into a proper war. Regan had knocked someone out in an exhibition bout two weeks before, so I knew I had to watch him and I wasn’t going to just stand and take it. I hit him as hard as I could in retaliation and after two rounds the referee had warned us so frequently that his patience snapped. ‘That’s enough,’ he said before chucking both of us out of the ring.

Everything began to click into place with my boxing. I suddenly changed from being about wild, unbridled power to being more of a thinking boxer, jabbing, moving, considering all kinds of different strategies and settling down on my punches. The hardest part was making weight. I had to starve myself to make the 36kg limit for my first schoolboys’ title when my ‘walking around’ weight was 40kg. Even 4kg is a lot of weight to shift when you’re thirteen years old and only skin and bones. The constant struggle made me binge, whenever I could, on junk food, burgers and soda drinks, which was terrible for my system. It was ten times worse for me then than it is now as an adult. Back then I was growing and the craving for food was something terrible. I also had to box a couple of hours after stepping on the scales, whereas in the pros I get up to thirty-six hours to refuel my body and make sure that I’m physically ready.

The worst experience I had making weight was in my senior year as a schoolboy when I had to lose 13lb in a week. A year earlier, aged fifteen, I had boxed in the ABA Intermediate final at 51kg with a cracked rib against Nicky Bardell. I’d suffered the injury in sparring when a bigger guy caught me with a left hook in the short ribs and really got his meat into it. I could just about punch with the pain but if I’d got hit in the ribs, I’d have been all over the floor. I still went for it, that’s the kind of desire I had and I won the fight, flooring Bardell twice and stopping him in the second round. Now, in the same position, I’d probably just say, ‘Listen, it may be the ABA finals but you can always fight another day.’ The tiniest tap in the right area could have left me in excruciating pain. Bardell was in the opposite corner again when I boxed in the final of the National Association of Boys’ Clubs championships. I was sixteen years old and growing, and because of my nightmare getting back down to 51kg, I was in an even worse state. For the ABA championships, which were overlapping, I was able to weigh 54kg and later in the season I boxed at 57kg in the Gaelic Games in Nova Scotia, Canada, so making 51kg was just murder.

For two whole days I ate nothing, not a morsel. It was horrible at school because I went without taking breakfast and I couldn’t eat dinner even though I was starving. Everybody else was gorging themselves on chips and sausages or whatever and the smell from the canteen was killing me. I was almost in tears with the hunger. The days I was able to eat I had mostly salad, four leaves of lettuce, a tomato and no dressing and that was my dinner. I went running wearing bin bags beneath my tracksuit to make me sweat and then I went training in the gym. When I came home I had something light, maybe just a sip of soup or a little cabbage. I don’t know how I got down to the weight but I did and as soon as I stepped off the scales I went out to McDonald’s and got a burger and a Lucozade and I bought a big chocolate Swiss roll in a shop nearby and stuffed my face with it. I was as weak as a robin and nearly sick when I lay down in the back of the car to rest myself before the fight. I couldn’t move. My stomach was bloated and for days afterwards I was recovering from diarrhoea because I’d binged and didn’t have my strength. If I’d been boxing the boy I beat by a majority decision several weeks earlier in the semi-finals, Matthew Hall, a short stocky guy, I might have lost. I was terribly weak and light-headed, and nearly passed out when I got in the ring, but I had Bardell’s measure and just a few hours after getting down to the weight I won on points. The next morning I bought a giant box of Weetabix and ate the whole bloody pack.

There were no dieticians to consult then, I knew nothing about nutrition and the damage I must have been doing to myself I’d rather not think about. It was never as bad as it was for that NABC final any other time but my diet was incredibly bad for the demands I was making of my body. I’d eat a sandwich or a burger along with a Mars bar and guzzle down a bottle of Lucozade to try to build up my energy after weighing in, then I’d get sick before going to the ring – and I did that for years. If I didn’t get sick, I’d worry about being hit by a body shot because everything would have come up and probably landed on some old dear in the second row. Still, I was winning and I took my third ABA schoolboys’ title that year, as a senior, by beating a lad called Ian McShane convincingly on points. My dad was the second in the corner alongside Paul Williams but, to me, he was always my trainer. Dad was in the band a lot so he couldn’t be in the gym as often as he wanted to be, but when I needed a kick up the arse he was always the one to swing the boot. There were many times when he pissed me off and it was only in retrospect that I was able to see exactly where he was trying to get me but I hated him sometimes. I guess I was going through the normal teenage rebellious streak at the time but we had loads of arguments about all the training he was making me do. I thought he was a fool and that he was being cruel.

Dad would write down on little cards all the different exercises and runs that I had to do each week. It could have been snowing but he still had me out running, even though it might have been a foot deep in places. I would pull on my wellies and run with heavy sweaters on and two pairs of trousers. The hills around here, like Kendon Hill which is really steep, are all perfect for building up stamina. What I’ve had all these years, right on my doorstep, is something similar to the training camps that the old-school fighters used to locate to in the countryside. If I was going out with friends all the time, doing stupid things, I’d need to go away to camp, but that’s really never been an issue with me. Even today I can start my run at the back door of my house and turn straight up into the hills from the end of the lane. I’m surrounded by fresh air and some of the most beautiful countryside in Britain and I get left alone, no hassle. There’s a solitude and tranquillity here, a calm before the storm, and it’s just ingrained in me now because I’m going up hills that I’ve been running on since I was twelve years old. Doing the runs became a habit and my running tracks have remained much the same through all these years. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, as the saying goes, and this is one of the secrets of my success. This is what works for me, so Dad knew what he was doing all right, I just didn’t realise it when I was a kid.

Many times the rows escalated from there. Even to this day, I hate to do exercises. I do sit-ups and press-ups but I don’t do any circuit training. I have a strong stomach because I do a lot of body work, which hardens up the muscles. My dad used to have me on fifty press-ups, fifty sit-ups, squat thrusts and whatever else. I had to do ten rounds of shadow-boxing at home and maybe all I’d have eaten was a salad because I had to make weight. Then I had to go to the gym, come home and he might take me on the pads, the cushions off the settee. It was ten o’clock at night maybe and I’d be punching those cushions; but I was a kid, I wanted to see my friends and do other things.

Psychologically, all the training and making weight was just draining. I used to get a headache from it, the constant grind and monotony. I had many heart-to-heart chats with my dad. I used to cry in front of him and tell him that I didn’t want to go through this any more. Mainly, I was rebelling against him because he wanted me to box. He saw the talent I had and he wanted me to reach my potential, so he’d call my bluff and say to me that if I didn’t want to box, that was OK. I had won the argument, I thought, so the next day, of course, I would be back at the gym, content that I wasn’t being told what to do. That’s why I have such a tight relationship with my dad. He knows how far to push and when to push and he’s always known how to get the best out of me.

The Gaelic Games, contested by Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Canada, were the final championships of 1988 and a trip to Nova Scotia was the perfect way for the season to end. Gareth Pugh was the hardest puncher I ever fought as an amateur. He came charging out of his corner and whacked me on the side of the head in the opening round and I felt like a mountain had come down on me. I was able to weather the storm, though, and Gareth quickly blew himself out from his efforts. His vision wasn’t the best, so he wasn’t the most accurate puncher, which was just as well for me. In the final minute of the round I gave him a count and finished him off. But the only boxer in the amateurs who ever gave me a count by the referee was the Scottish lad in the final of the Gaelic Games called Andrew Borland. In the second round he hit me with a combination of punches that stunned me. I didn’t go down, but if you were hit with three good punches and maybe got staggered a little, the referee would step in and count and that’s what he did. The guy waded back in and I held on to him and got a public warning, so I needed to stop him in the third round to win. Years later I faced a similar scenario against Byron Mitchell, a dangerous American one-time world champion, who had put me down in the second round. I needed to strike back fast and I did, totally overwhelming him and forcing the referee to stop the fight, which is exactly what happened in the third round in Nova Scotia. The referee issued two counts and waved it over.

We had a couple of free days when the tournament was over and on the second day I thought I’d have a few drinks and join the party with the older boys, one of whom had brought a flagon of cider. ‘Get some cider into you,’ he said and laughed. I thought I’d be one of the boys and get a bit tipsy. It was 2 p.m. and we were flying home at 8 p.m. I only had one drink, but it was twelve per cent proof and I’d never before had even a whiff of a drink, so within seconds I was paralytic, dangerously paralytic, almost ready to be hospitalised. All I remember after speaking to this boy was banging my head on the floor and then nothing. Complete blank. When I came to again in my room everything was in slow motion. I was sick and felt awful. I was properly gone, had no control of my bowels and even shat in the shower when the other lads chucked me in underneath it to try to bring me round. I collapsed and banged my head again, so they put me in bed for a couple of hours, got me up and managed to get me into my clothes when it was time to leave. Someone put the rest of my clothes in my bag and I was able to head to the airport but I was still ill and was even sick on the plane, to the point where nothing more was coming up. I’d enjoyed the flight on the way over – it was the first time I had ever been on a plane – but the flight back was one of the most awful experiences of my life and it seemed like it would never end. I didn’t touch another drink for a while.

There was nobody left in Wales for me to fight but I had finished school the previous summer, so I began sparring early for the 1989 season and it was in a local boxing club in Cwmbran that I suffered the injury which threatened to end my career. I’ve had various problems and injuries with my hands over the years, but this was different. The sparring session itself was harmless until I threw a right hand in the second round and a sharp, searing pain suddenly developed in my wrist, as if a knife had been put through it. I was immediately in agony and had to be taken to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport where my wrist was X-rayed before the doctor came back to tell me that I had suffered an injury which would leave me with chronic, recurrent pain in my wrist. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever be able to box again,’ he said, which was the second knife to be suddenly plunged in.

I’m not familiar with all the medical jargon but what became clear from the X-ray was that there was extensive tissue damage in what is known as the interosseous membrane, which holds the bones in proper position. Once this happens, it fails to stabilise the position of the bones and this will recur when force is applied, leading to further pain and injury. I went home and told my dad and he was as devastated as I was, but I refused to believe the doctor. I kept trying to put the pain out of my head and still went to the gym to train, strapping my wrist up heavily with bandages, but there was nothing I could do with it. I couldn’t box. I couldn’t even shadow-box. I would wince with the pain. Ultrasound and different treatments were carried out in the hospital over the following weeks and months but the problem wouldn’t go away. Even now I can’t press on my wrist or do press-ups properly. I have to do them on my knuckles. Eventually, I overcame the problem with willpower, shutting out the pain and putting so much strapping and tape on my hands inside big gloves that it looked like I was punching with cushions. But for the time being there was nothing to do but take a complete rest and put boxing as well as the pain to the back of my mind.

At the same time my dad was going back to Sardinia to work as a chef in a little bar and restaurant business, which my grandad was leasing. It was next to the beach, half an hour out of Sassari, so I went out and stayed for four months. It was a chance for my dad to make some money and my uncles Uccio and Sergio were also going across. I tagged along to do odd jobs around the place but mostly to get over my disappointment, which I did. I went to the beach every day, swam in the beautiful Mediterranean and made friends. Every morning I ran on the sand to keep myself fit and all of us ate like kings. My dad and grandad cooked lobster and the finest fish and pizza, pasta, beautiful food and everything was fresh. I was meeting different people and I really had the time of my life. I went over to be a waiter but my main jobs were collecting the bread in the morning and taking out the bins and I did little else.

He was a strong man and his eyes suddenly opened wide as he lifted this huge log, the size of an oar, and swung for me. I made a very sensible decision and ran. But the guy had gone berserk and he set off after me, roaring like a lunatic, waving this Captain Caveman log. He was far too fat to catch me but for a while he gave it a good go. The road went through sands and trees about a quarter of a mile from the chalets to the restaurant and I managed to lose him and take cover round a corner. But he saw me and started to chase me again and it must have been a comical sight. I was shouting at him, ‘Come on then, you bastard,’ which aggravated him more, but he was too slow and eventually gave up. Later in the day, however, he saw my grandad.

I had still packed my boxing gloves and Dad had brought along the pads and now and again he stuck them on and I did a bit of work on them but it was very light. The wrapping had to be thick and solid over my wrist but after a couple of months I could feel that it was getting stronger. So, twice a week, we began to do it regularly, tip-tapping, but slowly this was building up my confidence and reinforcing my belief that I would box again. When the tourist season died off I decided to come home, though Dad was staying in Sardinia for another month or two. For all the fun I had out there, I got a bit homesick after a while and it was good to be back. Of course, after a week of feeling the cold again I wanted to return to Sardinia but I’m a homebird at heart and I don’t think I’ll ever be torn away.

Dad came home but I still didn’t know what I was going to do or whether I’d even be able to box again, so I began to hit the social scene with my mates. We’d go out drinking and clubbing and a lot of the time come home well plastered. When you’re a kid you can’t hold your drink, I certainly couldn’t hold mine. I used to roll in at whatever hour of the morning and head straight for the toilet to puke up my guts.