Born to Fight--The True Story of Richy 'Crazy Horse' Horsley

by Richy Horsley

  The bottom line is that boxing is a skilful sport, fought by tough people. When lads used to be bust up, the main trainer, Duncan, used to repeat his favourite saying with a smirk on his face: ‘That’s what it’s all about.’ He would even turn a blind eye to the odd bit of cheating, so long as it reflected a desire to win. There was one big guy there who used to try to bully you in the ring, using his southpaw stance to the optimum advantage. The first time we sparred I couldn’t land anything on him. I thought, Fuck this, and waited for him to come in close before releasing a cracking right hand into his balls. That sapped the energy right out of him. In the end, I could take anything he threw at me, replying to each shot with interest.

  My love affair with watching the professional game continued. In 1978, I started collecting all the weekly boxing supplements run in one of the newspapers. I especially loved Rocky Marciano and the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis, who is thought by many in the know to be the best heavyweight of all time. For Christmas I got the Encyclopaedia of Boxing, which had all the world champs in at every weight, with great in-depth action and brilliant photos. I was also given an 8mm film projector and screen, with which I could watch some of the classic fights on film. They were silent and in black and white, but when the lights went out and the film was rolling, it was magical: Marciano v Walcott, Marciano v Louis, Ali v Frazier and plenty more. Unbeatable. All the lads from school would come round to watch them too. I still have them to this day.

  I passed my medical to box and was lined up to fight in the December of 1978. But some things just aren’t meant to be, and the fight had to be pulled when I started to suffer with pains in my legs and heels. I was diagnosed as having ‘Osgood-Schlatters’ disease, which basically meant that I was growing too quickly, causing inflammation of the bone where the thigh muscles attach to the lower leg. I was not allowed to do any physical exercise for a good while. I had to wear bandages around my knees for six months, as well as having my boot heel built up by a quarter of an inch. As soon as there was a bit of wear on them, I had to get them redone. It was a good job flared trousers were in at the time, as otherwise my bandages would have shown through. If drainpipes were in, I’d have been well fucked!

  The 1970s were still in full swing, and I loved all the partying. In the summer of 1978, Mam, Ken, Corbo and I went on holiday to Butlins for a week. Corbo and I were at the disco every day. There was a punk rocker there with a Mohican hairstyle. One night, after the disco, he got on the diving board in the outdoor swimming pool and dived in with all his clothes on. Everyone used to think he was mad. Happy days. I can still recall all the lasses crying at the last disco of our stay, as they were saying their goodbyes to their brief holiday loves. We would laugh at them and say, ‘Look at them, daft bastards.’ We certainly weren’t a sentimental bunch.

  I continued my partying back home at the disco night, which was held every Thursday at the local youth club. You’d see lads on the dance floor showing off or trying to act dead cool, all in order to pull the birds. At the beginning The Fonz was still all the rage, and people would turn up dressed up like him, or with T-shirts with ‘The Fonz’ written on them. Then disco started taking over, with the release of the films Saturday Night Fever and Grease. I have to admit that I went to see Grease at the local ABC Cinema with a few of my mates – you’d be surprised at how many so-called ‘hard’ lads were in the queue. There were two brothers called the Barnstable twins who used to go to dancing classes, and would have the dance floor cleared for them just so they could strut their stuff with two girls to the song ‘Greased Lightning’. The twins were done up like John Travolta’s character and the two bewers – that is, women – were dolled up like Olivia Newton John. They used to think they were film stars, but I just thought they were a pair of fucking prats.

  And how could I afford all this partying? Well, I had started going to football practice with a lad from my class, who lived above a pub. On the days that we weren’t at practice, he would take shots at me. With his fists. I used to let him sock me in the jaw for 10p a punch. He used to absolutely love it, he really did. I used to get £1 a day from him and he thought it was worth every penny. After all, in 1978, £1 a day was good money.

  Violence didn’t scare me half as much as ghosts. Sometime during the summer, I started camping out in our Roy’s front garden, or slept on the couch in the living room. Roy was my mam’s brother and was married to Jean. They had two kids together plus they also looked after Roy’s five kids from his first marriage. Quite a brood! One night I was sleeping downstairs, when I suddenly woke up with a start. I could feel something behind me, but was frozen with fear and couldn’t turn around. I tried to ignore it, but just couldn’t. It was like a vibrating current of electricity. The hair on my body was stood on end. There was something in the room.

  I plucked up the courage to turn around and have a look. Nothing could prepare me for what I saw. Sat down in the chair opposite was an old woman. She raised her head to look at me. I shouted with fear and leaped of the couch like a scolded cat.

  I ran through the kitchen, into the passage, up the stairs, and started banging doors. I barged into Roy and Jean’s bedroom, white as a fucking sheet. Roy and Jean woke up and wondered what was going on. I told them I had just seen a ghost in the front room and that there was no way I was going back down there. The look on my face should have said it all. Roy went down to check and found nothing. He said it was my imagination. But I know what I saw and, believe me, it was a ghost. A real spirit! I never slept down there ever again.

  CHAPTER 9

  MAKE MY DAY, PUNK

  Disco stayed around for a while, but I started growing out of it when Punk hit the scene. One of my mates had bought the album Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols. I would go round and listen to it with him. We loved the Sex Pistols, who were notorious not only for their subversive songs, but for that appearance they made on live television, where they hurled a load of swear words at the host of the show.

  When my mate dyed his hair, we all laughed and took the piss but, to give him credit, he didn’t give a fuck. And that was what punk was all about. One night at the disco, my mate went up on the dance floor and started doing what was called the ‘pogo’. I don’t think I need explain what that one was all about. Everyone used to laugh at him because he was the first one to do it, but soon enough it became all the rage. It wasn’t long before even yours truly dyed his hair. Along with my hair colour, my company also changed, and I started knocking about with a different crowd, with a rougher edge. A couple of the lads, Measor and Waller, had both just been released from detention centre. I knew them from school, before they had served time in Her Majesty’s establishment for naughty boys. We often went to each other’s houses to listen to any new singles or albums by The Clash, Sham69, X-Ray Spex, Sex Pistols, Angelic Upstarts, and so on. We bought guitars and a microphone so we could start our own band. Measor obtained a set of drums, using a loan from a bloke called Ken.

  Punk wasn’t just about music. It was about fashion too. We would wear T-shirts with obscenities scrawled on them; coats and trousers were ripped to bits and held together with safety pins and the odd zip. Measor and I wore a padlock and chain around our necks, just like Sid Vicious. I threw mine away though after an incident outside the youth club. Measor was having a fight when his opponent grabbed hold of his chain and started trying to choke him with it. The fight was soon broken up, but still, fuck that, I thought, I don’t won’t to be a fashion victim, and never wore one again.

  If punk was about anything, it was being different to everyone else. I went to a hairdressers called ‘The Knut House’ and got a skinhead-style haircut, and I then had coloured blond hair with red question marks dyed into it. I was over the moon with the finished result, as it was completely different to what anybody else had. I didn’t half get some funny looks from people. I had it like that for about a month. I wish I’d had my photo taken so I could show people it now and have a laugh about it. />
  Just like the rockers and the mods a generation before, the punks were firm enemies with the bikers. We started going to a youth club that was full of bikers, all of whom were older than us, all in their early twenties. They fucking hated us and we loved it. We introduced punk up there. The DJ started playing a couple of punk records for us, which we would dance the pogo to. Inevitably we’d get drinks chucked over us, resulting in a fight, which would always escalate out of control. There were some enormous fucking bikers, I can tell you, but we always gave a good account of ourselves.

  I started seeing one of the biker’s girlfriends on the side. Although she wanted to keep it quiet, it wasn’t long before he found out about it. He came looking for me one Saturday afternoon with a couple of gorillas. I was with Measor, and they spotted us walking back from the town. They expected me to bolt off, but instead I started walking towards them, fucking up for it. He was taken aback when he saw that I didn’t give a toss about him and his mates. He asked if I wanted to fight, so I calmly responded that I did. As we scouted for a place to scrap, I looked at one of his mates, whom I knew was a right handy fucker, and nodded down at his Dublin boots. I cheekily said to him, ‘I suppose I’ll be getting a taste of them, will I?’ He went off on one, wanting to start it there and then, but it was too busy. We eventually found a bit of wasteland, which is now the site for a doctors’ surgery and health centre – ironic, I’m sure you would agree.

  I slowly took my denim jacket off, carefully undoing each button as I looked deep into his eyes to let him know that I couldn’t give two fucks about him. I handed it to Measor, and squared up with the girl’s boyfriend. As soon as he was in range, I snapped his head back with a savage left jab. I wanted to keep him at arm’s length to have a look at him and see what he was all about. I wanted this fucker to know that he had made a grave mistake in challenging me, so kept snapping the jabs home, making his eyes water like sprinklers. He changed tack, and leaped at me like a lame bear, in a desperate effort to turn the fight into a wrestling match, but I sidestepped, cracking him once more on the nose. When he recovered, I could smell his fear. He tried once more to take me to the ground, but that just allowed me the opportunity to catch him again. He had been beaten and, what’s more, I hadn’t thrown a single right hand.

  Some old ladies who had walked past had alerted a policeman, who then came running over. The other lads bolted, leaving just my beaten opponent and me. The copper gave us both a warning, and asked for our names and addresses. He also asked our ages. I replied that I was fourteen. The biker couldn’t fucking believe it. When he was asked the same question, he reluctantly answered, ‘I’m nineteen.’ He then said, ‘If I knew you were only fourteen, I wouldn’t have fought you.’ I was tempted to reply, you shouldn’t have fought me anyway, as I was always going to kick your arse.

  Fights also broke out between punks. I remember one punk disco where there was quite a bit of barging on the dance floor. As the music got louder, the barging turned to elbowing, and so on. Nothing happened in the end, but at the same disco the following week, we decided to change tack. As soon as the barging resumed, we started fighting, even though we were as outnumbered as Davy Crocket and the boys at the Alamo. Everybody piled out into the street. One of our boys, called Tone, had the foresight to run back to the van we had come up in, and picked up a length of thick chain. He wrapped it round a good few heads, which started making things more even. But just as we were getting on top, the police arrived. They halted the fighting immediately. During the trouble one of the tyres on the van had been pierced. The cops told us to change the tyre and to fuck off immediately or we’d get banged up. We didn’t stand there arguing with that and did exactly what they said. They mustn’t have wanted the paperwork.

  Looking back on that period, I’m amazed we didn’t end up getting banged up. We continued our escapades one night after meeting a couple of girls. Measor, Charlie and I all went back to one of the girl’s houses, sneaking in through the front door while the parents were watching TV downstairs, before proceeding upstairs to her bedroom. Measor jumps into her bed, I grab hold of the other one, and Charlie starts to amuse himself. The bed began to bang against the wall as soon as Measor started to get his work rate up. In the interests of the group I had to put a stop to my shenanigans, and hold down the bed to soften the noise. Soon enough though, the door opens, and in walks the girl’s dad, fucking fuming. He starts punching the walls, shouting his head off. Charlie jumped under the bed to hide, while me and Measor bolted it down the stairs and out of the house. What a fucking performance! Amazingly, Charlie was never discovered, and sneaked out the house a couple of hours later.

  Punk, sadly, wasn’t to continue for long, but it was a fucking great time while it lasted. After all the scrapes I’d been through, I don’t know how I’m still here in one piece. My attitude to school, though, had permanently changed. One day in class, I said to the lads, ‘I’m sick of this, I think I’ll fuck off.’ The lads dared me to prove my words, so I just pushed the table away and walked out. The teacher was shouting, ‘Horsley, where do you think you’re going? Horsley, get back here.’ But I just ignored him and kept walking. I had a fellow comrade in hating school called Roger. We started nicking off lessons together, especially in the last year. We would go to the arcades all day or in the shops and cafés spending money. Roger used to get money from somewhere, although he never revealed his source to me. Once we went into a men’s tailors and bought two trilby hats – they were fucking beauties. They came to thirty-odd quid, which Roger settled. If I ever wanted anything, he would buy me it. But still, Roger was my mate if he had money or not – it made no difference to me.

  He was a good fighter too, second only to me at school. One day he turned up covered in cuts and bruises after a fight outside – you guessed it – the local youth club. He had been firmly on top when the lad’s mates waded in. At that time he was only one grade away from a black belt in karate, but ended up packing it all in. I encouraged him to go back, and went with him. We did it for a few months, but I’m not frightened to admit that I wasn’t too clever with my legs. I used to challenge him to Kung Fu fights in the back street, no hands, just kicking. We would go at it, hurting each other with full-blooded kicks, fighting for about thirty minutes at a time. We would put each other on the deck, but each of us would always get up, and start going at it harder than ever. Every time we ended up with bust noses and cut lips, but we would always shake hands after it as if nothing had happened.

  Eventually the bunking from school caught up with us, when one day a man from the school board knocked at the door. To my mam’s amazement, he said I hadn’t been at school for two months! Mam tried to catch me out when I got home by asking me if I had had fun at school. I replied that it had been OK. When she mentioned the man from the school board though, I just started laughing. I had nearly left anyway so it made no difference to me. Hence my surprise when the final examinations came out and I discovered that I had miraculously got three GCSEs. Fuck knows how that happened – in one exam, for instance, I only wrote my name on the exam sheet and passed the rest of the time with a book on Bruce Lee. In spite of that unlikely success, I can only conclude that I was never really a school person. They say they’re the best days of your life, but on leaving the school I felt more akin with Alice Cooper’s sense of joy when he screamed out: ‘School’s Out Forever’.

  CHAPTER 10

  TRADING BLOWS, TOE-TO-TOE

  I left school at the age of 15 and got my first job with a local builder who used to do houses up. All he really wanted was a young dogsbody who he didn’t have to pay much. I never liked it. The builder expected you to know what you were doing straight away and the hours were long. I was only in the first week when he told me I wasn’t what he was looking for. The feeling was mutual – he was a fucking arrogant wanker. If I were a bit older, I’d have chinned him for sure. I then started working on Sea Defence, at Middleton Beach, for five days a week. It was run by a gover
nment scheme which paid £23.50 a week, although I only received £19.50 a week until I was 16 as Mam took £4 a week as child allowance. The work was laboriously hard, but it went some way to building my strength up. The labour involved wire cages called ‘gabions’ which had to be filled up with rocks and bricks and stacked beside each other along the beach. You gradually built them on top of each other, until there were about eight or nine levels.

  The hard graft complemented my return to the boxing gym. I worked with two gaffers called Denny and Bill, who would tell tales about the old days. They used to call me ‘Rocky’. After eight hours of that, everyone went home to put their feet up, but I would go on to the gym to put myself through more punishment. I’d do an hour-and-a-half session: shadow boxing, stretching, skipping, sparring, pad work, medicine ball, sit-ups, press-ups. I was as fit as a lop in those days. The main trainer at the gym, Duncan White, encouraged me with my training. The other lads were getting better and better, which made sparring sessions all the more intense. One time I went a couple of rounds with a very good amateur, who had just returned from an excellent third-round win in Norway. As the bell was rung I went straight for him, jab, jab, one, two, left hook, right hand – I was really up for it. I think he was shocked at my intensity. He came back at me just as hard and we could have fought in a telephone booth. Neither of us would give an inch as we traded full-blooded shots, toe to toe and head and body. After two rounds Duncan shouted, ‘That’s enough or you’ll kill each other.’ We were both bloodied up, the sign of a proper session.

  I’d come through the ordeal and satisfied myself that I did have some real fighting spirit inside me. I decided to give boxing a proper shot, and agreed to my first fight, but that had to be cancelled when I had a bike accident. I was getting a lift off my mate Tony, and as we were belting along my foot got stuck in the spokes, throwing both of us flying over the handlebars. When I landed my teeth went through my lip, which was pretty fucking painful. Nevertheless, I was allowed to box on a show less than a week later. My lips were still swollen, but Duncan had been told the doctor was going to pass me in advance. The doctor gave me a wink, and then said with a smile, ‘What’s that, a cold sore.’