I managed, somehow, to get up from the ground and I ran at Big Bri and tore into him with empty punches. People watching jumped in and pulled me away and convinced Big Bri to leave. The only reason he stopped laying into me had been because he thought I was dead. I nearly was. He had a couple of rings on and I was cut to ribbons, the flesh on my nose was cut wide open and my eyes were both sliced open above and beneath. I was in a proper state. I couldn’t see out of one eye, so two days later I went to the Eye Infirmary and they said the eyeball was grazed where the pupil was, but it would heal. I stayed away from bouncing until I healed up. Soon it was all over the town that I was done easy and there was a new kid on the block – Big Bri. He revelled in the glory and, time after time, told the story of the fight. It was all pats on the back and free drinks for the new King.
The prelude to my rematch with Big Bri took place a few months after the beating. I received a phone call telling me the cockney lad was in a certain nightclub. I went straight down and got a pint. One of the doormen let me stand on the fire-exit back stairs. He told the cockney he wanted a word because he believed he’d been smoking dope. The door opened and the cockney was led through like a lamb to the slaughter. He swaggered in and the bouncer shut the door. Come into my web, the spider said to the fly! I dropped my pint in a flash, but as I went for him I slipped in it, and I fell down the stairs! Somehow, I managed to grab hold of him, taking him with me. I just don’t seem to have any luck when I’m around stairways and spilled booze! I let him have it to head and body. The cunt was squealing like a pig. I left him outside the fire doors at the back of the club, laid in a heap!
One down, one to go. Next in line: King Kong. It was time to fight Big Bri! He’d had his 15 minutes of fame and glory, but if he wanted to keep my title he was going to have to kill me. I went to the club where he was hanging about. I had my back-up team with me in case of any foul play: Ryao, Vul, Eric and Mick. I didn’t go in but I looked through the windows and saw the big twat in there with his back to me. The butterflies started fluttering in my stomach. Doubt started creeping into me: was it the drink or was he the better man? I had to find out. I waited over the road. He came out and bellowed, ‘So you want another good hiding, do yah?’ He was very cocksure of himself. He came at me and threw a big right, but he was too slow and I managed to block it. I put a couple of big jabs on him and he went down like the Titanic.
Now it’s my turn, you cunt. I jumped on top of him and started smashing him to bits. The sustained punching broke both my hands. I’d given my all and made a real mess of Big Bri; he was making funny gurgling noises and was choking on his own blood. I thought I had killed him. The ambulance arrived pretty sharpish and he was rushed to hospital; it was touch and go for a while, as he was at death’s door, but luckily he pulled through.
I was back on top. My new name, ‘Crazy Horse’, stuck after that little episode. That’s when the whole thing exploded. Word spread like wildfire and soon every loon within fifty miles was heading my way for a scrap. I got locked up a few times but I always had witnesses, and so I was never charged. Even when I just wanted a quiet night out, trouble always found me. One Sunday night I was out with the lass from the nightclub. We went to a place I used to work a few years before. There were two blokes at the bar, who I had to gently push aside to get the drinks. One of them grimaced and snarled, ‘Who the fuck are you pushing?’ I bit my tongue and ignored him. Then he threatened, ‘Do you want chew?’ Chew means trouble. When I said that I didn’t, he blasted, ‘You better not, if you know what’s good for you!’ I got the drinks and went to the other side of the room, but I couldn’t keep the stupid twat out of my head. He kept glaring over at me and saying something to his pals. I resigned myself to the fact that a quiet night was now out of the question. I weighed up the situation; there were three of them and one of me. The odds weren’t fair – I pitied them! After what seemed like an eternity, the trio of agitators decided to leave. I stood in front of the door and blocked their way, confronting them head on.
The prick with all the mouth was wondering what was going on. ‘I do want chew,’ I said. And then, BANG! My big right-hander lifted him out of today and into tomorrow. The wanker didn’t know what had hit him. Loyalty wasn’t something his mates subscribed to, as they quickly said they didn’t want none. They had turned an ugly shade of white and shit themselves an even uglier shade of brown. Some woman started screaming her head off. The manager told me to leave before the ambulance arrived, which I promptly did. Now you would think that would be an end of it, but the bloke I had hit started saying that I had used a glass ashtray on him. Why he couldn’t tell the truth, God only knows. I went to this pub one day to sort some trouble out, but the lad I wanted to see had pissed off but, funnily enough, there sat in the corner with a group of mates was the cunt with all the mouth. It was like walking into a lion’s den. As I went outside and started walking away, I heard, ‘Oi, you!’ I turned round: he’s standing there with a load of his mates behind him for back-up. He shouted, ‘Who do you think you are? Don’t ever come here to sort chew out in my pub.’ I could handle three easy, but this was a little different. For one, there were women present and I didn’t fancy spilling any blood and hearing a shrill shriek again – the last one hurt my ears!
I ignored him – there were too many of them. I wasn’t going to give them the chance to massacre me; I’d had enough when I was drunk at the hands of Big Bri to go through it again! Instead I used my brain, and went straight over to my mate Eddie’s boozer. As luck would have it, there were a few of the lads in there up for a scrap. We jumped in a couple of motors and went over to the bar I had just left. I stormed in to find the fucking prick sat down on his ownsomes. His pals must have known I’d be back and fucked off – they’d deserted a sinking ship and he was the only rat left on it. He steadfastly refused to come into the car park to fight because my friends were there. As he started to raise his voice I thought, Fuck this. I gave it to him. I shattered three of his ribs with a single body punch, with which he suffered internal bleeding. He was an ugly bastard anyway, but after what I threw at him, he could take the lead role in the next Hammer House of Horrors movie. The barman told me later that when the ambulance carted him off, he thought the geezer was dead.
Needless to say, the ugly cunt never came back for more in person, but he did hire an underworld hard man to do me over for two grand. The bloke he hired was twenty stone and as strong as a bull elephant. Word quickly spread all over the town. Everything was set for a certain night. As I went to the nightclub with the lads, you could feel the electric in the air. I was in one room, the hired hand was in the other. The head doorman was begging me not to fight in there but I told him to fuck off and he walked away with his tail between his legs. I had a couple of drinks as steadiers and fumed, ‘It’s time.’ But when we went in the room a lad I knew said, ‘He’s just left, he’s bottled it at the last minute.’ That was a big comedown because I’d been psyching myself up all night for him. A few weeks later, I spotted him in the nightclub and stood eyeballing him, but he just shook his head as if to say no and turned away from me. You don’t get much for two grand these days, do you?
The lass from the nightclub made enough trouble for me to deal with. I was like a clockwork automaton, all you had to do was put the key in me, wind me up and press the ‘go’ button. There was one local geezer, a well-respected hard man, who started tapping her up in the nightclub. This bloke, called Davo, fought bare knuckle and had beaten some very good men; to my knowledge, he had never lost. He was rumoured to have gypsy blood in him. He certainly looked the part, as he was shady skinned, had jet-black shoulder-length hair, which he sometimes wore in a ponytail, wore a bit of gold, and had the mandatory tattoos. Nobody wanted chew with him. When the lass I was with threatened to tell me about him trying to tap her, he had brusquely replied, ‘What can Richy do with me? He can do nowt with me. I’ll beat him easy.’ When I was told about this, I was incensed and stewed with it for
a week. Luckily enough, Davo and his pals walked into a pub I was working one Saturday afternoon. I took the afternoon off because I wanted to get the job done right away.
I went back with Vul and Andy. It wasn’t a secret that there was going to be trouble. Some people were sitting in prime spots, waiting for the action. At this stage I had reached a rock-solid, muscle-packed sixteen-and-a-half stone, and was 6ft 1in tall. I was wearing an England shell suit, I had a skinhead haircut and stubble on my chin – don’t laugh at the shell suit, they were all the rage then! I said to Vulture, ‘I’ll wait until he goes to the bar and go over and offer him outside.’ But Vul advised, ‘Nah, just get stuck in as soon as you see him.’ I was toying what to do when he walked in behind a load of his mates.
I went straight over. He read the right hand I threw at him, and tried to slip under it, but he was too slow. BANG! The pile driver connected with him. He crashed to the deck; I must have caught him with a good one because there was plenty of claret all over him. As he was lying there, dazed, and looking up at me, I bent over him and whispered, ‘Stop messing with my woman.’ Then I hit him with a peach of a left hook on the side of the jaw. His eyes rolled and he went out like a light. He had lost a few teeth and had wet himself into the next century. I stared up at his mates, but none of them would look me in the face. I shouted, ‘Come on then, who wants it?’ Silence. I walked out the back door and jumped in a motor. After that, the customary ambulance turned up and took Davo away.
That’s when the lies started to begin. I hit him from behind, I used an ashtray, I ran to the cops for protection afterwards, all that shit. Why do people make up lies like that? Since Davo had such an impressive reputation, people believed the lies. It was talked about all over town and the place was buzzing. Davo started thinking of revenge. He went into training for eight weeks to prepare for the second fight. People started betting money on the outcome. But before I could take him out, I had to deal with all the little arseholes he sent my way.
There was a friend of Davo’s called Philly, who used to run the doors in the town. He was a bit of a tough guy, and was also well connected. He was at least 25 stone, as big as they come, but a fat fucker overall. Well, one night we saw him in the nightclub, pumped up with Dutch courage. He started being a total arsehole, but I ignored him. The next week, he did exactly the same thing only with more front, so I thought, I’ve had enough of this. I shouted, ‘Oi, fat cunt! You’re getting on my fucking tits.’ He slammed his drink down and came straight for me like a charging hippo – he wanted blood. As soon as he got near me I weighed into him with a mighty right hand and a head-jolting left hook. I broke both my hands as they landed – the cunt’s huge head was as hard as a brick wall. He went down in front of the bar on the tiled floor. BANG! The fat bastard shattered both his knees, what with the weight of him. Despite the pain from my hands, I was driven on to keep punching his fat head; I found his squeals with each hit gratifying. A couple more and he was knocked out. The doormen wouldn’t come near me, but the manageress of the club was on my back screaming like a banshee. She thought she had a death on her hands. Fatso went to hospital with two broken knees, a broken jaw and got stitched up like a football.
So why couldn’t things be left at that? The cunt tried it on, he lost, end of story, you would think. But no, it wasn’t long before the truth of the tale was distorted. Now I had taken him out with two other lads. Of course, one was a Kung Fu expert, and the other smashed his legs up with an iron bar. I just finished him off like a coward. What a fucking fairytale! So more bad publicity went round the town about me. To keep the matter open, Hippo man and his family got in touch with one of the hardest men money could buy, Viv Graham. But they only told him the cock-and-bull story.
Let me introduce you to Viv Graham’s pocket history:
Weight: 252 pounds
Height: 5ft 11in
Age: 34
Job: Pub & Club Protection
Background: Boxing
Attempts on life: Two! Shot at outside nightclub!
Restaurant gun attack!
Viv Graham was a hard man with a heart of gold. He took every fight with a pinch of salt. His size and boxing skills made him an excellent insurance policy against the thugs and drug dealers who polluted the pub and club scene. His promising boxing career had been cut short by a ‘frozen shoulder’. After Viv impressed the local under boss by beating up a big-time gangster, he was quickly catapulted to the next level – Newcastle City Centre. Some say he changed from a man who wanted to make pubs and clubs safer for everyone into a bully who struck fear into the very hearts of the very people whom he was supposed to protect. Some mobsters enlisted the help of a heavy to eliminate Viv in a winner takes all bare-knuckle fight, but the plan failed when Viv didn’t show after being warned of an ambush.
It wasn’t long before I heard from the man. Someone pulled up as I was working the door of a club and said, ‘I’ve had Viv Graham on the phone asking me about you, he wanted to know what happened with Philly.’
I asked, ‘What did you tell him?’
He answered, ‘I told him the truth and also told him you were a nice bloke who wouldn’t take a liberty.’
Viv went on to say to my friend that he had a feeling the hippo wasn’t telling the truth and left it at that. One thing is for sure: if Viv did come looking for me, what a fight we would have had. It had all the makings of a classic. Sadly, Viv was shot dead outside the Queens Head pub on New Year’s Eve 1993. As he lay dying on the pavement, he asked his friend, Terry Scott, to lift him to his feet.
‘I can’t let them see me like this,’ Viv said.
It was a pleasure to have received respect from such a man.
I still had two broken hands from the hippo-man beating. After hearing that Viv wasn’t getting involved, I was beginning to think that the matter was closed, but then a couple of dykes I’d known for years came up to me in the club. One of them said, ‘I hear you’re fighting Davo again, aren’t you frightened?’ I spat out, ‘Am I fuck, he’s the one who’s getting knocked out, not me.’ Well, it turned out that some blokes had approached Davo about having me gunned down. Fair play to Davo though, as he said he didn’t want anything to do with it, and would sort me out on his terms, not on anybody else’s. After I found out about this meeting, I was very aware of potential traps. A geezer who I barely knew was torturing my ears for me to go to this pub one night for a lock-in. He must have thought I was born yesterday. I found out later that Davo and all my other enemies were in there, and this cheeky cunt tried to deliver me on a silver platter. My pal Mick Sorby saw him in a pub afterwards and knocked him cold with one punch. There was a stench in the air because the geezer had shit himself, and I mean literally shit himself. Come in, brown, you’re coming through!
CHAPTER 16
BOYS TO MEN
Things were getting too hectic in town, and I needed a break from all the chew. Luckily I landed a job installing heavy electric cables in Port Glasgow. I went up, strangely enough, with a lad I had knocked out some years before, called Bernie. We became good friends. On the way there, the radio in the van was playing the Number One hit record ‘End of the Road’ by Boys II Men – they must have played it three times before we got there. We finished that job in seven days, and were then sent to a job at Wallsend in Newcastle. Overall, a very welcome break.
It didn’t take long, though, for the trouble to return. I received a phone call on the morning of bonfire night from – guess who? – Davo. He was ready to fight. I told him I’d been out all night, and asked him to call back later, at teatime, which he duly did. He wanted to fight straight away, but I said he would have to wait until seven. We arranged to fight in a nearby car park. My mate Andy drove me over. Sure enough, on arriving, I spotted Davo, as well as a couple of his relatives dotted about to relay news of the fight back to people. I got out of the car and went over. We shook hands and he said, ‘I’ve got to fight you, Richy, it was a bit fast the last time.’ He was train
ed up for this and looked impressive in a white vest. I took my coat off and we squared up. We were stood there and he was waiting for me to make the first move. I threw a light feeler punch to test him out. He came under it like a ferret and grabbed me round the waist to take me to the floor. We landed on our sides, but I was stronger and got on top of him. I tried to smash his head off the floor but his neck muscles were too strong and he seethed, ‘You dirty bastard.’ I pulled my hands free and clubbed him with two heavy shots. My hands were bleeding, as my knuckles had little stones embedded in them from the gravel in the car park. I was firmly in charge. He said he’d had enough, but I wasn’t satisfied – I wanted to prove that I could finish him at his fittest, so I continued to wade into him twice more with my pounding, bloody fists. When it got really serious, I got up and started walking away. Then I heard him shout out to me, ‘Richy, Richy.’ I went back to look at him, laid there covered in blood. He couldn’t get up. He said, ‘Richy, you can’t leave me here, not like this!’ So I picked him up, hoisted him over my shoulder and took him to his car. I’m a fair man and I don’t take liberties – once a man is done, he’s done and that’s it. Although the fight ended in some sort of truce, I have never been able to have a lot of respect for Davo due to the way he couldn’t keep his trap shut about other matters. But let’s leave it at that.
The Davo aggro may have been put to bed, but it wasn’t long before I bumped into another old adversary, Big Bri. We were out celebrating Vul’s birthday one night when I spotted him in a pub. Buggery hell, he was with his woman and another couple. I kept it to myself and pretended I had never seen him. They finished their drinks and left. That was that, I thought. But as soon as I walked out on the street a few minutes later, BANG! The crafty bastard! Big Bri had caught me with a massive right hand. There was a blinding flash of light before my eyes, followed by a drum roll in my head. He hits me again, forcing me back against the window, before following up with another smartly aimed blow to my chin. If there was nothing behind me, I think I’d have gone down. While this was happening, my mates were stood in mortified shock. Then my mate Wally jumped in and pushed him back. Bri shouted, ‘Come on then, I’ll fight the fucking lot of ya!’ Then my other mate, Ryao, shouted, ‘Right then, let them.’
Born to Fight--The True Story of Richy 'Crazy Horse' Horsley Page 12