He turned to me: “I think you were very lucky to win that fight.”
I looked at him and said, “Well you’ve got another show, so I’ll box someone else. I don’t care who it is, I’ll fight them.”
I was told to come back the following night and fight again and if I did the same I’d get the job. I came back and fought Johnny again and he was a good boy, done the same thing again and I was in. The wages were £2 10s a week and my keep, but the money didn’t bother me. I just wanted to fight, and fight I did.
I travelled around with the booth and one day it came to Sophia Gardens in Cardiff. A coloured boy called Rocky Kent came to the booth. Ron says to me, “Whatever you do, I don’t want you to hurt this boy.” I didn’t know why he said this but I did what he said. Now when we fought there was me taking my time and he was laying into me. After the fight I asked Ron what was going on and he told me Rocky had taken a load of punches over the years and Ron didn’t want him hurt anymore. Ron would always look after the boys that way. So night after night he kept coming and the same thing was happening. I told Ron I wasn’t taking any more of this, I was getting banged around every night. The next fight we had I got stuck into him. Now, I didn’t go all out and try to stop him but at least he knew he’d been in a fight. Ron said it was a good fight but don’t do it no more.
We travelled around the country fighting each night. Some nights I couldn’t sleep with my face being so bruised and my eyes puffed up. I’d lie there crying in pain and would swear that in the morning I’d pack it all in, but I would rub some witch hazel on my face to take out the bruising and the next day I would be up ready to fight again.
When we would get to Gloucester I’d fight old Johnny Melpha, the middleweight. Now there was no easy fight with Johnny. Every time he went in the ring he would try to knock you out. I’d give as good as I got but they were really hard fights with him. In Gloucester there were loads of coloured boys who would give us some real good fights.
Every year I would turn up at the May fair in Hereford to meet up with the booth and travel around fighting. I’d fight all-comers from all walks of life. Sometimes I’d be giving away four to five stones to some of these guys. This may sound funny to some people but when I’d be standing on the front looking at the crowd, I’d know straight away who the fighters were. There was something about the real fighters that made them stand out; something that I can’t put my finger on that set them apart from the guy who just wanted to try you out. Remember I was fighting every night against guys who wanted to earn money by knocking me out.
From Gloucester we would go to Fairford where we would get Yanks and some Irish who would want to fight. The Yanks were all big guys, so they would fight our big heavyweight, Frankie. Now the Irish would always come into the ring half-cut; they would love a fight after a few drinks. They would get ten bob for three rounds, which they could go and have a few more drinks with. No matter what you did to them they would come straight back the next show, ready to earn some more drink money. One thing Ron always told us was, if we were fighting a boy or someone who couldn’t fight, then we must take our time with them. If we hurt them, then of course we would stop having people come to the fights.
Sometimes we got the message that some boys wanted to know how much they would get if they knocked you out, so Ron would tell us what they said and then we wouldn’t pull no punches with them. Everyone who put his hands up got a fight. One thing was that if someone got beat in the ring they never came to fight us outside the ring. All the fights were done fair and we treated everyone tidy. In all the hundreds of fights I had, I never once got knocked down. I got stopped with bad cuts but never knocked down.
I think it was the third year with the fair when I met my first wife. She was a traveller, a gypsy or whatever you wanted to call her. Her family were the Crowes, who came from Scotland originally. We met and got married all in seven weeks, which I know seems fast but that was the way we were then. Sometimes I’d be fighting as much as six to seven times a day. Now and again, if we had a busy week, Ron would say, “Look, you’ve had a busy week, so have Saturday off.” Oh, and that would be good to have off!
My first wife had three brothers and they never liked the Welsh, so they didn’t like me. Caroline came to the pub one night to say, “You’d better come back down and get your case packed, my brothers are going to try you out tonight, you’re in trouble.” I told her not to worry, “Just keep out of my way and give me plenty of room.” I went back to our caravan and changed out of my suit and put my jeans and my boots on. I walked up to the big fire where they all were. Now I wasn’t scared because I always believed if you got scared you lost the fight. Well the shout goes up, “Come on then, yah Welsh git.” I moved Caroline out of the way as the four of them came down. Now her brother Blackie came to me first and, oh, he was a good fighter. Well I put him straight down. The others ran, so I chased after them, catching one and giving it to him. Now I didn’t fight him clean, like I would in the ring. One of her other brothers ran to the fire and got this big log of wood. He lifted it up and brought it down on my shoulder. I just managed to push it out of the way. Anyway, I beat the four of them on my own. Just before this all happened, I’d asked Caroline to marry me and her mother said no because we were too young. After the fight, her mother said, “Well, if you can do that to my sons, you’re good enough for my daughter.” So we got wed.
Even after the fight, the boys still didn’t like me. The one brother, Isaac, if ever he got into a fight and was losing or if they were too good for him, then he would tell them, “Well, if you’re a fighting man come down and fight my brother-in-law. He’d lick any one of you.” There I would be, in my bed, when down they would come, knock on the door, and out I’d go to fight. Isaac would be telling all who would listen what I could do, so they would bring the Davieses or the Smiths down to fight me bareknuckle. They were always getting me to fight someone. Every week there was someone new for me to fight. There was no money involved, just family pride. You see, I had to fight rather than embarrass her family.
I remember going to Worcester blackcurrant picking. There were loads picking, students and all sorts. Well, they weren’t very good, they would leave more on the bushes than they picked. I was one side and Caroline the other and this girl took her top off because she was hot and tied a scarf around her top half. Well I couldn’t help but notice this. After all, you know, I was a young man and that. There I was, looking at this girl, then BANG, Caroline smashed this box down on my head.
“What did I do?” I said.
“I saw you looking up at that girl,” she replied, and off she went.
Up I go to get my boxes weighed when I hear someone call me “the Corring Mush”. Now I didn’t know this type of Romany because it differed from the Romany used on the fair. When I went back to the caravan I told Caroline what I had been called. She laughed and said, “You know what that means? It means they are calling you ‘The Fighting Man’.”
Once, my niece Caroline came running up to me, screaming, “Quick, quick, they are killing Charlie Richards.” It seems Isaac and Henry were really battering Charlie. Maybe it was because of all the trouble they were causing me or just because they hated me and the rest of the Welsh that I got involved. I got an old chair leg out of my van. It was one we would use to play baseball with the kids. I marched up to where a load of them was battering Charlie. Isaac and Henry ran straight at me. I swung the bat at Henry’s head just as he lifted his arm up. Well, he went down with his arm broken in two places. Isaac came at me and I sort of dropped the bat and threw a punch straight into his kidneys. Well, for someone who was known as a fighting man, down he went, and I beat hell into them. I’ve never used a weapon but that time I just had enough. There’s only so much you can take.
[On another occasion] even though it was a summer’s night, it was still cold. Isaac walked from Worcester to Stourport with no shoes or anything but his trousers on. The Smiths had given him a good hiding. The
father and four boys had made a right mess of him. They had beaten him bad with barbed wire as well. Anyway, him now being family, I was forced to help out. We waited three to four days till he came around better. He went to look for them in the Live and Let Live pub in Worcester. Well, by now they didn’t want to know but one was getting a bit lairy with Isaac. But as soon as I walked in they went quiet and nothing happened.
A week or so later, Isaac was out again saying how good his brother-in-law was, so the word that I was a fighter was spreading all the time. One of the Smiths, Black Harry, said to me in Stourport that he wanted to fight me for money. Well, at that time I had no money so I said I’d fight him for his lorry. Harry turned to me and said, “It’s okay son, I’m pulling your leg. You’ve done nothing to me.” Well, I said, “I’ve got nothing, but I’d fight you for your lorry,” but he didn’t want to know. There was a common there where they would all turn up to fight. Well Isaac started on me, saying what he was going to do to me. I told him to stop but he wouldn’t listen, so we fought there with all the fighting families watching. It was a rough fight and in the end he just had to give up. Some of the fighters came up to me and said I should have done it years ago.
By this time my marriage had broken up and I was still travelling around with Ron. I had one weekend off and went to Luton to see my brother. I was told he was in the pub so I turned up, to his surprise. I explained I was down for the weekend. “Well, I’m glad you’ve come now,” he said. “I had some trouble last night. Some guy put a chair over my back.” The guy wasn’t there that night but the following night my brother pointed him out to me. I walked up to him and said, “They tell me you’re a good man with a chair. Let’s see outside if you can still be good with me.” There was a green outside where people would fight. Well, I tell you, it was a hard fight, a real tough scrap. I put him away in the end. Down he went and down he stayed. We shook hands and went back in the pub as friends, which was the way it always was with me.
At some of the fairs we had boxing and wrestling. I tried the wrestling once and didn’t like it. I told them, “I don’t mind taking a punch but I’m not putting my back down on there.” Once we even did boxer against wrestler. I tried it and thought, I’m not letting him get his hands on me. As fast as he came forward I jabbed and stepped away from him. There was no way I would stand still to be grabbed.
Another time I had some fights with a guy called Percy Lewis from Oxford. He was a little bigger than me and could hold his hands up. Each night he would put his hands up to fight. Now he was a good fighter and each night he was getting the better of me. This one night I told everyone that I would beat him. Well I noticed that when we fought, every time I threw a right hand he would jump up a little. This time I threw a right, he jumped up and I threw a body punch, but I hit him right between the legs and down he went and didn’t get up. Nobody believed it was an accident and Ron said, “Well, you did say you were going to beat him tonight.” I couldn’t get them to believe that I wouldn’t do something like that but there you are.
Ron and Mrs Taylor would look after us well. We would always have a good breakfast and Mrs Taylor would make sure we had clean blankets and that. Ron would sometimes come into the trailer late at night with his torch to make sure some of the boys didn’t have girls with them. When he found one there he would tell them to go and the boy would be sent packing in the morning. I can remember Ron catching many girls there and he would be shining his torch on them as they got dressed.
There were travellers coming from miles around to my caravan to fight me. In the end I couldn’t go out for a quiet night because when I got home there would be someone waiting for me. I can honestly say with my hand on my heart that I only ever got beat once and that was when I was in school, by a boy called Ronnie Lewis. He was the most delicate boy you ever met. Now what I would do, as a boy, was go up to them and say, “Can’t you fight?” And if “yes” was the answer, we would go off to fight. Ronnie gave me the finest hammering of my life and it was my own fault. A year ago I bumped into him. “Ron,” I said, “I haven’t seen you for years. You’re the only man to ever beat me!” He laughed. “Shh, don’t tell anyone,” and we laughed like hell.
I was working in the steelworks years later. I was in the lorry in the passenger seat when I saw this other lorry coming towards me on the wrong side of the road and that’s all I remember. The lorry crashed into us, taking my side off. When they found me, I was stuck down between the wheels. I had a fractured skull, broken hip, my shoulder was gone and I woke up in hospital. Not long after I was cleaning my shotgun when it went off into my stomach. I walked about 30 yards to my friend’s caravan covered in blood, then I fell down and that’s all I could remember. Even now when I go for an X-ray, the doctors are amazed to count the 70 bits of shot still in me.
I went back to the booth after a while and soon worked off the excess weight I put on. I still fought there for years. I travelled with the fair for over 38 years, and after fighting hundreds and hundreds of booth and bareknuckle fights, I decided to call it a day. I was 52 and still fighting, so it was time to quit and take things easy.
BRIAN COCKERILL
Stockton-on-Tees, Durham
At six feet three and 23 stone, it’s not difficult to understand why Brian is known throughout the hard Northern towns simply as “the Big Fella”. A physically intimidating man never, ever to be crossed. Brian’s reputation was earned the hard way by taking every fight to the extreme. He crossed swords with some legendary fighters and put an end to every challenger.
WHEN I WAS a kid I had asthma and I’d always get picked on. From the age of eight to 13, it was always the same. My mam and dad would always be on the move so whatever school I was going to I was always the new kid. Thing is, when you went to a different school the kids would always pick on the new boy. They made my life hell. At the age of 15, I started to lift weights – my uncle owed my mam some money and in return he gave her a set of weights and an old weight bench. The bench was the old type, a made-up one with a bit of carpet on, but it was good enough to get me started. I didn’t really put much size on because I was playing football and that. I started training properly at Redcar when I was 19 and started packing the size on. People started to notice how big I was and in no time I was working on the doors and that’s when I started fighting.
One lad would come in and I’d put him out and beat him, then his mate would come and I’d beat him – there was always someone else wanting to have a go. That’s how I started fighting and before long I had worked every door in town. I went to work at a place called the Top Hat and it was really rough back then. One night, these guys come in, top boxers they were. One comes up to me and says, “Listen, we run this town, I’ve had sixty-three amateur fights and only lost two.” So I give him the right hand and drop him and shout, “Well you’ve lost three now, haven’t you?” His brother came in and I banged him as well, both brothers lying there knocked out on the floor. Now they didn’t come back but they sent this big guy over for me, six foot seven, right hard, top gypsy fighter. Can’t remember his name but I know they called him “The Dentist” because when he threw his right hand it would smash out all your front teeth. Now, I’m six foot two and I’m looking up to him like a schoolboy, he was massive. I know what he’s come over for but I still say to him, “You can’t come in mate, last orders have been called, sorry about that.” He was there to fight me and had a big load of lads behind him. He threw this big heavy right hand, which I slipped, and I threw my left hook. He drops to the ground with a shattered jaw. The police come that night and the guy gets me arrested. Unbelievable. Well, the charges got dropped.
I decide to try my hand at boxing and I train for about six weeks to fight this guy who had already had six fights, so I shouldn’t really be fighting him. Now, I’m the first to say that I’m no boxer, I’m more of a streetfighter and not into all this jab and move stuff. I prefer all-in fighting. I’m trying to get in on this guy and the ref keeps pull
ing us apart. I tell him to fuck off and he takes a point off me. All the time this guy is jabbing and jabbing me, my nose is bleeding, my lip is cut open and I’m getting really annoyed. I can’t knock him out because the ref keeps pulling us apart every time I get inside. After I lose the fight, I lace him in the changing rooms instead. I went in and bashed him all over. I know I shouldn’t have but I was still so wound up.
There was this big bully in Redcar who had fought and beat some of the hardest there. He was making this young kid sell ecstasy for him but he was giving the kid aspirins so the kid was getting loads of shit off the people he was selling to as well. I felt sorry for this little kid, so I go up to the bully and I tell him it’s not going on any more. Well, he tells me the kid is going to keep selling for him and with that he gets out of his big fancy car. I’m standing there waiting to get it on when he dives and grabs my legs. I’m 23 stone and I’m thinking how the hell is the daft bastard going to lift me up. I grab him and ram him into this car, he jumps back up and I smash my fists into his body and forearm, smash him to the ground. I’m on top of him now and I stick my thumbs into his eyes and push them right back. Blood shoots right up my arms. He’s screaming, “I’ve had enough! I’ve had enough!” All the time people are egging me on to kill him because he was such a bully. I’m glad nobody called the police. I could have been in real trouble with that one. It wasn’t long after that the bully moves from the area.
I fought all the hardest from up there, then I came down to Stockton to work the clubs. There was a big gang in Stockton called “the Wrecking Crew” who would go around 20-handed. Nearly all the pubs wanted me on the doors down there. I’d go around each one through the night, checking they were all okay. Late one night this crew turn up with the same old “we run this town” bullshit. I tell them how we are only trying to earn some money on the door and they can come in but no shit tonight. Now, I’m a fair guy and I try to get on with everyone, but when they come in, the one who spoke with me starts to roll a joint in front of the customers and, of course, the manager. I tell him to take it outside and he starts with all the mouth. Now, I’m not going to take that so I bang him out. His mate runs up and I put him out cold as well.
Streetfighters: Real Fighting Men Tell Their Stories Page 9