Fighting to the Death

by Carl Merritt

  But, despite his concern, I knew he’d stick by me. Not only were we close brothers prepared to help each other out at the drop of a hat, but I knew he was a bit strapped for cash at the time as Michelle had just had a baby. Over the next couple of days I completely laid off the booze. Carole soon got suspicious, so I started carrying a bottle of beer with me, then slipping it to John who’d swig it and give it back. We agreed to tell the girls that on the night of the actual fight we were planning a heavy evening out to talk about the old days. After all, we were two close brothers who hadn’t seen much of each other in ages.

  When the night of the fight finally arrived, John drove me to Venice where we met Kenny, whom we followed out to a big hotel near LA Airport, known to everyone as LAX, just a couple of miles east on the freeway. John was bricking it even more than me by this stage. Every time a jet came thundering a few hundred feet overhead, he jumped out of his skin. I tried to reassure him that it’d all be fine and we’d earn a decent wedge for no more than a couple of minutes’ work.

  ‘But what if this other fells is a bit tasty?’ asked John anxiously.

  ‘I’ll be fine, big bruv. I’ll be just fine;’ I answered. I had to put on a front for my brother. I didn’t want him cracking up on me before we’d even got to the venue.

  We dumped John’s old banger a couple of blocks from the parking lot where the fight was to be held. Arriving in a $250 rust heap wouldn’t have done my reputation any good. So we got in Kenny’s shiny black Lincoln Continental alongside two English minders. They didn’t say a word and they didn’t look in the same league as Wayne and Neville.

  As we glided into the parking lot entrance, a bunch of flashy-looking motors were lining up ahead of us. We drove up at least two floors before Kenny turned to me in the back seat.

  ‘You okay, Son?’

  ‘Yeah. Keep an eye on my big bruv here and make sure he doesn’t get too excited.’

  I poked John in the ribs and he put on a bit of smile for me. Then I asked Kenny about my opponent.

  ‘He’s just some short-arsed Mexican kid,’ he said. ‘You’ll make mincemeat of him.’

  Just then the Lincoln levelled up as we drove into the actual venue which was carefully lit up with huge lamps on adjustable legs, like they have on movie sets. There was a compère in a maroon velvet jacket with a mike in his hand standing near the cage, which glistened under a multi-coloured array of different light filters. Just then another jet thundered overhead, which certainly added to the eerie atmosphere.

  I felt a bit underdressed in my jeans and t-shirt, especially when I got a first glance at my opponent. He was dressed more like a traditional boxer with tassels on a flash pair of white leather boots. His hands were taped just like a boxer but without any gloves being added. But what really struck me was that he was only about five-feet-six-inches tall, although he was built like a squat brick shithouse.

  This fighter was definitely quite a lot older than me, but he was bouncing around just outside the cage like Roberto Duran performing for the crowd. His sweaty Latino trainer then started slapping him across the face, trying to psyche him up.

  Meanwhile Kenny’s Lincoln glided to a halt alongside a couple of cars that looked longer than most bungalows. As I got out, two or three Mafia types slapped me on the back. I thought they were just trying to soften me up. But what really caught my eye was the mix of people at that event. They weren’t all gangster types; there were a lot of what I’d call rich yuppies, in their early-to-mid-thirties, with glamorous-looking women on their arms.

  I even recognised a couple of Hollywood stars in amongst them, including one Oscar winner who’d been in and out of the news in recent years because of his dodgy lovelife. They were all acting as if the entire event was as normal as apple pie.

  Then the compère strolled inside the cage. Moments later, he began telling the audience over his PA system about the two fighters. He even referred to me as the ‘English Bulldog’. I’ve never been keen on nicknames and I wasn’t happy to hear anything being said that even vaguely helped identify me.

  That was when I realised Kenny operated in a very different way to Bill. Normally by this stage; Bill would have been chatting to me and reassuring me. Not Kenny; he was more interested in slapping a load of wedge into the greasy palm of a fat Danny DeVito lookalike, whom I presumed was a bookie.

  Meanwhile, my big bruv John stood there with his hand resting reassuringly on my shoulder as we started walking towards the cage. Trouble was, his hand was shaking like a leaf. ‘Calm down, bruv. You’ll be alright,’ I said to him with a wink and a nod; although I suppose he should have been the one saying that to me.

  Then the compère started up again: ‘Time for the fight to commence. Will both fighters please enter the cage: ‘The Mexican was bouncing around like a pit bull terrier on speed. He even took up a stance like a proper fighter, which seemed a bit strange to me, but I didn’t have time to question the rules. I stooped down and got into the cage at exactly the same time as my opponent. Our eyes met for a split second.

  We both instantly moved at high speed towards each other. I caught him first with three fast shots to the head. He hit back with two sturdy punches to the body. Then I putted him right in the temple. It obviously shocked him, and the audience, who started hissing and booing. He wobbled on his pins so I kneed him in the head and down he went. Next he tried to scramble straight back on his feet and I caught him with a hefty punch on the back of the neck. He crumpled onto the deck. This time he was out like a light. I aimed a kick into his body just to make sure he wasn’t having me on.

  Then I gently stabbed my foot into his ribs twice to see if he’d get up. That’s when a bottle of water was thrown into the cage which was the Yanks’ way of throwing in the towel. I raised my arms in victory but the boos and hisses were now so much louder I could only just make out the Jumbo flying overhead. Can’t say I cared. My confidence was sky high. I felt on top of the world. I didn’t give a toss about a load of verbals from a bunch of American yuppies.

  ‘Fix,’ one blond-haired bloke yelled right at me through the cage.

  Then came a pathetic chorus of ‘Fix. Fix. Fix. Fix.’

  As I climbed out of the cage, I caught a broad grin on Kenny’s face. He moved alongside me and slipped a fat envelope into my hand. It contained $10,000. I was well chuffed and about to say thanks when he disappeared in the opposite direction. Obviously I was just another piece of meat to him.

  At least that dough would set me and Carole up for the first couple of months in Australia and I’d barely got a scratch in the process. I bunged brother John $2000 as we drove home in his rust-bucket. He was over the moon.

  The very next day, we met Kenny for a drink in that same bar on Venice Beach. He was on a real high. No doubt he’d earned tens of thousands of dollars by gambling on me the previous night. ‘I know some good fight people in Australia,’ he said and gave me a number in Sydney to call. ‘If we firm something up I’ll fly over,’ added Kenny. He was obviously a big worldwide player, on a different level to Bill.

  The cage had become the most important earner in my life. I was in it hook, line and sinker. It had given me the potential to earn a fortune thousands of miles from home. I was on top of the world. I couldn’t wait to get cracking again. The scene was set.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Down Under

  There’s no denying that getting to Australia with a good few thousand bucks burning a hole in my pocket helped me and Carole settle down more easily. I rested up for the following three months, and Carole and I got on really well. I even got myself a building job in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, and we stayed at the nearby home of one of Carole’s oldest mates.

  But when the dough started running low, I couldn’t stop myself from calling up Kenny’s Australian fight contact. He turned out to be an Italian called Vincenzi, who I called Vinnie from the moment we met. Vinnie’s job was to fix up the fight before Kenny swarmed in to grab all the gl
ory – and the cash. Vinnie warned me that this time there would be no cage. The only other thing I knew was that I would be fighting an Aussie and that he was a very tasty operator. That’s what Vinnie reckoned anyway.

  Kenny appeared on the scene a few days before the fight. It was starting to dawn on me that he really was an extremely wealthy bloke because he even had his own apartment in Melbourne. Kenny wore even more jewellery than usual and he’d started speaking in an increasingly strong Irish/American accent. It was almost as if he adapted it for people in America and Australia. Strange, really, because he’d seemed straight Irish when we’d first met in London.

  Kenny reckoned the Aussies were good to deal with ‘because they’re so fuckin’ thick-skinned.’ It was only a lot later that I realised the significance of what he was saying.

  On the night of my first Oz fight, Vinnie drove me to the venue in his Nissan Patrol. I felt fit and strong because Carole and I had been training at a gym in Melbourne virtually every day of the week. Of course she had no idea I was prepping a fight.

  This time the fight was held in a furniture warehouse at an industrial estate on the outskirts of Melbourne. It had a roped-off ring with eight barrels, so it ended up being the same shape as a fifty-pence piece.

  There were lots of Italians and Greeks in the audience. They looked like smartly dressed business types but I guess a lot of them were villains. There were a lot of four-wheel drives on display. I was dressed in my usual ‘uniform’ of tight T-shirt and jeans. Kenny appeared briefly but stayed firmly in the background most of the time.

  The crowd circled the entire ring, and the lights were so bright they made the interior of the warehouse steaming hot. Naturally, my Aussie opponent got a load of applause, while the Pom (that was me) got booed from the moment I emerged from Vinnie’s jeep. My opponent must have been about six-feet-one or two. He looked like a real bushman, complete with a hat, jeans, T-shirt and Blundstone boots, similar to what we call Chelsea boots or jodhpurs back in the East End. He had a crooked, broken nose and was standing there in the ring with his thumbs hooked in his front pockets, which made him look like a right plonker. But, most significantly, his beer belly was protruding over his hands. That was all I needed to see to believe I’d crush him.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong. This character kept me very busy for the first three minutes, which was already longer than any of my fights had ever lasted. He was a good scrapper and he and I even exchanged mind-blowing head-butts. Then he lashed out at me with a series of vicious kicks to the shins that really hurt: before he caught my knee and I went tumbling to the floor. I still have the mark where he hit me to this day.

  But as I bounced up from the floor, I decided it was time to play the fight by my rules. He came down close on me and tried to pull me up by the head. That was when I bit a chunk out of his lip and spat it on the floor. It was an animal instinct sort of thing. I don’t know why I did it but I did. It certainly shocked him because he froze in mid air.

  The audience went crazy when I did that. One spectator sprang out of the crowd into the ring and punched me twice on the back of the head before he was dragged away. And I can tell you now, he knew what he was doing because those punches really hurt. Bedlam exploded all around me. The crowd had lost it.

  Then I noticed Vinnie elbowing two spectators in the face. Meanwhile, I carried on laying into my Aussie opponent who was bleeding profusely from his lip wound. It was getting really nasty. I kicked out viciously at the Aussie and then he started muttering something under his breath. ‘Cunt. Cunt. Cunt.’

  All that did was encourage me to catch him with a sharp flurry of punches before he fell backwards onto the floor. I pummelled his face as he went down, specifically targeting his eyes and nose. Over and over. Over and over.

  Just then, two sets of hands grabbed me and pulled me off him and threw me to the floor. Everything became a blur. Vinnie appeared and pulled me to my feet. I almost hit him because I didn’t know who he was at first. ‘It’s me. It’s me. Let’s get the fuck outta here.’

  I was in bad shape after a vicious battle that lasted more than five minutes. Just then the compère grabs my arm and hoists it high. I’m the winner. I’m the winner. What the hell is going on? No time to celebrate. Got to get the fuck outta there.

  And the punters continued going AWOL. Bottles rained down into the ring. We just made it through the crowd, many of whom were throwing punches in our direction. As we scrambled into Vinnie’s Nissan Patrol, they started kicking the door panels. The noise was more frightening than anything else. A mob of them were rocking the car backwards and forwards. If it had been a Fiesta, they’d have toppled it over in seconds. This was fucking hairy stuff.

  As Vinnie tried to reverse out of the chaos, I’ll swear I heard a thud as if we drove over something or somebody. It might well have been a body but we didn’t stop to ask. Once out of the warehouse, I looked behind us and saw Kenny following in another car. There were other motors behind him trying to ram his vehicle. The bedlam was far from over.

  Outside, two vans tried to ram us off the road as we careered round the narrow streets of the industrial estate. When one vehicle came alongside us, I ducked because I thought I spotted a shooter in some idiot’s hand. I don’t know if I was right because I wasn’t going to stop to have a proper look!

  We finally lost the last of them about fifteen minutes later. Shortly afterwards, Kenny flashed us to pull over. I threw a right moody at him. ‘There was no fuckin’protection. Anything could have happened back there.’

  ‘It was fine,’ Kenny shrugged, as if nothing had even happened. But this time his charming Irish brogue wasn’t going to be enough to calm me down.

  ‘Fuck you, Kenny. You put all our lives on the line back there – and you bloody know it.’

  ‘Don’t talk shit,’ Kenny bit back. I was outraged that he could throw such a bare-faced lie.

  ‘I’ll never fight for you again. D’you hear me?’

  I felt like decking him on the spot for taking the piss.

  But he still had the front to come back at me. ‘I’ll phone you.’

  ‘Don’t fuckin’ bother,’ I screamed back. Kenny was a toerag. He knew it and I knew it.

  Back home that night Carole erupted when she saw the state of my face. ‘This can’t be another pub fight, Carl. What the hell’re you doing? What’s going on? You gotta tell me.’ But I carried on lying. I tried to calm her down. I told her I loved her, but none of it worked this time. She’d had enough and was about to go walkabout for good. She wanted out of Oz and our marriage. How could I have allowed it to get to this?

  I was so fucking angry with myself. I hadn’t expected to get so badly beaten up. I thought it’d be another walk-over. I was lucky to win and I knew it. I should have gone to hospital and had myself checked out, but I’d wanted Carole to believe I wasn’t that badly hurt. I’d even pushed my own crooked teeth back into place to try and look as normal as possible when I got home. But now I was getting everything I deserved.

  Me and Carole talked long into that night. Of course she was steaming mad with me and she had every right to be. But I still didn’t have the bottle to tell her the truth. She thought I was a punch-happy, violent drunk who couldn’t be trusted to go out for a beer without having a tear-up. ‘What sort of person am I married to?’ she screamed at me at one stage. ‘I’m not sure I even know the real you.’

  I was desperate to hang onto Carole. I told her we’d go touring Oz for the next three months. At least that would keep me out of trouble for a bit. ‘You mean it?’ she asked. “Course I do,’ I said.

  A week later I was paid 11,000 Australian dollars (about £4000) by Vinnie, who was a good bloke with a lot of bottle. I respected him. Once I’d got the money, Carole and me set off and did the lot: we went to the Great Barrier Reef, got stuck in some floods, saw Ayers Rock. And it was all achieved in a rust-bucket of a Mark Three Cortina that I bought for $500 or £200.

  That trip was
a marriage saver for us. Carole calmed down and started to trust me again. You could say we fell back in love with each other again. And being totally out of contact with Kenny made me feel a whole lot better. He was the equivalent of a drug dealer to me. If I didn’t think or talk to anyone about him, then perhaps he’d just go away for ever.

  Eventually we drove back into the big metropolis of Sydney. We’d blown all those hard-earned Aussie dollars but I wasn’t going to be tempted. Or was I?

  I’d always kept the number of the local fight fixer … just in case of a rainy day. It was easy money and the painful memories of how I almost went belly-up in that last fight were already fading. You do what you do best in life, don’t you? And I was a good fighter. It had to be done. I’d kept fit throughout that break with Carole. I was ready.

  So I called the fixer, Colin, whose number had been given to me by Vinnie. This time Kenny wasn’t involved and surprise, surprise, the money was better: 22,000 Aussie smackeroos. Colin warned me it would be a tough fight. The venue was a huge warehouse out in the middle of nowhere, about fifty miles from Melbourne. My opponent was a massive rugby-forward type and I won it after about four minutes of hard graft. Word had spread amongst the local criminal fraternity and there were faces laying huge bets, so it was obvious the cage was popular down under. Me and Carole would be able to live off the dough for months. And although Carole might not appreciate it, I’d done us both a favour. This time I explained away my injuries by claiming I’d fallen off a wall while hod-carrying. Carole accepted the story much better than if I’d gone and told her I’d had another tear-up in a pub. With no Kenny on the scene my money had shot up. This had to be a lesson for me. Now I knew for certain he was a lying piece of shit. There was no doubt he was taking more than a 60:40 cut of the fight fee, not to mention all the dough he was winning by placing bets on me. I reckon he was copping at least £100,000 a fight, the slimy bastard.