That was kinda odd. The magistrate didn’t leave the court the last time I was here. Then the clerk exited the court through the door to my left. It shut behind him and the courtroom was silent. I was about to ask my lawyer if I was supposed to go back into the waiting area when he dropped an atom bomb on my world.
‘Michael,’ my solicitor began, ‘I have to inform you that when a defendant is about to be taken into custody, security guards from Group 4 arrive. And they have just entered this courtroom.’
My head shot to the right. There they were, four of them, in their dark-blue jumpers. It took me a second to catch on.
‘Hold on a minute!’ I said. ‘You mean there’s a chance I’m going to prison? Today? Now?’
‘There was always that chance, Michael,’ came the patronising answer. ‘And that appears what is about to happen.’
This new reality – I was going to prison right now – was like an out-of-body experience. Without even looking at the idiot who’d talked me into pleading guilty, I hurried to the back of the court to speak to Rebecca.
‘They are sending me to prison!’ I said.
She rolled her eyes and smiled. The day before, I’d told her that I’d taken so long in the shower because I’d been ‘practising not dropping the soap’. I’d been making silly little jokes like that for weeks.
‘Rebecca! Seriously! These guards are going to take me to prison. My solicitor just told me that’s what is happening!’
Shock, disbelief, fear … I can’t even describe the look on Rebecca’s face. As she began to process what I was telling her, I glanced down at her belly. I don’t want to describe how dejected I felt. She began to say something when I heard someone shout, ‘Mr Galen-Bisping!’ from the bench. My solicitor was gesturing urgently for me to retake my place next to him.
Just then the magistrate re-entered the chamber. I swear, his lips curled when he saw I’d left my seat and gone to the back of the court.
Y’know, I hold the UFC record for getting knocked down but getting back up to win (seven!). I go back and forth on whether that’s a good record to hold or not, but it does show I can get about on wobbly legs. My knees could barely keep me upright as I stood there, waiting for my sentence.
‘I’m disappointed to see you in this court once again,’ the magistrate began. ‘Clearly, the fine you left here with last time was not a sufficient deterrent. Clearly, you have not learned your lesson. Clearly, you are not getting the message.’
Only at the end of his lecture did he say: ‘I hereby sentence you to serve 28 days in prison. Take – him – down.’
My head spun around. Rebecca was already crying.
The handcuffs pinched my wrists as I was led away, taken downstairs through a back entrance and helped up into a waiting security van. The veins in my neck were throbbing an inch thick. I had no idea what would come next and I was going quietly mental inside my head.
I was driven the nine miles to Preston Prison, an over-crowded, high-security facility for ‘those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security’.
Every second of the way I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. I shouldn’t have kicked that guy. I knew that the second he hit the tarmac. Prison, though? I wasn’t the type of guy, the type of man, who needs to be sent to prison. I didn’t belong here! How could I be here?
More than anything, I thought about my girlfriend. My pregnant girlfriend. The woman who I was going to marry when I could give her the wedding I wanted to give her. I had driven our Volkswagen Polo to the court with her, and she was driving it back alone.
Like you’ve seen in the movies, I was told to strip and hand over my clothes and belongings. Then I was showered and given a crappy prison tracksuit, tatty slippers and told to step into a holding cell. Putting the prison-issue underwear on was soul-destroying.
There were seven or eight prisoners in the holding cell. They were all skinny, scrawny dregs of society. Two of them were engrossed in the football highlights on the TV mounted on the far wall. The rest were greeting each other like old mates, swapping stories of what they were in for. I was in that room for an hour and blanked the lot of them whenever they tried to talk to me.
Why? I kept thinking. Why am I here with these people in this room? Is this really happening to me? I shouldn’t have kicked the guy, yeah, but was the choice really let him punch me from behind again or prison? What should I have done instead?
In twos and threes the dregs were taken out of the holding pen to whatever prison cell was now expecting them. Then it was my turn to be led away by men in uniform who referred to me by a number. The metal stairs, the industrial-estate décor, the cells and the thin cot beds – it all looked just like what I’d seen on TV or in films. Maybe because the first prisoners I saw were cigarette-stained older men, I don’t know, but I wasn’t scared. I was sad, sick and dejected.
My cell was also just like on TV. My cellmate was an arsonist. He told me that within minutes of me sitting down on my cot, on the left of the grey room that had been his home for a long time. He was a little guy, nine stone maybe. He was definitely weird and off-putting but I didn’t get a ‘dangerous’ vibe off him.
Preston Prison had a 24-hour lock-up. At 7am each morning, prisoners – like me – got woken up and marched downstairs to get breakfast. We’d splat our food on a plastic tray and get marched right back to the cells, where we’d eat it with the doors already locked again behind us. A while later the trays would be collected through a slit in the door. At noon, we’d be marched downstairs to get dinner (lunch) and marched back to the cells to eat it. The tray would be collected through the slit in the door. Then a long crawl to 5pm. There’d be another march downstairs, another plastic tray would be carried upstairs and the same door would be locked. Repeat the next day, and the day after and so on. Once a week there was an hour of walking in a circle outside in a dusty yard.
Just one month to do, I kept saying to myself. Just one month in this place. I could do that. I’ve no idea how anyone copes any longer.
On the fifth day two guards came into the cell to do a routine search. One of them was a stocky guy, with longer hair than I thought was sensible for his line of work. Anyway, somehow he knew that I’d been a martial artist once. He’d seen me compete somewhere. I can’t quite remember the details, but we had a conversation about a karate fighter from Liverpool we both knew a little.
Then the guard asked me what I was in for and I told him all about it.
‘What was the charge?’ he asked.
‘Public order. I pleaded guilty because I was told I’d avoid coming here.’
‘You sound like a prospect to be transferred. You should be in a lower-security prison,’ he said.
He shut the door behind him. When it opened again the next morning, I was informed I’d been transferred.
Her Majesty’s Prison Kirkham was like a Pontins but you weren’t supposed to leave. It had once been an RAF base and the ‘billets’ – basically, villas with six bedrooms – did have a real Second World War BBC period drama feel to them. It was a palace compared to Preston! We all had our own rooms which we could lock with our own key. We had our own bathrooms; there was a communal kitchen, a living room – and even a games room.
Three hours after waking up next to a creepy fire-starter and surrounded by murderers and rapists, I was playing Space Invaders with tax evaders.
Then I caught another break. I was scheduled to be released on 1 April but that was Easter Monday and, luckily for me, the staff who process releases didn’t work bank holidays. They didn’t work Sundays either. Nor Saturdays. And, of course, the Friday before Easter Monday is Good Friday, another bank holiday. So, I was released from prison at 9:05am on Thursday, 28 March.
The elderly guy who signed me out gave me my double-glazing salesman white shirt, black trousers and black shoes along with an envelope with a train ticket and 50 quid. ‘That’s ta get home with, my mate,’ he said. ‘Bus station is
o’wer d’are. Don’t get a return ticket, eh? Ha-ha-ha!’
As the small, single-deck bus rattled along the A583 I let myself turn around for a second. I’m never going back there, I knew.
Easy for me to say now, but that magistrate did me a big favour. He sent me a message; a message I’d received before but had just laughed off with the arrogance of someone who’d gotten away with too much shit for too long.
What was the message?
It was pretty simple, really: Stop getting into scraps – and stop getting arrested.
Real life isn’t like one of those pre-fight vignettes designed to encapsulate a fighter’s life in a few minutes. I didn’t get to skip the boring parts like you can when bingeing on Netflix Originals. There wasn’t an inspirational music track to let me know better times were coming.
Even though I swore to myself, Rebecca and everyone who cared about me that I’d never, ever put myself in a situation to be arrested again, I still didn’t have a direction in life. Vowing to do better than getting locked up for scrapping outside pubs is a pretty low bar as far as life ambitions go, y’know?
Rebecca and I were sitting down for a meal with her parents when the call came. It was the evening of Tuesday, 14 January 2003, and we were all excited that Rebecca and I were about to become parents to a baby girl.
My phone rang. I answered to hear my mum – who’s about as tough as they come – wailing in agony. She was frantic, panic-stricken and incoherent. Something awful had happened, that was clear, but she was so heartbroken and hysterical she wasn’t making any sense.
‘Mum, calm down,’ I said. ‘Take a deep breath. Tell me what’s happened. Mum … mum!’
‘Konrad,’ I heard. Then, ‘… With an axe.’
Konrad was serving as a lance corporal in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. He was due to be shipped out to Iraq in a few months’ time, but was still in England.
What could have happened to him to upset my mum like this?
‘You’ve got to take a breath, mum. Calm down!’
Rebecca and her parents looked on with increasing concern on their faces. Then my phone beeped with another call. It was a landline number I didn’t recognise. I declined it and continued to try to get my mum to calm down a little. The landline number called again – and somehow I knew whoever it was had information about Konrad.
It was a Families Officer from the British Army. Konrad had been attacked by a private from his own platoon during a training exercise on Salisbury Plain. He’d been airlifted to Southampton General Hospital.
‘Is he alive?’ I heard myself ask of my brother.
‘He is right now. He’s undergoing surgery to try to get the brain swelling under control.’
The entire family – my parents and siblings – flew down the motorway to Konrad’s bedside. He’d always been my hero; I’d looked up to Konrad since I was a toddler. I’d started martial arts because Konrad did it. I’d played rugby because Konrad did. He was now 6ft 6in tall and always the toughest, strongest – and funniest – guy in the room.
He was out of surgery when we reached the hospital. I stared down at the man in the bed with wires and tubes leeching blood out of his bandaged skull. His neck and cheeks were swollen around a breathing mask that held the tube that was helping him cling to life in his mouth. He was surrounded by white plastic machines that were keeping him alive.
His wife said a priest had been to perform last rites.
Later, I met a colleague of Konrad’s who witnessed the attack. What he said – and what was said at the trial – has never left me or my family.
My brother was leading his platoon through a war game in preparation for the deployment to Iraq. A little shit named Grant Kenyon couldn’t handle the pace. This coward waited for Konrad to take off his helmet and sit down during a break. Then he crept up on Konrad and swung a 3ft-long army issue pickaxe with a 1ft-wide blade head into my brother’s skull.
‘Your brother died,’ the solider told me. ‘He dropped to the ground with the axe sticking out his head. He turned blue. We checked his vitals. He was dead, gone! Then – I still can’t believe it – he jumped up gasping for breath! He tried to pull the axe out before falling on the ground again. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.’
We all stayed in the hospital for days waiting for signs of improvement. The staff – who were great – found a bed for my mum and sister to sleep in and I slept on a couch. On the fourth day, with Konrad still in a coma, I had to go back north to be with Rebecca who was due to give birth and looking after Callum on her own.
I’d been home for a couple of days when my mum called with the news. Konrad was awake! I’m not religious, but I struggle to find a better word for it than ‘miracle’.
But the life Konrad had made for himself was over. He received compensation from the army but his career, his sight, his health – even his ability to take care of himself – they’d been taken away from him.
But he’s a Bisping. He battled back. He’s a father and husband. He still loves to compete – and came close to reaching the Para-lympics in 2012. I’m so incredibly proud of him.
(Kenyon was released after serving only two years in prison. It wasn’t long before he committed another cowardly and sickeningly violent act.)
On 5 February, I held my newborn daughter in my hands. After trying out several different names, Rebecca and me named her Ellie. I remember driving my young family home from the hospital, knowing Konrad had a long stay in series of hospitals in front of him.
What had happened to Konrad made me realise I needed to make the most of life – for myself and my family – while I could. I could do better than bounce around minimum wage factory jobs during the prime of my life. I had to do something different!
After bouncing around a few jobs here and there, including time as a postman and slaughterhouse worker, I’d settled into a role at an upholstery business on the edge of Clitheroe. It was boring work but I really liked my direct supervisor, a guy 35 years or so older than me named Mick. To me, Mick had life all figured out. He was a decent man earning an honest living for his family. I looked up to him and he was a mentor at a time when I really needed one. We worked side by side for over a year – which was the longest I’d ever held down a job. I was determined to keep regular money coming in for Callum’s and Ellie’s sake.
On tea-breaks during the warm months Mick and I would go outside, lean against the wall and pass the ten minutes talking. One day he asked me what I wanted to do with my life.
‘Mick, that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for ages. I dunno.’
‘You’re a smart lad,’ Mick said. ‘You should really try to figure it out sooner rather than later – or do you want to be working here in ten years’ time?’
‘Sorry …’ I hesitated before continuing my thought. ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way but, if I’m honest, I don’t want to be here in one month’s time.’
Mick knew I wasn’t insulting him or denigrating what he did for a living. He liked his job and had been encouraging me to find one that, at the very least, I didn’t hate.
‘Don’t spend your life watching the clock until it’s time to go home,’ he said. ‘Everybody is good at something; you owe it to yourself to work out what that is. You are young enough to do it. If you are unhappy at work, you can’t help but take that home with you eventually. So really think about it – what are you good at? And then think about how you can go about doing that for a living.’
Over the weekend, with my babies cooing on my lap, I did think about it. I picked up the conversation with Mick on Monday over the steam of a cooling chicken and mushroom pot-noodle lunch.
‘So, Mick,’ I began. ‘I’ve thought about it. I am good at something – very good at something!’
‘Let’s have it then – what?’
‘From the age of six to about seventeen I was a really good, world champion level, martial artist. So – I’m going to become … a professiona
l boxer.’
Mick looked at me as if he was embarrassed to have called me a ‘smart lad’ the week before.
‘Oh, a boxer,’ he said.
In the summer of 2003, I’d never heard of the UFC, PRIDE FC, Cage Warriors, Cage Rage or anything remotely to do with mixed martial arts. I’d seen a few minutes of an early UFC – maybe UFC 1 – while in New Zealand when I was 16 but I hadn’t been entirely sure it wasn’t pro-wrestling (which I loathe). As far as I knew back then, getting paid as a professional fighter meant one thing: boxing.
‘That’s what I’m going to do, Dad,’ I told the old man when he came round my house one evening.
My dad was 100 per cent on board with it. He’d always been so supportive of my KSBO fighting and I think he missed the road trips we’d taken around the country. He was more than encouraging about me becoming a boxer – he actually came up with a great plan of action.
‘Join the army and, from there, join the army boxing team,’ he said. ‘I know how good you are at this – and the army love athletes. After basic training, you’ll never have to deploy or do much of anything other than train boxing. It’ll be fantastic for you. You’ll get paid a decent wage to train and compete as a boxer for the army. Then after a few years you come out, turn professional, and you’ll have all that experience under your belt. Basically, the British Army will pay you to train and box for them.’
Of course, this wasn’t the first time Dad had suggested the armed forces. He was a military man and had passed on his patriotic pride to all us kids. Not only Konrad but also my younger brother Adam had joined up when they’d got old enough and I’d given it thought here and there too. But I’d always considered the services as a back-up, a Plan B.
This suggestion, though – this was genius. My dad, brothers and I had been big fans of two-division boxing world champion Nigel Benn, a massive star on ITV in the early 1990s. Benn had learned to box while serving in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
Quitters Never Win Page 4