Fighting For a Life

BOXING CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH, BUT
TEACHES SELF-DISCIPLINE, & GETS YOU FIT. SMOKING,
DRINKING, DRUGS JUST DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH...!

Suddenly, without warning, he twists his ear, rolls his eyes, and protrudes his tongue like he's performing some kid's party trick. I half expect him to produce a shiny new sixpence to further amaze me.

"What do you learn from that?" he stabs.

"Co-ordination," I snap back, as immaculately drilled as one of his "boys".

"Co-ordination. Yes." Brendan Ingle smiles approvingly, then reels back the years, to the beginning.

"At one time, from age 18 to 20, if anyone said anything bad to me, fucking no sooner the word than the blow. The only thing is you hit the feller, the feller went on the floor and you've killed him, you'd be up for manslaughter. I understand all that. But when I went working on the building sites and the steelworks, I thought 'I'm going to be fighting these bastards all the rest of my life'. So I got a little bit clever, I used to bring me fuckin' gloves, I used to put the gloves on and say 'you fookin' hit me anywhere you want'. They couldn't hit me. And after two minutes, when they were out of breath, I'd say 'hey, you haven't hit me yet'. So they left you alone . . . but there I go. Swearing again. I must try and stop," he protests. "But it's the language of the business. It's the language they all use."

There's big money to be made from the Noble Art Of Fisticuffs. Forbes magazine's annual World's Highest Paid Athletes list includes Michael Schumacher, Lennox Lewis and Brendan's one-time "Fresh Prince", Naseem Hamed. A separate UK sporting big-earners' Top Three places Naz third with an estimated £4.5 million price-tag behind Damon Hill, but worth exactly two David Beckhams.

Brendan Ingle has invested his life in pugilism. A boxer, and a fighter by his trade, he carries the reminder . . . of a lot more besides. He's manager and trainer. Boxing is a hands-on, 24-hour, seven-days-a-week commitment. As surrogate father to "Brendan's Boys", he tells them "you make money, we make money. You look good, we look good". A BBC Close-Up North profile timed to coincide with his MBE award claims, with some justification, that he's "as famous as the boxing champions he's helped create".

Old bruiser American novelist Norman Mailer celebrates boxing as the purest, rawest and most primal expression of personal competition. Direct. Uncompromisingly brutal. One on one. A creative bludgeoning of wills made flesh, pared down to its most minimal expression, then driven to extremis until one or other participant is physically broken. A study in blood, pain, snot and broken noses, a spectacle primed on the thrill of seeing one man demolish another.

Soccer became chic. Moved up-market, got a Fever Pitch intellectual make-over made of sociological bubblewrap. Got poncified and became a fashion statement. But boxing remains the final, most extreme resort. The Last Exit from the ghetto. In the ghetto you sing blues. Or you fight your way out. With your fists. Literally. And metaphorically. Boxing has stayed true to its roots.

Me? The closest I got to boxing before this was watching late-night re-runs of Elvis Presley's Kid Galahad. But now I'm here at Brendan's gym, the St Thomas Club, in the shadow of Sheffield's Tinsley Viaduct, a raised section of the M1 which stilts on past the nearby Meadowhall Shopping Complex. There's a faint aroma of mustiness when you walk in off the street, and a pumping rhythm of sequenced drums from the sound centre, as a radical mix of wannabe "Fists of Fury", and "Coulda Bin A Contender's" work out, weave, mirror and shadow-box up and down between yellow lines painted on the floor. All the activity is conducted under Brendan's attentive and critical eye. He's sharp, make no mistake about that. He knows exactly what he's doing.

"I've got a system, a good system," he explains. "It develops time and distance co-ordination, mobility, flexibility, agility, patience and rhythm. Like watching Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers, it's all down to practice. Choreographing—is that the word? Instinctively you teach them repetition. Then people say you're brainwashing them. Repetition is brain-washing. But it's good brainwashing. In here I teach life and social skills. And 99% use it to improve their life. Don't let nobody what?"

Be a bully? Shit, he's got me at it already.

"Right—don't let nobody bully you. And when you learn how to fight, don't become a bully. Probably 1% use their skills to con people and rip people off. I think that's sad. You get two choices. You go that way. Or you go the other way."

"Bully" is the most despised word in Brendan's lexicon. He gives Anti-Bullying and Racism lectures at local schools, Working Men's Clubs and prisons. But it serves a dual purpose. It's also part of his policy of taking his boxers "out into the community", developing their self-confidence and interview technique. It's a process which, bizarrely, also has them breaking off in the gym in mid-spar to sing, rap, or recite.

"There might be a million people watching them," says Brendan, "so now, when they go out to fight, they got no hang-ups," as a huge pugilist sings "Red & Yellow & Pink & Green" while rhythmically ducking and stabbing. "It's hand-feet co-ordination with the voice. But if someone comes and takes my methods and uses them, that's plagiarism, isn't it. That's the right word, isn't it, Andy?"

It's also a question designed to yield a dual response, requiring my confirmation, while inferring a degree of shared intimacy. "Brendan is the most enterprising bullshitter-sage I have encountered," declares The Guardian's Jonathan Rendell. "It's his great trick to make you feel special". He knows exactly what he's doing.

A BBC film-crew recorded Brendan's nostalgia-trip return to Dublin.

"Forty years ago, when I left Dublin, everybody was struggling, but the wit and humour, the songs and laughter, that was something you can't forget. You come back now, and the place is booming."

They took him to Plas Maishread in Ringsend, where he grew up.

"In that bedroom, there was ten brothers in two big beds and three bunks. And in here my three sisters in a fold-down bed. While my mother and father was in the back room. There was 17 then 16, the baby died at a few weeks or so, but there was like, 16 people in this house. It's just unbelievable."

His father, by necessity, was very very strict, "but if you could fight or play football you had a bit of standing in the community."

So Sugar Ray Robinson was an early hero. Joe Frazier too. And Spike McCormack, an admired early Irish boxer.

"Eight or nine of my brothers boxed. All boxing mad. In 1939 they built the new stadium in Dublin, and my eldest brother, Jimmy, was the first Amateur European Flyweight Champion there. Went on to become professional. Those fellers—if they were around today, they'd make millions, because they could fight, fight for fun . . . "

From Murray's Lounge Bar ("isn't it ironic, I'm Irish, and I don't drink Guinness") to the inner-city Dublin Corinthians Club, young Brendan's boxing skills grew and developed.

"My main interests is boxing, religion and politics," he declares. "In the 1940s, learning history at school, my teachers were very nationalistic, so the English were the biggest shower of bastards on two legs. And when I come over here to Sheffield I was Republican-Socialist—nearly a Communist. In theory, I think, Communism is like Christianity, would you agree? But I'm 18. Never been out of Dublin. It was a freezing January, there was smoke and fog, it was miserable, and I've got this attitude regarding the English. I thought 'bloody hell, I've done it now'. And even though the people were great, you knew you were different. The minute you open your mouth, you're different. I got my real education and knowledge in the steelworks. On the building sites. In the gym. Being observant. Watching people shake you by the hand, then stab you in the back. I got my education on the street."

He read The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists—"read it and read it again. Then I read it again." He laboured days at the Sheffield steelworks where they called him Benny because they couldn't be bothered to pronounce "Brendan".

"I've grown up and I've had to rough it through, but I've never been in a fight that wasn't a fair fight. I've never picked on anyone, or caused trouble with anyone, unless they started first. And I've always stood up for the people that's got bullied. Whether it's mental bullying, physical bullying or whatever, it's terrible. When I told people I was going to turn out British, Commonwealth, European, International, World Champions, they laughed at me. But I've done it. On a shoe-string. I said to people, 'I'm going to bring kids from seven years of age and make them famous and make myself famous', whatever fame is. Fame's only a twinkle in the eye. But I've gone and done it."

Brendan's first high-profile twinkle came with Herol "Bomber" Graham. But the supernova flash came when he spied the Arab kid, Naseem Hamed.

"The bus pulls up outside of school, it's around break-time in the afternoon. I'm on the top. There's a wall there with some railings, and this little kid in the play-area, he's got his back to the wall and he's fighting off three other kids. They're all only six or seven years old. And I'm looking. Then the bus pulls off. A week later I'm coming past his shop, and his old man comes out—I knew his old man but I didn't know the boy I'd seen belonged to this home—and he said 'me three lads are getting picked on', so he brought them out: Riath, Nabeel, and the little feller was Naz. So they come down here. The eldest feller (now Naz's manager), didn't last two minutes. Nabeel stopped. Naz didn't stop. He'd come straight out of school to be in here. The rest is history."

The selling of a pro fighter is a tricky business. He can be a charismatic Muhammad Ali, a bad Mike Tyson, or a comic-turn Frank Bruno. But he must not, under any circumstances, be dull (like Lennox Lewis). Naz is a natural. His fists detonate explosions, yet he equals in courage and talent what he delivers in high-risk ego and hype. He's already the hottest property in the history of British boxing, and a leading draw-card on the world scene.

"The gist of it is," says Brendan Ingle, "he came in here as a kid, and we built him into a star—Frank Warren (promoter) and meself. But Frank Warren has got to keep everything right, you understand? So if Naz starts putting pressure on Frank Warren, then I've got problems. I said to Naz, 'remember when you become Champion, don't forget all these people that helped you, alright?' 'Right.' And he'd say 'oh yeah, I'll do that'. But, as he got more powerful in the boxing hierarchy and became a star, then he started intimidating and trying to bully everybody in here. You say 'did Naz intimidate you?' Of course he did. Especially me. And you've got to understand, I've got a gym-full of fighters. So I'd finish up having rows with him here, in front of everybody. Then, when everybody left, and there d'be just me and him, he'd apologise. But there was no sincerity in the apology. And I looked at him, and I thought . . . " he gives a dismissive shrug.

But all that came later. By the time Naz had turned 12, they'd verbally cemented the agreement whereby Brendan took his standard 25% cut. Brendan proselytised and relentlessly touted the fighter he renamed "Prince" from the start. "Why Naz? Muhammad Ali, of course, was brilliant," explains Brendan. "But he was a traditional fighter. He could only fight one way. Naz, by comparison, fights four or five ways." There's pride in the way he tells it. But as purses became increasingly astronomical, the pre-fight hype became even more outrageous, and as Naz's market value grew across the Atlantic, finance became an issue. He was earning £30,000 per fight by the time he beat Argentina's Sergio Liendo in early '95, attracting ITV audiences of 10 million, and that's before Warren negotiated his switch up to pay-per-view Sky Sports. Naseem was soon famously refusing to leave for Atlantic City to defend his WBO featherweight title there until his $2 million purse had been banked. Then, according to journalist Kevin Francis, Ingle had to endure insults galore during Naz's 12th defence of his belt against Ulsterman Wayne "Pocket Rocket" McCullough during his Halloween Fright Night in Las Vegas. "He (Brendan) was clearly upset at the way his instructions were ignored between rounds, with Hamed just pushing him away on one occasion. Nevertheless Naseem 'did the business', as he put it himself, extending his unbroken pro record to 31 fights, 31 wins."

"Naz Hamed and his family, they're the worst set of people since they got money," Brendan confides to me now. "And I'm having to listen to this 'Inshallah (god willing)', y'know, 'gift from god'. And I'm looking. And I can't believe. When Naseem Hamed first came in here he didn't know his left foot from his right hand. And when I tell that story now, that story never happened. It's something I made up in me mind. It doesn't suit now, you see?"

The final decisive split came with the book Brendan produced in collaboration with ex-Sunday Times sports journalist Nick Pitt, which claims Naz missed training, bad-mouthed police and made money his god.

"When the book came out Naz got upset about it. And he was entitled to. I thought it was constructive criticism. But he says 'you gave away my training secrets and everything else'. But after that he was back training at seven o'clock in the morning, doing what he was doing when he was twenty." Naz took the slights up-close and personal. To him, it was betrayal.

"The book was a big thing in my eyes, he revealed quite a few things, personal stuff. You don't do what he did," accuses the Prince. The sparring spilled over into the press. Now it's like the aftermath of a vindictive and particularly painful divorce. The same twisted mix of love, bitterness, and the compulsive need for self-justification. To Nick Pitt the split ran far deeper than just money.

"They didn't properly acknowledge the contribution of each other," he claims. "Brendan took the view that 'give me any seven-year-old and I can turn him into a World Champion'. While from Naz's point of view, all his gifts come from god."

Now, an allegedly reformed Prince Naseem kicks off a six-fight deal that will net him a staggering £15m for his next title defences. And like he says in his current Adidas TV-ad, "no-one ever called me boring".

While for Brendan, there are new celebrity fighters. "The little feller is gone. Finished. And the gym's blossoming again. There's no problem." Johnny Nelson is here in an Evander Holyfield T-shirt. His Peugeot 406 parked outside, emblazoned "JOHNNY NELSON DRIVES PEUGEOT" with its neat boxing gloves logo. Commercial sponsorship, merchandising, why not? Get in there. There's also Ryan Rhodes and Darren Sutherland—Brendan's "Black Paddy", a 16-year-old protégé from the outskirts of Dublin. Linda, his mother, is Irish, Tony, his father, from the West Indies island of St Vincent. He's good. "When he raps, he raps Shaggy's 'Mr Boombastic'. Can you understand that? I can't understand what he's saying, and I'm Irish . . .!" protests Brendan, then "look!" he exclaims excitedly, "a backflip! Naseem can't do that. He can do a forward flip but not the backflip." He folds his arms with evident satisfaction.

Brendan's Boys are a strange multicultural mix of local whites, Bangladeshis, Afro-Caribbeans . . . and one lad over from Kosovo.

"Watch this," he tells me conspiratorially, and calls across an Asian fighter. Ingle looks him straight in the face and spits out "I hate you fuckin' Pakis." The fighter grins back. "I hate you fuckin' Irish." It's an exchange they've obviously worked out beforehand, but one that makes my Left-Liberal sensibilities cringe. Nevertheless, whatever you think of Brendan's strategies, they work.

Brendan tells the story about how he was once asked "what's the worst thing about boxing?" And he replied "it's a dirty rotten horrible prostituting vindictive game". So what's he doing in it? And he says: "It's no different to life in that respect."

"I've been no holy-Joe or do-gooder," he adds now. "It's like I used to say to Naz, 'if you drink alcohol, smoke, gamble, run around with more than one woman, or do drugs, your life will finish in a mess' . . . but the problem is, human nature hasn't changed in a thousand, two thousand years. And it never will. Envy, jealousy, greed, sloth—I keep getting these wrong—gluttony, anger and lust, the seven deadly sins. They will never change. But men-having-sex-with-men? Women-having-sex-with-women? Men-having-sex-with-animals! Women-having-sex-with-animals! I mean . . .?" You go to Amsterdam and you see videos of women having sex with animals.

He shakes his head in bewildered disbelief.

"Now Sodom & Gomorrah are in the Bible. And whether you believe that it happened or you don't believe it happened, it's there in the Bible, isn't it . . .?"

A grim and terrible warning to us all, indeed. So what does Brendan make of women boxers? "Jane Couch is serious about what she does," he concedes. But is that enough? He deliberately refused to applaud her historic victory against Germany's Simona Lukic in the first-ever woman's professional boxing match staged in Britain. His applause would be dishonest. He did have a woman boxer here at St Thomas though. And she was good. But she drifted away. It can't be easy for a woman to broach this sweaty, jousting, intimidatingly healthy domain of relentlessly aggressive maleness.

Brendan Ingle shrugs.

"You don't have to be a brainbox to do what I do. I'm not good at anything else. But coming in here training—it's there! If you've got plenty of patience, and plenty of understanding of human nature, then hopefully it'll work. You get one champion, you're doing well. You get two champions, you're doing great. But if you keep turning out champions for 30 years, you must be doing something right. And the last 40 years has been a marvellous roller-coaster ride, I would not change it. Because otherwise I wouldn't be the person I am and I wouldn't have learned how to live."

Finally, before leaving, I ask "do you have any objection to my using your quotes about Naseem?" And he says "why not. It's the truth."

He pronounces it the "troot". But his meaning is obvious.

IMPROVE YOUR BODY THROUGH BOXING.
DO NOT ABUSE IT THROUGH DRINK AND DRUGS ! (Poster in BRENDAN INGLE's gym)

The Paddy And The Prince: The Making Of Naseem Hamed by Nick Pitt is published by Yellow Jersey Press, priced £16 sterling.