The Alternative View of A BOXERS RECORD

In June 2002 Louis Vietch from Blackpool rang to tell me that one of my ex-professional boxers, Simon McDougal, had died in tragic circumstances. Simon was only thirty three years old and I had known him since he was eighteen. He turned professional under my management and had forty four contests before retiring in 1997.

At his funeral I was re-acquainted with his parents whom I had not seen since before Simon’s retirement and some other members of his family whom I had never met before. One was an Aunt who lived in the South of England and she told me that although she knew that Simon had been a boxer, she knew very little about his boxing career. She asked me if had any information about his record that she could keep as a reminder of him in the future.

Since I had trained and managed Simon throughout his career and had taken him to fight in venues all over the UK and France, Holland, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland and South America, I promised that I would not just write the cold facts of his record but also tell some of the stories that went on behind the scenes which paint an entirely different picture than a simple win draw or loss recording.

Although I had retired from the boxing business myself around the same time as Simon, after a life times association with the sport, I still had some of my record books and notes plus I had a number of VHS tapes of contests that boxers under my training, promotion and management had taken part in.

Over a period of a week or two I wrote the Simon McDougal chapter. I am fortunate that I have a good memory and many of my boxing experiences are so vividly etched into my brain I find it easy to recall them. I enjoyed reliving them, the high and the low points, the good, the bad and the ugly and by the time I had finished Simon’s story, I was pleased by the way it was received by his family and I hope it gave them a little consolation

Some other boxers whom I had managed also read it and asked if I could do the same for them and I promised that some day I would. I was surprised to find some of them had not kept records or memorabilia and I was glad I had not thrown out all the tapes and photographs

With lots of other things going on in my busy retirement, I did nothing more about it until recently when I suddenly thought that if I don’t make the effort now, maybe I never will, so over the next few weeks I have written the story of my association with the professional boxing game and the fighters whom I trained and managed.

To make it easier to understand by anyone who may not be familiar the boxing scene other than by what they read in the newspapers or see on the telly, I will start by giving a brief explanation as to what it is about.

For instance I refer to different training programmes whilst preparing individual boxers for contests and also the pre-fight preparations that we went through, so a description of what they entail may make more sense when I refer to them during my descriptions of there contests.

The order that the records are presented in is based on more or less on the date that each individual joined my professional boxing stable.

The make up of a successful professional boxer is complex. There were basic requirements, both Physical and psychological, which a boxer had to display before I would consider whether to train him. The obvious ones were a natural strength, co-ordination, boxing ability, talent and fast reflexes. These things can quickly be ascertained but it takes a little longer to establish some other essential characteristics. Courage, heart and determination, dedication, aggression, self discipline, a high threshold to pain, the emotions of fear and anger and the ability to manage them. If I could add to the above, an instinctive sense of timing and distance, then they had potential.

I was the sole judge of these requirements before signing up a prospective boxer and it would take a few sessions in the gym before I was satisfied that one had enough of them to make the grade. If I rejected them they could either walk away and try elsewhere or train on until I was convinced otherwise. Over the years I experienced both of these options.

I had a specific set of rules and disciplines that I worked too and I always made these clear to everyone. I explained right from the start what I would expect from each individual. I always invited feedback. When I asked them to do things in a certain way I would explain the reason why. There is a fundamental right way and wrong way of doing things in boxing as in anything else, but it is also remarkable how many great boxers throughout history have defied convention. However the unconventional cannot be taught.