Wild Thing (21 page)

Shortly after I had been stabbed, Margaret announced that she had fallen pregnant. We decided that, rather than have a child born out of wedlock, we would do what was considered to be the decent thing and marry. We exchanged vows at East Ham Registry office and became Mr and Mrs Martindale. For some time Margaret had been asking me to give up working on the doors. Now that we were man and wife with a baby on the way, the pressure to get a proper job increased tenfold. I knew that working the doors was riddled with risk, but I was being paid £250 per night when most men were not earning that in a week in their ‘normal’ nine-to-five jobs. I have to admit, as well as the money, I was enjoying the different challenges that each night offered. I told Margaret that I would consider giving up working on the doors, but deep down I knew it wasn’t going to happen just yet. I had other unfinished business that I wanted to resolve before settling down to what most consider to be a normal life.

I had never forgotten Roy Shaw and the fight that I longed for, but I had come to accept that it was unlikely ever to take place. While the slightest hope remained of it happening, though, I was prepared to pursue it. I went to a club called the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, Essex, one night. As I walked in, the door staff mentioned that Shaw was sitting at a table with his friends in the main room. ‘Oh, is he?’ I replied. ‘I had better go and say hello, or he will think I’m rude.’ A cabaret act were coming to the end of their performance as I approached Shaw’s table. I could see Joe Pyle laughing and big Ginger Ted sitting next to him. Shaw had his back to me. I walked around the table and stood directly in front of Shaw, who immediately looked up at me. ‘Do you mind? I can’t see the show,’ he said.

‘Hello, Roy,’ I replied. ‘Are you ready for me yet? Are you going to fight me or are you going to keep running away from me?’ Shaw jumped to his feet and was immediately restrained by his friends. I laughed at him, hoping I could taunt him into fighting me. ‘Let him go. Let him go,’ I said. ‘Let’s have it now.’

Ginger Ted, a man I respect, said, ‘Come on now, Lew. Not here. We are on a night out. You’ve had your fun. Turn it in.’

Shaw was still struggling, but I knew he wasn’t trying hard enough to break free. ‘Any time you want it, Shaw, you know where to find me,’ I said before walking away.

Shortly after this incident Shaw’s manager Joe Carrington contacted Peter Koster and arranged for us all to meet at the William the Conqueror pub in Manor Park. When we arrived, Carrington was present, but Shaw was absent. ‘Do you still want to fight Roy?’ Carrington asked when we all sat down.

‘He knows I do,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been asking him for the last five years.’

Carrington said that the fight could definitely go ahead, but there was a condition: ‘Roy’s getting fed up of you insulting him in public. He wants this to happen sooner rather than later. You fight in six weeks or you don’t fight at all.’

I nearly fell off my stool laughing. ‘Six weeks to prepare for a fight? Are you mad?’ I asked. ‘Any decent fighter needs at least four to six months to get fit for a fight. I have an umbilical hernia from working out when I shouldn’t have been, I am overweight, out of shape and recovering from being stabbed.’

‘We know all that,’ Carrington replied, ‘but that’s our final offer: six weeks or nothing.’

My heart ruled my head that day. I should have said no, got box fit and challenged him again, but there had been so many challenges, so many disappointments, that I stuck my hand out and said, ‘Fuck it. You’re on.’

I was asked to go to an unlicensed fight that was being staged at a nightclub in Ilford to make the challenge in public. When I arrived, I joined Peter Koster and several other friends at the bar. Peter told me that Shaw was ringside. He had been given the job of operating the bell to signal the beginning and end of each round. ‘I have spoken to Carrington,’ Peter said. ‘You will be called into the ring after the final bout to challenge Shaw.’

At the end of the evening the MC called me into the ring. The crowd, excited by the prospect of violence, were stamping their feet and cheering. As the MC announced the now all-too-familiar forthcoming contest between Lew ‘Wild Thing’ Yates and Roy ‘Pretty Boy’ Shaw, I looked over at Shaw and saw that he was staring at me. I really wanted to fight him there and then. ‘Get up here now!’ I shouted. ‘Let’s fucking do it now!’ The crowd, who couldn’t hear my words but knew I was gesticulating, goading Shaw to fight me, began to roar encouragement. Shaw remained out of the ring, gazing blankly through me.

Joe Carrington came over to me and asked me to calm down. ‘For fuck’s sake, Lew,’ he said. ‘Take it easy.’

‘He’s never going to fucking fight me, is he?’ I shouted. ‘Get him up here now!’

Carrington’s head came into contact with mine. I don’t know if he had intended to do it or not, but I pushed him away. ‘It’s only gamesmanship, Lew,’ Carrington said. ‘Don’t be like that. Behave yourself.’ The ring, to me, has always been a place where two men fight, not act. It sounded as if I was expected to take part in some sort of staged farce rather than a blood-and-guts boxing contest. As Carrington stepped towards me, I head-butted him in the face and sent him flying across the ring into the ropes.

Ginger Ted put his arms around me in an effort to stop any further violence. ‘Calm down, Lew,’ Ted kept saying. ‘Just leave it.’

Two men outside the ring grabbed my leg and tried pulling me to the canvas. I bent down and attempted to punch one of the men, and Ted ended up hanging almost upside down on my back. Shaw jumped into the ring; at last he had come to fight me. I stood up. By now the ring was crowded with people. ‘Come on then, Shaw!’ I shouted. ‘Let’s do it here and now!’ Shaw ignored me and went to the aid of his manager, who was clutching his mouth. There was no point in provoking Shaw further; he was clearly not interested in having it with me.

Eventually I was ushered out of the ring by Peter and others. As I was climbing out, an extremely overweight lady began shouting, ‘You bully! You bloody bully! Who do you think you are?’ I didn’t reply.

Carrington and Shaw came to the ropes and looked down at me. I turned and called out, ‘Come down here now. I will fight you both.’ The pair just stood motionless, staring at me. They were not going to come. I walked over to the bar. I was shaking with temper, and adrenalin was surging through my veins. Lenny McLean was standing next to a cigarette machine, drinking a glass of lemonade. ‘Let me buy you a pint, Lew,’ he said. ‘I loved that.’

My anger instantly subsided, and we both started laughing. I spoke to Lenny for a few minutes, and then Peter Koster joined us. ‘It’s going to go off in here,’ he said. ‘Shaw’s mob have got the hump over your little outburst. We had better make ourselves scarce.’

Lenny looked at me, trying to gauge a reaction. I looked back at him and laughed. ‘Fuck it, Peter,’ I said. ‘We are staying for a drink.’

Nothing did happen that night, but I knew I had given Shaw’s people the needle. They were never going to forgive me for embarrassing them in public, and they were going to ensure that I was made to pay one way or another. I had been down this road so many times with Shaw that I still wasn’t convinced the fight was ever going to happen.

All the talk of fighting, hearing the crowd cheer when I was in the ring, albeit to challenge Shaw, made me want to box again. I wasn’t fit enough to do so, but I thought that if I sharpened myself up against mediocre opponents and spent more time in the gym, I definitely had a few good fights left in me.

Eddie Richardson, the infamous south-London gangster, had recently got involved in the unlicensed fight game. Eddie was managing a doorman from Eltham named Harry Starbuck. In his autobiography
The Last Word
Eddie concedes that most unlicensed fights were decided long before the fighters had even entered the ring. There was simply too much of a risk for ambitious gangsters to wager the money they had thieved and robbed on a guy who might have had a glass jaw. If a fighter had lost two or three consecutive fights, it was highly unlikely that anybody would pay his stake money or bet on him, so he would become a worthless nonentity. The name of the game for a fighter was either to take a substantial backhander from an opponent’s manager to lose, which would enhance the other fighter’s worth as a crowd puller, or to avoid any opponent that looked capable of beating him, which would result in prolonging his lucrative but short career. Clocking up a respectable tally of victories in the ring would mean the bookies would offer very good odds against the fighter being defeated. Therefore, when the fighter thought he was reaching the end of his career, he would ask family and friends to place substantial bets against him winning his next contest. At some stage during the fight he would allow himself to be caught with a sucker punch, hit the canvas and remain there, dreaming of all the money he had just earned while waiting for the count to ten to end. Many of these unlicensed boxers and promoters alike certainly knew what they were doing. The punters were being entertained and the cast were making a living.

Desperate to get back into the ring, I decided to go to one of Eddie Richardson’s unlicensed boxing nights at a place called Harvey’s in Charlton Road, south London. It was my intention to challenge Eddie’s man, Harry Starbuck. I considered Starbuck to be an average fighter at the end of his career – just the type of opponent I needed to sharpen myself up on. When I arrived, I noticed that Roy Shaw was in the audience. He was sitting at the end of an aisle with Joe Carrington. When Shaw saw me, he walked over, greeted me and asked me what I was doing there. ‘I have come here to challenge Starbuck,’ I replied.

Shaw looked puzzled. ‘I’m here for him too.’

‘If Starbuck accepts your challenge rather than mine, you ought to knock him out in the first minute of the fight or there’s something wrong with you,’ I said.

Shaw glared at me, shook his head and walked away. I watched the fight, which Starbuck won comfortably by knocking his opponent out. As the MC was announcing the result of the contest, I made my way down to the ring so that I could issue my challenge. I couldn’t see Shaw, so I assumed he had changed his mind about offering to fight Starbuck. To my surprise, the MC announced that Starbuck’s next opponent was going to be Roy Shaw. The fight had obviously been arranged between Eddie Richardson, Starbuck, Shaw and his camp without the customary public challenge having to be made. I decided to attend the fight so I could look for Shaw’s strengths and weaknesses in the ring. It was important that I knew everything about the man I was due to face.

The fight was held at Dartford Football Club in Kent and attracted a crowd of 4,000 people. As I had predicted, Starbuck didn’t even last a round. Shaw ended the mismatched encounter without even breaking into a sweat. After the bout the MC, a huge black guy, called me into the ring. Shaw was bouncing around, arms aloft, celebrating his victory as I reached the ropes. Although I had already challenged Shaw, I assumed that the opportunity to hype the fight in front of such a large crowd was one the promoters did not wish to miss. Before I managed to climb into the ring, though, the MC announced that I would be Shaw’s next opponent. I was, to say the least, surprised that I wasn’t allowed to publicly challenge Shaw, but not as surprised as I would be when I heard the absolute rubbish that he spouted afterwards. Describing me as a ‘stocky little geezer’, Shaw claimed I had in fact got in the ring and challenged him after the Starbuck fight.

‘He had challenged me and McLean about five times,’ Shaw said. ‘We told him to put the money up and we would have it with him. Yates borrowed the money off a geezer named Terry Hollingsworth [Shaw is wrong about this], who I had already fought and knocked out in the first round of a winner-takes-all bout. So I decided to take Hollingsworth’s money twice and shut Lew Yates up at the same time. That’s why I accepted the fight, just to shut him up.’

Something didn’t seem right to me about the way Shaw’s last few fights were being hyped. Nearly everything he and his camp were telling the media was false or grossly exaggerated. Only now, with the benefit of hindsight, can I deduce that the fights were well-orchestrated events that his management were ensuring he could not lose. Not only were they ensuring victory in the ring by any means, they were building Shaw up for their next money-spinner: lucrative media deals covering his boxing achievements.

In my opinion the men behind Shaw realised that his days of making money in the ring were over, so they decided to sell the myth they had created to make even more money. Footage of Shaw’s fights against Donny Adams, Paddy Mullins and Lenny McLean was turned into a short film titled
The Guv’nor
, produced by Bob Brown (who went on to form Purple Rose Films with actor Jeff Daniels). On the front cover of a glossy Australian martial-arts magazine Shaw was described as the king of the unlicensed ring and the Guv’nor. As I read the feature in the magazine, the claims and boasts regarding Shaw just got more and more ridiculous. As an amateur Shaw was said to have had over one hundred and fifty fights, one of which was at the schoolboy championships of Great Britain. Another of these amateur fights was said to have been in the ABA final. The most ridiculous claim was that Shaw had fought ten professional fights and was managed by Mickey Duff. I say ridiculous because the BBBC have no records of these fights, Mickey Duff strenuously denies ever managing Shaw and, by Shaw’s own admission, he wouldn’t have stood a chance against a professional fighter.

When the Shaw camp were asked to explain the flaws in the stories about his past that were given to promote his new media career, they were equally creative. Shaw claimed his boxing record was erased from the BBBC records because his decision to set up unlicensed boxing bouts with Joe Pyle had ‘pissed them off’. It’s a feeble explanation, but an explanation all the same. Unfortunately it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny as far as I am concerned because several other fighters such as Cliff Fields, Kevin Paddock and Johnny Waldron fought unlicensed fights and their professional boxing records remain intact with the BBBC.