Born to Fight--The True Story of Richy 'Crazy Horse' Horsley (12 page)

Viv Graham was a hard man with a heart of gold. He took every fight with a pinch of salt. His size and boxing skills made him an excellent insurance policy against the thugs and drug dealers who polluted the pub and club scene. His promising boxing career had been cut short by a ‘frozen shoulder’. After Viv impressed the local under boss by beating up a big-time gangster, he was quickly catapulted to the next level – Newcastle City Centre. Some say he changed from a man who wanted to make pubs and clubs safer for everyone into a bully who struck fear into the very hearts of the very people whom he was supposed to protect. Some mobsters enlisted the help of a heavy to eliminate Viv in
a winner takes all bare-knuckle fight, but the plan failed when Viv didn’t show after being warned of an ambush.

It wasn’t long before I heard from the man. Someone pulled up as I was working the door of a club and said, ‘I’ve had Viv Graham on the phone asking me about you, he wanted to know what happened with Philly.’

I asked, ‘What did you tell him?’

He answered, ‘I told him the truth and also told him you were a nice bloke who wouldn’t take a liberty.’

Viv went on to say to my friend that he had a feeling the hippo wasn’t telling the truth and left it at that. One thing is for sure: if Viv did come looking for me, what a fight we would have had. It had all the makings of a classic. Sadly, Viv was shot dead outside the Queens Head pub on New Year’s Eve 1993. As he lay dying on the pavement, he asked his friend, Terry Scott, to lift him to his feet.

‘I can’t let them see me like this,’ Viv said.

It was a pleasure to have received respect from such a man.

I still had two broken hands from the hippo-man beating. After hearing that Viv wasn’t getting involved, I was beginning to think that the matter was closed, but then a couple of dykes I’d known for years came up to me in the club. One of them said, ‘I hear you’re fighting Davo again, aren’t you frightened?’ I spat out, ‘Am I fuck, he’s the one who’s getting knocked out, not me.’ Well, it turned out that some blokes had approached
Davo about having me gunned down. Fair play to Davo though, as he said he didn’t want anything to do with it, and would sort me out on his terms, not on anybody else’s. After I found out about this meeting, I was very aware of potential traps. A geezer who I barely knew was torturing my ears for me to go to this pub one night for a lock-in. He must have thought I was born yesterday. I found out later that Davo and all my other enemies were in there, and this cheeky cunt tried to deliver me on a silver platter. My pal Mick Sorby saw him in a pub afterwards and knocked him cold with one punch. There was a stench in the air because the geezer had shit himself, and I mean literally shit himself. Come in, brown, you’re coming through!

Things were getting too hectic in town, and I needed a break from all the chew. Luckily I landed a job installing heavy electric cables in Port Glasgow. I went up, strangely enough, with a lad I had knocked out some years before, called Bernie. We became good friends. On the way there, the radio in the van was playing the Number One hit record ‘End of the Road’ by Boys II Men – they must have played it three times before we got there. We finished that job in seven days, and were then sent to a job at Wallsend in Newcastle. Overall, a very welcome break.

It didn’t take long, though, for the trouble to return. I received a phone call on the morning of bonfire night from – guess who? – Davo. He was ready to fight. I told him I’d been out all night, and asked him to call back
later, at teatime, which he duly did. He wanted to fight straight away, but I said he would have to wait until seven. We arranged to fight in a nearby car park. My mate Andy drove me over. Sure enough, on arriving, I spotted Davo, as well as a couple of his relatives dotted about to relay news of the fight back to people. I got out of the car and went over. We shook hands and he said, ‘I’ve got to fight you, Richy, it was a bit fast the last time.’ He was trained up for this and looked impressive in a white vest. I took my coat off and we squared up. We were stood there and he was waiting for me to make the first move. I threw a light feeler punch to test him out. He came under it like a ferret and grabbed me round the waist to take me to the floor. We landed on our sides, but I was stronger and got on top of him. I tried to smash his head off the floor but his neck muscles were too strong and he seethed, ‘You dirty bastard.’ I pulled my hands free and clubbed him with two heavy shots. My hands were bleeding, as my knuckles had little stones embedded in them from the gravel in the car park. I was firmly in charge. He said he’d had enough, but I wasn’t satisfied – I wanted to prove that I could finish him at his fittest, so I continued to wade into him twice more with my pounding, bloody fists. When it got really serious, I got up and started walking away. Then I heard him shout out to me, ‘Richy, Richy.’ I went back to look at him, laid there covered in blood. He couldn’t get up. He said,
‘Richy, you can’t leave me here, not like this!’ So I picked him up, hoisted him over my shoulder and took him to his car. I’m a fair man and I don’t take liberties – once a man is done, he’s done and that’s it. Although the fight ended in some sort of truce, I have never been able to have a lot of respect for Davo due to the way he couldn’t keep his trap shut about other matters. But let’s leave it at that.

The Davo aggro may have been put to bed, but it wasn’t long before I bumped into another old adversary, Big Bri. We were out celebrating Vul’s birthday one night when I spotted him in a pub. Buggery hell, he was with his woman and another couple. I kept it to myself and pretended I had never seen him. They finished their drinks and left. That was that, I thought. But as soon as I walked out on the street a few minutes later, BANG! The crafty bastard! Big Bri had caught me with a massive right hand. There was a blinding flash of light before my eyes, followed by a drum roll in my head. He hits me again, forcing me back against the window, before following up with another smartly aimed blow to my chin. If there was nothing behind me, I think I’d have gone down. While this was happening, my mates were stood in mortified shock. Then my mate Wally jumped in and pushed him back. Bri shouted, ‘Come on then, I’ll fight the fucking lot of ya!’ Then my other mate, Ryao, shouted, ‘Right then, let them.’

There were a few pubs close together with glass fronts
and everyone was at the windows eyeballing what was going on. We should have charged £5 a head! As I walked towards Big Bri, my legs were still like jelly and my mouth was cut and bleeding. We were in the main street that runs through the centre of town and all the cars had stopped because they couldn’t get past the gathering crowd. At first, we both missed with a few sharp bursts of wild punches. Then, BANG! I catch him with a full left hook and he goes down like a ferret down a hole after a rabbit. When that punch landed, I broke my hand. It simultaneously broke his jaw. As Big Bri went reeling backwards towards the ground, I saw his eyes rolling around; it looked pretty funny to be honest. His head bounced off the tarmac road. I dragged him off the road and got on top of him and let him have it. When I got off him, I spat the blood that was swamping my mouth into his face.

I then looked down at him. He really looked like he was dying … shit! The ambulance arrived in about a minute and they put an oxygen mask straight on him. I could see the life draining out of him. You see, this is the problem with street fighting – we are only flesh and blood at the end of the day. At hospital, he was very close to dying. I was, in truth, worried. Luckily, the big bastard pulled through. Would you believe that he wanted to press charges afterwards? But I had too many witnesses to say he’d started it and the CPS kicked it out. Years later, I bumped into him at a party. Everyone
thought it would kick off again. We both looked at each other, but then we smiled and shook hands. It’s all water under the bridge now and we have a mutual respect for each other.

Such incidents furthered my reputation on the streets. I came out of a nightclub in Middlesbrough one night and a lad came up to me and said, ‘I’ve seen you fight three times and you are fucking awesome, I’d just like to shake your hand.’ I shook his hand and he looked over the moon, then he went back to his girlfriend and they walked off. That’s always a nice exchange, but unfortunately there are plenty of twats in this world all too ready to take the piss. I was working a bar with Vul one night when a bunch of Middlesbrough lads came in. We tried to be friendly with them but they weren’t having any of it. The manager was beside himself with worry. We made some phone calls and got a posse of lads down. We turned the music off and I went over with the lads behind me. I said, ‘Right, clever cunts, it’s your choice. KICK OFF OR FUCK OFF.’ I repeated myself even louder: ‘KICK OFF OR FUCK OFF.’ Now that the odds were even, they didn’t fancy their chances, so we started taking their drinks away and they all got up and left. The way I see it, why act like a cunt if you aren’t prepared to fight like a man?

One night on the door, we got a call from upstairs when some trouble had broken out. I was the first one on the scene. One of our doormen, Frankie, was on top
of a lad on the dance floor, whilst about five of the lad’s mates were kicking the fuck out of him. I dropped the first one I came on like a sack of potatoes. Then I waded into his pals, giving them all a fucking hammering. Frankie afterwards said that they were booting him for about a minute, but the fucking DJ never put the call out, so we couldn’t get up there until someone ran down and told us. I had some nasty words for the DJ at the end of the night and he filled up with tears and packed in working there. He certainly learned a lesson that night.

Pubs and clubs were one thing, as you could always control the area, but raves were a different matter. I worked on the door at a rave venue in Stockton for four weeks. There were a lot of dodgy characters in there and I could feel something was going to happen so packed it in. I went back a week later, just as a customer. As we were stood in the queue, two bouncers popped their heads out the door and pointed at me before closing the door. I was only in there for one hour and thought I was in danger so I left with a friend. As we went out, a car full of strange-looking geezers pulled up. I never looked at them, but I knew they were staring at me and I thought I was going to take a bullet. We jumped in the motor and left. The car with the blokes in followed us for a few miles and then turned round and headed back. That was my finish with those paranoid places.

Not long after, Vul’s cousin Eddie died in a car crash. I was gutted. We attended the funeral, which was
packed. Later, I was in a boozer with Vul when Big John, who was 6ft 4in and weighed 18 stone, walked in along with his pals. Vul told me about Big John taking the piss in Eddie’s pub after he died; he wouldn’t pay for drinks and wanted a lock-in, he was properly trying it on. As they finished their drinks, I went and stood in front of the door. As Big John got near me, I struck him with a right hand that nearly took his head off. You’d think he had been shot in the head by a sniper. He was laid flat out and, as usual, an ambulance was called. As they carried him out, one of his mates came back in and said to me, ‘Do it to me, go on, fucking try it with me.’ I obliged and flattened him as well. At least Big John had someone to go to the hospital with in the ambulance.

I went back to work with Mick Sorby, who I always got on well with and respected. Whenever people came in a pub and we were on the door, they’d think twice about starting anything. I started to do a few light weights just to tone my body up. I was now weighing in at a respectable 18 stone. Mick and I did loads of jobs together. We’d go to drug dealers’ houses and slap them around or punch them up a bit, whatever was needed, and take the drug money off them. They were only scumbags anyway, so it made no difference to us or anyone else for that matter. We once met a dealer in a car park because we pretended we wanted to do business with him. He was driving around in a nice flash BMW and he was supposed to be a bobby’s toot – a
spy for the police. We took his car off him and told him to fuck off before he got hurt. The BMW was a ringer so the fella couldn’t go to the police. We drove around in it for a day and then thought we’d better get rid of it and sold it on for two grand. A nice little earner, as was beating people up for money. So and so wants to know if you’ll break so and so’s jaw for £500. Jobs like that were always coming my way. There were limits though. I would never go to anyone’s house when there were children present. No way!

As our reputations grew, we started to attract all sorts of characters. One geezer turned up in the town out of the blue, wanting to meet Mick and me. We met him in a pub and he started pulling bundles of money out, trying to impress us saying he was this and that. He was full of shit. The dickhead even said he was an expert knife thrower, very impressive. We took his money off him and told him to fuck off and to never try to get in touch with us again. We counted the bundles and it came to six grand. Lovely!

Another oddball was a lad called Stevie who worked the door for Mick. He was a proper Billy Liar – we used to call him ‘Stevie Tallstory’ or ‘Bang, Bang’. Almost every time you seen him, he’d say, ‘I done these two blokes earlier. You should have been there, I just went bang, bang and they were both out.’ These fights were just his imagination. He liked a drink and when he drank he had a wagging tongue and loose lips and liked
to be loud. His ex-wife was living with an old work mate of mine. I bumped into him one day and he told me that Stevie was badmouthing me. I went to Stevie’s flat but he wouldn’t open the door. He was pretending he wasn’t in but I knew he was because I could hear him through the letterbox. I shouted that I was going to remove his head from his body for badmouthing me and I’d have him within a couple of days. I didn’t know it, but he’d just been cashed up for a compensation claim. Soon enough I got a call from a middleman telling me that Stevie was very sorry. I was invited around the middleman’s house, where he handed me a nice wad of money and said, ‘Here’s two grand for your trouble.’ I said, ‘Tell him he’s OK, but to keep his big fat mouth shut in future.’ Another nice little earner, I’m sure you will agree.

Amid all the money making, I started going out with a mixed-race girl. Every week, I’d see her on the dance floor in the nightclub bopping away. I’d stare over and she’d smile at me. She was gorgeous with hair as black as a raven’s wing. I asked to take her home and we hit it off straight away. We fell in love. Her name was Linda and she had two kids, Ashleigh and Grant. I was as happy as a pig in shit. I asked her to marry me, and she accepted. But we wanted to do things very quietly, so only had eight people present at the wedding, and Mick Sorby, the Best Man. We went for a drink after and I phoned people up and told them I’d been married.
They were all shocked and I think they thought I was pulling their legs. They all said the same thing: ‘Why wasn’t I invited?’

Meanwhile, the fighting was as rife as ever. When you get a big reputation, it becomes hard to know what is going on: people start spreading lies, and you get associated with things that you had nothing to do with. Bri Cockerill was supposed to be telling people he wanted to fight me. I was getting a bit pissed off with the rumours. Everyone seemed to be talking about it. I phoned my pal from Boro called Ste Shannon and asked him what the word on the street was, and he confirmed the rumours.

‘OK then, tell him I’ll fight him. I’m scared of no fucker.’ This never came to anything and when I met Bri not long after, we became good mates and have been ever since. To make things even more complicated, the Big Irish guy who was imprisoned for those stabbings was let out. He acted as a go-between and organised a meeting in a pub. We sat down and got it all sorted out. Maori told me later that he had a Magnum tucked in his waistband, just in case. We then went to a few bars with Irish while he was on his home leave as a goodwill gesture. Now unbeknown to Big Irish, his wife had been seeing this big ginger lad on the sly, who so happened to be standing near us with his pal. I noticed they were getting clever with Irish. I saw Maori’s face and enquired, ‘What’s up?’

He said, ‘Irish is gonna stab these two. He’s got a blade under his coat.’

I said, ‘Mind this drink,’ and walked over. I went over to one, and BANG! He went down. Then I turned to the big ginger one. BANG! He went down straight away. He was in a bad way and was rushed into hospital. I didn’t realise how serious he was; he nearly died and had a blood transfusion. It’s ironic that I only intervened so that Irish wouldn’t carve them up, but in the end I nearly ended up killing the lad with my bare hands.

The confusion got worse on a particular night during a lock-in with Mick. There was banging on the door. It was the armed police draped in their bulletproof vests, wanting our names. We found out why a few days later. There had been a lad over the road waiting in the shadows with a gun, waiting for me to come out so he could kill me. Someone must have known what he was going to do and phoned the police. The cops went down and, sure enough, he was there with a shooter so they nabbed him. When he was in jail, he got his nose bitten off. So there is some justice in the world.