Born to Fight--The True Story of Richy 'Crazy Horse' Horsley (16 page)

Later that day, I got a phone call to say that the fight was off. The geezer had pulled out. I wasn’t given an explanation. I couldn’t believe it. All that training for nothing – it would be an understatement if I said I wasn’t too pleased. All I got was an embarrassing apology. At the time I was fuming but, thinking about it now, it was probably for the best.

After all, in the grand scheme of things this was just a minor issue. I realised this most strongly one morning in July 2001, when our Debbie’s fella came walking up to my door and told me that my sister Jackie was dead. It took the wind right out of my sails. I asked what happened and he replied, ‘She killed herself.’ I couldn’t get my head round that: Jacqueline wouldn’t kill herself, she had six children at home and they were her life – she doted on them. I said I was going straight round to see Debra but he said she was visiting family and wouldn’t
be back until two o’clock. When I did get round there I was in a complete daze. Debra was in the kitchen making a cup of tea and her eyes were red and bloodshot with crying. I was also choked up with red eyes. Debra started telling me about what had been going on.

She said Jackie had phoned her a few hours before she died. Jackie said that her oldest son Andrew, who she hadn’t seen for years, had turned up out of the blue a couple of weeks before. He was eating her out of house and home and wasn’t giving her a penny. She said to Debra that he was a stranger and was thinking about asking him to leave, but was worried what people would think. She had been married to Paul and then got divorced, but they were still together, although he wasn’t living with her. It turned out that she and Paul hadn’t been getting on and he was being very difficult. That afternoon, she went to a pub to see him and found him all over a woman. An argument erupted and she stormed off.

When she phoned Debra at 9.45pm, she told her what had been going on and after a few minutes said, ‘I’ll have to go because I’m going out.’ Debbie enquired, ‘This late?’ Jackie said, ‘I’ll phone you tomorrow,’ and finished the conversation. Those were the very last words they ever spoke. We don’t entirely know what happened afterwards. Paul and Andrew are the only ones who know what really happened; Andrew was having nightmares for weeks after.

Paul said Jackie went upstairs and they could hear her walking about. He said that she sat on the bedroom floor and had a cigarette. Then she wrapped the lead from the vacuum cleaner around her neck tightly, about nine times, and passed out through lack of oxygen to the brain. When he went upstairs, he struggled to get the door open as she was laid against it. He spotted the lead around her neck as soon as he got in. He said her eyes were vacant and he knew she was gone. The ambulance came and found a faint pulse and gave her the
electric-shock
treatment, but couldn’t bring her back. That was at 1.30am. At 2am, she was pronounced dead. She was only 38 years old.

Paul said there wasn’t a suicide note. If Jackie had planned to kill herself she would have definitely left a note. The six children were asleep in the other bedrooms. The post mortem said the cause of death was strangulation by ligature and at the inquest there was an open verdict. I went with Debbie to the hospital morgue to identify Jackie, and the marks on her neck were visible. We were shocked to see our sister like that. Deb and I did some running around sorting the funeral out. The day before the funeral, I had one hour alone with her and was talking to her and crying my eyes out. She looked beautiful, just like sleeping beauty. The morning of the funeral, I had another hour alone with her. I wanted to say goodbye to my sister in private, as it was very personal to me.

There is a turquoise stone that is sacred to the American Indian and I put one in her sleeve and kissed her. The funeral was very emotional and I still haven’t got over her death. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. She smiles at me every day from a picture I have of her on my wall. Westlife were her favourite band and we played two of their records at her funeral. I have a lock of her hair, which I value as my most prized possession. It can never be replaced. I still have a little soft spot for her daughter Stacey, as I looked after her for a short time when she was a baby. Paul is looking after all the children now with the help of his family. It is all very sad.

Two months after Jackie passed away, my mam’s second husband Ken died. He’d been in a home for a few years and died of natural causes. Soon after, the adopted daughter of my mam’s friend, Annie Bobbin, died of kidney failure. Joanne was buried on Christmas Eve. She left an eight-year-old daughter, who is now being brought up by her grandparents. There was another friend of mine who died around the same time, who choked on her vomit. She was the same age as Joanne, both only 25 years old. You can be talking to someone one minute and they’ll be gone the next. Life is so short; you have to make the most of it while you can because we are not here on this earth very long. Needless to say, all this anguish put my own problems firmly into perspective.

As I started losing family and friends, I was moved to try and find out more about my own ancestry. I heard of a good medium called Peter Crawford who lived in a town not too far from me. I had a private sitting with him and what he told me was unreal. He was spot-on with everything and everyone. I got messages from my dad, Granny Horsley, my sister Jackie and my pal H. He said Gran was with her sister Margaret, who had died when only a child. He also told me he could see
horse-drawn
gypsy trailers in a field and horses grazing and gypsy men sat round a campfire talking. He said if I checked it out I would find that I had gypsy blood in me and that these spirits were my family from generations ago. This corresponded with a similar message I have already told you that I had years before. When I told my sister Debra, she said that she thought there was a gypsy link somewhere. She was sure she’d heard something like that when she was a child but couldn’t be sure.

A few days later, she phoned me and said, ‘I’ve just been talking to my mother on the phone and I asked her if there was any gypsy blood in the family.’ She had said that her mother – my biological grandmother – was a pure-bred Romany gypsy who had been brought up in a children’s orphanage in Leeds; her name was Ellen Hopkins. Debra went on, ‘She doesn’t know how old she was when she went in or what happened to her parents. We don’t know if her name was already Hopkins or whether the orphanage gave her it. She died
some years ago.’ That was a bit of a shock to me, but there you have it – I do have gypsy blood in me.

I have a good friend called Louis Welch, who is a Romany gypsy. The late Bartley Gorman, in his autobiography
King Of The Gypsies
, rated Louis as one of the best bare-knuckle fighters in the British Isles. One day, when he was at my house, I told Louis the story of my gypsy blood and he was a little surprised and then said, ‘We could be related.’ Then he told me something which really surprised me. He said that he was born in Hartlepool, at Cameron Hospital. I was shocked, especially as I was born in the same hospital. We came into this world on the same spot, probably only feet apart.

I had certainly had enough fights to qualify as a
true-blood
gypsy. But when the medium repeated that I was very lucky to have not killed someone, I decided never to fight on the streets again. If those messages aren’t warnings for me to stop then I don’t know what is. Only a matter of a few years ago, a lad was killed in our town with one punch. You don’t only ruin your life, but you ruin your family’s life, and that of the victim and the victim’s family. It’s not worth it.

My own health was taking a bit of a bashing even without the fighting. I developed a hernia just above my belly button, known as an umbilical hernia. It develops when the intestine pushes through the stomach wall. I don’t know how I got it but it kept
getting bigger and eventually looked like a golf ball. I was referred to the hospital and was told straight away that it needed surgery. I wanted to lose a little bit of weight before I went in, so I shed a stone. I went in hospital on the Sunday, had the operation on the Monday and was released by Tuesday teatime. They had cut me open, and pushed the intestine back in before putting a mesh gauze there so it couldn’t push back through. I had to take it easy until it healed up, but I’m OK now. I’ve taken a few good shots in the gym in my belly and had the medicine ball smacked off it loads of times and it’s fine.

As my interest in fighting began to wane, I started to get into birds – no, not the lasses, but birds of prey. I went to a bird-of-prey centre with Tommy and George and had a good look round. We started talking to the blokes who ran the place; they would kindly give advice and answer questions. There was a flying display on at the time, and the birds would swoop down and fly just above your head and put the shits up you. One of the blokes gave me the glove to put on and part of a baby chick as food, which I placed on one of my gloved fingers. He gave a signal and this big buzzard came flying out of the trees and swooped down on to my fist and took the chick. The power of those birds is unreal. We were there about three hours and had a great time. What was significant about it was as soon as I got home, I put the TV on and all the stations were live to America
because the World Trade Centre was on fire after a hijacked plane had crashed into one of the towers. Then I watched as the second plane went into the other tower. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and the rest is history. I’ll never forget what I was doing on September 11.

I had an aviary built, and filled it with all sorts of birds, Canaries, Cutthroats, Silver Bills, Strawberry Finches, and so on. They bred like wildfire. I never sold any of the young, preferring to give them away for free. I bred for pleasure, not profit. I did that for over two years and enjoyed it, but then I decided to have a break and gave the birds to my friend who has a pet shop.

I cleaned out the aviary and it was stood empty for about six months. One day Tommy said, ‘You know what would look well in that aviary?’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘An owl,’ he replied.

I’d never given a thought to owning an owl before but he planted the seed and it seemed like a good idea. I bought a book and a video on owls before so I could understand them a bit more. I had a look in the local admag and found an ad for a young eight-month-old Barn Owl for sale. I eagerly phoned up; it hadn’t been sold. It was at a place called Seaton Delaval, which was about fifty miles up the North East coastline. I had been there about 12 years before to see a Scottish medium called Mary Duffy give an evening of clairvoyance to a packed
hall. When we arrived at the house the guy who opened the door looked like a New Age traveller. Out the back, he had aviaries with birds of prey in. He knew what he was talking about and he handled the birds with majestic ease. He showed us the owl, which was a beauty. He was feeding him on baby chicks and he gave me some to take home. I also used to give him mice once a week as well for a change. I would watch him at night to see his actions because my aviary was situated in an open space and surrounded by trees and birds – it was like being in the wild for him.

I started a new trend because not much later Tommy bought a pair of European Eagle Owls. George, who I call Bald Eagle, bought a pair of Turk Owls. Mick Burns bought a pair of African Spotted Eagle Owls and Maori bought a pair of Snowy Owls. I called my owl Barney because he was a Barn Owl. I had him for a year. When the mating season started, he was calling all night for a mate – I couldn’t get to sleep so I decided that he had to go, but I wanted a good home for him, so gave him to a friend of Mick Burns called Gerry. He was a great bloke and a proper naturalist and a little eccentric. He keeps Barney in a lovely aviary and he’s well looked after.

Gerry had had a few run-ins with the law when he was a young man, and had been known by the nickname ‘Screw’ Lawson, as he chinned a few coppers in his time. But with age he had mellowed out, and become an authority on wildlife in general. He is 66 now and still
active with his dogs. He moved to the Shires and lived in an isolated cottage on his own for 12 years, hunting and studying wildlife while working in the kitchens at the Military College, in Wiltshire. He returned to the North East a few years ago and settled in Hartlepool for about 18 months before moving up to Shotton.

After hearing of my sister’s tragic death, the infamous prisoner Charles Bronson sent me a very nice letter of condolence. We exchanged a few letters after that, and he even wrote a tribute to me for inclusion in this book. Not long after, I was invited as a guest to one of his art shows being held on his behalf somewhere in Yorkshire. To cut a long story short, I never turned up and about a week later I received a nasty letter from Bronson demanding a reason for my non-show. A line from the letter reads: ‘Is that your fucking game, disrespecting people?’ Bronson then contacted a friend of mine called Terry in London, requesting a fight with me as soon as he got released from prison on parole. In spite of my temporary retirement from fighting, you have to admit it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. But will Bronson ever
be released? I’ve got my fingers crossed in hope that the fight does happen; it’ll be a nice littler earner and I’m certain I’ll be victorious. So watch this space.

In the meantime, Tony suggested I take a few unlicensed fights to get fit and shake off the ring rust. This was a timely suggestion as I had been out of the ring for 14 years – my last amateur fight was way back in 1989. I was well out of shape and weighing in at a gigantic twenty stone. Over the next couple of weeks, I gave it some serious thought. I was almost 39. Was I too old for it? I knew that my best fighting days were behind me, but this was probably my last shot at the big time. I also knew that in years to come I’d be sitting by the fire with my pipe and slippers thinking about the opportunity that I had let slip through my fingers. The answer had to be: Yes, bring it on!

Now I had to go on a diet as well as start training. I needed the right fuel in my body, as the slightest disadvantage can be the difference between glory and defeat. My diet routine was the following: Breakfast: bowl of Cornflakes or Rice Krispies, with only a sweetener – no sugar allowed. Sometimes I’d also have 4 soft-boiled eggs. Mid-morning: a banana and an apple. Lunch: baked potato with tuna or beans. Mid-afternoon: two pieces of fruit. Dinner: steak or chicken or fish or pasta, with a choice of three vegetables. Evening meal: one piece of fruit, and a tea or coffee with sweeteners. I could drink as much fruit juice and water as I liked. I
stuck to the diet and never once wavered – the stakes were too fucking high. And it worked: on 14 May 2004, I had weighed 20st 2lb, but on the day of the fight eight weeks later I weighed 18st dead – a loss of 30lb!

The diet was only one aspect of the training, as of course I had to put some serious work in, in the gym. After all, I was going to be fighting in front of 2,000 people so I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. I also kept a diary of my training so I could look back at it and know exactly what I’d done right or wrong. When you do this, you know whether or not you’ve put the work in. If you don’t put the work in, you are only fooling yourself because if you cut corners there is always a price to pay. I’ll put my training diary in so you can see how I built my fitness up.

As you can see, I worked hard for this fight and made sacrifices. Once or twice, as I was going home from a
session in the gym, I felt like saying, Fuck it, this is too hard, but I hung in there and stayed with it. I had some excellent sparring sessions with ‘Big Shanny’. He is 6ft 2in tall and weighs in at 16 stone, is as fit as a lop and often goes out on 10-mile runs. He’s a really good heavyweight boxer and as strong as a bull. He put me through it in sparring and got me prepared. He brought me on no end and I can’t thank him enough. As well as Big Shanny, I would like to thank Craig and Mark Denton for some first-class sparring. Mark is No 2 Amateur Middleweight in England and has a tattoo on his back that says, ‘Pain is temporary, pride is forever.’ Also, thanks to John Dawson for giving me some excellent conditioning work.

I did all the homework on my opponent Tony ‘Rock Hard’ Louis. He had had around forty fights and then retired for about six years, making a comeback only a few years ago in the unlicensed ring, having fifteen more fights. He was certainly no mug. I got hold of a couple of his fights on video so I could have a good look at him. He was a very clever fighter with a good defence, and hardly ever got caught by punches to the head. Going for his head and hitting nothing but gloves and arms will tire you out very quickly, so I devised a plan to attack the body to force his arms down. I accordingly worked on my body shots in training.

I went to London with John, one of my trainers. We met up with my other man, Biff, on the day of the fight.
We stayed with old friends, Steve and Sofia, who made us very welcome. Steve was a former Hartlepool lad who I’d known since the 1970s. We stayed for three days in all. It was a great place to find peace and just relax and get focused about the job ahead. But as the fight time drew nearer, the butterflies inevitably got stronger. All the training and homework was done; it was all down to me now to deliver and produce the goods on the day itself.

We went to the Hammersmith Palais by taxi. All the way there, John and Biff were talking to me from the back seat, psyching me up. The place was packed out when we arrived. The bouncers on the door were huge and I was recognised straight away because my picture was on all the posters for the show. I was to be fighting the last bout of the night – the top of the bill. Inside the venue, there were well-known celebrities from TV and film: top professional boxers, gypsy fighters, glamour models, well-known football hooligans, bare-knuckle fighters, underworld gangsters and even one of the great train robbers, Bruce Reynolds, was at the ringside. They had all come to see this guy, Crazy Horse! When we got into the dressing room, it was like a blast furnace. There was no air to breathe and everyone was sweating cobs. As all the celebrities were in the ring auctioning things, I slipped outside and grabbed a bit of fresh air. It was beautiful as it cooled me down and allowed me to look up to the sky and get some focus. I
went back in after 15 minutes, and was gloved up. Then the music started blaring and I knew my opponent was on his way to the ring.

Halfway through the record, the music stopped and the MC announced a five-minute delay. It didn’t take a genius to work out they were playing the waiting game to unnerve me. I paced up and down in the waiting area for five minutes like a caged tiger, preparing myself mentally. Then the MC announced, ‘Tony “Rock Hard” Louis,’ and his music came on. This time I knew it was for real.

The music eventually faded. Now it was my turn to be introduced. The MC’s voice boomed out and announced that I was the opponent ‘from Hartlepool’. A big cheer went up and the roof nearly came off with the noise from all my supporters. I made my way through the crowd to the booming and deafening beat of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’. I was getting slaps on the back as I went through the crowd. People were screaming my name. But I was too focused to take any notice. When I eventually climbed into the ring I knew that this would be my night. Nothing would stop me from claiming the winner’s trophy. I was willing myself to win so much so that I didn’t even hear the MC announce my opponent. The first time I heard anything was when he reannounced my name, introducing me as ‘the
street-fighting
champion himself’.

Now I was confident, but don’t get me wrong: I
respected my high-profile opponent, as I never underestimate anybody. It especially takes a special breed of man to climb through those ropes and step into the ring in front of a crowd of people all baying for blood. Nothing has changed since the days of the Romans. It was proper gladiatorial stuff.

The referee called us to the centre of the ring. I stood face to face with my opponent for the first time. I hardly heard a word the ref said as I fixed my gaze upon Tony ‘Rock Hard’ Louis. We touched gloves, a sporting gesture, and then went back to our corners. Time for war. The bell sounded.

I went straight for him and slammed in a hard right to the body, but he covered up nicely. He was very fast for a 17-stone fighter, so I cut the ring size down, as I didn’t want to waste essential energy chasing him. I gradually walked him down. I started slamming lefts and rights into his body to bring his hands down, just as planned. I added a powerful right jab for good measure.

He was throwing jabs back, but I was so
single-minded
that I brushed them aside like confetti and walked through them. Then he loaded up with a big right which caught me flush on the nose: BANG! The sweat sprayed from my head. I wasn’t hurt, but I was narked with myself for getting caught. Luckily though it only made me more focused to end the fight.

I exploded into action. I bullied him into his corner. A right hook to the body, but he covered well. Another
mighty hook to the body, but still his hands didn’t drop. I changed tack, and threw a feigned punch, a right uppercut, then switched to the left and whipped in an atomic iron left hook into his ribs. CRACK! He went down, unable to hide the feeling of agony on his face. The pain was too much for him. He spat out his gum shield, and tried to catch his breath. I had robbed him of his wind.

The referee started counting. When he reached five, Tony ‘Rock Hard’ Louis, lying on the canvas on his back, shook his head to say he wasn’t getting back up. When the ref said ‘Ten’, my supporters went wild. The fight had lasted a total of one minute and thirty seconds, yet it had felt like an eternity.

It would be a massive understatement to say I got a great feeling from the victory. I had done the business in the capital, in front of a large crowd. As I left the ring to head back to the dressing room, I was literally mobbed, with well-wishers patting me on the back. People who had come to support me were overcome with emotion. Everyone wanted to hug me and have photos taken with me – I felt more like a pop star than a fighter. It was certainly something else. Afterwards, my opponent came up to me and said that the left hook I landed to his body was the hardest body shot he’d ever been hit by.

When I arrived home the next day, everyone was still buzzing. I didn’t know it, but on the night of the fight there were about eight people at my mam’s having a
drink and waiting for a phone call about the result. Our Joanne’s husband had given them a running commentary over the phone. When the fight was over, some of them were dancing and singing in the front garden, shedding tears of joy. The neighbours must have thought they were mad. But what is more, I know my dad, Tommy, was looking down and smiling, as proud as punch of his boy.