Looking Back At British Heavyweight Paul Sykes (1946-2007)

By Donald “Braveheart” Stewart

Not for the first time in my life I am indebted to Mr Steve Bunce. Bunce has been, for me, the English voice of boxing for quite some time now. I missed him in BBC radio when he had a tremendous double act with Ron Bodey, doyen of all thing amateur in English boxing – the Bodeyman – the man so full of riches, they paid him nothing – who brought to my, and the British boxing public’s attention deep in the early part of 2010 or 2011 a very special guy by the name of Anthony Joshua. This was way before anyone else was saying his name out loud.
Now that Bunce is back on our TV screens – with Box Nation – and in our ears on BBC radio with Mike Costello, we have the royalty of royalties parading their enthusiasm for us all to see and hear.

It is not from his broadcasting though that I have taken my assignment for this week. It is from his scribblings and his excellent book, Bunce’s Big Fat Short History of British Boxing. This is a must read for anyone interested in the last 5 decades of British pugilism. Running from 1970 to 2016 there is more than enough in it to surprise, delight and leave you gasping for air.

It is Bunce’s enthusiasm which makes him the King of UK Boxing’s media. He cares, he shares and he despairs of nothing in a ring. His knowledge is encyclopaedic and were it not for the master of the sporting media, and my fellow Ayrshire man, Hugh McIlvanney, Bunce would be my favourite journalist in the field of the sweet science.

So where did Mr Bunce take me this week in his tall tales and sweet recollections…

Let me take you with me, back to the late 1970’s. In Britain that was the point where a certain Mrs Thatcher was about to take power and destroy our communities. It was a period of time when socialism was on the decline and punk was on the up. We saw things shaken all around us and we could not depend upon the Beatles to show us where it hippy shaked. Politically and culturally deep questions we re being asked…

The boxers we admired were hard men. They were mean men. They were hardened and meant business. But then came a harder man than the rest, an impact here but nowhere else – Paul Sykes, 6-3-1, 4 KO’s.

Heavyweight boxer, raconteur, published author, weight lifter, debt collector, villain and notorious convict.

He was the cliché that boxing wanted to avoid but we cannot deny we get drawn to their sides.

His birth came just after the sound of the Nazi menace had been extinguished and though he was to manage to live long enough to see the dawn of the twenty-first century he was never part of its new agenda and certainly no supporter of its new found freedoms. In Bunce’s words, he was old school. In fact, he may well have been ancient school.

A Yorkshire man by birth and inclination, his upbringing was a hard one where he fought as a boxer and drank as a working class man of little means.
The thing was, he was also a decent enough fighter.

In an age where there was little by way of social media, he became known to the public thanks to a documentary into prison life in 1976 where he was prominently featured. He boasted then that he would win the British heavyweight title, taking it off Joe Bugner.

It was a boast that was nearly to come to pass, though Joe was never to face him.

Between 1978 and 1980 he managed to stop with his misbehaving long enough to have a short 10 fight professional career. He was big and a decent size for a heavyweight, but he could move and that made him dangerous.

His ruthless streak appeared in a ring in his 6th fight when he knocked out American David Wilson but kept hitting him on the ropes until the referee managed to intervene and stop it. Wilson ended up on a life support machine and in hospital for a month.

The pinnacle of those 10 fights came in June 1979 when he was able to climb in against the legendary British heavyweight John L Gardner, 35-4, 29 KO’s, for the British and Commonwealth titles. If truth be told, Sykes, at 33, and with very little experience should not have been in that ring. By the 6th it was still, according to some, evenly matched but then the fitness of the athlete became too much for the shortcomings of the challenger and in the 6th Gardner stopped him.

Sykes got that fight in his 9th professional fight and still holds the record for having the fewest professional fights before fighting for the British title; Anthony Joshua took 10 fights to win it.
The trouble with Sykes though, was trouble.

He had been spotted as having immense potential. The problem became that it never got out of being potential; trouble always intervened. Everyone saw that he could ah been a contender. The only time he proved he was a contender was when it looked like he was going to have to contend with prison.

His debut in the professional ring actually came after a spell inside but by 1980 he had blown it. He had one more fight, after his loss to Gardiner, in Lagos against a journeyman and he was knocked out in the first round.

Following his boxing retirement, he was back inside, still trying to be the macho man. Whilst inside at one time he actually held a British amateur weightlifting record.

He was however, more than a handful.

By 1990 it was reckoned that he had spent 21 of his previous 26 years on the planet in no fewer than 18 prisons.

Aside from the weights though, he also lifted books and a pen.

His degree in Physical Sciences came from the Open University and his memoir, Sweet Agony followed; which won a Koestler Award in 1988.

The problem was that no activity could soothe the need for alcohol. He got out of prison and was unable to cope with life outside those prison walls. By the time he died in 2007, he was sleeping rough, glory days beyond a distant memory and his body showing more signs of neglect than athletic endeavor. He was not punch drunk; the punches did not connect with the description.

His mouth had got him noticed, his mouth had got him that big fight, but his mouth was the vessel that kept opening to be filled with the liquor not of comfort but destruction.
His tale, ironically, is sobering.

But for a character, the likes of which we see in fits and starts throughout this sport, he is as worthy of a chapter than a footnote of the stories that Bunce tells as anyone and we are all the richer for hearing it. He has not glorified Sykes, nor have I sought to, but by remembering him, we contextualize the better and the best in the sport. For that I was delighted to read, to investigate and to bring to you the unique British and Commonwealth heavyweight former contender, Mr John Sykes; though he is just not the type of guy you want your daughter to bring home.

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