Paul Sykes: the hardest man in boxing
Tyson Fury has nothing on former British heavyweight - and serial criminal - Paul Sykes
Welcome back to Old Gold, our Sunday email spilling forgotten tales from the past.
This week we set up our tents outside HMP Walton and grilled the shell-shocked screws and inmates on one of Britain’s most notorious criminals.
It’s the hardest man in boxing, Paul Sykes…
BOXING
🥊 An expert in violence
Tyson Fury likes to think he’s boxing’s wildest hardman.
But The Gypsy King has nothing on former British heavyweight - and serial criminal - Paul Sykes.
Born in Wakefield in 1946, Sykes was introduced to boxing by his dad aged four, and by seven he was training three times a week, “getting bashed in the face Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday morning.”
Unsurprisingly, this did little for Paul’s tender brain cells, and he was soon up to no good on the streets of Wakey.
After his first arrest at 17, Sykes racked up 22 offences over the next two years, for robbery, violent assault and car-jacking.
But during a five year stint at HMP Walton, Paul convinced the wardens to let him pick up his childhood passion and join an amateur boxing club.
And for a while, it seems like Sykes was getting his life on track…
On a brief spell out of jail in 1973, he earned a lifesaving award as a lifeguard on Blackpool beach, and picked up work as a debt collector, where his speciality was the “threatenergram”.
On one occasion, he turned up at a bloke’s wedding to settle a job.
“I told him unless he came up with something here and now I was going to stick his head right through the wedding cake” Sykes explained. “He took his wife's engagement ring off and that just about covered the debt.”
This, unsurprisingly, led to a few more stints behind bars, but after another release in 1977, Paul successfully applied for a pro boxing license.
The authorities were soon regretting their decision.
In one fight he was disqualified for head-butting, and in another he knocked his opponent unconscious then, as he lay slumped over the ropes, continued relentlessly pummelling him until the referee dragged him off.
His unfortunate rival suffered a brain haemorrhage, and spent a month in hospital on a life support machine.
Nevertheless, in 1979 the boxing board allowed Sykes to challenge John Gardener for the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles at Wembley.
There was so much interest in the fight due to Paul’s criminal past, that he was invited to the States to spar with Muhammad Ali’s vanquisher Leon Spinks, and posed for photos with legendary promoter Don King.
But when it came to the title fight, Sykes was easily beaten. And it wasn’t long before he was back behind bars…
By 1990, he’d spent 21 of the previous 26 years locked up in 18 different prisons.
During one stint, he befriended famed criminal Charles Bronson, who included him on his A to Z of Britain’s hardest men.
“A lot of people never liked him, perhaps they even feared him but I respected the man", Bronson explained, before recalling an incident where Sykes killed the prison cat and “fashioned it into a Davey Crockett hat”.
But it wasn’t all bad. While behind bars, Sykes got himself a BA in Physical Sciences, and even won a prison literature award after publishing his memoirs.
After finally being released, Paul returned to his career as a cut-throat debt collector, and starred in a documentary, Paul Sykes: At Large.
In on memorable scene, he claimed he’d once swam across the Straits of Johor, a shark-infested stretch between Singapore and Malaysia.
“Sharks will have a look at me and think ‘mmm yeah’. But I know how to do them - you punch them right in the fucking earhole and they swim off.”
When he wasn’t in the slammer or picking fights with man-eating beasts, Sykes was usually down the boozer.
“I like being drunk” he explained, “I've never had any complaints”.
Wakefield Council might disagree… In 2000 he was given a two year ASBO and banned from the city centre after pissing on the street and shouting abuse while on the piss.
Paul sadly died in 2007, but you’ll be glad to hear he’s survived by two children.
They’re both serving life sentences for murder…
If you enjoyed this story you’ll love these:
Still want more? Check out the terrifying Halloween edition of The Upshot podcast: Halloween special: Serie A stalkers and rugby-playing cannibals
Reply