Beyond Good and Evil

Glyn Rhodes

Description

Glyn Rhodes MBE has devoted his life to boxing. Since wandering into the world-famous St Thomas' gym in Sheffield as a directionless teenager, he has spent more than 40 years working inside and outside the ropes. Cognisant of how this hardest of sports both saved and brutalised him, he is now ready to tell his story. Rhodes' reflections offer fresh perspectives on the likes of Naseem Hamed, Johnny Nelson, Herol Graham, Clinton Woods, the British Boxing Board of Control, plus his complicated relationship with the iconic Brendan Ingle. He reveals how boxing lifted him from his childhood on Sheffield council estates to royal appointments and financial security. Yet ultimately, the sport that gave him so much nearly broke him, causing him to seek psychiatric help. As boxing continues to attract both support and condemnation, Rhodes' story shows how the sport's defenders and detractors suffer the same delusion. You cannot truly love or hate boxing, because it is such different things, at different times, to different people.

Sujets

• Xian de Boxing
• Boxing

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 17 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781801504089
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Glyn Rhodes with Mark Turley, 2022
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Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801503754
eBook ISBN 9781801504089
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface from co-author, Mark Turley
Introduction - the air was full of feathers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Photos
This book is dedicated to all the boxing teachers and coaches who spend hours in gyms up and down the country 24/7, teaching kids how to become better people. Most of these coaches never get any recognition for the work they do week after week, month after month, year after year. Never mind the big-money champions, they are the true heroes of our sport.
It s also dedicated to all those going through difficult times within themselves. My advice is to find someone to speak to.
This book is also dedicated to the memory of Scott Westgarth, RIP.
Acknowledgements
I NEED to thank my grandparents, Joe and Annie, for my start. My parents, Wendy and Freddie, for everything. Dave Davies, for encouraging me to promote my first amateur and professional show. I couldn t have done it without his encouragement. Herol Bomber Graham, who I met at 16 and enabled me to do so much as a trainer. Brian Anderson, who always stopped me killing someone in the gym. My childhood friend, Darren Wright, who helped me in the beginning. And Brendan Ingle, because who knows where I d be, had I not met him. On top of this, I d like to thank anybody else I ve forgotten who ever helped me. Also, the people who didn t help me, but made me the person I am today.
A big thank you to my kids because it seems that over the years, I ve spent more time with other people s kids than I did my own. That wasn t a conscious choice. It was just the way things turned out.
Glyn Rhodes, June 2022
Preface from co-author, Mark Turley
BOXING, EH?
I ve tried to focus on other subjects. The world is full of fascinating things to write about, or so I believe, but boxing always pulls me back. I leave it for a year or two, then it s there again. People often say I must love the sport to keep returning to it. That s too much of an easy line, though.
In many ways, I m deeply troubled by it. Its hullabaloo and nonsense, its greed, the casual violence which surrounds it, the damage it causes, which can be immediate and life-threatening, or slow, sinister and creeping - all of these things sit uneasily with me. Yet boxing also has a rawness which won t let me go.
I think it s because so much in the modern world feels incredibly artificial, but not what happens in a boxing ring. No matter what s been said beforehand, whatever you are gets exposed in there. Brave, afraid, reckless, self-doubting, heroic, ready, focused, old, tired - it doesn t matter,. Whatever is inside you will show.
It s all truth once the bell goes.
The other thing that keeps bouncing back at me is Sheffield. The steel city has a great fighting tradition and a fair shout to call itself Britain s boxing capital, but I m a Londoner and have no historical connection to South Yorkshire, at all. The wind s baltic and all the hills do my knees in. Despite that, I seem to keep ending up there.
I first met Glyn Rhodes MBE at a book launch in Sheffield in 2015. The boxer I was working with, Jerome Wilson, was not his fighter. In fact, Glyn had managed and trained his last opponent. Despite that, he was one of the first to arrive at the event and one of the last to leave. We spoke about his life and career. He mentioned then that he wanted to do a book one day. I was intrigued.
Over the coming years, as I came to Sheffield again and again, Glyn s name kept cropping up. Whether it was in connection to high-level professional boxing, title fights and trips abroad, or the junior classes he holds at his Sheffield Boxing Centre gym, he was always spoken of fondly. Not that he s an angel, of course. There aren t any of those in boxing, but he obviously exerted a positive influence over Sheffield and therefore British boxing for several decades.
When we spoke on the phone last year and he said he was ready to tell his story, I knew immediately it was one I should do. Glyn s experiences during 40-odd years in the fight game, from the positive, to the euphoric to the tragic, have the scope to encapsulate all there is about this most primal of sports.
So, I won t fall into the trap of saying this is my last boxing book. I ve said that before, but I believe this will be the one that sums the whole thing up.
Remember, it s all truth once the bell goes.
Ding, ding.
Introduction - the air was full of feathers
THE SHRINK sits neatly, legs crossed at the knee, very composed and self-contained, straight-backed on her chair. I imagine she does yoga in her spare time, eats vegan food, rides a bicycle. She looks at me softly, as if there s no pressure. Not what I was expecting, at all. You know the clich . Sterile, white rooms, stern faces and questions like, So, tell me about your mother.
She s not bad looking, this one - brown hair, hazel eyes, late thirties. I m not sure if that helps or not, but I knew, for sure, that I wanted a woman. A male psychiatrist would have been awkward. I m not opening myself up to a fella.
Her office, if that s the right word for it, looks like a lounge, in a big old manor house near the centre of town. There s a couple of easy chairs and a sofa. I sit down, then put my hat and keys on the coffee table beside me. She smiles nicely.
Good morning, she says.
Morning. I don t like the way my voice sounds, thin, a bit nervy. This err The words stick in my throat.
Go on, she encourages me.
This in t something I thought I d ever do.
I know, she says.
What she doesn t know is that I ve been struggling badly for a few years. Life s been like swimming through treacle. Boxing can get you like that. The doctor prescribed anti-depressants, but I couldn t bring myself to take them.
I had always dismissed this stuff. If someone in the gym said they were depressed, I would have told them to do some press-ups, go for a run, pull themselves together. It s different when it happens to you, though, isn t it?
But in my mind, I m not depressed. It s a deeper issue, one that curdled inside me until it turned rotten. One day, I confided in my right-hand man at the gym.
I reckon you should go and see a psychiatrist, he said.
What? I narrowed my eyes.
I ve been to see a psychiatrist, he went on, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. This was a guy who had chalked up 27 professional fights and led a right life outside the ring. A man s man. As an inmate, he had been involved in the Strangeways prison riots in 1990. He d been in the Foreign Legion, done all sorts, but here he was telling me how a shrink helped him get over his internalised trauma.
Thanks, I said. I ll think about that.
I still took my time, though, turning it over and over, often in the middle of the night. That can got kicked down the road for two years. Then, at last, I looked through the Yellow Pages and found her number. A few days after that, I even plucked up the courage to call. It went straight to voicemail, so I hung up. What do you say to a psychiatrist s answerphone?
Good morning. My name s Glyn and I think I m cracking up.
I did the exact same thing three times. After the last one, she must have seen my number appearing repeatedly and called me back. Boy, was that an embarrassing conversation.
Now here I am.
She begins talking, nice enough, just chit-chat really, but all the time, I m on edge. I m waiting for the questions to start, the real questions, the ones that will get me to talk about the scenes in my memory.
She asks about my childhood, about what made me happy, what I used to enjoy. Very slowly I feel myself start to unravel, as if she s a cat and I m a ball of string. Before I know it, I m just talking, wittering on about my mum and grandad, Brendan Ingle, my ex-wife, my kids, pretty much everything.
Near the end of our allotted time, she asks if I want to talk about it. Just like that. She s relaxed me by then and catches me on the back foot. Crafty. The punches that get through are always the ones you don t see.
Err the air, I say.
She looks a bit puzzled, shakes her head slightly.
The air?
It is so hard to say it. I have to cough it out.
The air was full of fucking feathers.
Immediately I know it s too much for me, but there s no way I am going to cry in front of her, so I scowl, snatch up my hat and keys, then storm out. The door slams as I go.
Out on the street, before I get in my car, I look back at the house and think of her inside, refl