John Wight - This Boxing Game

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019

Pitch Publishing

A2 Yeoman Gate

Yeoman Way

Durrington

BN13 3QZ

www.pitchpublishing.co.uk

John Wight, 2019

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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library

Print ISBN 978 1 78531 627 2

eBook ISBN 978 1 78531 660 9

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Dedicated to everyone whos
ever laced up the gloves

Now, whoever has courage, and a strong and collected spirit in his breast, let him come forward, lace on the gloves and put up his hands.

Virgil

Boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.

Joe Frazier

I FIRST met Freddie Roach on a bright sunny morning in a little breakfast place on Hollywood Boulevard.

It was mid-February 1995 on my first day in Los Angeles, having arrived on a transatlantic flight the previous night from London Heathrow. A half-hour drive from the airport along the 405 South and then up to Hollywood via a stop-off at Venice ensured that I was exhausted by the time I booked into the Holiday Inn on Hollywood and Highland, just a short walk from the boulevard. Jet lag rendered sleep impossible and I was up, showered and dressed at six the next morning, before heading up to the top-floor restaurant for breakfast, where I occupied a table by the window. The view comprised an endless expanse of gleaming white architecture, awesome to behold in a part of the world synonymous with movies, fame, celebrity culture, extreme wealth and ostentation, not to mention every kind of weird and wacked-out subculture you could think of. The one thing that Hollywood was most definitely not synonymous with was professional boxing.

I knew very little about Freddie prior to meeting him. Brad, an up-and-coming fighter I knew from back home in Edinburgh, had relocated to LA to train under Roachs tutelage, adamant he was one of the best trainers in the game. At this juncture let me say that boxing was a sport I admired from afar, possessing no more than a cursory knowledge or understanding of its finer aspects. My motivation for coming out here was not to pursue an interest in either the sport or Freddie Roach, but rather to relax and have a good time for a couple of weeks. LA was a city I was already familiar with, having spent a bit of time here a few years previously, and I was looking forward to returning and getting reacquainted with the place.

There was nothing more to it than that.

Id learned from a mutual friend back home that Brad was living in an apartment somewhere in Hollywood and training at Roachs Outlaw Boxing Gym located on the corner of Hollywood and Highland. My original intention upon arriving was to locate and book into a hotel in and around Venice Beach, the area of LA I was most familiar with, after which at some point I would drive up to Hollywood in the car Id rented at LAX to check in on Brad and see how he was doing. However, this initial plan changed after I visited two hotels in Venice with a view to booking a room and encountered cockroaches in both. It was around ten at night by the time Id finished checking out the last of those two hotels in Venice without success. I was dog-tired after a 12-hour flight and therefore decided, fuck it, and got back in the car and drove up to Hollywood, determined to find somewhere decent and clean to spend my first night in the city, no matter what the expense, before looking for a cheaper option in the same vicinity the next day. This is how I ended up at the Holiday Inn just up the street from the Outlaw Gym.

With no idea at what time Brad trained, I thought I would pop into the gym first thing the next morning and find out. I could then either wait for him to appear, or, if he wasnt due until later, kill some time wandering around Hollywood before returning.

So with this in mind I left the hotel for the gym around seven, hoping to find it open or just about to open. It was only a five-minute walk down a Highland Avenue that was already busy with traffic heading in both directions. I soon noticed that the only people out walking were me and a sprinkling of homeless people, carting their belongings with them in plastic bags, or, in some instances, pushing them in front of them in shopping trolleys. The scene was a far cry from the image of Hollywood commonly held around the world. The grim reality of cloying decay and ubiquitous poverty and homelessness came as a shock.

Outlaw Gym took up the entire bottom floor of an office block, surrounded by large tinted windows that enabled you to see inside the place from the street. I reached the pedestrian crossing at the junction opposite and waited to cross. From here I could see that the gym was still closed; there were no lights on and the door was shut. But then, just as I started across the road after the light turned green, the door opened and out came a slightly built guy with cropped red hair and glasses, dressed in an Outlaw Gym t-shirt and training shorts. He proceeded to walk round the corner on to Hollywood Boulevard, then a short distance along before disappearing into a cafe. My instincts told me that this was the Freddie Roach Id heard so much about.

I decided to follow him into the cafe and find out for sure, intending to find out how Brad was getting on and what time he was due at the gym.

He was sitting at a table in the middle of the place giving his order to the waiter as I walked in. Suddenly conscious of the fact he might not appreciate being disturbed by some guy hed never set eyes on before while having breakfast, I took a seat at a table by the window rather than approach him right away. The waiter came over, I ordered a coffee, and moments later it arrived. After taking a couple of sips, I made my approach.

Excuse me, Im sorry to disturb you. Are you Freddie? He looked up at me, justifiably taken aback. Yeah. How you doing? he said defensively.

We shook hands as I quickly introduced myself in a manner designed to reassure him that he wasnt dealing with a crackpot, explaining I was a friend of Brads from Scotland. Noticing him visibly relax, I asked about Brad and how he was progressing.

Scottys doing okay [Brad was known as Scotty at Outlaw, due obviously to the fact he was Scottish]. Hes working well and looking good. Well know for sure when he fights in March, though.

Brad, just so you understand, was a young guy who was in possession of more self-belief than the Red Army on its approach to Berlin. His was the archetypal tale of the bad boy making good, the kind that litters boxing and has done so since time immemorial. After winning the ABA lightweight title at the time the UK equivalent of the Golden Gloves he turned pro. A southpaw, he was a slick boxer/puncher with an abundance of charisma, and he was a regular fixture on the back pages of the local and national press, this even though hed only had six or seven fights as a pro. Filled with the ambition to train with the best, under his own steam hed made the move Stateside. And so thus here he was, living and training in Hollywood with Freddie Roach.