Frank W remarkably opened up on talkSPORT about the time he was shot and lost half a lung back in 1989.
The Hall of Fame boxing promoter has been involved in the sport for 44 years, but nearly had his life dramatically cut short when he was shot twice by a masked gunman over three decades ago.
When he was 27, Warren was shot twice in the chest
Warren opened up about the incident when he spoke to White and Jordan on talkSPORT.
Asked what he remembers about it, Warren replied: “It hurt! It made me jump!
“It was a surreal moment, it’s not something you were expecting to happen.
“I was just getting out of my car in Barking, Colin McMillan was fighting there. I was getting out the car and I heard a bang. I thought it was a car backfiring.
“I looked around and I’ve seen somebody standing there holding a gun.
First of all I thought it was a joke, I was looking around and I thought, ‘What’s all this about?’
“I could see him shaking a bit, then there was a click and I realised there was another bang and I felt pain in my side.
“What had happened, it had gone in my chest and I was standing at an angle and thankfully it went through my lung – and I lost half a lung – and came out.
“A friend of mine, a barrister called John Buttress, he went, ‘What the — are you doing?’ And he jumped on him.
“I didn’t realise, I suddenly felt this gurgling in my throat and because obviously the blood through my lungs had got into my throat.
“And then I was losing my breath, I went down on one knee and then I remember my late uncle Bob coming out and my brother Robert.
“They were standing over me, they were helping me and they said, ‘Get a doctor, get a doctor.’
“At every show we have doctors and the Boxing Board of Control’s doctor came out. I remember him saying, ‘Have you got a hankerchief?’
“I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Hold it on.’
“At the time the ambulances were all on strike so the next minute they bundled me into the back of a police van.
“They done like a 16-point turn up the curbs and everything.
“And they drove me off to the hospital and that was it.”
Terry Marsh – a boxer formerly represented by Warren who was at the time being sued by the promoter for libel – was charged with attempted murder two months after the shooting.
He was ultimately cleared at the end of a trial and nobody else has ever been convicted of the crime.
When asked if he believes the incident was the case of someone trying to settle a score, Warren replied: “I don’t know about a score being settled, just a lunatic.
“But at the end of the day I’m here doing what I’ve always been doing and that’s all that matters.”
Pressed further as to whether he knows who did it, Warren said: “Yeah, I do now. I didn’t know then but I do know now, yeah.
“You get lunatics, don’t you? The Pope got shot, Ronald Reagan got shot. It happens, doesn’t it? It just happens.
“You find a lunatic and actually an incompetent lunatic at that.
“Very lucky to get away with it.
Warren was the founder and owner of the London Arena
“And even if I knew who it was then – at that time when I was in court, because I wouldn’t want to be committing perjury.
“Had I known who it was then, I still wouldn’t have said because rightly or wrongly that’s the way I was brought up. That’s how it is.
“Afterwards you find out and obviously you wanna settle things, obviously that is in your head.
“My family, I come from Islington, they’re a well-known family in Islington and I know they wanted to sort things out and I just wouldn’t go down that road.
“For me that would’ve been a defeat. My thing was to stay relevant and do what I was trying to do.
“I had a big problem, I had London Arena at the time, we’d built that and it was a massive problem for us, we were just doing a big syndication deal and the banks just backed off with it.
“I was then fighting on two fronts, at the time fighting for my life and fighting to keep my business going.”
31 years later, Warren remains at the forefront of British boxing.
