Maddest experience I ever had, was the night I went to the Ponds Forge Leisure centre in Leeds - to watch homeboy Clinton Woods last fight with Glencoffee Johnson, I got chatting to a guy at ringside, as I was reporting for an American website (I think it was) at the time.Deserter wrote: ↑17 Oct 2022, 10:56Great post.Cyclops wrote: ↑15 Oct 2022, 11:47 As a veteran of many undersold and late running Warren cards in places difficult to get home from (including a couple of Fury performances) I'm curious as to how well this is going to sell. Attending Fwank's fights is always a messy business. You can buy crap seats and end up ringside, scoring the fight with security. Forget getting home on time, or sometimes getting home at all. Think rammed tubes, shut stations, unfamiliar and dangerous areas, unsavoury characters. Weak beer, crap coke, night busses and first trains on cold platforms.
You might literally get a fist bump from the fighters as they leave the ring after, or watch tiny ants from so far away you'll wish they'd provided opera glasses, and be stranded miles away from home. There is a crapness, and a subsequent lawlessness, that adds something to the night. I'm tapped out on that for now. I wonder how many youngsters, starved of real life experiences, will pay to have someone piss in a pint glass next to them, do a bump of coke off their thumb, and kick off in the stands, as "something to tell the grandkids about" as an aside to this pathetic 'fight'?
It's an entirely different 'experience' to a well run but ultimately soulless 'Big Fight' Matchroom card.
It's a funny story to tell I suppose. Especially if it ends up a bit of a famous car crash circus.
As for Fury vs Chisora specifically, words fail me... no justification for the match and doesn't paint Fury in a great light after all the theatrics around an AJ match-up.
Anyway, we got chatting, and he told me he was a trainee BBBofC referee, and was on their programme (no idea) if he was or he wasn't
At the end of the night, he offered me a lift home, he was a bit of a lively sort, probably coked off his not looking back at it. I was staying with a friend in Leeds for the weekend (who is ironically my girlfriend now) - and he offered to drop me off near the City Centre, we were talking on the way back in the car, and he was telling me a story about someone he knew who had died some time ago in a motorbike accident (again from memory, it was many years ago) when all of a sudden the windscreen imploded completely - with a loud bang. There was nothing visisble that we got hit by and nothing else on the road, - it was mental. To this day, I cannot explain how the windscreen just shattered like that.
He said we should carry on driving, which seemed a bit mental, he mentioned something about having to get the car back as it wasn't his , which in hindsight should have been my cue to leave.
Inevitably we got flagged down by the police on the way back, who had some obvious questions, like 'where the fck is your windscreen?' - as soon as he saw the police he attempted to have it off on his toes, and was apprehended.
I explained that I had just gotten a lift from him at the boxing show, and I was there in my capacity as press for the fight, and was staying with a friend in Leeds for the weekend, who I think they got me to call to confirm. The police actually dropped me off to her place as I recall.
Odd night was that.
"Come on Clinton - Come on Clinton - Come on clinton.' Will forever be ringing in my ears.
Wonder whatever happened to Clinton Woods - never heard anything of him since he retired.