Carlos-Wigan wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw9ipfC3YQk
This is a clip from one of the greatest boxing documentaries of
all time that was on ITV back in 1987.
I can't wait for th clip where he is talking to his boss who he does a bit
of debt collcting for. The boss was a cross between Ted Bovis and Black
Lace sat behind a rolls royce desk
I have this documentary on VHS its called First Tuesday it was like a news docu like Tonight that is currently on these days.
Paul Sykes also wrote a book, Sweet Agony
PAUL Sykes who has died at 60, was a man whose life might have been changed by success in the boxing ring, but despite contending for the British and Commonwealth heavyweight title, he sank back into old habits and his recent appearances in the Press were as a drunken might-have-been.
Paul, from Lupset, near Wakefield, died in Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, from pneumonia and cirrhosis of the liver.
His prowess as a boxer was sufficient to bring him a title fight in June, 1979, at Wembley with John L. Gardner.
He narrowly lost, and his last professional bout less than a year later against Ngozika Ekwelum in Lagos ended in another defeat.
It heralded a return to the self-destructive course of his life from which boxing had been unable to free him. By 1990, he has spent 21 out of 26 years in 18 prisons.
He boxed as a teenager at Robin Hood and Thorpe Amateur Boxing Club near Wakefield, displaying considerable talent which, with his size and ability to move, made him formidable. But the drinking started early. When he was 16 he went to Germany to fight and the night before was carried out of a bar. He lost.
He had 10 fights as a professional, recording six wins – four with technical knock-outs – one draw and three defeats. Dave Wilson who fought him in September, 1978, was rushed to hospital afterwards and spent a month recovering.
Paul's success in the ring brought him a US boxing tour, for which he was signed up by Don King.
But Paul did not escape his troubled past, and even as recently as 2000, Wakefield Council secured a two-year Asbo banning him from the city centre after a series of drunken incidents.
His years in prison were not entirely wasted. He earned an Open University degree in Physical Sciences, and his book Sweet Agony earned the Arthur Koestler prize for prison literature.
His son, Paul Sykes Jnr, was jailed for life in November 2004 after stabbing 50-year old Michael Gallagher to death in Lupset.
This has upset me somehow.
RIP
