Opinions & Features
Wayne Elcock Helps a Modern Generation Change Their Lives
WAYNE ELCOCK didn’t realize how much his father admired him as a boxer until it was too slow.
Different people have different ideas about how to motivate others, and Elcock’s father apparently thought it best to reserve praise.
“I got all the way to the final of the tournament,” Elcock says of his amateur days, “and the first thing my dad said was, ‘Well, son, nobody remembers second place.’”
“Even if I knocked someone out, he would still talk about the first punch he landed on me.
“I think it was just his way, he didn’t want me to get cocky. But I stopped loving boxing and stopped doing it for four or five years.
“I worked, paving roads. It was good money, but it was 10 hours of difficult work every day and I didn’t feel like going to the gym, so I went to the pub. I would watch the Saturday night fights and I would see the boxers on TV that I had beaten as amateurs and then I would get into fights in the pub. I couldn’t stand alcohol and looking back I must have been frustrated.
“Boxing was out of the question. I was overweight, I wasn’t doing anything with my life, I was going out for drinks and fucking. I was hanging out with mates who had no ambition and didn’t want anyone else to have ambition. If I talked about boxing again, they’d laugh at me.”
But one person who never laughed at Elcock’s boxing was his father. He may not have been effusive in his praise—at least not to Elcock himself—but that was perhaps a sign of how seriously he took it. “He begged me to come back to boxing,” Elcock says of those lost years.
And he eventually did – but it was too slow for his father, who died in a car crash in 1998. For Elcock, it was obviously a devastating event, but his father’s death led to his rebirth as a boxer – when he learned, posthumously, what his father really thought of him.
“Every man and his dog was at my dad’s funeral. People came up to me and asked me about my boxing. Everyone said that he told anyone who would listen how brilliant I was, how far I would go, that I would be world champion.
“I was sitting there after the funeral and I thought, ‘I have to finish this for Dad.’”
The 10-year professional career that followed, beginning in 1999, may not have quite lived up to his dad’s expectations of a world title, but it was nonetheless a proud, electrifying and decorated campaign, encompassing reigns in Britain, England and the WBU. And there was a chance for world glory, with an unsuccessful challenge to IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham. By then, though, ‘Mad Dog’ had one foot out of the competition door, seeing his previous fight – a surprise victory over Howard Eastman, one of the best British middleweights of the 21st century – as his lowest point and a vindication of his dad’s faith in him.
“Every time I had a professional fight, I would put a picture of my dad in my sock,” he says. “After I beat Eastman, I took it out, looked up and said, ‘Dad, I did it.’”
That unanimous decision in September 2007 is Elcock’s best, though he also boasts victories over Darren Rhodes (twice), Anthony Farnell, Lawrence Murphy (avenging a first-round knockout defeat), Steve Bendall and Darren McDermott. Eastman’s victory led to a world title fight with Abraham, but Elcock says he was motivated at the time by something less conducive to fighting spirit than honoring his deceased parent.
“I was just thinking about the money,” he says. “It would have been nice to leave after Eastman, but Abraham was a good payday. It was only eight or nine weeks after Eastman, and I got up every morning thinking, ‘Fuck!’ But I said, ‘Just think about the money; just get in there and see how it goes.'”
Elcock was knocked down in the second round but otherwise showed quicker hands and more punching power than Abraham, but it was the German’s superior power that proved decisive in the fifth round when he was knocked out in Basel, Switzerland.
“I wasn’t confident, but after the fourth round, Abraham got cut, I was doubling and tripling my jabs. My attitude changed. I started to believe I could win – and then I got stopped!
“He was definitely the hardest boxer I’ve ever faced. When he knocked me down in the second round, he hit me so difficult it didn’t even hurt, does that make sense? I didn’t even know I was knocked down, the referee was just counting and I was like, ‘What are you doing?’
Elcock fought twice more, most recently in the “Battle of Brum” derby with Matthew Mackin in March 2019. Mackin won in three rounds, although Elcock claims he was handicapped: “I broke my leg in two places,” he says. “My shin and fibula – the first from playing football and the second because I was training for it.”
Injured, coming off a massive defeat and at the age of 35, Elcock decided the logical thing to do was retire – but like many others, he at least felt the temptation to fight again.
“The fight with Darren Barker happened, but a few weeks later I got infirmed. My weight dropped to 11 pounds and I had to pull out.
“Then, after a few years out of the ring, I was offered James DeGale. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll put money into my business,’ and I asked how much, and they said seven grand. Seven grand to fight an Olympic gold medalist!
“Luckily I didn’t need it, but for a lot of former players, seven thousand dollars would be a lot of money. [Some] promoters see someone with a name and instead of helping him, they cheat him.”
MANCHESTER – APRIL 5: Wayne Elcock of England and his manager Frank Maloney celebrate after the WBU Middleweight Championship fight between Wayne Elcock of England and Anthony Farnell of England on April 5, 2003 at the MEN Arena in Manchester, England. Wayne Elcock of England won the fight. (Photo by John Gichigi/Getty Images)
Elcock then focused on his novel callings. He started out as a trainer, then supplemented that with a boxing shop, where he meets Boxing News. Mad Dog’s Boxing Store, on the outskirts of Birmingham, has defied the decline of brick-and-mortar retail by running the store himself, offering a more personalised experience than shopping online or in a chain store.
Our interview is interrupted several times as customers drop in. Each is an amateur boxer stocking up for the novel season, and each is dealt with by Elcock, who discusses their requirements, experience level, weight etc. and makes personalised recommendations – not just the ones that cost the most.
“If a beginner came in and wanted a pair of Reyes gloves for £200-£300, I wouldn’t sell them to them,” he says. “I won’t sell you what you want, I’ll sell you what you want. need. Most of the shops are run by businessmen or enthusiasts. I don’t know of any other shop where a former professional could advise you in this way. I’ve even had kids on the pads there.
When it came to coaching, Elcock started with a program called Box Clever, an ingenious “mobile gym” that consisted of a hoop that could be packed into the back of a van along with other equipment, then unloaded and stored anywhere there was space – usually schools.
Elcock explains why he wanted to teach children boxing: ‘Where I grew up, there was a lot of crime [Chelmsley Wood]. You went one way or the other. Most went one way [towards crime]; I was the rarity that went the other way. My buddies would say, “Come on, our car got stolen over there.” I’d say, “I’m going to the gym.” They’d say, “You jerk!” But I knew the respect you get as a boxer far outweighed the respect you get as a criminal.
“I wrote a programme for children. It combined boxing with education. For example, maths – we would score a fight. We set up tasks with bronze, silver and gold prizes; courses divided into rounds. They didn’t even know they were educating themselves! Box Clever grew very quickly. We travelled all over the Midlands; 39 schools.
“The council came to me and said, ‘We’ve got a kid here – an absolute nightmare, excluded from school, constantly in trouble with the police. If you can do something about him, it would be a miracle. He turned up, 11, with his mum. He just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t care who you are. I’m only here because she dragged me here.’ He just sat there. Everything I asked him to do, he just said ‘no.’ I managed to get the gloves on him. He hit the shin guards and I said, ‘Wow, you’ve got some power there! It’d be a shame if you got in trouble again; you’ve got a gift.’
“The next week he came back. A few weeks later his mum said, ‘What have you done with him? He eats oatmeal in the morning, he goes for a run. I even took him back to school.’ He was 11 then. Now he’s 26 and a professional.”
That pro, Birmingham welterweight Elliot Hurley, boxs out of Elcock’s rival gym, Kronk Birmingham, officially sponsored by the Detroit legend. Box Clever still caters to kids, the disabled and beginners, while those looking to compete train at Kronk. Elcock’s son, Wayne Jr., is among them.
“I didn’t want him to box, but the kids at school knew his dad was a boxer, so he came to me and said he wanted to try.” Junior is now a 16-year-old amateur welterweight with 12 fights to his name, including a Midlands title.
Overall, Elcock, now 50, is feeling good, which he admits is down to the advice his trainer Paddy Lynch gave him when he was still fighting.
“Paddy got me thinking about what I was going to do when I retired,” he says. “I would have said, ‘Retire, you c***? I’m just getting started!’ But he said, ‘Just put some more pounds in the bank, start jotting down ideas in the back of your mind. It seems a long way off, but it’s passing quickly.’
“People think you make a lot of money boxing. They say to me, ‘What are you doing working? You should be on the beach drinking cocktails.’ I had money in the bank, but I’m a grind and I wanted to pay back Paddy for what he did for me.
“I’m making more money now than I ever did when I was boxing. The gym is paid for; the pros can train for free. I’ll only take the bare minimum if they win the British title.
“My satisfaction does not lie in money, but in changing the lives of others.”
IT WAS the summer of 2018 when Jai Opetaia and his father-trainer Tapu were returning from boxing after a long day.
The talented Olympian, who had gone 15-0 in the first three years of his professional career, was so broke that he barely had enough gas to get home and wondered whether the sport he had devoted his life to would ever pay off.
As Opetaia remembers that day, she stops. “Fuck, you touched me,” he says, wiping the tears from his eyes and rubbing them on his jogging pants.
“I remember that trip home very vividly. we just didn’t have any coin, we were having a shitty day and we were like, “What the hell does that make sense?” We both talked about quitting boxing and joining the local soccer club.
“We gave boxing everything we had, but we got nothing in return. People don’t know what a rollercoaster I was on. Recalling moments like these from where I am now only shows the fruits of my labor. It makes everything sweeter.”
In the six years since that day, Opetaia has gone 25-0, 19 KOs, and is the current IBF cruiserweight champion and arguably the best 200-pound fighter in the world. On Saturday, he will defend his title for the fourth time in his third fight in a row in Saudi Arabia, where he is the clear favorite of Turki Alalshikh.
Money is not so crucial these days, but the fire inside still burns. There are warriors who wear their hearts on their sleeves, and then there is Opetaia.
“I think I was about 18 before I got my first paycheck,” he says. “Because my fights were so spread out and it was so challenging to get on cards in Australia, I had to invest in myself. C***s have no idea what a fucking journey we’ve been through, man.
“People now see Saudi cards and stuff like that, but they haven’t invested in themselves. They win a few fights and expect high earnings, and that means they miss out on good opportunities. At first, we just wanted opportunities. We went for every possible card. We were losing money on fight cards, we weren’t selling tables, we were in the trenches.
“Whether it was money for sparring or training camps, we didn’t have money for fuel to get to the Sydney sparring session. It was challenging for us, but we found a way and got the cards. It’s been one hell of a journey and that’s why it means so much to me.
Riyad, Saudi Arabia: Jai Opetaia vs. Jack Massey, IBF cruiserweight world title
October 12, 2024
Photo by Mark Robinson Matchroom Boxing.
That victory over Mairis Briedis in July 2022 not only clinched his world title, but also catapulted him to superstardom. However, it was a victory that kept him out of the ring for over a year, as he broke both sides of his jaw at the hands of the Latvian.
“I know I deserve to be here because I went through these challenging times,” he says. “Those frail points and that wasn’t the only one. Eating through a straw for four months was one of them too, those are mind games. I’ve been there and picked myself up off the ground, so now I know what I have to do.
“Even when I broke my arm, I was in a cast for nine months and weighed about 117 kg, I was coming back from the injury. I thought my career was over and that was the fight before Briedis. I went into surgery and was in a cast for nine months and then I got really fat and fat. I drank alcohol and that was it. I was a nobody then, I was a dead nobody.
“I remember my first session, I went to the gym and did two rounds of jumping, punched the bag for two rounds, and then I sat down and just said, ‘My career is over.’ I honestly thought that was it… but 12 months later I beat Briedis. The emotional rollercoaster I’ve been through is fucking crazy.
“And you know what the key is: just show up. That’s all, just show up. Get there. The hardest part is just getting into the gym. The alarm goes off early in the morning and you just think, “What the fuck is going on?” Once you’re in the gym, you’re in business. The hardest thing was to play consistently but achieve absolutely nothing and believe in a goal that was so far away. But now that we’re here, it’s crazy.”
He’s the clear favorite on Saturday night, when 31-year-old Jack Massey tries to turn the cruiserweight division upside down with an unexpected victory. Given the intensity with which Opetaia speaks, it’s tough to imagine him disrespecting anyone, especially considering he now has another mouth to feed on back home. He and his partner welcomed their first child, Lyla Robyn Opetaia, on July 1, marking his first fight as a father.
“It’s a strange set of emotions, but it’s all part of it,” says Opetaia, who left Australia for England in September and will only return after the fight.
“It needs to be done, it adds fuel to the fire, and we are here for a specific purpose. We’re not here to waste time, we have work to do and then I can go home and spend money on my family.
“The birth was a good experience. I cried, I couldn’t stop. Everyone asked if I cried when the baby was born – brother, I cried before, during and after, emotions came and went. It was an amazing journey.
“I was often around children. We are Pacific Islanders, with children everywhere in our huge families. There’s a gigantic age difference between my brothers and sisters, so I’m kind of used to having kids at home.
“Having my own body is obviously a different feeling, but I’ve been waiting for it for a long time. When you have a good partner, life becomes much easier. He’s been there since day one, he knows when I’m gone I have to flip the switch to turn into a warrior. That’s why I don’t come to many fights because it’s tough for me to reconcile my gentle side with my aggression.
“She knows all about it. We’ve been together for 13 years, childhood sweetheart, it’s been a journey, brother. She was the breadwinner when I had nothing. We started from fucking scratch.
Another person who accompanied Opetai on almost every step of his journey is Tapu. However, Saturday night will be their first fight together in almost three years and their first with Opetaia as champion.
Opetaia in action during his last fight against Mairis Briedis. (Peter Wallis/Getty Images)
Having coached the first 21 fights of his son’s professional career, the couple separated. However, in this case, they are reunited and Opetaia Jr is adamant that it is worth the risk.
“There were a few things we disagreed on, a few issues,” Opetaia says of the initial breakup. “But we have moved forward and developed as people, so I felt the break was good for us. Now we are back together and moving forward, so everything is positive.
“That’s good. It’s back to basics, man. Coming back to capabilities and skills, stop trying to knock everyone’s heads off. I’m going back to what brought me here and I feel like I’ll show it in this fight.
“I’ve changed a lot since he was last in my corner, which was the fight before I won the title. They’re two completely different people, man. Entering and exiting the ring. It was fun finding that balance and it took a few weeks, but we found it and I feel like it’s going to work. That’s good.
“He’s a great boxing coach, in my opinion one of the best. I feel like it was the right move, it was astute, and I feel like everything is positive. There is always risk, there will always be change, but you have to adapt to change. I feel good and I feel this will take us to the next level.
With this, Opetaia is ready. Six years had passed since the conversation that almost ended the pursuit, but he had never looked back.
Next month, the fight for the so-called “world No. 1 belt” will take place in Florida.
On December 6 in Pembroke Pines, Richie Leak, a 45-year-old removal specialist and father of four from Blackpool, will fight for the Police Gazette diamond belt in a bare-knuckle heavyweight fight.
The last British bare-knuckle fighter to come so close to a title shot was Jem Smith in 1887.
The Shoreditch fighter faced Jake Kilrain for the right to fight John L. Sullivan and fought for almost three hours in front of 79 spectators until it was declared a draw due to being outshone by Smith’s 74 supporters after the Londoner’s fall.
Leak is expected to have his lights out next month.
Gustavo Trujillo is the latest heavyweight to win the Police Gazette diamond belt, restored by Scott Burt, president of the Bareknuckle Boxing Hall of Fame, in 2016.
The “Cuban Assassin” – also a 6-0 (5) professional gloves boxer who lives in Miami – won all six of his bare-knuckle fights in the opening round.
“I would like to get to the second round,” said Trujillo, 31, “but they are too basic!
“There is no room in my fight plan for looking for a first-round knockout, it just happens.”
Trujillo showed off the shot selection and defense of the Cuban amateur boxer he was not.
“I wasn’t a boxer in Cuba,” he said. “I was a Greco-Roman Olympic wrestler.”
Which didn’t make him wealthy.
Trujillo left Cuba ten years ago with the intention of becoming a millionaire.
Boxing with gloves will likely make him more money than bare-knuckle boxing, but BYB Extreme keeps him busier and keeps audiences rooting for a sport in which 96 percent of fights go the distance.
Leak knows he faces a knockout next month and shrugs off the danger in the matter-of-fact way of someone who worked on doors in Blackpool as a teenager.
Leak gives the impression that no matter what Trujillo did to him, he’s had worse nights.
“I started working on doors when I was 18 because I could always argue,” he said, “but it was a terrible job.
“The local boys can’t misbehave because we’ll block them or bump into them, but the ones who come for the weekend think they can do whatever they want because they’re on the coach on Monday morning.
“They don’t care – and there are 20 buddies behind them.
“I got stabbed while I was working on a door, but luckily it hit my fat ass so there was plenty of padding!”
Leak looks very much like a Victorian boxer with a beard that earned him the nickname “The Viking.”
“It doesn’t assist me absorb the punches,” he laughed. “If I thought so, I would have grown it even longer.”
After the first round of his fight with Dan Podmore in March, his beard was stained with blood.
As is often the case in bare-knuckle boxing, Leak found the punches that turned the tide of the fight and won in the third round.
This won him the BKB heavyweight championship.
BKB has since been purchased by BYB Extreme and their champion is Trujillo.
The champions meet at the Charles F. Dodge City Center in a triangle described as the smallest fighting area in combat sports, and Trujillo is the first to defend the Police Gazette diamond belt first worn by Sullivan, the hard-living “Boston Sturdy Boy” who claimed that he inherited his strength from his Irish mother.
The belt was the invention of Richard Kyle Fox, a Dublin resident who, at the age of 29, emigrated to America in 1871.
He saved enough money to buy the struggling National Police Gazette and turned a struggling publication devoted to helping police find criminals into a colorful and controversial tabloid that gave away prizes for outlandish feats such as the longest frog jump.
Fox noticed that his readers had an appetite for sports, especially bare-knuckle boxing.
The sport was illegal in every state of America, and to counteract this, the Police Gazette reported on fights only two weeks after they took place.
Sullivan was considered America’s best fighter, and Fox supported Irishman Paddy Ryan to defeat him.
In the April 16, 1881 issue of the Police Gazette, he declared that Sullivan and Ryan would fight for “$1,000 a side, the American heavyweight championship” and “a facsimile of the belt for which Heenan and Sayers fought.”
Heenan is John C. Heenan and Sayers is Tom Sayers, the best fighters in America and England respectively.
They met near Farnborough in April 1860 and both received their belts after beating each other unconscious for two hours and 20 minutes.
The Police Gazette belt would have been in jeopardy when Ryan, Tipperary, of Troy, Modern York, and Sullivan faced each other in Mississippi City on February 7, 1882, in a 24-foot ring under London Prize Ring rules.
“Back when Sullivan was fighting, you could throw your opponent and the round would end when the knee hit the ground,” Burt said. “Some rounds lasted a few seconds, some lasted 20 minutes.”
The fighters were given 30 seconds to recover from the knockdown, and then the fight was resumed.
“Officially, Sullivan has had 51 fights,” Burt said. “If we include all the fights in bars, it will be closer to 500!
“He only fought three times bare-knuckle, against Paddy Ryan, Charley Mitchell and Jake Kilrain.
“He hated bare-knuckle boxing. You could point your eyes out and grab your hair.
“It was tedious to watch too. People left the fights. They just kept fighting until one of them gave up and they landed too many punches.
“The promoters talked to the players and told them they were afraid of breaking their arms.
“The promoters put on gloves, so they threw more punches, there were more knockouts, and it was better to watch.”
There were another 5,000 people there to see Sullivan fight Ryan, including outlaws Jesse and Frank James in drag.
They saw Sullivan drop Ryan to the jaw after 30 seconds and recalled the fight on “Memories of ’19.”vol Century Gladiator” Sullivan said the match was called off after 11 minutes because Ryan was “so disabled that the best medical care was required.”
After the fight, Fox found himself at the same bar as Sullivan and asked the waitress to invite Sullivan for a beer.
According to Burt, Sullivan replied, “No reporter is taking me away from my friends. He will have to come here.
Fox heard – as Sullivan intended – and became furious.
Burt said: “Fox wanted revenge on Sullivan and got Jake Kilrain to challenge him.
“Sullivan refused because he thought Kilrain was out of his league.
“Fox took the belt off him, put diamonds in it, called it the belt of the world and gave it to Kilrain.”
Kilrain, another Modern Yorker of Irish blood, therefore became the first holder of the Police Gazette diamond belt – until Sullivan took it from him in 1889 after a fight lasting 75 rounds – that is, two hours and 16 minutes.
This was the last world heavyweight title fight under the London Prize Ring Rules, and subsequent holders of the Police Gazette diamond belt during the glove era included Bob Fitzsimmons before the rise of The Ring magazine and the decline and eventual demise of The National Police Gazette in 1932 The belt was undisputed for over a hundred years.
Burt decided to refurbish the belt in 2016 and gifted it to Bobby Gunn, a former Canadian professional glove boxer with roots in the Irish traveling community, to “set the ball rolling in the current era.”
In 2019, Joey Beltran, a former UFC fighter from California nicknamed the “Mexecutioner,” became the first heavyweight to capture the Police Gazette diamond belt in a bare-knuckle heavyweight fight since Sullivan defeated Chase Sherman 130 years earlier in over five innings in Mississippi.
AJ Adams and now Trujillo have won the belt.
Burt said: “It was the first belt passed from champion to champion.
“There were other belts that were put up for battle after the match was over, but in the case of the Police Gazette diamond belt, you had to defeat the champion to win the belt.
“It’s the No. 1 belt in the world. There is no other belt like this. The history of no other belt comes close.”
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