Rear View Mirror – Paul Sykes
There is a picture of him on the front of a book with a nose that seems to be wider than any damn river in the United Kingdom! Paul Sykes, 6-3-1, 4 KO’s, cuts an imposing figure and somebody you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley nor indeed end up in some kind of argument with him no matter how trivial the subject matter.
It is a look and an aura that has been passed on to his sons who are currently serving at His Majesty’s pleasure. Both father and sons share that experience though Paul Sykes was initially to come to our attention as a heavyweight boxer. It was a reputation that his sons, Paul Sykes and Michael Sharp, wear with ease. Both father and one son – Michael – found themselves in prison documentaries which opened them up to the wider public. For father it was opportunity, for son led to a hardening of his image. Sharp inherited that notoriety through the man coined the UK’s hardest lag, his father. Paul was considered to be one of Britain’s hardest prisoners thanks to his brutality who had a taste for violence that was extended to his son.
Whilst inside Sykes even left an impression on Charles Bronson when they met behind bars. Bronson wrote of Sykes, “a notorious hard man from Yorkshire. A fighting man in every sense. A lot of people never liked him, even feared him, but I respected the man and what he stood for.”
Father, Paul was born in and spent most of his life in Wakefield, Yorkshire. He started his boxing journey, age 7 at the Robin Hood and Thorpe Amateur Boxing Club. Unfortunately, it was not long before drink took hold. Brought up on the Lupset Council Estate, he found himself in Germany for a tournament, was carried out a bar on the evening of his fight, drunk and lost the following day. He was 16.
By 17 he was inside, but in 1971, still in prison, found himself opposite Roger Tighe, former ABA Champion and Commonwealth gold medallist, in a ring sparring. While on a temporary release in 1973 Sykes join the Maple Leaf Amateur Boxing Club in Bootle allowing him to represent the North-Western Counties team. In the 1973 ABA championships he got as far as the semi final when he was beaten by Garfield McEwan, who went on to win the ABA title. Sykes was in HMP Walton at the time.
But he took on an aura and demanded a whisper of who he was and what he was becoming. People took notice. It was not long before he was out and he signalled a new chapter in his life.
In an age where there was little by way of social media, he became known to the public thanks to a documentary into prison life in 1976 where he was prominently featured. He boasted then that he would win the British heavyweight title, taking it off Joe Bugner.
It was a boast that was nearly to come to pass, though Bugner was never to face him.
His professional boxing career was to be when a certain Mrs Thatcher was about to take power. It was a period of time when Labour was on the decline and punk was on the up. We saw things shaken all around us and we could not depend upon the Beatles to show us where it hippy shaked. Politically and culturally deep questions were being asked…
The boxers we admired were hard men. They were mean men. They were hardened and meant business. But then came a harder man than the rest, an impact here but nowhere else – Paul Sykes, now a heavyweight boxer, raconteur, published author, weight lifter, debt collector, villain and notorious convict.
He was the cliché that boxing wanted to avoid but we cannot deny we get drawn to their sides. In Bunce’s words, he was old school. In fact, he may well have been ancient school. The thing was, he was a decent fighter.
Between 1978 and 1980 he managed to stop with his misbehaving long enough to have a short 10 fight professional career. He was big and a decent size for a heavyweight, but he could move and that made him dangerous.
His ruthless streak appeared in a ring in his 6th fight when he knocked out American David Wilson but kept hitting him on the ropes until the referee managed to intervene and stop it. Wilson ended up on a life support machine and in hospital for a month.
The pinnacle of those 10 fights came in June 1979 when he was able to climb in against the legendary British heavyweight John L Gardner, 35-4, 29 KO’s, for the British and Commonwealth titles. If truth be told, Sykes, at 33, and with very little experience should not have been in that ring. By the 6th it was still, according to some, evenly matched but then the fitness of the athlete became too much for the shortcomings of the challenger and in the 6th Gardner stopped him.
Sykes got that fight in his 9th professional fight and still holds the record for having the fewest professional fights before fighting for the British title; Anthony Joshua took 10 fights to win it.
The trouble with Sykes though, was trouble.
He had been spotted as having immense potential. The problem was it never got out of being potential; trouble always intervened. Everyone saw that he could ah been a contender. The only time he proved he was a contender was when it looked like he was going to have to contend with prison.
His debut in the professional ring actually came after a spell inside but by 1980 he had blown it. He had one more fight, after his loss to Gardiner, in Lagos against a journeyman and he was knocked out in the first round.
Following his boxing retirement, he was back inside, still trying to be the macho man. Whilst inside at one time he actually held a British amateur weightlifting record.
He was however, more than a handful.
By 1990 it was reckoned that he had spent 21 of his previous 26 years on the planet in no fewer than 18 prisons.
Aside from the weights though, he also lifted books and a pen.
His degree in Physical Sciences came from the Open University and his memoir, Sweet Agony followed, won a Koestler Award in 1988.
The problem was that no activity could soothe the need for alcohol. He got out of prison and was unable to cope with life outside those prison walls. By the time he died he was sleeping rough, glory days beyond a distant memory and his body showing more signs of neglect than athletic endeavour.
His mouth had got him noticed, his mouth had got him that big fight, but his mouth was the vessel that kept opening to be filled with the liquor not of comfort but destruction.
His tale, ironically, is sobering.
But for a character, the likes of which we see in fits and starts throughout this sport, he is as worthy of a chapter than a footnote. It is important not to glorify Sykes, nor have I sought to, but by remembering him, we contextualise the better and the best in the sport. A unique British and Commonwealth heavyweight former contender, Mr John Sykes; though he is just not the type of guy you want your daughter – or your son – to bring home.
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