Sev is sad to say that Roy Shaw passed away earlier last year. Her good wishes go out to all his family and friends.
Sev
had the privilege of meeting Roy in September 1999, where she and her fellow
training partners, her instructor (Alan Charlton who planned and hosted the
day) and other elite instructors were present. Please read the article
that Alan wrote about the great day in Fighters February 2000.
http://www.sevnecatitraining.com/Articles/UltimateinReality.pdf
A 7-minute clip of the seminar in 1999 on you tube.
The bare-knuckle fighter and armed robber Roy
"Pretty Boy" Shaw, who has died aged 76, once gloried in the title of
the "hardest man in Britain". The opening line of his 1999
autobiography, Pretty Boy, encapsulates the way that he presented himself to
the world: "I am a ruthless bastard."
Shaw was bullied as a boy and, after his
father's death when Shaw was 10, finally reacted to being harassed by lashing
out violently. "God had given me a gift," he recalled in Pretty Boy, which was ghosted by Kate Kray, widow of the gangster Ronnie Kray. By 16, Shaw
was a schoolboy boxing champion, winning
the first of his titles at the Royal Albert Hall.
Roy spent time in Borstal for the violent robbery of a
bookie, then in 1963 was jailed
for 18 years for being part of a gang that robbed a security van. In Wandsworth prison, he found himself serving time with the
train robber Ronnie Biggs. He was then moved to another prison. From Parkhurst, after many violent incidents and
clashes with the authorities, he was sent to the psychiatric unit at Grendon
Underwood. What he described as his "uncontrollable temper" soon took
him to Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital. He spent five years there where he was injected with a variety of different drugs in a bid to pacify him.
He was returned to prison and spent the remainder
of his sentences in a variety of jails where he channelled his energy into
working out with weights. After his eventual release, he was encouraged to try
his hand at bare-knuckle fighting and it was through unlicensed contests, with
and without gloves, that he established his reputation.
What was billed as the "fight of the
century" and "a fight to the death" between him and the Gypsy
boxer Donny "The Bull" Adams, in 1975, was halted by the police on
the grounds that such contests were illegal. It attracted enormous publicity at
the time and so great was the amount of money riding on it that they agreed to
wear gloves and fight. Shaw won and went on to take on his great rival, Lenny
"The Guv'nor" McLean, whom he beat. He lost the re-match and a third
unlicensed fight with McLean, although the two men continued to differ as to
how many times they had actually fought.
There are some
elements of regret in his memories. "It's
not big and it's not clever to go to prison," he concluded.
• Roy Shaw,
unlicensed boxer, born 11 March 1936; died 14 July 2012
