BBN Exclusive Billy Graham Interview - Part Two by Terry Dooley May 23rd 2008

BBN had exclusive access to boxing trainer Billy Graham as the trainer sought to give an account of himself to Internet boxing fans. Part one dealt with the fall-out from the Floyd Mayweather-Ricky Hatton fight. Here in part two we look at Graham's early career in boxing, as well as discussing what motivates a fledgling boxing trainer. Graham once began training for an aborted comeback; this training took place under the watchful eye of Phil Martin, who had fought as a professional himself before opening a gym, ‘Champs Camp', in the then-notorious Mosside area of Manchester. After failing to secure a renewal of his license Graham was offered another route into the sport, Phil Martin offered him a job working with the fighters in a training capacity. BG: “I was helping Phil out in the first place. I knew Phil from old and Steve (Foster) took me to the gym. “I was working out. I had packed boxing in way too soon and had nothing to do so was going to have one more fight. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere as a boxer but I just wanted to do it one more time. People were asking me if I wanted to become a trainer and I said I wasn't interested. Then Phil asked me if I wanted to help out at Champs Camp and I found I had an aptitude for it. “I really liked it and got the same buzz I got from fighting but at that time I wasn't thinking about riches. I thought, “I wouldn't mind doing this to make a living”. If I could just make a living being around boxing then that was enough for me. The thought of anything else (happening) never crossed my mind. I thought it would just be nice to make a living training fighters. Then I went out on my own and things were totally different. “My first fight on my own was a European title fight with Carl Thompson (Versus Akim Tafer). Phil was ill. I knew he was ill but not how bad it was. Phil later died of cancer and I never really understood early on how bad things were for him. I had left Champs Camp by that time. So Carl's people asked me to train Carl for this title fight. “After leaving Phil's I had not known what I wanted to do so when I was asked to train Carl for the title fight I jumped at it. By that time I was actually obsessed with boxing. I thought I would get my own gym but had no idea how I'd do it...the money I got from the fight I put into the gym. “Then I thought “I'm going to make it at this”. I had some good fighters – some older fighters in Steve Foster and Ensley Bingham and that – and I knew they were good fighters. We all sat around coming up for names for the gym and Ensley came up with ‘The Phoenix' idea because it had been the symbol on his school badge. I knew about the story of the Phoenix bird and it's (the gym) risen a few times in new locations so it was fitting in the end.” Training is a vocation that one goes into fully aware that the rewards can be great, but they are also remote and reached by a small number of people. A vocation has to be spurred by pure ambition; it must be free from thoughts of riches, and Graham's own ambition was kick-started by a personal tragedy. BG: “I was incredibly ambitious in the early days. What gave me my inspiration was, sadly, my brother (Joe) dying (in a car crash). I had still been at Champs Camp when he died and I thought it was the end of the world for me in boxing. “I decided to quit but then thought about my brother always telling me that I was useless at everything else but good at this (boxing). So by the time I got my own gym, by the time it came to train Carl Thompson for that fight, I was determined that I would make it as a trainer. “By that point I had become really determined and knew I would be successful, I don't know about rich but I had seen other people train top fighters and succeed and I knew I could do the same. It wasn't money it was winning things (that interested me). “I didn't know how hard it would be or how long it would take but I knew I'd succeed. To be honest with you, looking at how long it took to actually make money, I would have probably given it up and got a job. I knew the rewards were there but I thought the money would come when you started winning British and European titles but the money didn't come (then) so I kept chipping away and I just wanted to train boxers by that point.” Boxing is like a spider web; from the centre to the outer-limits it draws you in and keeps you there. In Graham's case it drew him in whilst also breaking him down, his body started to suffer under the yolk of the sport, his hands took so much punishment he sometimes had to pick his daughter up using his wrists because his hands were weak after a day at the gym. BG: “Boxing took away my life. As soon as I woke up I was thinking about boxing…I was thinking about boxing before I went to bed at night. I was completely focused. I stopped going out and wanted to be successful. I always made a living because there were always title fights one year after another. I made a living but the big money only came with Ricky Hatton. The money is only a recent thing.” One of the misconceptions is that the money comes relatively early into a boxing career, even for a trainer, get yourself a title fighter and the fiscal rewards will immediately appear, this is wrong, many trainers have had title fighters come and go yet still have to work for a living outside of boxing. Graham again stressed the vocational nature of the sport. BG: “Wow, if you are going to go into boxing (training) thinking you will make a lot of money and be a celebrity then fucking hell you are pissing in the wind. You are better off getting a job. It is a vocation and there is a lot to put up with. It is so hard and there are so many obstacles and disappointments. If you go in with the wrong attitude you will fall at the first hurdle. “At Champs Camp I felt like quitting loads of times. Especially when our kid was killed. I was always thinking about it (quitting). Years before our kid died, (with) anything I tried to do…when the going got tough I used to fuck off, that was it. If I got pissed off I'd fuck off, simple as that but his dying changed that. “Joe then got killed. Run over. He was actually at Champs Camp (earlier) that day. He was crazy on sport. He was my big brother sort of thing and looked after me, or out for me, however you see it. Trust me I was a pain in the arse and he was a much better person than me. He never let me down and he was passionate about boxing and wanted me to do well. “It was a pity that I never took notice of Joe when he was alive. I take more notice of him now he is dead and that is a shame. I think of things he used to say and talk about him a lot now. He was into sports science even back then and always had something to say on that. He was a massive part in my life and success but unfortunately it took him getting killed to play that part and give me the determination to succeed.” “I made a conscious decision when Joe got killed that I would never quit. After that I never felt like quitting. Any problems (that came up) I would either swerve around or knock them down. There were plenty of disappointments, well not disappointments but frustrations…the wins kept me going so I never felt like quitting for that reason as well.” Also, after the death of Joe, there was to be little support from his family. BG: “I'm not really a family person. Me and my brother were close, I've got a sister I'm quite close to, they used to watch me fight and that but I've been on my own for a long time, since I was sixteen. No one else got involved with me apart from my brother. It is not a nice thing to say but I don't see my family from one year to the next. “They (the boxers) were the people I liked to mix with (my boxing family). Everything was built around work. I had a good relationship with (the) boxers. I didn't know anybody else. I had no mates to go out with and at the weekend (I) would sit watching fight tapes and all that. I was pretty fucking boring and hard to live with I suppose.” In the film ‘The Jerk' the protagonist, played by Steve Martin, takes delivery of a telephone book and becomes overwhelmed by the experience, thinking the publication of his name in the book is the road to success, instead a psychotic killer plucks his name at random from the book, then takes pot-shots at him whilst hiding on a hill. This is not entirely dissimilar to what happens to you when you begin to find success in the sport of boxing, your name gets put down for all to see, and then the fun begins. You stick your head over the parapet only for people to then attempt to blow it off your shoulders, as Graham found out early into his career. BG: “Yeah, absolutely. Backbiting is a general thing in boxing but obviously I didn't know that at that time (when I first got into training). I thought it was me, it was only happening to me. “The vast majority of people involved in boxing have to work; they don't make any money from boxing...that goes for fighters and the trainers. But if you get to the top the rewards are massive. So with everyone striving to get the same thing, and that thing being limited, the result is a lot of jealousy and bitching in boxing, more than I ever imagined. I've had my fair share and really felt it at the time but it drove me on.” Described in knockabout terms as being as ‘rough as a badger' Graham has often projected a tough image, that of a man who may be a little difficult to approach and probably does not care about what people say about him, however Graham feels that this image is a misconception. BG: “I think it is a misconception because I've not got as thick skin as people think. I wish I did to be honest with you because having a thick skin helps you a lot in boxing. I'm the opposite. I'm pretty sensitive. I get upset easily and am too emotional at times. “When I see things written about me I can't believe it to be honest with you. I find it amazing. You have to get tough and you have to get accustomed to things. You have to take a lot on the chin in boxing, and I've taken a fucking lot on the chin, especially from certain people. It goes with the territory.” Over time the bumpy terrain can make you fatigued, after being lazily categorised as a foul-mouthed tough man Graham felt that this caused him to adopt the persona in order to make life easier, in reality Graham is very approachable, depending on the truth of your approach. BG: “Yeah, boxing has made me the way I am in some respects; the bad things about me are down to boxing. Boxing brings out the best of you and it brings out the worst in you. People pigeonhole you into a certain type and in the end you kind of become that. You think, “Fuck them! I'll behave like that”. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Whilst being presented as a tough talking totalitarian Graham was, in reality, having problems with the most basic function of a disciplinarian trainer, getting subs from his fighters was something Graham, as a former boxer himself, always found difficult, to the extent that he abandoned the pursuit of subs entirely. BG: “My accountant went crazy when I got another gym a few years back…he knew that I don't ask for subs so that made him crazy. It just didn't add. He told me I'd get no subs and (would) be paying for it all myself. I said “no this time I'll be strict” only this time I was even worse. I gave up trying to get subs off fighters years ago. “Everyone who trains at my gym trains here for free and in many ways that is how it should be. Most fighters haven't got the money on them half the time anyway so charging subs for sessions is a waste of time. You get sick of asking for them and in the end it doesn't bother you. “People don't really know what I'm about and I want to explain myself. I want people to have an idea of where I'm coming from. I want people to know what I'm like. I'm not making myself out to be anything great but I want people to know that I've trained people who cost me money. I trained them because I liked them and this is the only gym in the country that doesn't charge subs. In the scheme of things little things like that don't matter but it means something to me that a fighter could come to me and train here without having to owe me anything. That is the way I've been all the time. I just let things go because I can't be mithered. “I've not taken fights on just for the money. I've turned money down so people can't call me for morals and that. I could have been more popular (within boxing) if I hadn't given a fuck about the fighters but I care about them. I try to be what I am.” One thing Graham does ask of his fighters is that they share a bond with him, a firm believer in personal chemistry Graham has often gone on record as saying that he cannot work with someone he dislikes. BG: “I can't work with a fighter unless I like him. There are very few fighters I dislike anyway. They are people I get on with. I have to feel something for the fighter to get the passion for working with them. It would probably be easier to be the other way. To be more remote. I can't do it (train a fighter) unless I am attached. “It is not a conscious effort but if some guy wants to work with me and he is an obnoxious fucker then he won't get anywhere near me. If I walked into that ring and didn't care about him, his family and his friends then I wouldn't be able to feel the way I do when I go into the ring with a fighter.” Despite feeling friendship for his fighters Graham also recognises the rigours of the sport, stressing that a trainer must find the median between crazy courage and calculated caution. BG: “I'm not squeamish in the corner. People pay me to help them win fights. Fighters are not thinking about getting hurt in the ring…he (the fighter) knows it (hurt) is going to happen and (that) the business is brutal so he doesn't think about it. He only thinks about winning. He is scared of losing instead of being scared of being hurt. I have to give him every opportunity to win the fight. “A fighter has to come through being staggered and being hurt. The crowd can be roaring the other guy on and he has to think about being able to get his senses and hold on without all the time thinking (about his trainer) “don't stop it, don't stop it”. That is what I was thinking as a fighter. “Some of my fighters had the most brutal fights seen in a British boxing ring so I've seen first-hand what it takes and that is why I won't stop a fight at the drop of a hat. “For that reason I always tell my fighters to let me know if they are ill. They have lied to me in the past because they know I'll pull a fight. I want them to be ready because I let them know they might have to come through some terrible situations so I always insist on my fighters being right. I think there is a risk of stopping a fight too soon as well as too late. Fighters come to win. I don't work with people who aren't ambitious and are only there for a few quid. “Although there is nothing wrong with that journeyman type of fighter. Boxing has to have journeymen to survive, there are all types of fighters in boxing and I work with ones who want to get somewhere and don't want to be stopped early. I'm not squeamish but I try to be compassionate.” In the final part Graham talks some more about the role of a boxing trainer before discussing his personal attitude, his public perception, plus his affinity with the fans, before then addressing one or two of the accusations made about his character on Internet forums, including his thoughts on some of the more serious allegations that have appeared about him online.

Go back Comment on this article | Send to a friend | Print

great interview May 24th 2008, 06:15:51 by ian edwards really interesting stuff, thanks Terry