944 Quotes by Stephen Richards

My first sparring session with him saw him bullying me around the ring, so I thought fuck this, and when he came back in close, I threw the boxing code of conduct out of the window and hit him with a cracking right hand in to the balls! That sapped the energy out of him and that was the end of that. In the end, I could take anything he threw at me and then I’d come back with mine, which he didn’t like and people would comment on how much I’d ‘come on’.

I had a burning desire in me to win and started to get him on the back foot. I was looking for that one special shot when I put him down with the famous Horsley Muckspreader right hand… an unstoppable force. Incredibly, he got up and took the count and the ref waved us to continue.

Eventually, it was around midnight, I was told to get ready and put the gloves on. I felt physically depleted and drained of energy, and had no get-up-and-go left in me. I wanted a bed badly, not a boxing ring.

The crowd started cheering as soon as they seen him, he was one of them, a local lad from Lancashire. In the first round, I tried to put him away but my punches had nothing in them, I might as well as been hitting thin air. It was then that I knew I had to really dig deep if I wanted to hear the final bell; I threw a clever little corkscrew right. A great shot, but ineffective unless it hits with some vigour, which it didn’t!

I made another comeback in the sweet science of boxing, and nobody say I’ve had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra… ‘cos he’s dead.

He spouted out, ‘Richy, I’ve just been talking to a bloke from Blackpool on the phone, there’s a boxing show tomorrow night and they are desperate for a heavyweight. Will you fight?’ I retorted, ‘Are you joking. I haven’t trained for four months; I’ll be blowing after thirty seconds.’ He pleaded, ‘Howay, man. It’ll be a night out down Blackpool.

There is no ‘out there’, only ‘here’ exists.

I started to develop a penchant for the odd hot foil of smack. After all those years of calling junkies ‘the scum of the earth’, I had now fallen by the wayside and had become a junkie myself!

What you fight hard for never let go of easily!