From classic world title fights to a prison stint, Michael Brodie reveals all
Not so long ago, Michael Brodie was a hero in British boxing and the pride of his city. But rotten luck conspired with heartache to wreck his desire and, in turn, his career. During a meeting with Terry Dooley, Brodie reveals the brutal lows of his career
IN Manchester and Salford’s boxing circles there is a name that drops as frequently as the recurrent rain the cities are famous for, a one-two of syllables that encapsulates the formative days of the area’s recent boxing zeitgeist: “Brodee…bro-dee…bro-dee”.
As in Michael “Mikie” Brodie, one of the chief architects of the boxing boom that swept the North West from the 1990s. Brodie, a name mentioned when talk turns to British boxers who should have won a world title. And Brodie, the forgotten fighter who has fallen out of boxing’s public eye since retiring in 2009 after a comeback that started with a thrilling fourth-round win over Mark Alexander then abruptly ended in a third-round loss to Anthony Crolla.
Boxing News caught up with him on a moody Manchester evening, one of those ones where the air reeked of that metallic whiff that signals the onset of rain. The 43-yearold was parked outside a strip of shops in Ancoats, as he drove me to his place in Collyhurst we passed some drug addicts who were hunkered down over their doings. Brodie pointed them out and said: “Living around here is like being in Beirut. I love it, though. I grew up around here – I know everyone and everyone knows me.”
The former British, Commonwealth and EBU – a title he defended five times – super-bantamweight champion, he also held the WBF and IBO featherweight straps, forged his style and attitude on the streets of North Manchester then honed them within the confines of the gym. Sadly, his mother died when he was 15, and raised by his brother in his father’s absence, the youngster took to the streets again. “It was hard when my mam first died,” he stated.
“At first, I’d be out with my mates getting into mischief, because I was without my mam. My mam brought me up well when she was there and then my brother was there for me, but I was doing my own thing. Boxing got me on the right path again. I started behaving myself. I came from nothing, I think I did amazing to get to where I got. Look at what happens to most of the kids from around here, no one gives them anything.”
Despite enjoying a cult status, Brodie believes that the sport has forgotten him. “It is a bittersweet feeling because I feel I got left behind,” he said. “I fell out with [manager] Jack [Trickett] after I retired. He promised me a lot of things, like saying he’d be with me in court for my divorce then phoning me on the day to say he wouldn’t. I was dropped by everyone, it isn’t nice. “It’s like I fell off the boxing world after I retired. I got left on my own. People get media work, no one gave me any help and I just had my friends around me. They forget about you if you’re not fashionable. If I’m watching a big fight on the telly, I think ‘F ***** g hell, that was me a few years ago’. Then you remember that it has gone and feel a bit down.” Brodie’s reputation was made in a series of tough bouts – most notably an epic first fight with In-jin Chi for the vacant WBC featherweight belt in October 2003 – yet his vacant British superbantamweight title encounter against Neil Swain in March 1997 remains the exemplar, a come-frombehind 10th-round KO win after an attritional battle.
“It is the hardest fight I ever had, I p **** d blood for three days. I was getting beat. I kept saying to myself, ‘Carry on, don’t give up and you’ll win’. He broke my nose in the first. I still snort and cough now,” he said, looking and sounding exactly like a man who got his nose done early. Phlegm is coughed up to make room for his words to be uttered.
“You can’t breathe through your nose so you try to blow the s**t out of it to clear it and that makes your eyes swell more. At the end, I saw him pulling his hand back [for a right hand], I thought, ‘I’m gone if he hits me with that’ and hit him with a right hand right on the
IT’S LIKE I FELL OFF THE BOXING WORLD WHEN I RETIRED. I GOT LEFT ON MY OWN. NO ONE GAVE ME ANY HELP”
chin – it knocked him spark out. “After the fight, my nose felt like it was down to my belly. My eyes were swollen. I was holding my baby daughter and she was looking at me as if to say, ‘Who is that?!’ It wasn’t a nice feeling having your kid seeing you with shiners.”
The fight also made a lasting impression on a young ringside observer. Future British superwelterweight champion Jamie Moore - who staged a domestic classic with Matthew Macklin in 2006 – first fell in love with the Lonsdale Belt at Swain-brodie.
“The first pro fight I ever sat ringside for was Brodie and Swain,” added Moore. “To see the extent both fighters went to trying to win inspired me. His Lonsdale Belt was the first one I ever touched. It made me want one. Mike’s style and heart made him so good to watch, he is the unsung hero of the Manchester scene.”
“Getting the Lonsdale Belt was a big thing, you see world champions who haven’t got one who would have loved to have won that belt,” Brodie concurred. “I won proper titles in proper fights. I’m not being bigheaded, but I believe I put Manchester on the map. Ricky [Hatton] was just coming up, we’d had Maurice Core, Ensley Bingham and all them – I just feel I took it up another level.”
Brodie twice came close to lifting the WBC belt that he had always coveted, a decision defeat for the vacant 122lb crown against Willie Jorrin in September 2000 and a draw against Chi for the Mexico-based organisation’s 126lb strap. The Jorrin fight was widely thought to have gone the wrong way. The Chi battle was closer, and was initially announced as a majority win for the visitor only for Jose Sulaiman to make a post-fight amendment due to an error on Hubert Minn’s scorecard.
The fact that referee Daniel Van de Wiele erroneously ordered the officials to deduct a point from Brodie after an accidental clash of heads has left a lingering sense of injustice. A rematch was ordered, with a more emphatic outcome as the marauding Korean swept his co-challenger aside in seven rounds.
“People still go on about that Jorrin fight,” he said. “Thinking I’d won the belt for those few minutes [before the decision was announced] was amazing. Then it was all taken away from me. I felt sick. I wanted to cry in the ring and was depressed after it – I didn’t even want to go out the house. I thought I was done with boxing. I was close to retirement then decided to get back into it.
“After I came back at featherweight and got a few wins, [promoter] Barry [Hearn] said ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got you a fight against Chi.’ I watched him try to murder Morales for 12 rounds and thought ‘I’m not getting any easy fights here.’”
A messy divorce from his wife, who he had married a week after the Jorrin reverse, blighted the backdrop of the rematch with Chi and was still distressing him going into his final world title shot, a fourth-round KO defeat to the tough WBO boss Scott Harrison at the MEN Arena in June 2005. By that point, the fire and desire that had dragged Brodie through the mire on hard nights had deserted him as he lost both his wife and the family home that he had worked so hard to acquire.
THEY MADE ME OUT TO BE PABLO ESCOBAR. NO ONE APOLOGISED TO ME”
“By the second Chi fight my head wasn’t in it. I beat him in the first fight. They took a point off when they shouldn’t have. It burned my head out. It was a tough fight, a really tough one, but I’d been there with Swain so knew I could come through it. Don’t get me wrong, I won the IBO and WBF titles, but they don’t mean a thing to me because they aren’t world titles. The WBC is a proper title. In my heart I’m a world champion, they just didn’t give me the belt,” Brodie said as he narrowed the eyes that still look like they’re recovering from a fight.
“The divorce went on and on. It started really affecting me after the contest with Chi. I convinced myself that it would be good for me to fight again even though family and friends were telling me not to, my heart just wasn’t in it.”
Ironically, he had also turned down a gilt-edged opportunity to relocate to Las Vegas in order to stay close to home. In a real-life echo of his in-ring style, Brodie went with his heart rather than his head when making his decision.
“Barry took me over to Las Vegas to try to set me up over there. I’d just got married so I couldn’t do it, which I regret now. I was big in Manchester yet reckon I’d have been bigger if I’d have fought over in America. Mike Mccallum was going to train me, we met up and he was a lovely bloke.”
Post-retirement, Brodie had a brush with notoriety after he was charged and later acquitted of possessing cocaine with intent to supply when police discovered around 1kg of the drug under the passenger seat of the taxi he was driving in November 2011. His passenger was also arrested and later sentenced. Brodie was held on remand until the police confirmed that his employers had handed him that fateful fare.
“There are wrong ‘uns around here, but it was a fare so I took him to where he wanted to go and got nicked. It took the police six months to ask the taxi firm for the job sheet for that day, which showed the fare had gone through them. While that was happening I was on remand and lost my licence to drive a taxi.
“My oldest [child] is 20 now, for her to be phoning me crying about it was a bad thing. No one from the boxing world acknowledged me after I retired, but the people in prison did because they appreciated my career. It was a horrible experience. We got no cheese butties, just a cup of tea and straight up boredom.
“It was all over the press, then I was acquitted and it was hardly mentioned. They had made me out to be Pablo Escobar, like I was driving drugs up and down the country. No one apologised to me after all that bad press.”
Now working as a builder and eyeing a move into training, he hopes that some of the regeneration money trickling into North Manchester will come his way so that he can fund his own gym. An accomplished boxer-puncher in his prime, the game remains in his genes and Brodie hopes that he can impart his ring and life wisdom to the local youths. If this new dream comes to fruition that famous name will ring out again.