‘I loved to bully bullies’
A part-time job as a nightclub bouncer in Yeoville in the heady 1980s led to a legendary street fight between Lionel Hunter and the gangster Gary Beuthin. It was but one violent confrontation in a life filled with them but it cemented Hunter’s tough-guy r
When Lionel Hunter became a bouncer in the late 1980s, gangster Gary Beuthin had already embarked on his reign of terror at Johannesburg nightclubs. Hunter, a printer by day, started his secondary, nocturnal career part-time at Late Night Al’s in
Bruma.
He would stop off in Rockey Street, Yeoville, for a nightcap on his way home. The man who owned the popular clubs Talking Heads and Dylan’s, as well as a nearby restaurant, asked whether Hunter would consider working at these establishments too.
Beuthin, a bodybuilder with aggression issues, was a problem; every time he rolled in, the bouncers ran for cover.
“Ja, sure,” replied Hunter, a retired middleweight and light-heavyweight boxer who had engaged in 99 amateur fights and 18 professional bouts.
From the moment he agreed, the showdown against Beuthin seemed written in the stars.
Now 57, Hunter has a successful second-hand BMW spare parts dealership in downtown Johannesburg. In his spare time he’s a pastor and a wily boxing coach. It’s not uncommon for his fighters to score upset wins against more favoured opponents.
This afternoon one of his prospects, Smangele “Smash” Hadebe, fights a six-rounder in KwaThema, Springs. He’s already tipping her as a future world champion.
Confidence is not negotiable in the hurt game. Hunter has never entertained the prospect of defeat. Not once, not even when he was at primary school, taming bigger kids.
Growing up carefree in Kibler Park, south of Johannesburg, Hunter loved the outdoors and played every sport possible with his mates, swing-jumping like Tarzan from a rope into the Klip River and catching snakes in the veld.
Hunter sold the harmless ones to kids at school. “One day I caught 98 snakes. I’d catch all kinds, even rinkhals. We used to sell blackheads for 10c, eggeaters for like R2, auroras for R1.50.
“And then I got bit by a burrowing adder, and then there were no more snakes allowed in school.”
It sank one fang into the middle finger of his right hand. “I sucked my finger and spat, you know, cowboy style.”
Hunter, in standard 6 at the time, spent a week in hospital. “I’ve still got no feeling in this finger.”
Hunter’s father, Stanley, who worked as a warehouse storeman, pushed him and his older brother Kevin into sport. The latter was good at rugby and was also academically gifted. Hunter just loved fighting, inside or outside the boxing ring. He would “give a klap” to any guys who caused trouble with his younger sister, Natalie, and he always fought the bigger kids.
“I loved to bully bullies.”
He grew to 1.85m and turned to bouncing full time after giving up his printing job. He wrote his resignation on the back of a warning letter he’d been given for talking at work.
The infamous Yeoville scrap
It took nearly two years before he and Beuthin duked it out. “He wasn’t scared of me,” Hunter says, “but he was wary. He didn’t just come and tell me what I must do, like he did with all the other guys.”
One night, however, Beuthin was raging outside Talking Heads, looking for a scrap.
“I’ll fight anybody here for R1,000,” Beuthin roared. That was a red flag to Hunter, whose job was to keep the establishments safe and fun for patrons.
Whenever Hunter had to use his fists on unruly intruders, he tried doing it out of sight of customers. He’d lure troublemakers into the toilets, kitchen or out on the pavement and then fell them with a short left hook.
He’d slap them awake à la Asterix and then walk them off the premises. Few people saw him in action.
His strategy with Beuthin was similar. “Look, I don’t have R1,000,” he told the raging posturer, “but I’ll fight you for nothing.”
Beuthin nodded: “Let’s go.”
Hunter ushered his opponent down an adjacent alleyway where he had engaged in quite a few rumbles — called “one-outs” and held out of the way so nobody else could get involved.
Onlookers watched from the alley entrance some 35m away.
Hunter’s left hand was broken at the time, which might have been a handicap for most people, but not him. He had once fought the final of an amateur tournament with two broken hands (he still dropped his opponent but lost by a split decision) and there were even times as a bouncer when he worked with two bust hands. A broken metacarpal required a few weeks’ rest, forcing Hunter to improvise.
“I had to use my elbows because you’ve got to still hit the oke. You can’t tell him, ‘Hey, my hands are sore, don’t make trouble.’ ”
Hunter knew he couldn’t afford to wrestle Beuthin — word on the street was that he was strong and once he had someone down, he would jump on them until they had to be stretchered to intensive care.
Hunter waited for a gap and bombed his right hand into Beuthin’s chin, dropping him.
“Get up!” Hunter ordered. Beuthin obliged.
Another right hand put Beuthin down a second time.
Hunter used to put the boot into fallen troublemakers, a useful trick to ensure they didn’t return quickly.
“Once you break the guy’s ribs, for three months afterwards he remembers every time he wants to go to the toilet, every time he coughs. He thinks, ‘I mustn’t make trouble there again.’ ”
But at the time of the Beuthin fight Hunter was facing a charge of assault. His victim, who was in a coma, was a 1.98m brawler who had made the mistake of going to a club guarded by Hunter. The giant and two of his brothers had beaten up a good friend of Hunter’s. They were also banned from that particular club.
Hunter took him on in the toilets, putting him down with a left hook, then “I jumped on his face”. “I was mal with this guy.”
Hunter saw the police photos of the huge man that were taken at the hospital. “They didn’t see it but I saw it — I could check the purple lines of the design under my takkies on his face.”
He intended to put the man in hospital but not to kill him, and was relieved when the man recovered. Hunter was acquitted after two witnesses contradicted each other in court. The giant couldn’t remember anything.
Cementing a fearsome reputation
Back to Beuthin. He rose from the second knockdown, still seething, and went to Hunter’s Ford Escort, which was parked in the alley. Breaking off a side window shield, he launched another attack, trying to stab Hunter with the jagged edge.
“Then I gave him a good hiding. He got up and tried to run away and I ran after him and I tripped his foot.”
Beuthin fell into the road in front of a group of policemen. He stood up and shouted to them, pointing at Hunter: “Arrest that man, he’s assaulted me.”
The cops, who knew Beuthin well, laughed him off the strip.
Word of Hunter’s triumph rapidly spread through Johannesburg’s nightclubs. “People celebrated all over,” Hunter recalls.
That fight became folklore and Beuthin was hurting. He phoned Hunter and told him he was coming after him.
Before he could carry out his threat, however, the increasingly unstable Beuthin kidnapped a socialite, Jill Reeves, and went on the run in a stolen car for nearly two weeks.
Beuthin was front-page news by the time he gave himself up in May 1992.
When Beuthin went to prison, Hunter sent him a message through a warder he knew: “Lionel says hi.”
Beuthin went berserk, breaking everything in his cell. He was eventually released but was unable to stay out of trouble and was soon back in prison.
Hunter gave up bouncing after five years. By the end he had turned to cocaine to stay awake at night.
“I looked at myself one day and I said, ‘This is not how my father raised me to be.’
“I was a hooligan. I was vicious.”
From making R10,000 a month he started working at a scrapyard for R2,000, but it turned out he had a knack for selling parts.
Hunter’s reputation as a street fighter lingered for a long time. It proved a hindrance when he was trying to woo Shereen, who is now his wife. They went on a blind date and then she ducked his calls for a few weeks. When he finally convinced her to go on a second date, he took along his three children — from three different women — so she could see he was a good father.
It worked. Shereen married Hunter and introduced him to religion. As a pastor he has worked with prisoners and recovering drug addicts.
He, in turn, introduced Shereen to boxing. Their daughter Chelsea, 10, is keen to don gloves and dad is happy to teach her.
“She’ll be able to look after herself with boys,” he says, also laughing off concerns that she might lose her looks. “I’ll teach her to block and move her head.”
Hunter’s confidence is as high as ever — watch out for his boxers.