THE FIGHTING FIREMAN
Terry Marsh had his last fight 30 years ago this month, but he remains one of British boxing’s most engrossing characters. Life has thrown plenty his way but, as Ben Dirs discovers, the Londoner has managed to survive it all
We sit down with Terry Marsh to discuss his incredible life in and out of the ring
➤Marsh had a stint working in a betting shop but joined the Royal Marines after seeing an advert on a packed commuter train: ‘Green Berets – do you think you can hack it?’ Unsurprisingly, Marsh was convinced he could.
Boxing for the Royal Navy, Marsh won three senior ABA titles – one at lightweight, two at welterweight – and reached another final at light-welterweight. During this run, Marsh experienced the first lash of injustice at the hands of “men in grey suits”, who crop up frequently in Marsh’s stories.
“I won the welterweight title the year of the 1980 Olympics, but they wanted me to have a box-off against the previous year’s champion, Joey Frost, even though I’d beaten him comfortably. So I thought, ‘sod this, I’m not going to entertain it’. I can’t get along with jobsworths. Joey went to Moscow, I went to Ireland for six months. One night, I was putting my camouflage cream on, about to go out on patrol, and Joey was boxing on TV. I just started laughing.”
When others might have been weighing up a career as a pro, Marsh decided he wanted to be an army officer. But Marsh wasn’t exactly
I SPRINTED TO THE NEUTRAL CORNER... I DON’T REGRET MANY THINGS, BUT THAT WAS SO UNCOOL
classic officer material, not least because his time in Northern Ireland had turned him into a Republican sympathiser. Unfortunately – or fortunately, whichever way you want to look at it – Marsh didn’t have the funds to put himself through college to get the necessary qualifications. “And then I got a call from some guy called Frank Warren, who wanted me to turn pro. I thought, ‘I can earn a few quid here, to supplement my studies’. It was just a means to an end.”
But Marsh – and by extension Warren – had a problem, namely that boxers who make purists purr in the amateurs often struggle to sell tickets in the pros.
“My brother used to say: ‘You know what, Tel, you’re the only boxer I know who has all his supporters in the changing room.’ I was a liability for Frank, but all his other fighters kept falling by the wayside and I kept winning.”
But Marsh was still trying to escape. Having got married, he ditched his plans to become an army officer and joined the fire brigade. “I did the training and thought that was it. But then they offered me a final eliminator for the British light-welterweight title against Tony Sinnott, so I took it as a pay-day.
“The plan was to clear off my overdraft and go back to the day job. But I beat Sinnott and fought Clinton Mckenzie for the British title. He was ranked four or five in the world and the fight was on the telly. I beat him on points, showed a hell of a lot, and now ITV had a fighter they could run with. Now I’d started winning, I got to thinking, ‘the quickest way out now is to win a world title’.”
To that end, Warren went to work. Even before Marsh had added the European crown in 1985, there was talk of him challenging American Gene “Mad Dog” Hatcher for the WBA title. “I remember visualising the poster in Las Vegas,” says Marsh, grinning. “‘Mad Dog and Englishman – Out in the Midday Sun’.” However, Hatcher lost his belt and perhaps the most inventive fight tagline ever dreamed up never saw the light of day.
Attention turned to Italy’s Patrizio Oliva, who landed the WBA title in 1986. Because Oliva had won gold at the 1980 Olympics and been voted boxer of the tournament, Marsh saw a fight against him as a chance to settle another score, but Oliva twice pulled out of scheduled matches to leave Marsh frustrated.
When Warren secured IBF champion Joe Manley, Marsh wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels. “I’d seen Manley beat Gary Hinton, who had only just lost to Aaron Pryor on a split decision. So I thought, ‘what am I going to do here’?”
IT WAS COLD AND HE CLIMBED INTO THE RING WEARING A SILK DRESSING GOWN
Marsh pulled a few strings with his mates on Basildon council (Labour, naturally) and it was announced that the fight would take place under a big top in his home town, because there wasn’t an existing venue big enough. When Marsh started babbling about biorhythms at the pre-fight press conference, Manley must have thought one of the circus clowns had snuck in.
“I told everyone I’d looked up his biorhythms and that they were at an all-time low, whereas mine were at their peak. After the fight, Jim Mcdonnell, who was always asking about training routines, phoned me and said, ‘Tel, about these biorhythms…’ I said, ‘Jimmy, I just made it up, to psyche him out’. It worked.
“It was March and very cold, so I was all wrapped up and wearing tracksuit bottoms, but he climbed into the ring wearing a silk dressing gown, as if he’d already won the fight. I thought: ‘Well, the first three rounds are mine.’”
Rather than be overcome by the vociferous home support, Marsh was able to rationalise and dismiss it.
“I don’t mean this in a derogatory way, but I didn’t worry about letting anyone down, because where were they when I was fighting in France, Bristol or Bradford? And they all thought I was going to get beat anyway. And because I thought I was going to get beat, I decided to have a tear-up, do myself proud, go down fighting and get carried out on my shield.
“The game plan was basic – work hard and make him work harder than me; throw the jab, throw the right hand, jump in quick, so that he wasn’t able to counter, wait for the referee to break and do the same thing all over again.
“Beforehand, he said that when he was fighting Hinton, he kept saying to himself, ‘Joe Frazier, Joe Frazier’, while thinking of Frazier versus Ali. So in about round eight, I rushed him on the ropes, and while I was banging away at him I said in his ear: ‘Joe Frazier ain’t gonna help you now, mate…’
“I didn’t expect to knock him out, but I put two or three shots together, every one hit him and as he was falling over, I thought: ‘What do I do now?’ Other fighters hit someone on the chin, walk away and then their opponent falls down. But I sprinted to the neutral corner, because I was so desperate for the ref to take up the count. I don’t regret many things, but that was so uncool.”
Manley was saved by the bell in the ninth but didn’t last long in the 10th before referee Randy Neumann stepped in. Marsh leapt off his stool and launched into a somersault. He didn’t look like a man whose heart wasn’t in the game.
“My mind went straight back to the North East Divs at York Hall, many years earlier.
I remember my dad saying to all his mates, ‘I reckon if I got a fighter I could make them into
a champion’. All his mates started giving him banter, ‘P**s off, you don’t know what you’re talking about’. Well, Jim, you done it…”
The plan was to make one successful defence, retire undefeated and go back to firefighting full time. There was talk of fighting Puerto Rican maniac Hector Camacho or fellow Brit and welterweight world champion Lloyd Honeyghan. Instead, four months after upsetting Manley, Marsh stopped Japan’s Aki Kameda - a scrap engineered by Warren - at the Royal Albert Hall. But soon after, things got complicated.
Marsh says he suffered his first blackout before winning the world title. Having suffered a second, a neurologist diagnosed him with epilepsy. Because Marsh is never one to mince his words, some of his version of what happened next will have to remain between me and him. But here goes…
Warren had secured a mandatory defence against an American called Frankie Warren (yep, it’s complicated). But when Marsh told
The Sun that he was suffering with epilepsy and would have to retire, despite signing medical documents just days before which indicated the contrary, boxer and promoter fell out in a big way.
In particular, Warren was furious with the epilepsy revelations - fighter claimed “everyone who needed to know, knew” while promoter insisted he knew nothing of the sort - and soon libel claims were flying. Warren sued The
Sun over defamatory allegations and won a settlement, including an apology and damages. Meanwhile, Marsh lost his job as a fireman. A disagreement with the British Boxing Board of Control scuppered his hopes of becoming a promoter, and an attempt to get his boxer’s licence back was also unsuccessful after he failed to undergo the required examinations. “Suddenly, it was all gone,” Marsh recalls.
On November 30, 1989, Warren was shot and left for dead outside the Broadway Theatre in Barking, East London. The mystery assailant, who wore a scarf and a hood, escaped on foot.
Warren made a full recovery. But two months after the incident, Marsh was charged with attempted murder and banged up on remand. At his trial, the prosecution said his quarrel with Warren had given him the motive for murder.
When I put it to Marsh that people weren’t exactly surprised when they heard he’d been arrested, given what had gone before, he put forward an alternative theory for the attack. Alas, this hit the cutting room floor.
But the fact is this: having been remanded in custody for 10 months in some of the country’s toughest prisons, Marsh was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
“The Old Bill didn’t care if I shot Frank Warren or not and I wanted them to think that I did it, because that makes them idiots. And if I hadn’t taken anything positive from my time inside, they’d have beaten me twice. But I ended up winning, because the experience enhanced me. I emerged a better person, but not due to the prison – you can’t give them any credit.”
After his release, Marsh gained a degree in politics. Having defected from the Labour Party (“I was at the conference in 1996, and when Tony Blair was getting a standing ovation, I was the only one sitting down”), he was due to stand for the Liberal Democrats at the 1997 General Election, but forced to step down after being accused of fraud. Again, he was acquitted. Marsh ended up in the City as a stockbroker and was making a tidy living, as brokers do, until he turned whistle-blower and was made redundant.
“It opened my eyes to the power of the banks. The City is a racket, a Ponzi scheme,
a way for the elites to cling on to power. Neo-liberalism means the same people winning all the time, so, by definition, the system must be rigged.
“Alexander Pope had a poem, words to the effect that it doesn’t matter if you’re Capitalist or Socialist, it’s the sincerity of the people in charge that matters. That’s why I’m behind Corbyn, his intentions are honourable. Then again, I was worried he would win the election, because that would have made me mainstream, and I haven’t been mainstream the whole of my adult life.”
Now retired, Marsh, who has three grownup children and two grandkids, looks after his disabled brother and helps out once a week at the local boxing club, where most of the kids are unaware he ever fought. A few years ago, he took up chess boxing, before winning the world title and retiring undefeated.
After talking me through chess boxing strategy, Marsh, 59 going on 30, nips inside and returns with his World Chess Boxing Association belt, grinning from ear to ear.
“I’m more proud of this than the IBF belt, truth be told.”
Asked if he would have done anything different, Marsh replies: “I would have taped a few conversations. But I’m in a great place. I can look in the mirror every night, while I’m cleaning my teeth, and say: ‘No f **** r ever beat me.’”