Shadow boxing

Published on Saturday 9 June 2007 00:29

HE was a talented fighter with a mean right hook and a jaw as tough as the city that made him.

And when he trained, they said he danced with ghosts. It was all there for Scott Harrison, who fought his way out of Glasgow's East End to become world featherweight champion: wealth, respect, the immortality of the record books. But no-one ever told the kid when to stop fighting. The last 18 months have been what one commentator called a "rolling tragedy", as life has done what no other boxer could do - put Scott Harrison against the ropes, soften his body and blur his mind. Last month Harrison failed to appear in court in Glasgow over an alleged fight at a pub because he was in prison in Spain after being arrested for a similar incident there. He now faces five charges in two countries, including assault, breach of the peace, and an alleged attack on a police officer so vicious he was left blind in one eye. This amid revelations of alcoholism, weight gain and depression.

They call it shadow boxing; every fighter has his demons. Yet what drives a man to turn his fists on himself; what compels him to follow triumph with tragedy? And what of the young men who follow him, the kids who cram into musty gyms in the belief that if you punch hard enough life's obstacles will eventually give way? In short, what does Scottish boxing look like in the shadow of Scott Harrison, another in the country's long line of talented but doomed fighters?

The Forgewood Amateur Boxing Club is housed in a rickety trailer in a tough area of Motherwell. Four council high rises enclose it like corners of a ring. It is located across the street from the Ebenezer Evangelical Church, and there is an invisible barrier separating those who seek salvation in the gym or the church and the men loitering with half-empty beer cans in the doorway of an adjacent betting shop. The church and the boxing club are "over there", the men explain, pointing into the distance even as they are close enough to hear the sound of a skipping rope tapping canvas and hymns rising from the choir stalls.

Three nights a week at Forgewood young men stalk around rows of punching bags or go toe to toe in one of two sparring rings. Above them, disused boxing gloves hang by their laces like swollen Christmas decorations. Around here you are known by name or as "big man" and should you choose to speak, you do so briefly and within centimetres of another man's face to be heard over the din of fists pounding leather and the "hiss, hiss" of fighters exhaling with each punch.

Boxing clubs like Forgewood may teach jabs and hooks but they trade on hope. On the walls hang posters and news clippings from past Scottish champions. They peer down on the fighters - fists up, offering a challenge. The centre of the wall is dedicated to Benny Lynch, Scotland's most famous boxer, who won a world title in 1935. He died from malnutrition in a Glasgow gutter 11 years later, unable, they say, to turn down the drinks offered by those who wanted to toast their countryman's success. In the photo, Lynch, a flyweight, is tiny, elfin, and with his old-style open stance it's not clear whether he's asking for a fight or to be embraced.

It was all supposed to be different for Scott Harrison, who idolised Lynch growing up and to this day has a life-size oil painting of him on his bedroom wall (Harrison himself is an avid oil painter). In boxing's persistent narrative of the rise and fall from grace, Harrison's life was designed to embrace the former. The son of a fighter, he trained in a gym similar to Forgewood, with the hope that his fists could carry him above the wasteland around him. The gym was called The Phoenix.

But what happens when a man is pushed to the limit of starvation and is asked to return there over and over again? Experts agree that one of Harrison's strengths was his ability to "shift" weight - a boxing euphemism for the hunger strike required of all fighters to make all weight classes below heavyweight. Most featherweights like Harrison lose 20lbs in the 12 weeks before a fight. Harrison would lose 40, according to Niall MacFarlane, a sports scientist from Glasgow University and Harrison's medical trainer. MacFarlane believes that the extreme weight loss left Harrison short-tempered. He points out that most of the alleged bar-room brawls that have landed Harrison in court occurred within a few weeks of fight nights.

"Anyone who has to be hungry, thirsty and tired for 14 weeks would be irritable. There's no doubt that Scott is argumentative by nature, and that he was even quicker to a fight in the weeks leading up to his bouts," MacFarlane says.

Four years ago he and Frank Maloney, Harrison's former manager, pleaded with Harrison to move up a weight class, concerned over his mental and physical health. Harrison refused; to move up would mean giving up his title belt.

At Forgewood, Barry Morrison, 27, is preparing to defend his British light welterweight title - a fight that was due to take place in Motherwell last night. He is one of the ordained few whose poster on the wall has preceded his death: "To reach the top you have to start at the bottom," the poster declares under a picture of a grinning Morrison in his title belt. Morrison, like most of the fighters here, had an impoverished upbringing. Being British champion has not made him rich - until recently he kept a full-time job as a brick layer. There are no nutritionists or medical trainers to help him lose weight for his upcoming fight.

"It's torture," he says of the weight loss, fidgeting and shifting his feet. His face is hollow and sunken. "You get really irritable and antsy. I have a girlfriend and a one-year-old son in the house and this time I told them to get out; if my girlfriend stays I'll just pick fights with her and I don't want my son around when I'm like this. There's no way to control [your mood]. You have to know that when you are dropping the weight you won't be the same person and you have to prepare for that. That's part of the discipline."

In a sport that embraces the theme of salvation in near-religious terms (even the most grizzled journeyman is always only 36 hard-fought minutes from redemption), it is not unusual for that theme to become inverted in a boxer's mind, and for them to speak of persecution. Harrison's father and trainer, Peter, recently told a radio interviewer that the "media won't rest until my son is in a box".

Former world lightweight champion turned television pundit Jim Watt says all talented fighters have to deal with a media that will tear them down as quickly as it builds them up. "It's a question of moving from the back pages to the front pages. Boxing writers are sports fans to begin with, and they want to write about a sportsman's achievements. But if a fighter finds himself in the news pages, especially for an unsavoury reason, it's a totally different story. You can't imagine the psychological effect this can have; just as a fighter tends to believe the hype of the sportswriters, so too can he start to doubt himself and feel lost if he suddenly gets negative coverage in the news section," he says.

For most of the kids at Forgewood, just getting into the news would be a goal. When it's announced that a reporter and photographer have arrived, fighters position themselves for the camera and hover around for the opportunity to list their record and discuss their style. Boxing has been called the loneliest sport in the world. And while a fighter like Harrison will have an entourage of trainers, doctors and promoters, their sole concern will be keeping the champ fit and in the ring. A boxer needs far more personal attention, according to Barry McGuigan, the former WBA world featherweight champion who now heads The British Boxers' Association, a support group for active and retired fighters.

"Boxing does not look after its protagonists," he says. "It can be a brutal business. There are many fighters from disjointed families and broken homes. Boxing gives them an opportunity to make a successful life. But many fighters need counselling, and it's not a culture that is comfortable with that sort of thing. There's a belief that fighters need to feel invincible; but where does that leave them when they need help?"

Archie McKay, the head trainer at Forgewood, is instructor, father figure, counsellor and priest to his fighters. He and his two assistants, Bertie MacShane and Peter McCormick, are volunteers. McKay, a part-time social worker, teaches a boxercise class to local women twice a week to make ends meet. As a kid, he fought out of Forgewood. Now he limps around the gym, his body crippled by heavy labour outside the ring and one too many beatings in it. He's watching one of his professionals, 25-year-old Mark Hastie, spar. He grunts at him to keep his shape, head bowed, guard up, stance askew, but it's not working and the kid is getting bloodied. In between rounds, McKay clears a streak of heavy, viscous blood - Hastie's nose is trying to clot - with the tenderness of a mother wiping a runny nose. "See in the ring, that's just you in there," he says. "You can train the boy hard and scream at them, but in the end it's just them in there."

Later, he says: "Boxing is like life. All I try to do is help kids keep their shape. That's what we teach them here; keep your shape, in boxing and in life. They will make their decisions. You just hope you've taught them well and they've got the discipline they need to make it."

But all the support in the world might not be enough. It has been suggested that boxing attracts conflicted, disturbed individuals; if you don't have rage inside, you don't have a reason to fight. Most of the boxers at Forgewood say they started boxing because they were bullied, or they were angry, or they wanted to feel tough. Many had disciplinary problems; you can tell the most promising prospects by the unseen fire with which they pound the bags. In professional boxing, past champions are a roll call of the unstable, tormented and flawed: Lynch, Mike Tyson, even the affable Frank Bruno (who suffers from bipolar disorder). Just two weeks ago the American super featherweight Diego Corrales died on his motorbike while attempting what one commentator said was a "move that wasn't on, just like he did in the ring".

Sports scientist MacFarlane says: "You talk to any trainer in boxing and they'll tell you that manic depressives make the best fighters. Any sane person would hesitate to go through 14 weeks of starvation and then allow someone to pound their head and body, knowing that it could cause serious and permanent damage. Not to mention the type of person who could summon the desire to inflict that sort of damage on their opponent."

McGuigan adds: "Every fighter needs to have rage. It's the same for all contact sports. The key to boxing is channelling that aggression. Aggression is a component of the human make-up. For many fighters boxing gives them the discipline they need to keep their aggression in check."

Who knows what drives the kids at Forgewood, or where they will end up? They are all desire, punching away under the watchful eyes of fighting spirits long gone. They don't have long in this dream; the best they can hope for is to join the pictures on the wall. Punch hard, the pictures say. Make your mark. When you train, you dance with ghosts.