The Strange Case of Heavyweight Paul Sykes, Britain’s Hardest Prisoner
By Robert Brizel, Head Real Combat Media Boxing Correspondent
By far, the strangest fighter ever to come out of Great Britain has to be the late heavyweight Paul Sykes (1946-2007). While Sykes was no Frank Bruno or Lennox Lewis, Sykes remains perhaps the most famous, infamous and colorful ex-con. Coming into the year 1990, the troubled Sykes had spent 21 of his past 26 years in 18 different prisons.
Sykes was a championship caliber weight lifter, heavyweight boxer, accomplished author, highly educated college graduate (accomplished in prison), frequent prisoner, and was employed (in the Rocky Balboa tradition) as an effective ‘threatengram’ debt collector.
Of formidable size and great ability to move, Sykes became known as a talented amateur out of Wakefield, England, boxing at the Robin Hood, White Rose, and Thorpe Amateur boxing clubs.
As an adult, Sykes’s life featured alcohol abuse, petty robberies, violent crimes and prison stints. However, during a brief period of rehabilitation, Sykes fought ten bouts as a professional boxer between 1978 and 1980. Believed to have great promise, Sykes was pushed too far too fast, but received great publicity in the United Kingdom during his brief rise and fall. In his sixth fight, Sykes knocked American David Wilson unconscious draped over the ring ropes, before referee Warner ended the bout almost too late. Take to the hospital, Wilson was put on a life support machine, and needed a month in the hospital to recover from the Sykes bout. Wilson’s boxing career was ended by Sykes.
Sykes had only eight professional bouts when he fought and was stopped when he turned his back in the sixth round by 30-1 champion John L. Gardner in a British and Commonwealth British Empire title challenge. The most physically fit prisoner in British history, Sykes could knee bend 500 pounds, but his lack of experience, battles with booze, and troubles with the law did not serve to give his boxing career the focus he needed to succeed, publicity aside.
Both of Sykes son wound up receiving life sentences and are incarcerated for murder, perhaps a continuance of the lifestyle and cycle of skirmishes with the law of their father, but perhaps not. Paul never committed murder, despite his rough tough reputation. The author of the book ‘Sweet Agony’, Sykes died of cirrhosis of the liver on March 7, 2007.
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