Ray was visiting Wolverhampton Boxing Club, to watch and inspire some of the young boxers there. The club is very aware of the positive effect boxing can have on a young life, especially being situated in an area of high knife crime. We catch up with Head Coach and a former gangster now promising boxer at they club as they chat to Ray.
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00:00 So Richie we're down here at Wolverhampton Boxing Academy, Boxing Club.
00:04 Boxing Gym yeah.
00:05 Boxing Gym and you're head coach.
00:07 That's correct.
00:08 And we've got a bit of a legend here.
00:10 It's the Boom Boom.
00:11 In my own mind, in my own mind.
00:12 It's the Boom Boom.
00:13 I'll have a moonshot of him here.
00:15 Yeah, yeah Boom Boom Mancini.
00:17 And what's the thinking with getting Boom Boom down then Richie?
00:21 Right, I mean, we've tried, obviously Jimmy, one of my fighters, one of my Midlands champions.
00:27 Yeah, yeah, doing good stuff in the ring at the minute.
00:29 Yeah, yeah.
00:30 What's your, go on, get your name, full name.
00:32 Jermaine Osborne Edwards.
00:33 Cool, look out for that name.
00:35 Cool, yeah.
00:36 We're trying to do something with the knife crime in Wolverhampton.
00:38 Yeah.
00:39 It's gone out of control at the minute.
00:41 It's absolutely horrendous.
00:43 And all we're trying to offer these young kids, if we can save one or two lives from doing down that path,
00:47 get them to the boxing club and it can change lives.
00:51 Boxing can change these kids' lives.
00:53 Yeah, well I guess you're, you know, a testament to that, aren't you?
00:56 Yeah.
00:57 You were leading a colourful life.
00:59 Just fill us in a little bit on kind of where you were and where you are now and how boxing's played a part in that.
01:03 I was in a local gang, of course, Penford.
01:08 Seen a lot of shooting, stabbings, mates getting murdered, you know.
01:13 The last three years, when I had my turning point, when I started going through my spirituality, my meditation,
01:20 I knew I had a purpose and when I come out of it, I wanted to be a professional fighter.
01:26 And that's when someone put me towards Richie and I haven't looked back since.
01:31 I'm his first champion ever.
01:34 So I wasn't making history.
01:36 You were saying it was, speaking to Richie, kind of really just cemented that and brought you on.
01:41 Yeah, he got rid of my anxiety and my low self-esteem and, you know, always thinking that I'm nobody.
01:48 Richie always told me, "You are somebody and you will become my champion."
01:52 And at first, he was giving me anxiety about it, never thought it would be real.
01:57 Now we're here now, take more titles.
02:00 And Boom Boom, where you grew up as a kid, was there always the opportunity to get in trouble if you wanted?
02:08 Yeah, but there wasn't a lot of gang. My gang was more mob life, you know.
02:12 Gangster life, mob life.
02:14 Youngstown, my hometown, is very well known in the States.
02:20 We're at a halfway point between Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
02:22 So we're one of the only cities of our size controlled by both major families.
02:27 And I knew everybody.
02:30 So we were the second biggest steel-producing city in the world.
02:33 Pittsburgh was one.
02:34 So, turn of the century, people come from Eastern and Western Europe to come work in the steel mills because you could always get a job, right?
02:41 So we're a multicultural city.
02:45 But that's where, when you come from, so when there was, the jobs were good.
02:51 So mob life was big because the guys were, you know, gambling was an opportunity, the bars, restaurants.
02:57 I mean, so the guys were spending money.
03:01 When the steel mills shut down in 1977, it was called Black Monday, September 19th, 1977, over 50, over 10,000 men lost their jobs in one week.
03:12 Over 20,000 men in one month, in six months.
03:16 Over 50,000 men in a year.
03:19 It decimated my town.
03:20 So, where do you go?
03:22 When you come from the job, you make it, you have no, and I'm talking about guys that are just working guys.
03:28 Good family men.
03:30 They had no way to make it.
03:31 So they started collecting.
03:32 They started collecting.
03:33 They started making books, doing books, you know, bookmaking.
03:37 You know, they were doing books.
03:39 So they had it turned away because it was there, it was available.
03:43 My brother being one of them, my brother was a collector.
03:46 And it cost him, it cost him his life.
03:49 And so, what I'm saying is, it was, but it was always there.
03:54 But when I was on the Klan, they were proud of me.
03:57 They never wanted anything from me.
03:58 Everyone knew what I was going to do.
04:00 But when I turned pro, they tried to handle me.
04:02 They wanted to be part of me.
04:04 I'll never forget, I'm talking now, I can tell.
04:07 They wanted to handle me.
04:09 But I said to them, I said, "Look, what can you do for my career?"
04:13 They said, "Well, look, we're new to the business.
04:15 We know, we're going to get you, we're going to get that training.
04:18 We're going to talk to Angelo Dundee about training you."
04:20 True story.
04:21 And we're going to pay you, I don't even remember how many we're having a meeting.
04:25 We're going to pay you $500 a week just to train.
04:28 We'll buy you a car.
04:29 We're going to rent you an apartment.
04:30 My father said, "We'll take it.
04:31 We'll take it."
04:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:33 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:34 Yeah, relax, relax.
04:35 I said to them, I said, "Hey, man, what can you do for my career?"
04:38 Yeah.
04:39 "Can you help me?"
04:40 They go, "Well, we're new to the business.
04:41 We don't, we don't, we're going to."
04:43 Okay.
04:44 Then I mentioned my mentor.
04:45 Dave Wolf came from New York.
04:46 He said, "Look, I'm not going to offer you anything.
04:48 I'm not going to pay.
04:49 I'm going to give you, float you some money, but you're going to pay it back after your first purse."
04:53 And so you're going to move to New York.
04:55 You're going to sleep on, Murphy Griffiths is going to be a trainer.
04:58 You're going to sleep on his couch.
04:59 You're going to take the train downtown.
05:01 It's time for his Times Square gym.
05:04 He said, "But young man, you do your job and I'll do mine.
05:06 I'll get you a world title."
05:08 That's all you want to hear.
05:09 And yeah, you got that.
05:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:11 So that's what you do.
05:12 So that's what I'm saying.
05:13 It was there.
05:14 And they kind of, I was hands off because they were proud of me.
05:18 They don't want nothing from me.
05:20 Yeah.
05:21 And that's what I'm saying.
05:22 But was it available?
05:23 Yes.
05:24 But everyone knew what I was going to do.
05:25 Everyone knew I was going away, what I wanted.
05:27 So that's kind of hands off.
05:29 It feels, I'm sure you feel this, Richie.
05:31 It feels like the boxing clubs, people see it as a sports club.
05:35 They don't really value what it is you're doing for youngsters
05:41 and the part that can play in kind of keeping them on the straight and narrow,
05:45 focusing their energy into something positive.
05:47 Do you feel that kind of boxing clubs in general don't really get that acknowledgement
05:52 and that financial support?
05:54 No, definitely not.
05:55 Boxing clubs, like I said the other week, is absolutely perfect in any community.
06:00 I definitely get enough support.
06:02 I mean all my friends, we've got friends obviously with the coaches around the country,
06:06 I've got boxing clubs.
06:07 And we all do the same job and it's a damn good job because we'll get 50 young kids in here.
06:12 Yeah.
06:13 You know, we'll get ex-gang members, Jimmy was part of all that.
06:17 We'll get kids who, you know, on the verge on drugs, we can get them off that.
06:21 It's a massive, this is massive.
06:24 Yeah.
06:25 I think lots of things can be sorted out in a boxing gym.
06:28 Yeah.
06:29 I think you could sort everything out in a boxing gym.
06:31 And I guess, Boom Boom, you'd vouch for that really.
06:34 It's nice to come down here and see places like this and that they're so valuable, aren't they?
06:39 Especially in communities where there is issues, you know, gangs, knife crime and so on.
06:43 Back in the States, I did an interview recently with the paper,
06:48 and I said that the gym, these are the lifelines for the community.
06:52 They're lifelines for the community because when a mother's got to work certain jobs,
06:55 and she's come home, the kids come home to an empty house, they got to have a place to go.
06:59 So this is their family.
07:01 It becomes a family.
07:02 And that's a relief for the parents so they know where they're at.
07:06 So these are not only--they're not luxuries, they're necessities.
07:12 The gyms, the local gyms, boxing gyms, you know, sports in general, but boxing gyms particularly,
07:17 are lifelines to the local community to keep these kids off the streets and get them on some type of--
07:23 because we were talking about earlier, the discipline.
07:26 The discipline to care for your body, to care for your friend, to take care of yourself.
07:34 It's a lifestyle, isn't it?
07:35 It's a lifestyle. It has to become that.
07:37 With the boxing gym, you get--in this gym you can have police officers, you have gangsters,
07:43 you have odd men, you'll have, you know, drug dealers, you'll have every kind,
07:48 but everybody wants to get into this boxing club.
07:51 If everyone wants to get into this boxing club, they all get on and there's all respect.
07:56 You go back out that door, everything changes again.
07:58 Actually in the boxing club, as weird as that sounds, they all get on.
08:03 Yeah, to a level--
08:04 There's no animosity. That makes sense. It's a weird--
08:09 But you're absolutely right.
08:10 As though you say, "The boxing gym or any boxing show," you said, "If you look at ringside,
08:18 the best of everybody--the best of the community and the worst of the community,
08:21 all in the same place, the same guy."
08:23 But you were saying earlier, when you come to the gym, it's not okay.
08:30 You get these guys that are, you know, street guys, they get to come in here and they get smacked around by--
08:37 get humbled real quick.
08:38 And they get smacked around by the guy who's the book guy, you know,
08:42 nerdish kid going to college.
08:44 Or you get the--but you see these guys, these book guys, these nerdish kids,
08:49 who come in and they blossom. They find themselves.
08:51 They have no friends, but they find a community here in the gym.
08:55 Two guys that may not see each other and say hello in the street normally,
08:59 now, "Hey, how you doing?" In school or whatever, "Hey, how you doing?"
09:02 They acknowledge each other.
09:03 That's a big--that's big.
09:06 And one final question, Boom Boom.
09:09 If you were boxing in this day and age, I dare say there's probably more money,
09:13 or do you feel you were boxing in a better time for the game?
09:17 Absolutely. People ask me all the time, "I bet you wish you were fighting now."
09:20 And I say yes and no.
09:21 Meaning this, if I can be paid, as you said, the money these guys paid
09:26 for the people I put in the seats and the ratings I did on television, yeah, of course.
09:31 But you have to say I was exposed to over 60 million people domestically,
09:34 over 100 million people worldwide on network television.
09:38 Now, network television is gone.
09:40 So if you have a 2% pay-per-view fight, you get a 2% buy rate,
09:45 that's only half a million people, and that's considered a success.
09:48 That's a success.
09:49 A 2% buy rate is considered a success.
09:51 That's only half a million people.
09:53 So look, I'm a fighter fan. I love our fighters.
09:56 I know their names, but I can't tell you half the guys.
09:58 I don't know the faces.
10:00 So after they walk in the street, I wouldn't know who they are.
10:02 I just know their names.
10:04 And that's why coming over, when Scott brings me over,
10:07 I get a chance to meet a lot of the guys from Joe Calzada.
10:11 I knew who Joe was, but Barry was, Barry Wiggins.
10:14 But now I'm learning these other fighters.
10:16 I heard of Nile Barry, the young man.
10:19 I couldn't let hell of a lot of fighters, man.
10:21 I just can't go.
10:22 And then I met Sam Egginton.
10:24 Egginton.
10:25 Egginton.
10:26 I knew the name, but I didn't know what it was.
10:28 And then when I met him, I was like, "Oh, man."
10:30 So that's what I'm saying.
10:31 That's the thing about network television.
10:34 The visibility factor is so much more.
10:36 And first, I found out firsthand.
10:39 First time, they brought me after I won the title.
10:41 They brought me to Italy.
10:43 Bobby Earman, Rodolfo Sabatini, the Italian promoter, brought me to Italy.
10:46 And I was walking.
10:48 I got, you know, walking in the streets.
10:50 People were, "Manchini, Manchini."
10:52 I said, "Oh, my God, they recognize me?"
10:54 If you realize the power of television, the power of television.
10:58 That's when I realized, "Oh, man, the power of television is strong."