By Terence Dooley

“There he goes.  One of God's own prototypes.  A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production.  Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”

?Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Although Thompson was talking about Dr. Gonzo, AKA Oscar Zeta Acosta, played brilliantly by Benicio del Toro in the film adaptation of the book, the quote above could have easily been applied to Manchester’s John Murray during the time when the former English, British, EBU lightweight Champion and WBA world title challenger was mixing fighting and winning titles with embarking on epic benders.

Murray (33-3-, 20 KOs) has calmed down in recent years yet his binges have passed into Manchester folklore.  On one occasion, he went to the chemist to pick up a prescription for his then-girlfriend only to end up at a funeral before embarking on a three-day bender, the prescription script still tucked away in his pocket.  Could he have gone even further in his chosen profession had he reined himself in during his twenties?

“You are a young lad when you turn over, all your mates are getting pissed and chasing women so you don’t think: ‘Hang on, I’m a 19-year-old professional boxer, so I’m not going out or chasing women, I’ll go for a run instead’,” he answered when BoxingScene put the question to him.

“That wasn’t my mentality.  It was ‘anything they can do I can do’.  I turned up at the track many a time after being on the p*ss the night before, and I still beat everyone on the track.  That’s why they called me ‘The Machine’.  I could always turn up at the gym and put in a session.  I’d go to places no one else would go to, pushing myself to the limits no matter how bad I felt.  I’d feel like crap—I’d actually want to cry—but I’d do it just so [former trainer] Joe [Gallagher] couldn’t say: ‘I told you not to go on the piss’.”

“Getting a normal job would have been alright for a few weeks then I’d have been bored out of my head,” he added.  “That’s how I was back then, I’d get into something for a few weeks then move on to something else.  I’ve calmed down now, I’ve found my place in the world.

“I wouldn’t change anything, I think I played it right.  I’m a bit older now, I’ve got a family and my kids so I’m happy.  I don’t go out as much as I used to, I got it all out of my system.  I’m not saying I’ll never go on another bender, that would be a lie, but I won’t do it the way I used to when I’d be out every weekend. 

“I can have a few cans in front of the TV sometimes to chill out without getting on it.  I don’t have to go wild any more—swinging from lamp shades and that—because I’m happy with my own company.  If I could be in this place in my 20s, I’d have been a lot more successful as a fighter, but you can’t look back.  You have to have the best of your youth and enjoy life.

“You have to enjoy it while you’re in it.  Every now and then, a memory will pop into my head and I’ll smile about it.  It’s good that I enjoyed that time.  I had a good mentality.  I could control my nerves and I used to think that nothing much will change if I lose a fight, the world will keep spinning around and tomorrow will still come.”

Since his retirement in 2014, the 33-year-old has concentrated on his own stable of fighters rather than slavishly following the sport.  He puts this disconnect down to one key factor.  “Boxing is boring now,” he stated.

“I miss the characters, the ones who make you think: ‘This kid is going to kick off’.  When I walked to the ring I was menacing, I looked mean and like the kind of angry man that you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley.

“That’s why I liked [Michael] Gomez and [Anthony] Farnell, fighters who might kick off at a weigh-in.  There’s nothing like that anymore, no real characters.  For me, they’re all ‘Yes’ men. It is all ‘Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’—it bores me to death.

“I know some of the lads, they’re alright but a bit boring.  I want someone to come out and get a bit of a buzz going with the fans.  I want a next Gomez to come through, someone to entertain me inside the ring and outside the ring.  We need the Ricky Hattons, fighters who could go out with the lads after a fight and is just one of the boys.”

At this point, Murray paused for thought and then looked at the flipside of the equation, saying: “Maybe boxing has moved forward, though, and maybe it is more professional now than it was 10-years ago.  The same with football.  You couldn’t be George Best and play in the Premier League, you’d have to be right down to work.  It might just be the sport moving forward.  It’s a shame as I did like it to be a bit like the WWE—some good guys, some bad guys and more fun.

“Tyson [Fury] is probably the last character left.  He is Marmite, you love him or you hate him but that’s what boxing needs, characters.  I might be the training equivalent of them lot, cause a load of aggro in the build-up to fights.

Murray's former stablemate foe Anthony Crolla once told me that his friend gave him one of the best pieces of advice he has received and it was a simple one: enjoy fight night.  Crolla admits that he would get nerves before fights yet Murray told him to savour every moment of being in the ring as your career can end at any time.

“I used to tell myself that no one cares about this little fight in Wigan, it doesn’t mean anything in the bigger picture.  That used to calm me because it was only relevant to me.  I never suffered from nerves.  I used to be able to relax, crack jokes and enjoy it.  Joe used to get nervous, I’d say: ‘Joe, you’re going to have to leave the room before you make me nervous’.

“I can understand, there is a lot of build-up and you feel under pressure to perform, and where do you go if you don’t perform?  Good ones cope with the pressure, get through the bad times and move on.  If you can’t cope you won’t be the same fighter.

Now, though, the former fighter turned trainer has put any lingering bad vibes from his injury-induced retirement behind him and hopes to turn his gym into a hangout for Manchester’s boxing fraternity as well as producing his own line of starlets via his recently accredited amateur club.

It is the start of a new path for Murray, he misses fighting, and many miss his fights, yet he has seamlessly settled into the next best thing.  If he is as successful as a coach as he was as a fighter there will be more nice memories to look back on.

Fight Nights—Murray talks about some of the fights that defined his career:

Lee Meagre (W TKO 5 for the vacant British lightweight title): “They said I was an underdog for this.  In truth, I was overlooked for most of my career.  I don’t think I was really rated as a fighter or respected as much as I should have been.

“They’d always say it was a 50-50 one, then I’d smash the kid and they’d make a load of excuses about him being old, past it or not as good as people thought.  Then they’d say my own boxing isn’t good enough, my defence wasn’t all that, but I’d still go out and smash it—I did that here.”

Jon Thaxton (W TKO 4 for the vacant British lightweight title): “I’d like it to have continued a little bit longer, to have put him down rather than have the ref [Howard Foster] stop the fight.  I felt it that night.  It was building up to a top performance.  It was premature, but the writing was on the wall as I hurt him every time I hit him, which, to be fair, was maybe a sign of his age and what the ref was thinking.  Plus the ref is a lot closer to the action.

“Then again, the refs didn’t mind it when I was getting my head bashed in in my losses.  I was on my feet every time I lost, no one minded seeing me get a right good hiding.  My eyes would be swollen, nose gone and I’d piss blood after every loss.  I probably could have done with a ref jumping in!”

Brandon Rios (L TKO 11 for the vacant WBA lightweight title): “Walking out at Madison Square Garden was my moment.  My song, Johnny Be Good, was blaring and I thought: ‘This is it now, this is my moment’—I wanted to enjoy it.

“I walked out and saw the second tier and thought ‘Wow!’.  Then I saw another tier of people, it was massive, but I still managed to spot my mates who had come over from Manchester in their ‘Here’s Johnny’ t-shirts.  That was one of my fondest memories.  I’ve boxed in Vegas twice, once at the MGM Grand, but that was it by a long, long way.

“He was a bit nasty at the weigh-in then told me it was just his fight face when we talked after the fight.  I understood, it is not all kissing and cuddles when you fight.  We were going to fight the next day so you expect it.  Then you have a fight, shake hands and have a beer together.

“I tried to absorb it all, but my memory is shocking—I wish I could remember more.  Probably getting punched in the head for years didn’t help.  I used to try to take in those unbelievable moments.  I remember fighting in America and seeing Ronald Winky Wright saying ‘Come on, Murray’ as I walked out.  It was mad.”

Anthony Crolla (L TKO 10 for the WBO Inter-Continental title): “I was just being a character (when referring to himself as ‘Feeling violent’ pre-fight).  I wasn’t a nice man.  I was trained to have a fight, not to be nice, so I was training to be a nasty man and that’s how I acted.  That’s why I said that.  I was feeling violent because that’s what I’d been training to do.

“I’d been nice, it had go me nowhere so I had to start being nasty to get what I wanted.  Maybe my career would have been a lot different if I’d been like that the whole time.  If I knew then what I know now, I’d have been a lot, lot worse than I was and more entertaining.  Boxing is an entertainment business, people like the bad guys and you have to be one sometimes to make serious money out of it.

“I started too fast in that one, maybe I could have done with a few more fights to warm-up after being off for so long, but I took the opportunity.  It is funny, I sometimes watch my defeats back when they’re on TV and I always expect myself to win them even though I know I lost.  I’ll think: ‘There is no way I can lose this from here’.  Then I’ll watch it happen again.  It’s weird.”

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