Cliff Field was a man mountain: six foot seven, more than 20 stone, with a right hand that could knock out a bull. In the early 1980s he fought Lenny McLean twice in unlicensed fights, and both times McLean was carried out of the ring. But before the unlicensed game, Field had spent years on some of the most violent doors in London. He worked for the South London gangster Eddie Richardson. He was stabbed, he was jailed, and in one last brawl he lost an eye, and with it the fighting life that had made his name.
A night in Acton
By the time of that night, Field had won the Royal Navy Imperial Services title and turned professional. None of that counted for much once a club went up.
One of the clearest accounts of that world comes from a former doorman, Ray Hill, who worked alongside Cliff on a savage night at a club in Acton, West London. The club sat close to Acton Police Station, and it made no difference. From Friday to Sunday there could be seven doormen on, because everyone knew what the drink could bring.
That night the warning signs came in ones and twos: men filtering in, never as one obvious firm, until enough of them were inside. Then it went. Bottles and glasses flew, tables went over, men were smashed across the head and others were stabbed. A heavy pint mug came down on Cliff's head. He stayed on his feet. According to Hill, he was then stabbed two or three times.
The fight spilled out into the street. The men who had started it were backing off, turning, throwing bottles and crates, and Cliff, bleeding heavily in a white T-shirt and jacket, kept going after them. For a professional whose boxing career had been damaged by cuts, there was a grim irony in it. In the ring, blood could stop a fight. On the doors it meant nothing.
The knife
By his own account, Cliff was minding a club when around 200 drunk, angry men gathered outside wanting to fight the door. Two came forward and he put each of them down with one right hand. Then a third came at him with a knife.
This time Cliff did not box. He threw everything behind one punch, and he later said the man's face seemed to disintegrate. The next day he was arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm. In court he was shown photographs of the man's injuries, and he said they made him feel sick. His father visited and told him he was lucky: the man had nearly died. Cliff said that if he had, it would have gutted him.
In 1978 he was sent to Wormwood Scrubs for 18 months. He came out in 1979, looked back at the prison, and told himself he was never going back.
Lenny McLean
Back home in Dunstable, skint and drinking, he heard the name that would make him part of British hardman folklore. According to Cliff, a pub manager told him there was a man in London knocking everyone out. The money was good and Cliff took it. By his own account he weighed around 26 stone when he started training, and sweated the weight off on a bike with a bin liner under his kit.
The first fight was short and rough. McLean came out hard, trying to bully him early, and Cliff let him burn through it. According to Cliff, McLean nutted him, so he nutted McLean back harder. Once it settled, Cliff's timing and heavier finish told, and inside five rounds McLean was stopped.
The rematch came in the early 1980s, and Cliff said it was even more decisive. He caught McLean with a combination and knocked him out cold, and McLean lay there so long Cliff thought for a moment he had killed him. There was no feud afterwards. Cliff went round to McLean's flat with his own son, and when McLean's boy asked why Cliff had beaten his dad up, Cliff told him they were only earning a pound note.
Caesars Palace, 1984
By 1984 Field was working at Caesars Palace near Luton. By his account, it started with an argument with a barmaid. Wound up, he barged past a group of men and told them to get out of his way. He dropped two of them, one with a headbutt and one with the right hand. Then another man came from the side and smashed a glass into his eye.
He lost the eye. He said he was gutted, and he hit the bottle. Drink had been with him since Navy shore leave, but now it became something darker. The man once paid thousands to fight went back to scrap work, then drifted, and in the end was living on the streets.
Cliff Field died in 2010, aged 67, much loved by his family and friends. The film asks that he be remembered for more than the fall: a Royal Navy man and combined services champion, a professional heavyweight who was never knocked out, a sparring partner to Joe Bugner, a man who shared a ring with Muhammad Ali in an exhibition, and the fighter who beat Lenny McLean twice. Not bad, as the film puts it, for a lad from Dunstable.