Gary Sandland was a world heavyweight full-contact kickboxing champion who defended his title 14 times in seven years. He was one of the hardest punchers of his era, and he had trained under one of the most feared doormen Britain ever produced, Gary Spiers. Like many champion fighters of the time, he also worked the doors. One night at the Chelsea Reach in New Brighton, he needed everything he knew.
Door wars
In the late 1980s and the 1990s, before door licensing came in, whoever ran the doors controlled who got into the clubs, and who sold pills and cocaine to the thousands of people inside. Many of the big door firms were run by crime families. On the front line, crossing the wrong people could be fatal.
The stairs
A large group of heavy-looking men came to the front door asking if certain people were inside. The two doormen said they were not. One of them was knocked out by a punch from a fist wearing a knuckleduster. The other was set on and knocked out too.
Sandland and his door partner, Steve, were on their way to check on the front when around 14 men came through the doors with knives, lumps of wood, chains and knuckledusters. There was no time to think. Standing a few steps above the attackers, the two of them fought for their lives. One punch from Sandland sent a man through a plate glass window. Behind them, the other doormen were being kicked around the head, and the owner's son, who had come to help, had been stabbed many times. Sandland and Steve drove the gang back down the stairs and out of the door, and the attackers ran.
The meeting
The owner's son was rushed to hospital with stab wounds. The two doormen from the front were badly cut by broken glass. You might think Sandland deserved a medal. Instead he was called to a meeting with serious players in Liverpool's underworld. The message was simple: drop it, with no police, or someone would be sent to finish the job on the owner's son in his hospital bed.
In an interview with Bernard O'Mahoney, Sandland said he agreed. No statements were given to the police and the matter was dropped. A world title means little to serious villains, and it was not his fight to die for.