Lenny McLean was the king of the bouncers, a fearsome street fighter and a force in unlicensed boxing, though not unbeatable: he lost to good boxing men like Johnny Waldron, Cliff Fields and Kevin Paddock. But being a legitimate hard man, the film argues, is a million miles from being a criminal who thinks nothing of killing to protect his business or his family. Being dangerous with your hands only gets you so far. In McLean's case it nearly got him killed, because by the account in his own book he beat up the wrong man.
The man who knew his family
The film opens on a night at the door. A drunk man was arguing with McLean's staff and threatening them. McLean pushed past his doorman and told him to leave. The man held his stare and asked if McLean knew who his family were, and said he would have them all ironed out. McLean hit him on the chin and broke his jaw, and as the man fell his arm broke under the weight of his own body. McLean had his doormen put him in a taxi to hospital and went back to the bar. According to McLean's book, the man was telling the truth. He was a member of a notorious East End crime family.
The Barbican Club
The film places this in the early to mid 1980s, when, according to McLean's own book, a friend asked him to help mind the Barbican Club at Smithfield meat market, where the doormen had lost control. It was a rough place, and McLean went in hitting first to put his stamp on it. He was paid £100 a night and worked Monday to Thursday alone, with a team at weekends. Numerous troublemakers were beaten, one of them left with a broken jaw and a broken arm. McLean heard rumours that he had upset someone, and ignored them.
Some weeks later, one Saturday night, the front windows of the club exploded as two men on a motorbike fired a pump-action shotgun into it. McLean ran out and tried to kick the bike as the pair circled round and fired again, and he ran back inside for cover. He was badly hurt, with a chunk taken out of his backside that never healed properly. His daughter has written about seeing his injuries afterwards. The club owner paid McLean £5,000 to leave.
Freddie Hill's gym
Once he recovered, McLean agreed to return to the ring against Mad Gypsy Bradshaw, a tough scrap-metal man, around 1985 or 1986. He trained at Freddie Hill's gym at the Craven Arms in Battersea, a gym whose names ran from Joe Bugner to Marvin Hagler.
It was there, according to independent accounts, that McLean sparred with Barry Dalton, a Dubliner who had built a reputation in London as a gangster not afraid to use weapons, and went over the top, giving him a hiding in front of the other boxers. The film stresses that the shooting at the Barbican came before the Dalton fallout. The threat to McLean's life had already begun.
Some weeks later, by the accounts the film gathers, Dalton came to McLean's door and tried to shoot him. In McLean's book, Dalton missed and McLean chased him off with a bat. Others claim McLean was hit. McLean went on to beat Bradshaw in a fight that reached the mainstream news, after Bradshaw made the mistake of headbutting him.
A friend in his car
The next attack in the feud with the unnamed East London firm fell on someone else. A friend borrowed McLean's car, was followed, and was shot in the legs in a case of mistaken identity. The friend never walked the same again.
Then a man the book calls Scottish Ritchie Anderson came to McLean and said he knew who was behind it: the East London firm whose man had left the Barbican with a broken jaw and arm. They wanted revenge. In the book, a meeting was arranged through mutual friends, there was a heated argument, and it was agreed the feud would go no further.
What the book leaves out
The film is openly doubtful about that ending. The narrator finds it hard to believe that McLean, with a name as big as his, never knew who was trying to kill him, and reminds the viewer that a book takes creative licence. He made inquiries among people active at the time, and weighs several East London firms, but none of it goes beyond word on the street and he rules most of them out. What he can say is that there was certainly bad blood with Dalton, and that around this time McLean moved his training to South London, away from Dalton and the East London firm he had upset.
According to McLean's book, even after the dispute was settled he was shot in the back by a gunman, whom he later cornered and beat, and who confessed that Dalton was behind it. The gun was low-powered and did little damage. But the message was clear. As drug money flooded in through the 1980s, gangs were armed and willing to shoot, and a man who fought with his fists was becoming second fiddle to men with the nerve to pull a trigger. McLean's days as a heavyweight enforcer were coming to an end.