Picture it. A firm of the toughest doormen from Liverpool's 1990s club scene, most of them former boxers, taken to Las Vegas by their boss to watch Lennox Lewis fight. Then add a 24-hour club with some of the biggest bouncers in Nevada. The story comes from Joey Owens's book Paid and Plenty of It, the most detailed account of that era, and it is a brutal one.
Ferrari's
Ferrari's was a club in an old biscuit factory in Huyton, in the middle of a rough estate with Cantril Farm close by. The owner, a long-standing face in the city, brought in a top team of promoters and an even tougher door team. The strict dress code and the hard door kept most of the trouble out, and the money rolled in. Duncan Ferguson, Kenny Dalglish and Jan Molby came to its VIP nights.
The Shark Club
In Las Vegas, the Shark Club had been a hit since the 1980s. Its security team, the Shark Patrol, were big men who looked after the place like a family.
In 1993 the boss of Ferrari's took about 20 people, door staff and employees, to Las Vegas to see Lennox Lewis fight Tony Tucker. They stayed at the Flamingo Hilton. After the fight they went to the Shark Club.
The brawl
Halfway through the night the boss stepped out. When he tried to go back in, the door refused him. An argument turned into a punch thrown at him, and the lads inside came running. One of them was hit over the head with an iron ball and got straight back up to fight on. Another wrestled a gun off a doorman and fired it into the air. The Shark bouncers used pepper spray and metal truncheons, and the fight spilled into the car park, with a TV helicopter hovering overhead and news crews on the ground.
Four of the Liverpool men were past or present professional boxers, and the rest were experienced doormen. Without the police, the film says, the Shark Patrol might have needed a new name. When order was restored, most of the lads spent the night in the cells. The police seem to have believed one of them was the British wrestling star Davey Boy Smith. Several were charged with affray. Having flown home, they never went back for the trial.