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Capturing a Tradition, Blow by Blow

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By Corey Kilgannon

• Nov. 25, 2011

THE big, bald man at the end of the bar extended a huge hand and introduced himself as the filmmaker Ian Palmer and his slighter, gentler-looking companion as the bruising bare-knuckle boxer James Quinn McDonagh.

It was a traveler’s trick, of course. The bald joker was himself the Mighty Quinn, king of the gypsy bare-knucklers in the documentary “Knuckle,” a rib-cracking look at the brutal fistfights long used to settle feuds between clans of Irish travelers — nomadic families that go back centuries in Ireland.

“This is always how the families have sorted things out and stopped larger violence,” said Mr. Quinn McDonagh, 44, who heads a clan of about 200 people, mostly in the Dublin area. “Other people use guns and knives to settle things — we do it through our fists.”

He had cut loose the publicist who coordinated the interview and ordered up pints of beer, so that a proper discussion could be conducted here in this Irish bar in Hell’s Kitchen.

Next to him, Mr. Palmer, who made “Knuckle,” looked as if he knew the drill. After all, he had hung around with Mr. Quinn McDonagh for 12 years to make the film, which opens in select theaters in New York City and Los Angeles on Dec. 9 after an impressive run at festivals, including Sundance, Hot Docs in Toronto, and Irish Film New York (where it was named best film last month). HBO has even aquired the rights to make a series based on the film.

This is hardly the first star turn for traveler culture. The 2007 cable series “The Riches” featured Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver as the leaders of a con-artist traveler family in the United States. “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding,” a British reality series that began last year, chronicles over-the-top nuptials there. And who can forget Mickey O’Neil, the Irish traveler bare-knuckle boxer played by Brad Pitt in Guy Ritchie’s 2000 film “Snatch”?

“Knuckle” is fueled by the personality of this big man, who is undefeated in fighting for his family name against the Joyce and Nevin clans.

Never mind that the three clans themselves are interrelated with, as the film puts it, “brothers and cousins fighting brothers and cousins.” One family member in “Knuckle” points to the absurdity of the self-perpetuating feuds and fights: “At least wars are about something.”

The feud in the film was supposedly started by a torched tinker’s cart at a horse fair, and renewed in 1992 by a deadly fight outside a pub, for which Mr. Quinn McDonagh’s brother Patty served prison time for manslaughter.

In the film, Mr. Quinn McDonagh is derided as Baldy James by rival clan members who send taunting videotaped challenges, a modern wrinkle on this centuries-old tradition.

“The fights help settle a score, but then the next tape arrives and everyone gets stirred up again,” Mr. Quinn McDonagh said in the interview.

As a referee scolds two boxers in the film, “It’s what you say on the videos that keeps the fights going.”

As it happened, videotape helped open the door for Mr. Palmer. In 1997, he videotaped a Quinn McDonagh wedding and the family then invited him to shoot Mr. Quinn McDonagh fighting a Joyce. Mr. Palmer followed a triumphant Mr. Quinn McDonagh, 20,000 Irish pounds in his bloody hand from side wagers, rushing back to “a giant fan gathering” at a pub in Dundalk, Mr. Palmer recalled.

“It was like a medieval knight coming back from a tournament,” Mr. Palmer said. “An amazing, huge world had just opened up to me, the most amazing thing I’ve ever had the chance to film. I remember calling a friend and saying, ‘I really have to find a way to make a film about this.’ ”

He did find it, by hanging around the feuding families for the next decade. It started as a bit of a tradeoff, he said, with the Quinn McDonaghs giving him access to the fights and Mr. Palmer giving them some footage. The travelers had already been taping their own fights and either selling the footage in streets and pubs, or editing it into “threat tapes.” “In a way, they were already documenting themselves,” the director said.

Mr. Palmer grew up middle class and well educated in the Dublin suburbs and like many Irish “settled” people, he knew travelers from seeing them solicit work at the door, women asking for old clothes to mend and sell, and men offering their tinsmithing skills to fix garden tools and sharpen knives.

During his first few years on the project, Mr. Palmer, who had tried a screenwriting career in Los Angeles with little success, also shot two shorter, nonboxing documentaries for Irish national television, on the Quinn McDonaghs and traveler activity. But since the bare-knuckle fights were sporadic, it became clear that a fight film would take years to complete.

Each time the call would come, Mr. Palmer would pile in a crowded car and head to a remote country lane, the precise location a secret to prevent the authorities from showing up. Often there were a series of fights, lasting hours. There were no clocks, no rounds, and of course, no gloves — just shirtless men pummeling each other until one gives up.

“I was following something completely unpredictable,” said Mr. Palmer, who shot roughly 200 hours of footage and changed video formats six times to keep up with changing technology. He held a day job in the family business running trade shows, but always stored a camera in his desk.

“If the fights were more frequent, I could have finished more quickly, but I would not have captured them changing over time,” he said.

Through the years, Mr. Quinn McDonagh repeatedly declares he’s retiring, only to begin training again after the next taunting tape arrives. Then there is his brother Michael, who broods over a lost fight for a decade.

Will “Knuckle” affect the feuds? “I don’t expect the film to change what is hundreds of years of tradition,” Mr. Palmer said.

To Mr. Quinn McDonagh, the film had had a calming effect — for now. “These feuds change like the weather,” he said. “Anything can trigger anything.”

Anyway, calm never lasts in a traveler’s life, Mr. Quinn McDonagh said, finishing his pint. He recently moved his family to Wales after their home in Dublin was burned down by gangsters seeking one of his relatives. He said that his younger son, Huey, 19, is taken with bare-knuckle fighting, and that he has reluctantly agreed to train him.

“I don’t approve, but I can’t stop him,” Mr. Quinn McDonagh said. “It’s in the blood. It’s in the heart. I hope he doesn’t do it, but if he does, I want him to be prepared.”

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Dad jailed for running over teenager is well-known bare knuckle boxer

Sonny Gilheaney is good friends with 'King of the Gypsies' Paddy Doherty who won Celebrity Big Brother

• 12:38, 16 JAN 2019
• Updated 14:12, 17 JAN 2019

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A ‘furious’ dad who mounted a revenge attack on a teenager who had allegedly stabbed his son, is an infamous bare knuckle boxer.

Sonny Gilheaney, who was sentenced to 32 months and banned from driving for five years , has fought in events in fields and car parks for decades.

The 49-year-old who lives in Patchway, is good friends with Paddy Doherty, the winner of Celebrity Big Brother 8, and has lifelong involvement in the Irish travelling community bare knuckle scene.

Multiple videos can be found online of his fights and ‘call outs’ to other fighters.

During the trial Gilheaney was described as a ‘family man’ who had acted ‘completely out of character’ and on ‘seeing his son injured had ‘completely lost his cool.’

The court heard Gilheaney, on finding out his son had been stabbed, tracked down the alleged perpetrators, and drove at the teenager, breaking his ankle.

He pleaded guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving, and was sentenced at Bristol Crown court on January 10.

The judge said : “Revenge is something that has to be deterred. You can't live by the rules of the Wild West and go out on the street and sort out your problems. It was terrifying for all those involved."

Within the bare knuckle boxing scene Gilheaney is a huge name.

Known as ‘Big Sonny Gilheaney', his family have a history of fighting competitively, with connections in Swansea, Merthyr Tydfil, as well as Bristol.

Many of his fights have been put on YouTube including one against his own relative Jimmy Gilheaney which was ‘refereed’ by famous Irish traveller Paddy Doherty, the self-proclaimed a 'King of the Gypsies.'

Doherty first hit TV screens on ‘Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on Channel 5, and went on to enter Celebrity Big Brother in 2011. He was immensely popular, and took the show by storm eventually winning.

He has also been featured in Danny Dyer’s ‘Britain’s Deadliest Men.’

Gilheaney himself has been lifelong friends with Doherty, and the pair are also seen together talking about the result of the fight on another video.

Lots of the videos are 'call outs' where Gilheaney is offering to fight opponents, talking himself up and 'trash talking' others, a tradition within the culture.

In one he is talking of his status in the Irish bare knuckle game describing himself as a ‘rocket.’

Calling out an opponent he said: “I am a legend mate. I’m up there with Johnny Kyle, Paddy Doherty, Dan Rooney, Big Joe Joyce, all the big names. Am up there in the sky.”

Gileany has been described as ‘old school’, and keeping to the rules of what is called ‘fair fighting.’

Not all fights stick to this, but this is close to 19th century pugilism , involves No hitting below the belt, head butting or biting.

Referees will separate when wrestling, and fighters compete until one man is knocked out,  says ‘I’ve had enough’ or the referee steps in after both have given a good account of themselves, and tells fighters to shake hands and declares a draw.

One boxing club owner from south Bristol, where Gilheaney would sometimes visit and train, described Gilheaney as a ‘gentleman.’ He said :“He was a man of his word. If he said something, he would do it.

"He was very family orientated, and would back you 100%.”

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Gypsy Blood: True Stories

TX: Thursday 19th January, 10pm, Channel 4

Launching the True Stories feature-length documentary strand on Channel 4, Gypsy Blood examines the culture of violence handed down through generations of gypsy and traveller fathers to their sons.

Gypsy Blood was filmed over two years by first-time director and award-winning photographer Leo Maguire. Over a four-year period Maguire lived with the gypsy communities on their sites, gaining unprecedented and intimate access to men who live amongst us and yet are driven by different values. As one father, Fred Butcher, puts it:  "We don't take each other to court, we don't sue each other. If we have got a problem with each other we go out and fight".

The film follows the story of two families, showing how they fight for respect and revealing the price they pay - the cycles of revenge that erupt into sudden and terrifying violence. 

The Doherty's are Irish Traveller royalty.  Hughie Doherty, 27, is the son of Francie ‘The Punk' Doherty, once one of the most feared bare-knuckle boxers in the land.  Hughie is determined to bring up his seven-year-old son, also called Francie, to be as tough and uncompromising as the grandfather he's named after: "You're born with it ... and you won't have anyone make a fool out of you, or making you look small .... You would rather die, and fight till the bitter end..." For Hughie, what's at stake is the Doherty name. As Hughie himself becomes embroiled in a fight to defend his family's honour, we follow his son Francie, caught between two worlds, learning to read at primary school while learning to fight with his fists at home. We watch Francie develop a toughness that culminates in an unrelenting sparring session as he takes on an older boy and makes his father proud.

Fred Butcher is Romany and father to nine-year-old Freddy Cole. He's a career fighter but, unlike Hughie Doherty, he's worried about the future of his son in the violent world of some gypsy men. Freddy Cole is a sensitive child, who fears his father will be badly hurt in a fight. So Fred is torn between a gypsy code of honour and his love as a father. The film charts the story of how he himself nearly died in a machete attack as a day of drinking and sparring went terribly wrong. 

Tracing these stories, Gypsy Blood becomes a haunting study of masculinity and violence, and the uneasy, equivocal relationship gypsy and traveller men have with their epic, bare-knuckle traditions.  These fathers and sons carry with them a burden of fear and physical damage, broken bones and scars, and yet fighting remains, for many, the essence of what it means to be a man.  As Hughie Doherty says: "It is like a disease, a disease that gets into your blood. And sometimes you close your eyes and for that moment  I  wish I wasn't like it, but you can't help it."

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Outrageous portrayals of Gypsy culture are cinema's last acceptable bigotry

The casting of Benedict Cumberbatch in the film adaptation of Mikey Walsh’s memoir Gypsy Boy highlights a troubling attitude in the industry

A t the Toronto film festival a few days ago, BBC Films announced their film adaptation of Mikey Walsh’s bestselling memoir Gypsy Boy. The wrenching story of a Romany Gypsy born into a tough family of bare-knuckle boxers – and moving away from that background with difficulty after realising he’s gay – is being turned into a father-son drama. While the main character Mikey has not yet been cast, Variety announced that Walsh’s father, Frank, will be played by Benedict Cumberbatch .

But casting Cumberbatch goes far beyond the realm of tone-deafness. With talk of whitewashing now rife in the film industry, there should be some kind of response to this decision. Cumberbatch is from the most privileged echelons of British society, playing one of the nation’s most disadvantaged ethnic minorities. So far, the rest of the cast and crew of Gypsy Boy are also made up entirely of non-Travellers – a choice that would be outrageous for any other BME film production.

Cumberbatch is undoubtedly a hugely talented actor and we can expect a nuanced performance from him. But the problem here is deeper, and the implication that any actor can throw on a different ethnic identity at a whim is troubling. From the outset, Gypsy Boy is exhibiting a degree of carelessness about the group of people it seeks to portray. The Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community is among the most derided and rarely portrayed ethnic groups in British cinema.

In more cloistered cinephile circles, film directors such as the Romany-born Tony Gatlif ( Latcho Drom , 1993) and Serbian arthouse favourite Emir Kusturica ( Time of the Gypsies , 1988) have done pioneering work in their explorations of travelling life. In English-language cinema, the exemplary 2005 film Pavee Lackeen (directed by Perry Ogden) is an impressive, documentary-style drama featuring a family of real Irish Travellers.

But overall, particularly when it comes to films released theatrically in the UK, GRT protagonists are scarce. The handful that average moviegoers can name either parrot racial epithets such as “pikey” (Guy Ritchie’s Snatch ), borrow language and cultural elements from Travellers with little acknowledgement (Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant ) or use their Traveller characters as token working-class tough guys.

Last year did see one notable if lukewarm exception: Trespass Against Us , starring Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson. The film, based on the real-life exploits of a Traveller crime family, did attempt to take a jab at casual racism in British life. But, populated as it is by conmen and thieves, it hardly defies negative stereotypes. And more pressingly, the director Adam Smith did not cast actors from a Romany background. Borrowing from GRT people’s stories without including them in the creative process is hardly progressive.

When we face the realities of Travellers’ marginal existence – a group of people who have the lowest life expectancy, school attainment rates and standards of living in the UK – it smacks of borderline insult for Cumberbatch to take on the mantle of oppression for a film role. This is a former public schoolboy who once said that his biggest experience of being “ostracised” was “for being brought up in a world of privilege”.

That’s a painfully far cry from the regular mistrust and fear that Romany Gypsies are treated with in contemporary Britain. Last week, Travellers’ Times magazine shared a horrific video of a police eviction in the West Midlands. Although there were no charges for resisting arrest, and no other crimes were committed, a police dog attacked an unarmed Gypsy man. The man’s leg was savaged for a minute and he later needed surgery. This shocking footage has not been widely shared in national news media, nor met with the type of online outrage typically reserved for police violence against racial minorities.

While it may seem tangential, the response to that footage is the most extreme iteration of the same endemic issue. There’s a gnawing silence on the subject of racism against GRT people, in the arts and film community and in the media more generally. If GRT people are denied minority status by this blindness, the results can be dangerous. Casting a posh white actor as a Romany Gypsy with little or no backlash is an extension of the same problem.

Last month, a whitewashing scandal around the casting of Hellboy reached all the way to its Hollywood executives and stars. Another white Englishman, actor Ed Skrein, was cast in a role originally written and created for an Asian-American person. In response to criticism, Skrein decided to leave the position open for someone better suited to the part (ie, someone racially appropriate). It’s not the first time Cumberbatch has found himself in hot water over a similar race-related controversy. In Star Trek Into Darkness , he played Khan, a role intended for someone of Indian descent.

Unlike Cumberbatch, Skrein chose to step down from the role and released a statement. “It is clear,” he wrote, “that representing this character in a culturally accurate way holds significance for people, and that to neglect this responsibility would continue a worrying tendency to obscure ethnic minority stories and voices in the arts.” Skrein’s decision and accompanying statement was applauded on social media.

This points to one conclusion: that film festival programmers, critics and film-makers have a troubling blindspot when it comes to the Gypsy and Traveller population. If a white person takes on a role playing a person of colour, the uproar is swift. Romany Gypsies’ apparent “whiteness” does not erase their ethnic-minority status. Whether the film world’s silence on the subject speaks of simple unfamiliarity or a deeper bigotry, it desperately needs to change.

• Benedict Cumberbatch
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Tyson fury explains the insane world of gypsy bare-knuckle boxing, share this article.

Tyson Fury ended Wladimir Klitschko reign as the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the World late last year by handing him his first loss in 11 years.  It was an upset that shocked the boxing world and ushered in a new, controversial era led by Fury.

HBO’s Real Sports sat down with Fury for a fascinating interview about his life, his boxing career, and most notably, his family’s gypsy heritage. Fury calls himself the “Gypsy King” and is proud of his culture despite it leading to him making a number of controversial remarks in recent months.

One part he never shies away from explaining is his family’s involvement in “bare-knuckle fighting,” which was used in his community to cement status and settle disputes. Fury’s father was a noted bare-knuckle fighter in the community who was sentenced to 11 years in prison at one point after he gouged an opponent’s eye out. The portion of the interview above (which is worth watching in its entirety) that concerns bare-knuckle fighting is fascinating, and runs from about four minutes to about nine minutes.

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Shocking video shows ‘travellers’ trade blows in brutal bare knuckle fight

The footage, believed to have been filmed last month in Epsom, Surrey, shows two men trading blows surrounded by a circle of spectators

• Richard Wheatstone
• Published : 16:28, 22 Jun 2017
• Updated : 18:45, 23 Jun 2017
• Published : Invalid Date,

THIS shocking video shows the moment two men trade huge blows in a brutal bare knuckle brawl.

The footage, believed to have been filmed last month in Epsom, Surrey, shows two men trading blows surrounded by a circle of spectators.

Despite one of the men involved falling to the ground on a number of occasions, onlookers continue to shout for the fight to continue.

As the brawl begins people can be heard shouting "give it to him" and "give him some more".

Even when the man in the white T-shirt falls to the ground after sustaining a number of blows, members of the crowd continue to shout, "he's not had enough".

Eventually, a small number of people step in to stop the fight, which has since been viewed thousands of times after footage was shared on Facebook.

As the fight was brought to an end, the man in the white T-shirt quickly climbed into a Range Rover and drove away.

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His sparring partner then retorts: "F*** off back to my wife, my ex-wife. Take her."

Although it is unclear who the fight is between and what sparked it, it is thought to be between two travellers who had a score to settle.

More than a nickname: The tradition that makes Tyson Fury the Gypsy King

About 10 minutes into a recent video interview with British journalist Gareth A. Davies, Tyson Fury leans toward the camera and announces he’s about to release an exclusive — a crucial bit of intel about the preparations for Fury’s Feb. 22 heavyweight title rematch with Deontay Wilder.

“Nobody knows this exclusive,” Fury repeats, a glint in his eye. “I was speaking to an old, legendary bare-knuckle fighter from the Travelling community. He’s called Big Joe Joyce, and he told me about dipping his hands in petrol to toughen ‘em up. So for this fight, I’ll be dipping my hands in petrol for five minutes a day during the last three, four weeks of training camp, to really toughen ‘em up. It worked for him so I’m gonna give it a try.”

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Short of smelling his paws for gasoline vapors on fight night, it will be impossible to confirm whether Fury has followed through on this promise. Soaking his fists in fuel would fit snugly within the canon of boxing folk remedies, from Joe Frazier brining his face to Juan Manuel Marquez drinking his own urine.

Fury could have been having a little fun with his audience, floating another outlandish claim along the lines of masturbating seven times a day to boost testosterone or strengthening his jaw by performing cunnilingus.

Fury’s reverence for Joyce, however, is genuine. It’s a nod to their shared heritage as Irish Travellers, the traditionally itinerant minority group in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Although Travellers are often referred to as Gypsies — the basis of Fury’s regal “Gypsy King” nickname — they are ethnically distinct from British and Irish people of Romany descent, who are also commonly known as Gypsies.

In an interview with The Athletic nine days before he rematches Wilder, Fury said he’d kept up the gasoline routine in homage to Big Joe.

“I take notice of these guys,” Fury explained. “These guys are legends in the game, and legends do what legends do, so I thought I’d try it. I’ve been putting me hands in petrol in the gym, after sessions, for five minutes. I don’t know if it’s done any good but I feel OK, Me hands are injury free, and so far, so good.”

But if any outsiders curious about Traveller culture and lore decided to look up Big Joe Joyce’s exploits online, the results might surprise them: Video after video of Ireland’s real-life answer to Bad Grandpa .

There was Joyce, white-haired and sporting a walrus mustache and a beer belly bigger than a beach ball, issuing profane threats to his enemies and declaring himself the “boss of all men.” There was Big Joe, self-proclaimed “King of the Travellers,” flashing still impressive hand speed on the heavy bag despite looking one combination away from cardiac arrest. There he is in the 2011 documentary “ Knuckle ,” standing on patch of mud and trading blows with fellow long-in-the-tooth bareknuckle icon Aney McGinley while narrator-director Ian Palmer laments, “something about this fight made me want to quit.”

There is no doubt that Joyce is a fearsome man who knows fisticuffs like only a person who has spent his entire life fighting can. But was this really the wise, old sage whose advice Fury ought to seek heading into perhaps the most significant heavyweight title bout since Lennox Lewis fought Mike Tyson in 2002?

Despite some basic similarities between the two forms of combat, bare-knuckle fighting is not world-class, professional boxing. But how, if at all, does the 200-year lineage of fighting men that Fury can trace in his blood translate into the heavyweight boxer that he would eventually become? Is the bare-knuckle fighting tradition a factor in the success Travelling men like Fury, Billy Joe Saunders and Andy Lee have found as world-class prizefighters? Or is it a red herring, a narrative oversold, sensationalized and largely misunderstood by the media?

“Just be warned, most of what people think they know is wrong,” said BT Sport boxing analyst Steve Bunce, author of Bunce’s Big Fat Short History of British Boxing. “Traveller boys join amateur boxing gyms in the thousands. For every tale about bare-knuckle lunacy, there are a hundred little Tysons boxing legitimately in a vest in a tiny civic hall. On any Traveller site there will always be boys shaping up, throwing punches and talking a fight as they dance and punch. Fury’s impact has only added to a tradition.”

There are times when Fury is quick to shut down any suggestion of a connection between bare-knuckle fights and organized boxing.

“It’s totally different,” he told The Athletic. “Just because it’s a fight doesn’t mean it’s the same. They couldn’t be farther apart. One’s a sport, one’s not. Nothing can compete with heavyweight championship boxing. No bare-knuckle fighter in history could ever beat or win a heavyweight championship of the world. Not possible.”

(Nathan Stirk / Getty Images)

To the extent that Fury sounds reluctant to muse about the cultural roots of his boxing career, it may be that he prefers not to discuss Traveller identity in depth every time he grants an interview to an unknown foreigner. For centuries, Traveller communities have resisted full integration with settled society in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and over the years their difference has caused Travellers to suffer various forms of official discrimination as well as the scorn and prejudice of the general public.

The rules, broadly speaking, and purpose of bare-knuckle fighting among Travelling men share almost nothing with the sport of boxing. Although money may be wagered on the outcome, these brawls serve primarily as a form of extralegal conflict resolution for a people who prefer to settle disputes without involving the state.

Instead of taking place in a physical ring, bare-knuckle contests typically occur outdoors, with onlookers encircling the combatants in a mobile, human ring that shifts and sways with the action. A referee is present to enforce basic tenets of fair play — no biting, no hitting below the belt, no hitting a man while he’s down — but only the fighters can call an end to the bout, when one man decides he’s had enough.

“There is no such thing as a knockout in bare-knuckle fighting, even if your opponent is spark out,” writes former champion Jimmy Stockins in his memoir, “ On the Cobbles .”

“When he finally comes around, he has the option of calling it a day or carrying on. … There is no trainer, no referee, no second ringside who can make the decision for you, look after you. It is down to you and your heart.”

There is no trainer, no referee, no second ringside who can make the decision for you, look after you. It is down to you and your heart.” – Jimmy Stockins

These battles can last only minutes or go on for hours, and once a man finally gives in, it’s traditional for both sides to head to the pub — broken ribs and gaping head wounds be damned — to share a drink.

Given how little this custom has in common with the sport of boxing, it’s no wonder that Fury emphasizes the distinction between his profession and his people’s tradition. In the same breath, however, Fury embraces the notion of coming from generation upon generation of fighting stock, as if it has been his birthright to inherit the strength and courage of the bare-knuckle champions who preceded him and channel it into what Fury calls the “more disciplined” and “real art” of boxing.

“Both sides of my family have had famous fighting men from Ireland going back over 200 years,” Fury writes in his 2019 autobiography, “ Behind the Mask .” Fury notes that his maternal great-grandfather, Othea Burton, earned the title King of the Gypsies, “never losing a bare-knuckle fight in his life.”

On his father’s side, Fury is a distant cousin of Bartley Gorman, who wore the same crown from 1972 to 1992 and whom Fury calls “one of the toughest men who ever lived.” Fury’s great-great-great grandfather was the Original Bartley Gorman, another renowned fighter who served as the namesake for Fury’s legendary cousin.

Fury reflected on that impressive pedigree during his January interview with Davies.

“I know we’re not animals, we’re all human beings, but if breeding makes any sort of difference, I was born and bred to do this,” he said. “I don’t look at a boxing fight and think, ‘Oh, I’m frightened to death of it.’ I look at it and lick me lips. It’s like going for a nice Sunday dinner. I love it.”

These days, several prominent British and Irish boxers come from Traveller backgrounds. Fury is considered one of the two best heavyweights in the world, an ex-champion whose belts were stripped during the three years he spent away from the sport, struggling with depression, weight gain and substance abuse issues, but who has since recovered and has a chance to reclaim a share of the title in Saturday’s rematch with Wilder.

Fury’s first cousin, Hughie, is a fringe top-10 contender at heavyweight who came up short in a 2017 title shot against Joseph Parker. Another cousin, 16-1 heavyweight prospect Nathan Gorman, is a great-nephew of Bartley Gorman. After Fury, the most accomplished active fighter of Traveller heritage is undefeated super middleweight belt holder Billy Joe Saunders, who appears headed toward a May 2 clash with boxing’s biggest star, Canelo Alvarez.

According to Andy Lee, the retired former middleweight titlist and 2004 Irish Olympian, this crop of fighters isn’t the first batch of Travelling men to grow up in boxing gyms and achieve early amateur success, but they do represent Travellers’ burgeoning interest in pursuing pro boxing as a career.

“It’s a long tradition, Travellers and Gypsies boxing,” said Lee, another of Fury’s cousins who has helped train Fury for this week’s Wilder clash alongside head cornerman SugarHill Steward. “If you go to any underage, amateur tournament in England or Ireland, you’ll see the Travellers are mostly the winners, if you can recognize the names.”

(Al Bello / Getty Images)

Until recently, however, it was uncommon for young Traveller fighters to stick with the sport. Instead, they followed tradition, dropping out of both school and organized athletics when they were as young as 10 years old to begin working alongside their fathers. Only a handful of Traveller boxers, such as Tyson’s father, John Fury , and former British light heavyweight champ “Gypsy” Johnny Frankha m carved out meaningful prizefighting careers at the domestic level.

The pages of Stockins’ memoir are studded with references to the pro fighters he and his brother trained with over the years, but that experience was mostly limited to sparring. Stockins’ real fights took place outside, with no gloves on.

“What’s always happened,” Lee explained, “is that they reach a certain age, they marry young, and then it’s time to go to work. Boxing is something you do when you’re a teenager, when you’re a kid growing up. I think I was one of the ones to break that mold and actually dedicate myself to boxing and make it my livelihood.”

He had started down that traditional path, a teenager working beside his dad, going door to door to offer landscaping and gardening services, doing tree surgery, tarmacing driveways.

“It’s physical work, hard work,” Lee said. “And I remember clear as day, I thought to myself, do I really want to continue this life and this hard way of doing things? Or, I could dedicate myself to boxing and really have a go at it. That was maybe a year or two before the Olympics , and luckily it turned out well for me.”

By opting to remain committed to organized boxing, Lee, Fury, Saunders and others among their batch of Traveller fighters have capitalized on one of the greatest advantages available to boxers: an early start.

One attribute commonly shared by the world’s finest professional prizefighters, from Floyd Mayweather to Vasiliy Lomachenko, is that they picked up the sport as children. These fighters are often more fluid and instinctual than athletes who come to boxing later in life — their lives in the ring allow them to react and improvise in the heat of exchanges, while those who’ve learned on the job sometime appear to be one step behind, pondering their way through each attack and counterattack.

Their fighting tradition all but ensures that Traveller boys become enrolled in this rough, boxing equivalent to Project Head Start.

“Look at Tyson,” Lee said. “He’s one of four brothers. All of them boxed at some stage. I’m one of four brothers. All of my brothers boxed at some stage and to a certain degree. And that would be the case in most Travelling families — in some way they would go to the boxing gym.”

Lee and Fury appear to be at the forefront of a generation of Travelling Men who have absorbed their culture’s warrior ethos and applied it to the sweet science. They were raised on stories of Big Joe Joyce and Bartley Gorman while harboring dreams of becoming the next Tommy Hearns or Mike Tyson.

Lee recalls he and others in the Travelling community watching an old VHS tape of a bare-knuckle fight between Dan Rooney and Aney McGinley. They also grew up on “Rocky” movies and followed Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Sugar Ray Leonard closely.

And now that Fury has helped blaze that trail, others in today’s generation have begun to follow.

“Young Travelling boys, now they can watch Billy Joe Saunders, they can watch Andy Lee, they can watch Tyson Fury, and that’s someone they can identify with,” Lee said. “I think you’re going to see a lot more Travelling boys coming into the professional game. Some of the top prospects in boxing from our side of the world are Gypsies and travellers: Paddy Donovan (who is trained by Lee), Charlie Frankham (whose grandfather is the former British light heavyweight champion Johnny Frankham), Hopey Price, Dennis McCann.

“The talent there is up there with anybody.”

There is one aspect of the bare-knuckle tradition that Fury acknowledges as vital to his professional career and success — the fighter’s mentality.

“You fight till the end,” Fury said. “You never give up and always keep coming no matter what. No matter if you’re cut, no matter if you’re hurt, you keep going. That’s the mentality that’s been instilled in me all my life.”

“You can’t show any weakness,” Lee explained. “From the early age, you’re not taught, but it’s kind of bred into you within the culture that you have to stand up for yourself, not let anyone take advantage of you.”

Lee understood this going all the way back to his earliest fighting memories, rumbling in the fields with his brothers and other boys in their community. Everyone would take turns fighting, and no one wanted to walk away defeated.

This included his own brother, six years his elder.

“I would never quit against him,” Lee says. “Even if he punched me till my nose was bleeding and my eyes are watering and everything else, until my mom shouted out the doors, ‘stop that now!’ We’d still be fighting. You just can’t quit. You can’t show any weakness. Because if you did, you wouldn’t hear the end of it.”

You just can’t quit. You can’t show any weakness. Because if you did, you wouldn’t hear the end of it.” – Andy Lee

That norm of ironclad machismo surely creates baggage in everyday life, but it also breeds good boxers, and Lee called Fury’s competitive spirit fierce even by the lofty standards of Traveller culture.

“Tyson’s the epitome of it,” Lee said, recalling endless push-up competitions in the gym, along with Fury’s maniacal determination to defeat Lee, a man roughly 100 pounds lighter than him, on cross-country runs when they joined Wladimir Klitschko’s Austrian training camp in 2010.

Fury pushed himself so on one run, Lee says, he vomited while running past him.

“It’s unacceptable to lose.”

Easy to say, but impossible for almost everyone to fulfill. Lee, of course, did not win all of his fights, and chances are that Fury, like almost every other boxer who’s ever laced a pair of gloves, won’t retire undefeated either. But that prideful mentality, born from bare-knuckle tradition and sealed with the spilt blood of their fighting forebears, has been apparent in the brightest moments of both men’s careers.

For Lee, it manifested in a string of come-from-behind victories, often by knockout, in fights he appeared to have little remaining chances of winning ‚— the final-round TKO of Craig McEwan; the Hail Mary right hook that short-circuited John Jackson after Lee was knocked down and appeared on the brink of being knocked out; the same hook that delivered Lee’s first taste of a world title, six rounds into a fight with Matt Korobov in which Lee trailed on all three judges’ scorecards.

For Fury, it has shown up in bouts few expected him to win. First, in 2015, when Fury ended Wladimir Klitchko’s 11-year reign atop the heavyweight division and tacked his name onto a storied championship lineage that includes Jack Johnson, Gene Tunney, Muhammad Ali and, Fury’s namesake, Mike Tyson. Then, in 2018, when Fury, barely a year removed from the nadir of his battles with mental illness and morbid obesity, challenged Deontay Wilder and outboxed the American champ for nearly every second of their fight.

And, of course, Fury’s mental fortitude shone through in his greatest moment, when he rose from the canvas in the 12th round against Wilder, after being knocked down by the thunderbolt right hand considered to be boxing’s deadliest single punch.

“Many people thought it was over,” Fury said. “For many who would have taken that shot, it would have been over. But for me, with that mindset, it was never over. You never surrender.”

Saturday, when Fury faces Wilder for the second time, whether Fury seeks an early knockout like he has promised or he opts to stick with the more defensive style he’s known for, Fury will be tested again. He could be hurt; he could be dropped; he could be exhausted. The freshly healed scar tissue over his right eye, where a gash from his last fight required 47 stitches to close, could open up early in the fight.

Somehow, at some point in Saturday’s fight, Fury will be forced to respond with the personal strength and the strength of his fighting tradition to overcome another impossibly precarious situation. And when that moment comes, Lee said he knows the words that will be ringing in Fury’s head:

“How are you going to go home to your family and friends and say that you lost? If you’re not going to let another Travelling Man beat you, how are you gonna let this normal, settled person beat you? He’s never been through your life.

“You just can’t lose.”

(Top photo: Lionel Hahn / PA Images via Getty Images)

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