By Oliver Fennell
WAYNE ELCOCK didn’t realise how much his father admired him as a boxer until it was too late.
Different people have different ideas about motivating others, and Elcock’s father obviously felt it better to be sparing with his praise.
“I’d get all the way to the final of a tournament,” says Elcock of his amateur days, “and the first thing my dad would say was, ‘well, son, nobody remembers second place’.
“Even if I knocked someone out, he’d talk about the shots they landed on me first.
“I guess it was just his way, not wanting me to get cocky. But I fell out of love with boxing and stopped doing it for four-five years.
“I was working, tarmacking roads. It was good money, but 10 hours of hard graft every day, and you don’t wanna go down the gym after that, so I’d go down the pub. I’d be watching the Saturday fight nights and I used to see boxers I’d beaten as an amateur on TV and I’d get into fights in the pub afterwards. I couldn’t handle the drink, and looking back, I must have been frustrated.
“Boxing was out of the question. I was overweight, I was doing nothing with my life, going out drinking and shagging. I was spending time with lads who had no ambition and who didn’t want others to have ambition. If I talked about me boxing again, they’d laugh at me.”
But one person who never laughed about Elcock boxing was his father. He may not have been effusive in his praise – at least not to Elcock himself – but that was perhaps a sign of how seriously he took it. “He was begging me to go back boxing again,” says Elcock of those missing years.
And eventually he did – but it came too late for his father, who died in a road accident in 1998. It was, naturally, a harrowing event for Elcock, but his father’s death led to his own rebirth as a boxer – once he learned, posthumously, what his dad had really thought of him.
“Every man and his dog was at Dad’s funeral. People were coming up to me and asking me about my boxing. They were all saying how he’d tell everyone who’d listen how brilliant I was, how far I was gonna go, that I was gonna be a world champion.
“I sat there after the funeral and thought to myself, ‘I’ve gotta finish this off for Dad’.”
The 10-year professional career which followed, launched in 1999, might not have quite achieved Dad’s predictions of a world championship, but it was a proud, exciting and decorated campaign nonetheless, including British, English and WBU reigns. And there was a shot at world glory, with an unsuccessful challenge against IBF middleweight ruler Arthur Abraham. By then, though, ‘Mad Dog’ already had one foot out of the competitive door, seeing his previous fight – an upset win over Howard Eastman, one of the finest British middleweights of the 21st Century – as his nadir, and validation of his father’s faith in him.
“For every one of my professional fights, I put a picture of dad down my sock,” he says. “After beating Eastman, I took it out, looked up and said, ‘Dad, I did it.’”
That unanimous decision in September 2007 is the standout result on Elcock’s ledger, though he also boasts wins over the likes of Darren Rhodes (twice), Anthony Farnell, Lawrence Murphy (emphatically avenging a first-round knockout defeat), Steve Bendall and Darren McDermott. The Eastman win led to the world title shot against Abraham, but Elcock says he was by then motivated by something less conducive to fighting spirit than honouring the memory of a deceased parent.
“I was just thinking of the money,” he says. “It would have been fitting to walk away after Eastman, but Abraham was a nice payday. It was just eight-nine weeks after Eastman and I was getting up every morning thinking ‘f***!’ But I said to myself ‘just think of the money; just get in there and see how it goes’.”
How it went was Elcock suffered a second-round knockdown but otherwise displayed faster hands and a greater output than Abraham, only for the German’s greater strength to prove decisive with a fifth-round stoppage in Basel, Switzerland.
“I hadn’t really been confident, but after the fourth round, Abraham had been cut, I was doubling and trebling the jab. My mindset changed. I started to believe I could win – and then I got stopped!
“He was by far the hardest puncher I ever faced. When he knocked me down in the second round, he hit me so hard it didn’t even hurt, if that makes sense? I didn’t even know I’d been knocked down, just the referee was counting and I thought, ‘what are you doing?’”
Elcock fought twice more, the last being a ‘Battle of Brum’ derby with Matthew Mackin in March 2019. Macklin won in three rounds, though Elcock claims he was handicapped going in: “I’d broken my leg in two places,” he says. “Tibia and fibula – the first when playing football, then the second one because I was training on it.”
Injured, coming off an emphatic defeat, and aged 35, it made sense for Elcock to retire then – but like so many others, there was at least the temptation to fight again.
“A fight with Darren Barker was made, but a couple of weeks later I got sick. My weight dropped to 11st and I had to pull out.
“Then after I’d been out of the ring a couple of years, I was offered James DeGale. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll chuck the money into my business’, I asked how much and they said seven grand. Seven grand to fight an Olympic gold medallist!
“Luckily, I didn’t need it, but for a lot of ex-fighters, seven grand would be a lot of money. [Some] promoters see someone with a name and rather than help them, they shaft them.”
MANCHESTER – APRIL 5: Wayne Elcock of England and his manager Frank Maloney celebrate after the WBU Middleweight Championship bout between Wayne Elcock of England and Anthony Farnell of England on April 5, 2003 at the MEN Arena in Manchester, England. Wayne Elcock of England won the fight. (Photo by John Gichigi/Getty Images)
Elcock then focused on his new vocations. He started out as a trainer, and then complemented this with a boxing shop, where he meets Boxing News. Mad Dog’s Boxing Store, in suburban Birmingham, has defied the decline of bricks-and-mortar retail thanks to the man himself manning the store and offering a more bespoke experience than you’d get when buying online or from a chain outlet.
Our interview is interrupted several times as customers drop in. Each is an amateur boxer stocking up ahead of the new season, and each is tended to by Elcock, who discusses with them their requirements, their experience level, their weight, and so on, and makes personalised recommendations – and not just whatever costs the most.
“If a beginner came in and wanted a £200-300 pair of Reyes gloves, I wouldn’t sell it to them,” he says. “I won’t sell you what you want, I’ll sell you what you need. Most stores are run by businessmen or fans. I don’t know of any other shop where an ex-pro can advise you like this. I’ve even had kids on the pads in here.”
As for the coaching, Elcock began with a programme called Box Clever, an ingenious “mobile gym” that consisted of a ring that could packed up into the back of a van, along with other equipment, and then unloaded and assembled anywhere with a bit of floor space – typically schools.
Elcock explains why he wanted to teach boxing to kids: “There was a lot of crime where I grew up [Chelmsley Wood]. You went one way or the other. Most went one way [towards crime]; I was the rarity that went the other. My mates would say, ‘come on, we’ve got a car nicked over there.’ I’d say, ‘I’m going to the gym.’ They’d say, ‘you tosser!’ But I knew the respect you get as a boxer far exceeds the respect you get as a criminal.
“I wrote a programme for kids. It combined boxing with education. For example, maths – we’re gonna score a fight. Set tasks with bronze, silver and gold awards; courses broken up into rounds. They didn’t even know they were being educated! Box Clever grew very rapidly. We were going all over the Midlands; 39 schools.
“The council came to me and said, ‘We’ve got this kid here – absolute nightmare, excluded from school, in trouble with the police all time. If you can do something with him, it’s a miracle. He turned up, 11 years old, with his mum. He just looked at me and said, ‘I don’t care who you are. I’m just here because she dragged me here.’ He just sat there. Everything I asked him to do, he just said ‘nah’. I managed to get him in some gloves. He hit the pads and I told him, ‘woah, you’ve got some power there! What a shame it would be if you got in trouble again; you’ve got a gift.’
“The following week, he was back. A few weeks later his mum said, ‘what have you done with him? He’s eating porridge in the morning, going for a run. I’ve even got him back in school.’ He was 11 back then. Now he’s 26 and a pro.”
That pro, Birmingham welterweight Elliot Hurley, boxes out of Elcock’s competitive gym, Kronk Birmingham, officially endorsed by the legendary Detroit brand. Box Clever continues to serve kids, casuals and beginners, whereas those looking to compete train at the Kronk. Among them is Elcock’s son, Wayne Jr.
“I didn’t want him to box, but the kids in school knew his dad was a boxer, so he came to me and said he wants to give it a go.” Junior is now a 16-year-old amateur light-middleweight with 12 bouts under his belt, including a Midlands championship.
All told, then, Elcock, now 50, is doing well, which he credits to advice given to him by his own coach, Paddy Lynch, when he was still fighting.
“Paddy made me think about what I’d do after I retired,” he says. “I’d say, ‘Retire, you c***? I’m just getting started!’ But he said, ‘Just put a few more quid in the bank, start putting some ideas down in the back of your mind. It seems a long way off, but it goes quick’.
“People think you make a lot of money from boxing. They say to me, ‘what are you doing working? You should be on a beach sipping cocktails’. I did have money in the bank, but I’m a grafter, and I wanted to pay forward what Paddy did for me.
“I’m making more money now than I ever did when I was boxing. The gym is paid for; pros can train for free. I’ll only take the minimum if they get to a British title.
“My satisfaction is not in money, it’s in turning lives around.”