The story of my life would be a bloody sight shorter if the man who
tried to murder me outside the Broadway Theatre in Barking on a winter's
evening in 1989 had succeeded. He nearly did.
Frank Warren has spent forty years working with boxing's most colourful
and controversial characters. In his long-awaited autobiography, he
reflects on the battles he had to win to reach the top and remain there,
not least the battle to stay alive after he was shot at point-blank
range in an attempted assassination in 1989.
In Frank and Fearless, Warren pulls no punches, taking us behind the
scenes into a world of blood and sweat, and intense relationships that
all too often end in tears. Under Warren's careful stewardship, Frank
Bruno, Naseem Hamed, Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton, Amir Khan and Tyson
Fury all became world champions. So did Terry Marsh, the man who was
later accused, and cleared, of trying to murder him. Along the way,
Warren has been assaulted in a hotel room by the formidable Mike Tyson
and gone toe to toe in a court room with his erstwhile partner, the
flamboyant Don King.
However, boxing is only part of the story that begins on a council
estate in 1950s North London, where Warren first learnt how to stand up
to bullies. That was how he overcame and outwitted the powerful cartel
that controlled British boxing and tried to stop his career before it
started, and it is why he is still around to reflect on his remarkable
life.
With cameo appearances from Frank Sinatra, Luciano Pavarotti, Pink Floyd
and the Philadelphia mafia, Frank and Fearless is the unflinchingly
candid and hard-hitting memoir of Britain's most famous and influential
boxing promoter.
