BLOOD & CUTS

You’re blinded by claret and the referee is about to stop the fight. Elliot Worsell talks to the man who can help you...

- Elliot Worsell

BLOOD. It’s being coughed up and he doesn’t know why. All he knows is it’s somewhere in his chest, then in his throat, then on his tongue, and that he hasn’t yet learnt how to stop or control it. All he knows is this is not supposed to be happening. Not now, at 18 years of age. Not when training. Not when fit and healthy. Not before a fight has even broken out.

“I was lucky to have found out I had TB [tuberculosis] through boxing,” said Mick Williamson. “I was training and having chest pains and coughing up blood.

“In those days they would put you up in Switzerland and wait for you to die. I went to the doctors and they said it was a strain. I stayed in Grove Park [hospital] for six weeks and after that I was allowed home for weekends. I was the oldest of seven [children], so I was a bit worried about the rest of the family.”

Williamson would never have been a good boxer, or so he says. But he shone in the school championships and even when tuberculosis tried wrecking his dream was determined to get back in the ring and pick up where he left off.

“I was driving people mad,” he said. “All they heard was, ‘When can I start boxing? When can I start boxing?’ But TB leaves a scar on your lung and you’ve got to wait for that to heal.

“All of a sudden I was 20 and booze, birds and God knows what else entered the equation. I forgot to ask when I could start boxing again.”

More blood. He’s 23 now, blindsided by booze and birds, and somewhere inside the Stork Club in Streatham. His days of fighting in a ring are over but that doesn’t mean Mick Williamson’s fists have necessarily retired. Ungloved, they are currently clenched in the middle of a melee, all broken glass and faces, as that unwelcome taste returns to his tongue.