Three men and a referee could not stop 'Britain's hardest man' as he battered rival fighter
Three men and a referee could not stop 'Britain's hardest man' as he battered rival fighter
Lenny McLean was a force to be reckoned with and even three men and a referee couldn't stop him from battering a rival fighter.
The notorious bareknuckle boxer, who was known as 'Britain's hardest man', garnered his reputation for beating up a whole lot of people, and was involved with some of the country's toughest gangsters in the 70s and 80s.
Back in the 50s, Lenny grew up in Hoxton, London, with an abusive stepfather.
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Later on in life, he started out as a nightclub enforcer and was then befriended by notorious gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray.
After falling into a life of crime, he served 18 months in prison for beating up his boss on a construction site.
When he got out of jail, Lenny got into bare-knuckle fighting because his criminal record prevented him from becoming a licensed boxer.
He began competing in fights at Frank Warren’s National Boxing Council in 1970, where he excelled.
Weighing 20 stone, he would go on to win more than 3,000 fights.
And one of his opponents - Mad Gypsy Bradshaw - thought he could take him in an unlicensed boxing match back in 1986.
A clip of the fight was shown in the 2016 documentary, The Guv'nor, which focused on Lenny's life.
Before the bell rang, Bradshaw makes the mistake of head-butting Lenny.
Like that man needed provoking.
As you can imagine, as soon as the bell rings, Lenny knocks him out within seconds with a clean right hook.
But it didn't stop there.
Lenny suddenly unleashes himself on Bradshaw, who is lying flat on the canvas.
With a series of brutal punches and kicks, three men and the referee attempted to break it up, but they could not stop him.
In an interview after the fight, a battered-up Bradshaw did not answer a single question asked by the journalist.
According to his daughter, Kelly McLean, Bradshaw had to be taken to hospital and was said to have went into a coma.
“When he walked on to the ward and saw him, Dad was completely gutted." she told The Mirror.
“He kept visiting him from that day forward and they stayed friends."
Lenny eventually ended up getting into acting after working as a bodyguard to the cast of EastEnders.
He then starred in Guy Ritchie’s 1998 crime thriller Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, cementing his status as a legendary figure.
It was during the filming of Lock, Stock when Lenny fell ill with what was later diagnosed as lung cancer.
Sadly, he died shortly afterwards on July 28, 1998, a month before the film’s release.
Anish Vij