London’s City workers are at the hub of one of the most powerful business communities on earth so is it any wonder their stress levels run higher than player turn-over at Leicester City. Tired of turning to booze, drugs and heart attacks for relief, many have now discovered that getting in a ring and pummelling each other is the ultimate way to find peace.

This month we meet Alan Lacey, a man whose personal epiphany is changing lives and supporting our national economic future.

Having co-managed / co-promoted boxers such as Chris Eubank and Gary Stretch, it took Alan a good punch in the face to realise the way forward for boxing in this country. With the zeal of a religious fanatic, Alan explains how he came to set up the Real Fight Club, an underground boxing phenomena, sweeping the City of London.

Your job must be absolutely unique in this country, how on earth did you find yourself with a profession like this?

“Completely by chance actually. Back in ‘96 I was still looking for ways to stop smoking and I was getting worse and worse and I just couldn’t do it and in the end I thought, I know I’ll go to a boxing gym, a crazy and half-arsed idea but strangely enough it worked, - the day I walked into the gym was the day I stopped smoking - I substituted one drug for another. I trained assiduously for a year, lost weight, stopped smoking, felt great”.

“I was 44 years old in very good shape for my age and then one day this bloke walks in to the gym with a young boxer and says, ‘Alan, would you like to spar with this fella?’ and I thought why not? It turns out that the kid was turning pro but as it was he wasn’t that good and I managed to hold him off for a round. He then smashed me around for the next couple, but strangely enough I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it, and I thought, ‘I like this I’m going to do more of this’, and I was like, ‘hey when do you want to come back’, my nose was all over my face by now but I was really up for it”.

“Then I got wind of these white collar events that were going on in New York so I flew over there and trained in a great gym in Brooklyn and was matched against a Manhattan dentist 10 years younger than me. We went at it big time in a public arena and it was FAN-TASTIC, like being re-born, it was fucking awesome. I went back a year afterwards and took a group of people with me, you know there were people training in gyms who didn’t really fit in there and this White Collar thing was taking off in the States. It was always quite a closet activity, we used to hear rumours of this multi-millionaire hairdresser who used to turn up at the Thomas a Becket in his Ferrari, to train like a pro and spar with pro fighters, it was a kind of weird, underground scene”

“I had another fight in the States and thought, you know what, I think there’s something here I can develop”.

So how did you get people interested in it over here, who did you target?

“We get most of the fighters through the website but we’ve got a lot of people from posters at traffic lights, people sat in traffic who see the signs and get in touch. Somebody will give them a call, try to find out what they’re about, see if we like the cut of their jib, then we invite them down do a bit of training and off we go. We discourage people from just pitching up and coming down”.

“We’re not aiming at kids from troubled backgrounds who want to stick glasses in each other’s faces, fundamentally we are aiming at people who work in the city, people with careers and families, rather than people who are wanting to hurt each other”

So do people need to have experience to be eligible for TRFC, I mean do you have to know your way around a ring?

“People who join have no boxing experience, they’re the people this is designed for, they’re the people who want to do it. They come down and we develop them, armchair fans who have never put on a pair of gloves in their life. People who are never going to be champions but who want to have a go, there’s a happy medium if you work hard”.

“Boxing can be enormously rewarding, it’s open to everybody, providing you’ve got two arms and two legs, you can do it but you’ve got to work hard and train hard for it and that’s something that not everybody can do. You know, the modern human condition seems to be the maximum pleasure from the minimum effort”.

Yes that sounds familiar. So what do you think the incentive is for a total new comer to want to get in a ring and box, especially at a relatively late stage in their life?

“I don’t know why people do it, maybe they’re trying to test themselves, maybe they’re trying t kill a demon from somewhere in their past, maybe they’re just a fat lazy bastard that’s approaching middle age. It’s a big experience you know, boxing at York Hall for a boxing fan is like being given the ball to kick out at Wembley isn’t it. It’s a boyhood dream”.

What about the idea involved in the film, Fight Club, that men want to acknowledge their natural being, a kind of backlash against the mollycoddling of modern society and its force fed ideals of consumerism?

“There’s two ends to that spectrum, because in some ways life has never been so dangerous, you know, go to Romford on a Friday night and you’ll find as much trouble as you ever want to handle. At the other end you’ve got a situation where we’re over governed and over protected and live in a health and safety culture, which is frightening. So maybe this is an antidote. The element of control is a key issue, how much control have I got over my environment?”

It seems like a lot of what TRFC does is about self-development, do you notice changes in your members?

“For sure. It changes the way people think about themselves and feel about themselves. I’ve had many, many instances of guys who are not, necessarily alcoholic but definitely have a drink problem, people who are seriously overweight, people who have suffered from low self esteem, who have come down and trained assiduously for a year and they shed four or five stone and its like they’ve been re-born, been given another chance. Guys who are in their late 30’s early 40’s and suddenly they have been given a new lease of life. They feel different, confident, positive they can deal with things, it’s the benefits of consistent exercise as well as having the challenge of something that’s edgy”.

“I’ve got so many stories of guys fighting and then doing business together afterwards. It’s a common ground, they recognise each other’s fears, understand how the other person feels and has respect for what the other person’s going through”.

So it’s the new golf then?

“Damn right, don’t go for 18 holes go for a few rounds in the gym”.

Obviously the aim of TRFC is not to train a bunch of thugs to go out and cause mayhem, but do you feel the training can help you in confrontations on the street?

“Look that’s a whole different point, but if push comes to the shove and you let one (a punch) go quickly then it may have the desired effect. At least physically, you’re not going to swallow it and you have the confidence to at least stand there and throw two or three shots and then be on your toes”.

“About two months before I boxed in the States, I found myself in a situation at 1am outside my house with two robbers trying to break into my car and I was 10 round fit at that time and I went out stark naked apart from a pair of shorts and I ironed the two guys out. I said, ‘Please leave the car alone’, and they thought, silly old bastard and so I didn’t have a choice but I was confident enough in my fitness. If I hadn’t have been that fit, I never would have gone out there”.

So you’d recommend it?

“Most definitely! I tell you there’s nothing to beat it, you’ll get more of a buzz out of this that you will out of anything”.

Right then, I’m of to find a medicine ball, a heavy bag and some gloves. What’s keeping you? Your country needs you!

The Real Fight Club will present an evening of boxing at the York Hall on the 12th May, in aid of The Luta Pela Paz charity project in Rio, helping children to escape armed violence by teaching them to box.