Lou Yates was built like a tank, short in height, but incredibly broad and thick-set. Powerful shoulders, forearms like slabs of beef, legs like tree trunks, a proper northern powerhouse who could also fight. And being a northerner down south, he needed every bit of it. In the 1970s, he found himself working the door at a popular nightspot in Ilford, Essex.
The Room at the Top, a venue for trendy partygoers and top faces across Essex and London. On this night, Essex’s most feared firm were in attendance, the Blondells, headed by two brothers, Eddie and Billy. Billy was in that night, the hotter-headed of the two. Lou clocked them straight away, swilling champagne out of flutes, sneering at the doorman, very sure of themselves.
He wasn’t impressed by flash suits, wads of cash, or reputations. He was a straight, John Bull northern man. You play by the rules, or you got the stick. There was no carrot in his playbook. As he pushed through the crowd asking punters to drink up, he made his way over. The remaining crowd paused, sensed the tension.
A caveman of a doorman squaring up to Billy and his crew. Billy didn’t move. Neither did Lou. That scar on his face, carved into him from wars most men wouldn’t have survived, said everything about who he was. He wasn’t used to being told what to do. Lou didn’t care. Drink up. Time to go. What happened next happened fast. Billy lamped him. A sharp shot right on the chin.
Most men would have wobbled. Lou Yates was not most men. He came straight back, smashing into Billy, fists like hammers. Then it came from the side, a heavy glass, full force, across his head. It split him open. Blood pouring down his face and something shifted in Lou Yates. The doorman was gone.
What was left was something primeval. He went through them like a wrecking ball. The gang, men who had faced armed robbers, shooters, London’s most dangerous, were being dismantled. Billy got out, a couple of his men with him. The rest didn’t get that luxury. One northern doorman had gone to war with one of the most feared gangs in London and Essex and won the battle.
But the war was not over. The morning after the whispers started. Lou was warned. Billy was a serious man. Connected. Respected. There would likely be comebacks. Calls were made. Underworld back channeling. Men on both sides trying to cool the temperature. Lou listened and then went back to work. Because to Lou Yates, it was just another pub fight. If they came, he’d be waiting.
He was a proud northern fighting man from St. Helens. A tough rugby town in the northwest. Hard men, hard lives, hard weather. Liverpool on the doorstep. A town that produced many fighters. Lou had started boxing young. The Britannia, Low House, clubs that built boys into men through discipline and leather gloves.
He loved everything about it. The skipping, the bags, the sparring. But it was outside the ring where he truly stood apart. A relentless nature, freakish strength, and an absolute refusal to take a backward step. So, life was good. Boxing, nights out, the door, street fights, the swinging ’60s rolling through Liverpool and washing over St.
Helens. A young family to raise, a life being built, and then a name reached him. Roy Shaw, a man putting out a challenge, an open call to every hardman across the country. “Come and have a go.” Lou Yates read that and didn’t hesitate for a single second. Challenge accepted. That was what brought him to the smoke.
Advertisements
Not just the door work. Roy Shaw had thrown down a gauntlet and Lou Yates had picked it up. But first, he had a certain Essex gang to deal with. A week after the violence, Billy walked into the club on his own. No crew, no muscle, no traps. Just a scar-faced Essex hardman. He walked straight up to Lou Yates and put his hand out. “Fair play.
You gave as good as you got.” Lou shook it. They talked. Two hardmen. No posturing, no ego. It was a punch-up. It happened. It was done. Billy was a fighting man. These things happened. And that was that. Or so Lou thought. Because not everyone in their firm got the memo. There were men who were not interested in handshakes, not interested in drawing lines.
They’d been humiliated by a northern doorman in a local club. And that sat very badly, indeed. Three men in particular. The Mad Jock. Originally from Scotland, tall and wiry with a boxing background and a nasty streak a mile wide. And two enforcers. Giant men. One originally a boxer from Africa. Physically imposing in a way that made rooms go quiet when they walked in.
These men were not done. The Mad Jock came to the club first when Lou wasn’t on the door, conveniently. He was hard to miss. Tall, wiry, coiled like something waiting to go off. A boxing background etched into the way he moved, the way he carried himself. He made his feelings known, loud, threatening, making sure word got back.
He wanted Lou Yates, and he wanted everyone to know it. The threats filtered back to Lou. Lou listened, said nothing, because men who talk that much usually have something to prove. And men with something to prove always show up eventually. That night came a few days after. Lou Yates was on the door. The mad jot walked up, shadow boxing, offering Lou on the cobbles.
The punters queuing, waiting to get access to the lift up to the bar watched on bug-eyed. They didn’t have to wait long. Lou Yates rushed him. All that height, all that speed, all that boxing background, it counted for nothing. The man who had filled the club with noise and threats and bravado was demolished.
The crowd watched the demolition job in stunned silence. A week later, one of the enforcers came into the club, 6’7″, a giant of a man, full of confidence, very sure of himself. He’d forgotten something important. Size means nothing if you can’t handle yourself. Lou put him down with one shot, cold, out before he hit the floor, and that was the end of it.
No more threats, no more visits, no more late-night calls with attack dogs. Done. Because when you stripped it all back, that’s what this had really been about. A group of men who could not stomach being told what to do by a northerner who didn’t know their names, didn’t care about their reputations, didn’t read the map of who was who in the Essex underworld.
He just knew the rules. Drink up, time to go, and God help you if you didn’t. But the door work was never the reason Lou Yates had come south. It was always about one man, Roy Shaw, the most feared unlicensed fighter in the country, a legend, a wrecking machine, a man who had issued an open challenge to every hardman in Britain.
Lew Yates had traveled the length of the country to answer that call. But was Roy Shaw ready for Lew Yates? In the 1970s, Roy Shaw emerged from prison and aligned himself with Joey Pyle, entering the brutal world of unlicensed fighting. In 1975, he faced Donny “the Bull” Adams, a feared enforcer and traveling man who had previously been shot during a violent feud involving the Blundells and a dangerous East London firm.
The fight made Shaw’s name on the unlicensed circuit. He smashed Donny “the Bull” Adams to pieces. Well, I was trying so hard for it. You don’t train three days before you fight. Well, I know I was training right up to the morning of the day of the fight. And all the energy I was dishing out in me body every day was storing up. And I was like a time bomb.
How would you call it say it with your fight? Could it only lasted a few seconds? He just walked across the ring with bush, bush, lift up, bang, right in, it was all over. And he hit him so hard on the chin, the guy went out. Then we jumped on him, not but he was out anyway with a right hand him. I hit him and then I put I I I No, I put that in.
I ain’t I ain’t putting that in. He said, “I’m going to pick him up and start again and it’s going to kill me up and no, I hadn’t spent nothing. So, that was the In 1981, Shaw finally accepted a challenge off the loud, relentless northerner who had pursued him for years. Ray Hill, who at the time was himself an active fighter on that same circuit witnessed the fight firsthand.
1981 Roy Shaw fought Lou Yates. Um I’m not quite sure what the promoter was, but by the decision it could have been Joe Bow because Joe Bow was Roy Shaw’s manager and it’s and it was a bad bad decision, yeah. Uh the first round it was that even. Lou Yates was pushing Roy Shaw around a bit, you know.
And you could see that it was hurting Roy Shaw very hard for Lou Yates, yeah. Uh second round um it was Lou Yates again pushing Roy Shaw around. Roy Shaw nutted Lou Yates and split his eye, cut his eye. And third round uh the referee stopped the fight because of Lou Yates’ cut. Uh there was murders because I’ve seen unlicensed fighters in my day.
I was an unlicensed fighter for a long time. And I’ve seen people like get cut to pieces, you know. I mean the idea of unlicensed fighting is usually the referee will say to you, “Right, you know, you get three about you can get three or four warnings, you know what I mean? And then they get disqualified.
” But to get a cut and it just looked that bad and then for the referee to stop it and say that Roy Shaw was taking too much stick, yeah. And so he stopped it and there was murders in the ring. Murders murders. So I think it might have been uh the only man probably uh promotion. But I said it now. I like Joe. I said I said Joe was a proper man, yeah.
But anyway, yeah, Roy Shaw beat uh Lou Yates. Uh but they couldn’t get the fight back on again. Uh Roy Shaw didn’t want to know, yeah. Sadly, Lou Yates and Roy Shaw have now passed after living good ages. Two warriors from north and south that you’re unlikely to see the likes of again. Billy Blundell, a chop-faced and Essex businessman, has also sadly passed.
This story came from Lou Yates’ book, Wild Thing. Like most books, there’s going to be embellishment, but I’ve got it from good sources that Lou was the real deal back in the day. He says in his book that himself and Billy became good friends after, but still makes a good story decades later. Please like and subscribe if you enjoyed the video today.
The majority of viewers who watch my videos don’t subscribe, and it would make a massive difference if you can do me a solid as I’m dreaming one day of hitting that 100K follower mark. I’m on around 60 at the moment, so like I say, I’d really appreciate it. With that being said, that’s me done for today. The Inquirer out.
