Full transcript: Frank Bruno on London Real
4:49 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Frank Bruno, the former British heavyweight world champion boxer, known for your incredible punching power. You have a total of 40 wins under your belt, 38 by way of knockout. You fought Lennox Lewis for the title and had two epic bouts with Mike Tyson, the second one.
5:14 And in your career you’re one of the most loved and recognizable boxers in Britain, and your life and struggles with mental health have been highly publicized by the media, and your new book, Let Me Be Frank, you open up about living with bipolar disorder in the hope of taking away some of the stigma attached to this illness. Frank, welcome to London Real. Thank you very much, run. Thank you. It’s amazing having you here.
5:36 What’s it like to come back to London? I know you grew up here, but I know you spend a lot of time in the countryside, and how much is this city changed since you were here? Us feces one of the best cities in the world. You know, I mean, but all what’s gone on around the world at the moment everybody’s on edge and getting jumpy. But London’s a nice place, but I like the country.
5:58 I’m a country man. I like the fresh air, the fields of whatever. But it’s a nice place, London, but it’s very, not jumpy, but all the different things where I opinion 217 2017, it does make people live a lot. Yeah, you’re big on children having respect for their elders, and I was wondering what would you like as a kid in South London? Well, you the one that had respect for their elders or did you kind of learn that over time?
6:28 I didn’t have no choice, and I was brought with them. I’ve three sisters and two brothers, and either brother that watch my back all the time, but I told me love, discipline, focus and manners by the serious dad, who was very, very generous to me, but he did not allow me to be disrespectful. Didn’t ever man, as my mum was a very, very powerful lady. She was a Pentecostal preacher, and she walked me out very, very well, and unfortunate from the other center, Borstal, when I was about 12, and that’s the best thing that could have ever happened to me.
7:05 That being said, to that bull stole, because it told me about manners, discipline and focus, and now to look after yourself. Okay, why did you get sent? That I was hanging around with the realm, so like people, and I think if I were the stuck having an air within people I might not have been here now today or might be in an hour prison, but I haven’t got a criminal record, but I was fascinated with bad guys and people hanging around, but my brother kept him away from me, but my mom warned me if I don’t dare myself and pull my socks up or whatever, I will be sent to her, hug busto, but other expel from my primary school, which I’m not very, very very proud of.
7:54 It but when I got expelled me and then she took me up to London to see some people, another castaway to Suffolk’s, but a good thing about it, they had teacher Mr. Irwin. I’m in contact with him, some of the pupils from the school, and they helping me with my cherry, different brewing our foundation and the teacher Mr. Irving must only most nicest, strictest and very, very knowledgeable cry of structuring your life around and advising you and helping you, but he was no nonsense or like guy, but not the nice thing. We’re in contact now and he’s a good guy.
8:36 So twelve years old, they got you out of kind of the inner city, out in Sussex, sausage or discipline, new environment. Oh, he’s only hang out with the gangsters. Oh, I thought I was bad, but with a Mr. – – oh cool, boarding school. There were serious cups of tea that brought me down to earth to make me this realized, pull my socks up. That’s where I just decided I wanted to be a boxer.
9:00 Are trained. I went to work in our old people’s home, the Mr. Mrs. Chapman. They looked after me, and I was cleaning floors, cleaning the chicken things, cleaning his Aston Martin, and about life and discipline, and it was a good, good education. Went camping, we done all different things, walk the South Downs Way and learn about respect, discipline and how to conduct yourself, look after your shoes and socks and being better at certain time. We got free meals a day, but you had to be on point every single day, because there was a lot of them kids there.
9:39 There was a lot of very tough guys, tough when I mean tough guys, you know, man, if you walk to the toilet and they’re done, you don’t mean you get a punch in your mouth or something like that, or you know, they were very, some of that chips in the shoulder. But did you take up boxing to protect yourself? Once we got boxing, because I didn’t have no, I was, I didn’t realize I was dyslexic, so I’ve realized that I’m more than the struggle. They’re trying to be a lawyer or be a judge or be a an accountant to make enough money, so the other way I could do is to take up some sort of like school football.
10:14 I had two left feet and rub the 12 men, you know, I mean, when you cut down the wages is 12 different checks you gotta give. Outside wanting to go in the box is unlike martial arts, and a like, like boxing. Okay, martial arts is boxing, and martial arts, boxing, martial arts. Yeah, I mean, you said you like martial arts. What you fascinated with Bruce Lee?
10:38 Yeah, it’s very, very fascinating. Bruce Lee, I used to be my hero, and I used to watch a lot of feelings. I’m used to that. Clap Junction, you still got to see the man, watch some kung fu movies and come out light, thinking that you walking home about two, three miles away from the Clam Junction, two ones, of I knew, ah, kicking them all the moves. Oh, they used to do.
10:59 Yeah, but you have little friends season when you’re young and so in England, though, probably boxing was the closest thing you could find to a martial art. Well, you could beat ah, yeah, I like boxing. We’re down to else killed John Levin and Gary Lavergne and John Liver, and unfortunately is not here now, but his son Gary, and I mean, looked, asked me very, very well built, and so Phil Akane’s and Freddie Ritz, and yeah, code coded in Tsunami learning a trade.
11:28 What do you think made you a good boxer, and were you good from the start? I was a father, say I was good. I was very, very determined, as very, very fit, I was very, very focused, or I was very, very on my game. You don’t mean I wasn’t no, she gray Leonard’s, or whatever, but I was like in the army, you know, I mean. I would knuckle down, and I was very, very determined, some would say I was muscle down, some would say I was stiff, or whatever, but I knew I wanted to do only to make money.
11:58 I wanted to win the World Championship, and I’m going to have a dream, and I had a dream, and I starts more guns. You know, okay, where did your mother, the Pentecostal preacher, think of her son going into boxing? She wanted me to be a preacher or a lie or whatever, but I didn’t have it in my brains to work. When you’re dyslexic, sometimes you drop it, and your fashion, your style is different. I didn’t understand what she meant, but she didn’t want me to do boxing at all.
12:29 None, mother wants to see the Sun again. Beach, she came to a couple of fights, and sometimes you didn’t, in the toilet was her Bible, praying rather than what sure fire. She went into boxing at all, but if just were someone to do, she would pray for me and go down the church and pastor Ramsey would earn chops and prayers for me, that I don’t get her or whatever, but mom didn’t want me to do boxing. I told my dad, did I? My dad died when I was about 15, 14, so he didn’t really see when I left school from 16.
13:02 Tried a few jobs, here and now, I’m out polishing work in the building side, working Lonsdale, spool shop in Dixon, and working them the bingo hall, and I just went straight in the boxing. Addison money, one game, can’t really support me too well after paid my momma. They’ll get texts and whatever. I decided, stripe, went straight into boxing. Was it hard losing your father?
13:30 Yeah, was hard losing my father because my father was my era. You not made my father always wanted a son. When his son came along, used to spoiling me and give me a lot of different things, but if I were hand, he would drop some manners on me. I’m old and beans. They gave me, put me in good stead to tell me about certain different things who live from wherever, trusting people and looking after yourself, or whatever, but yeah, missing.
14:03 I still miss him now. And you had three older sisters. Three older sisters. Yeah, you were there, the son. he was waiting for you and boom, you came out.
14:12 There was one full sister and two half sisters, but yet I mean, there still was my sisters. Okay, now your first 21 fights, you won. Yeah, what’s that like and how do you stay focused and not let the ego take over? What was that whole process like in your late teens, early 20s? Sometimes I’m not, I’m a practical guy.
14:34 I don’t really let things excite me or go to my head or whatever. Are trying very, very hard. Having 21 fights, it was nice having 25 and one fights, but sometimes you gotta go and someone’s gotta hit you back, and I did have a couple of fights with someone who’d hit me back hard, to dig deep and see if I had the bottle, the determination, the will to go forward. But yeah, it was nice, within them early fights. when you go into the ring it’s a different temple that you gotta go into, which you don’t know how you’re gonna come out, but when you go in there, it’s not like football, it’s not like quickly, it’s not like rugby, it’s not like a snuke or wherever.
15:14 You go in there to take the guy out or be taken out yourself. What do you like before you go into the ring? Do you get nervous? Do you get quiet? Some guys throw up, some guys are calm.
15:26 What do you, what were you like before you win it? Just, you know, is having him or me. He’s not mean the going. They are trying very, very hard, get is so very, very fit, and hear him before he needs you. I let my trade that the hard way, cuz I didn’t learn about survival.
15:42 Sometimes in life you learn tricks of holding and if we get hurt, girl, and the one the did, now all others are trying to get very, very strong, very, very fit, went in there and just went from the round one, come back and go in there, learn how to pace and get some rhythm and bob and weave and whatever. You learn them things later on, but I was very, very raw, very, very keen, very, very eager, not listening to certain different skills through life. They, he’s not mean if you, if you, if you get hurt and you bubble at your gums, you let the referee stopped the fire.
16:20 Cry that on one knee or things like that. You learn through life after, and you do, but I was just, it, I’m hit like I’m talking to say, if you get a girlfriend’s knot or something like that, you just Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, River, just take your time and pace yourself. You lost a little bit more, longer. I didn’t have that experience, who like run for my life. Do you think that’s why people love watching you fight?
16:45 Because you just put it all on the line, but he put it all on the line, bash, and I put it all on the line. I should have learn a few more tricks here and there, got a little bit more experience for the amateur. My dad went 21 amateur fights on them, making no excuses either. Good innings, for five fights lost five, and I had no complaints whatsoever. Either AB made history, a won the World Championship.
17:11 How the I did for five minutes, but dumb wire to do so. I’ve no complaints at all. You said for that World Championship in 95, you said sometimes you kind of take your mind back there, and you can hear Nigel been shouting your name, you know, in the stands, and you can remember what it was like. What was it like to win that, you know, at Wembley with all that on the line and all those people there and Nigel in the crowd? You know what do you remember?
17:37 I remember everything. What was to remember about you? I had three attempts or four attempts. First loss to Bankruptcy Smith, which I, 21, 22 fights. I was being him up until about eight round.
17:53 I’m forcing my head got in the wrong place and he stopped me. But the best thing that could have happened to me is him stopping me, go back to the drawing board and learn my trade. The nice Soloway turned up within the game’s teeth and a hard lesson to learn. It sometimes the losses are the right thing at the right time. I think in life you’ve got to lose before you win.
18:13 You can’t win and win, you win all the time. I’m not lying. What it’s like to lose, you know, I mean, you can’t get money, but at night, not having money, you don’t mean so if you have no money and you get a little bit money, you’ve got nobody likes to you know, late lasts and pace yourself else. So winning all the time in life, nobody should win, win, win all the time. Some days you gonna have bad days and good days.
18:41 Everybody, whoever this royal family, whether you build with the silver spoon in your mouth, you got a no waste like to lose and to take a beam and know what is hard to know about hardship. And so that time he stopped you was a good thing. Yeah, good, good, good trees him from there. You went back to the drawing board, went back to the drawing board. Sometimes a lot of people when they lose, they can’t get their confidence up, the girl or the gun shy and the car get their head, then they, the things back together.
19:12 But the more I lost, a more determined I got, and the more I started more guns, right? And so then you went back, fought for the title a few more times, and then finally got it. Yeah, definitely, a light running my life about it. But yeah, I was chief motoring. I must have been an epic night there, Freya, Freya, unbelievable night.
19:32 You know, I mean, because I was like a cat, you have seven lies, but that that was my last beer. I mean, then seventh, seventh. So like life, are though, if I didn’t get it then nothing aware, and it was good that Frank war on Cameron bald. He was connected to dumb king, dunking I doubt of her. McCool, Oliver McCall knocks out loans Lewis gave me the opportunity of flying for the showers.
20:00 I was unbelievable, unbelievable night, and the crab was nicely, everything went down smooth. What’s the boxing game like? Because it’s not only you have to be the best, but you also have to be the best business and be in the right place at the right time to make those things happen, because you’ve seen people that have been great boxers that had bad careers. Probably how did you learn how to do all that? I had a Gordon.
20:22 I’m a teacher in Terry Lawless, Mickey Duff, Jarvis Astaire. Mike, bearer of not fell out. I left them and learned, but the either could accountant officials, ooh, the marks, I called Neil Marks. I had good lawyers and either good team around me at the time, and you had a vision, which was you wanted to be the champion, you wanted to make money. This was gonna be a career.
20:46 Yeah, definitely different, cuz I start fighting because they like fighting. Hmm. And you know you always were a businessman? I thought was a businessman, but yeah, boxing his business with blood, but I had a good team. I was a good listener, and I’d put people around me, so I put, let them do their best business and let me do my business.
21:09 It’s a business, yeah. He’s a business with blood, boxing, and boxes are getting a bit more smarter now, of looking, often promoting themselves, and you don’t mean them drop in a different way. It’s a different era now. Boxers are talking about millions of pounds that they’re getting, which are getting a business with the pay-per-view and different with some big pieces, but if he got character, if he got charisma, and you could put bums on seats and get viewing figures, like it was a BBC at the first when I started, then I ended up be described.
21:42 But yeah, you gonna be a little bit different then. She’s not on me. Mary, I had Chris Eubank here and Nigel Benn. No, another one, two years, and they were talking about their rivalry back in the day, and they were talking about how British boxing kind of in the 80s and maybe early 90s was a different animal. It would be on free television, everybody would be talking about these bites.
22:08 I thought the whole the whole country would watch them. Can, can you tell, take me back and tell me what was boxing like back then? When you find the Asian is unbelievable. You Don me sometimes, you’ve got the press comes yet, every single paper there. It was on the television.
22:24 It was an on ITV. ITV would compete with BBC, and everybody knew you, and everybody watched here and everybody. The barrack wickedness leave quad is Nadja friend. Chris Eubank, Clinton Mackenzie, you had Charlie my gray, you had the Morris hope, you had so many different fires then that that, not saying box name boxing, but in them days it was unbelievable good fun, you know, if he went abroad somewhere to Europe, if you could divide, you said suddenly we pause and that characters, you know, mainly about the fresh clothes, etc.
23:03 Said sure, them guys were very, very, very good, very funny, because we’ll firm that lyrics and all of them were calling hearts and of the Sun, and this it was a beautiful time time, which I don’t think could be Bill. What’s it like being that, things most like we’ve never, I mean that famous? I don’t class myself as being a fine, but I’m not more famous than you are famous. I’m on the level as what you are, what the cameraman is, with the voice man is, what the photographer man is, what the lady that we’ve met, what he took me up the arm, personal level now, on this Dacron diver, so I don’t clap yourself as being famous.
23:46 80s and 90s, when you go to Vegas, people know who you are. Yeah, that must be a strange life to leading. It goes to some people’s heads. It can be a strange life to leave, but I’ve none more different than anybody else’s. I mean, like in a way famous with and so what if I’m famous?
24:06 So I’m human, normal, go to the toilet. If you kick me out, if that dog was to bite me, I would, and I’m out. You know, I mean, you know what your Bloods are, no more different whether you, when the class was being famous, but frame is surely a word. This is your mother and your father and your upbringing. Probably they kept you grounded.
24:29 Everything you got being in life, in grounded in focus and level. It’s done finest and right. And then what, so will you say you’re gonna say you’re famous and then, yeah, yeah, yeah, famous. It doesn’t go anywhere. You just, yeah, you need to just be yourself a video.
24:56 Yeah, you had to epic bouts with Mike Tyson. I was wondering, just tell us what that was like cuz in 89, you know, he was coming up and then you were coming up too, and I was just wondering what do you remember about that time? It’s a long time ago. A long time ago. I remember going to Vegas.
25:12 I remember going to the cat school. Now has been Cus D’Amato was alive and I was 19 and my task was 15 and we spent about two, three weeks together, up Cus D’Amato, though, at Gleason’s Gym before you was born. Before anybody did. I mean when the gyms were training camp they had up there, and it’s been a lot of time together. Laughs.
25:37 And after a while we got to fight one another. The fight was supposed to be in London. Got postponed and got driven to Las Vegas, but trying very, very hard to get myself, should knock him out, wherever, bubble demon, and for sure got being simple as that. Well, how did you get to train with Cus? How did you know that connection, Mickey Duff, Jarvis Astaire, our finger Jewish connection with Gleason’s and America and Castaneda and Mickey Daphne, a lot of people, Johnny bus and they just got together, you know, me youngsters trying to use, I mean, get through the ranks in boxing.
26:21 Muay Chavez, bargains each other and we went around the whole of America getting experience and just come together. What’s that like, 19 years old going to America to train? It was unbelievable, you know, I mean, because the best place I went in America was a hundred in Beach, California. The people was so cool, so laid back, from whatever. Went to Arizona, went to Vegas, went to Chicago, went all over America, and he was just, I alpha know, you know, I mean, because I’m Americans drop it differently but when they party, they are relaxed and Bastian cool, and he was a great, great, great, great experience, and the for me being a young, so most beautiful style in my life, in our lives, very, very, the amazing place America, amazing different characters but the best place was understand each Cus.
27:19 What was he like? You know, I watched these old videos on YouTube of him training Mike Tyson, the relationship they had, which was a much as like a fool father and son as I’ve ever seen. What was it like being there in the Catskills and what kind of boxing trainer was he? It was a very, no, you must have a favorite uncle that you listen to or admire, or sometimes you listen to your dad, what advice he gives you, but it was a cigar that everything he talked about at the lyric had a meaning to wherever he talked about.
27:51 He was a guy that could sit down and imagine and fantasize, years it advanced and what you could imagine. Look, it was just like a, you’ve got her done, and when you sit down and whatever he said you listened and took on board, because he, whatever he said made sense. It was a hard to know, like a prophet, like your great-grandfather, like your great-uncle, but he does a vision. He is just a very knowledgeable, knowledgeable guy. Some people you could sit down and chat to and know that they know what they’re talking about and think that they’ve been through, I’ve told you earlier before on the camera and your own point, you meditate, you keep yourself together, you go to the gym on your own point, and I admired that and I respect that.
28:49 But when you talk to people, some people, to every jibbery and done the right in what sense, but when someone like Cus talks, Cymbeline yourself to listen and not try and Nick the bits, Pisa there, take advice and put that into your armory, and he was that solid guy. I could listen to him for about here constantly, this every day, seeing that table, listening more, chuckling something I am, and the device that he gives you that you try and put down boots, whatever you need to do. Did he have a vision for you?
29:21 What did he used to tell you? Remember certain different things that he used to tell me, but yet I mean the star where I had used to say, bend your legs, relax a little bit more, and you’ll get more power, but he’s concern was more my Tyson, he’s my Tyson’s man, but he was a very, very generous and kind man. In anything that he talked about, he did talk nonsense, you talk sense, bank, and a kind of a softer spoken guy, right, which is very, very soft-spoken guy, but he’s been through out of nowhere is blew up.
29:56 He must have been brought up in New York, and he had a lot of seasoning. He has a lot of experience. He had a lot of knowledge. He had a lot of common sense, but I could think years above what we could predict and what we could see, and I mean he’s a very, very powerful guy. Either he must have read, there must have been books out there before we even fought about it, but it must benefit love experience, or he’s dead, or his grandparents, or what he’s been through in life.
30:25 He used that as a experience, and he was the master. Yeah, he was famous for having that whole library of all old film ambience, and definitely, no, Mike Tyson used to watch constantly old boxers, under our siano boxers from 30, 40 years or fermionic, their styles, you know, and if you watch the way Cus trained Mike, he would kind of let Mike spar a couple rounds in the ring, and he’d come over and he would just kind of quietly whisper a few things to him. Never yelled at Mike.
30:54 Never said, you got to do this. He would, okay, well, why don’t we try this again? like you said, someone you need to listen to. Oh, and I know Mike also said he just gave him lots of confidence. Mm, you know, sometimes people do give you confidence if you really do this, and sometimes in life we all human beings, and we learn things through life that a lot of people have got different lyrics, different ways, and different spurs for fun as hell.
31:18 They care about things, and sometimes if you can go to psychologists, go to someone that’s gone through life and has gone going through life and learning skills and proper skills and different things to empower you. You know, maybe you could only sit down like you got to cinema seminars where you, a professor or psychologist, will sit down then and have about two thousand, five people talking about life and different things. You sit down there and you come out there and you’re very, very enlightening and very, very powerful, than people like us.
31:55 Mm, you just wish there was more people like that around ya. When you went to fight Mike, were you thinking back to those days when you trained, or was that that had been ten years earlier? I here would have been ten years earlier, but he developed and he got bigger and different things, like there and the media, the way he exploded, it was different, but I remember him when I was fond of him, and if I mean that’s been bigger than him. When you spar with him in nineteen, I was bigger than him by his imaginary got bigger than means different parts ago.
32:28 So what about that? That’s the way it goes. I, you know, I went in there trauma-based, my excuses. I lost a fight. Did he try intimidating you, because that used to be kind of his mo, the stare-downs and things like that?
32:40 I wasn’t really intimidated by him at all. When you’ve sparred with someone when you’re 19 and he’s 15, and whatever is a finger, people around him, which one intimidate people, cuz he had a lot of hangers-on and people sharing out different things and making funny phone calls at nighttime, so they used the intimidation, but he told her told clip, the clip, I, I, it went into my bag. Little yeah, you don’t seem like a guy that would be intimidated in the ring.
33:09 If it was a crocodile, if he had a gun or machine gun, and there was a football crowd of about a hundred against one, I think I might be intimidated. I’ve got gonna lie to you, but one, two, one, and I mean when you got trying to be a boxer, you go in there. My Tyson, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, you go in there to try and it’s war, and sometimes you come out war victoriously, sometimes he don’t come out, fight not victoriously. But when you come in there, is business, boxing, you know I mean.
33:41 When he fire, I’ll tell you that he’s just click, Philippe, tile to tile, punch to punch, and he don’t. I know business. You gonna make yeah, what was it like seeing him seven years later? How would you both changed as fighters? What is the second fighting a bear?
33:59 I got older. I was in, I had a detached retina from Oliver McCall from the first fight, so it was just messy, which means blur, things are blurry and double, a double vision, you know, had the detachment from the first rounder for Oliver McCall, these are the detached retina, but on the block summer fire. I had the family night bread to pour on the table. So what I have a lot for it, God only knows. That Titan, the second Tyson fight.
34:27 Yeah, okay, all right, and we had, he changed as a fighter? I think he’d been in prison. He had a lot of different characters around him, or whatever, so I don’t know as he changes the fire. He wasn’t the same Mike Tyson that I knew. Yet I mean or whatever, but he still beat me.
34:48 So nice uses, so no, for me to sit down and disrespect him and say he was he the same? My Tyson. Yeah, I think you might have to ask him that question. Yeah, I’ll ask him at some point. Have you seen the movie about him, and you know he’s moved on in his life, and you know the one-man show, and I mean when you see, you know, the movie about him and his life in the boxing, let me, I mean, what resonates with you?
35:10 I haven’t seen the movie. I’ve seen someone in two movies about him and the people, he’s one-man show and different things like that, but he’s got a good wife behind him now. You guys got kids and he’s got a structure about his life, but my people make mistakes. We all make mistakes. He’s too much got to do.
35:32 He’s got himself together. He’s juggling. He’s hustling, and he’s not made to just try and put food on the table for his family. Yeah, staying busy, that’s important. It’s most important, his time busy and focus and keep yourself on the level, you know.
35:49 Yeah, Lennox Lewis, you fought him in 93. What do you remember about that bout? To, you know, hugely popular Britons fighting, you know, for that girl idol. What do you remember? Remember a lot about the fight, was being him up into a little cool and all that stops and they won the fight, and how does that, how does that feel, to feed being that kind of a transition point in the fight?
36:13 And do you remember every round? I remember every round, here definitely. I was in there. There’s a referee, they’re loosing myself, so yes, I remember everything, so I went in there with and full. She lost to fire, simple as that.
36:26 No excuse, no should have done dishes, have done that, trying very, very hard, a champion, not vinegar Japanese, that far I wish I would’ve, the Japanese, but trying very, very hard on food, shall not survive. And when that happens, how do you process a loss? Are you one that’s good about moving on, back to the drawing board? How does that? I have no choice but to move on, you know, I mean.
36:49 Sometimes in life we win, we lose, we use our defeat or sadness to make us get stronger, and I had no choice but to go to the Betsy joyful, trying very, very hard and try to get myself back in the position that I want to win the tower. I wanted to get was a doubly busy child. The fortunate thing for me, I leads happy. John Frank wrong, thank one was partners with Don King. Oliver McCall knocked our legs loose in the second round, and the gaming opportunities and my loss shock at the dice.
37:27 Hmm, do you think would it be harder to retire without having won that that title? It was doing very, very hard. Sometimes we look at yourself in the mirror, you’re happy, and sometimes you know, I mean, I looked at myself. I didn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve, and I’m mighty termination, my will, my focus, my survival instinct. Would have been happy with myself, but I achieved my dream, so I’m very vacant, tempted and humble and grateful.
37:56 Last fight with Tyson, you injured your eye again, re-injuring that. Only was it difficult to say, that’s the time I’m gonna call it quits? I had to call it quits because I detached retina, and I couldn’t really fool no one but myself, and have his sorry flickering in your eye for six, seven months beforehand, and it was every day. Was it a struggle? Blessing in disguise, now that she was it a blessing in disguise that you had a firm reason you had to stop?
38:23 Because a lot of guys will come back, and then they’ll come back for the wrong reasons. I had a long career from when I was 16, and I had a dream, and I had a vision, and I was on a long road, and not trying favor how I’d put a lot into it, and you know I mean, I think it was time for me to retire at that time. Sometimes you go through life in the gate, exhausted and not fed up, but you know me, that is how much in get up and drive yourself, and I was a little guy that kindly corners.
38:53 I was a favorite in the gym after fights, and when the trains were trying to kick me at the gym, and I was just dealing with, just trying, working on my strength, working on my skills, workin on my moves, and whatever, so it was the right time to retire. Hmm, what’s life like after fighting? My China truth fancies tell me that the biggest five in life is gonna be when you retire. I didn’t know what he was talking about, where he was talking about, but when he was having a live kind around the world, have kind of training camps, means these happen, press conferences, fans, is that the Venus water?
39:32 Then it comes down it’s not much place, right now, nice place to be retired. Not a nice place to be retired, but sometimes if you retire and get yourself into training, get yourself into, which I, I’ve retired and not done pantomime. I’ve done different shows, so I was grateful and appreciative that I could Duncan divers went the same as, because it, it kept you in a constant state of busyness, training, press. I mean, you’re constantly thinking about the next fight.
40:04 All of a sudden you retire and it’s kind of like a black hole, brave, a black hole. You know, I mean, you come on, I was away from the kids choir. Look, you, you and your wife, or not listen to the same radio station. You have a break up or you got fooled. I said it was messy, were nice, but you know I mean, that I’m still here, and now you go for a bad patch, you go through a rocky day, just court.
40:32 I got the chin, I’m still alive, I’m still healthy. I was to put food on the table, and there were the bad days, but sometimes for your life you gotta feel good days. Some days you don’t feel bad day, you know I mean, but I’ve got my kids. I still speak to him, and the healthy mothers having a grandchild, which I can’t wait for. Rachel to, to get frizam.
40:56 I’m happy. I’d be a place I never ever been for a long time. Talk to us about bipolar disorder, because I think most people don’t understand it, and you know, in 2003, when the public kind of found out that there was, you know, something going on with you, your mental illness, and you know, in the woods, and these kinds of things. Can you tell what happened to no. 3, and how did you learn about this yourself?
41:20 I don’t really, not understand my father too much. People say bipolar it’s a new change, and whatever you go through, you don’t mean, but I can’t really understand, but by part of some days you feel lafurgey, sometimes you feel energetic, sometimes you spend a lot of money and different people things, they reacts to everybody in a different way. There’s some people who’s got high, by paola, what are very, very dangerous people, but by paola our finger, my little, the professor or doctor about bipolar, but sometimes viola is not a nice thing.
41:57 Okay, and so you just have to deal with it on a day-by-day basis. I’ll do it, but I basis, the talk, what we had before. The go to the G much fun, look at myself, ah, thank God I’ve got sham, please, there, a Frank Oliver 24 hours, Jim near me, so I’ll go to the gym, are chunky must my brain. I meditate a little bit a lot, what’s right and try and look after myself and keep focus. You know, okay, and that’s how you can kind of keep your mind on.
42:29 Yeah, definitely. You got look after your time, look after your engine, look after your body, look after your mind. And I mean, I think you know, I mean, keep yourself on the on the noise and structure and a pattern, and keep it under focus, should be charged yourself, meditate, and keep yourself in the straight level. Right, what happened in 2003? What did the public not understand about what happened?
42:55 I can’t remember the 2003. What, what? So the son said, you know, that did they took you away and took you to the hospital, and you’re walking through the woods, what happened? They’re walking for the woods. Um, I had to break down, nervous breakdown, and what I mean, you may have kids, you may have a wife, but I wouldn’t like you to go for a break up, I’m not seeing your kids.
43:18 We’re not, couldn’t see my kids for a while, and having a break up, I just had a nervous breakdown. Okay, and what happens after that? Did they check you into a hospital? I’ve got sections of exhausted Oregon law, section. What’s that like when someone tells you that, that you, you now need to go to this place?
43:39 I mean, it’s your first reaction to say I feel fine, and then what does that like to process? That it’s not a nice place at all. You carry to being sexually being filled with all different injections, zombified, Hmong, doubt crazy, and doctors trying to say you got to take these tablets for the rest of your life, and saying you got this, you like that. But it weren’t a nice place to be. It was not a nice place.
44:07 It was a harmless place and hell to be, to be going this, but over Section three times, and there’s one, the worst times in my life, and it’s bad because the other inmates, because of the doctors, but mostly because the medic, you know, like the medication. I don’t like the medication at all, you don’t mean Some countries you hear of dictate what people watch, dictate what people do, or whatever, but the system when they take you for education, and a lot of people are out on medication or on medication, and they can’t get out the whole weather in the Mong ji route, says you loosen aid in dreaming and doing different things, but different strokes for different folks, but download the medication at all, and a World Tree is very, very nice little okaying.
44:57 You’re after medication up or about the return or feeling, though. Congratulations for you, though. There’s a scar on your on your head, on your eye. They didn’t come from boxing, correct? No, it didn’t come from boxing.
45:09 It came from when I took the medication when I fell. I nearly needed stitches in my, I said, times out of the medication, I nearly busted my ribs, or whatever, seven different times I was in certain different places where they were trying to wind me up to make begin a very secure unit to try to use me as a guinea pig to it. I mean, powerful. My wife threw cough the medication. Got myself together and I’m there tonight.
45:39 That must be really hard, Frank, to be isolated where they’re giving you medication, and then they’re kind of messing with your brain, and you’re alone for 24 hours. Okay, I mean, I don’t know how you fight that fight. I deny our food to fight myself, but up when co fighter, once your boxer, if you’re in the army, you lose different tactics, survive, and I had to do that because certain tablets are give me, there was messing with your head. You could sleep, mundanity, biting the tongue off sometimes.
46:10 The after care team came to my house, give me the injection at that power, firm. He left me there for two weeks, and I couldn’t hardly move at the chair. I couldn’t either gap stairs, full, either had no legs or whatever, but I four hours read very, very rough, but that’s why I’m trying to define Frank Bruno Foundation, to help people to their well-being classes and try to structure people’s life and give me advice how to use I mean, keep strong, keep looking out for himself in in the right so a lot way, because if I was treated that bad, how do you think other people treat, and I sit down, then something out.
46:49 I will try and fly the flag for mental health, not saying for people to not take medication, but there’s a different way about looking after cell structure in yourself using this experience. That you may use. Like this is the custom model, this is your great-uncle, listen to your dad, tighten that would into consideration and beyond the structure yourself and empower yourself. What’s the best way do you think to say mentally strong if you want to try to do it without medication, and of course consult conciliatory order, etc.
47:25 But I know you do meditate every day, know you, you train probably every day. What are the ways? Gratitude. You’re very grateful, man, yeah, sometimes you can’t be grateful. We’re all human beings, and Chris’s has been now within part in, we’ve been sitting down, we’ve been eating, but you’re not being, we’ll say three days, like what you gotta get back to the grind.
47:49 If I’ve got back to work, you’ve got bills to pay, got kids to look after, you got to look after yourself. You don’t get yourself out there, so some people cast net themself had that, but you got to look after yourself. If you can look after yourself, you cannot be good for nobody else. Some kids out there, some people out there, I haven’t got full of things that we’ve got, some diagnosis, all different things, you know, main, they come provide for themselves from whatever, but if you can survive this, of look after yourself, try and look after yourself with without the air on borrowed time, and tomorrow and today, with might be here, and try and not, might not be there, but look after yourself, be grateful, and just just do what you can do and be as happy as you can.
48:38 Look after yourself. Are we medicating our kids when we really shouldn’t be doing this? Are we giving them an Adderall and giving them Prozac, and is happening with children as well as older? If you listen, look at programs, you got people in America, you look people who all around the world what study, and they’ve got science, and they’ve been in the lab, and if they say all these things are bad for you, kicked me, the the side-effects of what you gotta do, and the government are not listening to these sort of people and just giving these people things and make it very, very highly addictive.
49:17 Things were they giving it if you’re not listening to these people, who, and you just try and make money off, you’ve been beings as guinea pigs. When would you, a lot of people learned, as a lot of people can be in suicide. I had therefore the CERN different drums what they’re giving him and the medication, what they’d given him, but in the olden days, is they have all these fancies served in bits and pieces, were they get when your mum and dad was alive, when your granddad was alive?
49:43 What did, did they have all these technical things that these so-called professors are making so much millions and billions of pounds, and the government are making millions of pounds of us as guinea pigs? No, they didn’t. And in America, they advertise them on television, Frank, like three-minute ads telling you about this latest new drug that you need to have. What do they tell you? The ladies trouble you have, outside the fakes, and the things where you could do the damage for you.
50:14 Yeah, those are always the small print. So this is a dangerous epidemic, and we really need to look at these drug companies and say, what are they doing to us? I mean, they’re multi, multi-billion dollar companies that come up with these crazy drugs that put us, like you said, in this state, that you know, I told to Tracy Krause. I went to 10 down the street where the conversation they’d bought a lot of sports people and to look into the thing. They say they could look into it, but they’re not interested in looking out for the people.
50:42 In the way all day, in Tessa’s numbers and making money. I mean, it’s big business. Yeah, because they’re gonna do this. They’re gonna fund the campaigns, they keep people elected. Business, so you’re gonna need more than a trip to Downing Street.
50:57 This has to be people waking up. Okay, you know, dire health, looking after yourself, medication, yoga, being a positive state, having a a channel vision for your life, is a lot more. You don’t chatting around the table advising you, having a counselor, having somebody that cares for you a little bit more, someone that understands it, rather than giving people tap is among in the mouth, lays them out, zombiefied them out, can’t get her sofa to give is much more better than what they’ve done in the olden days.
51:34 That chat, the two, they had lessons, doctors, it, because your doctor now, you’d go to a doctor, and the doctor will give you a membership to a gym to try and look after yourself, to go and get into the gym. If you can’t get into the gym, there’s yoga classes, yoga hang, busted, killing yourself is getting a map. There is no stretching, breathing, relaxing, and getting yourself with the focus in a set mindset of what before they come out of all these big medication.
52:10 So cool medication, what they’re giving people, thank during our yoga, are to, to yoga, sometimes art and yoga over the years, at an advanced yoga, on the hot yoga, and different things are trampled a into my armory, meditation, listen to the types and are trying recharge myself and refocus myself and get myself with the rights or light mood and get myself device and focused. Sometimes I’m in a suit now, but I’m when in my home, I’m in my sleep, is I’m chillin, and whatever we need. Sometimes put on your clothes, sometimes you feel good, sometimes you feel bad, but you can’t feel good every day and they can’t feel bad every day, but when you’re good, just feel nice and look after and be proud of yourself.
52:55 I love yourself. Yeah, you dealt with that incident in 2003, the over sectioned, and in your last book you covered it, and you thought you put that story to bed. Yeah, and this book starts off, it’s ten years later. You got your iPod in your, in your, your headphones on your head, you around your house, you’re having a wonderful morning, and someone knocks at the door, and this is like a bad movie repeating itself. Yeah, you’re there to be sectioned again.
53:19 Yeah, what, how did that happen, and what is that like facing another fight like that? It’s not nice. It’s a horrible place to be, but some girls took it on the chin, because I was an under win, no way, they were pleased there. It was doctors there, are dumb wired to do, and I don’t think he was very, very fair, but sometimes life hangs here. You got a toaster and even things on the chin, I’m game of what you gotta do.
53:47 Dumb wire to do. Didn’t give him no trouble. Dumb my time, and I’ll come out, and you don’t mean I just, they tried to give me medication, but I said I was take that. Didn’t I get to discover in my life? Got myself together.
54:00 I just went on from there. Okay, I mean, it’s one thing to go 12 rounds in a ring, but to have that 24 hour a day, you know, fight where you’re, you know, been taken away and trying to give you the medication. That’s a serious, very, very serious thing, but you don’t mean sometimes you just, you get on with it, do what you got to do, take you on the chin, come out, get myself at together. You know, I mean, some people want to see you down, and some people want among you out.
54:28 If that’s how you were, the deuce, do what you got to do, but I’m a fighter, I’m a survivor. He is, he’s done this history. That was yesterday. We’re talking about today. Yeah, have you made amends with your daughter on the back of that?
54:46 Yeah, I made up. My kids are my kids, and they’ve got their opinions to do and say and think what they’re gonna think, you know, I mean. But I’ve got my opinions, and I stick to to my guns, but at the end of day, they’re my blood, and I always will love them. Right, so you respect them for making that decision, but you disagree with their decision. Plus, you know me, I just, I’d leave it there.
55:08 They’re my kids. So that was yesterday, took you on the chin, done, why to do so. You know, when I’m here now, medication free, very, very happy, very, very focused, very, very busy, got the Frank Bruno Foundation, quite the website. Got a lot of there’s a lot of people reading my book, and a lot of people, I understand, didn’t serve different things. A lot of people looking for the same thing that I’ve gone through.
55:33 I’ll grind through medication and understanding what I’m talking about, so if you don’t understand what I’m talking about, – you read the book and you’ll understand. Yeah, a little bit more clear. Yeah, and I’m so impressed how raw you went in those, these first four chapters. I mean, you talk about what we just talked about in greater detail, you know, what it’s like to go through that. What’s the big action step you want people to take when they read this book?
55:57 Is it to question their own medication? Is it to just open their eyes a little bit more about mental? Have you question the medication, question the doctors, well, giving you, you don’t mean some of these doctors will come around your house, the after care team. I’ve got big cars, are living in big places, are making a lot of, lot of money. It’s a cherry, they’ll work together that you try to talk to people.
56:19 If you talk to someone, that someone’s talking back to you, you understand the person, if he’s right, if he’s say anything in the right, so a lot place from another sectioned, there was some nice sergeants and some nice police people that came to the door. Please people are trained to notice the people if he’s there, right or not right, when that cross section, that, and a couple of times, you know, I mean, I came back from a charity thing. I was on point, you know, I mean.
56:49 I was in Scotland, I was enjoying myself with the lady that was briefed at the time, and she was empowering me, and whatever, but you know, I mean, just look after yourself. Read the book and you’ll understand exactly where I’m coming from. I can tell you what medications to take, because I mean, you must know what you want to type, but there’s other ways that you could look after yourself, empower yourself and get submit some some strength from somewhere.
57:17 I’ve read the book. You’ll understand certain different things, cuz McGowan that wrote the book is a good reinvestigated journalist, and you know me, understood wheels come from a lot of people. FaceTime me and treated me, understand where I’m coming from. So can’t be that bad. Very important, you’re bringing this up, and I really appreciate you talking about this, because this, this is gonna probably get worse before it gets better, and we really need to be on our eyes, because like you said, you trust the doctors.
57:50 We’ve all been taught all of our lives to do what they say, and yet the prescriptions started coming, and pretty soon you got three bottles of pills, and your thing, you don’t know why you’re taking these things, and you’re a different person. You usually get a peek, but what’s good for me may not be good for you. Read the book, understand it, and make out for yourself. We will, what kids, we all got families. Rule or grandma’s or dads or whatever may go for a mental health thing.
58:15 I’m not the same. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Look yourself in the mirror, or read, and try to get knowledge of what you read. Type the good, what you think is good for you, and take the bed and check out the bed, you know. But read the book.
58:29 The book is very, very interesting, I think, and something you can’t have. Serious, knowledgeable, powerful people send you different things. They’re not being through the same road that you’ve been through. I’ve done this. My certain cousins taking medications commit suicide through this.
58:47 What they can’t work it out, but working out for yourself. I’m not advising anybody to do anything. Read the book and take the good and check out the bed. What kind of grandfather are you gonna be? I’m gonna be a very, very proud grandfather, you don’t mean, because I love my kids, but Rachel and Bobbie, they’ve got recently married, and I think it’d be a very, whether it’s a girl or a boy, very, very pretty baby, and I would be, hopefully, be a good grandfather.
59:18 And there’s a lot of people say when you have kids and your grandchild, you can have you can charge as much as long as you want, or if you get further than give them back. What am I, well, who are you watching in boxing right now? And what is the state of boxing? Are you happy with where it is right now? Yeah, it’s very interesting.
59:39 I knew Joshua is the kingpin of oxygen, and I mean at the moment, and good luck to him. He’s very, very on point. He’s very, very focused. He’s on his game, and he’s hungry. You know, I mean, there’s a lot of boxes, Chris, you been, son, Connor, been up boxes out there.
59:57 You die, meanwhile, I’m making a lot of noise, and you know, hi, and been you, and you have been people from Liverpool, people from Birmingham, Manchester, Scotland, all over the place. So good luck to him. Is it very, very healthy place at the moment? You still go to the Manchester yet, some of the men shots are go to him, so busy be served, be very, very difficult up into the last high. I went to cut lines, justified, some whatever.
1:00:26 I’ve seen some good fights, there, you don’t mean. What did you see Joshua touch, girl? Yeah, I did. That was a champ. These box hidden Wembley, and he was too far away for me to really understand and get to see the fighter.
1:00:40 He’s a good fighter. What did you, I mean, when you watch that fight, I’m guessing you see things different than I see, but when you watch, you know, those two champions, one that’s held about for a long time, one the up-and-coming young man, what do you see in both of those fighters? Would I mean Klitschko was faulty, and he’s flying the flag for a full-year-old man, and the Joshua is a young, up-and-coming, and he was flying the flag for that becoming youngster.
1:01:08 You got take into consideration, and each other. Sonny had 20 fights, and people putting a lot of pressure on him, expectation on him, but he’s only point I could love to. He deserve to do and do well what he’s doing, because he’s a businessman. He’s selling himself, but he’s got balls. He’s got a lot of determination, and he’s on his game.
1:01:31 So though two ends of perspective, and I made the older man and the younger man, and valve them. They just why they made the fight there. Yeah, I guess you need, you always need an opponent, don’t you? Two have a great fight. You need to offer us one guy, and you need a great opponent, right?
1:01:49 The you know, my baby, the partner. What do you see necessarily good day for the lab these days? What sort of wooden toys? What do you see in Joshua that’s that’s unique? What do you see that I might not see in that young man?
1:02:06 Maybe the way he moves, or his attitude of things he says, that’s different. Johnny Oliver, nice China, and the club that I used to. They looked after me when I was not very well, so I love grace, love the spectrum. in Joshua is young. He hasn’t is won the Olympics, is gone from the Olympics, economy professional, is how he had 20 fights, and but his on point is doing very, very well for himself.
1:02:34 He’s hungry, he’s on point, and he’s a humble human being. So I wish him all the best, and how he does, very, very well. You can’t love quizzes and whatever you do, but take the consideration. 20 fights, he’s only add, and he’s achieved a lot, and then what is on his case here and there. I’ve liked, some people don’t like it, but it’s a good ambassador for British boxing, and he’s quite a kind of a good ambassador.
1:03:03 I mean, he’s got a nice kid, the well-meaning guy, nice guys, he’s humble. Yeah, he’s contented, you don’t mean. He’s still living at his mom’s house. He’s he’s fees on his ground, but he’s on his game. Is it easy?
1:03:17 He’s a hustler. That’s rare. Is well, I mean, that’s almost a different marketing level than say an angry fighter or a Chisora or a Tyson Fury or something like that. Yeah, he’s a, I’m points. I don’t give me credit where credit is due.
1:03:30 Does he win his next fight? Josh, does Josh all win his next fight? If I could Donald, a with your next powerful someone in it, make some more money for himself in anything, is gonna depend who’s gonna fight. Okay, David, hey, what do you see there? He’s a nice guy.
1:03:45 He’s a very good puncher, come off and Cruz awaits a heavyweight. He’s done very, very well for himself, you don’t mean, and he begins. David, tell you, you’ve, I mean, David Billy’s a very, very nice guy, very, very got moves like an elephant, and very, very deserving guy, so I wanna sit here, she’s pretending. Wonderful mother’s wish they could have some sort of thing that they can make some more money for themselves, for their wife and their family, and get her and do will provoke from David.
1:04:16 A David Venu, nice Christ, right, tax, and Fury today, nice guy, came through, maybe a rocky patch is for the lower way, but more bear fighting a lot of people give him credit for, but we thought, wait and see what he’s like. Take the way off and see if he’s still got the spark there, but there are much more better fighters than people taken away. Some of the things they may say contradict and upset a lot of people. Put that societies that could fight off, but whether you can come back.
1:04:53 News no, don’t wait, I’ll do some hotel. Do you ever reach out to guys like that when you see you know they stumble a little bit in personal life or something, because you know you’ve been at the top, you know what it’s like, and it’s hard after the counseling cold son got the boxer’s license. Schools, anybody that comes to me for a baby advice, I always give me a little bit advice. I don’t go seeking to put myself and make myself dizzy and to put myself in a position where I’m a little muggy, anything off a mug, anybody off, are doing a mock myself off if he wants to come and get the advisory, I’ll give him advice like I would give my son advice but I’m not gonna put myself out to learn its branch myself or whatever.
1:05:37 I’ll give advice or anybody. You not mean I’m a human being, and at the end of day, if you can help somebody and give something a little tip, a little bit advice here and there, that wants to listen to advice. I’ll give anybody advice, whether what kind of walk read what religion they are, I will give anybody what little bit knowledge I’ve got to hopefully benefit and enlighten, and you know me, give them a little bit strength. Okay, Dereck Chisora, any thoughts on him?
1:06:09 I mean, did you guys gonna be fighting at one point? Are you? I thought now deadly sword that will you don’t mean adenine that will play. He’s a nice guy. He’s a boxer, he’s a trier, and did not mean according Dell boy, so good love tree.
1:06:23 Yeah, we’ve seen some boxing and MMA crossovers, and I wondered what you thought of Conor McGregor, you know, the UFC fighter, and his recent fight with Mayweather, and are we gonna see more of this happening? I don’t really know if he could really break all records, but it, I mean, they’re done what they’re to do. They made a lot of money. Conor McGregor done well from selfie, it made millions of it. Floyd, baby, over done very well for himself.
1:06:48 I don’t mean, but boxing, his boxing and MMA is emanate, but tournament the Gregor’s charisma. He’s chat, his swagger helps sell that fight with what Floyd Mayweather, the way they dropped it, went around the world, and had press conferences, and it sound, and you’ve got to people’s imagination. What did you see that you thought was unique when you watch those, to go around the world and do that press conference? This desert is a breed. He notes a lawyer, you know, certain accountant, you can go to a salesman, the car dealer or whatever, some control pitcher away that, because said to the Santa Arabs and the South’s, and and then some, and then some.
1:07:39 So a lot of people and some people could he imagination, some people don’t see here your imagination and a rest. Because John, were you a good salesman back in the day? Was rock, were you good salesman? A good salesman? No, I think everything you do in life you got be some sort of like character.
1:08:00 I buy have done to that. I’m done to birth. Some people might say this and some people might say that, but I really mustn’t grumble in Brussels, Graham little. I’m still duck diving up and down the country, around the world, and people are still coming to see me. I’m coming sometimes I get trolleys here and now of people criticizing me, but I’m sure the UPD the business.
1:08:27 I’ve watched your show, other than when I watch your show, I’m glad I’m on your show, but you got a different class about you, but if you didn’t have the class about you, you wouldn’t have been from your flat to bring it to a building or whatever. So everybody’s got different style, differently, some like I’m some dumb, so I like your style. I’m not going to be a Charlie, but when I mean atrani, someone that creates art, is something does it. I mean, will doctors and divers men, so we’re just gonna do what we gotta do, be happy, be contented, hopefully we go up tomorrow morning, put some food on the table for our family.
1:09:07 Yeah, why does the British public love you so much? These and why does the British public love you so much? I don’t really, you must be the one of the most loved British boxers in history now. I wondering, you know why? I don’t know.
1:09:21 I don’t know why. I don’t know where – I’m not nothing special. All I am is a guy from South London, was done pretty well for himself, kept it very, very real, still keeping it very, very real. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of friends and a lot of so-called friends, or whatever. I’ll keep myself to myself.
1:09:42 I’ll try and look after myself and conduct myself for the right, so a la way. I’m not perfect, a contract stands at green else’s, but I just kill me in my life. What you see is what you do. Hmm, tell me a couple things about you. When you think of the word success, who comes to mind?
1:09:59 Is it somebody in history, is it maybe one of your parents? Is it a boxer? But what does that word mean to you, success? Yeah, these Now back to the rest of the show. Where was your grandma from, Jamaica?
1:10:35 Are several more. Wow, okay. And she taught you things. Told me so much food, different things, were ever to be some achieving things. Your mother told me so much, but that too is how much my sisters to decide much is.
1:10:54 I mean, Harry Carpenter told me so much. My uncle’s to me so much, and friends teach me so much. You see in here today with this interview, the interview, what we had before with the sandwich. I had you to be alone. You don’t mean, Moines, bill to a lockers.
1:11:16 I’m firstly to learn, and I know a lot, a summer forgotten, but I’m always learning and trying to eat. I mean, just enlightened, empower myself to learn so much, will design on how so if you can’t go out and look and learn and pick up and use into your armory. I’m learning all the time. Best day of your life, what was it? Best, I have the life that you deserve.
1:11:47 The best. Herbalife, grateful for being here. Right, you’re grateful for being a very grateful. You don’t mean them, but my moment that could be Frank Lin, and it is a wasted year way of say factory or whatever, but sub you could be Frank, but I’m here. I’m here for a reason, I think you know, I mean.
1:12:10 Yeah, what keeps you awake at night? What keeps me awake at night? If I take a Viagra, oh, the devil keeps you awake at night, you know? Mina, if I got a lot of my mind, and you don’t mean I’ve mastered your job. Anna might have to answer little questions or whatever.
1:12:33 I’m thinking of that hound when they approach you or whatever that might keep you up, but I usually have a good sleep. Okay, what scares you? Well, excuse me, the crocodile, alligator. Oh, a snake, that’s it. What would we be surprised to learn about Frank Bruno?
1:12:57 Maybe some some thing that you do on your own or something? Oh, you like. Wow, I would never thought Frank would do something like that. No, I’m not. Yes, okay, no more like your music.
1:13:09 Don’t you? I love dummies about managers got me to travel with some of the neighbors are vetted retire for that $2 fee. Are you a DJ? I’m a frustrated DJ. Okay, can you tell me about that?
1:13:21 What I just love music, you know, over the years since I’ve been boxing. When I went to America when I was 19, I went in a record shop, put differently sort of records that I’ve never opened, are like bashment, I like reggae, I like lovers rock, are like prints or like children, Michaels, Sting, Bob Marley, Beanie Man, Ninja Man, after our French, not sure, Pavarotti. I love music. I’m a frustrated DJ. Okay, do you, does music get you your brain to like a different place?
1:13:59 Yeah, a bit of quite a lot of places to have love, busy, and every different when summer says, was that music you like? I like music, and music is a speciality. Do you and Nigel Benn never get together and do some eGain? Have not been seeded Vance. DJ’s a house funky-ass, have improved since our first, had a little clashing, but didn’t know what I was doing, but now as a DJ I do know what I’m doing.
1:14:26 So I don’t know if we ever clash again, but if we did, that out of there, that’s right. Okay, all right. I had Goldie in here, and he said that he sees music in in four dimensions. For him he kind of sees the music and sees colors, and also he’s someone that’s really embraced yoga, yo. Now you know, right?
1:14:46 Nice quiet. Goldie, dummies, very, very talented, very, very clever guy, but sometimes in everything you do in life, suppose you go see colors and the brightness and the imagination, and did I mean, yeah, how could understand where he’s coming from when he sees colors? We busy when you’re playing music. If you’re a DJ, you got a feel with the music or know the music, and you go see what the people like. If you’re DJing outside, we’re gonna detain from her.
1:15:15 I’m free loud, sucking. Put on a funky house drop, a batsman in their trouble of his rocking, their chopper, George Michael didn’t every French dancer, you know, being crazy set for that then come, come, come back with our ices. That means well, depends what we’re doing. Okay, Ministry of Sound will be calling soon. Mr. Stein is a specialist funky house, but it depends what you give the people what they want to have.
1:15:44 Okay, would you ever live in America? I’m living in the best country in the world, England, and I would never lie to step above, but some parts of America I wouldn’t mind living in, but I don’t want to get myself in an ultra nice, nice crunchy farm, quite happy living in you. So you’re not gonna tell me about Donald Trump, are you? Donald Trump. Donald Trump was boxing a long, long time before done.
1:16:13 When Donald Trump was in Atlantic City, I used to do with Nikita, you should deal with Don King, Mickey Tough, you to deal with Donald Trump. Donald Trump was when I fought Mike Tyson the first time. It was supposed to be in England, and fruit doesn’t Trump getting involved. The fight was postponed and drop to Las Vegas by. I ain’t got nothing to say, but you would have won if it was in London.
1:16:37 We know that, Frank. I’m not gonna say nothing. I’m just as I, he’s a very, very powerful man. Donald Trump, and that’s what I’m gonna say about it, but he’s been in boxing a long, long, long time before he became president of America. You mentioned Don King a couple times.
1:16:52 What was he like as a promoter? A lot of people say a lot of bad things about Don. What, there’s anything good about Don King? I don’t know where to be. I could say nothing bad against Don King.
1:17:03 He’s a businessman, unlike any powerful businessman. He’ll things, but what businessman, Athena, was very, very successful. He’s a foodie cap. He’s a wife. He’s a foodie cat.
1:17:16 Oh, no, I have pretty cat-like. Yeah, yeah, no, they don’t exist. you don’t mean that your boss, but I’m sure you, you seem very, very fair. You’ve got a lot of respect around the people you’re working with, but you gotta be on your game, whatever this is you’re involved with, and a very successful person. Can’t be that too much of a pretty cat.
1:17:37 You could have a pretty cat. Well, you’re very, very generous, but when you’re on your game you gotta be on your game, because you’re not easily, a very small limited time that we don’t deserve. So, Don King, he was all right to me. Paid me on time and much liver balance. All right, that’s always important, right?
1:17:55 You’ve been watching London Real for a few years. You told me you would seem one of our shows before. Yes, I see what you said before, that’s why I went. Now I’m a combat look to the British flag, but thing is when using the flat your feet. Yeah, when I first started years ago, you first, five years ago, used to watch your shows, very, very interested.
1:18:15 Nice to know Frank was watching us though, so I was always, I was told I watched your interview with Piers Morgan and really enjoyed that. She, you know, that was one of my ones, and I know that was that, was that was hard. You were training right up to the front of that interview, and I thought it was a great interview, but thank you, that was hard. It’s hard to be on live television, right? Pearce Bull Gooden is a guy that you don’t mess with, in the way is not to be on his side, that really again against his life, but when he first started them working the South London press, I thought the interview, you didn’t forgot that, but he’s a he’s a write to me up here seizing again, because he’ll go for the throat.
1:18:54 Oh, you can’t have a late night before you got on your face, more when you got be on point, right? So yet, and you respect that. It’s like a fight, you got to go in there. Well, UW Latroy, yeah, yeah, definitely. Frank, I always ask people just a few questions here at the end, and I want to ask you a question.
1:19:16 If you could make a phone call to the 20 year old Frank Bruno and give that young man a bit of advice, you know, you would have already started boxing, you would have had some wins going on. What would you tell him based on what you know now? Learn, listen, get as much experience and knowledge in life, and just be yourself. Don’t be nobody else, that’s wrong. Has to be nobody that someone’s trying to be.
1:19:43 Dick, you’re not. Chompy, be yourself, be humble, be grateful and appreciative of what you get and what you got, and he’s not mean. Dumb be bad minded of what I didn’t. When they also jealous if you got, they see a man in a Rolls Royce, so you see someone’s got something more bad than me, just be content with what you got. You like Rolls Royces, unlike like bikes, unlike brown this case, before I bought myself a car, unlike cars.
1:20:15 Okay, and you like caravans? I don’t want caravans. It was raised over nothing, and you drive them around and just get on the road. Sometimes, well, you did the caravan. You just drive it around.
1:20:27 Happens on the site up in Kent, so down on our dime, you drive around the caravans and on the road, so it’s facing to see. Okay, so you can guess get some quiet time and just chilling out, and I miss going down there, but me so busy. Sorry, they’re trying to do that. Okay, on that same note about the advice, or what’s the best advice you ever received? It could have been something from a trainer or from Cus, or maybe from your mother or your grandmother, and it’s usually a hardest question I asked, but what is that?
1:20:57 My dad couldn’t understand. They said that a woman can get what she won. A man has gotta work more harder, but did I mean? Not say don’t trust anybody, but you, you got be very, very careful you deal with and who you trust. Okay, he tell you that young?
1:21:18 Yeah, very young. Okay, and you learned. Sometimes you learn, but then we will learn, the make mistakes. Sometimes you got made mistake before you really know how to learn and to listen and focus in here, but sometimes you might dad. You said my mom used to say, if you can’t hear you must feel it.
1:21:37 Hmm, what does that mean? If you can’t hear it, if you can’t hear it, that will give you a good beating, it to make you feel it. I’d know what that mean. That was the old-school way, right? Give miss your mom, possibly some Robin love my mom.
1:21:53 Yeah, it was a Mr. Mr. Dad as well, but life without, I mean of here today, may be gone tomorrow, but they had cancer, God rest her soul. Yeah, last part of that question, to that 20 year old, is watching us out there somewhere. It could be in China, South America, America, or England. What advice do you give to them? What should they be doing with their lives, or what can they be doing to make this world a better place?
1:22:24 You don’t mean this world is a very, very funny world. Well, you know, I mean, we’re talking about people that religion. Religion-ism is a very sweet, sweet thing, but a lot of people may begin to entwine with religion. If it’s not religion, it’s a football team that you support, that if risible Arsenal, if I support Western, you don’t like me or whatever. If you come from America and you’re from a different down there, don’t like that sort of like, take all that way.
1:23:09 I appreciate it. Don’t look at Carla, don’t look at religion, look like the person itself. The person has a family, have a got way of life, and wear the shorts all time. There’s so much confusion and putting values of this that the devil knows what, and his messing up and there’s a lot confusions and nastiness, love weirdness, was going around the world, and we need to know that we’re here important, diddly. A lot of the negativity and bring some love into the world to try and make it a better place, you know, I mean.
1:23:46 A lot of stars, a lot of people are trying to sign in the records or try to preach this endeavor, does walk, but this, you know, mainly needs some love. And when I mean love, this understand it, no matter what. Just got a lot of darker sun tans, and you can then leave for this sort of get them me for that, but there’s been a lot of wickedness out there. Need to put the wickedness aside and leave a little bit loveless. Amen to that.
1:24:15 You know, we need a lot more love in this world, a little less divisive. Enough, so the book is let me be frank. It’s an incredible story, and I love how you just really took the gloves off for this one, and you came really clean, and then it’s really powerful, I’m sure, and I know you said this was hard to write. Well, there’s a guy, I dyslexic, and I’m learn a a rod, they’ll be a read a little bit more bear, but guys cool nickering for the mirror. Put that together.
1:24:45 I we listened, and we totally can around my house, and if we put things together, but I won’t give him credit, the kinda kind, for the mirror for putting the book together and being a nice guy, fair guy, and I could, you know, be yeah, but you were brave enough to put some of this stuff out there. I’ll sure it’s personal, and it, you know, and it’s, it’s vulnerable, you know, and I appreciate you doing that. Thank you very much, and I really think people should take this message, and it’s a theme that comes up a lot on London Real, whether we’re trusting the pharmaceutical companies or the meat companies or what the media says, or this.
1:25:18 I think it’s important to question why we’re doing the things we’re doing, and I really appreciate you bringing up this whole, this whole deal as far as medicating and psychiatric medication and all the things that we, we give our kids and we give our grandparents if we don’t think twice about darling certain foods and ingredients and all different things like that. Is don’t care about your health for this, care about the money. What they might know, but you know, if you get worse before it gets better, but long after this, fly the flag for the human beings, the people that are suffering out there.
1:25:53 I haven’t got a chance to say, I won’t do it. A lot. Alright, that’s good, and I appreciate your doing that, and for my fellow Americans, they have to watch out even more, because it’s a marketing machine over there, and like I said, when I go back home, I’m just amazed by all the different things that they’re trying to sell you on, to you, and they’re convince you that you need to be on a prescription medication when you know everything else might be okay, or you can find alternatives like you’re saying, healthy, why the natural way that your grandfather, you know, your mother, something like that I used to do.
1:26:23 I would school, but yeah, but it takes hard work, and like you told me in here before we ran camera, you said, I get put my hat on and I get in the door of the gym, that’s what you say you do, and then the rest. Okay, there are good days, they’re bad days. You get your sweat on sometimes. You feel your rhythm sometimes, you don’t, but at least you got the training done. Definitely also the engine.
1:26:43 Yeah, and look after the brain as well as Laura. To Frank, it’s been a real pleasure having you here. Things were being honest. Thank you for writing this book. Who swear it’s a real pleasure to circles ring cute.
1:26:52 Alright, as we say on London Real, it’s about the journey, and I wish you well in yours. I mean, yours as well. Bless you. Cheers, boss. the critics who always speak behind my back.
1:27:16 Maybe I want to hear them remind me, he’s back, the great Pretender. I hope this time he gets hurt. I love these guys, they give me fuel. You want them to read to your objective. You want to achieve it, you’re gonna have to be able, you can have to be upset, feel what you do, feel it.
1:27:47 If you’re not feeling it, it doesn’t matter because you bank Jr. How do you explain his prowess in the ring? Julia has that obsession, that genius, that magic genius of obsession, but if in one area you studied the sweet science for so much of your life, how do you walk away from it? Do you miss it? Hmm, you can’t walk away from it. I am it, and even when I dance, I really unboxing a credit belongs to the man who’s actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, the one who strives valiantly.
1:28:35 What was the worst day of your life, and how is it shaped you as a human being? When I thought might have been I stood like this. It was the mask. This risk must be taken. That’s why you are London Realist, that’s why we’re here.
1:29:00 We are tired of sitting still, watching it happen, happening for others. Let’s do it. You
