In the Pink Corner

Charles Jones delivers a right cross, followed by a sharp, left jab. But it’s not the speed of his combination that sets Jones apart from his sparring partner - it’s his shorts, and the tiny rainbow stitched onto the hem. He stitched it there to represent the diversity of human sexuality. You see, Jones is the world’s first ‘out’ gay boxer - to the boxing establishment, he is ‘The Pink Pounder’.

Well, ‘The Hitman’ had already been taken. So had ‘The Enforcer’. Besides, ‘The Pink Pounder’ was more, well, appropriate. “Ages ago” says Jones, “a policeman friend of mine gave me the nickname ‘Rufty Tufty’. For a while I was just ‘Rufty’. But it was a bit camp for boxing. And way too cuddly. So my trainer said ‘You’re going to be ‘The Pink Pounder’.”

His trainer also wanted him to fight in pink sequin shorts. “But pink isn’t my colour” says Jones. “And I refused to step into the ring to YMCA by The Village People. I can live with the nickname - a nickname is just a nickname. But the rainbow flag was the only other concession that I was prepared to make. I may be gay, but at the end of the day I’m in that ring to box.”

To watch Jones box, at his gym in Blackfriars, he’s not camp. Until he steps out of the ring, pulls off his padded head protector, and reveals a shock of bottle-blonde hair. “It hides the grey very effectively” he says, with a smile. Jones is 6” 2’ - ideal for a male model, but rangy for his division. Most Super Middle Weights are short and stocky. But Jones is different - he isn’t just in it to win it. He’s got something to prove.

He wants to prove that ‘gay’ and ‘athlete’ aren’t a contradiction in terms. “We have come so far” says Jones. “But not in the world of sport. How many clubs are there in the Premier League? How many players do they have? And you’re telling me that not one of them is gay? Rubbish. Why don’t they come out? Look at what happened to Justin Fashanu [the Nottingham Forest footballer]. He hanged himself.”

Lennox Lewis has long been dogged by insinuations about his sexuality - based on the incontrovertible evidence that he plays chess. And plays it well. One of his opponents, Hasim Rahman, riled him on a chat show by pointing out he had no children. Lewis reacted with “If you think I am gay, bring your sister”. It wasn’t the cleverest thing to say, and the two ended up brawling on the floor.

There were bloodier consequences for the Cuban boxer Benny Paret, who - during the build-up to a world title fight in 1962 - referred to his opponent Emile Griffith as a “maricon” (the Cuban equivalent of ‘faggot’). Griffith was furious, and in the ensuing bout, he launched an attack of such ferocity that he ended up battering Paret into a coma. Paret never regained consciousness.

Charles Jones grew up, the oldest of three children, in the north-east of England. His father was an industrial economist for ICI (“although he never really explained what that meant”), and his mother was a housewife. “At the time” says Jones, “there was a real snobbery in ICI about the little woman staying at home. Even if the woman didn’t want to stay at home. So it’s fair to say I had a ‘traditional’ family upbringing.”

The young Jones wasn’t a natural athlete. “I could hardly kick a ball” he says. “I moved away from it at all times. And I certainly never went near anywhere that wasn’t nice and green. If it was a bit muddy? No - we don’t go there. The ball can just stay put. In games lessons, I was always the last one to get picked. No-one wanted me on their team.”

“In part” he says, “the Pink Pounder is about sticking two fingers up to some of those people. If I’d had a year book, you could have brought my entire school to a halt if you had written ‘the boy most likely to be the country’s first out gay boxer’ under my picture. They would have gone along with the gay bit. But boxer? They would have laughed uncontrollably.”

He grew to love boxing - but only as a spectator. He wasn’t allowed to watch it at home so, every Saturday, he would sneak off to watch Grandstand at his grandmother’s. “I always knew I was different” says Jones. “But, by the age of 13, I had worked out what that ‘different’ was. I didn’t watch the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ thinking ‘This is homo-erotic’, but that was definitely part of it.”

Boxing Jones remained a spectator sport until, at the age of 38, he was doing a chest press in the gym. “I thought ‘This is no good. I’m working within my comfort zone. I’m never going to move that pin further down the stand unless someone tells me to. I need to be pushed’.” Later that day, when he was looking for a telephone number in the phone book, it fell open at White Collar Boxing. “Fate” says Jones. “Fate”.

The idea for White Collar Boxing came from New York - the city that invented yuppies. And then had to come up with ways to amuse them. Gleason’s Gym was the first to offer bored businessmen the chance to explore the perimeters of their civilization - what it is, or should be, to be ‘human’ - in three rounds of boxing. Jones, who was then a trained architect, was intrigued by the idea. So he rang the number.

Mark Burford answered the phone, and agreed to train Jones. “I got to like Mark” says Jones, “and thought I would invite him and his girlfriend over for Sunday lunch. When he agreed, I said ‘Right, I’ve got to do something I haven’t had to do for years. I’ve got to ask you if you know I’m gay’. Mark smiled and said he had guessed. But nothing changed. Our gym chats carried on exactly as before.”

Well, not exactly as before. “I think Mark was actually rather chuffed at having a gay client” says Jones. “Every time he introduced me to another of his clients, he would say ‘This is Charles. Charles is the world’s first out gay boxer’.” Burford had a plan, and set it in motion one evening by inviting Jones to watch a competitive bout at the Real Fight Club.

“The next day, Mark said ‘Well, you up for it? Want to box in front of a crowd?’. That was exactly what I wanted him to ask - like he believed I was good enough.” Burford became Jones’ trainer, manager and cut-man. “I’ll be cynical - maybe he thought I would sell a few more tickets, and get some publicity for the Real Fight Club. But, frankly, I didn’t care. I was going to do my own thing.”

He could have opted to box as The Angry Architect. But he didn’t. He boxed as The Pink Pounder. “If I had been The Angry Architect, it would have been ‘So bloomin’ what? They’re ten a penny, they are’. I like attention - I am a Leo, after all. And that means I like the spotlight.” But there’s a little more to it than that. When Jones fights as The Pink Pounder, he is fighting for equal rights.

His first bout was in February at the York Hall - the spiritual home of boxing in London’s East End, where there are 1,200 seats, and a balcony so low that you can smell the linament. “Audley Harrison’s last fight was at the York Hall” says Jones. “So I couldn’t believe that I was going to fight there. It was like Balham Amateur Operatic Society putting on a performance at the Coliseum.”

His opponent was Igor Kennaway - a classical musician known as ‘Killer Conductor’. “I just decided, after six years of training, that I was going to go out and enjoy myself. That’s the thing about boxing - and I’ll get in trouble for this - but it is camping it up a bit. Having a nickname is just part of the deal. You come into the ring to your chosen piece of music. And, in between rounds, you have the pretty ring card girls. It’s a show.”

Jones decided to came out to the theme from The Pink Panther. “But I couldn’t hear it” he says. “The crowd was unbelievable. All I could hear was noise. I know that in the audience that night were people who wanted me to fall flat on my face. Friends have told me they overheard people saying ‘Oh god - when’s the poof on?’. And ‘What do that lot know about boxing?’. But I had other people cheering for me.”

They included 40 of his friends and family. But not his father - Jones says he was “psychologically abusive”, and the pair haven’t spoken for 15 years. And not his mother. “I knew she would worry. So I didn’t even tell her about the fight till the day before, when I knew there were no tickets left. I might be 44, but I’m still her baby. But my brother promised to ring her the second the fight was over.”

The MC announced The Pink Pounder (“weighing in at 168lbs”) in his best camp voice. “But I couldn’t hear that either. I had the most godawful panic when I heard the MC saying ‘Seconds out, round one’, and for two seconds I thought, ‘Oh shit’. I could hear Mark shouting ‘Work the left’ and ‘Get your chin down’, and I could hear this woman screaming ‘Hit him Charles’ above everything. I thought ‘There’s a woman with powerful lungs’. It was Mark’s Mum.”

The encouragement must have worked. Jones took the decision. “Somebody came up to me afterwards and said he had won £100 on me. There was a crowd of photographers in my corner all shouting - all wanting pictures. And then Charlie Magri came past. He stopped and said ‘That was a good fight, that was’. Do you know how that made me feel? A former world champion? Amazing.”

There are other gay boxers out there - there must be. It’s a matter of simple statistics. But still nobody is prepared to come out. Mark LeDuc, the Canadian amateur boxer who won a silver at the Barcelona Olympics, only dared to come out once he had retired. “If boxing was my career” says Jones, “I would keep shtum too. But it’s not my career. I’ve got nothing to lose. That’s why I’m making lots of noise.”

“Possibly one or two of the people who watched me at York Hall came along for the novelty - the freak-show element of watching a poof box. But afterwards, I hope they paused for thought and said ‘Actually, he put on quite a good performance. And if you hadn’t told me he was gay I would probably never have known’. And I hope they left thinking ‘poof’ isn’t such a big insult after all.”

Burford was delighted at Jones’ performance. “Charles is a brave guy” he says. “And he always competes. If there’s one thing I would change about him, I would like to see more head movement - excuse my French. He’s a bit static. But I would like him to have a couple more fights, then retire. Now he’s become a bit of an icon, rather than dilute his message he should just walk away.”

He’s only boxed once since York Hall. He popped his nose after only one round. But he has vowed to return. For now, the limit of his ambition is the sports quiz They Think Its All Over. He wants to be the surprise guest who is felt-up by blindfolded panellists. “Just imagine Jonathan Ross’s face when he removes his blindfold” says Jones. “And he realises he’s groped Britain’s first out gay boxer. Now, that is something I would love to see.”



		In the Pink Corner Charles Jones delivers a right cross, followed by a sharp, left jab. But it’s not the speed of his combination that sets Jones apart from his sparring partner - it’s his shorts, and the tiny rainbow stitched onto the hem. He stitched it there to represent the diversity of human sexuality. You see, Jones is the world’s first ‘out’ gay boxer - to the boxing establishment, he is ‘The Pink Pounder’. Well, ‘The Hitman’ had already been taken. So had ‘The Enforcer’. Besides, ‘The Pink Pounder’ was more, well, appropriate. “Ages ago” says Jones, “a policeman friend of mine gave me the nickname ‘Rufty Tufty’. For a while I was just ‘Rufty’. But it was a bit camp for boxing. And way too cuddly. So my trainer said ‘You’re going to be ‘The Pink Pounder’.” His trainer also wanted him to fight in pink sequin shorts. “But pink isn’t my colour” says Jones. “And I refused to step into the ring to YMCA by The Village People. I can live with the nickname - a nickname is just a nickname. But the rainbow flag was the only other concession that I was prepared to make. I may be gay, but at the end of the day I’m in that ring to box.” To watch Jones box, at his gym in Blackfriars, he’s not camp. Until he steps out of the ring, pulls off his padded head protector, and reveals a shock of bottle-blonde hair. “It hides the grey very effectively” he says, with a smile. Jones is 6” 2’ - ideal for a male model, but rangy for his division. Most Super Middle Weights are short and stocky. But Jones is different - he isn’t just in it to win it. He’s got something to prove. He wants to prove that ‘gay’ and ‘athlete’ aren’t a contradiction in terms. “We have come so far” says Jones. “But not in the world of sport. How many clubs are there in the Premier League? How many players do they have? And you’re telling me that not one of them is gay? Rubbish. Why don’t they come out? Look at what happened to Justin Fashanu [the Nottingham Forest footballer]. He hanged himself.” Lennox Lewis has long been dogged by insinuations about his sexuality - based on the incontrovertible evidence that he plays chess. And plays it well. One of his opponents, Hasim Rahman, riled him on a chat show by pointing out he had no children. Lewis reacted with “If you think I am gay, bring your sister”. It wasn’t the cleverest thing to say, and the two ended up brawling on the floor. There were bloodier consequences for the Cuban boxer Benny Paret, who - during the build-up to a world title fight in 1962 - referred to his opponent Emile Griffith as a “maricon” (the Cuban equivalent of ‘faggot’). Griffith was furious, and in the ensuing bout, he launched an attack of such ferocity that he ended up battering Paret into a coma. Paret never regained consciousness. Charles Jones grew up, the oldest of three children, in the north-east of England. His father was an industrial economist for ICI (“although he never really explained what that meant”), and his mother was a housewife. “At the time” says Jones, “there was a real snobbery in ICI about the little woman staying at home. Even if the woman didn’t want to stay at home. So it’s fair to say I had a ‘traditional’ family upbringing.” The young Jones wasn’t a natural athlete. “I could hardly kick a ball” he says. “I moved away from it at all times. And I certainly never went near anywhere that wasn’t nice and green. If it was a bit muddy? No - we don’t go there. The ball can just stay put. In games lessons, I was always the last one to get picked. No-one wanted me on their team.” “In part” he says, “the Pink Pounder is about sticking two fingers up to some of those people. If I’d had a year book, you could have brought my entire school to a halt if you had written ‘the boy most likely to be the country’s first out gay boxer’ under my picture. They would have gone along with the gay bit. But boxer? They would have laughed uncontrollably.” He grew to love boxing - but only as a spectator. He wasn’t allowed to watch it at home so, every Saturday, he would sneak off to watch Grandstand at his grandmother’s. “I always knew I was different” says Jones. “But, by the age of 13, I had worked out what that ‘different’ was. I didn’t watch the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ thinking ‘This is homo-erotic’, but that was definitely part of it.” Boxing Jones remained a spectator sport until, at the age of 38, he was doing a chest press in the gym. “I thought ‘This is no good. I’m working within my comfort zone. I’m never going to move that pin further down the stand unless someone tells me to. I need to be pushed’.” Later that day, when he was looking for a telephone number in the phone book, it fell open at White Collar Boxing. “Fate” says Jones. “Fate”. The idea for White Collar Boxing came from New York - the city that invented yuppies. And then had to come up with ways to amuse them. Gleason’s Gym was the first to offer bored businessmen the chance to explore the perimeters of their civilization - what it is, or should be, to be ‘human’ - in three rounds of boxing. Jones, who was then a trained architect, was intrigued by the idea. So he rang the number. Mark Burford answered the phone, and agreed to train Jones. “I got to like Mark” says Jones, “and thought I would invite him and his girlfriend over for Sunday lunch. When he agreed, I said ‘Right, I’ve got to do something I haven’t had to do for years. I’ve got to ask you if you know I’m gay’. Mark smiled and said he had guessed. But nothing changed. Our gym chats carried on exactly as before.” Well, not exactly as before. “I think Mark was actually rather chuffed at having a gay client” says Jones. “Every time he introduced me to another of his clients, he would say ‘This is Charles. Charles is the world’s first out gay boxer’.” Burford had a plan, and set it in motion one evening by inviting Jones to watch a competitive bout at the Real Fight Club. “The next day, Mark said ‘Well, you up for it? Want to box in front of a crowd?’. That was exactly what I wanted him to ask - like he believed I was good enough.” Burford became Jones’ trainer, manager and cut-man. “I’ll be cynical - maybe he thought I would sell a few more tickets, and get some publicity for the Real Fight Club. But, frankly, I didn’t care. I was going to do my own thing.” He could have opted to box as The Angry Architect. But he didn’t. He boxed as The Pink Pounder. “If I had been The Angry Architect, it would have been ‘So bloomin’ what? They’re ten a penny, they are’. I like attention - I am a Leo, after all. And that means I like the spotlight.” But there’s a little more to it than that. When Jones fights as The Pink Pounder, he is fighting for equal rights. His first bout was in February at the York Hall - the spiritual home of boxing in London’s East End, where there are 1,200 seats, and a balcony so low that you can smell the linament. “Audley Harrison’s last fight was at the York Hall” says Jones. “So I couldn’t believe that I was going to fight there. It was like Balham Amateur Operatic Society putting on a performance at the Coliseum.” His opponent was Igor Kennaway - a classical musician known as ‘Killer Conductor’. “I just decided, after six years of training, that I was going to go out and enjoy myself. That’s the thing about boxing - and I’ll get in trouble for this - but it is camping it up a bit. Having a nickname is just part of the deal. You come into the ring to your chosen piece of music. And, in between rounds, you have the pretty ring card girls. It’s a show.” Jones decided to came out to the theme from The Pink Panther. “But I couldn’t hear it” he says. “The crowd was unbelievable. All I could hear was noise. I know that in the audience that night were people who wanted me to fall flat on my face. Friends have told me they overheard people saying ‘Oh god - when’s the poof on?’. And ‘What do that lot know about boxing?’. But I had other people cheering for me.” They included 40 of his friends and family. But not his father - Jones says he was “psychologically abusive”, and the pair haven’t spoken for 15 years. And not his mother. “I knew she would worry. So I didn’t even tell her about the fight till the day before, when I knew there were no tickets left. I might be 44, but I’m still her baby. But my brother promised to ring her the second the fight was over.” The MC announced The Pink Pounder (“weighing in at 168lbs”) in his best camp voice. “But I couldn’t hear that either. I had the most godawful panic when I heard the MC saying ‘Seconds out, round one’, and for two seconds I thought, ‘Oh shit’. I could hear Mark shouting ‘Work the left’ and ‘Get your chin down’, and I could hear this woman screaming ‘Hit him Charles’ above everything. I thought ‘There’s a woman with powerful lungs’. It was Mark’s Mum.” The encouragement must have worked. Jones took the decision. “Somebody came up to me afterwards and said he had won £100 on me. There was a crowd of photographers in my corner all shouting - all wanting pictures. And then Charlie Magri came past. He stopped and said ‘That was a good fight, that was’. Do you know how that made me feel? A former world champion? Amazing.” There are other gay boxers out there - there must be. It’s a matter of simple statistics. But still nobody is prepared to come out. Mark LeDuc, the Canadian amateur boxer who won a silver at the Barcelona Olympics, only dared to come out once he had retired. “If boxing was my career” says Jones, “I would keep shtum too. But it’s not my career. I’ve got nothing to lose. That’s why I’m making lots of noise.” “Possibly one or two of the people who watched me at York Hall came along for the novelty - the freak-show element of watching a poof box. But afterwards, I hope they paused for thought and said ‘Actually, he put on quite a good performance. And if you hadn’t told me he was gay I would probably never have known’. And I hope they left thinking ‘poof’ isn’t such a big insult after all.” Burford was delighted at Jones’ performance. “Charles is a brave guy” he says. “And he always competes. If there’s one thing I would change about him, I would like to see more head movement - excuse my French. He’s a bit static. But I would like him to have a couple more fights, then retire. Now he’s become a bit of an icon, rather than dilute his message he should just walk away.” He’s only boxed once since York Hall. He popped his nose after only one round. But he has vowed to return. For now, the limit of his ambition is the sports quiz They Think Its All Over. He wants to be the surprise guest who is felt-up by blindfolded panellists. “Just imagine Jonathan Ross’s face when he removes his blindfold” says Jones. “And he realises he’s groped Britain’s first out gay boxer. Now, that is something I would love to see.”

		© Richard Johnson 2000 - 2009