Thoughts on Bartley Gorman... Educate me.

I grew up watching Bloodsport.

It was my favourite film as a kid.

I still can’t believe the fabrication.

Ha!


Regarding Bartley Gorman, I can understand people being sceptical. But I’ve studied the man’s life for 20 years, and there’s just too many credible people that have spoken about him for it not to be true. He was a mentor to a lot of people, most notably, Tyson’s dad, John.

 

Bloodsport was awesome, yes. Dux was a fraud, but he wrote a cool fictional story.

 

No problem.

The bio is great.

Let’s hope that Shane Meadows does his biopic one day.

Watch that short video of John Fury if you haven’t seen it and you have the time.

He speaks of Bartley and Bartley’s brother, Sam.

It’s very moving.

It had me on the verge of tears.

 

Who did he beat though? Did he and Rooney ever cross paths?

 

That's the one! So he was the real deal even amongst Viv, Duffy etc?

 

Cheers pal.

 

There is a Chinese?Fighter. He would be around 50 now, he has made a career out of challenging martial artists of all disciplines I think he is basically MuyThai he is on You Tube beating up Kung Fu,Karate,Aikado etc ,fighters that agree to meet him in a ring,There are at least 10 of his fights on film. He has had a lot of grief from the various Martial Arts bodies in the East for supposedly bringing them into disrepute and damaging their respective reputations a couple of these bodies have selected men to fight him to disprove his theories that much of their discipline is ineffectual in real combat situations.

 

Gorman does appear to have reliable people to back up his claims.

 

Very interesting post.Little guys with big shoulders who keep their chins behind them don't offer much in the way of a meaningful target,just the top of their head , biceps and forearms ,and being short their midsection is usually too low to connect with effectively.
I was reading about Chris Byrd a while back,he said his Dad put him in tiny areas to learn to fight ,the limited space meant he had to improvise his defence as there wasn't enough room to use his legs for evasive action ,its also a good way to learn to side step and spin your opponent around,but I'm trying to teach you to suck eggs here,you know this stuff.

 

Has anyone ever seen this footage of Paddy Doherty sparring? Wasn't he meant to be a bareknuckle fighter?

This content is protected

 

Yes,he is a well respected BK scrapper.

 

Interesting, so who is the best fighter that Gorman beat?

 

I don't get what is legendary about Lee Duffy, I'm sure he could fight but there's also many stories of him sucker punching people, even Brian Cockerill who was his friend said Lee was a bully and then there's these stories of him single handedly knocking out groups of bouncers which go anywhere from 6 all the way up to 12! The stories get bigger as the years go by.

Britain has guys like Lee Murray, Paul Venis, Dillian Whyte, Barrington Patterson, Dominic Negus, Dereck Chisora etc All these guys were street dudes but they were willing to prove it against trained fighters too. Hell a guy like David Haye is never brought up when it comes to boxers who could really fight outside the ring but look at how he did Chisora!

 

Bartley and Dan Rooney never fought.

So people will rightly ask how do we know who the better man was. And that would be a fair question. But what I will say to that, is the fact that Dan Rooney would not challenge Bartley for his title. And that was huge. That speaks volumes.

To give you a bit of background on Dan, Dan was significantly younger than Bartley. And Bartley was friends with Dan’s Uncle Felix in the 1970’s. They got into a few scrapes together, but they were friends and never fought. This is after Bartley had taken over Uriah Burton’s crown to be called the King of the Gypsies. So Felix who was older than Bartley never challenged Bartley for his crown, nor did any other member of the Rooney family. They all respected him and was friendly with him. And in the mid 70’s, Dan would only have been a very young boy/man back then. So Dan would have known who Bartley was and of his reputation from when he was a young man, in the same way that Bartley knew all about Uriah Burton when he himself was a young man.

Every young gypsy lad wants to be able to fight, and the stories and the history of the greatest bare knuckle fighters is ingrained in them since childhood. So the point is: Dan Rooney would have known all about Bartley for many years. When Dan was coming up and being classed as a top fighter in Ireland, Bartley would have had the crown for almost 20 years at that point. Dan beat Joe Joyce in Ireland in the 80’s, who was said to be a formidable fighter. They fought for a while, but Joyce broke his ankle/leg and couldn’t continue. Then in 1990, Dan got the best of it against Aney McGinley, but the fight never reached its conclusion and they never fought again.

So by 1990, Bartley was still known and revered as the King of the Gypsies, whilst Dan was revered in Ireland as their best fighting man. Dan then came to England to live and to work in and around Luton. Yet he still never pursued Bartley, who again, had had his title for almost 20 years at that point. Then the following year in 1991, Bartley lost his brother, Sam to cancer. And Dan Rooney’s brother, John attended the funeral. Then during the wake, Bartley and John fought each other after John had hit him. Bartley, who was 47 at the time, beat him up good and then knocked him out. Yet despite this, his brother Dan still didn’t pursue Bartley to challenge him.

So he knew of his awesome reputation, he moved to England, he heard that his brother had been beaten by Bartley, yet he still didn’t seek a challenge. So to me, that speaks volumes. Then around 10 years later when Bartley was dying of cancer, both John and Dan visited him in hospital in Derby, where they both told him that he was a legend.

People may ask why Bartley didn’t challenge Dan, but that’s not how it works. In the travelling world, the onus is on the challenger. So the fact that Dan never pursued Bartley tells me an awful lot.