Frank Warren, Boxwise, and the battle against knife crime

It seems an appropriate time for Frank Warren to discuss why he’s contributing to the battle against knife crime. 

Eight people were stabbed during the recent Notting Hill Carnival. One was a young mother, with a child, who remains in a critical condition. A total of 334 arrests were made.

Boxwise, who Warren has become the first chairman of, describes as its mission statement: “Working with the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people across the UK, striving to reduce the rates of gang violence and knife crime through sport, community and opportunity.” They seek to give deprived young people the opportunity to learn to box – the outlet it presents – and the sense of community they may have been lacking that in combination can prove so damaging. They’re also in the process of doubling their footprint. 

“We only seen it this week, haven’t we?” Warren said to BoxingScene. “I mean it’s just a natural thing now – stabbing is just a regular occurrence. Someone sent me a video on the same day we launched it in Cockfosters – this little quiet place where these kids are running around trying to chop each other up with machetes. I mean, it’s mad – and this absolutely gives these kids a chance.

“There’s like 30, 40 gyms, and there’s a link up now with Sport England. Last year, 1,500 kids went through it, and those 1,500 kids all come from pretty shitty backgrounds. Troubled; mostly knife crime and all that sort of stuff. It gives them an opportunity to go on a 10-week course – to channel their energies; any aggression or so – into boxing training. Not to be a boxer – amateur boxer or pro boxer; maybe they might want to do that; who knows? – but to go and get on the programme. To work with trainers, to interact with people from different backgrounds, from different ethnicities; to learn about their bodies. 

“Obesity is a big problem in this country – [so] to learn about diets; the whole thing – and more importantly to work and get some self-esteem. [To get] some self-respect, and [learn to] respect others. 

“With Queensberry’s help, they’ll be able to put 3,000 through this year and we’re going to build it up and build it up and just keep rolling it out around the country. It is around the country, and it is a success story. It does work. I’ve seen it myself – it does work. 

“When we launched it – Queensberry’s involvement at Islington, where I come from; Islington Boxing Club – see those kids in there when they’re not on the street, they’re enjoying what they’re doing. It’s a joy.

“This one is really close to my heart because it’s kids and if this [knife crime] just becomes the norm then where are we all going? Where’s the kids of tomorrow? It won’t get better; it’ll get worse. What’s the next thing they get to? Something has to happen, and it seems to me that this is something that can be rolled out. 

“Most of the kids affected by this come from a pretty humble background – which I did. I mean, I come from a council flat. When I was a kid, I got involved in trouble. I’ve had some serious fights when I was a kid. I’ve had some really serious things like that – and it’s all about peer pressure. It’s all about thinking that’s respect – that you’re the toughest guy and all that shit – [and] that just takes you into another arena and it just gets worse and worse.

“What they need is to see there is another way that you can conduct your life and another way that you can work to get out of that environment. That environment – that situation where, ‘I’ve stabbed him so I’m the hero’. You’re not the hero; it’s just crazy. All you’re doing, you’re screwing your own life up; screwing your family’s life up. You may kill somebody, and you screw their family’s life up. No one gets over it. No one.”

Warren was 37 in 1989 when he was shot in Barking, east London, in what was described at the time as a “gang shooting”, and is open about his fear that night that he was going to die. Eleven years later the promoter was punched by none other than Mike Tyson, once the most troubled of youths and who, however perversely, has become one of his profession’s most iconic figures. In 2024 Warren’s greatest asset may even prove the heavyweight Moses Itauma, who so recently spoke of the fact he turned professional instead of prioritizing competing at an Olympics because of his parents’ struggles to provide he and his two brothers with food.

“‘AJ’ [Anthony Joshua] – I’m not saying he had a bad family background,” continued the promoter, a long-term contributor to Nordoff Robbins and DEBRA, “[but] some of these kids have bad family. He, on his own admission, would have gone down another road. I mean, he did get in trouble. What he’s done [via boxing] is brilliant. He turned his life around.

“There’s plenty of guys – boxing’s changed where he’s come from – Dennis Andries. Not big household names but they’ve gone through it and come out the other side. 

“It’s not about them becoming boxers [at Boxwise]. It’s about them going in there and training; getting on the program. They get fed – they’re not just there working – they get fed. You don’t have to pay for your meal; you’re getting food. You’re getting treated like a person; you’re not somebody’s problem. You’re going in there on the same footing as everybody else, and getting treated as a human being.

“[The] by-product – you may want to be an amateur boxer – but [that’s] the by-product. Get in there and work hard and get on this programme.”