The inside story of one of Britain’s most respected and prolific boxing gyms

Tucked away on a quiet residential street in the West Midlands market town of Wednesbury, England, you will find an unassuming gym called Back Country Boxing. It’s a humble building with a quiet façade and thus a perfect place for the few remaining members of our trade who like to keep things quiet and on an even keel.

Once inside, you have the usual poetics of a boxing space: warm-up areas, mirrors, bags, posters on the wall, with everything flowing towards to one place. Churches are centred by the pulpit, Mosques by the mihrab. In boxing gyms, however, all paths lead to the sparring ring, which in turns sets you on your path to either glory or, sadly too often, disappointment.

The BCB gym boasts a tall and ubiquitous presence. Errol Johnson is so big, in fact, you would struggle to not to spot him as he quietly makes his rounds while holding an old basher of a mobile phone in his hand. When you glimpse him at boxing events, you are likely to recognize the face but struggle to place his name. Barely a photo of Johnson exists, hence why an image of him is absent here. When nominated in 2023 for British Trainer of the Year at the BBBoC awards, those tasked with publishing the program spent days trying find a suitable photo of him.

Johnson much prefers life in the shadows. It allows him to focus on the development his fighters, his gym, and the BCB brand, even if today he takes time out to talk to BoxingScene. “This type of talking to people thing for publicity isn’t for me, at all,” he admitted.

“I’ve been asked about using iPhones, Twitter, WhatsApp and all that as well for 15 years. I just want one thing: text me or speak to me. I’m not even into doing long texts. Talk to me and I can get into other things. I understand that interviews are what television wants. They want the stories, what trainers have got to say and to create something. It isn’t about me, it is all about the boxers. The TV people even want to be in the corner so that they can talk about, and judge, what you say and do between rounds. But I understand it.

“The boxing world is mad enough, anyway. We’re misfits or whatever you want to call us. Then you’ve got these misfit fights or fighters from YouTube — I can’t hack it. Boxing is hard enough, the hardest sport going. You have to take it really seriously. You come under pressure. It is like you’ve done six rounds, and nothing is going your way. All you’ve got is this [raises hands.] All sports are hard, but there is nothing like having someone trying to punch your head in.”

Despite his reticence to play the game, Johnson played it to perfection in the first lockdown, making sure that his fighters didn’t emerge from it in a position where they were not fit or focused enough when the sport demanded a steady supply of boxers for the first wave of post-pandemic shows.

“We had some hard times, some wins and losses, then it all kicked off with Covid,” he recalled. “As soon as Covid started, I texted all the fighters to tell them to keep on training. I knew it would come back behind closed doors and that they’d need fighters and fights so that what’s I told them. We just kept on taking fights. There was a tough process there, yet the lads were all ready to fight so I just moved them about. We have had fighters with Eddie Hearn, Frank Warren, and fighters on Sky. All the fighters came from small hall shows then rewrote the rule books, really.”

This tenacity stems from a childhood spent playing football and boxing, which of course you don’t really play, before common sense and a career kicked in, despite the fact he had achieved the required boxing coaching qualifications by the tender age of 17. Johnson became an admin officer for the Sandwell council, a role he enjoyed. However, then the boxing urge kicked in again and, with the support of his family and friends, he kicked on.

“I tried to work with the tenants a lot,” he explained about his old life. “I was closer to work at the gym but that made it work, and it was a little triangle. There’d be dinner times when I’d be at the gym in a suit. It got to where I didn’t have the time, which wasn’t good for the fighters. I couldn’t be on my phone all the time. Boxing was getting busier. I had more fighters. There were times I didn’t have the time to make the calls for the management time of things.”

With time now on his hands to build the BCB brand, Johnson is fully committed to the work, alongside Paul Mann, who trains fighters and oversees the day-to-day running of the gym and Paul Webb, their Head of Media and Communications. They are all partners in the project and Johnson expects his fighters to swing along with their plans, hook their wagons to the BCB star and the process. It’s a work of pure passion, long-gestating with all of them holding a firm idea and hope of where and what it will lead to.

“Paul was working with the fighters across the country,” he said. “We’d chat after the shows. Work may come, good offers, but we’d have to turn them down. It was probably tunnel vision, thinking I couldn’t balance the boxing full-time with working and paying a mortgage so Paul bought into it and we started talking to other people to make the brand into BCB.”

The word ‘plateauing’ is a common one in the interviews Johnson has conducted. It reminds him of the size of the task because he is not just trying to build a gym, they are all fighting against the bureaucratic machinations of the business of boxing. Johnson, though, has some good ideas that would work well with the right backing.

“When you reach a level, you see how hard a sport it is for all trainers and fighters,” he said. “Everything has to be right all the time. Then if you’re the champion there is someone coming to beat you. Then you lose, get told you’re finished and must rebuild over a period of time. It isn’t easy, especially for us, as we’ve been bringing fighters through from the bottom when other people get the top fighters and a bigger slice of the cake.

“The sport gets it all wrong when you consider how hard fighters train. Look at other sports, they’ve got people who lead them. I keep bringing up before the [British Boxing] Board [of Control] that we don’t run the sport — the promoters and TV run the sport. Our Board are like an admin facility. Look at football. It doesn’t matter what people think, they have the Premiership, which goes on TV and the money filters down. We get nothing in our sport until you get into the top league.”

At this point, Johnson outlined an idea that he believes works on paper and would translate to the canvas of the boxing ring. “Why don’t the [British] TV companies get consistently involved in small hall boxing?” he asked. “There are enough channels out there. Why not look at matching different Area Champions or area-level fighters, like a national league, on some platform?

“These lads can box once a month or so on TV so that people can follow them. Fighters earn, you get 50/50 fights and then you can move on to other titles. Once that happens you might be able to move your kids up. Everyone looks at it, says, ‘That’s a good idea’, and nothing comes of it.

“You can still tell the stories. Look at the fighters you would be giving a platform to. Some of them are [working] on the bins or working other jobs and asking if they can afford to carry on [boxing]. You’d be showcasing boxers from certain backgrounds with different personalities, and they can engage with the public. We’d get the best of both worlds.”

Johnson will keep banging that drum, you can bank on that, while also continuing to work hard despite the tough, remorseless nature of having to build something outside of the bright lights of the biggest platforms. It is a struggle, requiring hardship and suffering, as Matthew 5:10-12 says: ‘Blessed are those who suffer for doing what is right.’ At this level, though, ticket sales are God and there is a knack to it, especially these days.

“It is even harder now,” he said. “Costings are going up. Ticket prices are going up and incomes are going down. We’ve always relied on the boxers selling tickets. You’ll get some good sellers, some average ones and it is a case of trying to juggle to bring them through the best you can and, more importantly, at the right pace. Some of the most skilled kids don’t sell tickets yet you need to get them fights so that they can progress.

“They don’t have a choice but to sell tickets, do they? It isn’t a nice conversation. It is a hard sport, though. If they can’t do that, they might not be able to box or they get to a level where they box but aren’t earning as much. I let them make those decisions. It was easier at work when I was at the Council — I know that much!” 

As for Johnson, our time was almost up, he had a lot to do, and his old basher phone had been pinging throughout. Every missed message or call could be an opportunity that has gone by the by. “The way I am can have its up and downs,” he said, referring to his throwback approach to lines of communication. “Sometimes it helps, sometimes it can hold you down. But there’s less stress and aggravation.”

Technology-wise, Johnson may be a man out of time, yet time moves on. Each moment is gone as a new one stands tall, but all will fall like dominoes. Johnson is acutely aware of this. “Maybe I’m running out of time, packing in as much as I can while I can,” he admitted.

“Within one month, I went from Liam Davies winning the [IBO] title to taking a 13-year-old to a girls’ finals. The main aim is to win, for the gym and the kids. From Midlands to world level. That’s how we work and how the gym works for all of the kids. We split everything down the middle. The fighters and trainers know what is going on. They know what to expect from me as well, and they always will.”