It was supposed to be a quiet drink with an old pal. But then again trouble had a habit of following Steve Sinclair around. A bouncer in Blackpool since the age of 18, he had a reputation as the Golden Mile's hardest man.
Standing at 6ft 2ins and weighing 17 and a half stone, Sinclair, who once fought all-time boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard in an exhibition bout aboard a cruise ship and appeared in the documentary series Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men, was not a fella to be tangled with. READ MORE: 'Enough is enough': The pub truce that brought a halt to the Gooch, Doddington and Cheetham Hill gang war And by his own admission, he'd got away with quite a bit over the years. "I've been 15 or 16 times in crown court on different charges," he told the Guardian in 2003. "Wounding, GBH, affray, endangering the public.
I've had major trials, where they had to move us out of Blackpool. "I've been arrested for bank robbery. They've accused me of contract hits.
I was a minder for a big drug dealer." Then one day in the mid-90s, he found himself in Salford, amid a bloody and wild 24 hours that almost kick-started war.
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