Everybody thinks it's easy to fight. They go in a pub and beat up three of four blokes, stamp on them. But the average pub fight lasts ten seconds. When you get in the ring, you're cold. You're not mad. Your body is playing terrible tricks on you. Being in the ring is the hardest thing you'll ever do. Unlicensed fighting is the raw flipside of boxing.

A few men make what they call easy money, but for many the unlicensed game becomes a nightmare of pain and fear. Watching fights that run the gamut from 'backroom jobs' - encounters of uncut street violence - to fully promoted cards with referees and judges, THE UNLICENSED: RANDOM NOTES FROM BOXING'S UNDREBELLY journeys into the margins of contemporary Britain to strip this world bare for the first time. From the remarkable John Barnwell, a veteran of 30 years of brutal contest around the world, to the fearsome and undefeated Billy Heaney, the street-fighting champion they call 'The Galway Bull', and many more, Jon Hoteen shares the lives and times of these hard men as they confide their vivid and extraordinary stories. In parts bleak, funny, shocking and uncompromising, THE UNLICENSED is above all unflinchingly honest about this secret underside of the fight game.