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I’ve been training Barrington Patterson in Coventry for more than 20 years.

My name is Dev Barrett and I’m a karate and kickboxing instructor. I was born in Jamaica and came over to the West Midlands just after independence in 1963, when I was aged 10. I learned to fight at school because of the obvious problem that most people have as immigrants. I started playing rugby, which led me on to boxing, which everybody did in my day. That then led me to karate. I absolutely loved playing rugby at school and I also excelled at karate, so it was a tough decision to make the switch.

I started off in traditional karate and then I went on to kickboxing. In full-contact karate I went on to win the British title and European Challenge Cup title; I also became the first British fighter to win the world title in the ring. But I found kickboxing to be that little bit more ‘honest’.

Karate was also good for discipline though. I worked as an electrician and became a foreman. I had a well-paid job and it was a tough decision, but I decided to give up work to focus on my sport fulltime. The sport was only at the amateur level, but what changed it was when my father passed away.

He worked all his life and didn’t get to see much of us really. He finally took early retirement and went to Jamaica to look at some land; he wanted to go back. He was out there for three weeks and then he died. It seemed as if he didn’t do much with his life and I decided I was going to do something I really liked.

In 1982, I gave up my job as an electrician to work as a fulltime teacher and trainer. In 1984, I opened up a gym in the city centre. At the time the local authorities were trying to get kids in the community into sport. There was always gang warfare going on in Coventry then.

A few years later, I was teaching a regular class. It was around 6.30pm and I remember it was as if the lights had gone out – when I looked round there were these two big fellows standing in the doorway. My immediate thought was: Oh God! because I’d heard that the week before somebody had come up and there was a bit of a problem with the other instructor that was teaching. So I obviously thought these two guys had come back to sort out whatever they had going on with him.

I ignored them for quite a while – I just continued teaching and they stood almost motionless in the doorway. I was teaching a class of young lads at the time and I remember thinking, I hope it doesn’t go off while they’re here. At the time I was a world champion and I didn’t want to approach them in an aggressive way.

I was walking up and down the dojo, not saying anything to them as I was hoping they would go away, but then I thought, Why? I’m a world champion. I suddenly turned and looked at them and said, ‘Can I help you?’ There was a little bit of movement as if they were quite surprised at the way I approached them. The one in front filled the doorway, a huge black guy who must have been a bodybuilder; this was Barrington. The one behind was quite a bit bigger and taller, quite a smart-looking character. They called him ‘Catalogue John’, I found out later, because he looked like somebody who’d just walked out of a photo shoot.

They said they were interested in training, so I gave them the times, costs, etc. But I wasn’t convinced; I thought, There’s a bit more to it. I looked at them and I was thinking, What do they want with martial arts, the size of them?

I remember Barrington saying he just wanted to do some karate. Obviously I thought, Thank God. It was quite scary actually. At that point I thought, We’ll see, but they did stay and watch for a while. After they left, I thought, Maybe, maybe not.

But they turned up the next time and that’s how it all started; they both came and trained with me. Barrington is still with me today. He just trained as a regular student but, as time went on, he became an icon within the club because he seemed to gel with most other students. There was one group who seemed to get on with him really well, but there were others who seemed to be a bit wary of him because of his ways.

I always knew there was something about Barrington. Because you always have some characters in the world, a personality with a little bit of something different, like Muhammad Ali.

Barrington was one of those.

DEV BARRETT, former British, European and World W.A.K.O. (World Association of Kick-boxing Organizations) full-contact champion