One Punch
Paul Doyle is a legendary figure in Salford, and in the underworld and door world of Manchester. The name One Punch was earned. He was known as one of the best fighters in the city.
A big puncher who has rendered many men unconscious over the years.
His most famous fight was a street showdown with Damian Noonan. Noonan was a big, strong and clever man who, with his brothers, controlled important clubland doors in Manchester, and he was one of the main men in the city's underbelly before he died in a crash. He was also the bigger man. Doyle fought him to a standstill.
A hard start
Doyle's life is a fascinating and tragic tale. He spent his early years in institutions and prisons, and went on to forge a life in criminality, football hooliganism and door work. He told that story himself in his book, Surviving the Madness, and much of what is known about the Salford door world of his era comes from its pages.
Boardman
Doyle was the best friend and business partner of Graeme Boardman, a Manchester doorman with a lethal reputation. Boardman's good looks and posh voice hid a monstrous temper, and he was adept with weapons as well as his hands, taking on mobs as well as individuals. Doyle knew him better than anyone, and the word he used for his friend was psychotic.
Boardman went missing after a bad-tempered dispute over stolen drugs, and the police believe he is dead. The feud around him blighted Doyle's life too, with death threats hanging over his head. Doyle's answer was to show he would not be an easy target. According to his book, he arranged for his Manchester United hooligan pals to turn out for him in big numbers as a show of force. Among them was Vinnie Clay, a six foot four Salford fighter. During the day out the group went for a nightclub door team who had humiliated one of their number a few weeks earlier. Doyle says Clay and his friend were at the front of it, and that he managed to persuade them to get away before the police arrived.
One book called Clay a six foot four terror who scared everyone. Doyle's view of him was simpler. "I like Vinnie, he was a character," he said. Clay was shot dead in Salford in November 2000.
Salford door wars
Doyle was once good friends with Paul Massey, the man they called Mr Salford, who had interests in security doors alongside the Noonan brothers. That friendship did not last. In his book Doyle describes the war that he and Boardman fought in the early 2000s with Massey and his friends over doors in Salford and Greater Manchester.
Massey, Boardman and Clay have all gone into Salford folklore as men taken before their time. When I picked the deadliest doormen of the nineties, Liverpool against Manchester, Doyle was one of my main picks. I matched him with Terry O'Neil, the legendary Liverpool martial artist and actor who trained many hard men, and gave that one to Terry. It took a legend to edge him.