Grim remaining years of Paul Sykes who was ‘hunted in packs’ and ‘overwhelmed for sport’

Paul Sykes was somewhat of a cult hero remembered for many things – and most of them revolved around violence.

He was a former professional heavyweight boxer, a prison hard nut and an intimidating debt collector. And despite being dead for 17 years, his notoriety still gets spoken about to this day.

The bruiser spent over 20 years in prison and he himself famously said: “I’m an expert in violence – I’ve been at it all my life.”

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When he was not in jail, he was known for causing havoc in his hometown of Wakefield where the alcoholic was banned from most pubs.

His wild tales are endless and clips of him talking about things like punching sharks “right in the f*****g earhole” still go viral to this day – but his demise was brutal.

Sykes died in 2007 at the age of 60 as a frail shadow of himself. And an author who spent years researching his turbulent life spoke about how opportunistic thugs often “took liberties” by roughing him up.

Jamie Boyle, speaking in a recent YouTube video, also described how Sykes was “feral” and would wake up in gardens and live out of cardboard boxes.

He spoke out after allegedly receiving messages from the public claiming they had witnessed the hardman getting a “good hiding” in his latter years. But Jamie said “even his wife” could have beaten up Sykes from 2002.

He added: “A lot of people would hunt him for sport in packs and it was quite common if you like to have ‘oh I’ve just beaten Paul Sykes up’. Well you didn’t, you’ve beaten a shell of a man who used to be somebody.”

He believes Sykes was targeted in the 2000s because of his infamous name and fearsome reputation – but said he was not a physical threat to anyone.

However, giving a raw insight, he added: “He was still a nasty piece of work and would still throw things at you and shout abuse and spitting was one of his things he used to do.

“I spoke to various couple of people in the police and they put like a bag over him so he couldn’t do it. I forgot what it is called but he was still as mean as cat piss when he was old.”

Despite passing away aged 60, Jamie said he looked closer to 85 and was ravished with diabetes and arthritis. He could barely even open a can of beer.

But he claimed that he did manage to stab one of his friends in the backside 11 months before his death during a boozy cider session – before they made up the following day.

Sykes also had marks and scabs on his face after a gang of youths set him on fire while he was sleeping rough. And giving his opinion on whether Syke’s downfall was justified, he said: “Did he deserve it? I don’t know. I think only god can be the judge. Life came for the badness that he did and it all certainly came back at him in his later days.

“His fall was absolutely great. It was as hard as one human could endure, physical sense, mental sense.”

He added: “Even when he was living in a cardboard box or a skip, he thought he knew better and you couldn’t tell him, he couldn’t be told. In his later years he was feral. It would be like going to the desert and getting a honey badger and taking it home and trying to train it to be a dog, it just wouldn’t happen.

“He was more for the wild. He was happy to wake up in people’s gardens and scrounge five, ten quid here and there to go and get Special Brew and he just lived for that.

“But if he did anything he certainly got his comeuppance and if I say he was paid back a thousand times for any badness in life he did that’s no exaggeration, certainly in my head anyway and certainly from the research I did.”

Sykes died in Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield and was suffering with pneumonia and liver cirrhosis.

His legacy includes being housed in 18 different prisons for numerous assaults including beating up police officers. But he also left behind a son, Michael Sharps, who is now serving a life sentence for murdering former policeman David Ward.