British soccer hooligan was ‘keen to kill’ to ‘shield’ status of agency

A football hooligan revealed he was “willing to kill” during his days fighting on the terraces.

Dante Hawkins has been known in recent years as a professional MMA fighter but he once caused chaos in the streets surrounding the old White Hart Lane.

The Spurs fanatic spoke to James English on his Anything Goes podcast about how he spent his youth fighting rival fans.

He had his first footie scrap at 14 before receiving a three-year banning order when he was just 17.

But he admitted that as a teenager he was prepared to commit serious violence that would have left him banged up for a “very long time”.

Giving a chilling insight, he said: “That day I was thinking ‘someone is going to get properly done’ and I weren’t in the mood for playing about that day which when I look back now I thank god it never happened.”

The podcast host replied: “Were you willing to kill someone that day?”

Confirming, Dante answered: “Yeah, I was going to get put away that day. If I got nicked I would have got put away for a very long time, do you know what I mean?”

He later added: “At that specific time I was engrossed with it all and I felt like ‘this is going to happen today, this is going to happen properly’.

“I would have done anything to protect Tottenham’s reputation at that specific time. That is where my mind space was it.

“Now, I’m in a completely different headspace, but I was like 19, 20, whatever.”

Dante grew up in West London and his first brawl was with Portsmouth fans shortly before hitting puberty.

But he said the “best fight” happened when a group of “20 Tottenham fans” took on a larger mob of bloodthirsty Wolves supporters.

He said on the podcast: “We split up into fives so we didn’t attract attention from cameras walking up the road and they (Wolves fans) had got off the train.

“They came up to us, I’ve put this bottle straight through this geezer’s nut straight away, I thought I’m going to hurt one of these badly first and set the tone for the day.

“So I put this bottle through the geezer’s face, right through hard, all the glass had shattered into my hand, cut my hand but his face he went ‘agghh’ and went back into the melee screaming.

“I was thinking this is going well, but they have got 40 people and they are a good firm.”

After spending time in prison he turned to mixed martial arts where he was nicknamed ‘The Bull’ and accumulated four wins and one defeat inside the cage.