Moment infamous bare-knuckle fighter trades blows with fellow Traveller as brawl erupts at busy Christmas market
A notorious bare-knuckle fighter traded blows with a fellow Traveller, bringing a packed Christmas market to a standstill.
Crowds parted as Dougie Joyce, recently released from jail, and long-time foe Simon ‘Simey’ McGinley brawled outside Manchester’s high-end Selfridge’s department store – and a Porky Pig food stall.
The violence erupted in Exchange Square – with video footage showing the pair fighting before falling to the ground.
Joyce can be heard shouting ‘get it up there son – who are you?’ before aiming a number of blows at McGinley.
Others then move in to separate the pair, who then move into the crowd and out of view.
Following the scrap on Sunday late afternoon, businessman Joyce – an unlikely friend of Liz Truss – and McGinley each claimed victory and traded insults online.
In a later video, McGinley, who appeared to be on a train, said: ‘Dougie Joyce, you came tonight to the Christmas market and you’re acting now a bit of a blackguard.’
He showed the camera close up of his face which and said ‘there’s nothing there – there’s not a black eye’.
McGinley continued: ‘But Dougie Joyce, I knocked you out on your a**e with two or three belts.’
In the two-minute clip, McGinley suggests that Dougie recruits his cousin Tommy Joyce to be the referee in a re-match and to ‘get the fight on’ before calling his rival ‘you dirty big knacker’ and a ‘country boy’.
Meanwhile, Joyce posted a six-minute rant against McGinley in which the traveller cannot be seen but can be heard as he appears to be driving away from Manchester city centre.
He claimed he ‘knocked out’ his rival, who was left ‘not knowing what day it was’.
Joyce said he took his watch off ‘as a fair chap’, gave his phone ‘to the missus’ ahead of an encounter with someone else but that McGinley then appeared.
Laughing, Joyce went on: ‘And this is the gospel truth and this is on me mommy’s life, yeah. Simey walked up to me in front of him and there’s no point lying about it, and he knows his own self, he hit me a headbutt… straight to the face.
‘The beating that I give Simey McGinley, and this is on my mommy’s life, my sons’ lives, my beautiful little girls’ lives, he didn’t know what day it was.
‘The fella with two pigs eyes got smashed and knocked out and didn’t know what day it was. Simey, I bet you didn’t think Dougie Joyce could hit like that did you?! Simey, Simey, Simey, you’re an embarrassment mate.”
He claimed his rival ‘didn’t know whether you were coming or going’ and then ‘all your brothers got stuck into me’ but failed to floor him.
Joyce continued: “F*** you. You should be embarrassed in your life.”
He claimed he knocked his rival ‘spark out’ and challenged him to another fight the following morning, adding: ‘Simey, speak in the morning, no videos back and forth, all I want is a time in the morning, a location, my cousin Tommy or any of the boys, your uncle Jonnie or cousin Jonnie or whatever. Let’s get it on. You got sparked. You got f***ed…. Did you realise, yeah, Dougie Joyce can bang!? You got f***ed!’
He laughed as he called McGinley a ‘dirty smelly bog man’s b*****d’. He promised to publish CCTV of the fight and called McGinley a ‘dirty smelly tramp’s b*****d’.
A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police confirmed officers responded to reports of a disturbance in Exchange Square at 4.35pm on Sunday but incident appeared to be over when they arrived. Officers spoke to both men but ‘neither would disclose anything’ and no complaints were made.
The feud between the two men is believed to date back to at least 2016 when they were involved another war of words as they tried to organise another fight.
In June, Dougie Joyce posed with former Prime Minister Liz Truss to promote his new line of whisky. He posted a video on his Instagram page of the pair together at a table with Truss holding a bottle of Joyce’s brand of Irish whisky.
Joyce hands her the bottle of whisky in the clip, saying ‘just remember – Dougie Joyce loves ya’, with Truss then adding ‘Liz Truss loves you’. Joyce, one of the highest profile members of Manchester’s Traveller community, has a long criminal history.
He saw his latest jail term come in March 2024 after a feud between the Joyce and Doherty traveller families turned violent in the Vine pub, in Collyhurst.
Dougie Joyce was jailed for 13 months for violent disorder after trouble broke out. The two families had attended the pub as part of a wake following the death of two young men who were part of the traveller community.
At the time of his sentencing, he was already in jail after he was imprisoned in November 2023 for attacking a widower in a pub in the city centre, after which police described him as an ‘aggressive and violent man who intended to intimidate and inflict pain on a vulnerable 78-year-old’.
After being released from prison in July, an unrepentant Joyce, 35, said: ‘I never regret anything I do in life. I regret being in that situation. But I don’t regret anything I do because everything I do is for a reason.’
