A Thousand Blows is a brutal exposé of the criminal underbelly of Victorian England, with illegal boxing at its heart. We spoke to boxing coach Jamal Akay about his role in getting the show’s stars boxing clever
When Stephen Graham, one of the stars of Disney’s new show A Thousand Blows, comes swaggering into the ring for an illegal boxing bout, you’re immediately convinced he’s going to deliver a knockout performance.
Although he’d “done a bit of boxing” beforehand, hours of work in the ring with boxing coach Jamal Akay has honed Graham’s skills (as the excellently-named Sugar Goodson) to perfection. Co-star Malachi Kirby, on the other hand, had never stepped in to a ring so Jamal had his work cut out for him turning the BAFTA award-winning actor into a hardened ring-ready puncher.
The results? We’ll, you’ll just have to watch the show to find out. But we were given an insight into the training regimes for both actors in the show developed by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, which revolves around the Forty Elephants, a 19th to 20th century all-female London crime syndicate who specialised in shoplifting.
Jamal Akay is a professional boxer and has been in the sport most of his life. His father founded Allstars Boxing gym ‘the home of champions’ where his oldest brother became British cruiserweight champion. He has been coaching for over a decade, focusing on technique mixed with good old-fashioned hard work!
MEN’S FITNESS (MF): It would be fair to say that boxing is in your blood. Can you give us a brief resumé of your career?
JAMAL AKAY (JA): My father was a Ghanaian boxing champion and started a gym in London in 1974. My eldest brother became a British champion, so it’s fair to say that boxing’s always been in my household. ‘Jab’ was probably my first word! I started in the amateur ranks, where I had about 30 fights, and ended up representing England. I fought some international tournaments and then turned professional at light heavyweight.
MF: How did you get in to coaching, and specifically, A Thousand Blows?
JA: Throughout the time I was building my boxing career, I was also doing personal training sessions with clients. I started quite young: I was only 18. Because my family gym has quite an iconic look, like an old artisan building, it gets used for film and TV locations quite a lot. I used to see my dad training actors and I was always mindful of that.
It happened organically – I was training quite a few actors and directors and one of the producers of the show got in contact. He’d seen me fight and called me up and said,‘I saw you fight seven years ago’ and he invited me to be part of the show.
MF: What were the key challenges in working with Stephen and Malachi? Had either of them done any boxing training before?
JA: The initial brief was about the style of the show in terms of how they were going to be boxing. It’s obviously a period piece which means a certain style of fighting. Fortunately, I’m quite a boxing historian. When I was growing up, my dad made me do my boxing homework by watching hundreds of black and white fights. It was an interesting brief – keep the hands lower and a more brutal style of boxing rather than just feeling each other out in the ring and boxing for points.
Stephen had some boxing experience and trained as a boxer before. With Malachi, we took it right back to scratch, starting with the basics and no bad habits. Stephen was different, he knew what he wanted to do.
MF: How much time did you spend with them working on boxing skills?
JA: As I said with Malachi, it was very much back to basics: looking at feet placement, where we keep our hands, posture and the way he carries himself. We spent a lot of time working on his stance to make it look authentic. But I had to tailor the sessions to each of the actors. Stephen has a clear idea of who he wanted to look like – he’d watched boxing and understood it. The work was more specific to his fight scenes: we’d work on a punch combination that might be used in the fight choreography. With Malachi, it was really boxing from day one.
MF: How did you shape the training? How much time was spent on pure fitness?
JA: They were both very coachable people, albeit with very different temperaments. Stephen was someone who could be laughing and cracking jokes one minute and then as soon as we got in the ring, it was like a light switch – tunnel vision, ready to go. Malachi came into the sessions focused because I think, for him, there was a bit more pressure. I would have to lighten him up with some jokes. I tried to get over to both of them that fitness was paramount.
Repeating a scene over and over is going to get tiring. Shooting days were pretty intense: the cameras were rolling, the lights were on and they were getting pretty hot with everyone watching. So, we made sure their fitness levels were high. Stephen had a clear idea of what he wanted his character to look like and had been working for a year already on his physique with a strength and conditioning coach.
As time went on, we worked on ‘cutting’ and getting him more ripped for the fight scenes. But I actually had more time with Malachi because he lived closer, so we did everything from warm-up to bag work and even light sparring to build his confidence in the ring.
MF: How difficult is it to make their skills look authentic? Plus, it’s bare knuckle which is not strictly legal!
JA: You’ve got to teach people to not make contact but to make the punches look as authentic as possible. This is something I incorporated in our bag work. We would do multiple rounds of bag work but hardly touching with the punches. It does feel strange initially but over time it became natural for them to move in and out of range.
For an experienced boxer, it’s easier to pull your punches but if you’re just starting out, your inclination is to put everything behind it. And that would have been less than ideal!
MF: A Thousand Blows is centred around illegal boxing. Did you have to teach them skills which would obviously be banned in a proper ring?
JA: Yes, some dirty tricks for sure. It’s a much rougher and tougher game: when they were getting in close, I might get them to do shoulder dig. I actually have an old boxing handbook that my dad gave me years ago which had a load of dirty tricks explained in it!
MF: How did Stephen and Malachi find the training? They both look in excellent shape!
JA: Stephen was initially more in-tune with his character. He had a strong idea about how he wanted his character to come across before he’d even started filming. With Malachi, once he got confident with the punches and the movement, we started sparring which, for me, is the fastest way to get comfortable with boxing. He found that the logic started to come into play with the practice.
The fact that he done some sparring with me off set meant he could bring that to bear when the cameras started rolling. But we developed a great rapport with the guys in the gym. I wanted them to feel like they were actually boxers – and they took to it like ducks to water.
MF: Are you happy with how the boxing scenes came out on camera?
JA: I’ve not watched it all, but in the episodes I have seen, the boxing looks great. I expected Steven Knight to capture the cinematic feel for the era, but it looks even better than I expected. The fights scenes look genuinely authentic. For me as a boxer and watching boxing in TV shoes and films, I’m always the biggest critic. But as soon as I saw it, I was hooked.
MF: What advice would you have for anyone who wants to take up boxing?
JA: The first thing to do is just go into a boxing gym and have a look around. Most people are intimidated by the just getting into a gym but taking in the atmosphere and seeing how we work out lessens that intimidation and makes boxing more accessible. But, from a physicality point of view, just go for a run. Professional boxers are part-time runners, so if you want to be a boxer, you’re going to have to do a lot of road miles.
• A Thousand Blows started streaming on Disney+ on the 21st February
