Frank Bruno has claimed that his father would be in prison today for hitting him the way he did as a child.
The former world champion, who started boxing when he was just eight years old and later fought against Mike Tyson, said his father, Robert, would put him in his place whenever he was ‘out of order’.
The 60 year old said his dad would be ‘locked up’ if that were to happen today but he said that was the ‘old school’ way.
Today, the maximum sentence for cruelty to a child is ten years in jail.
When asked whether getting beaten up while boxing was ever too much for him on the Anything Goes podcast, Bruno said: “Sometimes you’ve got to take a little beating.
“I’m not keen, keen.
“But my dad, if I was out of order, he would drop some manners on you.
“If he’d done it in this day and age, he’d be locked up with a curtain wire and whatever, but that’s old school for you.”
Bruno was sent to a borstal, a youth detention centre, when he was 12 years old.
The heavyweight, known for his punching power, said he was targeted by other kids for being dyslexic.
He continued: “My mum warned me if I don’t stop fighting and getting into trouble on the streets she would send me to a borstal.
“But I didn’t really realise until I got to 12 what it was really, really like.
“But it’s a good place. You learn to look after yourself very early on because someone will nick your cake or try and rob you or nick cigarettes or whatever.
“It’s a very serious place.
“At boarding school, there was about 200, 100 kids - sarcastic, trying to wind [you up] and bullies and whatever.
“It’s [dangerous] what you go through.
“It’s the same like in prison - if you know someone in there who can look after you, it’s not a bad place.”
Frank’s father Robert moved to the UK from his native Dominica in the 1950s.
The boxer later said Robert never found the dream he was seeking in London,
taking a job as a warehouseman in a bakery.
He developed diabetes, which Frank said left him “often weak and bedridden”, which he said knocked his pride.
Tragically Robert did not see his son’s career blossom as he died in 1975
while Frank was at school.
