Inside the cage - Carl Merritt

Carl Merritt breaks the strict code of silence that surrounds The Cage to tell, with Wensley Clarkson's help, how - just months before his sixteenth birthday - he became the star of this most deadly of sports.

The Cage is a ring enclosed by a steel box where participants are urged to fight to the death - an illegal sport that attracts some of the world's richest and most powerful people as its shadowy patrons. This is the true story of the star of this deadly sport.

Born into a large family in East London, and the victim of domestic violence, Carl tells how he learned to punch properly at the age of nine. He needed to use his boxing skills soon afterwards, by fighting off his stepfather, who was viciously attacking his mother. A few years later, Carl himself was attacked by a vicious youth. The physical damage done to him ruined his chance of a career as a professional boxer, and he became trapped in a cycle of violence, crime and retribution.

In this compelling account of his fight for survival, Carl tells of his twelve-year career in The Cage. Transported to fights like some medieval warlord, he gained a reputation as the most deadly opponent in the world.

Now he has left this world, and is trying to live a normal life with his wife and two children. Having killed three people himself, Carl has also dealt out justice to local drug dealers and wife beaters in his role as a vigilante on the streets of the East End. Now he tells his whole story - through to when he fought his last Cage fight in Vegas and gained sweet revenge on the evil men who'd encouraged him to risk life and limb.