He's been shot, and punched by Mike Tyson, but British boxing's great survivor is back on top and aiming to rule the world

This is where the magic happens," reads a big neon sign scrawled across the entrance to the offices of arguably the most powerful man in British boxing today.

- JAMES MAJOR

Frank Warren

It's a boast backed up by the walls lined with posters for some of the biggest fights of the past five decades and featuring the sport's most famous names - Mike Tyson, Frank Bruno, Nigel Benn, "Prince" Naseem Hamed, Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton, Tyson Fury. Standing sentry by the doors to the inner sanctum is a statue of the "Prince", celebrating arms aloft, and underneath is chiselled a note of thanks to Frank, the man at the heart of it all. Inside, Frank Warren, the 72-year-old Islington-born impresario, is preparing for one of the biggest shows of the 44 years he has been promoting fights Fury against Oleksandr Üsyk on December 21-when Warren's "Gypsy King" bids to capture the world heavyweight belts the Ukrainian took from their first clash in May.

Fury made close to £100million that night and will earn around the same again for the rematch in Riyadh, so, for now, Warren won't put his feet up at his Hertfordshire mansion, surrounded by his 12 grandchildren; there is hay to be made.

"Absolutely, and we are," he confirms. "In boxing you get ups and downs. We're flying at the moment." It's not just the longevity of Warren's achievements that are remarkable, but that he is here at all, having being shot by a masked gunman at close range outside a boxing show at the Broadway Theatre in Barking in 1989, costing him half a lung and some of his ribs.

There was also "an altercation" with Mike Tyson in 2000 that left him with a red eye after a bust-up in a Park Lane hotel, not to mention "a couple of fights" with "bully" second cousin and renowned London hard man Lenny "the Guv'nor" McLean when the pair were growing up. Warren's life has been anything but dull, but rarely has he had it so good as now, with three of the world's most exciting heavyweights on his books and money flooding into the sport.

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