A SHORT ringwalk from the hustle and bustle of Oxford Street and down a winding, iron staircase guarded by a white terrier called Rocky sits the brainchild facility of Ian Hoyos.
Champs Barbers might just be the only place in the world where you can get your haircut, do six rounds on the bags, another three on the pads and then finish your afternoon off with a full-blown head spar. That’s spar, not spa.
Colombia-born Hoyos has managed to combine his two passions – cutting hair and boxing – into one enterprise which these days takes the form of this west end basement, where a line of vintage barber chairs surrounded by boxing memorabilia sit only a few feet away from a full-size ring.
The wraps worn by Oscar Rivas in his controversial defeat to Dillian Whyte sit in a display case at reception while original posters from Prince Naseem Hamed and Nigel Benn fights adorn the walls. At the entrance sits the first ever chair Hoyos owned as a reminder of how far he has come.
“This is my fourth place since I started in the west end 12 years ago,” he says. “I worked as a barber all over London but the west end was always the dream and all four places have been here.
“I used to un off to Selfridges and buy a bit of clobber and I wanted to catch a fade after but there was no one for it in the West End. There were only hairdressers back then. So I was literally the first barber to just try it and go and fade people up in the West End. I guess you could say I’ve been here ever since in one way or another.”
But it was the Covid-19 pandemic, which left Hoyos and many others in his industry on the brink of turmoil, which first inspired the combination of barber and boxing.
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