Richie 'The Torch' Giachetti: Boxing trainer who rose up from Cleveland underworld to assist Larry Holmes and Mike Tyson

Richie "The Torch" Giachetti was a fearsome beast of a man, a shrewd trainer of highly strung boxers with a blood-stained history that was comical whenever he told the stories.

In 1972 Giachetti, having given up a short career in stock-car racing and turned his back on enforcing for fringe players in the Cleveland underworld, was introduced to Don King, fresh from a prison term for manslaughter. The pair had served an apprenticeship on the streets of Cleveland and were about to embark on a boxing mission, starting with a fundraiser for a troubled hospital. It was King's first boxing show. "I started King in the business and knew him when he had a nice afro, normal hair," recalled Giachetti.

From 1973, Giachetti helped Larry Holmes become the heavyweight world champion by 1978 and one of the sport's finest boxers; Giachetti was sacked by Holmes in 1981 when the FBI investigated King and scrutinised Giachetti's role in his empire. The nickname "The Torch" was given to Giachetti by the FBI because of the number of coincidental times he had been in the same area as an arson attack.

"Don King is a liar and a thief, the greediest bastard I've ever known," said Giachetti in the 1980s. "If I was a fighter and I needed a promoter, who would I take? Don King. The man is the best, he delivers." The pair reunited to work for some of boxing's most amazing nights, including the second Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield fight in 1997, the so-called "Bite of the Century", when Giachetti was in Tyson's corner. Holmes also worked with Giachetti again.

In the 1960s, Giachetti ran bars in Cleveland, did occasional jobs for local mobsters and picked up casual work. "I worked one day in the coal mines and it wasn't for me," he said. "I moved to Cleveland, I was good with my hands and that helped. I was sort of an enforcer for Babe Triscaro's truck drivers in Cleveland. Hey, a good fight is a good fight..." Triscaro was a boxer and "union guy" and Giachetti had fought as an amateur and knew the gyms.

During his days in bars and on the Cleveland streets he picked up a couple of serious injuries – and always claimed he was the innocent victim. He was once stabbed in the left eye, and had an ice-pick plunged into his chest. "Let me tell you what really happened," he told me once. "This guy with a broken bottle stuck it in my eye. Why? I will tell you why. He walks into the bar and asks the bartender: 'Who is the toughest guy in the bar?' Some idiot pointed at me." Giachetti needed 78 stitches, but never lost the sight in his left eye.

"I had never seen this guy before in my life," he continued. "Anyway, there is blood everywhere and then he pulls out a knife and that never worked out for him – he ended up stabbing himself three times." When I asked him how he managed to stab himself three times, Giachetti fixed me with his damaged eye and said: "He was a very dangerous man."

Giachetti survived the ice-pick because, "my muscle tone kept the pick from puncturing my heart." He had the most perfect fat belly, enormous shoulders, chest and neck. Any talk of muscle tone was ridiculous. He said he had forgotten how many times he was shot at. During his split with King, and when the FBI were trying to get a conviction, a hitman arrived at his home and, because of their long-standing friendship, offered a settlement, "to whack the guy that put the hit on me and do it for nothing. I told him, I take care of my own business."

Giachetti truly connected with fighters, offering advice and devotion to some of the best and most troubled. "I'm not just a cornerman," he said. "I have to be with my fighters, I have to live with them. I could have made easy money for coming in late for the fight and working the corner, but I refused to prostitute myself."

In the gym, Giachetti demanded total control – some of his sessions with Tyson are rumoured to have been vicious. Giachetti cleared away a lot of the scroungers who surround fighters. He started on the road with Holmes when Holmes had won four fights, and the boxer was paid $189 for beating Bob Bozic in their first collaboration. "We came from nothing – we were both fighters," insisted Giachetti.

During his brief exile from King and Holmes, there was also work for Giachetti with Sylvester Stallone and the actor's boxing promotional company, Tiger Eye Productions. He remained friends with Stallone and was the fight choreographer in Rocky III and Rocky IV, but was fired from Rocky V. "I upset people, that's what happens," said Giachetti. "I never lie. I may not tell the truth, but I never lie." Bloodied, confrontational, funny and loyal – Giachetti was a real boxing man.

Richie Giachetti, boxing trainer: born Uniontown, Pennsylvania 20 April 1940; died Lodi, California 3 February 2016.