No Ordinary Joe

Steve Collins had just beaten Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn to become one of the most respected fighters in British boxing. For years he had toiled and struggled to make his name, boxing out of the same gym as Marvelous Marvin Hagler and going twelve hard rounds with Mike McCallum, one of the most underrated fighters of the era. Finally, towards the end of his career, Collins’s reputation was made secure by two wins each over Eubank and Benn. He didn’t need to put it all on the line against me. Steve knew the danger, so he decided not to fight me.

I’m convinced that’s why Steve gave up the WBO belt he had won from Eubank and walked off into retirement. Frank had got me into the position of mandatory challenger, so Steve couldn’t duck me but, deep down, he didn’t want to know. He weighed up the pros and cons and probably concluded in his mind that I wasn’t a big enough name to justify the risk of facing me. He’d just beaten two of the biggest names in the sport and all of a sudden he was being made to encounter a young, up-and-coming fighter who was dangerous. So he asked himself, ‘Why? Do I need to risk getting the shit kicked out of me before I retire?’ The answer was straightforward: ‘No, I can just get out now.’ He told people that he couldn’t find the motivation but I’m sure that if they’d found another Craig Cummings for him to fight, motivation wouldn’t have been so much of a problem. He had enough motivation when he stepped in the ring with Cummings only three months before and got dumped on his arse. I had also beaten up his mate, Mark Delaney, who gave Collins trouble in sparring, so the truth is that Steve knew what was coming.

I had gone to watch him fight quite a few times and there’s no doubt that Steve was very good, but he also had the good fortune to catch Eubank at the right stage in his career and Benn as well. Eubank had him on the verge of being knocked out in the ninth round of their first fight in Millstreet, County Cork, but after the Michael Watson tragedy Chris never had the same instinct to finish off any opponent. So Collins was able to hang in there and win a close but deserved points decision, which he did again in their rematch at Cork’s Pairc Ui Chaoimh football ground. Benn was finished after his brutal war with Gerald McClellan, who almost died as a result of his brain injuries. He won the fight but took a tremendous beating and, psychologically, those fights do damage beyond repair. So, despite his reputation, I was always 100 per cent confident that I could beat Collins. I was in a bar in Newport when I watched Cummings, who was no more than a middleweight, floor him – a big roar went up – and that only increased my confidence. Even when he signed to fight me his behaviour was strange, almost indifferent. At the press conference, when Frank announced that it was on for 11 October, Collins walked in and told the press to speak to his publicist, Max Clifford, if they had any enquiries about his business. Then he just walked straight back out again. He didn’t want the fight. I sensed that all along.

Time went on and he met with Frank, who told him that the fight was going to happen. Collins felt that he was being railroaded into something that wasn’t in his best interests. It wasn’t as if he was being offered £1 million, so it didn’t make sense from a business standpoint either. I’m not going to call Collins chicken because that’s one thing he wasn’t – Steve was one of the bravest every time he stepped in the ring – but he’s an intelligent guy also and a businessman. He calculated that if he got in the ring with this young Calzaghe kid, whom no one had ever heard of, there was just too much risk for a couple of hundred grand. So a week or two before the fight was due to take place I switched on the TV and read on Teletext that Steve had pulled out. Then he announced his retirement at the British Boxing Board’s annual awards dinner. ‘Joe is a good up-and-coming kid but he wouldn’t fill a parish church,’ he said. This isn’t something I’ve held against him all these years. I’ve met him at fights and other events and I like Steve because he’s a good guy who did well for himself. But he did annoy me when he said that he couldn’t get up for the fight and wasn’t motivated and that’s when he knew he should retire. Bullshit. I know why Steve Collins didn’t fight me. Every fighter and every trainer and promoter worth their salt knows how good another fighter is and Steve knew his own limitations. I think he knew he was going to be beaten and, if so, after watching my fight with Eubank he probably realised that he’d made a wise decision. He didn’t make a comeback, did he?

Eubank entered the equation a year ago when he first pestered Warren about a fight deal. Early last month a deal was finalised for Eubank to box in England. On September 11 the deal was off after the pair had an argument. A week later it was back on, with Eubank allegedly in a fight against Mark Prince, from Tottenham, for the WBO Intercontinental light heavyweight title, a fight that always looked unlikely to take place. Warren wanted Eubank on the Sheffield show and last week the gap opened for him to get his way and Eubank to get the exposure he craves. When Collins went, doubts about the show taking place ended, only to be replaced by fears for Eubank’s health if, as expected, he had excess weight to lose. The British Boxing Board of Control announced they would be monitoring his weight reduction methods.

Eubank had two weeks to get down to the twelve-stone super middleweight limit and there was little time for either of us to get our heads around this turn of events, but I felt I would now be involved in a more difficult fight. Overall, Eubank was a better boxer and he was fresher than he’d been for a long time, having contested just two fights in the previous two years, as opposed to six which he’d had in thirteen months coming into his first encounter with Collins. The break had revitalised him after his crazy schedule of fighting every couple of months or so during his £10 million Sky TV ten-fight deal. His batteries were recharged and he had his hunger back after going stale with one fight on top of another. His back was against the wall and few fighters were more dangerous in adversity than Christopher Livingstone Eubank. I knew he wasn’t turning up for the numbers. Good fighters always brought out the best in him. Remember when he landed that devastating right uppercut on Watson at the end of the eleventh round? It came straight after Watson had knocked him down and looked to be on the verge of stopping him.

The only time I had ever watched him live was when he’d stopped Sam Storey in the seventh round three years earlier in Cardiff. I remember the buzz as Tina Turner’s ‘Simply the Best’ reverberated around the arena and as I stood there watching him, the adrenalin pumping through me, all I had in my head were a few simple thoughts: This is where I want to be. I’m going to win the world title one day. This is what I want to do and one day that will be me walking to the ring. I always got excited about watching Eubank and Benn because I knew that I would probably fight at the same weight. In my last ABA championships I boxed at middleweight, which in the amateurs is 11st 10lb, so I knew I was going to be a super middleweight in the pros. Benn was the ultimate warrior and Eubank the ultimate showman. Chris marketed himself so cleverly. Love him or hate him, and everybody had an opinion one way or the other, he made a shedload of money because he was a unique individual, the way he carried himself, the Lord of Brighton Manor. If he had walked to the ring like any other fighter, he wouldn’t have been a star. He wasn’t a thrilling boxer. It was rare that I saw him in an electrifying fight. In fact, he had loads of stinkers. Benn, on the other hand, was Mr Excitement. You knew that when you sat down to watch a Nigel Benn fight it was likely to be a tear-up. He was either going to hurt the other guy or end up hurt himself. So here I was fighting one half of the most famous double act in British boxing and all I could think about was the day I had told one of my mates, as a scrawny teenager, that I could beat Eubank and how I got seriously pissed off when he laughed.

We met for the first time outside a London hotel. Eubank turned up on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, wearing a silk shirt, a leather jacket and a pair of his trademark jodhpurs. I had never been in his company before, so I was a bit taken aback by the grand entrance. We were going to fight in a matter of days but he walked along a line of people as if he hadn’t a care in the world, smiling and shaking hands while taking off his hat and his goggles. Then he came to me.

He did. Physically and mentally, the Eubank fight drained me. I said that I was going to knock him out but that night was the hardest I’ve had in the whole of my boxing career. If I hadn’t shown a warrior’s heart, Eubank would have won back his belt. I had to dig deep just to stay with him, in the trenches, and only my heart and fitness brought me through the ordeal. It was the most exhausted I’ve ever been. In boxing you need to be calm under pressure but you also need immense heart because one day being able to dig deep will be your only way out.

Eubank and Benn, Michael Watson and Collins were fighters who knew how to dig. I used to love watching Benn and Eubank, in particular, and I strived to be like them. I loved Eubank’s arrogance and admired his showmanship. He could be frustrating to watch against fighters he should easily have beaten, like Dan Sherry when he fought like a bum, but when he boxed the likes of Benn and Watson he showed exactly what he was about and I knew he was going to fight well against me. I was more nervous than I had been for any fight before, not because I was fighting Eubank but because it was a title fight on a big bill in Sheffield, which Frank was calling ‘The Full Monty’ after the success of the movie. Everything I had worked for my entire life was on the line and my nervousness showed itself in strange ways. With less than two weeks to go I brought in two local boys to spar and one of them cut me on the lip by elbowing me deliberately. I was beating up on him a little bit and he came in and caught me with his elbow. The cut was bad enough for me to need a couple of stitches. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I shouted at him. My dad tried to take away the heat. ‘Right, that’s it, come on out,’ he told us, but I wanted to make the guy pay for what he’d done. ‘No way,’ I said. I kept him in there and I ripped in body shots and head shots until he went down. By now, the red mist had settled. ‘Get back up,’ I said, spitting out the words and, bang, I put him down again. ‘Get back up.’ Three times I put him on the floor because I knew he’d done it on purpose. I made sure he paid. ‘Now fuck off,’ I told him as we got out of the ring. It’s fair to say that I wasn’t in a good mood that day.

When I first turned pro I did beat up guys in the gym because I had this mentality that I was paying them £100 for sparring and they should earn it. Tony Booth, an experienced old pro from Hull, had sparred with Benn and several other top fighters and he once told me that I was the only fighter in a training camp that he couldn’t wait to get away from. I beat him up for two days before he left for home. He would spend two or three weeks in camp with Benn, who hardly hit him, but he couldn’t handle more than two days with me. Andy Flute, a good fighter in his day, used to spar with Benn and Sven Ottke, the long-time German holder of the IBF super middleweight title. He always said that he was never hit as many times or as hard as he was in sparring with me. Back then I used to hit my sparring partners hard but I became more injury-prone as my career went on, and with maturity I also settled down and stopped trying to have sparring sessions that became wars in the gym. Eventually, they’re not too healthy for anybody.

Over and over in my mind I kept telling myself that I was fighting Chris Eubank for a world title and the anxiety was building inside me. I’d never been in this kind of environment, surrounded by all the hype that goes with a big fight, the interviews, the photo calls, the general buzz and, of course, your own expectation. Sky TV were putting it out on pay-per-view and Naseem Hamed was top of a bill that was to feature ten title fights in all. It was a big day for sport, with England playing Italy in a World Cup qualifier – a 0–0 draw which would be Gianfranco Zola’s last game for the Azzurri – and the biggest night of my career, a night when I would have to prove myself to Eubank and to everybody else.

Like Eubank, Calzaghe has a style that infuriates the boxing purists. He dances around the ring with his hands at waist height but makes no apology for that. Southpaw Calzaghe pointed out that he has finished 21 of his 22 fights inside the distance and added, ‘Some people don’t appreciate class. They just want orthodox or Queensberry Rules types. But I have got three or four gears. I can slow it down and bang or I can go fast. I can box, I can fight or I can showboat. The speed is natural. It has always been there and, thankfully, I can punch hard as well.’ Arguably, his only victories of real significance were over Steve Wilson for the vacant British super middleweight championship and Mark Delaney in his first defence. But former champion Eubank, making another comeback, gives his opponent due respect. He said, ‘Joe is undefeated in 22 fights and I should worry about that. But I have had 49 fights and nobody has knocked me out, not even the world’s hardest pound-for-pound punchers, so I cannot see Joe doing it. It is very ugly and nasty in the trenches. This is the acid test for Joe and I don’t think he will come up trumps.’

At the official weigh-in Eubank made the twelve-stone limit comfortably, hitting 11st 13¾lb to my 11st 13¼lb. I always come to the ring twenty-four hours later weighing somewhere between 12st 10lb and 12st 12lb and when I’m at that weight I’m happy. I feel good in myself because I know I’ll be strong. But I burnt so much nervous energy in the final hours before facing Eubank that I came in much lighter. I was just 12st 4lb when I went to the ring. The pressure I was putting on myself to perform meant that I didn’t eat right. I just couldn’t. All my life I’d worked for this moment, to challenge for a title and to win. I’d imagined it, I’d dreamt about it and, suddenly, this was the real thing. We got to the arena at about 8 p.m., which was too early because I wasn’t in the ring until after midnight, and I trained for an hour on the pads, too much. I was slightly dehydrated and on edge even before I got to the ring. The adrenalin was pumping because all my life I’d worked for this moment, to fight for a world title. I’d imagined it, I’d dreamt about it, but this was the real thing and I wanted it so bad at that particular moment that I was just a bundle of nerves, so I started like a runaway train.

When the bell rang I flew out of my corner towards Eubank and hit him with a left hook, which knocked him down along the ropes. The punch hadn’t caught him flush and he got up and nodded over to me, smiling. My sole purpose at that point was to go back in and try to knock him out and I thought I was going to. I kept telling myself, ‘This is the big chance. Take him out now and don’t blow it.’ I went for it but I was far too wild and Eubank covered up well. I threw a lot of punches but I didn’t hurt him again and at the end of the round, with Eubank still on his feet, I felt tired. There wasn’t much in the tank. I didn’t feel 100 per cent in the second and third rounds and Eubank ended the third round smiling. I knew then that I wasn’t going to knock him out and that I’d have to prepare myself mentally to go into the trenches, where he had predicted that the fight would be fought. I had never boxed for twelve rounds before. In fact, I had only gone eight rounds twice. Everybody else went inside four rounds. Now, after just three rounds, I was completely knackered. I’d hardly eaten any food and I was stressed out. I didn’t know if I would be physically strong enough to last the course. Chris had been here many times and he looked across the ring before the start of the fourth round and smiled again. ‘I’m still here,’ he was telling me, trying to reinforce the doubts he knew would be swimming around in my head.

Eubank was always an intelligent fighter and he knew, almost instinctively, what he had to do in any particular fight. Physically, he was exceptionally strong and he moved well and covered up well and could take a really good shot, regardless of the early knock-down. Cleverly, he avoided being hit clean by moving his head fractionally ahead of being hit by a punch. He kept his chin low and he also had good power. He wasn’t the biggest puncher I ever fought but he could hit. Although he never really hurt me, there were several times in the fight when he stunned me with decent shots, right hands over the top. I wasn’t wobbled or in danger of going down but I felt his power and at that stage of my career I hadn’t boxed anybody who could take me the rounds or anybody who was as wily as he was. If I boxed Eubank today, it would be a different story, but I was twenty-five years old and knew a lot less than the guy in the other corner. Experience only comes with the years.

We weren’t even halfway when I started to ask myself, ‘How the fuck am I going to come through this?’ Rounds five, six and seven were decent rounds for Eubank, like murder for me. My dad had to give me a kick up the arse before the start of the seventh because he could see signs in the sixth that I was wilting. What are you doing, Joe? Do you want me to stop this fucking fight? You’ve got to keep fighting this guy. Start using your jab. Box. He always makes it more dramatic than it really is but that was my wake-up call and I started to pick it up again. In the seventh round we both slipped onto the floor and I actually found it hard to get back up. I’d hit a brick wall. Towards the end of the round Eubank thumbed me in my left eye, the only time I’ve really got marked in a fight apart from the Bika fight nine years later. The swelling came up around the eye and I had to lift my head in the air to see him, leaving Eubank able to catch me with more right hands. I was exhausted but I had to push myself through a hard couple of rounds. Dad was urging me on. What the fuck are you doing? You’re going to throw away this fight. A couple of times he slapped my face and it was my sheer will and determination to be a champion that drove me on when I was past tired.

Going into the ninth round, my mouth was dry and I started to get stomach cramps. They were painful and I was becoming seriously dehydrated. Gulping down water between rounds wasn’t helping at all but, because of my general fitness and the fact that I could see the end approaching, I was able to get my second wind and finish strongly enough. For the last three rounds – uncharted territory – I picked it up again and came through some hard punches from Eubank. The experience of a long, gruelling fight must be like that of a marathon runner reaching the final mile and seeing the finishing line. That gives you the energy to see it through. I showed my fighting spirit that night. Eubank landed two good shots right at the end of the fight and I stayed on him and kept punching because that’s my way. A lot of people would move around and try to stay out of trouble but that’s not me. When the bell rang I knew that I’d won and I raised my hands, though I was barely able to. I’ll never go through another experience like that ever again. There was an immediate feeling of joy when my dad lifted me on his shoulders but I was exhausted. The next day I struggled to even get out of bed. I just couldn’t. Every muscle, from my neck all the way down to my feet, was in agony, not from the punches I’d taken but from the sheer physical toll of doing twelve hard rounds against one of boxing’s true warriors.

At the press conference afterwards I was first in, sporting a black eye and sore all over my body. Several minutes later Eubank sauntered in, doing his strut. He had changed into a sharp suit and he looked immaculate, like he hadn’t been in a fight. Even though I had won, it looked like he’d just given me a beating. He didn’t have a mark on him and I was so depleted. Eubank was respectful and courteous in his comments and I remembered that he’d told me that I wouldn’t knock him out. He was right about that and he was right about something else: after that fight I knew what it was to be taken into the trenches.

The harder the fight the sweeter the victory and I was so proud. The pain, the exhaustion and the hardship I went through to win the belt, which I still hold, will live with me forever. I fought a real champion that night and came through the toughest of endurance tests and I’m glad it was Eubank and that it was such a struggle because I was able to prove to myself everything that I needed to, everything that I’d always believed about myself. If I’d gone in there and knocked him out in the opening round, a guy who was a substitute opponent, it would have been a bad way to win the title. I wasn’t able to beat Collins, who had been the champion, but I beat a legend who’d had more title fights at the time than I’d had fights. I was still a novice but I felt good after my first twelve-round fight.

It was quite simply one of the finest fights in British boxing history. ‘Gentlemen,’ Eubank said, ‘the show goes on. I entertain. I crave it. I missed boxing and had time to reflect during my two-year absence. I came back and I took a gamble but it was a good gamble. Joe Calzaghe is an exceptional fighter.’ As Eubank spoke, Calzaghe, his right eye closed, remained silent with a look of utter exhaustion on his bruised face. There were moments when Eubank’s long right connected cleanly with Calzaghe’s chin. There were other moments when a haze descended down Eubank’s face after southpaw lefts landed. Every second was fought with little or no regard for the outcome of the next round. They stood with their toes touching and unleashed punches in wild round after wild round. There was a look in Eubank’s eyes that was missing in many of his last championship fights and, as each failed right uppercut missed and Calzaghe blocked some that were on target, it was still impossible to rule out a Eubank win. But on Saturday Calzaghe fought like a veteran and not a novice with 22 easy wins, including 10 in the first round. The exchanges in most of the rounds were reminiscent of boxing’s most brutal and memorable encounters. As the punches connected, there were gasps from the ringside area and a constant roar of appreciation from the capacity crowd. Calzaghe can do whatever Frank Warren, the show’s promoter, wants because against Eubank he became a true fighter the hard way, the old-fashioned way, by surviving tremendous adversity to win.

Whenever I meet Chris he is constantly passing on advice. People have their own ideas about him, from what they read in the newspapers about his anti-war protests and his eccentric personality, but he’s well meaning, a good man, though a very different character to me. He’s extravagant in the way he spends his money but – apart from my blowout after my first win with Frank – I look after mine. I could get a bigger car or a faster car but I’m realistic enough to know that if you start chasing these things the money won’t last. I’m not someone who goes seeking the bright lights or quick thrills. I live in the same area in which I grew up and my feet remain firmly planted on the ground. More than any other sport, boxing’s about staying focused and staying hungry, so I never regarded my fight against Eubank as the ultimate fulfilment and I didn’t change the way I live. I train with the same boys in the gym, the boys I’ve always trained with, and there’s no superstar status around here because I’m a world champion. I walk into Newbridge and I’m just Joe. Nobody bothers me and there aren’t many things here to distract me from what I’ve got to do. I don’t have to go down the road signing autographs and I like that. I beat Eubank in my twenty-second fight and I’ve now fought twenty more and I’m still unbeaten and still hungry for more.

I’ve often reflected on the praise that was lavished on Eubank after our fight by the same people who hated him when he won. I guess it’s the gallant loser syndrome that exists in this country. Maybe that’s why the England cricket team can’t win the Ashes more than once or why the Welsh rugby team aren’t able to build on a Grand Slam. In Eubank’s case the crowds used to loathe him, then he lost to me and twice more against Carl Thompson for the WBO cruiserweight title and they loved him. That’s a mentality I’ve never been able to understand.

Eubank was an exuberant showman but he was also a good fighter and he always fought to win. I came along right at the end of the Eubank-Benn-Watson-Collins era and sometimes I regret this. Maybe I could have made £10 million in two years but been beaten to a pulp, which might have been the end of me. Instead, by staying patient and hungry, I’ve demonstrated my talent over a long period. I could have fought an opponent like Lacy in my first defence and made four or five defences and moved on but I had to wait for years. The way I see it, everything happens for a reason.

Naz boxed really well that night in Sheffield against Jose Badillo before he stopped his Puerto Rican challenger in the seventh round. Also on the bill, in a fight that took place several hours before me and Eubank were called to the ring, was a British light welterweight title fight between Belfast’s Mark Winters and Carl Wright from Liverpool. Carl’s brother, Paul, and I had been due to fight in 1996 before I injured an ankle, so the bout never happened, but Carl was confident that he could take home a Lonsdale belt for the family. He lost on points, however, and on his way home from the arena he took ill and slipped into a coma. That night he had to be operated on to remove a blood clot from his brain, and when the bad news emerged the next day, it was a shock. No fighter ever wants to hear of another fighter going through this.

It would happen again when I boxed in the same arena against Richie Woodhall three years later. Paul Ingle lost his IBF featherweight title to the South African, Mbulelo Botile, was carried out of the ring on a stretcher and underwent emergency brain surgery to remove a blood clot. Both boys have made only a partial recovery but Paul’s plight affected me more because I’d known him quite well and I liked him. He won a schoolboy ABA championship the same year as me and I can remember watching him as a thirteen-year-old amateur. We were the same age and, throughout our careers, we went more or less the same route. He fought in a tremendous encounter with Hamed before getting stopped in the eleventh round but managed to win the IBF belt in his next fight. I was delighted for him, but Paul was to pay a heavy price for struggling so badly to make weight for the Botile bout.

Now we are made to do check weigh-ins by the British Boxing Board of Control in the run-up to fights, but I remember seeing Paul at a press conference seven weeks before the Sheffield bill and he wouldn’t take off his top for the publicity shots. I can only assume this was because he knew that he was a bit fleshy, and I thought to myself that day, looking at him ‘How is he going to make weight?’ Paul could fight but I believe he was drained from the effort of making weight. It’s a telling reminder to all fighters of the importance of making weight properly. I’m all for the British Boxing Board’s policy of check weigh-ins four weeks before. It’s a struggle for me but it gives you a benchmark and it means that you’re coming down in weight in a way that doesn’t leave you totally debilitated when you reach the weigh-in the day before the fight. I have to be 12st 10lb four weeks before and that’s difficult as my natural walking-around weight is between 13st 10lb and 14st, but because I have to hit that mark four weeks before I always make the weight fine and I’m always strong. I prayed for Paul that night in Sheffield, as I’m sure I did for Carl. No one really knew whether he would come through. This is just a sport, so someone’s health is far more important. It was Christmas as well and I felt so sorry for Paul’s wife and kid. Thank God it wasn’t worse, though I know he’s struggled to get his life back together. It’s been similar for Carl.

I never think about the potential consequences of what I do. I’m aware of them. Every fighter is aware of them, but I don’t dwell on the subject. That’s my defensive mechanism perhaps. I look on boxing as an art. People who are ignorant only see the brutality, but if they were to sit down and watch proper boxing, they’d begin to appreciate the skill of being able to hit and not be hit. I’m proud that I’ve managed to keep my features intact. I’m proud that my face hasn’t been smashed and that there’s no scar tissue around my eyes. Why is that? Am I really that lucky? I don’t believe so. I’m just good at what I do. When I spar I always let the other fighter come to me and I get pleasure from making him miss, being slick and moving like a snake, out-thinking him and making the right moves and having the nerve to execute all that in the ring against a live opponent. That’s boxing and that’s the art.

It’s entertaining to watch two fighters pummelling away at one another, like Marvin Hagler and Tommy Hearns did in 1985 in the car park at the back of Caesars Palace, a tremendous fight, an absolute war. But I don’t crave to be involved in that kind of fight. I don’t want to be in a Muhammad Ali–Joe Frazier scenario where both winner and loser end up in the hospital and the winner describes it as ‘the closest thing to dying’. When I get in the ring I just want to beat the man in front of me and come out unscathed myself. I don’t want to be remembered as a crowd-pleaser, if it means that some day someone will treat me like a punchbag. Boxing’s not important to the extent that I can’t walk away from it. If I thought I was going to get hurt or hit about, I wouldn’t do it. Boxing is as safe as it’s ever been and in this country we are fortunate because the British Boxing Board of Control is excellent in the way it administrates the sport, making sure that doctors and anaesthetists are ringside at every fight. Unfortunate things still happen, as they do in other sports, in motor sport, rugby and even football. On the same day that I fought Sakio Bika in Manchester the Chelsea goalkeeper, Petr Cech, was stretchered off and underwent surgery for a depressed fracture of the skull, and then Carlo Cudicini, the substitute goalkeeper, had to be carried off as well when he was knocked unconscious. How many former rugby players are paraplegics because of a tackle or an accident that happened on the pitch? Thank God, these things haven’t happened to me. I understand that in boxing the purpose is to do damage but I can only speak for myself and say honestly that I have never wanted to seriously hurt an opponent. I’m not violent, it’s just the nature of what I do.

People jump on the bandwagon to ban boxing because we’re inflicting punishment on another human being but this happens in other sports, not just boxing. Richard Vowles, a mate of mine, started boxing at the age of thirteen, as a featherweight. Like me, he won a schoolboys’ ABA title, he had a hundred-odd amateur fights, turned pro and had four fights, and the worst he ever suffered from his years in the ring was a broken nose. Richard’s in a wheelchair now, paralysed from the neck down, and it happened in a friendly game of rugby. He went in a scrum, all nine and a half stone of him, the scrum collapsed and he broke his back. If he’d suffered the same kind of injury in a boxing ring, there would have been a clamour to ban the sport. It’s an accident in rugby, yet in boxing it’s different somehow. I know the argument about intent but, listen, I’m a fighter and I can tell you what’s in my mind. I have never set foot in a ring with the express intention of inflicting serious harm on my opponent. Never. That is just not me. Look at the tapes and see my face when I’m about to answer the bell. I’m usually smiling and it’s not an assassin’s smile. It’s just the smile of a man about to do a job I enjoy. When I got in the ring against Bika I looked down at my two sons, Joe and Connor, at ringside and I waved to them. Do you really think I turned away from my kids and immediately transformed myself into a monster who would want to kill a man? They know who their dad is and they know I’m not like that. I know I’m in a dangerous profession but I also know I’m not a sadist. I’m a father of two boys I love to bits, with the same competitiveness and the same desire to do well as the best lock forward in international rugby. I’ve seen their flat noses, their cauliflower ears and their gummy smiles, I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and all I can say is thank God I’m not a rugby player.

Boxing’s a harder sport. It’s the hardest sport, one-on-one combat. When you’re in that ring there is no one who can help you. You’re on your own, sometimes under siege. You don’t have ten other teammates to help you out, or fourteen. It’s you and the other guy and you can’t throw in a substitute when you get injured. If you break your hand, you stay in there or you lose. If you get cut across the eyes, you’re in serious trouble but you hang in there, clinging onto the hope that you can turn it all around with one punch. The ring must be the loneliest place in the world sometimes, a frightening place because your opponent is trained to beat you up physically, and if he can knock you out, he will. Cyclists, maybe, are fitter than fighters with their cardiovascular levels, but they’re riding a bike, they’re not getting bashed up. In the boxing ring you get hit with body shots and you get winded and you have to keep going. You get cut and you keep going. Your equilibrium goes from a shot to the head and you use your wits to survive. Then you try to get back in the fight. I have the utmost respect for cyclists because it’s a hard, hard sport. But it’s not boxing.

I could worry about boxing but I could also worry every time I get in the car to drive. I can’t live my life worrying or eventually I would fall into a depression. When I’m in the ring I feel like I’m OK. I’m not out drinking and I’m not getting in trouble. I’m not abusing my body and eating like a pig, the way I do sometimes when I’m not fighting. I’m eating well and I’m at the peak of my physical fitness. My mind is clear and I feel more alive than I do anywhere else. Eubank said to me recently that I should walk away when I hurt an opponent. ‘You know you’ve got his number,’ he said. ‘Hurt him and make the crowd laugh and cheer, then walk away.’ I disagreed with him. ‘I’m a finisher,’ I said. But then again I haven’t experienced what he and Watson, Benn, McClellan, Carl Wright and Paul Ingle have been through. And I never want to.