The roads that boxers take, or are forced on, to stardom and glory are both similar and yet different. For every young Cassius Clay who becomes Muhammad Ali after being the victim of theft (the young man from Louisville, Kentucky, was directed to a boxing gym by a policeman after expressing his anger at having his bike stolen), there is a Mike Tyson who learns fear and rage when one of his pigeons has its head ripped off by a fellow teenage delinquent. The paths are similar because, somewhere along the line, there is anger, rage, fear or a need for revenge, emotions that boys struggle to understand and therefore turn to fighting. The difference comes when those boys become men and begin to understand their emotions. Some control them and use boxing as a profession and also a form of expression. Others use the anger and pain as part of their fighting DNA. The fire inside them burns and burns; when allied to talent, it is a proposition difficult to stop but easy to sell.
As one of seven brothers, there didn’t seem anything exceptional about Nigel Benn, born on 22 January 1964, as he entered his ninth year. The second youngest of the brood, born to parents from Barbados who had immigrated to England, Benn had energy to burn and wasn’t opposed to a healthy scrap with his brothers. The exception to the rule was his relationship with his eldest brother, Andy, who had been born in the West Indies before coming to England to be reunited with his family. Nigel described his relationship with Andy as being ‘like a lion with his cub’. He idolised his big brother, who enjoyed a reputation as a genuine tough guy in the east London suburb of Ilford. To this day it’s not known whether it was that reputation or his own arrogance that led to Andy’s premature death. The bare facts are that he bled to death after falling from a house he should not have been in. According to Nigel Benn, the event was rarely discussed in the family household. Seventeen-year-old Andy Benn was buried in an unmarked grave, perhaps the biggest sign that none of his family knew how to react to his passing. It all left his eight-year-old brother with one overriding emotion.
‘I lost my hero … and I was just angry,’ says Benn of his early life as a restless teenager who roamed the streets of Ilford, looking for trouble. When he wasn’t living the life of a petty thief, Benn would happily engage in street fights, where any unsuspecting youths would find out just how painful life could be when they were punched by a future world champion. Sensing that Nigel’s promising career as a small-time criminal was about to take off, father Dickson insisted that his boy follow older brother John into the army, specifically the Royal Fusiliers. It was in the army that Nigel Benn, just sixteen and until then the consummate street fighter, learned how to put even more power into punches that were already blessed with a natural force. That blend of speed and strength may have been gifted to him from birth, but the desire to throw them emanated from the sense of loss and anger which had defined his life from the moment Andy died.
‘I’d been throwing punches all my life. There was a lot of energy, a lot of anger in me, a lot of things that I couldn’t deal with. I had to be able to channel it somewhere, without it consuming me. [Talking about fights in the army] I was fast and I punched hard. I didn’t know what the first punch I’d throw was, all I knew was that there would be power going into it. I just had to make sure I was in shape – I knew if I was in shape, and if I connected with my punch, then the other guy was going to be out,’ says Benn.
Fear seemed to play no part in any of Benn’s early scraps, either on the street or in the ring, although those closest to him would testify that he would exhibit nerves before a bout – maybe those were the nerves of someone who just wanted the release of that aggression that swirled around his body. He’d happily fight heavyweights in those army bouts, inviting men with a 5 stone advantage to try and manhandle his then light middleweight frame (11 stone), something they could never do. His trainers never seemed that concerned either; why would they be, given that Benn was, in their estimation, the most naturally gifted fighter they’d ever worked with? The fighter himself knew. ‘I got it,’ he told me. ‘I just knew how to throw a right hand. It’s in my genes,’ he adds, having observed how well his teenage son, Conor, can fight.
According to Benn, that natural talent compensated for any tactical shortcomings he had in the ring. ‘I knew I wasn’t a great boxer … I couldn’t box. I just didn’t want to lose.’ That may have been the case in the army but by the time he left the Fusiliers in early 1984 and joined the amateurs, fighting out of a club in West Ham, he had evolved. ‘He was very well coached. He might have had that natural power, but he came from a strong amateur club where there were some good trainers who gave him some good schooling,’ says Mike Costello, now the BBC’s boxing commentator but back then a young coach working in amateur boxing in south-east London. Relying mostly on his power and ability to put punches together in sharp combinations, Benn secured notable victories against future professional stars: Rod Douglas – who gave Benn his one and only amateur defeat before losing the rematch in front of a packed crowd at York Hall – and future British middleweight contender Johnny Melfah. Knockout power is rarely appreciated at amateur level yet such was Benn’s that he became the national light middleweight amateur champion. He had hoped to have earned the chance to make the 1986 Commonwealth Games as part of the English team; instead, it was Douglas who went. Benn, now tired of fighting for no money, and having to double up as a security guard to pay the rent, turned professional. His signature was coveted by all the top promoters in Britain. But rather than go with the established cartel, headed up by Mickey Duff, or even the emerging Frank Warren, Benn chose, initially, to be handled by Burt McCarthy, a boxing manager who seemingly loved boxing more than he did cash. McCarthy once gave up the contract of a Welsh heavyweight named David Price (not to be confused with the Liverpool heavyweight currently boxing) because he felt that the boxer’s health would be in danger if he continued to fight.
Benn turned professional on 28 January 1987, his first fight against the much more experienced but smaller Graeme Ahmed from the north-east of England. Ahmed was essentially a light middleweight, while Benn had now, at the age of twenty-three, grown into a fully fledged middleweight. The bout ended seventy seconds into the second round; as a result, Ahmed would become a footnote in the Nigel Benn story. There was no disgrace in losing so quickly to Benn; by December that year, he would not be extended beyond the fourth round by any of his opponents. By then, Burt McCarthy’s desire to do the right thing meant he wasn’t opposed to letting Benn flee the nest, if he felt the boxer would be best served by a change of direction. That direction came in the form of Frank Warren, whose fights were a popular feature of ITV’s programming, courtesy of a late-night show called Seconds Out. The programme would feature up and coming young fighters like Benn, who were building unbeaten records. In the case of Benn, the record was comprised of knockout after knockout, the perfect kind of material for that late-night showcase. Warren knew what he had. Many people, including Warren, believed that Benn was potentially the most exciting fighter seen in a British ring for many a year. Frank Bruno had excited and charmed millions on his way to two unsuccessful world title challenges, but he’d become a national treasure, less of a boxer and more a pantomime hero who occasionally fought. Benn was raw, violent and fast. There had been a buzz about Errol Christie just a few years earlier, but he was a pure boxer with style who moved with grace but not much menace. When Benn fought, you knew never to look away, such was the anticipation that fights could end with one blow.
‘Nigel had a lot of power and presence. He was just an all-action fighter and I kept him busy. In his first year with me, he had fourteen fights. He was an exciting prospect and fighter – I remember Burt McCarthy had Errol Christie, who was considered the top amateur of the time. I said to Burt that Nigel will be ten times more successful than Errol as a professional. I thought Nigel would be a future world champion,’ said Warren. ‘However, he had a few problems. A lot of things happened outside the ring.’ That’s something I’ve heard many times while researching Benn’s life. In the latter years of his career, many assumed those issues outside the ring involved drugs, but back in the 1980s virtually all of his issues stemmed from women and his inability to control his libido.
‘I didn’t care if the woman was eight stone, twelve stone, fifteen stone or twenty stone …’ he told a therapist on television after he retired. Benn was an early starter with women, losing his virginity when he was twelve. Despite being in a series of long-term relationships, his love of women meant he was rarely faithful. The temptations and opportunities would only increase as his fame grew. A striking looking man, Benn still attracts women of all ages, although a mixture of maturity and his religious faith means he’s better able to handle temptation. In his physical prime, however, there were few boundaries. Like many sportsmen starting out, he felt he could combine the demands of his job with extra-curricular activities, even while those around him were convinced it would cost him at key stages of his career and life. George Best’s struggles with alcohol and women meant his football career at the highest level came to an end when he was only twenty-seven.
But from the moment Benn turned professional in 1987 through to that balmy night in Finsbury Park, the notion of failure seemed impossible. By the time he fought Watson, Benn had had twenty-two fights and won all of them by a knockout. The quality of the opposition was questionable, but the authenticity of his knockouts wasn’t. He was good at his job because, in the words of someone who prefers not to be named, ‘he was one of the few boxers I’ve ever met who seemed to genuinely enjoy hurting people. Most of the fighters I’ve met come from a life of poverty and are desperate to escape, or they’re advised to channel their aggression by their parents. But not Nigel.’ It’s natural to assume that the surplus of aggression came from the death of his brother and a failure, until later life, to deal with those feelings of pain and loss. Now, Benn admits that the best way to avoid his issues was through training and then fighting. All those who have trained or managed him say that Benn was always able to remain professional in his dedication to training. And, through those wins, he had, like many boxers with unbeaten records, developed a ‘Superman’ complex.
That, no doubt, was enhanced by his acquiring the Commonwealth middleweight title from an African boxer named Umaru Sandu, whose toughness had been proved in twelve gruelling rounds with Tony Sibson, Britain’s premiere middleweight for much of the 1980s. Whereas Sibson’s left hook couldn’t stop Sandu, Benn’s put the champion on the floor on numerous occasions before the fight was stopped in the second round. That first title was won on 20 April 1988, in only his seventeenth bout, less than eighteen months after he had turned professional. Benn remembers, accurately, letting out a war cry after being awarded victory. But his rage, his thirst for more in-ring violence and a greater share of the profits, meant that the title was seldom enough.
His volatile nature, restlessness and impatience meant he wasn’t satisfied with how his career was progressing. It wasn’t that Benn had dark days of moodiness and introspection – he could have several moments on any given day when someone might trigger his temper simply by saying the wrong thing. He remembers feeling that Frank Warren wasn’t showing as much interest in him as he felt he deserved, a point Warren would no doubt deny. It was at that time that he struck up a friendship with a fellow black man ten years his senior: Ambrose Mendy was involved in the careers of a number of black athletes, in football, athletics and boxing. In the words of Warren, who had once shared an office with Benn’s new manager, ‘Mendy blew smoke up Benn’s arse’. Whatever Warren believed, Benn’s recollection of events is a little different.
‘I remember one day that I asked Frank to come and watch me train. For one reason or another, he didn’t and I thought “Screw you! I’m showing you what you’re investing your money in.” Ambrose lifted me up, elevated me. I hold no grudges and I said I’d go back with Frank and I did [at the end of his career]. Ambrose Mendy and me did some incredible things – he was like the British Don King.’
The battle between Warren and Mendy over the services of the boxer reached the Court of Appeal – it would end in a permanent shift in the way boxers could handle their careers – but the partnership between Benn and Mendy would gain notoriety and success in equal measure for the period they were together. Even though the two men have no relationship now, a mutual respect was formed that exists to this day.
Mendy could bond easily with Benn because they had similar backgrounds. Both came from big families (Mendy was one of ten children) and were brought up in east London by immigrant parents. Like Benn, Mendy remembers there not being much money in his parents’ house, but there was plenty of love and respect. His early life was based around sport – he was a talented footballer and knew plenty who could play better, including the late Laurie Cunningham. The likes of Garth Crooks, John Fashanu, Brendan Batson, Ian Wright, Paul Ince and David Rocastle, men who made their names during the 1980s, were all acquaintances of Mendy. All those players had one thing in common – they were talented, rich and black. Mendy’s ability to get these men to talk to each other off the field gained him a strong reputation, for, strange as it seems, black sportsmen in England at that time were still something of a novelty. Even Liverpool, then the most dominant football team in England, didn’t buy a black footballer until 1987. The man they did buy, John Barnes, was another friend of Mendy. The agent/manager presence that he generated, via the World Sports Corporation that he founded, meant that Benn was directed to Mendy when things started to turn sour with Warren.
‘One day I got a phone call from Jake Panayiotou, the guy who owned Browns nightclub [in London]. He told me that there’s a boxer who badly needs some advice, some help. I asked who the boxer was and he told me it was Nigel Benn. I’d met Nigel a few times. I went to see him and he told me that he was never going to fight for Warren again, that he couldn’t stand him. I told him he needed some legal advice. I introduced him to a lawyer and we set about trying to work out how to release Benn from his contract,’ Mendy told me.
‘In the beginning, all I wanted was for Nigel to have fair legal advice. If Warren was still interested in working for Nigel, I wanted the pair to patch it up because I knew Frank very well. Warren subsequently obtained an interim injunction preventing Mendy from inducing a breach of Benn’s contract with him.’
That almost certainly increased Benn and Mendy’s determination to work together. Their partnership seemed a perfect mix. The boxer wanted to fight, win, hurt people and get paid what he thought he was worth. Benn would always keep an eye on those people who did the deals in his career, but didn’t entertain the notion of managing himself. Mendy believed he could make Benn rich beyond his dreams, with just a few tweaks in the way the boxer was marketed. Benn had only ever aspired to have what his father had – a house and a nice car. By making Benn wealthy, Mendy could draw more sportsmen to his stable. ‘I use Nigel Benn, but he uses me,’ he once told a television interviewer. What was also unique was the sight of two young black males working very publicly to make their fortune in a sport run by white men.
The pair ended up in the Court of Appeal, essentially seeking a release from the contract that Benn had with Warren. The case became known as Warren v Mendy, the point of the case being to allow Benn to fight for someone else. (Mendy was still only Benn’s adviser and he still didn’t have a licence with the British Boxing Board of Control to officially act as the fighter’s manager.) All this was going on in 1988, with Benn now twenty-four and a middleweight boxer in his physical prime. Having fought so regularly since turning professional, he couldn’t afford to be inactive, but the effect of the court case was quite distracting and nearly led to what might have been a very costly defeat.
In December 1987, Benn had been extended into the seventh round by the cagey American Reggie Miller. Mendy, who wasn’t working with Benn at that stage, admits he watched that bout with a degree of edginess, because Benn was starting to look quite weary by the end. His power saved him that night, as it would do on more than one occasion during his career, but Miller’s strategy of trying to box Benn, albeit dangerous given what could happen if he let his guard down for just a moment, had taken him close to victory. The winner admitted when he retired that he did consider, during the fight, that defeat was, for the first time, a possibility. The fact that Benn managed to avoid defeat, without looking very vulnerable, meant few people took note of his difficulties.
That wasn’t the case when he stepped into the ring against Jamaican Anthony Logan. The 26th of October 1988 would be the night that Benn’s cloak of invincibility was stripped of a little colour. Logan had a more than presentable record of fourteen wins from sixteen fights; also in his favour was that he talked a good game. The pre-fight verbal jousting, a feature of the sport since the days when the Marquess of Queensberry drew up the rules of combat, saw Logan score an early series of blows. He promised to hurt Benn, who admitted afterwards to fighting ‘angrier’ than normal. Any trainer will confirm that aggression only works when it is controlled. Without that, it can lead to ruin. Lloyd Honeyghan threw more than 400 punches in the first four rounds against Marlon Starling in a world welterweight title fight a few months later, Honeyghan admitting to boxing with such anger because Starling had ‘slagged him off’. The problem was that Starling put his gloves to his own head and blocked most of Honeyghan’s punches, before returning fire with interest, stopping the British fighter in nine rounds. Logan threatened to do much worse to Benn at London’s Royal Albert Hall. He punched Benn to the canvas – the first knockdown of his professional career – and dominated the action in the opening round. The second started little better for the Ilford man. After being hit with twenty-two consecutive punches, it seemed certain the fight was about to be stopped. Benn, a fighter noted for always being on the front foot, was being forced backwards. His only hope was the kind of blow the boxing fraternity calls a haymaker – a punch you can see coming from the back of the arena but rarely believe will land. A fighter only fails to avoid it if the punch is thrown with too much speed or because he is too preoccupied. Both of those factors were in evidence when Benn missed with a right hand, but then rocked back on his other side and exploded a left hook onto Logan’s chin, dumping him to the canvas for the fight-closing ten count.
The immediate problem for Benn was a domestic one – his mother. Mina Benn had come to the fight and had no doubt expected to see her Nigel deal with Logan as quickly as all the previous opponents. Seeing her son fall from one punch was enough of a shock but the twenty-two unanswered punches were something else. She told her husband Dickson to get in the ring and stop the fight. ‘Stop that man hitting my son!’ she is reported to have said. As his parents continued the discussion, their child found the fight-ending punch. As far as Nigel Benn was concerned, there was only one course of action.
‘She got banned from that fight on. Banned!’ says Benn. The story was one of the few back then that wasn’t exaggerated in order to keep Benn’s name in the spotlight. His PR and marketing machine in full working order, with Mendy pulling the strings in the background, meant he was seldom out of the headlines. But for the first time, the boxing press questioned the fighter’s credentials. Rising contenders should not have so many problems with men like Logan. There was no doubt some fear that Benn might go the way of Frank Bruno, whose early reputation was built on a steady diet of opponents who would have struggled to keep Fort Knox safe. On the first occasion Bruno fought a man capable of taking a punch and hitting back – the American Jumbo Cummings – he ran into trouble. Like Benn, Bruno would find a way out, but the experts noted that the heavyweight was more vulnerable than previously thought. Subsequent defeats at the hands of two more Americans, James ‘Bonecrusher’ Smith and Tim Witherspoon, reinforced the notion that Bruno was a magnificent specimen of man, but his talent didn’t favourably match his musculature.
Given the court case with former manager Warren that still loomed large for Benn and Mendy, the experience of near defeat was easy to explain away: a distracted Benn had taken his opponent too lightly and nearly paid the price. The bout was also a rarity in that it was not televised that night. Previously, all Benn’s fights had been shown on ITV, but, perhaps fearing repercussions if they broadcast the brawl, ITV passed on it and the BBC agreed to show it days later, on Saturday afternoon, on Grandstand. By then, the legend of Benn’s miracle left hook guaranteed an expectant audience. Those who tuned in that Saturday were not to be disappointed. That chink of vulnerability would make him more popular, almost as it had the American Thomas Hearns, who, during the 1980s, was never in a bad fight, simply because he could brawl with the best and fall with them as well.
The Logan fight came after a period of inactivity for Benn – he hadn’t had a bout for five months. During that time, his decision to seek camp with Mendy caused him to be ostracised by many in the boxing community. The consensus was that he should have stayed with Warren. The Logan fight appeared on a promotion by Mike Barrett, regarded as a member of the cartel of promoters that had run British boxing for most of the 1970s and 1980s. Benn was able to take the fight after a judge ruled in September 1988 that Mendy could act on his behalf. The British Boxing Board of Control might have refused to give him a licence to manage, but Mendy used his contacts within the game – notably Frank Maloney and former world champion boxer Terry Marsh – to get Benn on shows. All the while, boxer and manager were gearing up for the court case against Warren which had greater significance than their parting of the ways.
In January 1989, three judges on the Appeal of Court rejected Frank Warren’s attempt to stop Ambrose Mendy from acting on Nigel Benn’s career. Pivotal to the judgement was the notion that a boxer’s career was not only short (Benn’s would last less than ten years) but also a specialist one, requiring dedication, expertise and a high level of training. Warren had argued that Benn was reneging on a contract that still had time to run and also had further options. The verdict had echoes of a similar case in football just a few years later, when the Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman broke free of a contract which would not allow him to move to another club, despite no longer being an active part of his current team. Like Benn, Bosman had to go to court – in his case the European High Court – in order to find a ruling that would help him. It would ultimately give players the power to decide how long their contracts with clubs would be, as well as sign lucrative deals with substantial signing-on fees. The ruling in favour of Benn changed a sport, which, in the opinion of another young promoter by the name of Barry Hearn, ‘was a bit of a slave trade’.
Being Benn must have been more difficult than the man himself would let on. After all, as he has admitted on numerous occasions since he retired, his material desires extended simply to ‘owning a terraced house like my dad and having a BMW’. Mendy, however, encouraged him to reap the rewards of his labour. Both manager and boxer remember driving past a Porsche garage on the day they won the court case and Benn admitting how much he wanted one of the cars in the showroom. Mendy told Benn that ‘if he wanted one, he should get one’. Benn asked how he could afford such a car, to which Mendy responded by saying, ‘if you believe you’re going to succeed, you’ll pay for it’. Benn drove away that day with the Porsche, a moment Mendy described as a ‘major wake-up call’.
A wake-up call it may have been, but the sight of a boxer with a sports car, after just twenty fights and with no world title to his name, made him look, in the eyes of many, too flash and arrogant. This was still the era of old-school boxing, where respect had to be earned and the trimmings of success accrued with greatness. The decade may have begun with the era of the first million-pound footballer – Trevor Francis having joined Nottingham Forest in 1978 for that sum, a then record in the British Isles – but sportsmen and women were not yet millionaire celebrities. When Kevin Keegan returned to English football in 1980, having spent three years in Germany with Hamburg, he drew headlines for his new salary with Southampton of a thousand pounds a week, an unthinkable amount for a twenty-nine-year-old.
Benn’s alignment with Mendy, which saw him join a group of ambitious, talented young black people (his post-fight parties would see not just boxers, but footballers, athletes and singers in attendance), may not have been to everyone’s taste. Britain was still learning how to adapt to the wave of immigration which had made the country truly multicultural, and for most of the 1980s the most recognisable black sports star had been Bruno, whose affable and humble persona rarely offended much of white Britain, even if it jarred with many blacks. As the BBC’s Mike Costello remembers, it was a clever move not to position Benn as Bruno’s successor, instead choosing him as an alternative. In 1987, Michael Jackson had released the album Bad and had adopted a much rougher, tougher look than on his previous outings. Mendy encouraged Benn to adopt a similar image. Back then, Jackson’s influence on modern culture was such that the Bad phenomenon lasted for the rest of the decade. Being ‘bad’ meant lots of what is now called bling and Benn obliged, with gold bracelets and expensive watches almost always on display when he wasn’t in the ring. He may have carried off the look with aplomb, to the amusement of others, but, privately, Benn wasn’t always that easy with the direction in which he was going. His modest background and family leanings meant he’d sometimes prefer a little privacy, which he was struggling to find.
In the ring, the opposition was proving to be less than testing. The names of David Noel, Mike Chilambe and Mbayo Wa Mbayo will never be considered much more than padding on Benn’s record. He learned to control his fury a little during these bouts, perhaps as a natural consequence of how perilously close he had come to defeat against Logan. Benn even admitted after knocking out Noel in December 1988 that ‘[I] let my emotions get the better of me’ during the build-up and fight against Logan. It was easy enough to look controlled and sensible against his next three opponents. They posed no threat in terms of size and power. Only Mbayo would last past the first round – but only just. That bout took place in Scotland and, to the delight of the locals, Benn eschewed his black trunks in favour of red tartan. If there were smiles for the Scots, there were only scowls for ringside reporter Gary Newbon. The pair chatted about the ending of the bout before things got a little spicy.
‘Are you not, in your career, in need of a real big test that’s going to take you some rounds?’ asked Newbon. It was the sort of question few had the nerve to ask.
‘You’re forgetting how long I have been in the game. I’m taking my time – I’m not here to rush for you or anybody. I’m here to secure my kids’ future. It takes time and I’m not going to be rushed,’ countered Benn, his big brown eyes, which could look welcoming or threatening, starting to bulge.
‘How much time, Nigel, because we’re all behind you?’ asked Newbon.
‘I’m not going over there [America] and fighting Michael Nunn when I know I’m not ready!’ replied Benn. Nunn was a rising middleweight who held the International Boxing Federation title and had just defeated the highly rated Italian-based Sumbu Kalambay with a stunning first-round knockout. The Nunn camp had made a $3 million offer to Benn for a fight. At that stage of his career, the British man was not ready for a test such as Nunn would provide. The American was taller, moved well and boxed out of the southpaw style, which was bound to make Benn look bad. He might have got lucky and won by a knockout, but the odds were that Nunn would have been too experienced and savvy for a man who had only been a professional for two years. But it was obvious, and not just to the likes of Newbon, that Benn needed a real test. His world ranking was on the rise (in America The Ring magazine had him in their top ten) but there still hadn’t been an opponent who could be considered dangerous. After blowing away a string of African and West Indian journeymen – Benn’s ‘Mexican road sweepers’ – he and Mendy assessed their domestic options.
Herol Graham had been the best British middleweight for many years. His unorthodox style – hands by his waist, his head a seemingly impossible target because of his upper-body movement – meant he was rarely sought out by rising contenders. The great Marvelous Marvin Hagler should have defended his world titles against Graham, but was spared the chore when Sugar Ray Leonard came out of retirement to fight Hagler in what was then the highest grossing fight of all time. That was in 1987 and when Leonard emerged from his dual with Hagler with the middleweight title, he showed little desire to fight Graham, the mandatory contender. Benn wanted the fight, though, realising that the easiest way to convince the sceptics was to take on the man no one wanted anything to do with. Those looking after him weren’t so keen.
‘As long as I was with Nigel, I would never let him fight Herol Graham. Nigel would tell me that he’d work his body and beat him that way, and that convinced me even more to make sure the fight didn’t happen,’ says Mendy. Given that Graham would be knocked out by another puncher, Julian Jackson, at the end of 1990, Benn might have had a better chance than his backers thought. Even so, Graham was overlooked in favour of another rising middleweight. Like Benn, this fighter was from London and had also come from a modest background. He didn’t have the star quality of Benn, but anything Michael Watson lacked in charisma he made up for in terms of ability and dedication. The fight was set for 21 May 1989, with the poster for the fight asking the question: ‘Who’s Bad?’
More and more the public were finding out that Benn’s perception of himself as being genuinely ‘bad’ wasn’t far off the mark. He also told Newbon that he’d hoped Mbayo would have kept getting up, so he could keep knocking him down. That desire for violence was encapsulated in two ways. Around about that time, Benn gave a quote to an interviewer saying ‘God put Steve Davis on this earth to pot balls, Diego Maradona to score goals and Nigel Benn to kick ass’. It was the kind of statement that marketing professionals like Mendy dreamed of and was even better because it was unprompted. The discipline of training may have satisfied part of Benn’s psyche, but it was the violence that he truly enjoyed. It was why he spent his early years ‘fighting the National Front’ without ever taking a backward step and it’s why boxing was only ever a forum for his rage, burning as brightly as it had when his brother died.
What almost certainly aided the violence was the nickname ‘the Dark Destroyer’, which he had acquired at the start of his professional career. A photographer at the Daily Express called Jack Kay was watching Benn and was reminded of the great heavyweight champion Joe Louis, whose nickname had been ‘the Brown Bomber’. In the 1980s, such a blatant reference to a man’s skin colour was barely noticed, although some, including Frank Warren, weren’t comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it stuck and also became a part of Benn’s make-up. Much of Benn’s success had been down to his ability to produce the kind of action that others couldn’t. That was designed and he was marketed as a wrecking machine – but the acquisition of the nickname was pure luck. Benn and Mendy took it and ran with it. Commentators were encouraged to use it as often as possible. In time, the nickname would also come to represent the other side of Benn’s personality. He could be charming when he wanted, but when ‘the Dark Destroyer’ emerged, opponents and friends were best advised to run for cover.
Michael Watson’s family heritage belonged in Jamaica. His mother, Joan, came to England from the Caribbean in 1964; one year later, on 15 March, her first son, Michael, was born (she already had a daughter, Dawn, who was still in Jamaica). A few years later, the focus was on her second son, Jeffrey, two years younger than Michael, who was hit by a speeding car. So serious were the injuries to the toddler – he was seven months old at the time of the accident – that he was given the last rights. He had head injuries but he was too small to be operated on. He spent four months in a coma before beginning a remarkable recovery. The fighting spirit that would also become so obvious in his big brother in later years was evident in the younger sibling, whose only long-term repercussions from the accident would be a slight limp in the left leg and a slurring of his speech.
The Watsons, including father, Jim, lived in Stoke Newington. This north London suburb is now regarded as a fashionable area by young professionals, but in the late sixties life in a council flat was somewhat removed from that modern ideal. The Watsons did not have much money, but they had a rich sense of community. The family would move around on a regular basis, through Dalston and Islington. The church remained a constant – Michael, Jeffrey and their mother would attend up to three times a week and that faith would play a pivotal part in Michael Watson’s later life. As a young boy and then a man, Watson was familiar to those in the area because of his strong ties to the church before his boxing career began to blossom.
If Nigel Benn enjoyed boxing because it gave him an outlet for his restlessness, Watson’s reasons were altogether more complicated. By nature quiet (but not shy, he assures me), the young Watson remembers an altercation with a peer when he was a boy. The outcome left him feeling inadequate. ‘I didn’t know how to deal with it,’ he acknowledges now. Natural athletic ability meant he was already a member of a sports club but it wasn’t until he turned fourteen that destiny found him. He had watched boxing on television and was transfixed by Muhammad Ali and Roberto Durán, the great Panamanian multi-weight champion. There was no obvious comparison between those two men and, as Watson developed as a fighter, his ability to box as the situation required suggested that here was a keen student of the noble art. But that love of the sport, combined with the need to learn self-defence, took him into the ring. As soon as he learned the basics of the game and was allowed to spar, Watson remembers the feeling of joy, the sense that he had found both his calling and an arena in which boys quickly became men. Gentle outside the ring, Watson’s demeanour belied an inner toughness that revealed itself during the early stages of his ring career.
Glyn Leach, editor of the magazine Boxing Monthly, says, ‘I had a friend in the amateurs called Jerry Hammond. He fought Watson twice, but the bouts were a few months apart. He lost them both, but it was the second fight he remembered. He said Watson had changed so much by the second fight, he barely recognised him. He’d grown physically and mentally so much.’ Whether it was the onset of puberty or his skill, Watson was turning into an imposing physical specimen. And also one who knew his own mind. Perhaps aware of his potential, Watson moved gyms, from the local Crown and Manor gym to the Colvestone gym in Hackney. At the Crown, he was surrounded by fighters looking to pass the time and get fit. At the Colvestone, he mixed with the likes of Dennis Andries, a future three-time world light heavyweight champion and one of the strongest British fighters of any era, and Kirkland Laing, one of the most talented and eccentric. Laing had the ability to beat and lose to anyone – he once defeated Durán and then went AWOL, unable, it seemed, to control his love of alcohol, women and drugs.
The immediate goal for Watson was to be on the plane for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The north London teenager was one win away from securing a spot as Britain’s middleweight hope when he lost a fight to Scotland’s Russell Barker in Preston. A contentious decision had gone against Watson – historically, it would not be the last time he’d suffer such a disappointment – but his immediate response was to quit the amateur game and start earning money from the considerable amount of work he was putting into the sport. As a keen student of boxing, Watson knew that the promoter in Britain with the most clout and experience was Mickey Duff. A Polish Jew by birth, Duff escaped almost inevitable death when his father, a rabbi, conscious of the growing threat from the Nazi party in neighbouring Germany, emigrated to England from Kraków in the late 1930s. Duff had a brief career in the ring during the latter part of his teenage years and returned to the sport a few years later, initially as a matchmaker, before becoming part of the most powerful promotional alliance in British boxing history. The cartel, as the individuals who formed it became known, included Jarvis Astaire, Harry Levine, Terry Lawless and Mike Barrett. Because of their links with television, specifically the BBC, most of the top fighters of the 1970s and early 1980s were represented by these men. Watson’s decision to go with Duff was a logical one at that stage of his career; he would not be the star of the show by any means, but because of the nature of Duff’s promotions, with established fighters headlining his shows, Watson would get good exposure on the undercards.
Signing as a professional did not bring about a dramatic change in Watson’s day-to-day existence; he worked as a painter/decorator during the mornings and afterwards he’d go to the Colvestone gym, where his trainers, Eric Secombe and Harry Griver, would put him through his paces, managing his sparring and suggesting future opponents. Managing and training Watson wasn’t the hardest job in boxing – he may not have trained as maniacally as Nigel Benn, but he understood the benefits of roadwork and honing his reflexes and stamina in the gym, on the speed and heavy bag. Aside from a love of nice clothes, there was nothing flash about Watson – he may have been developing as an artist in the ring, but outside it his was a strictly artisan lifestyle. He’d become something of a local star after winning his first seven fights as a pro; Winston Wray was his first victim on 16 October 1984. His next six fights took place over a period of around nineteen months. Such a number of bouts would be considered active today, but during the 1980s it was just about sufficient for a talent like Watson’s. Perhaps mindful of that, Duff put Watson into another bout thirteen days after he’d gone the distance against Carlton Warren. All seven of Watson’s bouts so far had been in London and number eight, against the experienced James Cook, was no different, Wembley Arena being the venue.
Cook had fought twice as many times as Watson when the pair met, but the bout still looked a formality for the unbeaten Watson. Cook had been knocked out in three of his previous five fights. The chances of an upset in the eight-round contest seemed remote, but Cook used his experience to good effect to win the decision of the referee, the only man who scored in non-title fights in Britain. ‘It was just my time,’ says Cook, now a community worker who, in 2007, was awarded an MBE for his outstanding work on Hackney’s ‘Murder Mile’. Cook would go on to win British and European super middleweight titles, although his inconsistency was typified by defeat in his next bout to Mbayo Wa Mbayo, a future victim of Benn. Cook remembers that his three consecutive defeats before the Watson bout made it easy for his opponents to underestimate him, and that’s exactly what Watson did. Maybe believing Cook was a fading fighter and that he was on the rise, Watson didn’t train as hard as he might have. The intensity he brought to the gym was missing and, as if to underline just how lightly he regarded Cook, Watson went nightclubbing in the week of the fight. That failure to prepare cost him, although there were long-term benefits: ‘James Cook gave me a wake-up call – that fight made me the boxer I became.’
In the modern era, such a result for a young, undefeated fighter might have constituted a disaster, but Watson took it as a positive. He had become overconfident, seemingly unaware of his athletic mortality. In his previous seven fights, his size and strength, allied with solid boxing fundamentals, had been more than enough to see him through. Now he realised there was another level he had to go to. The day after the bout, his pride wounded more than his body, Watson began training again, secure in the knowledge that his promoter was still with him but aware that the fan base he had built up during his victories had dwindled and would only return when he hit the big time.
He’d fight again in November 1986, a routine points victory over Alan Baptiste at Wembley. The following year would see Watson have five bouts, the opposition consisting of some of Britain‘s better journeymen. Cliff Gilpin, Ralph Smiley and Ian Chantler were boxers you could learn things from – although Chantler would become another footnote in Benn’s career, lasting less than twenty seconds – and Watson continued his education without tripping up. By the end of 1987, Duff decided to up the level of Watson’s opponents, matching him with a series of tough American fighters. Don Lee was the first of those – he had already met Britain’s Tony Sibson, the tough Doug DeWitt and rising contender Michael Olajide. The Lee fight was shown on the BBC, and the venerable commentator Harry Carpenter remarked that some of Watson’s best work was ‘in the trenches, where American fighters are usually considered stronger’. The fight would end in the fifth round, stopped by the referee courtesy of a nasty cut on the American’s mouth. Lee showed no disappointment at the premature ending, having been outpunched and outboxed for the entire bout. At six feet two and fighting out of the southpaw stance, Lee should have presented more problems for Watson. That he didn’t said much for the British man’s knowledge of the basics of the sport and his revived sense of dedication, which had been missing from the Cook bout. Watson thinks Duff didn’t believe he could win the fight, one the boxer describes as one of his hardest.
Watson was also, like Benn, redefining the stereotypical image of the British boxer. For years, it was perceived, especially in America, that fighters on this side of the Atlantic preferred to box with a rigid, upright stance, chin high in the air with a jab pushed out in defence as much as offence. Watson worked from angles, in a crouch, unafraid of getting in close and using his strength to outmuscle his opponent. The wins began to build up in 1988 – Joe McKnight, Ricky Stackhouse and Kenny Styles all failed to hear the final bell, overpowered and outskilled by Watson, who would make his one and only foray into America that year, against Israel Cole. The fight was registered as a technical draw; stopped after one round because of a cut, under Nevada boxing rules – the fight took place in Las Vegas’s Caesars Palace – this meant an automatic draw. The year would end with a fight against another American, Reggie Miller, who had tested Benn twelve months earlier. There would be no problems for Watson in this fight, which lasted five rounds and was one-sided from start to finish.
Nineteen eighty-eight was the year that Watson’s potential started to take him places – but only in boxing circles. He was ranked in the top ten of the governing bodies, but his profile outside boxing remained minimal. Clive Bernath, editor of SecondsOut.com, one of the sport’s leading websites, says of Watson: ‘He was a bit of a throwback to the old days. He had good sparring with the rest of the Mickey Duff stable. But he was not box office.’ Mike Costello says, ‘Watson was a fighter’s fighter. He was no-nonsense, old-school.’ He was also starting to worry why it was the man from the east side of London, Nigel Benn, who was making the headlines. The kind of fan who’d read Boxing News would know just how good Watson was and the recognition he deserved, but in the 1980s, long before the age of self-generated, social media coverage, Watson’s only form of publicity was his promoter and it’s possible that Duff did not really believe in his fighter’s ability. And maybe Watson, who lived by the creed that being good should be enough, didn’t help himself. ‘He didn’t have much hype about him – he just worked hard and was very old-school. He didn’t boast or brag and therefore probably wasn’t as easy to market,’ says Boxing Monthly’s Glyn Leach. It would come as no surprise that Watson would one day go to Ambrose Mendy for advice on where to take his career, having watched ‘the Dark Destroyer’ gain a reputation for constant excitement and value for money, two qualities he believed he also possessed. Building up inside Watson now was a sense of both resentment and envy – how could he, for all his dedication, have acquired so little, while Benn, a man he considered inferior, was making such a splash? Watson knocked people out and punched hard. But, while Benn did it with a snarl, Watson seemed to approach his job with the precision of a surgeon. To the casual fan, Benn’s appeal was obvious: you wouldn’t have to wait too long for what you were really after – violence. With Watson, there was a sense that you needed to understand boxing’s scientifics a little better to really appreciate what he was doing.
As we have seen, at times Watson had taken a second job to supplement his boxing income – firstly in painting and decorating and then, latterly, as a minicab driver. He also had a family to support, a girlfriend, Zara, and two daughters. It all added up to a situation where he needed a moment to show the world how good he was and also get paid what he thought he was worth. Following two routine wins at the start of 1989, Watson, in a rare moment of bravado, told reporters he could beat Benn, because of his ‘superior boxing ability’. Neither Duff nor his trainer, Eric Secombe, believed their man could do it, which gave Watson all the motivation he needed.
Watson could have continued fighting tough American middleweights for as long as he wanted, but they weren’t going to give him the paydays or recognition he felt he deserved. There was one man he thought he could beat; one man whose name resonated throughout the British Isles and even further abroad. Victory over him would finally put him closer to where he wanted to be. For Michael Watson money was one thing, respect another. But he dreamed of becoming a world champion, and victory over Nigel Benn would take him closer to realising that dream. Watson had respect for Benn and his punching power, but was growing increasingly annoyed at the attitude of the Commonwealth champion, who didn’t seem to rate him any higher than the calibre of opposition he’d been facing for the past eighteen months.
‘I haven’t got the recognition I deserve. I’ve been very underestimated. This is a great opportunity for me to go out there and box to my full potential,’ said Watson after learning that he’d fight Benn. In his mind, Watson could hear Mickey Duff telling reporters that if he lost to Benn he would not be ready for a world title fight. ‘This is a big break for me now – no one has really seen what I can do. Fair enough, people make a big thing about Nigel Benn, but let me tell you, Nigel Benn will be in for a painful experience and it will be an experience he’ll never forget. If I don’t get respect from Benn outside the ring, I’ll certainly get it inside.’ Behind the bravado and the braggadocio, the most telling thing Watson said was that he felt undervalued. After the Benn bout, he’d make moves to ensure he never felt like that again. But for now, he was merely a talented middleweight boxer, without a unique selling point – although he had by now acquired the nickname ‘the Force’ – and, more importantly, without a title. In the 1980s, there wasn’t the proliferation of belts now available to fighters. There were four world governing bodies, the WBA, WBC, IBF and the emerging WBO. To earn a chance to fight for one of those titles, a boxer generally needed to prove he was good. A win over Benn was that chance for Watson. Until he won or lost, he would have, as many people told me, a ‘chip on his shoulder’. In his mind, he knew he was the best, that he’d studied boxers and their techniques, copied the ones he thought most effective and refined all he’d learned into a smooth style. In Benn, he merely saw a straightforward brawler, a man without subtlety. Yet this boxing primitive had the money and limelight. Aggrieved and still exuding envy and resentment, Michael Watson could now also see clearly what he had to do. Win.
‘I’ll do him, I’ll smash him to pieces. I will do him – definitely,’ Benn told Ambrose Mendy shortly after meeting Watson for the first time at a stage-managed occasion at the Royal Albert Hall. ‘But Michael wasn’t scared,’ remembers Mendy. To put the fight together, Mendy, Frank Maloney and the lawyer Henri Brandman arranged a meeting with Mickey Duff at the Phoenix Apollo at Stratford in the East End. When the fighters’ representatives met, Duff refused to deal with Mendy.
‘You’re not a licence holder,’ Duff told Mendy. While Benn’s manager remained outside, negotiations began inside Duff’s favourite restaurant and a contract was signed at around two in the morning, with Duff having held court for most of that time. Maloney says he kept himself sober, because the sums of money involved were large for such a Commonwealth title fight. In the end, both parties agreed that their fighters would earn £100,000, with the bout set to take place on 21 May 1989.
At the time, Watson’s fitness was in part down to a friendship he had formed with another boxer who worked out at the same gym, a featherweight called Jim McDonnell, who is now regarded as one of the top trainers in British boxing. McDonnell’s lifelong commitment to keeping in shape means that even today, in his fifties, he regularly runs marathons inside three hours. Both men were facing the challenges of their lives that summer. Ten days after Watson’s fight against Benn, McDonnell would face Barry McGuigan, now making a comeback, in what was a crunch bout for both. If McGuigan lost, he’d almost certainly retire from the game for good, while a win for McDonnell, who’d start as underdog, would yield him a world title fight. Aside from each man facing a make or break challenge, both Watson and McDonnell were devoted Arsenal fans. And as the 1988–9 football season reached its climax, the Gunners went to Anfield, the home of champions and league leaders Liverpool, needing to win by two goals to secure their first title in nearly twenty years. Watson and McDonnell had a bet that both would win their bouts and their team would go to Liverpool on 26 May and win 2-0.
The football season was finishing later than usual that year because of an event which, only now, has finally received some semblance of an explanation. On 15 April 1989, ninety-six Liverpool fans lost their lives after being crushed at the Leppings Lane end of Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium during an FA Cup semi-final between their team and Nottingham Forest. The match was abandoned with few aware of the scale of the tragedy. Liverpool’s understandable reluctance to consider playing another until their players felt ready meant a fixture backlog for the Merseysiders. But such was the low standing of football supporters in the 1980s that many regarded Hillsborough as a tragedy of supporter ignorance, and not, as was subsequently proved by an independent report commissioned by the Conservative government in 2012/13, the culmination of a series of serious mistakes made by the police, who allowed too many supporters into an end of the ground in which there was not enough space and where fences prevented a quick escape, and other emergency services who were too slow to respond when the situation escalated dramatically.
Football hooliganism had been a problem that had blighted the sport in Britain. Fences, introduced during the 1970s to prevent supporters invading the pitch, were indicative of the low esteem in which fans were held by the clubs they supported and the authorities. Skirmishes inside and outside grounds were on the rise during the 1980s and if that meant that the ordinary supporter, who went to football simply to watch some sport, was maligned, then so be it. Football, which had become the preserve of the working class after the Second World War, when tickets were affordable, and boys spent many a Saturday afternoon sitting with their fathers in old-fashioned and often unsafe stands or crammed into equally antiquated terraces, was no longer the ideal venue for a safe day out. And nothing was being done to change that. You could go to any league match without a ticket, in the knowledge that one could be purchased before a game without any proof of identity, and that increased the chances of an opportunistic thug entering a ground and starting trouble. Elements of hooliganism, whether organised or spontaneous, could be found at virtually every stadium in the country. And there were basic safety issues – in 1985, a fire started at Bradford’s Valley Parade stadium, destroying the main stand in less than a quarter of an hour and killing fifty-six supporters.
Neither did football have quite the number of stars that the Premier League would develop. The 1990 World Cup would make a household name of Paul Gascoigne, but he had to shed tears on a word stage before anyone really noticed him. It would not be until the start of the Premier League in 1992, backed by satellite television money and now family friendlier with the introduction of all-seater stadiums (introduced after the Taylor Report, following the Hillsborough disaster), that the sport began to find a new, more marketable identity.
It wasn’t that football left a void for boxing to fill; it was just that the latter fitted more comfortably into an era when the working man felt displaced. Safety at a boxing event wasn’t always paramount – promoter Frank Warren recalls a particularly brutal atmosphere at the Tony Sibson–Frank Tate fight in 1988 – but supporters making trouble at an event at which punching was legal was rarely as likely to make headlines in the way it did at football. Add that to the fact that boxing was almost always on television during the 1980s and you have a sport with a strikingly different outlook from the one you find in the modern era. While many bouts these days struggle to see the light of day because of problems about who will promote the contest and which television network will broadcast it, in 1989 there were considerably fewer such obstacles, certainly in the UK. There were only four TV channels – Channel 5 was a thing of the future – and two of those were owned by the BBC. Of the independent stations, Channel 4 had yet to show an interest in boxing, which left ITV as the logical home of the fight game. Apart from promotions by Frank Warren, the independent broadcaster would also be the place to watch top American fighters, including Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns.
America’s love for the sport had dwindled during the eighties, in part because of one particular bout that ended in tragedy. In 1982, Ray Mancini, a very popular lightweight world champion, had knocked out a twenty-three-year-old South Korean boxer by the name of Duk Koo Kim in fourteen rounds. Four days after the bout, Kim died as a direct result of injuries he had suffered in the fight, which had been broadcast on terrestrial television. The World Boxing Council, under whose auspices the contest was fought, immediately ordered bouts to be shortened to twelve rounds. But the wider issue was the savage nature of the sport, which, according to long-time boxing writer Steve Farhood, meant boxing would appear on American television a lot less. The Tysons and Leonards would be seen on pay-per-view channels or closed-circuit television. An exception would be Benn–Watson.
Kevin Monaghan, then a leading executive at NBC, purchased rights to show the fight live on what would be a Sunday lunchtime slot in eastern America. The prime reason for the interest in the contest was Benn. ‘He had a distinct presence,’ says Farhood, who has edited The Ring magazine and has also commentated on boxing for television. ‘He was completely different from the kind of British fighter we had been used to seeing.’ Even given the quality of opposition Benn had faced, he’d caused a stir on the other side of the Atlantic, because of his ‘crash-bang-wallop’ style. The broadcasting of the Watson fight was the ultimate compliment. Commentating on the bout would be Dr Ferdie Pacheco, a familiar name to boxing fans as the man who had been Muhammad Ali’s physician.
If America’s interest in Benn was proof of his emerging power at the box office, it was the potency of his fists that most concerned Watson. ‘If I had my hands down, I knew he could knock me out in the first round,’ admits Watson now. The challenger was used to sparring with bigger men such as Dennis Andries. But in order to negate Benn’s advantage in the power stakes, Watson had to think of a strategy different from any he had employed in his previous bouts. Normally a boxer who liked to go forward, Watson would have to adapt a defensive posture. His plan had echoes of one of the sport’s most famous contests. In 1974, Ali had fought the hitherto undefeated wrecking machine, George Foreman, in Zaire, in a bout christened ‘the Rumble in the Jungle’. For a number of reasons, Ali was a massive underdog. He seemed past his prime and was facing, in Foreman, a man who had destroyed the likes of Joe Frazier and Ken Norton in such brief and brutal fashion that there were genuine fears for the health of Ali, by now one of sport’s most popular and admired figures. After an opening round during which he was happy to trade blows with the bigger and stronger Foreman, Ali retreated to the ropes, his hands and gloves protecting both sides of his head, allowing Foreman to target his lower abdomen. The younger man threw punch after punch at Ali, with limited success, until the eighth round, when, apparently exhausted, he was knocked to the floor by a short barrage of punches from ‘the Greatest’. The strategy became known as ‘rope-a-dope’, yet another chapter in the enduring legacy of Ali. In order to pull off a similar tactic, Watson would need Benn to play the bull to his matador and, so far, there had been no evidence to suggest the champion knew another way to fight except straight ahead.
Not that Watson was especially fearful of his opponent. Lifelong friend Leonard Ballack confirms that his mate rarely, if ever, thought there was a better fighter around. ‘We’d be watching guys on TV and I’d ask Michael what he thought of this middleweight or that and the answer was always the same: “He’s OK.”’ His opinion of Benn, based purely on the evidence he’d accumulated from watching on television, was the same. Even so, he dedicated himself to a rigorous training schedule, after a final tune-up against American journeyman Franklin Owens, which Watson won in three rounds at the Royal Albert Hall. That bout took place on 8 March, leaving Watson more than ten weeks for preparation. He’d use his time wisely, sparring sixty hard rounds, some with Benn’s amateur Commonwealth Games nemesis Rod Douglas, who was now a highly rated middleweight prospect, and also the tough American Wilfred Scypion, who’d once challenged Marvelous Marvin Hagler for the world title.
If Watson was quietly confident, then Benn was close to believing the hype that he generated. ‘I was the best thing since sliced bread. I’d had twenty-two fights, twenty-two wins and twenty-two knockouts. So what can he do to me?’ he says of that feeling prior to the bout. If he wasn’t quite Britain’s star boxer, he was close. Mendy’s PR campaign had been breathless – he’d made sure his client’s face was as familiar to the general public as possible. The extent of his fame was illustrated when, upon finding himself late for a flight from Heathrow, the police were persuaded to drive him and Mendy on the hard shoulder of the motorway to get him to the airport on time. ‘Crazy, crazy. Wow. We got away with murder back then. Going to St James’s Palace and Buckingham Palace and meeting Prince Charles and all.’ Even with that stardom, Benn knew he had a problem with Watson, because he struggled to find anything to hate about the challenger.
‘Good-looking guy, classic man. How could you hate him? Handsome-looking man, he was a gentleman. He just got on my nerves because everything about him was perfect. He was just lovely and you couldn’t fault him. It was hard to look at him in any other way,’ admits Benn, who also felt a little envious at the way Watson carried himself. Even so, the twenty-two knockout victories convinced him that Watson would pose no threat and he’d willingly use any form of verbal intimidation in the build-up to the bout, promising that Watson was going to get a beating like all the other men he’d knocked out. Even though the bout was billed as being for bragging rights in London, Benn’s only concern was remaining unbeaten and winning the fight. Even so, his preparations didn’t include much in the way of sparring. For years, boxers and trainers have sworn by sparring, the ritual of boxers fighting each other in the gym as part of training, in order to gain sharpness. Benn sparred just twelve rounds for the fight, hardly sufficient for an amateur contest. The venerable writer Colin Hart, who had covered the sport for decades for the Sun newspaper, questioned the preparations of the Benn camp and felt that Watson, who already, in his estimation, had a better chance of victory, would win in six rounds. Throughout his career, Benn’s sparring would be a bone of contention – for the Watson fight, it was claimed that trainer Brian Lynch had limited the number of rounds the champion did, but it probably suited him to do less, given that he frequently admitted to not enjoying getting ‘bashed up in the gym for free’. Sparring so little for the challenge of Watson indicated a touch of arrogance and also the fact that Benn probably had too much control over the way he trained. A stronger trainer would have insisted that Benn spend more time in the ring, conscious that Watson would pose problems the previous opponents hadn’t. It wasn’t just Colin Hart who felt Benn was making mistakes in his preparation. Frank Maloney, who was the official promoter of the bill, privately felt that Watson would win. ‘Ambrose Mendy was so arrogant, he just didn’t believe that his man could lose. But Watson was always more talented than Benn. He was a very clever fighter.’
Mendy had other things to worry about, namely how and where to stage the show. ‘I’m driving home [after contracts for the bout had been signed] and the late Bernie Grant [back then, Member of Parliament for Tottenham] calls. Bernie was an amazing man, a mentor to me. He’d rung me to congratulate me on getting the fight signed and I said, “Bernie, where am I going to put it?” And he suggests putting the show on in Finsbury Park. I remember saying to him, “Bernie, how the fuck are we going to put it in Finsbury Park?”’ Grant encouraged him to put the bout on in the open air and said if there was the threat of rain, why not go for a tent? ‘You’re the marketing man … Be creative! Don’t put walls in front of yourself,’ Grant told him. Mendy had already been thwarted in his attempts to get traditional venues like Wembley, the Royal Albert Hall or even at his beloved Highbury, the home of Arsenal. The idea of Finsbury Park crystallised further when he drove past a circus and enquired about how many people the covering tent held. When he found a company in Belgium could put together a tent which would hold 10,000 fans, at a cost of just over £40,000, a deal was done.
There were other hurdles to overcome, such as getting a licence from Haringey Council in order to show boxing, while the promoter, namely Mendy, incurred the wrath of Michael Jackson’s representatives for using a poster showing Benn asking Jackson ‘Who’s Bad?’.(In the end, to avoid being sued for misuse of intellectual property, the Jackson party were offered ten ringside seats.) Finsbury Park turned out to be the perfect venue, being so close to where Watson was based and allowing his fan base – which was pretty sizeable – to attend in numbers, while Benn’s supporters would also be there. ‘He inspired a passion and loyalty in fans like no British fighter ever before or since,’ says Glyn Leach. The support came from many social sectors – those who identified with Benn’s combination of savagery in the ring and his style out of it. More and more, he was being marketed as a yuppie with boxing gloves, his face adorning the covers of men’s fashion magazines as they bigged up alpha-male role models. The Benn image was also in keeping with the mantra of the Thatcher government – work hard, take your chances and you shall be rewarded. The yuppie revolution, albeit a short-lived one, had taken control during the final years of the decade, with young men taking advantage of a buoyant property market and displaying the fruits of their labour in the form of convertible cars, pinstripe suits, braces and the first mobile phones.
There were also hardcore boxing fans and fighters who jumped on the Benn bandwagon. Around that time, women’s boxing was also finding a voice and Jane Couch, the first British woman to be granted a licence, was one of those who could be heard. ‘He was all action. You knew he’d either knock someone out or get knocked out. He always wore his heart on his sleeve. He always seemed like he was in a real fight,’ says Couch, who admits that one of Benn’s most stirring victories, against Gerald McClellan in 1995, was one of the moments that ultimately inspired her to take on the British Boxing of Control who, until 1998, refused to license women to box professionally. Perhaps the other most prominent sector of Benn support came from the wide base of celebrities that Mendy courted. Sir Bob Geldof, at that time one of the most recognisable men in Britain thanks to his tireless efforts to help starving children in Africa, was at ringside, with his wife, the late Paula Yates. Other stars were in tow, while some of the most promising young boxers, such as recently crowned Olympic heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and middleweight sensation Roy Jones Junior, were also present.
What those people probably didn’t know then was just how much Benn’s corporeal vices could affect his preparations. The former soldier smoked, a habit that would have had a more obvious effect on his performances in the ring if his bouts had lasted longer. Before scientific research confirmed the negative effects of smoking on athletes, many footballers and other sportsmen could be seen smoking, but those days were coming to an end. If the odd puff was one of Benn’s problems, another was his love of women – even though he was in a long-term relationship with Sharron Crowley – which would derail him in the final hours leading up to the fight. By this stage of his career, Benn had dispensed with the stark mohawk haircut and was now growing his locks. The day before the Watson bout, he went to get his hair ‘styled’. The lady doing the styling was ‘insanely pretty’, says Mendy. It was yet another sign that Benn wasn’t completely focused on the fight. Opinions vary on how long Benn spent getting his hair done. Some say three hours, others three or four times that. ‘Just so he could smell it,’ says Mendy. Either way, it meant trouble and someone should have got Benn to focus on the fight. To make matters worse, the fighter wasn’t even happy with how it turned out. ‘What in the blazes was I thinking? I went in a black man and came out looking like a Chinese man!’ he recalls, laughing about how his locks had been pulled up so high that it seemed to tighten the skin around his eyes. ‘You can’t imagine Watson spending so much time on having his hair done the night before,’ says Glyn Leach.
Whether or not Watson knew of Benn’s distractions is not known, but the challenger was now exuding confidence. In the final press conference before the fight, he said to the champion: ‘Nigel, I hope we can be friends after I beat you.’ Benn smiled, perhaps taken aback by an opponent having such faith in his ability. It didn’t shake his confidence or alter his preparations, however, for the Watson fight was to be Benn’s coming-out party, the night he confirmed on live television in both Britain and America just how exciting he was. ‘There almost seemed a belief from the Benn camp that he was so good, he could treat Watson with disdain, even though his boxing career wasn’t nearly as expansive as Watson’s,’ says Leach.
‘Watson couldn’t fill a hole. They come to watch me’
– Nigel Benn
‘Why should he be getting all the attention? I’ve lost only once in twenty-three fights and been in with better men’
– Michael Watson
Anyone who’s spent any time in Great Britain will know that a typical May evening is neither dry nor necessarily warm. Sun, sleet, rain and snow have all been known in these isles during this most volatile of months. It goes without saying, therefore, that if you were thinking of staging a sporting event, such as a prizefight, you wouldn’t gamble on an open-air venue. If you were going to stage a fight in London – and it would make sense to if both the main-event participants were from the capital – then Wembley Arena, or maybe even the Royal Albert Hall, would be your automatic choice. You’d need imagination, flair, bravado, not to say arrogance, to contemplate having it anywhere else.
For years, though, boxing promotion had been synonymous with exactly that – flair, bravado and arrogance. The flamboyant American Don King promoted ‘the Rumble in the Jungle’ in 1974 in Zaire because it was the only place where he could guarantee George Foreman and Muhammad Ali the enormous purses he’d promised them. Going further back in history, to the 1920s, the promotional team of Tex Rickard and Jack ‘Doc’ Kearns persuaded the town of Shelby, Montana, to build a stadium fit to stage a world heavyweight title bout between the pre-eminent fighter of the day and champion, Jack Dempsey, and an unknown challenger, Tommy Gibbons. Never mind that few paid to watch it and that four banks in the small western town went bankrupt – Dempsey got paid and went on to defend his title in bigger and better bouts.
Chances are that people would remember the night that Nigel Benn and Michael Watson first met whether the fight was held in a small hall or in an iconic arena. But Frank Maloney, Ambrose Mendy and Mickey Duff – the brains behind the event – had something a little more unique in mind. Finsbury Park, a part of north London which has always been associated with the staging of music concerts (the venue used to be called the Rainbow), was transformed for one night only into a location fit for this kind of fury. In order to combat the elements, all punches would be thrown inside a purpose-built red ‘super-tent’. Nothing like it had been seen in British boxing before that night – and not much has come close to it since.
A whole host of notable football stars were in attendance – Paul Ince, then of West Ham but soon to join Manchester United, the Fashanu brothers, John and Justin, and future Arsenal star Ian Wright. Frank Bruno, the most popular British boxer of the time, was also there. People who saw it said it was the London equivalent of the Ali–Frazier ‘Fight of the Century’ in 1971, when everyone who was anyone was there, an occasion not to be missed. Even if it was easy enough to watch it on television. After all, in 1989, boxing was still free-to-air, available on either BBC1, or, in this case, ITV. And it was Sunday night – what could be more natural than switching from Songs of Praise to a couple of hell-raisers?
Boxing’s pre-eminence on the screen in those days owed much to the endless supply of characters and stories that it generated. Kelvin McKenzie, the notorious former editor of the Sun, once told his staff that only three things sold his paper: ‘Football, tits and boxing.’ Certainly, there seemed little to dispute the health of the latter. February 1989 may have seen significant defeats for Bruno and another living-room regular, the former world welterweight champion Lloyd Honeyghan, but there seemed a surplus of men ready to thrust themselves into the limelight. In the three weeks after this fight, former world featherweight champion Barry McGuigan, multi-weight champion Duke McKenzie and rising cruiserweight Glenn McCrory would all make live appearances on both major channels.
Those three were involved in world title fights. Benn and Watson were to brawl for the former’s Commonwealth middleweight title. As promoters have found in recent years, especially with the proliferation of spurious world titles, sometimes the prize is not as important as bragging rights. In this case, the winner could only claim to be the best middleweight in London. Herol Graham was almost certainly the top British fighter in that weight class – the Sheffield-based boxer had just eleven days earlier lost a very debatable decision for the World Boxing Association title against Jamaican Mike McCallum. Graham’s head and body movements were so unique that he often challenged visitors to his gym to try and hit him when his hands were tied behind his back. Such dares left Graham richer, but he would be studiously avoided by those at his weight and missed out on the bumper paydays his talents merited. It was his misfortune to have been born a handful of years too early. Graham would turn thirty later that year, and his reflexes were already starting to slow. Both Benn and Watson were still only in their mid-twenties.
With Graham at home nursing his bruises, Michael Watson of Hackney, a stone’s throw from Finsbury Park, made his way to the ring. Watson walked to the squared circle like, well, like a fighter. There were no frills about him, no carefully manicured attempts to make him look more menacing than he was. The twenty-four-year-old, who had lost just once since turning professional in 1984, was flanked by trainer Eric Secombe and manager Mickey Duff. Depending on how you read body language, Watson was either nervous or confident. His handsome, black, mustachioed face seemed impassive enough, but plenty of people were looking for signs of nerves – after all, Watson was about to face the fearsome Nigel Benn, a man who had knocked out all twenty-two of his opponents, a man whose aura of intimidation had led people to christen him ‘the English Mike Tyson’. Some believed that Watson was daft even to contemplate such a fight. The only possible salvation for him would be if his beating was swift, rather than prolonged. Benn had talked about ‘hitting him with so many lefts, he’d be crying for a right.’
If you were a boxing fan in the 1980s, especially in the latter part of the decade, you’d have more than a passing knowledge of the phenomenon that was Mike Tyson. A juvenile delinquent apparently made good (the truth about his inner demons didn’t come to light until the nineties), Tyson turned professional in 1985 after failing to make the Olympics and within twelve months was being talked about as the saviour of the sport’s most storied division, the heavyweights. The New Yorker seemed to share many of the qualities of some of the great champions of the past – like Jack Dempsey, he entered the ring in the plainest of attire, no socks or robe, just black shorts and shoes, with a haircut that could only be described as severe. Like Sonny Liston or a young George Foreman, he exuded menace, his bleak stare, almost soulless eyes making men who would normally walk fearlessly around the toughest of neighbourhoods cross the street to avoid him. And there seemed genuine rage behind his blows. What else would you expect from someone who never had a father to speak of and a mother without the means to provide anything but the bare essentials?
Tyson benefited from a marketing strategy that was entirely of the time. His management team of Jim Jacobs and Bill Clayton, two experienced American Jews, matched Tyson against a series of opponents who would allow their man to show his talents. Tyson, still in his teens, would knock out or stop his first nineteen opponents in dynamic fashion and his management team would then send video highlights of these victories to some of the most influential journalists in America. Those montages, put together with such impact that they are still played in gyms around the world, generated both hype and aura. Before he was world champion, Tyson was already the sport’s star in waiting, eclipsing the likes of Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns and Roberto Durán as a box-office attraction. He was that rarest of things: a fighter who delivered exactly what people wanted – violence. A boxing audience will seek reassurance that the finer aspects of the sport are still being practised, and those who attend big bouts in fancy casino locations want their action served fast and with maximum brutality.
Tyson’s profile in Great Britain grew during 1988 and 1989, as a fight with national hero Frank Bruno was put together. The bout would be staged on 25 February 1989, with Tyson defending his undisputed world heavyweight title against ‘Big Frank’ in Las Vegas. Although Tyson would win in five, mostly one-sided rounds, the fight would have lasting significance. Such was the clamour to show the action, the BBC, ITV and the fledgling satellite company Sky would all bid to show it. In the end, Sky would secure live rights, forcing a small portion of the country to pay for a dish to be placed somewhere suitable on the outside of their house. The BBC would share TV rights with ITV to broadcast the recorded bout, while radio coverage gave those who didn’t have Sky good reason for getting up in the middle of the night. The BBC’s coverage was made all the more memorable by Harry Carpenter, who had by now developed a bond with Bruno, urging his friend on. ‘Get in there, Frank!’ bellowed Carpenter during a torrid opening round, which saw Bruno stagger the champion.
Bruno’s defeat did nothing to dent the popularity of boxing in Britain. If anything, it encouraged a new generation of fans to fall in love with the sport. A trio of videos, with Tyson’s name adorning the cover, were released, with the current champion invited to talk about the great warriors of the past. To his great credit, Tyson was able to discuss the merits of Ali, Louis and Dempsey, having watched their bouts on numerous occasions when staying with his mentor and first trainer, Cus D’Amato. His enthusiasm was infectious.
‘I remember in 1986 [and for a few years after] that there was a period when Mike Tyson won the world title and Lloyd Honeyghan beat Don Curry – and we literally had kids outside the gym before it opened, waiting to train with us,’ recalls Mike Costello of his coaching days. Honeyghan was a British welterweight who had done then what was considered unthinkable – gone to America and beaten Don Curry, the man then regarded as the best fighter in the world. He may have developed a reputation thereafter as being flash and brash, but his victory was a reminder of why people get involved in sport. ‘Kids box because they want to win. It’s not necessarily true that they go to gyms to get away from poverty and imagine a life of riches by becoming a boxer,’ says Costello, who adds that ‘boxing was massive in that time – just in the south-east of London we had at least fifty clubs or gyms.’
Around that time, Costello also remembers a buzz about a young middleweight who had set the amateur scene alight with his ferocious punching power. This fighter had lost just once, had taken the coveted ABA title and was about to turn professional, having missed out on a place at the Commonwealth Games in 1986. A former soldier who had served in Northern Ireland, the most dangerous place for a squaddie to be during the mid-1980s, much was expected of the apparently fearless Ilford-born Nigel Benn.
Having changed his hairstyle for the fight, Benn also arrived in the ring in a different manner. ‘The Dark Destroyer’ danced in wearing an all-in-one silver jumpsuit, having been announced into the arena by several members of his old Royal Fusiliers regiment. As he appeared from the entrance at one end of the tent, the sign ‘Who’s Bad?’ glistened above his head. Mendy, by his side, was also dressed in a similarly garish fashion, with Benn having insisted some time ago that if he was to look ‘different’ so should his manager. It seemed over the top then, but no one was willing to argue with a man who had knocked out his last twenty-two opponents. When he finally arrived in the ring, Benn began to shadow-box, as so many fighters do before the first bell. It can often be seen as a nervous reaction, the adrenalin kicking in as a fighter prepares for battle, but there was no such hyperactivity in the Watson corner. The challenger knew what lay ahead – in fact, he had predicted a sixth-round knockout to his closest friends, all of whom made sure to make a trip to the bookmakers before each Watson contest.
Once the two men disrobed, it became obvious to the neutral that Watson was the bigger man. ‘He looked twice my size, built like a brick shithouse!’ says Benn. Watson was taller and thicker and impassive when the two men were brought together before the first bell for their pre-fight instructions from referee John Coyle. The noise inside the tent made it hard for people to hear themselves speak and that included British commentating duo Reg Gutteridge, the voice of boxing on ITV for over twenty years, and his analyst, Jim Watt, a Scot who had held the world lightweight title during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The balance of support was overwhelmingly in favour of Benn. ‘If I thought about it too much, I’d have frightened myself to death,’ says Watson, whose core support came from those he’d grown up with – a sizeable number – and boxing devotees, who admired him for his diligence in the gym and the quality of his opposition prior to this bout. What neither man had were significant doubters who turned up merely to add their support to the one they disliked the least. You were either in one camp or the other.
In America, Dr Ferdie Pacheco told the TV audience, ‘The excitement here is crackling’, as the first bell sounded. In the UK, Gutteridge told viewers it was ‘one of the hottest domestic showdowns I can remember. It’s really like sitting on the red alert here, waiting for the bomb to explode.’ Both Gutteridge and Pacheco’s voices seemed to accelerate in pace as they talked – that’s what a real, well-matched boxing contest can do. ‘I make no bones about it, a really good, even match, which way is it going to go, it makes the hair on your neck stand on end,’ said Jim Rosenthal, the veteran TV presenter.
Watson, wearing red shorts, walked to the centre of the ring at the sound of that first bell and actually threw the first punches, a trio of left hooks which Benn, who had abandoned his now trademark black shorts in favour of white, blocked. After maybe ten seconds, ‘the Dark Destroyer’ unleashed his opening salvo, a fusillade of hooks with either hand, power punches with the intent to knock out his opponent. Watson, with hands up, gloves cupped around his head, elbows tucked in by his ribcage, defended stoutly and without too much discomfort, although the sheer power coming from the man in white forced him from one side of the ring to the other. ‘Can Watson survive the dangerous early rounds, it seems the only concern in his mind,’ said Gutteridge, choosing his words carefully, fearful that anything could happen at any moment. If there were psychological blows to be landed, they were being delivered by Watson, who pushed Benn away, reminding the champion of his own undoubted strength, and also establishing his jab, a punch that kept Benn at distance. Even so, the punches continued from the pursuer, left hooks and right hands, aimed at body and head.
‘The crowd are absolutely baying for Benn, aren’t they, Jim?’ said Gutteridge, as Watson retreated to the ropes.
‘Well, I thought Watson may have been a bit negative in the opening rounds, especially the opening minute, but he hasn’t. He’s been on the defensive, he’s been on the retreat, but he hasn’t been negative. He’s thrown good punches, he’s looking at Benn all the way through and keeping his own defences tight,’ answered Watt.
And so the pattern continued for the next two minutes, with Benn going forward, following Watson in a circle, throwing punches to all parts of the body and head but not connecting cleanly. He never hit air, but the damage he was used to inflicting wasn’t apparent. Watson hadn’t winced, wasn’t cut and was still thinking clearly, making sure to throw a jab or hook at Benn’s head when the opportunity arose. His tactic of moving to his left, away from the power of Benn’s favourite punch, the left hook, meant he was largely untroubled for the majority of the opening round. At the bell, with Benn a yard from his corner, the pair exchanged a glance – Benn’s seemed to say, ‘I’ll get you soon’, while Watson smirked, as if to say, ‘I’m still here’. In America, Pacheco had told viewers that it was the first time Benn had faced a man ‘this big. Solid legs, solid middleweight and that may pose a problem.’ He also noted that every one of Benn’s punches was as hard as it could have been.
The second round began as the first had: Watson out in the middle of the ring, throwing the first punches, showing that he could stand toe to toe with Benn. Watson threw the first blows, a combination of jabs and left hooks, controlling the first ninety seconds of the action and blocking what came back. What he was unable to do was force Benn back. The circle continued, Watson moving to his left, stalked by the champion. ‘Smart countering and covering by Watson,’ remarked Gutteridge. During the final thirty seconds, Benn pinned Watson in a corner of the ring and landed a right hand. ‘Benn got through with that one, Reg,’ said Watt. A left hook and other hard punches followed but Watson took them all and continued to throw punches back. ‘Can Benn keep this up for twelve rounds? He’s using a lot of nervous energy!’ said Pacheco. ‘He’s banking everything he’s got on these hard shots.’ Slow-motion replays showed that Benn had connected cleanly with a left hook and right hand, but Watson took the combination better than any of Benn’s previous opponents. ‘Watson is braced to take punches at all times,’ added Watt during a second round which was even more punishing than the first, with both men walking back to their corners a little more gingerly than they had at the end of the first.
Both seemed to have recovered their energy for the start of the third round, with Benn once again unloading with power punches. ‘Benn is standing off a few inches, and normally when he does that, he’s looking to land the really big stuff,’ said Watt, perhaps momentarily forgetful of the fact that all he had done for the previous two rounds was exactly that. By the end of the round, Benn’s punch output was down considerably from the previous two and he was happy to engage in clinches with Watson, the first sign that his energy levels were going down. All the while, Watson was controlling the tempo of the action with his concise movement around the ring and the use of a stiff jab. ‘Benn is wide open,’ noted Pacheco, who also observed that he hadn’t learned much from his brawl with Logan. The majority of the crowd seemed oblivious to the shifting nature of the fight, the chant of ‘Nigel, Nigel, Nigel!’ prominent throughout.
The fourth round began with the first, unquestionable change in the momentum of the bout. Watson lured Benn into a corner and, after the champion had missed with a power punch, Watson took advantage and threw a handful of shots at Benn, who, for whatever reason, decided to drop his hands and invite more punishment. ‘That was a stupid thing to do,’ said Watt, as Benn finally returned fire. ‘Watson knows he can shake Benn, can drive him back,’ added Watt. ‘I can see in his movements that those punches have hurt him.’ As the Scot was uttering those words, Watson hurt Benn again, marching him back down the ring, throwing and connecting with jabs and right hands. Again, Benn returned with those big hooks and roundhouse rights. ‘His power is so natural to him, even on his way down, I think Nigel Benn could still knock somebody down,’ said Watt. But, by now, Watson knew that if he had to take the odd lick to land a dozen, it was worth the sacrifice. In America, Pacheco and his colleague Marv Albert believed that Benn was trying to lure in Watson, that he was ‘playing possum’. Perhaps more pertinently, he had now run out of ideas. All the while, Watson was growing in his role as matador: ‘look at that rope-a-dope, look at peekaboo!’ exhorted Pacheco, as the challenger rode a succession of Benn blows before returning fire towards the end of the fourth. As the bell sounded, Benn gave his opponent a respectful tap on the back. It was probably the last clean blow he’d land.
An anecdote that Benn related about the fight for years revolves around instructions given to him by trainer Brian Lynch before the start of the fifth round.
‘Just go out there and steam him, Nigel,’ Lynch is reported to have said.
‘I’m looking at the boxing manual and I can’t find that phrase! I know I’m in trouble. All he had to say was cover up and take your time and land your shots,’ says Benn. At the same time, Watson saw his opponent’s father and winked at him. The gesture’s significance was obvious – Watson was telling Dickson Benn that he ‘had his boy’.
The fifth round was the most savage of the fight – both men dug in and landed brutal, vicious punches. But the sight of Benn retreating on two occasions signified that his fire was starting to burn out. Dispirited and now swollen around his eyes – some blamed the haircut for the swelling, but not Benn – he looked more the destroyed than destroyer as the bell sounded to end the round. Neither man could continue for twelve rounds at this pace, but Watson looked better equipped for the immediate future. The statistics, which had always favoured him, were now being quoted by ringside sages – Watson averaged over five rounds of action per fight, while Benn was programmed to brawl for two. ‘Watson’s fighting a very intelligent fight,’ added Pacheco as the fifth round came to an end. ‘There are no lumps or marks on his face.’
In his corner Watson could feel the fight had swung his way. Benn’s punches, ‘the hardest I ever felt’, were no longer as painful as they had been during the first four rounds. He had, after all, told his inner circle that the sixth round would be his moment of glory. With Benn being instructed by Lynch ‘box him, box him’, Watson opened up with a flurry of punches, culminating in a straight right hand. Benn backed away, holding a glove to his eye. ‘He got thumbed, he got thumbed,’ shouted Pacheco. A thumb in the eye is an old professional’s trick, designed to close the opponent’s eye. Benn would suffer such a trick at the hands of another British fighter later in his career, but at this moment he had just been discouraged. ‘A perfect punch, Reg. There was nothing wrong with that punch,’ exclaimed Watt. Referee Coyle urged Benn to continue, which he did. But by now, the end was in sight.
‘I was just exhausted,’ says Benn. ‘I was hitting him hard, and he just rolled, rolled. He always knew what was coming. All week, Michael had heard the talk that I was going to come out like an express train and all he had to do was cover up and I’d burn myself out. He never hurt me.’
Benn had one last burst of energy, tempting Watson on to him and throwing a handful of blows, all of which were blocked. His balance now gone, the champion was finally floored by a straight jab. ‘Oh, he’s gone!’ shouted Gutteridge, ‘so the big hitter has been hit.’ ‘Down goes Benn!’ said Marv Albert on the other side of the Atlantic. ‘A pinpoint left hand.’ Benn, for what seemed like an eternity had been in midair, until he landed flat on his back. It almost felt as if, as his body landed, the crowd didn’t know what to think. For the briefest of moments there was silence. And then a roar, from Watson’s supporters, who, like their man, had waited patiently before really letting themselves go. Benn, oblivious to the noise, rolled slowly to his right, got himself on to one knee and cut a dispirited, pathetic figure. The referee counted to ten, all the while looking at the timekeeper, ignoring the fact that Benn had got up at nine. As he turned to Benn, Coyle automatically waved the fight off, perhaps indicating that he had already decided to end the bout after the knockdown. There were no protests from the beaten man, who immediately sought out an exuberant and elated Watson for a congratulatory hug. Benn was being spoken to by Duff. All the while, Watson was being feted by friends and his cornermen, very few of whom had genuinely believed he could pull off what was already being described as an upset. In the end, he was brought to a neutral corner for an interview with ITV’s Jim Rosenthal.
‘The main object was to keep my composure. I knew if I used my left hand, everything would flow from there. I was catching him with some good shots … I was punching with bad intentions,’ Watson told Rosenthal. ‘I must give credit to Nigel Benn. He promoted this fight very well. He gave me one of my hardest fights so far – he was very strong. He throws some solid shots.’
Benn had by now fled the ring, chased by Frank Bruno. The pair were friends, who would eventually spend time training together in Tenerife and could often be seen ringside cheering on the other. When Bruno found Benn on this evening, his friend was in his changing room, crying. By now, manager Mendy had been alerted to the fact that his fighter had left the ring and joined the inquest. ‘It’s all gone, the gold, the girls, the houses, it’s all gone! I’ve fucked up,’ said Benn. Boxer and manager had a frank exchange of views, before Benn was encouraged to go back into the ring, as he had done at the start of the night, flanked by his former Fusilier comrades. The beaten man grabbed the ringside microphone and told the audience how great a champion Watson was. When asked by NBC television what had happened, he replied simply: ‘I got my arse kicked! But make no mistake, I’ll be back.’ Operation Save Face had begun.
The evening had started as Nigel Benn’s coming-out party. Twenty-two wins over opponents that few had heard of had made him a television fixture because of the way he knocked them out. But he hadn’t been tested. His supporters believed he would win but expected some resistance from the opposition. As Watson had covered up and fired back in the early rounds, it had looked as if it might be a tricky night for Benn. But by the time the end came, as sudden and dramatic as it was, it wasn’t a surprise. Out of ideas and stamina, with his eyes swollen, he had the look of a beaten man. Even so, seeing someone so feared on his backside, a man who many felt was unbeatable, was an unforgettable image. If you were old enough to remember Foreman’s cloak of invincibility being removed by Ali, the sight of a ring bully being dismantled wasn’t a new experience. But for those who were new to the sport, who had climbed on to the Benn bandwagon because of the violence and the glitz, the sight of their man on the floor, devoid of fight, was shocking. In the battle of the two most promising middleweights in the country, a definitive answer to the question of who was the best had been given. They’d expected one punch to end the fight and it had. But it had not come from the fighter they believed in.
For Watson it would be the biggest win of his career and would earn him a fight with the WBA middleweight champion Mike McCallum, the talented Jamaican who had recently beaten Herol Graham. In theory, the world was his oyster. But boxing never works as smoothly as fighters hope. Nevertheless, Watson would watch his Arsenal team win the league title five days later and then see his mate McDonnell beat Barry McGuigan as their bet came in. The questions about his talent had been answered – he might never be box office, but here was proof that old-fashioned values of dedication and hard work could prosper. He’d watched the vast majority of the country get carried away by Benn’s ferocious demeanour, which he knew was part real but also part of the business. He knew he was a more complete fighter but he also wasn’t prepared to say or do the things that Benn would to remain in the spotlight. There was always a bit of theatre about Benn, an aura and also an expectation that he’d say and do things that made people notice. He represented so much of a period in which people got rich quickly and then found that their wealth had been built on uncertain foundations. Watson offered a stark contrast to Benn’s approach – there were no short cuts on his road to the top. He’d learned his trade, how to box, fight and defend. His journey to the top had been longer and more demanding but the proof of whether it was worth it would be examined again when he fought McCallum.
The harder questions would be directed at Benn. Could a man with the desire to be a world champion really devote so much time to his hair? Why was he spent after four rounds? And in a sport in which courage is measured in how much blood a man sheds on his way to the top, should a single jab have been enough to put him on the canvas and keep him there? More than a few boxing writers were of the opinion that he had ‘swallowed it’–in other words, had he quit? Was Benn yet another ogre who knew only how to bully and was redundant as soon as the man in the other corner blocked and punched back? Benn would cry many private tears before answering any of those questions.