‘Chris lived the life that he thought a world champion should,’ commentator Dave Brenner told me. He got to socialise with the new champ for as long as he commentated on his title fights (about three years on Screensport, until Eubank changed networks.) ‘He was a lovely guy. He loved being Chris Eubank and it was enormous fun being in his company. Ninety-five per cent of his public persona was an act.’
What wasn’t an act was his love of the good things in life. Although he fiercely contests one quote attached to him, that the four best things in life are ‘sex, champagne, chocolate and cocaine’, he did enjoy spending the fruits of his labour. His image now featured three-piece suits, riding jodhpurs, a cane and a monocle, affecting the look of a refined country gent. As always, Eubank was doing things his way, creating his own style, or, to coin a very modern phrase, his own brand. The media ate it up as well, the look, the voice and the opinions all now carrying more weight as they came under the title of world champion. The excesses were treated as lovable eccentricities. ‘My wife and I had gone for dinner with Chris and Karron and we’d gone back to his house for a late drink. And I was in his sitting room when I said Chris, “Why is there a Harley-Davidson motorbike in your lounge?”’ remembers Brenner of that post-Benn victory era. Eubank would never concede what his faults were, but he would admit years later that he never quite understood the phrase ‘less is more’. He spent lavishly on clothes and cars and the level of spending meant he could not afford to stop boxing. But it was all worth it for Eubank, because it enhanced his fame. In among all the reasons for why he boxed – financial, respect from his brothers and also because he had a talent for it – perhaps the single most important was the love of the limelight.
Twice he was voted the country’s best dressed man – while also coming third in a poll to find who was the nation’s silliest celebrity. He added a Hummer to his collection of vehicles that already included an American Peterbilt truck. He appeared frequently on chat shows and breakfast television. And his fights were in demand. Gary Newbon, who had a dual role as television executive, remembers that ITV were desperate to show Eubank fights because of the ratings and revenue they would generate. And his promoter Barry Hearn knew that now was the time to milk Eubank’s fame, rather than risk an immediate rematch with Benn. ‘There was no rush,’ said Hearn. Eubank was blunter, telling Benn that he would ‘have to wait in a queue’.
If that public persona could exude arrogance, others knew a different side. John Wischhusen, the man in charge of boxing public relations at Matchroom, recalls Eubank happily talking to and engaging with the general public, who were eager to meet the most notorious man in British sport. ‘He was very generous, very kind. Sometimes, after one of his fights, I’d meet my mates and he’d come over and talk to them, buy them a drink. All things he didn’t need to do.’ Newbon also confirms that gentle side to Eubank which quite often got lost behind the monocle and cane. ‘He can be a pain in the arse and he can mess you about something rotten. But I’ve never seen him malicious or do anything nasty or be rude to people or show a lack of respect.’
Eubank was also not alone in trying to redefine how boxers could negotiate their way through the sport. Colin McMillan, a London-born featherweight, actually had the qualifications to back up his slightly detached view of the sport. ‘Sweet C’, as he was nicknamed, left school with three A levels and combined his boxing career with jobs with the government and British Telecom. He only committed to the sport full time when he received sponsorship and spent the majority of his career being advised by the journalist Jonathan Rendall. McMillan spoke clearly and concisely and boxed even more smartly, using his speed and reflexes to befuddle opponents and thrill even the most jaded of hacks at ringside. Rendall and McMillan navigated their way through the sport, striking deals with promoters when it suited them. Only an inherent weakness in his physical make-up – McMillan cut easily and also had problems with the muscles in his shoulders – prevented him from fulfilling his potential. But McMillan would walk away from the sport with his faculties and reputation intact. In 2000, he was employed by Olympic gold medallist Audley Harrison to advise on the start of the heavyweight’s professional career. McMillan may have heard the odd boo when he aligned himself with Harrison, whose professional career was as unspectacular as his amateur one had been successful, but with the gloves on he heard only cheers.
As did Eubank – except that the boos were louder. His supporters liked his shtick, his unbelievable confidence and the fact that he had something to say. Before agents became so powerful, almost as big as their clients, sports stars could speak freely. In football, plenty admired the clean-cut Gary Lineker, but how the masses loved Paul Gascoigne, his teeth a mess, his speech often muddled because of his intimate relationship with the pub and his tackling as refined as dog fighting. He was different – and he couldn’t possibly exist in the twenty-first century. Neither could Eubank – a PR company would have him locked away for an extended period, trying to repair the damage of his latest spontaneous remark to make the headlines. Witness his appearance on a Sky Sports boxing broadcast where he made several remarks about Desiree Washington, the woman Mike Tyson was convicted of raping. So strong were they that the show’s presenter, Paul Dempsey, was forced to disassociate the company from Eubank’s views. In the early 1990s, Eubank was often quoted by the mainstream press, even if he would only grant interviews to journalists who did not write about the sport from which he derived his income.
The new champion talked frequently about the integrity he brought to the sport, about how he was one of the few who dictated his terms to others, rather than be placed in situations against his will. But the word integrity would be called into question with his first defence of the WBO title. No one was entirely surprised that it was against a fairly nondescript opponent, Canadian Dan Sherry, who was the same age as the champion, also unbeaten but entirely untested. The bout took place at the Brighton Conference Centre and would end up creating yet more notoriety for the champion. He had seemed on course for a comfortable victory when he floored Sherry in the opening round. But, rather than shrink from sight, Sherry hung around and started to irritate the champ. He wouldn’t be the last person to discover that Eubank could become annoyed if he was asked to make the running. Whereas Benn came forward relentlessly and demanded Eubank’s attention, Sherry almost affected a will-o’-the-wisp presence, while also pausing long enough to have the odd chat. His words have never been revealed but the effect, along with the fact that he was not playing the game as Eubank would have hoped, meant the champion was ruffled. He’d claim afterwards that the words he heard had a racial context to them, an accusation that Sherry refuted, but that couldn’t obscure the fact that Eubank was being outworked and frustrated. At one point in the eighth round, he did in fact stop fighting, holding his gloves to his belly and scowling as Sherry taunted him. ‘He’s not doing enough here,’ said Barry McGuigan, in the commentary box, about the champion. ‘Chris is frustrated, but he should be frustrated with himself.’
By the tenth, Eubank had started to put the pressure on and looked on course for a stoppage victory against a now exhausted challenger. The Canadian managed to smother one attack and the pair found themselves in a bizarre clinch, where Sherry was facing the back of Eubank’s head. Not many people can claim to have been hurt in a ring by the back of a man’s head, but Sherry was about to suggest just that, as Eubank threw his cranium in the direction of the challenger, in response to what he thought were kisses being planted on the back of his neck. Television evidence doesn’t suggest that to be the case and neither does it support the force of the blow and the extent to which Sherry then danced around the ring, on seemingly unstable legs. The referee declared the fight over, with Sherry unable to continue. He also deducted two points from Eubank, with the fight now in the hands of the judges and their scorecards. Eubank was awarded a split decision, much to the relief of those in attendance. Others were more critical. ‘He should have been disqualified,’ said trainer Jimmy Tibbs, who was working as a cutman in Sherry’s corner. The great Henry Cooper said Eubank was too serious and had ‘an attitude’. The British Boxing Board of Control cut to the chase more quickly, fining Eubank heavily and accusing him of bringing the sport into disrepute. The champion did not disagree and made no attempt to contest the judgement, perhaps aware how fortunate he had been to escape the night with his title intact, if not his reputation.
The controversial nature of the victory only hardened the resolve of those of the general public who didn’t like him and were looking for someone who could beat him. The next sacrificial lamb was Gary Stretch, an exceptionally handsome man who had excelled as an amateur and combined boxing with modelling. Years later, Runcorn middleweight Robin Reid would do the same and win a world title. The difference between the pair was that Stretch lacked the dedication to achieve the most from his talents in the ring. He was also a light middleweight at best when the bout was held. Although he allowed the quote ‘I’d rather die than be beaten by him’ on the fight posters, he lasted just six rounds, during which time he looked completely out of his depth. Stretch had prepared for life as a champion by getting his teeth fixed before the bout – and with the money he earned he could afford to get them done again.
It was a more impressive performance by Eubank, but few were convinced that his first two defences of the title were against opposition designed to test him. Although Sherry had been a tough contest, the object of that fight had been to give Eubank an easy night. The principle of that in boxing is understandable – the beating he took at the hands of Benn even in victory was severe enough to allow him to take a year off – but instead he was back in the saddle just over three months later. An ever-present theme in his career was activity – he fought regularly and was paid enough to fund his lavish lifestyle. The problem for him was twofold – he was following in the footsteps of someone who had been much more popular in Nigel Benn, who also fought often and against a far higher calibre of opposition. And, secondly, he was fighting on terrestrial television, being watched by a discerning audience that had grown bored with heavily hyped contests delivering little in the way of action or competitiveness. The authenticity of those fights was questioned a great deal more in the 1990s than one would expect nowadays, sometimes by the networks actually showing them. ITV’s ringside reporter Gary Newbon was often dismissive of fights he considered mismatches and that critique could sometimes be found in the questions he’d ask of fighters, promoters and managers, before and after the contests.
It all added up to a situation that demanded a better quality of opponent. A tentative offer of a rematch with Benn was made to the former champion, but was rejected because of the size of the purse (Benn wanted parity and more than the £250,000 on offer). But Barry Hearn’s plan all along was to create another British challenger for Eubank. In the promoter’s mind, Michael Watson still had plenty to offer, and another domestic showdown could sell handsomely. After all, Eubank was very much the man to beat and the man who many wanted to see beaten. A rematch with Benn could wait – in fact, the longer it was delayed, and as long as both men continued to win, the better the chance it would turn out to be bigger than the first one.
Michael Watson might have guessed that his impressive stoppage of Errol Christie would be overshadowed by the main event in Birmingham that night. He had other things to worry about – the court case with Duff in February 1991 (which he’d win) and a defence of the Commonwealth title against Craig Trotter a month before that in Essex. Watson was not officially a Matchroom fighter, even if this bout was taking place in Brentwood. Trotter was a light middleweight at best, but was durable. As commentator Jim Rosenthal said, ‘Trotter has never met anyone of the class of Michael Watson.’ The Australian was repeatedly hit and hurt until his corner threw in the towel at the start of the sixth round. Before his next fight, against Trinidadian Anthony Brown, Watson had his day in court against Duff. As soon as victory was secured, he sat down with Barry Hearn to outline the future. ‘Watson, I’d known for years. I’d always liked him – too nice a person. Watson always thought he’d been held back by Mickey Duff. And he had been held back in the profile sense,’ said Hearn. When he had begun boxing, Watson was shy and, even now, as an adult, he remained outwardly humble. But that fooled some into thinking that he lacked belief in his own ability, whereas the opposite was true. He still believed that he was better than Mike McCallum, despite the one-sided nature of their bout. He knew and had proved he was better than Benn and he was also convinced he was superior to Eubank. While he had struck up a friendship with Benn after their fight, there was no warmth between him and Eubank. He didn’t like the comments about boxing being ‘a mug’s game’ and he didn’t feel Eubank had done enough to merit the world title chance he received against Benn. In Watson’s mind, Eubank represented what was wrong in boxing, in that he hadn’t needed to work hard to get to the top. There was no Don Lee, Ricky Stackhouse or Reggie Miller on his record, just a series of cheaply imported South American opponents. And now he was world champion, courtesy of a victory over a man Watson had beaten more quickly and more easily. Eubank had what Watson had always dreamed of: a world title. Even now, seven years into his professional career, all Watson wanted was that belt around his waist. He always felt the other things he wanted – the money, the respect – would follow.
The plans were for Watson to be moved into position to fight Eubank. On 1 May 1991, he beat Brown in a round at the grand old venue of British boxing, York Hall, in the East End’s Bethnal Green. Shortly after that, he signed a contract to fight Eubank on 22 June at Earl’s Court, another venue associated with the sport for much of the twentieth century. Watson admitted that, while, for the first time in ages, his mind was clear, one issue troubled him: who should be in his corner?
For his entire professional career Watson had been trained by Eric Secombe and the fighter felt that he needed something extra. His schooling in the hardest gyms in the capital had seen him spar often with Mark Kaylor, one of the most popular boxers of the 1980s. Kaylor, always visible because of the claret and blue shorts he wore in honour of his beloved West Ham, was trained by another Hammer, Jimmy Tibbs. A useful light heavyweight and middleweight during the late sixties, Tibbs had lived a life as full and frightening as any in British boxing. He spent four years in jail during the early seventies, because of ‘trouble’, as he says. It’s worth noting that Tibbs came from a family so strong and dangerous that even the Krays avoided them. A life spent in and around boxing meant Jimmy Tibbs once sparred with Muhammad Ali, met fighters like the legendary Willie Pep, who’s defensive skills were so fundamentally sound that he once won a round without throwing a punch, and worked tirelessly with Terry Lawless, particularly during the period when the latter was bringing along a raw, muscle-bound heavyweight called Frank Bruno. He had experience of training at the highest level as well, having worked with Lloyd Honeyghan, Charlie Magri and Jim Watt.
By 1991, Tibbs’s troubles outside the ring were a thing of the past – he’d become a born-again Christian and, given Watson’s own intensely religious background, the pairing seemed a natural fit. Tibbs would share duties with Secombe on the night but it was the new man’s voice that Watson listened to. A nice guy Watson may have been, but he also knew there were things he needed correcting and was prepared to upset the man who had helped him come so far.
‘By Public Demand’ was the title of the promotion, although, in truth, what the public demanded was a fight with action, between two guys capable of beating each other. Watson guaranteed work rate and talent and the three wins he’d recorded since losing to Mike McCallum indicated he still had plenty left in the tank. Neither Eubank nor Barry Hearn had any great interest in matching themselves with the big names in America, the likes of Michael Nunn, James Toney or Roy Jones Junior. Fights with Watson and Benn could meet the demands of the television companies, while there was easier money to be made fighting some of the division’s lesser lights. As charismatic as Eubank was, the public would not turn up or tune in if all he did was fight the Dan Sherrys or Gary Stretchs of the world. There had to be a Michael Watson or a Nigel Benn in there at some point.
When Watson first fought for a world title, against McCallum, he was rusty and dissatisfied with his promoter and manager, Mickey Duff. Now there was tranquillity in his life; he managed himself and knew that anything that went wrong was his down to him and he also had, in his opinion, the right people around him. Which meant that, when he invited the press to watch him train eight days before the bout, they saw him spar against two amateurs and a novice professional. Even worse was the rumour that the one fighter hired on the basis of having a style similar to Eubank was ushered away after being informed that, if he wished to provide in-ring competition, his payment would only be sent after the fight. As someone who had striven for financial and professional independence, Watson must have known that the terms he was offering others weren’t suitable.
Like Eubank, Nigel Benn would tie the knot after that epic fight in Birmingham. He’d been engaged to Sharron for two years and, despite the tempestuous nature of their relationship, they had children together. The wedding, in Las Vegas, would prove to be the beginning of the end for the couple. Some of his friends described Benn’s marriage to Sharron as ‘probationary’ and that his inability to make it work hurt him immensely. But the womanising continued.
Boxing was still what Benn knew best and his first fight back was also at York Hall. The opponent was no ‘gimme’, though. Robbie Sims had a reputation for toughness, based as much on who he’d fought as who he was related to – he was Marvin Hagler’s half-brother. Never as talented as the Marvelous one, Sims had nevertheless fought some quality opponents and had twice challenged for a world title. But he was now approaching his thirty-third birthday and was on the slide, having lost three of his last six. But he’d never been stopped and that was the test for Benn. If he was fully recovered, physically and mentally, ending Sims’s enviable record would be within reach of his talents. For his part, Sims said that Benn was a dirty fighter, who led with his elbows. It was all part of the routine to hype a fight – Sims also brought along his half-brother, who’d been retired for four years after losing a controversial decision to Sugar Ray Leonard.
Commentator Jim Watt noted that Benn’s timing was ‘slightly off’ during the opening stages. Sims had good fundamental skills and made sure he was never stationary long enough for one of Benn’s bombs to explode off his jaw. When things weren’t going Benn’s way, he could look vulnerable, but just like Eubank that appearance could be exaggerated for effect. In the seventh round, Benn was being attacked on the ropes and appeared headed for the same fate as his last fight. He’d already admitted that another defeat would make it all but impossible to regenerate his career, but despite his reputation as an out and out brawler with scant regard for tactics, he always had streetsmarts. They say in football that a team is never more vulnerable than immediately after scoring a goal – in the same way, it’s tempting to say that a fighter is never more at risk that after he’s hurt Benn. Rolling and recoiling, just as he had done against Logan, Benn reached out for a left hook that connected surely and with devastating fashion on Sims’s exposed chin. The punch appeared to place him in a state of suspended animation, a statue of a man now in the perfect position to absorb another left hook. Knocked down for the first time, Sims bravely rose, only to be punched into the other side of the ring, where referee John Coyle did the sensible thing and waved the fight off. It had not been easy and there were times when he had looked a little rusty, but Benn was back.
It would be the last time he was seen in the company of Ambrose Mendy. The flamboyant manager was in trouble with the law and the misgivings that Benn had about their relationship were amplified by the legal troubles (Mendy would serve time at Her Majesty’s pleasure more than once during the next fifteen years). In his autobiography, Benn states that he lent money to Mendy, much of which was never paid back. There were no rows that either man would refer to me twenty years later, but the parting of the ways was permanent. It also paved the way for Benn to join Barry Hearn’s growing stable. Their relationship was altogether more volatile. ‘He’d come in the office sometimes and say I want to kill you,’ remembers Hearn. ‘And other times he’d come in, sit in the chair opposite me and bawl his eyes out, saying, “No one likes me!”’ Regardless, the pair never became close, mostly because Benn suspected, rightly, that Hearn’s loyalties were with Eubank. That didn’t stop him signing terms, because the only fight that really interested him was with the Brighton man.
He’d been offered a rematch quickly, but the purse offer of £250,000 was, as we have seen, in his opinion well short of what he thought he was worth. It was also less than Eubank would earn. Benn had yet to understand that, as the ex-champion, he could not expect to earn as much as Eubank. Whether or not he knew who was behind the negotiations or the proposals, Benn took them as proof of Eubank’s arrogance, his desire to put him in his place. While Eubank also claimed he didn’t hate Benn, he resented his ascent to the top, stewarded as it had been by some inventive marketing by Ambrose Mendy. As such, he was happy to keep Benn at bay for now and remind him that he was calling the shots. And that enraged Benn further. His first instinct after defeat to Eubank had been to retire. Now he wanted revenge. But for the first time in a while, he was on the outside of things, looking for a way back in.
‘I’ve never hated anyone,’ Michael Watson answers when I ask him about Chris Eubank. There is a ‘but’ in there – this intensely religious man doesn’t do misdirection or mistruth – but his answer is more poignant. ‘He’s lost. He doesn’t know who he is.’ That’s what he thinks now and that’s what he thought then, back in 1991, when the pair prepared to fight each other. But there was not an edge to that, no dislike. Watson knew he was better, an all-round boxer/fighter who could stalk, retreat, defend and attack. He saw in Eubank weaknesses he believed he could exploit. And he wanted Eubank’s title. Regarded by so many in Britain as the best middleweight in the country, he had yet to taste the glory of being called a world champion.
Eubank didn’t see the fight as being as difficult as the one he’d had with Benn. In training for ‘the Dark Destroyer’, he’d mentally awarded his opponent a score of ten out of ten. Watson was an eight – Eubank just didn’t see the man from Islington as being particularly special. It might have explained a haphazard training camp which left him bruised from sparring and also massively overweight. Four days before the fight, he weighed close to 13 stone, meaning he’d have to lose more than a stone in order for the bout to go ahead. Eubank’s weight making was something of an insider joke – everyone who worked in boxing knew he took liberties with it, waiting until the last minute before making the sacrifice, which seemed to observers to be beyond dangerous. Jim Rosenthal remembers: ‘I saw him once when he lost weight in a similar fashion. I looked at him and his skin was totally dry. And I said, “You look awful”, and he replied, “My eyeballs feel dry”.’ But it was a routine he would go through for most of his career, until he moved up to cruiserweight, which was his natural weight. And because he didn’t do roadwork like others – ‘He jogged!’ one former pro told me – the excess with which all fighters began their training camp wasn’t coming off. His method for taking off the weight was simple – starvation in the week or fortnight before the bout.
Regardless, he was favourite for the bout, to be held on 22 June. Writing in the Observer, Hugh McIlvanney said, ‘Eubank’s eccentric spirit could yet prove vulnerable under bombardment but in the three wins Watson has scored since suffering his cruellest night [against McCallum] there has been little to indicate that he is the one to give the fantasist a bitter dose of reality. The challenger is an admirable performer but his are solidly respectable rather than soaring talents. Habit and pride may incline him towards pursuit of Eubank and, regardless of his faith in his ability to outcounter the counter puncher, that will be a hazardous game.’ McIlvanney was not alone in his assessment that the challenger was slightly too predictable to overcome the unorthodox.
By virtue of Eubank’s unpopularity – ‘I feel sure that many of you are tuning in to see him lose,’ said Jim Rosenthal more than once before a Eubank bout – Watson had the country on his side. And, publicly, there had never been any sense of anything other than positivity about Watson and his image. As Benn admitted, it was impossible to hate him. In his autobiography, Eubank bemoans the negative vibes surrounding his tenure as champion back then, but those who knew him closely believe he was well aware of the hostility he provoked and used it to his benefit, knowing he was a one-off and that he was in the sport for one reason only – money. He never seemed to tire of telling people what his burden was. ‘Boxing is not a noble art. It is brutal and I am merely using it to set myself free from the system that tries to hold me down. All I need to know is that it is dangerous. My mind is focused only on this truth which is why I will administer a fearful beating to Michael Watson and move another step beyond this terrible game.’ Watson joined in the pre-fight hype by labelling the champion ‘a phoney’ who was tarnishing the name of the sport.
If there was any consolation for Eubank in terms of the weight making, it came in the fact that Watson, too, was struggling. A naturally big middleweight with broad shoulders, he would need to shed a pound on the day of the fight, having already had to lose three during the final week of preparations. But that wasn’t the same as 19 lb in four days – on fight night Watson entered to a crescendo of roars, coming from the legion of Arsenal fans who had adopted him as their own as well as many neutral fans who backed him purely because of their dislike of Eubank. It wasn’t unusual for a champion to be cast in the role of pantomime villain and, as Eubank would say years later, like him or loathe him they came to watch. It was just that, more often than not, it was more by circumstance rather than by design. In the early part of the twentieth century, Jack Johnson became the first black world heavyweight champion. Johnson’s demeanour was at odds with what was expected of a black man in America in the 1900s. He dressed with style and expense and was often seen in the company of white women. Perceived as arrogant, Johnson became the focus of a campaign which saw every half-decent white heavyweight positioned to challenge ‘Papa Jack’. Even former champion James L. Jeffries was lured out of retirement to see if he could bring to an end the reign of Johnson. Booed relentlessly and also the target of lawmakers who tried to put him in jail for committing ‘offences’ (which were barely worthy of the label), Johnson was eventually relieved of his title by the giant Jess Willard in the baking Havana sun in 1915, after seven years as champion which demonstrated to later generations just how intolerant and prejudiced the vast majority of America was. Some historians have determined that Johnson invited some of the treatment he received because of the way he carried himself, a criticism levelled at Eubank more than seventy years later. But race didn’t play a part in the dislike of Eubank in the 1990s – the boos were more in keeping with those heard at professional wrestling shows, where the promoters predetermined who were the good and bad guys. The volume of the boos would not change Eubank’s demeanour before or during fights – he would always give the impression of aloofness, his chin pointing to the sky, face impassive, announcing that he was superior to everyone, be it the opposing fighter or the fans. That wasn’t a reflection of his thoughts so much as his understanding that self-promotion involved using all the tools available.
Eubank was smart, but even he could not have predicted how his persona chimed with the growing sense of frustration and restlessness prevalent in the country. Margaret Thatcher may have gone but the legacy of her years in power was there to be seen and felt. The recession, at first denied by those in government, was taking grip. Manufacturing output was down and unemployment was rising towards two million. Inflation was at an unthinkable 9.5 per cent, while first-time home-buyers faced interest rates of up to 13 per cent. The optimism of the yuppie era was well and truly over and, to make matters worse for a great percentage of the population, the government had decided to join the United States in the Gulf War at the start of 1991. With all that, a young man wearing jodhpurs and a monocle was an unpalatable sight for many. Eubank’s rags to riches story did not inspire – it just seemed to irritate. It mattered not a jot that he did plenty of charity work, was involved in helping homeless people in Brighton and had strong anti-war feelings that would lead to him being arrested years after he finished boxing. Eubank had made himself a target for hate. First the fans had put their trust in Benn to silence him, now they were trusting in Watson.
Maybe, just maybe, the common man had become tired of hating the Conservative government for everything that was wrong with his life (they had been in power since 1979) and found they could channel their energies into loathing a medium-sized fella who lived in back-to-back houses in Hove (Eubank had bought the property next to his house and converted part of it into a boxing gym). Elsewhere, the nation was delivering success in the sporting fields outside of the ring. In 1990, the gentrification of football began as a Paul Gascoigne-inspired England football team reached the semi-finals of the World Cup in Italy. Gazza’s tears and Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’ brought England together and made it acceptable to go to football again. Not long after, BSkyB flashed the cash and a lucrative deal was formative in the creation of the FA Premier League, a foundation whose bubble shows no sign of bursting more than twenty years later. In 1992, in Nigel Mansell, Britain would claim the world’s premier Formula One driver. The golf world feared a certain Nick Faldo, who had won majors at home and abroad. Failure on the cricket field was cancelled out by success with the oval ball, as the England rugby team went all the way to the final of the World Cup in 1991, losing narrowly to Australia.
Outside of the middleweight conundrum that captivated the country, there was also the looming menace of Lennox Lewis, a British-born heavyweight who had left the country for Canada at the age of twelve and represented his adoptive country at the 1988 Olympics, where he won gold, before returning to Britain to start his professional career. At the Olympics, Lewis had stopped American Riddick Bowe in the final and a rivalry between the pair had grown ever since. There was also plenty of talk about a charismatic lower weight fighter, born in Sheffield of Yemeni parents, called Naseem Hamed. And with television coverage granted to amateur boxing, a Welsh Italian born in west London called Joe Calzaghe was also making a name for himself.
In times of depression, beer and boxing could still provide comfort, and a sport still unfettered by modern nuance, and represented on this June night by Michael Watson, the very definition of old school, took centre stage as much as Eubank did. Watson’s entrance into the ring was as low key as ever, Eubank’s, to the strains of the same old tune was greeted by boos, the sign that hostility pervaded the air. At the sound of the first bell, Watson, in white shorts, moved towards Eubank, who remained stationary. ‘I don’t know why,’ says Eubank. Faced with such an opponent, a boxer has two options. Apply pressure in the way he normally would or try and match his foe for dramatics and theatre. Watson was stuck somewhere in the middle. The confident box-puncher who walked through Errol Christie was replaced by an altogether more circumspect character. ‘Watson’s just trying to get the tension out of his shoulders,’ remarked commentator Dave Brenner. His colleague Jim McDonnell noted that the opposite was true of the champion, who was ‘feeding off the hostility generated by Watson’s supporters’. The opening round was close, but the better quality of punches came from the champion, even if the quantity came from Watson.
Round two exemplified why attempting to knock Eubank off his perch was far harder than it looked. As Watson continued to pursue the champion, he was unable to close the distance between him and his opponent. Still tentative with his jab and right hand, he was caught on more than one occasion by a flurry of punches from Eubank, who looked the quicker and sharper puncher. His work rate may have diminished as the three minutes came to an end, but there was little doubt that the better shots, the eyecatching punches, were landed by the man in the amber shorts. Some experts believed that the bout’s tempo suited Eubank, as the more orthodox counter puncher, with Watson more comfortable as the pursued rather than the pursuer. Many of those experts based their opinion on Watson’s performance against Benn. Students of his career knew he picked his style depending on what was required. So far, his execution had been neither what he hoped for nor was capable of. Conscious of his energy levels, the first thing to go when you are weight drained, his application of pressure was sporadic, allowing the champion to flurry and take the plaudits.
For someone who described the sport as barbaric, Eubank seemed to have no qualms about accepting the kind of punishment to his head which would render most men incapacitated in later life. He invited those punches by holding his hands low, his elbows tucked into his sides, as a way of avoiding excessive blows to his abdomen and kidneys. Those punches had taken him to the very edge against Benn and some sense of self-preservation had finally kicked in after two title defences. But it was the punches he took in the third round, landing on that jaw that seemed to be made from the material you’d find in one of Eubank’s off-road vehicles, which meant this round went the way of Watson. At least in the eyes of the neutral.
That same neutral would have scored the next round in favour of Eubank, who seemed to hurt his man twice, first with a right and then with a left hook. The force of those punches seemed to take something out of Watson’s legs, as he visibly hobbled back to his corner at the end of the round. Ahead after a third of the bout, Eubank increased the pressure in the next round, allowing Watson into punching range before landing a short, powerful right hand which disorientated Watson, forcing him to put those big gloves around his head. But this battle, a series of mini wars if you like between two men who both believed they were superior in the same areas, was edging the way of the champion. Watson had skin damage under his left eye and, although he had not been down, was looking like a man on his way to a slow beating. With a minute left in the round, Eubank hurt Watson again. Such was the champion’s confidence, he now lunged in for the finish, throwing wild right hands – the kind you could see coming even if you were in the toilets – as Watson retreated to the ropes. At the bell, the pair walked past each other, with Watson seemingly intimating that, despite the punches he’d absorbed, he was still more than alive and also looking forward to the next seven rounds. Eubank would describe those first five as ‘unquestionably’ his. He was definitely ahead, but by how much only the judges knew.
Watson needed sustained success from now on if he was to wrest the title away from Eubank. But did he know it? If he had an obvious flaw it was in his total self-belief. That he knew he was better than everyone. He had not acknowledged the variety of skills that Eubank brought to the ring, and that by the very nature of his unique persona Eubank manipulated the minds of judges. They watched him, were captivated by him. Ask a person to judge a contest between a straight man and an eccentric and they will almost always notice the latter. The touch of theatre came exclusively from Eubank; if Watson was to match and surpass Eubank, he would have to do it through work rate.
The sixth round was crucial if Watson was to re-establish himself. With many now wondering whether the sustained beating he had taken at the hands of McCallum had left him damaged, he produced a sustained three minutes of work, moving forward, waiting for Eubank to throw and then miss, before countering with clean punches. ‘Michael can’t hurt Chris,’ shouted McDonnell from the commentary box, but points in boxing are accumulated by the quality and quantity of punches, not by the perceived power. Watson was making Eubank expend energy, often in the futile quest to land ‘Hollywood’ punches. By the end of the sixth, the champion suddenly looked exhausted.
Both men seemed happy to rest in the following round, notable only for an attempt by Eubank to land the cheapest of cheap shots. As he released Watson’s head from a clinch, he deliberately aimed the tip of his elbow at the head of the challenger and was immediately admonished by the referee, American Frank Cappuccino. In truth, Eubank should have had a point deducted, but the incident was illuminating in that it proved, not for the first time, that, although Eubank described his sport as barbaric, he was not averse to ensuring it justified that description. ‘He has these little moments of madness sometimes, Chris Eubank, and that was one of them,’ said Brenner.
‘The harder shots are coming from Chris Eubank, the cleaner shots are coming from Eubank, the more work is coming from Michael Watson,’ said McGuigan at the end of the round, pointing to the difficult job the American judges had. Round eight was no easier to score – Eubank began it with an impressive flurry of action. But that’s all it was. After that, Watson stalked his man, throwing several jabs, landing with some, missing with others. The cheers were coming with each Watson punch, whether they were on target or not. This almost certainly made it harder for those men marking the scorecards. Eubank seemed to sense that his output wasn’t what it needed to be and threw more punches in the next round than he had done for some time. It seemed to take Watson by surprise – he was unable to counter and ended the round looking like the man who had been underwhelmed during the first five rounds. Eubank’s trainer, Ronnie Davies, was growing more animated with every second. The best judge of a fight is almost always a trainer. He knows what his fighter can do, how much punishment he has taken and how much energy he has left. He will have seen the weaknesses of both men and knows whose vulnerabilities are being exploited. Trainer and boxer had an agreement – Davies would slap Eubank in the face if he felt the boxer was becoming too passive or inert. One such moment was upon us. If Eubank was to win this contest without reproach or conjecture, he’d have to maintain the output of the previous round. He might have landed harder punches than Watson, but the challenger was tougher and smarter than most. You could hit Watson once, but, usually, he’d be out of range by the time the next punch sailed by. It meant that quite often action was at a premium, Eubank uncomfortable as the aggressor, Watson too cautious to commit to the kind of continued assaults which would cause the champion discomfort. The commentators could be heard frequently claiming that it was heating up nicely; in fact, it had just been simmering since the first bell and was showing no signs of coming to the boil.
Now the final three rounds – the championship rounds – were upon them. In the old days – when men were men, the cynics might say – fights lasted fifteen rounds and it was from thirteen to fifteen that the true champion would emerge. But the twelve-round distance meant that, quite often, a slow start left a fighter needing a knockout to win, so difficult would it be for them to take it on points. In the late 1970s, Liverpool light heavyweight John Conteh seemed on his way to an easy points win over Matthew Saad Muhammad until a flurry of knockdowns during the final three rounds swung the decision the way of the American. In a twelve-round fight, Conteh would have been safe. As it was, the decision loss would signal the end of his career at the highest level. In Earl’s Court, Watson wasn’t staring at the end of his career, but he was aware that the fight was drifting away. After weathering a mini assault from Eubank at the start of the tenth, Watson took over, applying steady pressure. It was not flashy, would never make a highlight reel but it was enough to make an apparently exhausted champion run like a disorientated gazelle. ‘Eubank, sucking in huge gulps of air,’ said Brenner. This was undoubtedly a Watson round – if he could win the final two, the worst he could do would be a draw, surely. ‘Watson is slowly winning this fight,’ shouted McGuigan during the eleventh round. The Irishman would also note that Eubank, having done virtually nothing for the first ninety seconds of the round, finished it strongly. One of boxing’s oldest and truest clichés is that finishing a round strongly is as important as starting it as such. What was beyond dispute was that neither man could claim he had definitely won the stanza. ‘I have to tell you, Barry, with one round to go, I have it dead level,’ Brenner told McGuigan from behind the mic. Over on ITV, both Reg Gutteridge and Jim Watt now saw it as a fight that Watson could only lose. On Screensport, Jim McDonnell told his colleagues that someone at ringside had Eubank four rounds in front. This wasn’t so much a case of who you rooted for as what style did it for you.
Round twelve summed up the entire fight – you could find ways to score it for either man. Eubank fought with desperation at times, swinging fast and wild, punches hard but lacking sophistication. Watson continued the path he had trodden for much of the fight – slowly, patiently, prodding forward, jab prominent, defence tight, perhaps lacking urgency. In his best win, he had absorbed the pace and then changed it to suit him. In his worst defeat, he’d never found the energy to match a relentless worker. Had he learned from the experience? Hard to tell. Here he was answering questions with a shrug, confident, it seemed, that he was doing his best and certainly better than his opponent. Yet if one man thinks you’re winning and another doesn’t, interpretation is all that’s left. At the final bell, neither man had tasted the canvas as a result of a punch; neither had been so badly hurt that the referee had to make a decision about whether to stop the contest. If you were a Watson fan, and that seemed to be most of the crowd, you’d think he’d won. If you were in the champion’s corner, you’d think he’d done enough.
There are bad decisions in boxing and there are controversial ones. Bad was probably the draw that Lennox Lewis received when he appeared to dominate Evander Holyfield at Madison Square Garden in 1999. But the sound of boos in the arena reflected the unpopularity of the decision, especially given that it had benefited an American in front of his own fans. A controversial one was the split decision given to Sugar Ray Leonard against Marvelous Marvin Hagler in 1987. American trainer Gil Clancy reckoned Leonard had done enough to win, especially as he’d had one fight in five years. Hugh McIlvanney, perhaps the finest boxing writer ever, believed Hagler had won and said that Leonard had performed an illusion, having convinced those watching that his little was worth more because of his underdog status when he stepped into the ring. Even the judges were miles apart in their valuation of the bout – two of them scored it narrowly but to different fighters, while another gave the fight to Leonard by ten rounds to two. Hagler, having given so much to the sport, through his dedication and his desire to fight everyone, never came to terms with the decision and retired from the sport, permanently embittered by the way he felt he had been treated in what was to be his final bout.
Hagler would meet Watson some years later and was very complimentary about the way he worked and trained. One can only wonder how he would have viewed the decision that was about to be read out at Earl’s Court – the arena had been bathed in light all night. Now, it felt darker and tenser. ‘Judge Carlos Colón scores the contest 116 points to 113 points in favour of Chris Eubank. Judge John Rubin scores the fight 114 points to each boxer. A draw. Ladies and gentlemen, Judge Art Lurie scores the contest 115 points to 113 in favour of the winner and still the WBO middleweight champion of the world, Chris Eubank,’ said the ring announcer. Mild cheers chased around the ring as Eubank followed, arms aloft, with Barry Hearn by his side, looking more than a little relieved. A familiar ritual around now would be the champion being interrogated by Gary Newbon, who, direct as always, told Eubank the decision was controversial.
‘I fought like a dog this fight, I fought like a dog and I deserved to win. He was no way in front of me. I stayed with him and stayed with him. I was hitting him with clean shots, I was looking more classy than he was. He was aggressive, yes, but I was picking him off as he came forward. So, no, I won that fight, regardless of what people say. And Nigel Benn, let’s do it man,’ said Eubank. That was his opinion then and hindsight has not changed his belief. Such was the contempt for the decision from Watson’s supporters that they chose to express their distaste by haranguing the champion as he left the ring for his dressing room, spit, coins and verbal abuse all hurled his way. It is to Eubank’s eternal credit that he did not react to the provocation. In the ring, Watson continued to pace with menace, his eyes brimming with fury. Watson told me years later that Eubank, who had talked to him throughout the bout, had told him to come over after the final bell so he could give him the belt. It’s a claim that has always been denied by the champion. Perhaps more simply, Jimmy Tibbs would say, ‘He was robbed.’
Eubank’s reputation as boxing’s chief anti-hero was now assured and the tabloid press did as much as they could to play to that. A phone-in survey in the Daily Mirror found that nearly 90 per cent of those who watched the fight felt the belt was in the wrong hands. Jim Watt, conveying his opinion to more than ten million people, thought Watson won, although there was no criticism of Eubank. Watt, who knew a thing or two about how to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, felt that Watson dominated the second half of the fight. In the Observer, Hugh McIlvanney opined that Watson’s performance was a ‘triumph for honest orthodoxy over imaginative bombast … the scorecards came as a shock’. Years later, I spoke to McDonnell and Brenner about how they viewed the bout.
‘He [Eubank] never won it,’ said McDonnell. Brenner sided with Eubank, telling me he felt you had to take the belt away from the champion. The promoter of the bout agreed. ‘I thought Eubank won it. Michael and I always disagree about it,’ Hearn told me. ‘He always tells me I know nothing about boxing. I sat there and I fucking scored every single round. I don’t think Michael did enough. But it was close … I don’t know how any fighter can score a fight he is involved in, because you get lost in the moment.’
Hearn admits at that stage of his promotional career that he wanted Eubank to win because he was the bigger draw. He was also the WBO’s most prominent champion; the governing body was not recognised in America but the reigns of Benn and Eubank had given the fledgling organisation some limelight. By that stage, the champion had ‘cult of personality’. A look back at the footage from ringside shows how magnetic he could be – even with the best seats in the house, plenty of customers would stand up to get a look at some of Eubank’s moves. The posing, the quick punches, the posturing – they all added to the package. If he was bewitching for the paying punters, what effect could he have on the judges? Eubank did not fight in any kind of rhythm but his presence captivated. Judges are only human beings and it’s not fanciful to suggest that some may watch a bout with one person in mind.
Brenner’s assertion that a challenger needs to take the title away from a champion is a commonly held one in the sport. But judges can only score a fight round by round. They cannot go back to their cards at the end of the bout and decide to change things around, trying to make up for injustices. But in those closer rounds – and there were plenty of them in this fight – the man holding the belt may get the benefit of the doubt.
Eubank might have been eyeing up a rematch with Benn, but his next fight would almost certainly have to be a return with Watson. The title of the first bout, ‘By Public Demand’, would be more appropriate the second time round. The challenger would double his money this time as well, £200,000 representing the biggest purse of his career. And there would not be much time for either man to rest. The 21st of September would be the date, White Hart Lane the venue.
For now, Nigel Benn was isolated. The controversial nature of the Eubank–Watson fight and the immediate rematch meant his name wasn’t mentioned as a future opponent for either man. His thoughts were targeted on getting Eubank, although his loyalty to Watson meant he wanted the Islington man to win the return. Benn would keep busy, his latest foe being a boxer who went by the name of Kid Milo. His real name was Winston Walters but he could easily have gone by the sobriquet ‘Tough Guy’. Milo wasn’t the biggest of middleweights but, a year earlier, he had gone eight hard rounds with Chris Eubank, cuts being the only reason he didn’t hear the final bell. He’d fought other Eubank foes such as Johnny Melfah and Simon Collins and had acquitted himself well, but Benn was a step up. Brave as always, Milo actually went straight at Benn on an intense night in Brentwood, and with disastrous consequences. Down twice in four rounds, Milo had to retire at the end of the fourth, with severe eye damage convincing referee Larry O’Connell to stop the bout.
Benn’s demeanour was different now – the black trunks were gone in favour of bright blue and he was also intent on telling anyone who listened that ‘the Dark Destroyer’ days were over. Intimidation was no longer one of the weapons he’d bring to the ring. You could almost feel the disappointment as the snarl was replaced by a smile. Big changes were taking place in his life outside of the ring as well. The Milo fight would be the last time Benn had Vic Andretti is his corner. He’d now have Graham Moughton, who worked out of the Romford gym where many of the Matchroom fighters trained by his side. Despite his reputation as an ‘up and at them’ fighter, there were still certain nuances that he wanted to add to his fight repertoire. ‘The technique Vic was trying to teach me was to roll with the punches, to keep my neck tight and not drop my head. Then Graham Moughton at the Romford gym was trying to teach me to draw away from my opponent’s jab. It was all these different techniques,’ Benn would say in 2002. The search for the perfect trainer for him continued and it would come to a head the following year.
If the start of the 1990s was remembered for the country being at war and the beginning of yet another recession, it was also notable for a new sound sweeping the nation. Dance music, which had been growing during the 1980s, was moving away from disco into a fusion of sounds like trance, drum and bass, acid jazz and hip hop. Clubs around Britain were alive to this new sound and being a DJ carried huge kudos. Nigel Benn was part of a new breed of boxer who trained to these sounds, eschewing the traditional Rocky anthems which had helped form the stereotypical image of boxers. The other aspect of the new wave of dance music was its association with Class A drugs, all of which were very much part of the club culture.
When not training, Benn could be seen at clubs, often in charge of the music. A story doing the rounds at the time was that Benn would get off the dais and circulate with the ravers and start shadow-boxing, in order to test just how intoxicated the dancers were. There was press speculation that he was one of those ravers, too, a charge he denied throughout his career. In 1996, after former minder Tony Tucker was executed as a result of drug deals gone wrong, Benn spoke about his friends consuming illegal substances.
‘I can’t stop them or hate them for doing it but I can stop them doing it around me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been offered every kind of drug but I will never take them. Drugs are everywhere. Six years ago I was at the Berkeley Square Ball, which is very la-de-dah, and this guy asked me if I wanted a “toot” [cocaine]. I asked: “What the hell’s a toot?” I go to clubs to give people music they can dance to. If they want to do drugs, fine – just don’t try to involve me.’
Years later, Benn would admit what many, but not all, knew. ‘I never, ever, done cocaine. Just ecstasy,’ he told me. ‘I wasn’t really a drinker. I can’t drink brandy or things like that. One of my friends gave me this little ecstasy tablet and I was hooked. I was really depressed, took it and it really changed my life.’ He can’t remember exactly when that first hit was, but it was during that period when he was without a world title and still hunting a rematch with Eubank. And he was also wracked with guilt about his failed first marriage.
He also told me the shadow-boxing story was ‘rubbish’. ‘When I went clubbing, I was in the groove. Music was a passion of mine.’
Sometimes, things seem to work out well for everyone. What had been obvious about the first fight between Michael Watson and Chris Eubank was that neither man was at his absolute best. The middleweight limit was too much of a struggle for either man to make. Watson’s frame had always looked capable of carrying another half stone at least, while the density of Eubank’s muscle and his attitude towards roadwork meant a move up the weights was always likely. In 1991, the super middleweight limit was still relatively new – in fact, the WBO did not have a champion at that weight (the legendary Tommy Hearns had vacated it, as it had no worth in the USA). At the middleweight level, the WBO had installed Gerald McClellan as their number one contender, meaning he was entitled to a fight with the champion that year. If Eubank didn’t fulfil that requirement, he’d be stripped of the belt, with ranking contenders numbers one and two (John Mugabi of Uganda) the men to fight for the vacant title.
‘I told Eubank that we’d vacate the title rather than fight McClellan. Pound for pound, he’s a horrible bastard and he’s a nasty piece of work,’ Barry Hearn told me. Eubank wasn’t scared of the fight – that’s the thing about boxers, they never are scared. Some may remember a steady stream of heavyweight contenders who seemed ready for the toilet before the first bell if they were fighting Mike Tyson, but these men don’t train scared or frightened. They all have belief that, with both men wearing the same gloves and having trained responsibly, they have a chance to win. The ones with prescience and caution are the promoters and trainers. Hearn knew the dangers posed by the scrapper from Freeport, Illinois, who had been trained by the legendary Emanuel Steward. McClellan would prove just how good that advice to Eubank would be when he won the vacant title after knocking out the vastly more experienced Mugabi in 121 seconds at the Royal Albert Hall in November of that year. Hearn would also advise Benn in years to come not to fight McClellan, advice that would be ignored.
Of course, there were two other boxers who should have fought for the WBO super middleweight title. But once it became known that Eubank and Watson would be moving up to that weight, the WBO conveniently dropped the two men, both from South America, from their rankings, in favour of Eubank and Watson. Despite his fondness for reminding everyone how dirty and corrupt boxing was, Eubank kept quiet about this little episode. It said more about how easy it was to manipulate the governing bodies – the WBO was still a fledgling organisation, which enjoyed a cosy relationship with certain promoters.
The first fight between Watson and Eubank had not been full of the extravagant hate and hype that had so disfigured each man’s fight with Benn. After seven months or so as a champion, Eubank’s standing as the man to beat meant his bouts were not hard sells. Even so, both men would act in very different ways in the build-up to the rematch.
Watson decided to part company with Eric Secombe, the trainer who had been with him from amateur through to professional ranks. Secombe had been informed by the fighter that Jimmy Tibbs would now be the chief trainer. Not surprisingly, being demoted hurt Secombe, who walked away from the camp, although he would attend the fight as a punter. Watson knew that his decision would be painful for some, but there was something very different about this version of Watson. ‘He trained very hard for that fight. And he rested properly when he wasn’t training,’ Tibbs told me. There were only ninety days between the two bouts, so, after the contract signing, Watson began serious training at the beginning of August. Tibbs believed then, as he does now, in a six-week training camp. There was an intensity about Watson’s work which suggested this bout was worth more to him than the previous one, or even the Benn and McCallum fights. ‘These people are against me,’ Watson kept telling himself. ‘These people’ were those who controlled the sport – in his mind there was something wrong about the decision in the first bout which wasn’t just down to incompetence. ‘I just couldn’t get Chris Eubank out of my mind,’ said Watson in later years. It’s a tool that fighters often use – to think of who they’re fighting rather than what they were fighting for. The recognition that he always craved was finally coming his way, quite often in the form of sympathy after the previous bout. The anger was now directed at Eubank. In an interview with South African writer Donald McRae ten days before the rematch, he gave vent to those feelings, which some interpreted as hate.
‘Chris Eubank has no respect for anyone. There’s something seriously wrong with his brain, with his way of thinking. Why should he attack boxing – the very thing that makes him a very good living, that has lifted him out of nowhere? Why should he describe boxing as barbaric? He would like to come from Eton but he comes from Peckham. He would like to be a white model but he’s a black boxer. I think Chris Eubank is ashamed of his roots. Why else would he put so much pressure on himself, pretending he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth? The way he speaks, the words he uses, that’s not the way Chris Eubank speaks to his own mother. It’s sad but I have to say that I’ve never seen another black man try so hard to look and sound white. I don’t understand it – I just think he’s a very weird and confused guy. Our fight is for a world title and me getting some justice after the last decision – but it’s also a battle for the security of our families, for the future, for respect. Deep down, in his heart, Eubank knows all this.
‘If this one comes down to a war, he’ll finish the worse for it. I’ve been to bleak places in the ring, places he has never even touched. Last time, I was drained by making middleweight. This time, I’m stronger and I’m gonna do it for me but for every other fighter out there, I’m going to do it for the sport of boxing – I’m gonna strip Eubank of everything. These days, they tell me it’s not enough just to be a boxer. But, man, that’s what I am – a fighter. I ain’t no Chris Eubank.’
In none of his previous twenty-eight bouts had Watson made a fight seem as personal as this one. The whole Eubank act had riled him beyond the point of rationality. If he had, in the opinion of some, cut corners in his preparation for the first bout, this time he sparred hard rounds against future WBO middleweight champion Chris Pyatt and hard-hitting light heavyweight Gary Delaney. Watson would say in press conferences, in response to how much he wanted victory before the two stepped into the ring, that he was ‘prepared to die’. It’s the kind of phrase a sportsman can use without fear if his profession is golf or tennis, but, when used by pugilists, the neutrals and those involved in the sport recoil because it has echoes of an era in which death in the ring was all too common.
In the 1940s, Sugar Ray Robinson, the consensus choice as the greatest fighter who ever lived, fought and knocked out an Irish American fighter named Jimmy Doyle. Robinson tried to pull out of the contest after having a dream in which he killed Doyle. Persuaded to fight, Robinson’s punches did in fact render Doyle unconscious – he would never wake up. His death had a profound effect on Robinson, who, when asked if he was worried about the pain he was inflicting on Doyle during the fight, gave an answer that resonates to this day. When the coroner asked if he figured to get Doyle ‘in trouble’, Robinson said, ‘Mister, it’s my business to get him in trouble.’ Those cold, hard, brutal words defined the sport for years: Robinson, one of its most stylish and astute performers, admitting that the notion of killing a man to win wasn’t anathema to him.
Sugar Ray was generally too classy to invoke that kind of soldier mentality before a fight. His dashing good looks and reputation meant he was treated with respect for much of his career, especially once it became apparent the reflexes weren’t what they once had been. Respect. Boxing may be about money and glory, but how a young man longs to be looked in the eye and thought of as something. Popular in Brighton as a bit of a sideshow, Chris Eubank wanted more than that for his endeavours. A handful of the English press were happy to indulge him and his eccentricities and wrote kind words about him. ‘His is a genuine talent, able to command a platform. Having engaged people’s attention, he is also capable of making his points shrewdly and with purpose,’ wrote Nick Halling, familiar to boxing fans today as the commentator of many of Sky Sports’ live fights. ‘Eubank has proved to be both smart and articulate, the antithesis of the punch-drunk bum.’
It is also true that Eubank could not understand why he was so despised by so many. He hadn’t been able to work out why, after calling Benn a ‘fraud’ and saying he had ‘no time for such people’, that ‘the Dark Destroyer’ had so much contempt for him. Eubank felt it was possible to play the hype game and also believe that nothing he said would be taken personally. The problem was, given his love of the limelight and how readily he would hold court, things would slip out which would give him cause for regret. In one of those press conferences, he described the fight as a ‘kill or be killed’ situation. In its way, it was as volatile as calling the sport a ‘mug’s game’. The winding-up of Watson would continue throughout the weeks preceding the fight. Eubank would appear on Terry Wogan’s weekday chat show, parading his belt and reminding Watson who had walked out of the ring with the championship. He also grew tired of the incessant criticism, seemingly aimed at him, because of the decision in the first fight. He called Watson a ‘whingeing child’ and stormed out of a press conference, with Barry Hearn looking as surprised as anyone to see his main man lose his cool.
Some form of anger was seeping out of Eubank. He was preparing his mind for the size of what lay ahead. ‘Michael Watson is strong. He will not give in without a severe beating. I have the same feelings welling up inside me as I did before I fought Benn in Birmingham. I think it could be that tough – but I prevailed then and I will prevail now … We await our fate together, Michael Watson and I. Soon it will only be the two of us – face to face. Then, we will find out whose heart breaks first,’ he said in one of his final interviews before the fight. Anger and also vulnerability – this time, he would not have the cloak of invincibility around him, the championship belt which allowed him to play unskilled matador to whatever animals there were in his backyard. The fear, as it became apparent, manifested itself in some final, personal insults directed at Watson at the last press conference before the fight.
‘You lost the last fight and you’ll lose again. You’re a loser – go and ask your bank manager,’ said Eubank. ‘I was only running on half a tank and I still beat you. And I will beat you again,’ he reiterated before storming out. Watson, whose choice of pre-fight insults was usually conservative, in keeping with his devout religious beliefs, poked fun at his opponent’s accent and lisp. Eubank’s trainer Ronnie Davies spoke on behalf of his now absentee fighter. ‘That was no promotional gimmick. He is genuinely upset. Michael wound him up. It’s unusual for Chris to react like that. He doesn’t like Michael and he’s fed up with his continual whingeing.’
All the hype, the dislike, the hate, was a reminder, before the action even started, of one of the sport’s most famous quotes, from one of the sport’s most vicious practitioners: ‘Boxers go to dark places that no one else inhabits,’ said Roberto Durán. The training, the sacrifice and the dedication. They all remind you what’s at stake – the glory and the despair. Thank God they don’t make winner-takes-all bouts. The intensity would be too much for the viewer, let alone the participants.
Rematches rarely surpass the original. There’s an argument that the third Ali–Frazier fight was the best fight ever, but that ignores the sustained quality of the first bout, which pushed both men to the limit. In the old days it was common for men to fight each other on more than two occasions. Henry Cooper had five fights with the Welshman Joe Erskine. Sugar Ray Robinson took on Jake LaMotta six times, winning five of those contests. Sam Langford, a brilliant boxer who operated during the early stages of the twentieth century, fought fellow black fighter Harry Wills seventeen times, as both men struggled to get world title shots because of the colour of their skin.
Immediate rematches are rarely sought and it is even rarer for them to live up to the first bout. Sugar Ray Leonard’s fifteen-round brawl in Montreal against Durán in 1980 was one of unremitting intensity. Durán won, but later that year, in a rematch, he quit after eight rounds, apparently helpless to defend himself against Leonard’s speed, now utilised from long range. ‘No más, no más,’ Durán is alleged to have said as he turned his back on Leonard: ‘No more, no more.’ Six years later, Evander Holyfield, after a dozen fights, beat the durable cruiserweight world champion Dwight Muhammad Qawi after fifteen rounds which left the challenger so dehydrated he had to spend the night in hospital. In a rematch the following year, Qawi didn’t get past the fourth.
Earlier in 1991, Mike Tyson’s ring rehab continued with a seven-round stoppage of the particularly dangerous Donovan ‘Razor’ Ruddock. A rematch was ordered on the grounds that many felt referee Richard Steele had stopped the fight too early. Barely four months had passed before the return, which was an altogether more brutal and cranium-sapping affair, with Ruddock lasting the full twelve rounds, despite suffering two knockdowns. It was hoped by many that Eubank–Watson II would have some of that energy and sustained action, with almost everyone agreeing that the first chapter of their rivalry had delivered controversy but not much in the way of quality.
Even so, if White Hart Lane could be filled to its 35,000 capacity, Barry Hearn put the gross income at £2 million. ‘This is a fight with great commercial appeal and it is a bonus the first meeting ended controversially. This is business and a business fight. But here we have a case of unfinished business.’ A further sixteen million people were expected to watch the fight on ITV. Punters might have been expected to flock to television sets to see a Eubank–Benn rematch, but the polar opposites of the two men boxing on this Saturday, and the baggage being carried into the ring as a result of fight number one, all added up to a potent cocktail.
The problem of staging a boxing fight in a football stadium is that you get a different clientele. While drinking at a sporting occasion might be more controlled now, expecting the majority of the 20,000 plus audience to arrive sober, let alone stay that way through the first five fights before the main event, was naïve. Impatience, frustration, maybe violence – all those emotions were stirred up that evening. Dave Brenner recalls there was ‘a nasty atmosphere in the crowd that night. You were scared for your safety and were desperate for the show to end so you could leave. It was a thoroughly nasty evening – it reminded me of Hagler–Minter.’
The night Marvin Hagler beat Alan Minter at Wembley Arena, on 27 September 1980, was one of the ugliest in British sporting history. Before the bout, Minter, the world middleweight champion, was alleged to have said ‘no black man will take my title’. After three shockingly one-sided rounds, which saw Minter’s face reduced to a mass of crimson welts, the referee was forced to stop the bout and award the title to Hagler. As he celebrated the final part of his journey from humble, hardworking, and often ignored and avoided contender to champion, Hagler was pelted with beer cans and bottles by irate ‘fans’ who had shown up in the expectation of seeing a ‘lynching’. The handful of Hagler fans who had made the journey from Brockton, Massachusetts, testify to this day of feelings of genuine fear for their lives, as they watched policemen scurry to the ring, escort Hagler out through a secret tunnel, leaving them at the mercy of those tanked up and looking for trouble.
Efforts to contain drunkenness in future fights were made as a consequence, but there could still be the odd skirmish ringside. There had been trouble at Tony Sibson’s fight with Frank Tate a few years earlier and there always seemed to be a chance that if a boxer with a particularly strong, regional support came from distances further out, that combination of beer and travel could combine to bring a sense of menace to arenas and stadiums up and down the country. With the distaste for Eubank now reaching its peak – he did have fans of his own, but their voices weren’t as brash and bold as those of his detractors – there was every chance things could turn nasty before, during and after the fight.
‘The sport has to be resurrected’
– Michael Watson, September 1991
‘I don’t regard him as anything. Who is he?’
– Chris Eubank, September 1991
As an Arsenal fan, Michael Watson chose to use the visitors’ changing room at White Hart Lane, home of his team’s bitterest rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, as his preparation room. For him this would be a case of third time lucky, or so he hoped. Now twenty-six, he had challenged for a world title twice and failed on both occasions. He’d said already that winning the belt was secondary to beating Eubank. That determination extended to his approach to the ring that night. He could usually make his way to the squared circle with only a few noticing when he put one leg over the middle rope. This time, the thumping beat of LL Cool J’s ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’ echoed around the stadium. It made people wonder whether Watson, who had never lost his focus in the face of Benn’s barrage of intimidating insults and snarls, had let Eubank get to him. People had seen how Benn had gone in against Eubank full of hate and left the ring battered, bruised and defeated. Would the same thing happen to Watson? On a night that was already dark – it was nearly ten o’clock – and with a mild breeze, the tone was set, as it had been all week after those volatile exchanges during the press conferences when Eubank had walked out. One look into Watson’s face was enough to make you realise where his head was. Eight pounds heavier he might have been than the last time he fought, but in the hard angles which led from his jaw to his ear there was a determination, an anger, which was impossible to ignore. This would have to be his night.
As he danced around the ring in a red robe, gladiatorial instrumental music replaced the rap. It had become the preamble to the arrival of Chris Eubank. For the first time in ten months, he walked to the ring as a challenger. His face impassive, as always, his body told a better story. His arms moved freely as he walked, the strain of weight making apparently a thing of the past. When he arrived at the ring, the noise of the music and the gentle jeering stopped as he assessed how best to make his entrance. Standing on the edge of the ring, he started some vigorous shadow-boxing, perhaps teasing the crowd and Watson into thinking the trademark vault into the ring had been erased from his repertoire. Seconds later, in he sprang. His eyes fixed on a place in the distance, would the Eubank whose courage and fire had thrilled against Benn finally resurface?
Some believe you can read things into the way a boxer reacts when his name is read out. Watson looked anxious, as if this was another delay in his pursuit of destiny. Eubank, arms held in front of his body, seemed to have gone into a different world. As his camp held their hands up at the announcement of his name, he remained impassive, preparing to go from Eubank the personality into Eubank the fighter. When the two men were read their instructions by referee Roy Francis, a veteran of the British circuit but officiating in his first world title, there were no histrionics or name calling. They touched gloves without being forced to and returned to their corners. Reg Gutteridge, once again commentating for ITV with Jim Watt, told viewers that Eubank was the bookies’ 2-1 favourite, which was broadly in line with how most in the sport felt this fight would go.
At the end of the first round, Eubank strutted back to his corner, as had become his fashion. Once the act was over, he took in massive gulps of air. It wasn’t so much a statement of his lack of conditioning as the pace that Watson had set. ‘A force of nature,’ Jim McDonnell, who was at the fight, told me. For that first three minutes, Eubank matched that work rate, engaging Watson in what seemed like a hundred mini wars, all of them carrying more fire, more danger and more intensity than the first six rounds of their previous fight. ‘A good, action-packed first round,’ said Jim Watt as replays showed Watson digging in a succession of right hooks to his opponent’s ribcage. All of those were thrown with, as Mike Tyson used to say, ‘bad intentions’. Eubank’s own punches were no less powerful or sharp, but as he would say again and again, ‘with every punch I landed, he kept coming forward’. Scoring the round seemed academic – there was no way either man could keep going at this level. As Hugh McIlvanney noted in his fight report, ‘From the first bell, Watson made it plain that he was wagering everything on a commitment to sustained pressure.’ It was sustained pressure that many felt was the only way to guarantee victory against Eubank.
The greatest three rounds of middleweight boxing were between Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns in 1985; the sheer fury and energy expended by those titans left the viewer wondering whether they needed pacemakers, let alone the participants. The opening three rounds of the second Eubank–Watson bout had a similar intensity – round two began with Eubank, no doubt under orders, channelling as much power as possible into a right hand. It landed flush on Watson’s chin and its sheer force moved him off balance. But he didn’t go down or even cover up as he had done in the first fight. Instead, he continued to chase Eubank around the ring. It was hard to work out why this bout was so different from the first. Was the ring smaller? Had Watson been training with Linford Christie? Did Eubank, usually so evasive, have rocks in his boots? The pair might have been fighting in a Wendy house and still had enough room for their trainers to sit in. At the end of the third round, Gutteridge admitted he needed a breather, the action being too sustained and incessant to pass comment on in detail. His colleague Watt noted that, while Watson had been fighting more recklessly than normal, there were signs that the pace was starting to wear Eubank down. He had thrown more and better punches for three rounds than in any of his four previous world title fights and yet, after those nine minutes of action, he slumped on his stool. He may have posed and pranced on his way back to the corner, but there was no doubting his level of discomfort. He admitted later that from the end of that round onwards he was in survival mode.
Watch the fight again and you’ll notice that Watson returned to a theme of the first fight and also Eubank’s meeting with Benn – utilising a body attack to make his opponent suffer. While it may have been possible to give all three of those opening rounds to Eubank (and some did) there was little doubt who had suffered the most internal damage. Watson would say much later that it was ‘one of his easiest fights’. As the bell sounded for the start of the fourth, Eubank took great gulps of air that would have kept an elephant alive. He knew, better than anyone at ringside, what he was facing. ‘He’s so strong,’ he told Ronnie Davies.
In the fourth round there was no ambiguity about the scoring. Eubank’s punch rate slowed dramatically, while Watson’s remained high. Eubank’s left hand was being held by his waist, protecting his already tender abdomen. At the pace Watson was fighting, he couldn’t help but hit Eubank with a succession of right hands, taking advantage of that lowly held left. He also opened a cut under the left eye, as a result of those rights. By this stage, if you didn’t know Eubank and were unaware of his reputation and his almost limitless courage, you feared for his safety. There seemed no escape for him, unless he decided to run at the bell. It’s doubtful that anyone would really have blamed him if he had.
Round five was the first one in which either man exhibited signs of weariness – Eubank had saved his most desperate expressions for his corner – as more punches missed than landed. There were a couple of clinches, a sign that one or both boxers were happy to take a break from the action. At the bell, they exchanged a look, not for the first time. Watson’s seemed to say: ‘I told you I was better than you.’ Eubank’s expression was one of defiance: ‘And I’m still here.’ Their common foe, Nigel Benn, was ringside, speaking to Gary Newbon.
‘Nigel, why are you yelling for Michael Watson?’ asked Newbon, out of shot. Benn was wearing a shirt and luminous yellow jacket, a sure sign that he was firmly in the forefront of fashion in the nineties.
‘They’ve both beaten me … but I’ve got a lot of respect for Michael inside the ring and outside the ring and … no person more than me would like to see Michael win the title.’
‘Do you think Eubank is winning?’
‘No, no,’ Benn replied with a dismissive shake of the head.
‘Why do you think Watson’s ahead?’
‘His aggression, he’s coming forward, he’s connecting with good shots. I mean, I’m so happy that he’s actually changed his tactics and has come out and been so aggressive.’
‘Can he keep this pace up, though?’
‘Can Eubank last this long? Who knows,’ countered Benn. ‘I’ve got to hope he does. Nobody hopes that Michael wins more than me. Come on, Mike!’
If, for the previous five rounds, Eubank had moved away, as much as he could, from Watson’s fire, in round six it seemed as if his moves were less voluntary. More than once Watson’s flurries to the body caused Eubank to stumble towards the ropes. A sustained attack in the former champion’s corner was the most trouble anyone had seen Eubank in since he’d fought Benn. ‘He looks like he’s trying to pinch a rest. He’ll be glad when the bell rings,’ said Gutteridge as the round came to an end. Even so, Eubank still managed a little bravado at the bell, standing in front of his corner, hands together, before turning and sitting down. Some may have marvelled at the audacity but a great many more were not fooled. If Eubank were to finally fall, he’d do it on his terms.
Watson’s white shorts were now touched by a colouring of crimson – but that reflected the damage he was inflicting. And his pace, which had dipped ever so slightly in round five, was now back to the intensity with which he had begun the fight. In round seven, he threw over seventy-five punches, the number you may expect a flyweight or featherweight to output at the start of the fight. The majority of those blows were power shots, aimed at Eubank’s head and body. His use of the jab was purely incidental, thrown as a range finder. And Watson was doing to Eubank what no fighter had done before – landing with combinations. Even when Benn had had his moments a year ago, he had been most successful with single shots. In close, Watson was switching his attack from body to head and then back again. The variety and velocity were too much for Eubank to bear.
After seven rounds, Watson was ahead on most scorecards. That suited the majority of the crowd, who had chanted their man’s name lustily throughout. The cheers were most frequent when it looked as if he was scoring punches. There seemed almost an element of surprise in the reaction of the crowd – no one could believe that Watson was making his victory march look so easy. As trainer Jimmy Tibbs said to me, ‘He was walking it – doing what he liked with him.’
Even so, there was no chance of taking liberties with Eubank. If the Brighton man was allowed just a little room to plant his feet down and throw serious punches that could hurt, Watson knew there would be trouble. But because he was permanently on the move, he could roll and slip any punches that came his way. And once Eubank was on the retreat those right hands that he liked to throw, either straight or over the top, had less power. There were just twelve minutes of action left and many now believed that Eubank needed a knockout to win.
Eubank would claim later that he felt Watson was intent on prolonging the beating. ‘He was beating me up with malice,’ said Eubank in his autobiography. That’s difficult to believe, but what does seem apparent is that Watson was enjoying his work, enjoying making Eubank miss and enjoying showing the crowd of 22,000 or so who was the better man. At no point had he seemed desperate or lacking in composure. Just determined. Very determined. Eubank, though, was desperate. Round nine began with him throwing a handful of those haymaker right hands, all of which sailed past Watson’s chin. At the start of the fight, Eubank had spoken to Watson – neither would say what – but by now the man who would never use one word to explain himself when fifteen could suffice had become monosyllabic. Watson remembers his opponent ‘crying’ when he was hit in the body.
What must have worried Eubank by now was that his strength, his power, thought by many to be his true advantage, had not been a factor. Watson had walked through all those punches and seemed unperturbed. By the start of round ten, Eubank had convinced himself he could no longer win – he had merely conditioned his body to absorb the punishment that was coming his way. He was having the odd moment of success but it was almost like watching a football team celebrate the one goal they’ve scored to the other team’s five. Certain reporters, with their penchant for boxers rather than pressure fighters, were being more generous to Eubank than others. Crucially, Eubank himself was under no illusions about who was winning. ‘The integrity of the fighter’ (his words) was what kept Eubank on his feet and still wondering if there was any way he could win.
There were several occasions in the tenth round when it seemed he would fall to the floor through exhaustion. His efforts to repel Watson’s raids frequently led to him throwing wild counters, which would miss, and this would be accompanied by the unedifying sight of his body following through, his balance now all but non-existent. ‘When Eubank misses, look where he goes. He’s not an attacking boxer,’ said Watt. The other man was, always ready to rumble, his hooks and cuffs sending Eubank all over the ring. As the bell sounded for the end of the tenth, Eubank’s legs looked stiff, the belief having drained from his body. Watson may have been tired as well, but he still skipped back to his corner, knowing that all he had to do was control the last two rounds. By now, the crowd was expectant. Watson’s fans had waited patiently to see their man win the world title they felt he deserved. The Eubank haters had waited, with less patience, to see the bête noire of British boxing get the strapping they’d wanted to see.
The only thing that Watson hadn’t done in the previous ten rounds was land the knockout punch, the one that made the judges’ scorecards irrelevant. Should he chase it, mindful that leaving his fate in the hands of three other men was not a safe bet? Or would Eubank force him into a change of plan? These were the championship rounds and at the start of the eleventh, Eubank, whose cut by his left eye had become less serious but the swelling around it now causing him problems with vision, looked sharper. There was snap, menace and power in his punches. At times during the previous ten rounds, he had looked like a man harbouring a sense of self-pity. Bad enough to be the target of all the jeers but far worse for them to be replaced by punches. But, for once, a right hand forced Watson to cover up. His head twisted, he stepped backwards for the first time. Fortunately for him, there was no composure about Eubank’s work. A fusillade of blows came Watson’s way but he leant back and let Eubank flail away, the punches hitting air and rope. Watson’s head was cleared, but Eubank, usually so smart about the other man’s weaknesses, punched himself silly, the last vestiges of energy slipping from his body. And now Watson could sense the end. His right hands targeted Eubank’s head. These were concussive shots – ‘He’s in trouble,’ shouted Watt – and Eubank was being battered. He had stopped throwing punches and there was an argument to suggest he should not have been allowed to take more punishment. Around twenty punches landed in the next thirty seconds, a final combination that sent Eubank to his knees, voluntarily, by the look of it. The fight seemed to have only one possible conclusion.
Barry Hearn, at ringside, had spent most of the night encouraging Eubank forward. But now, even he knew there was nothing left to see. ‘He bashed him up,’ Hearn said about Watson’s performance that night. ‘When Eubank went on his knees, after Michael dropped him, my very first thought was “Hmm, Watson–Benn rematch”. I’m always thinking business. Don’t make me a nice person but I didn’t have a second – Eubank has had his time and he’s been completely outclassed and dropped so I thought “Move on”. It’s a bit Don Kingish, but it’s the practicality.’
Dropped he may have been, but Eubank would get up. No one doubted that. The most idiosyncratic British world champion might also have been the bravest. The full extent of the beating he’d been taking should have been obvious to anyone at ringside when he spat out blood on getting up. Eubank says that the moment he hit the canvas, the strength that had been draining from his body returned. That his senses were alive. It’s what makes a fighter go from good to great. How they react when things go against them. ‘Skills pay the bills’ is one of boxing’s most popular refrains. But when the skills have been neutralised, what’s left is instinct. What sets boxing apart from every other sport is how your mind reacts to the pressure of a beating from an apparently unstoppable force. The great heavyweight Evander Holyfield best exemplified this when describing how his mind worked when the younger, heavier and more powerful Riddick Bowe battered him around the ring in the tenth round of their first encounter the following year.
‘He was laying a lot of leather on me. He had me from pillar to post, but even while he was hurting me, I thought, for the first time in the fight, that I had a chance of winning. He was spending a lot of energy, and I thought I could catch him when he tired.’
Holyfield lost, but no one would ever forget how he nearly came back from the brink.
At White Hart Lane, Chris Eubank had less time to think about what to do next than he should have had. Under WBO rules, a fighter is given a mandatory eight count by the referee after being knocked down. Experienced he may have been, but Roy Francis got caught up in the moment and counted up to four before allowing Eubank to continue. There were less than ten seconds remaining in the round. Enough, surely, for Eubank to survive. Maybe his corner could revive him sufficiently for an assault in the final round, where he’d need a knockout to win. All three judges had him behind, by varying amounts.
Eubank walked forward and Watson came to meet him. Years later, he’d tell boxing writer Steve Bunce that he was already dreaming about the riches he could now bestow on his two daughters, so certain was he of victory. He’d been dominant in the eyes of the majority and had been more than a match for everything Eubank had done. So far.
All night he’d countered Eubank’s best shots with a jab and then a right hand. Sensing victory, he loaded up the power in his right hand, perhaps dreaming of the knockout punch. But for the first time that night he wasn’t prepared for any retaliation. It came in the form of a right uppercut. The punch was a short one, but it came with Eubank’s forward momentum. The force of the punch, landing on the tip of Watson’s jaw, forced him off his feet and towards the corner from which he had just walked. If he had just landed on the canvas, things may have turned out – is better the right word?
I remember years ago, when I was just starting out as a reporter, interviewing Sir Henry Cooper. I asked him for his prediction on an upcoming bout. After he’d told me, he added: ‘I just hope whoever loses, if they get knocked out, I hope it’s clean. Just one shot.’ The clean knockouts look scary, but more often than not the fighter gets up, shakes his head and then asks his trainer what happened. Michael Watson might well have been knocked out cold if his head hadn’t hit the third rope. Bad enough to have taken a punch with the force of a speeding car but now the whiplash effect of the rope against the back of his head left him in a state of distress that only a medical expert could explain. Watson would also get to his feet quickly, as the bell rang to end the round, but his legs looked stiff, as if they were being powered by his hips. His eyes were looking at Eubank, or at something in the distance. It was hard to tell. When you focus on a boxer’s legs, you realise how thin they are and wonder how they could possibly support a man for as long they do. That it takes so long for them to fail is the miracle.
Jimmy Tibbs rushed out to collect Watson, to do what he could to stimulate his fighter’s senses. He was three minutes from the title and Tibbs knew how much it meant to Watson. The crowd were stunned. What happened, they were thinking. The punch had been so short and quick, you’d need a monitor to spot it. But there was no doubt that the man most of them wanted to win was now in some sort of trouble. How? How? He’d been winning as he pleased. And he’d been doing it to persistent, tribal shouting of his name: ‘Watson, Watson!’ The atmosphere now was not so much cold as confused and anxious.
‘Are you all right?’ Tibbs asked Watson, once he had him sitting down in the corner. The boxer nodded. He seemed to know what was going on, but, like many a fighter, he was having difficulty getting his body to obey him. As he got ready to answer the bell, Watson’s mouth seemed either incapable or unwilling to accept the gumshield from the other man in the corner, Dean Powell. No one knew it at the time, but Watson was struggling to get oxygen into his brain. His central nervous system, already scrambled by that right uppercut, had other problems that it needed to fight off.
In the other corner, Eubank was still weary, still bruised, but for the first time all night he had a purpose. He looked over at his opponent. Watson was still looking at him, or at the very least that was the direction in which his eyes were pointing. When the bell went, Watson remained where he was rather than join Eubank in the centre of the ring for the obligatory touching of gloves at the start of the final round. Referee Francis dragged him by the arm and forced the issue. And now it was obvious that there was no strength in that body. His legs had no power – if he was to fall now he’d never get up. Eubank sensed the moment and started punching. Frantically and without much skill, he threw punch after punch at Watson’s head. Instinctively, Watson brought his arms up and blocked virtually all the blows. He was moving from the hip, allowing the ropes that were his enemy to be his friend, aiding his weaving and rolling. But he couldn’t move. Eubank had him pinned. Soon, one of those punches had to land. Watson had not thrown one of his own since the round began. With twenty-nine seconds of the round gone, Watson was an open target. Referee Francis, who had been monitoring the stricken fighter since he’d had to pull him to the centre of the ring, put his body between both men and waved his arms to signal the end of the fight. Eubank, improbably, incredibly and impressively, was the winner. For all the posing and pontificating he had demonstrated, unequivocally, that his fighting heart was as true as any of the great champions’. And his boxing brain, his nerve, were as flawless as those of men like Ali and Leonard. How else could he still have plotted an escape from where he was? However spurious the WBO title, he was now a two-time world champion. And it was his fairly and squarely.
As Francis took Watson, whose eyes had a dream-like quality about them, back to his corner, Jimmy Tibbs was already in the ring. ‘At first, I was angry,’ says Tibbs about it. In his mind, Watson had 150 seconds to survive and take the title. ‘They all want to be champions. That’s why they come into the gym in the first place,’ he’d tell me. In the 1990s, and for many years before, boxing was not, in any way, safety-first. It was about the winning.
For now, the winning and losing had been decided. But still there was fury. Watson’s legs might have been stiff and he was not throwing punches, but could he still have held on and won? Tibbs wasn’t alone in thinking there was an escape route. Then Francis, in his thick London accent, uttered the words that must have haunted Tibbs for years.
‘He’s hurt, Jim. And you know it.’
Still Tibbs didn’t really believe it. And then Watson sagged in his arms. And soon it became apparent to those near the drama, including the trainer, that this wasn’t exhaustion.
In the ring, Eubank had been confirmed as the new champion and was now being interviewed by Gary Newbon.
‘From round six, he was too strong for me … but I knew I could go the distance and I knew he would tire at this pace. He kept up a phenomenal pace. When I caught him, I knew that was it. I didn’t know whether he would revive in between rounds. He didn’t. I’d like to thank my brother Simon for taking me running,’ said Eubank, before embarking on a monologue in which he thanked his wife, the newspaper the People and the association that had voted him best-dressed man in the United Kingdom.
‘He hit me with a couple of good shots. He was very, very strong. I want him tested, I want him tested to see if there was anything in his blood.’ Newbon pressed him – did he mean drugs?
As Eubank answered, saying he wanted Watson’s urine tested, a fight broke out. The champion’s concentration was broken and he would not answer Newbon again. He would say later that he never thought Watson was on drugs, but he wanted to know where his strength had come from – it certainly had not been there in the first fight.
What was happening outside the ring was now pivotal. Newbon wrapped up the interview and handed control of the programme back to Jim Rosenthal. Newbon was trying to get to Watson, to see what was happening. ‘I didn’t realise how serious it was, because I couldn’t get near him. It was pretty ugly that night, the atmosphere,’ Newbon told me. The alcohol-fuelled fight that had broken out started because of a feeling that Watson had been robbed of the chance to win. But that sense of injustice wasn’t helping. It wasn’t helping the image of the sport but, much more importantly, it was preventing people being able to attend to their man, who was now struggling.
Only one doctor was around to try and aid the stricken boxer. The chaos that surrounded the evening clouded his thinking. With Watson sinking into unconsciousness, he was held up by friend and DJ Tim Westwood. The fight had officially finished at 10.54 p.m., and no expert medical attention had been given to the boxer in the five minutes after Roy Francis had waved his arms in the air to call the bout off. With no stretcher on the scene, the doctor placed a briefcase on the canvas and rested Watson’s head on it. There was still fighting outside the ring and it only started to ease when police, aided by Nigel Benn, calmed the situation. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough for Tibbs, Westwood and another friend of Watson, Kamal, to carry the boxer out of the stadium and into the tunnel. He was carried past his mother, who was assured her son was suffering from exhaustion. A series of lies were told to other loved ones to keep them calm. By now, blood was forming on the surface of Watson’s brain. Those who had been at ringside, who had watched what happened, knew the seriousness of the situation. This wasn’t a one-punch knockout where the stricken man comes round after a few minutes in the abyss. As Watson would say later about slipping away, all he knew was darkness.
There is no escaping the fact that boxing is dangerous. You may debate its purpose, how to achieve victory and the fact that many noted boxers have triumphed at the highest levels of the sport by putting a premium on defence while hitting their opponent cleanly but without fury. But there is no way around one aspect of it – it requires, as its purpose, for one man to hurt the other. Serious injury to boxers is a permanent risk. And when you see it, you don’t forget it. My night was in Sheffield, nine days before Christmas 2000. Local man Paul Ingle was defending his IBF featherweight title against Mbulelo Botile, a South African boxer who, on any given night, would have given Ingle a pretty hard fight. On this evening, he toyed with Ingle. The problem was that the champion had struggled with his weight making – the rumour had been that he’d lost a stone in the week before the fight.
After ten rounds, Ingle was a battered wreck. Sitting next to Claude Abrams, the then editor of Boxing News, I tried to work out with him how many rounds Ingle had won. I was much more generous to Ingle than Abrams. In the eleventh, Ingle was dropped. We all seemed to know that was it. There was no sense in Ingle being allowed to fight another round. He was weak, groggy and distressing to look at. But there he came, on legs as sturdy as blancmange, ready to take his final blows. Ingle had fought eleven hard rounds with Naseem Hamed, wore camouflage shorts and had a reputation for fitness. Then you remembered his record – he was always in hard fights. Those were the boxers you worried about. How many times can you take yourself to the brink?
Ingle was put out of his misery twenty seconds into that final round. Mercy. Except, he didn’t get up. For several minutes. He remained on the canvas until a stretcher took him away, his family distraught as he was carried past them. The bout was the chief support for another world title fight that night – Joe Calzaghe would defend his super middleweight title, the same one that Chris Eubank held, against Richie Woodhall. As the fighters approached the ring, I remembered promoter Frank Warren trying to muster a clap of sorts for these two warriors. He was obligated to do so, but it was impossible not to think he wanted to be anywhere else. His face ashen, his head no doubt full of weariness, knowing he’d have to debate the sport and its morals the following day. I wrote for the BBC website that during the Calzaghe–Woodhall bout ‘news filtered back from former British champion Kevin Lueshing that everyone feared – Ingle had suffered a blood clot on the brain’. Most at ringside had seen it before – the dates and names change but the fear, the worry, the dread doesn’t change. Trainers liken their boxers to sons. They know their personal life, their niggles, their personal worries. And writers aren’t so different. ‘We’re not supposed to get attached to them,’ Abrams told me once.
More than a decade later, Ingle has made a recovery. Not a full one. But he is alive.
The best medical minds talk about patients who have suffered severe brain trauma needing to be treated within the ‘golden hour’ after suffering the injury. Treatment during that period offers the victim the best chance of survival and then a full recovery. Key during that first hour is that he is offered oxygen support. The fight had ended at 10.54 p.m. and Watson did not get to a hospital until 11.22 p.m. It was only then that he was provided with oxygen support, without which he would have died. The problem for Watson was that the hospital, the North Middlesex in Edmonton, did not have the facilities to perform the operations he’d need on his brain. At 11.55 p.m., the boxer was put back into an ambulance and sent to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in central London.
A scan at the North Middlesex had confirmed that Watson had a blood clot on his brain which was denying his body sufficient oxygen and was also growing at an alarming rate. There was no time to waste. The pupils in his eyes had dilated and at around 1 a.m., more than two hours after the fight had been stopped, he was taken into the operating theatre for a procedure to reduce the increasing pressure around his brain caused by the blood clot, which was now the size of a saucer. He’d be operated on for over ninety minutes, a procedure which involved a section of the skull covering his brain being temporarily removed to give access to the clot. For such an operation, two surgeons, two anaesthetists and two nurses were involved, and despite the serious and complicated nature of the operation, no one doubted that the boxer would require further such treatment if he was to survive.
By now this was no longer just a boxing story and Fleet Street had descended on Barts aware that Watson had begun his second fight in twenty-four hours. At around quarter past six that Sunday morning, consultant neurologist Peter Hamlyn spoke to journalists about Watson’s condition. If many expected him to confirm that the boxer had lost his life, the news they received was indeed of a funereal nature. The word critical was used – and Hamlyn also admitted that he could make no definitive statement about the likely direction of Watson’s responses to treatment.
In the following twelve hours, there would be more cause for concern. The pressure inside Watson’s skull increased again and another operation was required. This time, after the excess fluid was drained from Watson’s cranium, Hamlyn chose not to replace the temporarily removed piece of skull, so that in the event of further procedure be required he’d be able to operate more quickly. It was clear that Watson’s condition would need to be carefully observed for some time. Hamlyn was also aware that even if Watson did make it out of intensive care, his quality of life would be questionable. Even so, there was no reason, as yet, to switch off the ventilator that was keeping him alive.
Watson’s recovery would be a long journey and it began with the smallest of incremental steps. He was, twenty-four hours after the fight, in a coma, watched by nurses, doctors and family. His mother, who had gone through a similar agonising procedure with her other son, Jeffrey, some twenty-five years earlier, remained vigilant. Faith had played a big part in Michael Watson’s life, although he would later admit that it hadn’t always done so in his formative years. Now, that faith was paramount to his recovery; his mother’s prayers then, in the months and years to come, would give him enormous strength. The serious nature of Watson’s injury would be summed up by Peter Hamlyn years later: ‘He was iller and more severely affected than any other person I’ve ever encountered. He was closer to being dead than anyone I’ve seen.’
Outside the recovery room, the merits of boxing were being questioned. Even without round the clock news coverage, debate raged far and wide as to whether civilised society should allow such an apparently barbaric sport as boxing to continue to flourish. Respected figures like Frank Warren and Mickey Duff were advising on safety measures such as regular doctors’ checks during a fight as well as a change to the ropes around the ring that had almost certainly caused the whiplash suffered by Watson. But neither man could come up with a coherent argument about how to change the basic nature of boxing – to prevent it being the pain game. As Harry Mullan wrote in the Sunday Times:
‘Sometimes, there is no easy explanation with which to salve our consciences, only the bleak fact that a man died because he was a boxer. Such a case was the death in 1986 of the Scottish welterweight champion Steve Watt, an apparently fit and well-trained boxer at the peak of his prowess. The post-mortem showed that Watt went into the ring that night with his brain already severely damaged from the repetitive, percussive damage caused by a busy and competitive career, first as an amateur international and then as a highly-ranked contender for the British title.’
Deliberately or otherwise, the latter part of that quote hinted at the punishment Watson had taken in his fight with Mike McCallum. Had that beating left his body and senses more vulnerable? There was no way of knowing. Regardless, those who had worked with him were struggling to deal with their own consciences.
‘I think there are times when any sane person asks himself “what are we doing in this business?” and that was a very good time to ask that question,’ said Barry Hearn. ‘Going to see him in hospital was not easy, because you do feel partly responsible, there’s no doubt about it. If I hadn’t put them both in the ring, it wouldn’t have happened.’ Hearn was also the target of criticism from the sections of the press for allowing the ‘hate’ angle to become such a pivotal part of the promotion. The effect on Hearn personally was bigger than he would admit – those around him recognised the extreme stress he was under and how he took most of the criticism on his own shoulders, rather than allow others at Matchroom to handle the fallout. But Hearn never did get out of the sport and, despite going to see Watson regularly for several weeks in the immediate aftermath of the fight, his visits dried up as he sensed that he was being held responsible for Watson’s predicament.
Another man struggling to come to terms with everything was Jimmy Tibbs. Boxing had been his life since the 1960s and, while there had been elements of his life that, at best, could be described as unsavoury, he had been a dedicated Christian for over a year, despite the doubts of those closest to him. ‘How long is this going to last?’ his wife asked her husband when he informed her of his conversion. It had been his decision to send Watson out for that twelfth round. Whether or not it would have made any difference if he’d retired the boxer when he walked back to the corner after taking that uppercut was something he’d never know. More than likely, the damage had been done when Watson’s head hit the ropes. When Tibbs reached the hospital and saw Watson’s condition, Peter Hamlyn assured him that it was not his fault. He has kept those words in his head ever since, but the doubts continue.
‘I was absolutely distraught. No one realised how seriously injured he was until we got back to St Bartholomew’s. I was ready to call it a day. I thought … Seeing that happen to a young man like that,’ Tibbs told me. Before he got the chance to hang up his spit bucket, Tibbs was visited by friends he had made through his newfound faith. They convinced him to carry on, saying that he could do more for their shared faith by training young boxers. Eventually, he would return full time and his future would be linked with Chris Eubank.
But as he contemplated his future he was not to know what lay ahead for the boxer he had trained to within a second of victory, only to see glory replaced by defeat, despair and then tragedy. Tibbs, along with the rest of the sport, held his breath as Watson clung on in a way he never did in the ring. He, along with the boxer’s family and friends, had been told that even if Watson did come out of the coma there would be a heavy price to pay. It was likely that he would be in a vegetative state for much of his life and would require constant help to feed himself, dress himself as well as go to the bathroom. As it was, he already required a tracheotomy to enable him to breathe. How, then, would boxing defend itself? As it was, the sport’s most famous, most active practitioner, Mike Tyson, had been charged with the rape of a beauty pageant contestant in Indianapolis. A savage business for savages, cried the many who had always believed the sport had no place in a civilised society. The abolition of the sport would be discussed in parliament, although the chances of any binding resolution were minimal given that there would be a general election the following year. What no one could ask with legitimate prior knowledge was whether Watson would be one of the voices calling for the sport to be cast adrift. Those who knew him well would probably assume that he’d never even thought about it. But as someone who had campaigned for greater control over his career, Watson would no doubt have some thoughts as to the rights boxers had when they were in the ring. After all, the medical attention afforded to him that night came after a delay and there was a link between his current plight and the speed at which he could be treated given the failure to arrange for medical professionals to be on site.
Rod Douglas had suffered the same injury on the same side of his brain when he lost to Herol Graham in 1989 yet he had left hospital within days of his injury, the speed and success of the surgery allowing him to lead a normal life, even if he would never fight again. At the time, John Morris was head of the British Boxing Board of Control, the body responsible for providing the medical supervision for the fight. He would say a year later of the Board’s evaluation of their performance that evening and their subsequent action: ‘We made very few changes. However, we did sharpen up the reaction time. My own feeling, after more than forty years’ involvement in boxing, is that the safety and welfare of boxers is the first consideration. If it isn’t, we’re in trouble. Boxing cannot afford mistakes.’
One of those mistakes meant that one of the fighters they were looking out for was battling for his life. A month after the bout, Watson began to show signs of recovery, although he could neither open his eyes nor speak, the occasional blink or slightest of movements on his right side being the only movements that enabled doctors to judge his progress. By November, two months after the fight, he was moved out of the ICU unit where he been taken after surgery and into a recovery ward. The signs were encouraging.
At White Hart Lane that September night, Chris Eubank sat in his dressing room after the fight in silence. It wasn’t just the dark clouds that rendered him monosyllabic. The extent of the beating he had taken meant he could not stand up. Barry Hearn insisted he stay in a wheelchair until after he had himself been to hospital. There were bruises consistent with the savagery inflicted on his body, but Eubank would heal. Sort of.
The Eubank ride had been fun, that was unquestionable. He was twenty-five years old and the WBO super middleweight champion. His presence and personality had helped galvanise boxing. Plenty of people could stomach his pontificating as long as the fans kept turning up. And Eubank had enjoyed most of the journey, the successes as well as the setbacks, regarding those as character-building. Away from the ring, away from the cameras, his personality was vibrant, his company engaging. But now, he had been rendered as silent as Watson was immobile.
For someone who had spent so much time explaining his dislike of the profession from which he earned his living, the plight of Michael Watson was the nightmare Eubank knew he might one day have to endure. Other fighters had been involved in similar situations. Barry McGuigan fought a Nigerian boxer called Young Ali during the early stages of his career. Ali was knocked out in six rounds and, like Watson, fell into a coma. He remained in it for five months before hearing the final bell.
‘I still see the wee man in my dreams. Both of our wives were pregnant. He never knew it, but he had a son, too,’ said McGuigan. ‘It had a dramatic effect on me. I really didn’t want to fight on but I did, and in my next fight I honestly pulled my punches. I had the guy in trouble and he was expecting me to finish him off but instead I hesitated and he nearly took my head off with a left hook. I realised I had to get the job done but I cried in the dressing room afterwards.’
But McGuigan learned to fight hard. Hard enough to win a world title and defend it. Eubank was already a world champion – what could the sport offer him that he did not already have? And having spent most of the past year being one of the most reviled men in British sport, he knew that, while there would be a degree of sympathy for him, it would be limited for a man who had severely injured a rival while also picking up a significant sum of money. His torment would continue as, post-fight, the tabloids sought to stoke up the animosity between the two men, claiming that Watson didn’t want Eubank to see him. It seemed an unlikely claim, given how hard even the most basic form of communication was for Watson. There were people who remember the stricken boxer refusing to see Eubank, blinking his eyes twice to signify that he was an unwelcome visitor. The effect on Eubank was unquestionable. In the face of the biggest physical beating of his career, Eubank had none the less found a way to win. And now he was being asked to hold his head high while those in the cheap seats threw stones at him. What to do next? Eubank would find a way to visit Watson shortly after the fight. He saw the extent of his injuries. And he left contemplating retirement. Others noticed a change in his behaviour. In the end, Eubank would decide to carry on, but it was not a decision taken lightly. And it might not have been the best one.
‘It finished Eubank as a fighter. He never, ever gambled to try and stop someone again in his whole career. And not because he was worried about hurting someone. He was worried about someone doing it to him,’ said Barry Hearn.
If one former foe found his connection with Watson fraught with emotional anxiety and resentment, another showed there was a side to him that few knew existed. Nigel Benn had been at ringside that night, cheering on the first man to beat him, not just because of his dislike for Eubank but also because of his admiration for Watson.
‘I visited him in hospital a few days later and tried to talk to him and comfort his girlfriend. It hurt to see him in that condition,’ Benn wrote in his autobiography. Their friendship would not end there. ‘The Dark Destroyer’ would keep in contact during the difficult days of recovery, through to the brighter days.
‘Nigel is one of the most caring men in the world,’ said Watson’s mother, Joan. ‘His warmth and generosity to Michael have been a tremendous help. He’s not boasted about it. He just gets on with it – and Michael loves him.’ A few years after the fight, Watson’s house was burgled. Benn replaced the stolen TV, video and hi-fi and tried to prevent the press from finding out, although they eventually did, from Watson’s mother.
‘When you see Michael and Nigel together you can understand what mutual respect and love is all about. No matter how busy Nigel is he’s always managed to find time to help Michael. If other people haven’t seen how warm and loving a man Nigel can be, then I’m sorry,’ continued Joan Watson.
Compassion notwithstanding, Benn wasn’t dissuaded from the rigours and dangers of a ring career after watching his friend suffer such serious injuries. In fact, watching Watson that night had galvanised him. He had observed the movements of his two conquerors and had been seriously impressed by the way Watson had approached his task that night. The intensity of his attacks and improved fitness had taken him so close to victory. It was clearly the way to beat Eubank, as long as you were prepared for those counterattacks that would almost certainly come at the end of the bout. Benn would change trainers again. Brian Lynch, Vic Andretti and Graham Moughton had all brought him to a certain point, but Jimmy Tibbs would take him to the level he wanted to go to.