by Nigel Benn
Who elected the people on the board? I’d like to know that and so would many others. We certainly didn’t and we’re the fighters, the men who make the money which gives the board members their status. We help to pay for them and have no say about their jobs. I felt they didn’t do enough for Michael Watson. The BBBC is a self-governing body and I disagree with their rules. They’re quick to take their percentage and slow to support you. We’d like to see more black guys there. I don’t have confidence in some of the people on the board. There are a few who are all right, but there are others who shouldn’t be in that position.
I don’t think the public knows the powers they have. They can stop you fighting, they can demand payment from you and they can make you fight. It stinks to high heaven. I don’t want to have anything to do with them any more. In my experience, they’ve shown more interest in the managers than in the boxers. It is people like me, successful boxers, who help to give them a good lifestyle and all I’ve had is hassle. It’s a club for the boys.
They never liked Ambrose but, even so, he helped put British boxers on the map, which made them a lot more money. When I criticised them publicly for not granting Ambrose a manager’s licence, they glibly responded that he hadn’t applied, but nobody had the slightest doubt that, had Ambrose applied, he would unquestionably have been turned down.
In June, shortly before I returned to Miami to train for my contest with Barkley, I was invited to a lunch thrown in my honour at the Tower of London by my old regimental commanding officer, Colonel Patrick Shervington. Captain John O’Grady, my old team coach, was also there and I was deeply touched by their gesture.
Back in Miami, my dietitian, Randy Aaron, made me cut out red meat, butter and salt and encouraged turkey, pasta, fish and vegetable juices. My hand had healed and I was feeling super-fit again, ready to take on the world. Iran ‘The Blade’ Barkley was a serious opponent. He was a veteran who had won and lost the WBC title with Thomas Hearns and Roberto Duran. He was nicknamed ‘The Blade’ because he was from the Bronx in New York, the toughest neighbourhood in town, where gang members boasted about the people they had carved up and murdered. He was a junior member of the ‘Black Spades’ street gang. Barkley’s manager, John Reetz, said if he stopped Iran fighting, the boxer would probably end up dead in a south Bronx gutter with a bullet through his head, or in jail.
He’d had a tough career, and the boxing journalist Harry Mullan put it in a nutshell:
‘Barkley became the WBC champion with the luckiest punch of the year in 1988 when, bleeding from horrific slashes over both eyes and on the verge of a knockout defeat, he found one almighty right hand to flatten Hearns. But that was also the night his luck ran out. He needed around 70 stitches to repair his ravaged eyebrows, and when the wounds healed he set about spending the million dollars he had earned … Benn has a powerful incentive to win impressively, as promoter Bob Arum plans to match him in a seven-figure pay-night with one of the division’s major names like Duran, Nunn or even Sugar Ray Leonard. Beating Barkley will open the door, and should remove any lingering doubts that he is a middleweight of genuine world-class calibre. But it won’t be easy, and the right hand which wrecked Thomas Hearns could well do the same to the explosive but sometimes vulnerable Dark Destroyer.’
Two days before my fight, Ambrose announced that the BBBC had sent him a letter saying that, as I had not paid the board the £2,500 fee for the De Witt fight, it would not give permission for me to fight Barkley. However, they would also expect another £7,300 from my purse of $400,000 for the Barkley fight. God knows if this story was true, but at least it was what Ambrose told me. I told them that they would not get a penny from me because of their failure to recognise the title fights and also for having cost me over £1 million in refusing to let me fight Barkley and Roberto Duran in Britain.
People in Britain urged me to stay away from Iran Barkley. I had thought long and hard about our fight and decided it was a do or die situation. I was in two minds when I saw him. He was built like a brick shithouse. He was so ugly, tears wouldn’t run down his face. Giving him the eye, however, I felt his bottle had gone and I would be the winner.
You can tell a man’s fear from his eyes. I ran straight at him and my first punch separated his brain from his body. He looked like jelly. He was all over the place, wobbling and reeling. I was punching him, trying to nut him, elbow him, rough him up in every way possible. I beat the granny out of him, knocked him down, boom, up he got, boom, knocked him down again. I just gave it to him, left, right, left. I punched him until he went down on all fours and then I dug him one. Afterwards, I pole-axed him. Any minute now, I thought, we’re going to have a riot. Americans can dish it out but they can’t handle it when they’re on the receiving end. I was ready to give it to him without a referee and without gloves.
I got Barkley on a technical knockout — he went down three times in the first round. It was a hell-for-leather fight, but I knew I had it in the bag from the weigh-in. But the scenes at the post-fight conference were a joke. When you’re in the middle of a fight, you’re all hyped up, the adrenalin’s flowing. I don’t remember doing it, but I saw on the TV afterwards that I’d hit him once when he was down. Barkley’s camp made a right fuss, but they were just crying over spilt milk. The referee was one of the most experienced officials in the world, and even he said, ‘It’s the momentum, the eagerness. That happens sometimes in a fight.’
Barkley was going down from the beginning, anyway. What was important was that I had retained my WBO belt. On television afterwards, I ripped up my BBBC licence, saying, ‘The Board have made it very hard for me, but they still want to get paid by the WBO. If they won’t entertain me, then I won’t entertain them.’
Bob Arum was ecstatic with my win. ‘Nigel’s undoubtedly the most exciting fighter in the world today and the best English boxer ever to come to the States,’ he enthused. I returned triumphantly to London two days later on 20 August, asking to fight Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommy Hearns or Roberto Duran. My present to myself was a £90,000 Bentley. However, back in Britain, Chris Eubank, a man I really had no time for, was itching for a chance at my WBO middleweight title.
Barry Hearn, the promoter, claimed he was offering the highest purse ever to a British fighter and gave me a deadline to accept the Eubank challenge. Mendy was holding out for £1 million but I was keen to have a go at Eubank. Under the contract that was eventually signed, I received only £400,000, although the press reported that I received a million, and there was no option clause providing a re-match. Peter De Freitas told me that this is sometimes a standard clause and would have allowed me to have a second shot at Eubank within 90 days rather than waiting for three years, and that Mendy’s lack of experience as a manager was the reason for not having it.
I thought I would have Eubank. I hated him. I remember thinking at the time that he needed to come down a couple of pegs and go away to America and win the world title and get some respect. My hatred towards him was not hype. I genuinely loathed him.
Eubank, in a rare moment of modesty, declared himself to be ‘… a boxer, slugger, trickster, craftsman, a mover, skillster and a chess player. Critics claim I am over-confident, but ability gives you that feeling. They say I’m arrogant. I say I’m assertive.’ That may be acceptable but when he denigrated his own profession it wasn’t only me who was angry with him. Fighting fans all over Britain were incensed when he called it ‘a dirty business … barbaric, a mug’s game’. Eubank was from south London but had been brought up in the south Bronx, New York, since the age of 14. He said of me, ‘Benn is a fraud, there is nothing genuine about the man … he is not capable of teaching me any lessons …’
Boxing has been very good to me and I don’t like it when people knock the sport and say it’s a mug’s game and barbaric. When I first heard him say that, I thought the only mug was him, because boxing had made him a very wealthy man and given him a lifestyle he’d never have had. Before he began boxing, he was just like me,
a kid from the street. I would never knock boxing. We don’t need that kind of talk in the game. Boxing has already got a bad name after the Michael Watson incident and the last thing we need is more people putting it down.
You’ve got to stand very firm in boxing because it can be a very crooked game. You have to let people know that you are not going to be mugged and you won’t let anybody take liberties with you, which happens in boxing all the time.
Towards the end of September 1990, I accepted the offer to fight Eubank and made peace with the British Boxing Board of Control. The Eubank fight was to be staged at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham on 18 November. A lot of pre-fight ‘hate’ between us was generated in the press but in my case, as I have already said, it was 100 per cent genuine. The Times billed me as ‘… a wild animal in the ring, and we had rarely, if ever, seen anything like that in this country. He was the epitome of an all-out warrior bringing a rage and fury into the ring that one might only encounter in the United States. Only Mike Tyson and Marvin Hagler have exuded such menace.’
Eubank was no newcomer to insults. He may have seen the world through a rose-tinted monocle when he dressed in his ridiculous clothes, but the garbage that flowed from his mouth was closer to his real background.
Never a favourite of the BBBC, Mendy was making further trouble as the fight neared. He insisted on being in my corner, despite being banned by the board, and threatened to sue over the issue in the High Court. A lot of my money seemed to be spent on court battles. Mendy was later fined £2,000 for appearing in my corner before the fight. Earlier, he announced, ‘This is a dangerous sport made more dangerous by the board, who are a bunch of buffoons and don’t have a clue. They had said that under no circumstances will I be able to go into Benn’s corner. The only way I won’t be there is if I’m six feet under! It’s becoming more than boxing now — it’s a war between me and the board.’
The NEC was packed and our fight attracted the biggest celebrity turnout for a sporting event the country had seen. More than 150 stars turned up.
Losing my title to Eubank was gutting, but looking back he beat me fair and square, and I boxed well, too. I was practically blind in one eye for most of the match, and I pushed Eubank like he’d never been pushed before. I fought till I had nothing left to offer, and the ref called it a day after about three minutes of the ninth of twelve scheduled rounds.
Eubank became more respectful towards me after the fight but I was gutted. Chris had damaged my eye and broken my heart. I wanted a re-match as soon as possible. Eubank said of me, ‘He hit me in the guts, the mouth and on my head — man, it hurt. I didn’t know people had that kind of power. I had to keep asking the Lord to help me out on this one. That man hits mega, mega hard. He is one in a million — I didn’t know people could have that kind of power. He was strong enough to kill me. His power is savage and he extended me the way nobody else in life has done. For that, I love the man.’
The referee said of our fight, ‘I’ve refereed 79 world title fights and this was in the very top category. It was too bad one had to lose. They are both champions in my book, but I was doing my duty to stop it, so Benn can come back and win that title again. Benn was really gallant, but just could not see out of the left eye.’
I had two goals now. To beat Eubank and win another world title. But first I had to pick myself up again and shake off the disappointment of this fight. And so I turned to my family.
15
WEDDING NIGHT BLUES
After Eubank beat me, I thought there was no better way of shooting myself than getting married. Sharron was there for me when I went down to Watson and she was there for me again after Eubank. In spite of our somewhat unpredictable relationship, there was deep love. I asked her to marry me on my birthday, giving us two months to prepare.
We’d already been engaged for a couple of years without naming the day. I might have been in a zimmer frame by the time I’d got around to marriage had I not been encouraged to set a date. The engagement itself had caught her totally off-guard. I had asked her to become my fiancée at a New Year’s Eve party and slipped a huge diamond ring on her finger. Then I got down on one knee in front of my parents and proposed to her. She was so shocked that she spilled her drink but said yes. I would have laid her out if it had been otherwise! Not really, but then it was the third happiest day of my life. The other two were when our children were born.
For the first time in years, we had some space to ourselves. My next fight was some months away and I planned a romantic wedding in Las Vegas.
First stop on our journey into wedlock was Bell Harbor, Miami, to kit us out with some wicked outfits. I bought most of Sharron’s clothes. She and I have always had similar tastes in fashion. Her wedding dress was unbelievable. She looked like a princess. I had on a black number and she wore white. Her outfit cost about £6,000. It was really expensive and I feel like taking it back because she hasn’t worn it. I fell in love with the outfit and it made me love her even more. It was like an evening dress and she looked stunning in it. I had wanted a wedding in England but that would have cost £100,000 and involved too many people. We preferred a small ceremony.
Sharron’s brother Scottie, her sister Joanne, Ambrose Mendy, Bob Arum (my USA promoter) and his girlfriend and other American friends came to the wedding. I was really nervous and the night before our nuptials we slept apart. We had chosen the Little White Chapel where Joan Collins had got married and, afterwards, a reception at Caesar’s Palace Hotel where they had specially opened the roof for us. The wedding party stayed at the Alexis Hotel. Sharron and I had a beautiful suite with a Jacuzzi the size of a swimming pool, a massive double bed and huge bouquets of flowers in every room.
When she walked into the chapel to marry me, she looked stunning. I tried not to look at her but she kept her eyes on me. I nervously rubbed my hands together. The ceremony was beautiful. We exchanged vows and kissed tenderly.
Ambrose made a speech at the party at Caesar’s Palace but it was hard to follow. I thanked everybody for coming and then it was time to cut the cake and drink champagne. Sharron drank a little too much — in fact, so much that she became steadily more drunk and any romantic notions I entertained for our bridal suite went out of the window. She was out like a light. I sat up watching telly. I asked if a kiss might be out of question but felt there was a possibility she might throw up. I wished I’d brought a blow-up rubber doll; I might have got a better response from that than my bride. What a way to spend your wedding night!
The next day, the first of our married life, we started to argue and continued doing so all the way back to England. What a disappointment. I had placed romantic messages behind the bed and wanted our time there to be really special. I fantasised that it would be the happiest day of our lives. As we were leaving for the airport, we argued again and Sharron walked off, leaving the wedding cake and her bags. I had to go back and get them. Then we argued for the first four hours on the plane back home and, for a further eight hours, refused to speak to one another. So this was wedded bliss!
On our return, I had to get down to training for my fight against Robbie Sims at Bethnal Green on 3 April. If I lost this one I’d be washed up for good. Sims had never been stopped in an 11-year career and was the half-brother of my idol, Marvin Hagler.
Around this time, I was also becoming disillusioned with Mendy. We began drifting apart. And I started questioning the fact that I was doing all the hard work — fighting and training — and Ambrose was the one with the big house and swimming pool. This wasn’t quite right as far as I was concerned. Nevertheless, he was still making arrangements for the Sims fight which was originally planned for the NEC until death threats were made against me.
They were telephoned to Mendy’s offices and referred to my military connections with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, who advised me to take them seriously, particularly as I had been in Northern Ireland. I had always been conscious of this type of thing and made sure I was eve
n more careful regarding my movements and cars. At the end of the day, however, I had to accept that the IRA, if indeed it was them making the threats and not Ambrose trying to sell more tickets, would always get you if that’s what they really wanted. I had no personal quarrel with them.
Before fighting Sims, I had a ridiculous offer to fight Chris Eubank for £250,000 and rejected it out of hand. Eubank then rejected my demands for the purse to be split down the middle and said I had priced myself out of the market and that his next objective was a fight with Michael Watson.
On my return from training for six weeks in Miami, I felt a little nervous but was, nevertheless, confident that I would beat Sims. I would be more controlled in my next fight. Although Marvin was my hero, Sims bad-mouthed me before the fight. He called me a monster, a ‘junkyard dog’ who didn’t care about anyone else and said of himself, ‘I’ve never been stopped and I’ve never been dropped on the floor and I’ve not come all this way to take a fall for the first time.’ I’d heard it all before.
Robbie Sims was a very good fighter. He’d been around a long time and was a good warhorse. He was a southpaw and I was wary of fighting him. At the time I still had Vic Andreeti as my trainer but things were starting to change. Peter De Freitas was now working with me and it was vital I regained a strong position. My army discipline helped me focus my energies. After the Eubank fight, this was going straight back into the deep end. It would have been the end of my career if I’d lost. You can only drop so much. Sims was not a journeyman like you get in England.
