No Middle Ground

by Sanjeev Shetty

  Round six was another going Eubank’s way until Benn dug a body punch below the belt. Referee Steele gave the challenger a minute to catch his breath – and he would spend the remainder of the round being chased around the ring by an energised Benn, who, advised by Andretti, concentrated on the body attack. As the bell rang, it was still not obvious who held the destiny of victory or defeat in their fists. Benn’s face looked worse, but the body language from Eubank wasn’t great. He may have loathed the sport, but he knew the history of great champions digging deep, even in situations where they couldn’t win. Muhammad Ali going twelve hard rounds against Ken Norton, at least half of them with a broken jaw, knowing he’d lose the decision, or Sugar Ray Leonard, with one eye closed, stopping Thomas Hearns in the fourteenth round of a contest which had seen the latter dominate for large portions. Although never in their class, Eubank was, like Ali and Leonard, at times regarded as a maverick, someone who danced to his own tune, rather than the one played at every gym, arena or small hall. What critics of Ali and Leonard would always agree on was the toughness of both men and their willingness to take their bodies over the edge in search of victory. Neither ever sought a way out when things were too tough.

  The seventh would be another test, for both men. The first minute showcased Benn’s murderous body attack. This wasn’t mindless aggression, but a strategy calculated to expose Eubank’s one real weakness. He could take punches to the head without too much inconvenience, but he’d attempt to evacuate the area when the blows connected further south. All the time, though, he was thinking about how to hit back. A right-left combination stunned Benn, who with eye closed, suddenly looked beaten. But the doubts about Benn’s courage, based entirely on his performance against Watson, had been erased. Maybe it had been too easy to admit defeat to Watson, a man Benn liked and respected. As each round passed against Eubank, with Benn’s face looking more and more contorted, you began to realise that quitting against this man was anathema to the champion. While Eubank needed the victory and title as a guarantee that his standard of living would improve, Benn saw victory here as proof of his reputation, most of which he had recovered after beating DeWitt and Barkley.

  ‘People have been asking questions of Benn’s chin but I think he’s answered a few of them tonight,’ said McDonnell in the commentary box at the end of the seventh, as replays showed just how hard he had been hit in the seventh by Eubank’s left-right combination. The next round would be Benn’s best – he boxed with Eubank, before chasing him round the ring and knocking him to the floor with an overhand right. The authenticity of the fall was instantly challenged by Eubank, who pleaded with referee Steele that he had slipped. That he was able to make such a coherent argument was proof that he probably had slipped. But the knockdown was also proof that, in choosing to train himself, his footwork had suffered and was naturally poor. When the punch hit the top of his head, his legs were as far apart as they could be without being in the splits position. Knockdowns are awarded when a punch’s impact sends a man to the floor, and this was just such an occasion. At the end of the round, Benn decided to imitate Eubank’s strut, which simply spurred the challenger on to do what only he could do. It drew a roar from the crowd, but others, around the world, were less impressed. ‘A lousy fight – two guys posing,’ were the words of American boxing magazine KO.

  By the end of the eighth round, Benn led, by virtue of that knockdown, by a point on two of the judges’ scorecards and trailed by a point on the other. With a quarter of the fight left, the challenger needed to stop his opponent, or win at least three of the four remaining rounds.

  ‘This is the sort of fight that makes you an old man,’ said McGuigan midway through the ninth round. Defence, which had been, for the most part, neglected throughout, was now dismissed entirely. That suited Eubank, who was a step quicker than the champion, landing jabs at will. Benn’s eye was looking more vulnerable than ever and on more than one occasion the champion seemed uncertain of his balance, as if fatigue had finally set in. Eubank knew it – he set Benn up with a series of jabs, before landing a right hand that left the champion defenceless. On previous occasions, when Eubank had hurt Benn, he hadn’t followed up with relentless attacks. This time he did. There were less than thirty seconds remaining of the round and Benn didn’t even have the strength to hold Eubank in a clinch. With ten seconds to go, Eubank threw a straight right hand which not only hurt Benn, but also forced him into a neutral corner. With Steele looking on closely, Eubank threw a flurry of punches, which Benn absorbed, but for the first time that night didn’t retaliate. In truth, both men were at the point of exhaustion, but having taken Benn’s best and survived, and having had a plan to take the champion into the later rounds and then administer the final blows, Eubank was undeniably in control. What he needed now was for the referee to decide that Benn was no longer able to continue.

  Richard Steele was regarded as the most high-profile and competent referee in the sport at the time, but his reputation had been called into question earlier that year when he refereed an amazing world junior welterweight unification title fight between Julio César Chávez and Meldrick Taylor. Taylor had dominated the feared Mexican and needed only to survive the last round to claim a points victory. With sixteen seconds remaining, Taylor was floored. Like Benn, Taylor’s face was a mess, even though he had had the better of much of the fight. After giving Taylor a mandatory eight count, Steele looked into the fighter’s eyes and decided, with just five seconds remaining on the clock, to stop the fight. In the opinion of most, Chávez would not have had time to get across the ring and land another punch but Steele defended himself by saying his job was only to safeguard a boxer’s future and enable him to fight another day. With Benn apparently defenceless against Eubank, Steele stopped this fight with just two seconds remaining of the ninth. Benn complained, but mostly out of despair. He knew his race was run that night.

  Eubank turned away and sank to his knees, congratulated within seconds by Davies. In time, Eubank would say this was his greatest night as a professional fighter, but he had to pay a terrible price. His ribs were bruised, his left eye was also swollen. ‘Nigel smashed him around … Chris urinated blood for days afterwards,’ said Hearn. Even so, Eubank, as he had during the fight, still had his wits about him. He remembered he had promised himself that, having answered all the questions about his courage and fortitude, if he did win the title he would himself ask one question.

  ‘Karron, can we get married now?’ Eubank said into the camera as he was being interviewed by Gary Newbon. Hearn had encouraged the boxer to take the plunge. Eubank could not hear the word yes coming from his future wife, who wasn’t at ringside. The new champion was fulsome in his praise of Benn, saying he’d extended him in ways he didn’t think possible as well as lauding his ability to take a punch. Usually ebullient when faced with a Newbon interrogation, Eubank was short of words, admitting he was in too much pain. That would be softened by the knowledge that he had earned every penny of his £100,000 purse and could look forward to earning more.

  ‘The show made no money,’ said Hearn. ‘But we walked away with a clean title and that’s what the investment was all about. It was an amazing evening.’ Others who had seen more top-quality action than Hearn were even more effusive in their praise. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen two men with a more intense will to win. How much should you pay a man to bare his soul? Because that is what Benn and Eubank did, in the most thrilling contest I have ever watched in a British ring,’ said Harry Mullan.

  More than twenty years on, there are still revisionist theories about the fight. On an edition of Sky Sports’ excellent Ringside programme, Eubank stated that he beat Benn that night because the loser came in angry. I prefer Benn’s rationale. ‘It was his night. He was the better man.’ Eubank had needed to be. As Hearn admits, it was the biggest and most important night for his boxing promotion. He had invested heavily in Eubank and, with no options for a rematch if his man lost, there was every cha
nce that both of them would have been in the wilderness. In victory, Eubank claimed he had achieved ‘exoneration’. Maybe, but he also now had the freedom to call the shots, to dictate to those who he felt made the sport ‘a mug’s game’. Promoters may be the most consistently powerful force in the sport, but fighters, especially ones with as forceful and unique a personality as Eubank, could also hold sway. As champion, Eubank could decide who he would fight and when. And on his list of future opponents was Watson, whose victory over Christie had been destructive enough to make him a viable contender. If Eubank and Watson were on the up, then Benn had to climb the mountain again. Some doubted whether he could. ‘Today’s hero is tomorrow’s opponent,’ said Harry Mullan, insinuating that Benn’s world title aspirations were now at an end. Certainly, the task of rebuilding his reputation would be harder than it was after the loss to Watson. That defeat was put down to overconfidence; this latest defeat seemed to represent a truer reflection of Benn’s abilities, in that when the opponents didn’t go down after the first punch, he did not possess enough tools to find victory. Not yet, anyway.

  Sifting through the millions of words said about the fight, most of them Eubank’s, it became apparent that the Brighton man lived the fight, then and now, as some kind of theatrical experiment, oblivious to the stakes involved, probably because he won. He had not spent the whole of the fight looking like the winner. A tongue nearly sliced in half, a face bruised and swollen, with pain etched on his features every time Benn dug a punch into his stomach: he looked like a winner when, after wincing, he carried on. That was something that most of Benn’s opponents did not do. A much more accurate reflection of Eubank’s state of mind and of the warrior within came when he spoke to Jonathan Rendall afterwards about the moment he had first laid eyes on Benn, when the pair locked eyes during referee Steele’s final instructions: ‘In the ring I looked at him and saw a relentless savage. But I also saw a man with a slight doubt in his mind. I saw that when he looked into my eyes he needed reassurance. I thought: “It’s too late for that, mate. You’re mine.”’

  That’s how fighters operate. They look for weakness, perceived or not. They smell it and then try and seize it on the night. Eubank was on the point of exhaustion for most of the night but that sign of weakness at the start was what kept him going, what made the pain seem worth it. And the brutality of what he did had not escaped him: ‘In the ninth I hit him with a right hand to the side of the jaw and his legs went. He went back and I knew there was no power left. I measured him and whacked him. He came off the ropes but I’d broken his spirit. No more resilience left. Right hand, straight left, right uppercut, left hook … the referee steps in.’

  It’s why Eubank is loved and loathed in equal measure. Because he thinks like a fighter. But he’d like you to believe that he doesn’t.

  Chris Eubank had always wondered why there wasn’t a photograph of him on the walls of the Matchroom offices in Brentwood. He was told it was because he wasn’t a world champion. A few weeks after he beat Benn, Eubank walked back into that Essex office and found a suitable place to hang his picture.

  Nigel Benn cried after he lost to Watson, but the defeat to Eubank evoked even more emotion. He immediately announced his retirement and apologised to his fans in the arena. The retirement wouldn’t last long, but, even now, the hurt remains. ‘He beat me fair and square,’ he told me. ‘But losing to someone like him was just awful … it was hard to swallow, to tell you the truth. Really, really hard.’

  There was a moment while we talked about the fight when Benn misunderstood me. He felt that I insinuated he had been knocked down in the fight. (I didn’t think I had, but arguing my point didn’t seem wise.) ‘Did I get knocked down? Did I get knocked down? I’ve got to make sure you get that right, because I know I didn’t get knocked down! I remember that – I didn’t go down. Change that!’

  Yes, of course the hate was real then. It’s real now. Benn would spend the next three years chasing a rematch that he felt would offer one more chance for redemption. He’d tell me that, years after they’d both retired, Eubank approached him about doing an exhibition, in order to make some easy money. ‘Chris, I can’t do exhibitions with you,’ he had replied.

  Nigel Benn’s reign as world champion had lasted 203 days, but a much longer stay of office came to an end later that month when Margaret Thatcher resigned as prime minister after eleven years, the longest tenure of a British premier in the twentieth century. Both fighter and politician had reputations as bullies. And both, it seemed, were finally undone by words. While Eubank had prodded away at Benn with little digs about his manner and how he’d probably have been a bouncer with several illegitimate children but for boxing, so Margaret Thatcher was finally undermined by the words of one of her most loyal servants, Geoffrey Howe, who turned on her just days before her resignation. The argument between the pair had been about Europe and Britain’s involvement, or lack of it, in the setting up of a European Council. Thatcher preferred to have no part of the European currency but it was her lack of conciliation, the ‘my way or the highway’ attitude that characterised so much of her premiership, which finally undid her. Howe himself was resigning from Thatcher’s cabinet and closed his speech by asking others ‘to consider their own responses to the tragic conflict of loyalties with which I have myself wrestled for perhaps too long’.

  Benn had a similar reputation – ‘the Dark Destroyer’ did not deal in shades of grey. Who knows if he could have beaten Eubank if he learned another way of fighting? He’d have to wait to find out. As the Conservative party moved to replace Thatcher with John Major, an altogether milder and more democratic figure, so boxing in Britain had a new star and perhaps a new direction. But like Major, whose first eighteen months in office would provide some of the most testing times for any prime minister, including sending troops to the Gulf War, so would Eubank find remaining at the head of his little kingdom more difficult than the ascent. There would be tragedy and self-doubt aplenty.

  Act III

  Scene I

  ‘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 c
hat 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.