No Middle Ground

by Sanjeev Shetty

  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 conti
nued 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.