No Middle Ground

by Sanjeev Shetty

  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 t
he 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.

  Scene IV

  ‘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 hi
s 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.