‘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 tak
ing 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.
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