There is no escaping the fact that boxing is dangerous. You may debate its purpose, how to achieve victory and the fact that many noted boxers have triumphed at the highest levels of the sport by putting a premium on defence while hitting their opponent cleanly but without fury. But there is no way around one aspect of it – it requires, as its purpose, for one man to hurt the other. Serious injury to boxers is a permanent risk. And when you see it, you don’t forget it. My night was in Sheffield, nine days before Christmas 2000. Local man Paul Ingle was defending his IBF featherweight title against Mbulelo Botile, a South African boxer who, on any given night, would have given Ingle a pretty hard fight. On this evening, he toyed with Ingle. The problem was that the champion had struggled with his weight making – the rumour had been that he’d lost a stone in the week before the fight.
After ten rounds, Ingle was a battered wreck. Sitting next to Claude Abrams, the then editor of Boxing News, I tried to work out with him how many rounds Ingle had won. I was much more generous to Ingle than Abrams. In the eleventh, Ingle was dropped. We all seemed to know that was it. There was no sense in Ingle being allowed to fight another round. He was weak, groggy and distressing to look at. But there he came, on legs as sturdy as blancmange, ready to take his final blows. Ingle had fought eleven hard rounds with Naseem Hamed, wore camouflage shorts and had a reputation for fitness. Then you remembered his record – he was always in hard fights. Those were the boxers you worried about. How many times can you take yourself to the brink?
Ingle was put out of his misery twenty seconds into that final round. Mercy. Except, he didn’t get up. For several minutes. He remained on the canvas until a stretcher took him away, his family distraught as he was carried past them. The bout was the chief support for another world title fight that night – Joe Calzaghe would defend his super middleweight title, the same one that Chris Eubank held, against Richie Woodhall. As the fighters approached the ring, I remembered promoter Frank Warren trying to muster a clap of sorts for these two warriors. He was obligated to do so, but it was impossible not to think he wanted to be anywhere else. His face ashen, his head no doubt full of weariness, knowing he’d have to debate the sport and its morals the following day. I wrote for the BBC website that during the Calzaghe–Woodhall bout ‘news filtered back from former British champion Kevin Lueshing that everyone feared – Ingle had suffered a blood clot on the brain’. Most at ringside had seen it before – the dates and names change but the fear, the worry, the dread doesn’t change. Trainers liken their boxers to sons. They know their personal life, their niggles, their personal worries. And writers aren’t so different. ‘We’re not supposed to get attached to them,’ Abrams told me once.
More than a decade later, Ingle has made a recovery. Not a full one. But he is alive.
The best medical minds talk about patients who have suffered severe brain trauma needing to be treated within the ‘golden hour’ after suffering the injury. Treatment during that period offers the victim the best chance of survival and then a full recovery. Key during that first hour is that he is offered oxygen support. The fight had ended at 10.54 p.m. and Watson did not get to a hospital until 11.22 p.m. It was only then that he was provided with oxygen support, without which he would have died. The problem for Watson was that the hospital, the North Middlesex in Edmonton, did not have the facilities to perform the operations he’d need on his brain. At 11.55 p.m., the boxer was put back into an ambulance and sent to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in central London.
A scan at the North Middlesex had confirmed that Watson had a blood clot on his brain which was denying his body sufficient oxygen and was also growing at an alarming rate. There was no time to waste. The pupils in his eyes had dilated and at around 1 a.m., more than two hours after the fight had been stopped, he was taken into the operating theatre for a procedure to reduce the increasing pressure around his brain caused by the blood clot, which was now the size of a saucer. He’d be operated on for over ninety minutes, a procedure which involved a section of the skull covering his brain being temporarily removed to give access to the clot. For such an operation, two surgeons, two anaesthetists and two nurses were involved, and despite the serious and complicated nature of the operation, no one doubted that the boxer would require further such treatment if he was to survive.
By now this was no longer just a boxing story and Fleet Street had descended on Barts aware that Watson had begun his second fight in twenty-four hours. At around quarter past six that Sunday morning, consultant neurologist Peter Hamlyn spoke to journalists about Watson’s condition. If many expected him to confirm that the boxer had lost his life, the news they received was indeed of a funereal nature. The word critical was used – and Hamlyn also admitted that he could make no definitive statement about the likely direction of Watson’s responses to treatment.
In the following twelve hours, there would be more cause for concern. The pressure inside Watson’s skull increased again and another operation was required. This time, after the excess fluid was drained from Watson’s cranium, Hamlyn chose not to replace the temporarily removed piece of skull, so that in the event of further procedure be required he’d be able to operate more quickly. It was clear that Watson’s condition would need to be carefully observed for some time. Hamlyn was also aware that even if Watson did make it out of intensive care, his quality of life would be questionable. Even so, there was no reason, as yet, to switch off the ventilator that was keeping him alive.
Watson’s recovery would be a long journey and it began with the smallest of incremental steps. He was, twenty-four hours after the fight, in a coma, watched by nurses, doctors and family. His mother, who had gone through a similar agonising procedure with her other son, Jeffrey, some twenty-five years earlier, remained vigilant. Faith had played a big part in Michael Watson’s life, although he would later admit that it hadn’t always done so in his formative years. Now, that faith was paramount to his recovery; his mother’s prayers then, in the months and years to come, would give him enormous strength. The serious nature of Watson’s injury would be summed up by Peter Hamlyn years later: ‘He was iller and more severely affected than any other person I’ve ever encountered. He was closer to being dead than anyone I’ve seen.’
Outside the recovery room, the merits of boxing were being questioned. Even without round the clock news coverage, debate raged far and wide as to whether civilised society should allow such an apparently barbaric sport as boxing to continue to flourish. Respected figures like Frank Warren and Mickey Duff were advising on safety measures such as regular doctors’ checks during a fight as well as a change to the ropes around the ring that had almost certainly caused the whiplash suffered by Watson. But neither man could come up with a coherent argument about how to change the basic nature of boxing – to prevent it being the pain game. As Harry Mullan wrote in the Sunday Times:
‘Sometimes, there is no easy explanation with which to salve our consciences, only the bleak fact that a man died because he was a boxer. Such a case was the death in 1986 of the Scottish welterweight champion Steve Watt, an apparently fit and well-trained boxer at the peak of his prowess. The post-mortem showed that Watt went into the ring that night with his brain already severely damaged from the repetitive, percussive damage caused by a busy and competitive career, first as an amateur international and then as a highly-ranked contender for the British title.’
Deliberately or otherwise, the latter part of that quote hinted at the punishment Watson had taken in his fight with Mike McCallum. Had that beating left his body and senses more vulnerable? There was no way of knowing. Regardless, those who had worked with him were struggling to deal with their own consciences.
‘I think there are times when any sane person asks himself “what are we doing in this business?” and that was a very good time to ask that question,’ said Barry Hearn. ‘Going to see him in hospital was not easy, because you do feel partly responsible, there’s no doubt about it. If I hadn’t put them both
in the ring, it wouldn’t have happened.’ Hearn was also the target of criticism from the sections of the press for allowing the ‘hate’ angle to become such a pivotal part of the promotion. The effect on Hearn personally was bigger than he would admit – those around him recognised the extreme stress he was under and how he took most of the criticism on his own shoulders, rather than allow others at Matchroom to handle the fallout. But Hearn never did get out of the sport and, despite going to see Watson regularly for several weeks in the immediate aftermath of the fight, his visits dried up as he sensed that he was being held responsible for Watson’s predicament.
Another man struggling to come to terms with everything was Jimmy Tibbs. Boxing had been his life since the 1960s and, while there had been elements of his life that, at best, could be described as unsavoury, he had been a dedicated Christian for over a year, despite the doubts of those closest to him. ‘How long is this going to last?’ his wife asked her husband when he informed her of his conversion. It had been his decision to send Watson out for that twelfth round. Whether or not it would have made any difference if he’d retired the boxer when he walked back to the corner after taking that uppercut was something he’d never know. More than likely, the damage had been done when Watson’s head hit the ropes. When Tibbs reached the hospital and saw Watson’s condition, Peter Hamlyn assured him that it was not his fault. He has kept those words in his head ever since, but the doubts continue.
‘I was absolutely distraught. No one realised how seriously injured he was until we got back to St Bartholomew’s. I was ready to call it a day. I thought … Seeing that happen to a young man like that,’ Tibbs told me. Before he got the chance to hang up his spit bucket, Tibbs was visited by friends he had made through his newfound faith. They convinced him to carry on, saying that he could do more for their shared faith by training young boxers. Eventually, he would return full time and his future would be linked with Chris Eubank.
But as he contemplated his future he was not to know what lay ahead for the boxer he had trained to within a second of victory, only to see glory replaced by defeat, despair and then tragedy. Tibbs, along with the rest of the sport, held his breath as Watson clung on in a way he never did in the ring. He, along with the boxer’s family and friends, had been told that even if Watson did come out of the coma there would be a heavy price to pay. It was likely that he would be in a vegetative state for much of his life and would require constant help to feed himself, dress himself as well as go to the bathroom. As it was, he already required a tracheotomy to enable him to breathe. How, then, would boxing defend itself? As it was, the sport’s most famous, most active practitioner, Mike Tyson, had been charged with the rape of a beauty pageant contestant in Indianapolis. A savage business for savages, cried the many who had always believed the sport had no place in a civilised society. The abolition of the sport would be discussed in parliament, although the chances of any binding resolution were minimal given that there would be a general election the following year. What no one could ask with legitimate prior knowledge was whether Watson would be one of the voices calling for the sport to be cast adrift. Those who knew him well would probably assume that he’d never even thought about it. But as someone who had campaigned for greater control over his career, Watson would no doubt have some thoughts as to the rights boxers had when they were in the ring. After all, the medical attention afforded to him that night came after a delay and there was a link between his current plight and the speed at which he could be treated given the failure to arrange for medical professionals to be on site.
Rod Douglas had suffered the same injury on the same side of his brain when he lost to Herol Graham in 1989 yet he had left hospital within days of his injury, the speed and success of the surgery allowing him to lead a normal life, even if he would never fight again. At the time, John Morris was head of the British Boxing Board of Control, the body responsible for providing the medical supervision for the fight. He would say a year later of the Board’s evaluation of their performance that evening and their subsequent action: ‘We made very few changes. However, we did sharpen up the reaction time. My own feeling, after more than forty years’ involvement in boxing, is that the safety and welfare of boxers is the first consideration. If it isn’t, we’re in trouble. Boxing cannot afford mistakes.’
One of those mistakes meant that one of the fighters they were looking out for was battling for his life. A month after the bout, Watson began to show signs of recovery, although he could neither open his eyes nor speak, the occasional blink or slightest of movements on his right side being the only movements that enabled doctors to judge his progress. By November, two months after the fight, he was moved out of the ICU unit where he been taken after surgery and into a recovery ward. The signs were encouraging.
At White Hart Lane that September night, Chris Eubank sat in his dressing room after the fight in silence. It wasn’t just the dark clouds that rendered him monosyllabic. The extent of the beating he had taken meant he could not stand up. Barry Hearn insisted he stay in a wheelchair until after he had himself been to hospital. There were bruises consistent with the savagery inflicted on his body, but Eubank would heal. Sort of.
The Eubank ride had been fun, that was unquestionable. He was twenty-five years old and the WBO super middleweight champion. His presence and personality had helped galvanise boxing. Plenty of people could stomach his pontificating as long as the fans kept turning up. And Eubank had enjoyed most of the journey, the successes as well as the setbacks, regarding those as character-building. Away from the ring, away from the cameras, his personality was vibrant, his company engaging. But now, he had been rendered as silent as Watson was immobile.
For someone who had spent so much time explaining his dislike of the profession from which he earned his living, the plight of Michael Watson was the nightmare Eubank knew he might one day have to endure. Other fighters had been involved in similar situations. Barry McGuigan fought a Nigerian boxer called Young Ali during the early stages of his career. Ali was knocked out in six rounds and, like Watson, fell into a coma. He remained in it for five months before hearing the final bell.
‘I still see the wee man in my dreams. Both of our wives were pregnant. He never knew it, but he had a son, too,’ said McGuigan. ‘It had a dramatic effect on me. I really didn’t want to fight on but I did, and in my next fight I honestly pulled my punches. I had the guy in trouble and he was expecting me to finish him off but instead I hesitated and he nearly took my head off with a left hook. I realised I had to get the job done but I cried in the dressing room afterwards.’
But McGuigan learned to fight hard. Hard enough to win a world title and defend it. Eubank was already a world champion – what could the sport offer him that he did not already have? And having spent most of the past year being one of the most reviled men in British sport, he knew that, while there would be a degree of sympathy for him, it would be limited for a man who had severely injured a rival while also picking up a significant sum of money. His torment would continue as, post-fight, the tabloids sought to stoke up the animosity between the two men, claiming that Watson didn’t want Eubank to see him. It seemed an unlikely claim, given how hard even the most basic form of communication was for Watson. There were people who remember the stricken boxer refusing to see Eubank, blinking his eyes twice to signify that he was an unwelcome visitor. The effect on Eubank was unquestionable. In the face of the biggest physical beating of his career, Eubank had none the less found a way to win. And now he was being asked to hold his head high while those in the cheap seats threw stones at him. What to do next? Eubank would find a way to visit Watson shortly after the fight. He saw the extent of his injuries. And he left contemplating retirement. Others noticed a change in his behaviour. In the end, Eubank would decide to carry on, but it was not a decision taken lightly. And it might not have been the best one.
‘It finished Eubank as a fighter. He never, ever gambled to try and stop someone again in his wh
ole career. And not because he was worried about hurting someone. He was worried about someone doing it to him,’ said Barry Hearn.
If one former foe found his connection with Watson fraught with emotional anxiety and resentment, another showed there was a side to him that few knew existed. Nigel Benn had been at ringside that night, cheering on the first man to beat him, not just because of his dislike for Eubank but also because of his admiration for Watson.
‘I visited him in hospital a few days later and tried to talk to him and comfort his girlfriend. It hurt to see him in that condition,’ Benn wrote in his autobiography. Their friendship would not end there. ‘The Dark Destroyer’ would keep in contact during the difficult days of recovery, through to the brighter days.
‘Nigel is one of the most caring men in the world,’ said Watson’s mother, Joan. ‘His warmth and generosity to Michael have been a tremendous help. He’s not boasted about it. He just gets on with it – and Michael loves him.’ A few years after the fight, Watson’s house was burgled. Benn replaced the stolen TV, video and hi-fi and tried to prevent the press from finding out, although they eventually did, from Watson’s mother.
‘When you see Michael and Nigel together you can understand what mutual respect and love is all about. No matter how busy Nigel is he’s always managed to find time to help Michael. If other people haven’t seen how warm and loving a man Nigel can be, then I’m sorry,’ continued Joan Watson.
Compassion notwithstanding, Benn wasn’t dissuaded from the rigours and dangers of a ring career after watching his friend suffer such serious injuries. In fact, watching Watson that night had galvanised him. He had observed the movements of his two conquerors and had been seriously impressed by the way Watson had approached his task that night. The intensity of his attacks and improved fitness had taken him so close to victory. It was clearly the way to beat Eubank, as long as you were prepared for those counterattacks that would almost certainly come at the end of the bout. Benn would change trainers again. Brian Lynch, Vic Andretti and Graham Moughton had all brought him to a certain point, but Jimmy Tibbs would take him to the level he wanted to go to.
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