No Middle Ground

by Sanjeev Shetty

  Act IV

  Experts on brain injuries and their effects on victims will tell you that no two cases are the same. Michael Watson may have suffered the same accident that befell Rod Douglas – a subdural haematoma – but the two men suffered their injuries in very different circumstances. Douglas had had a much milder ring career – fourteen fights with just the one punishing evening. Less than eighteen months before his fateful night with Chris Eubank, Michael Watson had suffered a horrendously prolonged attack at the hands of Mike McCallum. Frequent blows to his head would have led to some permanent bruising around the brain.

  The other problem for boxers is that frequent blows to the frontal lobe of the brain can have a far-reaching impact. They create a sense of fearlessness and also take away quite a few social phobias. An absence of fear might be considered no bad thing for a boxer, but it also probably means that he is the last man to know when his time is up.

  Anyone who saw Watson that night at White Hart Lane would have noticed that fearless streak. Now it would be tested to the extreme. His recovery from brain damage of the utmost seriousness would be on a number of levels. Firstly, in order to recover, Watson would have to work as hard as he had done in training for any of his fights. And even if he did put in the hours, there were no guarantees that he’d have a life worth living. Watson had gone from being three minutes and ten seconds away from fulfilling a lifelong dream to being left in a vegetative state. More than a few people I’d spoken to say that, prior to his accident, Watson had more than a trace of resentment in his DNA. The belief that his was a talent never fully appreciated. Would that affect his efforts to recover? Until Watson started to talk again, no one would know. In January 1992, he was transferred from Barts to Homerton Hospital in Hackney, recognition that there was a degree of progress in his recovery, although there was always a chance that he might succumb to his injuries at any time.

  At Homerton, Watson endured hours of repetitive physiotherapy in order to give him back some sense of flexibility. At this stage, he still had limited vision, did not speak and communicated mostly through the pointing of fingers or the raising of an eyebrow. That was encouraging, in the sense that he could understand everything happening around him. Now he’d be asked to find feeling in his limbs, through a series of physiological exercises which would arouse one of the few senses he still had. Pain.

  ‘The brain is like a fingerprint – it is made up of neural networks which are made up of the way we are and the way we think,’ says Alice Everett, who, as brain injury adviser at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, has seen dozens of patients attempt to recover from injuries similar to Watson’s. ‘Physio is just repetition – part of it is natural, building up strength and building up the pathways in your brain that have been damaged by the accident. To move your arm, you have to tell your arm to move, as well as train it to move. It’s a mental and physical thing.’

  All the while, Watson would go through the routine. Unable to dress himself, needing to sleep with a bedpan. His life before the bout had been one of seeking the one big fight that would change his life. Now, it was a steady stream of smaller bouts that required enormous physical and mental courage. To make matters harder the entire left side of his body was immobile and impervious to manipulation. Even so, he would continue to work. In fact, twelve months would pass before there was any real sign of improvement. Before that, he would speak his first word, calling out the name of one of the nurses who looked after him. In pain. Those who knew him best, who made sure they were by his side as often as possible, still shudder at the memory of what Watson put himself through during those long sessions at Homerton. They knew he was in pain, they could see it in his face, but he never complained. Those around him included friends from way back, not necessarily boxing people. The exception was Nigel Benn, who managed to sneak in, without any fanfare, and check on his friend and former rival.

  In May 1992, Watson was taken back to Barts for another operation, this one to close his brain. Shortly afterwards, he was visited by Muhammad Ali, who was facing his own battle with Parkinson’s. ‘Boy, you’re nearly as pretty as me,’ said the former three-time world heavyweight champion. Those present at the meeting recalled the effect Ali had on Watson. For the first time since his accident, he smiled. And then he raised his right fist in the air to touch Ali’s.

  It was, according to Watson, the only uplifting thing that happened to him that year, but it may have provided the motivation required to get through the hardest days. The physical impact for Watson of Ali’s visit could not be underestimated. ‘It’s hard to predict recoveries – but determination does mean a lot. If people are self-motivated then they can achieve so much. You have to push yourself,’ says Alice Everett.

  Religious faith also helps and now Watson leaned heavily on his god. ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me – Philippians 4:13. No verse in the Bible better exemplified Watson’s thinking. Again, there are those who believe faith can help, and certainly Watson’s friends who weren’t necessarily spiritual believe it did. But they do not underestimate the power of sheer bloody-mindedness either. Watson had both in abundance. And with every little battle he won he’d rely less on faith and more on himself.

  The year 1992 was as low and high as Michael Watson had ever been. He was still entirely reliant on others to bathe, feed and clothe him, but by the end of the year he was allowed to leave hospital and spend Christmas at home with his two daughters. Most patients in his condition can remember things like their first home, their primary school teacher and their friends and family – Watson remembered the street and the house where he lived in Chingford – but the minutiae of their day-to-day lives are much more difficult to recall. It is only with the help of those around him that he is now able to remember what was happening in his life. He knows now that for his first Christmas back home he was wheelchair-bound, confined to the house he owned and unable to spend too much time with anyone, so tired was he after performing the simplest of tasks. It was a struggle that he undertook in private. After the initial months following his accident, when details of his recovery were in every newspaper and on several television news bulletins, Watson had gone back to the obscurity he had dreaded so much when he fought. His close circle of friends kept a close eye on him, but the sport of boxing carried on as before.

  Watson’s goal was to go home for good. He would need permanent care, but the hope was that he would come to depend upon it less and less. Twenty-one months after the accident, during which time he was introduced to fans at Highbury, then the stadium of his beloved Arsenal, Michael Watson was finally allowed home. But rather than it be his crowning moment, he would find being in his house harder than hospital life. He still could not walk and talking was painfully slow and energy-sapping. There were financial issues as well. Watson had not made any money for two years and would need to have his house modified in order to allow him to live with convenience. A benefit, organised by Ambrose Mendy, raised around £86,000, which was spent entirely on equipment to help Watson to navigate around the house.

  Enough people would tell Watson that the British Boxing Board of Control had been negligent in their provision of adequate medical care on that night at White Hart Lane, but he would need to pursue his grievance with them before 21 September 1994, when the three-year limitation period would end. In an interview with the Sun, he said: ‘I now know every second counted. Just about everything that was done was wrong, and I will pay for the rest of my life.’ He was seeking a million pounds for damages. Crucially, the BBBofC would contest the action vigorously. A payout of such an amount would have bankrupted them.

  It had already been shown earlier in 1994 that nothing was going to change the inherently dangerous nature of the sport. Bradley Stone, a promising bantamweight, was knocked out in ten rounds by fellow British fighter Richie Wenton in a tough battle at Bethnal Green. Stone walked away from the ring in apparent control of all his faculties, telling people he would take
a year off from the sport. Three hours later, while talking with his girlfriend, he collapsed, fell into a coma and died two days later. Like Watson, who visited him in hospital, he had suffered a blood clot on the brain.

  As a result of what had happened to Watson, the BBBofC had made changes to the medical care available at ringside. At the start of 1995, Nigel Benn would fight American Gerald McClellan in London. The man from Illinois collapsed after being counted out in the tenth round. He was immediately attended to by one of four anesthetists present and taken to hospital as quickly as possible. But McClellan remains in a state of blindness and has little brain function.

  By now, Michael Watson’s recovery was visible to those who had been with him since before that fateful night. He could, with assistance, take a few steps, even though he remained wheelchair-bound. He would go to church and speak to hundreds of people. There were moments when the darkness could set in, but it was almost always short-lived. He was starting to go out more and more and the public reception he would receive almost always lifted his spirits. What would sap them was the torturously slow process of taking his fight for justice to the law courts. Incredibly, the case would not be heard in court until 1999, a full five years after the writ was served and eight years after the accident. The only benefit to the delay was that it had allowed Watson time to heal further, with regular memory exercises helping him to piece together what had happened to him on 21 September. He’d watched that fight countless times on video without being able to remember any of it. Now, slowly, it was coming back. Every aspect of what he had gone through was an ordeal and the therapy, which required him to focus the mental side of his body, was just as demanding. There was additional pressure. The BBBofC could not afford to lose so they hired the best: two leading barristers and a neurosurgeon were brought in to counter testimony from Peter Hamlyn. The Board’s team would also try to insist that Watson did not have the right to legal aid, but he argued successfully that he was incapable of earning a living. He had little money left as it was. Colin McMillan, the former world champion who had known Watson for years, was at the forefront of organising a benefit to raise much-needed funds for his friend. ‘We’d heard that Michael had been told he would never walk again. And when we had the benefit, Michael turned up and took a few steps.’

  The court case was set to commence on 8 June 1999 but shortly before it did so the BBBofC made an offer of £180,000 compensation. Watson asked for an additional £40,000 but the Board would not budge. So it went to trial, with the BBBofC arguing that Watson’s injuries would have been the same, regardless of the adequacy of medical provision on the night. Watson memorably gave testimony; he was wheeled into court and then walked twenty, very slow paces, to his seat. He had already filed a twenty-four-paragraph statement detailing his injuries and the progress he had made with his life since.

  The hearing was supposed to last six days but it ran until 22 June. In the end, Judge Ian Kennedy ruled, three months later, in favour of Watson, saying that the Board owed the boxer (and all future boxers) a duty of care. The date the verdict was reached was 24 September, almost exactly eight years after the fight. The stress of the whole case took a massive toll on Watson, not least because he knew that it was not the final moment of victory. I remember lining up an interview with him just a couple of days after the verdict, but was told just a few hours before he was due to arrive that he was simply too tired to attend. The interview was due to be held under camera lights, a format I would learn in later years does Michael no favours.

  The legal costs that the BBBofC were saddled with forced them into administration and the process dragged on for another two years before an unlikely mediator forced the issue. Frank Warren had never promoted Michael Watson, but a duty to boxing and boxers meant he got involved, essentially making sure that the BBBofC would pay Michael £400,000 as part of a long-term settlement. His boxing career had been one long journey for respect, in the end earned in the most tragic of circumstances. Now, in his quest for justice, he’d gone down a similarly long but significantly more arduous route. But the victory was his.

  Act V

  Scene I

  Chris Eubank would fight on. As he said, it was what he did. But it was also the way to stay in the news. His involvement in an accident as serious as the one that had befallen Michael Watson added a sense of fatalism which was probably the only element missing from the Eubank package. The act remained the same – the vaulting over the ropes, the preening in the ring and the impassive stare. But, privately, he had changed. Ebullient with his friends before the tragedy, Eubank had become more introspective. Watson’s condition remained critical and Eubank felt responsible. Despite those feelings of regret and anxiousness, he now had to continue fighting.

  Matching Eubank had not been the easiest of tasks for Barry Hearn. Before he fought Watson, any number of top professionals had called the champion out, but instead, Dan Sherry and Gary Stretch had been the challengers. Neither presented either a realistic challenge or box-office potential. The one fight that everyone wanted to see was a rematch with Nigel Benn, but Hearn wanted the anticipation for that fight to build. In order to safeguard that bout, Eubank would be matched with challengers not expected to beat him, and certainly without the ability to seriously hurt him. Thulani ‘Sugar Boy’ Malinga was a perfect example of that. The South African had mixed at the highest level for a few years and rarely beaten anyone of note. At the age of thirty-six, and with six defeats in thirty-nine fights, he was expected to pose Eubank very few problems. His record of thirteen stoppage wins from thirty-three victories did not suggest he could punch that hard either. The fight would take place on 1 February 1992, four months and ten days after the Watson fight. The venue was the scene of one of Eubank’s greatest moments, the NEC Arena in Birmingham, where he had beaten Benn. And those in the auditorium were firmly behind the Englishman. Eubank had always craved more popularity than he had – the irony that he had to almost kill a man to gain sympathy and support cannot have escaped him.

  What was the difference between Eubank before and after Watson? It was hard to tell over those first five rounds against Malinga. The challenger moved in circles and selected his punches well, a strategy that always gave Eubank fits. ‘So far, Eubank doing very little in this contest,’ said commentator Dave Brenner at the end of the second round. But in round five, Eubank finally managed to hurt Malinga, dropping him with a single right hand. Instead of forcing a stoppage, Eubank allowed Malinga to survive further rounds, taking a split decision on points. Afterwards, he was accused of having lost the instinct that boxers have when their opponents are in trouble, a charge he denied. But the safety-first attitude speaks volumes for his sense of self-preservation. It was hard not to believe he had other things on his mind, as he indicated in his post-fight interview. ‘I don’t know if you’re looking on TV but please, Michael, recover.’

  Perhaps the best explanation I’ve ever heard for how a fighter changes after he was involved in a ring tragedy came from former world featherweight champion Gabriel Ruelas. In 1995, Ruelas was considered one of the premier featherweights in the world and he showed most of his skills in an eleven-round stoppage of Colombian Jimmy Garcia. Thirteen days after the fight, Garcia succumbed to brain injuries sustained in the bout. Ruelas had visited him in hospital and had spoken to the stricken boxer’s family. Garcia’s mother asked to look at Ruelas’s hands, to see the ‘fists that killed my son’. Ruelas would never be the same again. Once noted for his variety of defensive and offensive skills, he would be stopped himself four times before retiring at the age of thirty-three. Years later, he would describe his state of mind after the Garcia fight.

  ‘That took away my anger. You need anger to be successful as a fighter. You need that hunger to be a world champion. I don’t have that any more … You have to be hungry in boxing, like I said. And after Jimmy I wasn’t. My trainers noticed it in training, when I was sparring. I would back off and not hit my sparring partners hard. And you
can’t afford to do that, you can’t afford to be like that – to feel sorry for your opponent. Boxing is the hurt business after all. It was very hard. It is even now. It feels like just yesterday.’

  There was definitely a lack of hunger in Eubank’s work that night. As he himself remembers, winning the fight meant he could afford something luxurious for his house. Away from the ring, there were further reasons for darkness. Shortly after the Malinga fight, he was involved in an accident on his way to Gatwick Airport to catch a flight to Jamaica. Losing control of his Range Rover, he drove the vehicle on to a building site, killing a labourer. ‘I saw this fellow there, and I couldn’t do anything,’ he told a Magistrates Court in Sussex. It was established that he had not been exceeding the speed limit, but was still ordered to pay costs and had his driving licence endorsed. Then there was the stigma. A man was dead. Over the next few months, he would find the word ‘murderer’ sprayed on to his house on numerous occasions. The show had to go on, but the performer was not at peace.

  He was back in the ring within three months. This time, the venue was Manchester’s G-Mex Leisure Centre. The scheduled opponent was tough American Lindell Holmes, but he pulled out and was replaced by compatriot John Jarvis. His record was an impressive one – twenty-five wins from twenty-eight fights, with only seven of those going the distance. What was also notable was his durability, which had been called into question with those three defeats all taking place inside the distance. In fact, in his last fight, nine months earlier, he had been knocked out in three rounds by the then IBF champion Darrin Van Horn. It was a case of different year but same ending for Jarvis, who took a full-blooded right hand and went over – hard. Eubank’s response to the knockout was in keeping with what had once been expected of him – strutting, posing in the middle of the ring. He appeared to have no concerns about inflicting pain on this occasion.