No Middle Ground

by Sanjeev Shetty

  The wait for the scorecards to be announced seemed interminable. While we waited in Old Trafford, viewers got to see the opinions of those at ringside. Michael Nunn was due to fight the winner and refused to put his weight behind either man. Don King boasted, as he would given his status as co-promoter, that ‘the fans won’. It was left to Hearn to give an opinion.

  ‘I’ve never seen a fight as close. If I’m going to go for anything, I’m going to go with the draw. That’s my honest opinion. I can’t divide these two.’

  Barry McGuigan also had it as a draw, having given Eubank both of the last two rounds. Jim Watt had given the fight to Benn, despite also giving those last two rounds to Eubank, while Reg Gutteridge believed the WBC champion had already been tipped off that the victory was his, as he went to each side of the ring and celebrated with the fans. Eubank sought his foe out for the customary post-fight hug, which he finally got after lots of posturing from Benn. After almost exactly four minutes, the scores were revealed by Jimmy Lennon Junior, who, twenty-nine days earlier, had told a packed crowd in Texas that Chávez and Whitaker had drawn.

  ‘Judge at ringside Harry Gibbs scores the bout 115-113 Chris Eubank. Judge at ringside Carol Castellano scores the bout 114-113 Nigel Benn,’ started Lennon Junior. At this point, Benn and Eubank stood opposite each other. Gutteridge told the nation that this ‘looked like being a draw’. Lennon Junior continued. ‘And judge at ringside Chuck Hassett scores the bout 114-114 even, a draw. The bout is even, a draw.’ A smattering of boos rang out at ringside, but no more than that. Benn slammed down his right glove on Eubank’s and then marched around the ring, before storming out of the ring.

  ‘I was genuinely mad. But it was a bit of theatre, a bit of theatre. You know it!’ he told me. But then he expanded. ‘But there is very, very little theatre in boxing. Back then, I was peed off, so it wasn’t really theatre. What you see is what you got with me. I was very angry so I could put on a bit of theatre. Especially with Chris.’

  And what about the decision?

  ‘I’ve seen worse decisions than that in boxing. As long as I’ve got that belt around my waist and a million pounds in the bank, I’m happy.’

  It didn’t seem like that at the time. Benn storming off put his trainer in a predicament. ‘Gary Newbon said “Jim, do you mind doing an interview? Cos Nigel’s gone!” I thought, I’ve got nothing else to do. Chris was going to run it down. So I said my bit, Chris went to interrupt me, and Gary said “hold on, you’ve had your say. Now let Jimmy have his say.” I said we won by a round, two rounds. If they don’t take that point away from us, for punching low, he’s won the fight. But I didn’t worry too much because we had the belt. It would have been nice to have the two.’

  Crucially, Tibbs can’t remember Benn pleading for a third fight.

  On the ring apron, Eubank was asked his opinion. ‘It was close. I thought I might have nicked it on the boxing. He was punching hard. He was scoring with shots. He’s not the man I thought. I thought I would knock him out, I thought his resilience would go. What a good fighter he is. I’m glad to have got the draw and now we can do it again.’

  Twenty years later, speaking to ITV in a programme dedicated to his life, Eubank was more candid. ‘Even though he hit me low and lost a point, he still did enough to win the fight. And a fighter knows [when he’s lost].’ Of course, given the rivalry that existed then between him and Benn, there was no way he’d admit to having lost. And there seemed little reason to admit to it now, except that a cynic might say that Eubank can admit to anything now, because the record books will always show that he did not lose.

  A further examination of the scorecards revealed some more surprises. Judge Castellano continued her theme of scoring the last six rounds in favour of Benn – even the eleventh was given to ‘the Dark Destroyer’. And all three judges scored the last round for Benn, which most gave to Eubank. If they hadn’t, Eubank would have won. And Tibbs was right – the point deduction for low blows stopped his man from winning. The only surprise was Gibbs giving the fight to Eubank by two points, but, then, the veteran Englishman had previous when it came to swimming against the tide. In 1971, he was the referee and scorer for a British, Commonwealth and European heavyweight title fight between the champion Henry Cooper and Joe Bugner. Cooper was beloved, having given great service to the British fight game and for his come-forward style, despite his moderate size and brittle skin, which was frequently lacerated. The fans disliked Bugner in equal measure, because his style was overly cautious and because he wasn’t considered British, having been born in Hungary. Cooper later acknowledged that for many of the fifteen rounds he wasn’t at his best. Even so, he came on strong during the later minutes, only to lose a decision by the smallest of margins. The decision was widely derided and Cooper retired immediately. He would hang around boxing for years, as an analyst and friend to up and coming boxers. But what he refused to do was speak to Gibbs, studiously avoiding him until six months before the official’s death in 1999, when they shook hands at a charity event.

  There would be further consternation about Gibbs’s scorecard given that he lived not too far away from Barry Hearn. ‘It looked crooked because of the score from my friend Harry Gibbs, who was from Brentwood. People get suspicious, but it wasn’t crooked, that’s for sure. It was a tough fight to score because there really weren’t many clear, concussive punches,’ Hearn told me. ‘But boxing is a business – Eubank is in the ring with me afterwards and asked me what a draw meant. And I told him, it means we get to do it again. It was a great night for boxing, a great atmosphere. Frankly, I could have made a case for either man. I’m just glad I called it a draw, because it made it look crooked.’

  At a press conference later, Benn finally spoke about the decision. It appeared ‘the Dark Destroyer’ wasn’t playing any more and it was also clear that he did think something underhand had happened, with the blame on Hearn. ‘I hold one man responsible for this. I don’t mean Don King or Frank Warren. Chris has got away with a few things like this.’ When informed of Benn’s remarks, Hearn responded by saying, ‘The officials were appointed by the WBC. I don’t have any power over these things. I wish I did.’

  By appearing to be so enraged, Benn was allowing Eubank to play the role of gentleman with gloves and the WBO champion did not fail. ‘I will fight him again. I feel I own a part of his WBC title and he owns a part of my WBO title. I’m giving Nigel Benn the proper respect. I take my hat off to him. I feel I fought as well as I could. I didn’t think he would be that formidable. I thought he would have deteriorated in the three years since the last fight. I thought I would box more. I thought I would knock him out, I thought his legs would go. But he was very strong, very durable and took some good shots from me. It was the sort of fight which perhaps nobody deserved to win. I told him this was pugilism at the highest level and he should conduct himself better.’ And, again, that was at the crux of why Benn did not like Eubank. No one told Benn how to behave and certainly not someone who he had just fought him to a standstill. Eubank was dangling the carrot about a third fight because he could already sense how much money he could make. How much he was being paid was also important to Benn, but you sensed that it didn’t matter as much as revenge.

  Eubank would never make any strong claim immediately afterwards that he deserved to win and would admit that he had underestimated Benn. But he did know that a draw suited him and Hearn. Under the original terms of the contract that was signed, the winner and loser would be contracted to Don King. But there was no provision for a draw, which meant both boxers were free to do as they chose. Given that Eubank had always feared working for King and that he might end up becoming the piece of meat that he so despised seeing happen in boxing, it was the right result. He decided to stay with Hearn and the Matchroom stable. Unsurprisingly, Benn would opt for a future with the King/Warren axis, his distrust of Hearn having now peaked. ‘We were never close,’ says Hearn. ‘Nigel always felt I was a Eubank man.’ But there w
ere regrets: ‘We never got a third fight’. Rival promotions, and that’s what Hearn and Warren were, seldom work together. The major reason is usually ‘options’ – what will happen if their fighter loses? Benn paid a high price when he lost to Eubank, because there was no provision for an immediate rematch. After the second fight, there was nothing in writing that compelled either man to fight the other again.

  If Benn had stayed with Hearn, it would have been simple to make a third fight. In fact, the promoter believes it would have had a long-term effect on boxing. ‘It would have launched pay-per-view in this country.’ Of course, pay-per-view was a phenomenon that the British public had heard about but were yet to experience. In years to come, Sky would ask their subscribers to pay more for certain fights, initially for bouts in America before it become the norm for high-profile domestic clashes. Pay-per-view would not happen on terrestrial television, but then Hearn was already thinking of taking Eubank off free-to-air and to Sky, where the reduction in his exposure would be balanced by significantly better purses. But he did not have Benn with him. And he was obviously not prepared to let Eubank fight on other promotions.

  The debate about who had won continued for a few more days. The majority of ringside reports gave Benn the nod, but by no more than a point. One such journalist was John Rodda of the Guardian, who, while siding with the WBC champion, added a caveat: ‘Benn was the more aggressive and more varied fighter and he took the points on my card because he was catching so many of Eubank’s shots and Eubank never matched his work-rate. Eubank, though, could be the smarter man and the silkiness in the way he moved from point to point suggested in the first half-dozen rounds that he was just too well equipped for Benn.’

  In the Independent, the veteran Ken Jones gave it to Eubank by that one-point margin, awarding him both the last two rounds. ‘There was none of the ferocity that marked their first meeting in Birmingham three years ago, the impression being that both have improved enough since then to expose each other’s limitations. Becoming less reckless, Benn is better able to pace a contest, but still punches off-balance and often missed badly, as did Eubank.’

  ITV broadcast a programme the following week which showed the fight in full and asked Barry McGuigan to score the fight. The Irishman had gone for a draw on the night and did so again under the spotlight. With him were Nunn, King and Warren, the latter saying he believed Benn had won. The show highlighted one thing – it was a rivalry that people still bought into and that still divided them. You could not love them both. So, surely, a third fight had to happen. There had been plenty of people who believed the drawn outcome was the convenient result which facilitated a third fight. The public were mildly interested to see what happened when either man fought the hard-hitting Henry Wharton, but the most obvious domestic match was still a third Benn–Eubank bout. But in 1994, something happened that all but guaranteed that it would never happen.

  Chris Eubank signed a deal with BSkyB, who were keen to add a marquee name to their expanding boxing portfolio, which already included Lennox Lewis. The key to their strategy was that they could offer more air time to Hearn’s other fighters. The promoter had been seething with ITV since a week after Old Trafford, when they pulled the plug on coverage of Eamonn Loughran’s WBO welterweight title challenge. ‘I’ve attracted the third biggest viewing figures for sport with Benn and Eubank at Old Trafford, and then a week later they drop me. If they think they can come in and just pick up Benn–Eubank III they will have to think again. This has made a difference, they will have to go to the market place with everybody else. I felt sorry for the people in Ulster and in England not to have the benefit of live coverage. It’s a shame on ITV for doing what they did. They are supposed to provide a service to all of us. Their decision not to show this fight is nothing short of disgraceful.’ With Eubank on satellite television and Benn still on terrestrial – he would end up on Sky, but only in the final stages of his career – a third fight now looked impossible. And the appetite for it disappeared – people had waited so long for the rematch they weren’t interested in another game of cat and mouse.

  After years of losing money in boxing, Hearn was at last starting to turn a tidy profit – and with BSkyB’s better terms and dedicated coverage, it made sense to accept their buck, even if fewer people would see the top man from now on. In the end, they’d all leave the screens and with that went boxing’s profile. Boxing was now a niche sport. Along with Eubank, Benn, Lennox Lewis, Prince Naseem Hamed, Joe Calzaghe and others would all end up fighting on satellite television, despite having begun their careers on terrestrial. No one could blame them – that was where the money was. But terrestrial television had proved during the latter part of the 1970s and the 1980s that it could make sport stars. From the likes of the swashbuckling Ian Botham to the staid Steve Davis, personalities were created who became part of the national consciousness. Boxing was no different; even after all the arguments about its place in a civilised society, it delivered men like Eubank, Benn and Watson who demanded attention from the viewer. People would moan when they left our licence-fee funded screens, but not many were prepared to pay the money to follow them elsewhere. And so began the era when the boxing fan’s love could be equated with how much he was prepared to spend – in the twenty-first century, you can watch all the boxing you like, but it can cost you up to £100 a month, around 7 per cent of the average national monthly wage. The last major foray into boxing by a terrestrial television channel came in 2000, when the BBC signed Olympic gold medallist Audley Harrison to a ten-fight deal while also purchasing rights in overseas bouts. But it was too late. A generation of fans had missed what was so special about the sport and those who were ambivalent about it weren’t likely to be persuaded to invest their time in boxing as they watched Harrison plod his way through a series of undemanding prime-time assignments. By the time Harrison’s deal came to an end, there weren’t many new fans and even fewer who were prepared to watch the big man fail on other channels.

  By now, the nation’s obsession with football had reached epidemic proportions. It was hard to see what place boxing now had in the nation’s sporting conscience. The amateur game was, like many Olympic sports, benefiting from increased funding with so much resting on London 2012. And there had been proof that stars could be created by satellite television, a prime example being Ricky Hatton, whose entire career had been away from terrestrial television. But he was the exception. And explaining the sport to newcomers was becoming harder and harder. Why were there so many world champions?

  Nigel Benn was asked recently if he still watched boxing. ‘Yeah, but it’s all different now’ was his response. Whether he meant because there were too many titles or because it was harder to watch thanks to the number of channels that showed it was unclear. Twenty years after he and Chris Eubank traded punches for the last time, Carl Froch and George Groves met in a bout that drew comparisons with the classic battle in Birmingham in 1990. There was dislike aplenty between Froch and Groves in the build-up, including a manufactured head-to-head confrontation on Sky that had many thinking back to when Benn and Eubank signed contracts in the presence of Hearn, Mendy and Nick Owen. The fight itself lived up to its billing, with underdog Groves flooring the more experienced Froch before wilting in the ninth round. But the comparisons ended when you compared the audiences for the two fights – while upwards of twelve million watched Benn and Eubank’s first contest, considerably less than a million watched Froch–Groves, which was sold as a pay-per-view event. Had Benn, Eubank and Watson been born into this era, it’s likely their stardom would have been diminished, with every title defence sold on a pay-per-view basis, the consumer forced to make a choice based on finance rather than violence. Viewing figures for boxing at the Olympics, when it is still free-to-air, are favourable enough to make one believe that the sport’s basic appeal remains intact. But until a promoter or fighter decides that they prefer profile to profit, the vast majority of professional boxers will remain figures of myst
ery and myth for a society whose Saturday night entertainment is now based around a cycle of talent shows and reality television.

  And so we were and are left with the memories of when the sport was a commodity that defined our lives. That knowledge that when you went to work on a Monday morning, it wasn’t just the football scores you talked about. Did you see the big fight? You bet. My generation had these three men. We were too young for Ali, Frazier and Foreman and so we put all our energies into Benn, Eubank and Watson. They gave us their all and, because of them, we bought into the sport, its pain, its glory, its nastiness and its hype.

  Act VI

  Chris Eubank would carry on defending his WBO super middleweight title for another two years. In that time, he displayed some of the qualities for which he had become renowned. His first bout after the draw with Benn was against the durable German southpaw Graciano Rocchigiani in Berlin. Eubank fought hard that night and although some thought it hadn’t been enough to win the decision, the judges voted unanimously in his favour. Later in 1994, he signed that deal with Sky Sports. The pattern of facing unremarkable opponents continued, despite the fact that he was on a £10 million guarantee while contracted to the broadcasters – the likes of Mauricio Amaral, Sam Storey and Dan Schommer would have been decent competition if Eubank hadn’t been a world champion of some standing. There would also be an example of his ability to box to a plan, and with some style, when he took on fellow Englishman Henry Wharton a couple of weeks before Christmas 1994. Eubank was masterful that evening, keeping the heavy-handed Wharton at bay with movement and punching, winning on points and without any controversy over the scoring.