No Middle Ground Read online

  ‘I lost my hero … and I was just angry,’ says Benn of his early life as a restless teenager who roamed the streets of Ilford, looking for trouble. When he wasn’t living the life of a petty thief, Benn would happily engage in street fights, where any unsuspecting youths would find out just how painful life could be when they were punched by a future world champion. Sensing that Nigel’s promising career as a small-time criminal was about to take off, father Dickson insisted that his boy follow older brother John into the army, specifically the Royal Fusiliers. It was in the army that Nigel Benn, just sixteen and until then the consummate street fighter, learned how to put even more power into punches that were already blessed with a natural force. That blend of speed and strength may have been gifted to him from birth, but the desire to throw them emanated from the sense of loss and anger which had defined his life from the moment Andy died.

  ‘I’d been throwing punches all my life. There was a lot of energy, a lot of anger in me, a lot of things that I couldn’t deal with. I had to be able to channel it somewhere, without it consuming me. [Talking about fights in the army] I was fast and I punched hard. I didn’t know what the first punch I’d throw was, all I knew was that there would be power going into it. I just had to make sure I was in shape – I knew if I was in shape, and if I connected with my punch, then the other guy was going to be out,’ says Benn.

  Fear seemed to play no part in any of Benn’s early scraps, either on the street or in the ring, although those closest to him would testify that he would exhibit nerves before a bout – maybe those were the nerves of someone who just wanted the release of that aggression that swirled around his body. He’d happily fight heavyweights in those army bouts, inviting men with a 5 stone advantage to try and manhandle his then light middleweight frame (11 stone), something they could never do. His trainers never seemed that concerned either; why would they be, given that Benn was, in their estimation, the most naturally gifted fighter they’d ever worked with? The fighter himself knew. ‘I got it,’ he told me. ‘I just knew how to throw a right hand. It’s in my genes,’ he adds, having observed how well his teenage son, Conor, can fight.

  According to Benn, that natural talent compensated for any tactical shortcomings he had in the ring. ‘I knew I wasn’t a great boxer … I couldn’t box. I just didn’t want to lose.’ That may have been the case in the army but by the time he left the Fusiliers in early 1984 and joined the amateurs, fighting out of a club in West Ham, he had evolved. ‘He was very well coached. He might have had that natural power, but he came from a strong amateur club where there were some good trainers who gave him some good schooling,’ says Mike Costello, now the BBC’s boxing commentator but back then a young coach working in amateur boxing in south-east London. Relying mostly on his power and ability to put punches together in sharp combinations, Benn secured notable victories against future professional stars: Rod Douglas – who gave Benn his one and only amateur defeat before losing the rematch in front of a packed crowd at York Hall – and future British middleweight contender Johnny Melfah. Knockout power is rarely appreciated at amateur level yet such was Benn’s that he became the national light middleweight amateur champion. He had hoped to have earned the chance to make the 1986 Commonwealth Games as part of the English team; instead, it was Douglas who went. Benn, now tired of fighting for no money, and having to double up as a security guard to pay the rent, turned professional. His signature was coveted by all the top promoters in Britain. But rather than go with the established cartel, headed up by Mickey Duff, or even the emerging Frank Warren, Benn chose, initially, to be handled by Burt McCarthy, a boxing manager who seemingly loved boxing more than he did cash. McCarthy once gave up the contract of a Welsh heavyweight named David Price (not to be confused with the Liverpool heavyweight currently boxing) because he felt that the boxer’s health would be in danger if he continued to fight.

  Benn turned professional on 28 January 1987, his first fight against the much more experienced but smaller Graeme Ahmed from the north-east of England. Ahmed was essentially a light middleweight, while Benn had now, at the age of twenty-three, grown into a fully fledged middleweight. The bout ended seventy seconds into the second round; as a result, Ahmed would become a footnote in the Nigel Benn story. There was no disgrace in losing so quickly to Benn; by December that year, he would not be extended beyond the fourth round by any of his opponents. By then, Burt McCarthy’s desire to do the right thing meant he wasn’t opposed to letting Benn flee the nest, if he felt the boxer would be best served by a change of direction. That direction came in the form of Frank Warren, whose fights were a popular feature of ITV’s programming, courtesy of a late-night show called Seconds Out. The programme would feature up and coming young fighters like Benn, who were building unbeaten records. In the case of Benn, the record was comprised of knockout after knockout, the perfect kind of material for that late-night showcase. Warren knew what he had. Many people, including Warren, believed that Benn was potentially the most exciting fighter seen in a British ring for many a year. Frank Bruno had excited and charmed millions on his way to two unsuccessful world title challenges, but he’d become a national treasure, less of a boxer and more a pantomime hero who occasionally fought. Benn was raw, violent and fast. There had been a buzz about Errol Christie just a few years earlier, but he was a pure boxer with style who moved with grace but not much menace. When Benn fought, you knew never to look away, such was the anticipation that fights could end with one blow.

  ‘Nigel had a lot of power and presence. He was just an allaction fighter and I kept him busy. In his first year with me, he had fourteen fights. He was an exciting prospect and fighter – I remember Burt McCarthy had Errol Christie, who was considered the top amateur of the time. I said to Burt that Nigel will be ten times more successful than Errol as a professional. I thought Nigel would be a future world champion,’ said Warren. ‘However, he had a few problems. A lot of things happened outside the ring.’ That’s something I’ve heard many times while researching Benn’s life. In the latter years of his career, many assumed those issues outside the ring involved drugs, but back in the 1980s virtually all of his issues stemmed from women and his inability to control his libido.

  ‘I didn’t care if the woman was eight stone, twelve stone, fifteen stone or twenty stone …’ he told a therapist on television after he retired. Benn was an early starter with women, losing his virginity when he was twelve. Despite being in a series of long-term relationships, his love of women meant he was rarely faithful. The temptations and opportunities would only increase as his fame grew. A striking looking man, Benn still attracts women of all ages, although a mixture of maturity and his religious faith means he’s better able to handle temptation. In his physical prime, however, there were few boundaries. Like many sportsmen starting out, he felt he could combine the demands of his job with extra-curricular activities, even while those around him were convinced it would cost him at key stages of his career and life. George Best’s struggles with alcohol and women meant his football career at the highest level came to an end when he was only twenty-seven.

  But from the moment Benn turned professional in 1987 through to that balmy night in Finsbury Park, the notion of failure seemed impossible. By the time he fought Watson, Benn had had twenty-two fights and won all of them by a knockout. The quality of the opposition was questionable, but the authenticity of his knockouts wasn’t. He was good at his job because, in the words of someone who prefers not to be named, ‘he was one of the few boxers I’ve ever met who seemed to genuinely enjoy hurting people. Most of the fighters I’ve met come from a life of poverty and are desperate to escape, or they’re advised to channel their aggression by their parents. But not Nigel.’ It’s natural to assume that the surplus of aggression came from the death of his brother and a failure, until later life, to deal with those feelings of pain and loss. Now, Benn admits that the best way to avoid his issues was through training and then fighting. All those who have trained o
r managed him say that Benn was always able to remain professional in his dedication to training. And, through those wins, he had, like many boxers with unbeaten records, developed a ‘Superman’ complex.

  That, no doubt, was enhanced by his acquiring the Commonwealth middleweight title from an African boxer named Umaru Sandu, whose toughness had been proved in twelve gruelling rounds with Tony Sibson, Britain’s premiere middleweight for much of the 1980s. Whereas Sibson’s left hook couldn’t stop Sandu, Benn’s put the champion on the floor on numerous occasions before the fight was stopped in the second round. That first title was won on 20 April 1988, in only his seventeenth bout, less than eighteen months after he had turned professional. Benn remembers, accurately, letting out a war cry after being awarded victory. But his rage, his thirst for more in-ring violence and a greater share of the profits, meant that the title was seldom enough.

  His volatile nature, restlessness and impatience meant he wasn’t satisfied with how his career was progressing. It wasn’t that Benn had dark days of moodiness and introspection – he could have several moments on any given day when someone might trigger his temper simply by saying the wrong thing. He remembers feeling that Frank Warren wasn’t showing as much interest in him as he felt he deserved, a point Warren would no doubt deny. It was at that time that he struck up a friendship with a fellow black man ten years his senior: Ambrose Mendy was involved in the careers of a number of black athletes, in football, athletics and boxing. In the words of Warren, who had once shared an office with Benn’s new manager, ‘Mendy blew smoke up Benn’s arse’. Whatever Warren believed, Benn’s recollection of events is a little different.

  ‘I remember one day that I asked Frank to come and watch me train. For one reason or another, he didn’t and I thought “Screw you! I’m showing you what you’re investing your money in.” Ambrose lifted me up, elevated me. I hold no grudges and I said I’d go back with Frank and I did [at the end of his career]. Ambrose Mendy and me did some incredible things – he was like the British Don King.’

  The battle between Warren and Mendy over the services of the boxer reached the Court of Appeal – it would end in a permanent shift in the way boxers could handle their careers – but the partnership between Benn and Mendy would gain notoriety and success in equal measure for the period they were together. Even though the two men have no relationship now, a mutual respect was formed that exists to this day.

  Mendy could bond easily with Benn because they had similar backgrounds. Both came from big families (Mendy was one of ten children) and were brought up in east London by immigrant parents. Like Benn, Mendy remembers there not being much money in his parents’ house, but there was plenty of love and respect. His early life was based around sport – he was a talented footballer and knew plenty who could play better, including the late Laurie Cunningham. The likes of Garth Crooks, John Fashanu, Brendan Batson, Ian Wright, Paul Ince and David Rocastle, men who made their names during the 1980s, were all acquaintances of Mendy. All those players had one thing in common – they were talented, rich and black. Mendy’s ability to get these men to talk to each other off the field gained him a strong reputation, for, strange as it seems, black sportsmen in England at that time were still something of a novelty. Even Liverpool, then the most dominant football team in England, didn’t buy a black footballer until 1987. The man they did buy, John Barnes, was another friend of Mendy. The agent/manager presence that he generated, via the World Sports Corporation that he founded, meant that Benn was directed to Mendy when things started to turn sour with Warren.

  ‘One day I got a phone call from Jake Panayiotou, the guy who owned Browns nightclub [in London]. He told me that there’s a boxer who badly needs some advice, some help. I asked who the boxer was and he told me it was Nigel Benn. I’d met Nigel a few times. I went to see him and he told me that he was never going to fight for Warren again, that he couldn’t stand him. I told him he needed some legal advice. I introduced him to a lawyer and we set about trying to work out how to release Benn from his contract,’ Mendy told me.

  ‘In the beginning, all I wanted was for Nigel to have fair legal advice. If Warren was still interested in working for Nigel, I wanted the pair to patch it up because I knew Frank very well. Warren subsequently obtained an interim injunction preventing Mendy from inducing a breach of Benn’s contract with him.’

  That almost certainly increased Benn and Mendy’s determination to work together. Their partnership seemed a perfect mix. The boxer wanted to fight, win, hurt people and get paid what he thought he was worth. Benn would always keep an eye on those people who did the deals in his career, but didn’t entertain the notion of managing himself. Mendy believed he could make Benn rich beyond his dreams, with just a few tweaks in the way the boxer was marketed. Benn had only ever aspired to have what his father had – a house and a nice car. By making Benn wealthy, Mendy could draw more sportsmen to his stable. ‘I use Nigel Benn, but he uses me,’ he once told a television interviewer. What was also unique was the sight of two young black males working very publicly to make their fortune in a sport run by white men.

  The pair ended up in the Court of Appeal, essentially seeking a release from the contract that Benn had with Warren. The case became known as Warren v Mendy, the point of the case being to allow Benn to fight for someone else. (Mendy was still only Benn’s adviser and he still didn’t have a licence with the British Boxing Board of Control to officially act as the fighter’s manager.) All this was going on in 1988, with Benn now twenty-four and a middleweight boxer in his physical prime. Having fought so regularly since turning professional, he couldn’t afford to be inactive, but the effect of the court case was quite distracting and nearly led to what might have been a very costly defeat.

  In December 1987, Benn had been extended into the seventh round by the cagey American Reggie Miller. Mendy, who wasn’t working with Benn at that stage, admits he watched that bout with a degree of edginess, because Benn was starting to look quite weary by the end. His power saved him that night, as it would do on more than one occasion during his career, but Miller’s strategy of trying to box Benn, albeit dangerous given what could happen if he let his guard down for just a moment, had taken him close to victory. The winner admitted when he retired that he did consider, during the fight, that defeat was, for the first time, a possibility. The fact that Benn managed to avoid defeat, without looking very vulnerable, meant few people took note of his difficulties.

  That wasn’t the case when he stepped into the ring against Jamaican Anthony Logan. The 26th of October 1988 would be the night that Benn’s cloak of invincibility was stripped of a little colour. Logan had a more than presentable record of fourteen wins from sixteen fights; also in his favour was that he talked a good game. The pre-fight verbal jousting, a feature of the sport since the days when the Marquess of Queensberry drew up the rules of combat, saw Logan score an early series of blows. He promised to hurt Benn, who admitted afterwards to fighting ‘angrier’ than normal. Any trainer will confirm that aggression only works when it is controlled. Without that, it can lead to ruin. Lloyd Honeyghan threw more than 400 punches in the first four rounds against Marlon Starling in a world welterweight title fight a few months later, Honeyghan admitting to boxing with such anger because Starling had ‘slagged him off’. The problem was that Starling put his gloves to his own head and blocked most of Honeyghan’s punches, before returning fire with interest, stopping the British fighter in nine rounds. Logan threatened to do much worse to Benn at London’s Royal Albert Hall. He punched Benn to the canvas – the first knockdown of his professional career – and dominated the action in the opening round. The second started little better for the Ilford man. After being hit with twenty-two consecutive punches, it seemed certain the fight was about to be stopped. Benn, a fighter noted for always being on the front foot, was being forced backwards. His only hope was the kind of blow the boxing fraternity calls a haymaker – a punch you can see coming from the back of the arena but
rarely believe will land. A fighter only fails to avoid it if the punch is thrown with too much speed or because he is too preoccupied. Both of those factors were in evidence when Benn missed with a right hand, but then rocked back on his other side and exploded a left hook onto Logan’s chin, dumping him to the canvas for the fight-closing ten count.

  The immediate problem for Benn was a domestic one – his mother. Mina Benn had come to the fight and had no doubt expected to see her Nigel deal with Logan as quickly as all the previous opponents. Seeing her son fall from one punch was enough of a shock but the twenty-two unanswered punches were something else. She told her husband Dickson to get in the ring and stop the fight. ‘Stop that man hitting my son!’ she is reported to have said. As his parents continued the discussion, their child found the fight-ending punch. As far as Nigel Benn was concerned, there was only one course of action.

  ‘She got banned from that fight on. Banned!’ says Benn. The story was one of the few back then that wasn’t exaggerated in order to keep Benn’s name in the spotlight. His PR and marketing machine in full working order, with Mendy pulling the strings in the background, meant he was seldom out of the headlines. But for the first time, the boxing press questioned the fighter’s credentials. Rising contenders should not have so many problems with men like Logan. There was no doubt some fear that Benn might go the way of Frank Bruno, whose early reputation was built on a steady diet of opponents who would have struggled to keep Fort Knox safe. On the first occasion Bruno fought a man capable of taking a punch and hitting back – the American Jumbo Cummings – he ran into trouble. Like Benn, Bruno would find a way out, but the experts noted that the heavyweight was more vulnerable than previously thought. Subsequent defeats at the hands of two more Americans, James ‘Bonecrusher’ Smith and Tim Witherspoon, reinforced the notion that Bruno was a magnificent specimen of man, but his talent didn’t favourably match his musculature.