No Middle Ground Read online

  Given the court case with former manager Warren that still loomed large for Benn and Mendy, the experience of near defeat was easy to explain away: a distracted Benn had taken his opponent too lightly and nearly paid the price. The bout was also a rarity in that it was not televised that night. Previously, all Benn’s fights had been shown on ITV, but, perhaps fearing repercussions if they broadcast the brawl, ITV passed on it and the BBC agreed to show it days later, on Saturday afternoon, on Grandstand. By then, the legend of Benn’s miracle left hook guaranteed an expectant audience. Those who tuned in that Saturday were not to be disappointed. That chink of vulnerability would make him more popular, almost as it had the American Thomas Hearns, who, during the 1980s, was never in a bad fight, simply because he could brawl with the best and fall with them as well.

  The Logan fight came after a period of inactivity for Benn – he hadn’t had a bout for five months. During that time, his decision to seek camp with Mendy caused him to be ostracised by many in the boxing community. The consensus was that he should have stayed with Warren. The Logan fight appeared on a promotion by Mike Barrett, regarded as a member of the cartel of promoters that had run British boxing for most of the 1970s and 1980s. Benn was able to take the fight after a judge ruled in September 1988 that Mendy could act on his behalf. The British Boxing Board of Control might have refused to give him a licence to manage, but Mendy used his contacts within the game – notably Frank Maloney and former world champion boxer Terry Marsh – to get Benn on shows. All the while, boxer and manager were gearing up for the court case against Warren which had greater significance than their parting of the ways.

  In January 1989, three judges on the Appeal of Court rejected Frank Warren’s attempt to stop Ambrose Mendy from acting on Nigel Benn’s career. Pivotal to the judgement was the notion that a boxer’s career was not only short (Benn’s would last less than ten years) but also a specialist one, requiring dedication, expertise and a high level of training. Warren had argued that Benn was reneging on a contract that still had time to run and also had further options. The verdict had echoes of a similar case in football just a few years later, when the Belgian player Jean-Marc Bosman broke free of a contract which would not allow him to move to another club, despite no longer being an active part of his current team. Like Benn, Bosman had to go to court – in his case the European High Court – in order to find a ruling that would help him. It would ultimately give players the power to decide how long their contracts with clubs would be, as well as sign lucrative deals with substantial signing-on fees. The ruling in favour of Benn changed a sport, which, in the opinion of another young promoter by the name of Barry Hearn, ‘was a bit of a slave trade’.

  Being Benn must have been more difficult than the man himself would let on. After all, as he has admitted on numerous occasions since he retired, his material desires extended simply to ‘owning a terraced house like my dad and having a BMW’. Mendy, however, encouraged him to reap the rewards of his labour. Both manager and boxer remember driving past a Porsche garage on the day they won the court case and Benn admitting how much he wanted one of the cars in the showroom. Mendy told Benn that ‘if he wanted one, he should get one’. Benn asked how he could afford such a car, to which Mendy responded by saying, ‘if you believe you’re going to succeed, you’ll pay for it’. Benn drove away that day with the Porsche, a moment Mendy described as a ‘major wake-up call’.

  A wake-up call it may have been, but the sight of a boxer with a sports car, after just twenty fights and with no world title to his name, made him look, in the eyes of many, too flash and arrogant. This was still the era of old-school boxing, where respect had to be earned and the trimmings of success accrued with greatness. The decade may have begun with the era of the first million-pound footballer – Trevor Francis having joined Nottingham Forest in 1978 for that sum, a then record in the British Isles – but sportsmen and women were not yet millionaire celebrities. When Kevin Keegan returned to English football in 1980, having spent three years in Germany with Hamburg, he drew headlines for his new salary with Southampton of a thousand pounds a week, an unthinkable amount for a twenty-nine-year-old.

  Benn’s alignment with Mendy, which saw him join a group of ambitious, talented young black people (his post-fight parties would see not just boxers, but footballers, athletes and singers in attendance), may not have been to everyone’s taste. Britain was still learning how to adapt to the wave of immigration which had made the country truly multicultural, and for most of the 1980s the most recognisable black sports star had been Bruno, whose affable and humble persona rarely offended much of white Britain, even if it jarred with many blacks. As the BBC’s Mike Costello remembers, it was a clever move not to position Benn as Bruno’s successor, instead choosing him as an alternative. In 1987, Michael Jackson had released the album Bad and had adopted a much rougher, tougher look than on his previous outings. Mendy encouraged Benn to adopt a similar image. Back then, Jackson’s influence on modern culture was such that the Bad phenomenon lasted for the rest of the decade. Being ‘bad’ meant lots of what is now called bling and Benn obliged, with gold bracelets and expensive watches almost always on display when he wasn’t in the ring. He may have carried off the look with aplomb, to the amusement of others, but, privately, Benn wasn’t always that easy with the direction in which he was going. His modest background and family leanings meant he’d sometimes prefer a little privacy, which he was struggling to find.

  In the ring, the opposition was proving to be less than testing. The names of David Noel, Mike Chilambe and Mbayo Wa Mbayo will never be considered much more than padding on Benn’s record. He learned to control his fury a little during these bouts, perhaps as a natural consequence of how perilously close he had come to defeat against Logan. Benn even admitted after knocking out Noel in December 1988 that ‘[I] let my emotions get the better of me’ during the build-up and fight against Logan. It was easy enough to look controlled and sensible against his next three opponents. They posed no threat in terms of size and power. Only Mbayo would last past the first round – but only just. That bout took place in Scotland and, to the delight of the locals, Benn eschewed his black trunks in favour of red tartan. If there were smiles for the Scots, there were only scowls for ringside reporter Gary Newbon. The pair chatted about the ending of the bout before things got a little spicy.

  ‘Are you not, in your career, in need of a real big test that’s going to take you some rounds?’ asked Newbon. It was the sort of question few had the nerve to ask.

  ‘You’re forgetting how long I have been in the game. I’m taking my time – I’m not here to rush for you or anybody. I’m here to secure my kids’ future. It takes time and I’m not going to be rushed,’ countered Benn, his big brown eyes, which could look welcoming or threatening, starting to bulge.

  ‘How much time, Nigel, because we’re all behind you?’ asked Newbon.

  ‘I’m not going over there [America] and fighting Michael Nunn when I know I’m not ready!’ replied Benn. Nunn was a rising middleweight who held the International Boxing Federation title and had just defeated the highly rated Italian-based Sumbu Kalambay with a stunning first-round knockout. The Nunn camp had made a $3 million offer to Benn for a fight. At that stage of his career, the British man was not ready for a test such as Nunn would provide. The American was taller, moved well and boxed out of the southpaw style, which was bound to make Benn look bad. He might have got lucky and won by a knockout, but the odds were that Nunn would have been too experienced and savvy for a man who had only been a professional for two years. But it was obvious, and not just to the likes of Newbon, that Benn needed a real test. His world ranking was on the rise (in America The Ring magazine had him in their top ten) but there still hadn’t been an opponent who could be considered dangerous. After blowing away a string of African and West Indian journeymen – Benn’s ‘Mexican road sweepers’ – he and Mendy assessed their domestic options.

  Herol Graham had been
the best British middleweight for many years. His unorthodox style – hands by his waist, his head a seemingly impossible target because of his upper-body movement – meant he was rarely sought out by rising contenders. The great Marvelous Marvin Hagler should have defended his world titles against Graham, but was spared the chore when Sugar Ray Leonard came out of retirement to fight Hagler in what was then the highest grossing fight of all time. That was in 1987 and when Leonard emerged from his dual with Hagler with the middleweight title, he showed little desire to fight Graham, the mandatory contender. Benn wanted the fight, though, realising that the easiest way to convince the sceptics was to take on the man no one wanted anything to do with. Those looking after him weren’t so keen.

  ‘As long as I was with Nigel, I would never let him fight Herol Graham. Nigel would tell me that he’d work his body and beat him that way, and that convinced me even more to make sure the fight didn’t happen,’ says Mendy. Given that Graham would be knocked out by another puncher, Julian Jackson, at the end of 1990, Benn might have had a better chance than his backers thought. Even so, Graham was overlooked in favour of another rising middleweight. Like Benn, this fighter was from London and had also come from a modest background. He didn’t have the star quality of Benn, but anything Michael Watson lacked in charisma he made up for in terms of ability and dedication. The fight was set for 21 May 1989, with the poster for the fight asking the question: ‘Who’s Bad?’

  More and more the public were finding out that Benn’s perception of himself as being genuinely ‘bad’ wasn’t far off the mark. He also told Newbon that he’d hoped Mbayo would have kept getting up, so he could keep knocking him down. That desire for violence was encapsulated in two ways. Around about that time, Benn gave a quote to an interviewer saying ‘God put Steve Davis on this earth to pot balls, Diego Maradona to score goals and Nigel Benn to kick ass’. It was the kind of statement that marketing professionals like Mendy dreamed of and was even better because it was unprompted. The discipline of training may have satisfied part of Benn’s psyche, but it was the violence that he truly enjoyed. It was why he spent his early years ‘fighting the National Front’ without ever taking a backward step and it’s why boxing was only ever a forum for his rage, burning as brightly as it had when his brother died.

  What almost certainly aided the violence was the nickname ‘the Dark Destroyer’, which he had acquired at the start of his professional career. A photographer at the Daily Express called Jack Kay was watching Benn and was reminded of the great heavyweight champion Joe Louis, whose nickname had been ‘the Brown Bomber’. In the 1980s, such a blatant reference to a man’s skin colour was barely noticed, although some, including Frank Warren, weren’t comfortable with it. Nevertheless, it stuck and also became a part of Benn’s make-up. Much of Benn’s success had been down to his ability to produce the kind of action that others couldn’t. That was designed and he was marketed as a wrecking machine – but the acquisition of the nickname was pure luck. Benn and Mendy took it and ran with it. Commentators were encouraged to use it as often as possible. In time, the nickname would also come to represent the other side of Benn’s personality. He could be charming when he wanted, but when ‘the Dark Destroyer’ emerged, opponents and friends were best advised to run for cover.

  Scene II

  Michael Watson’s family heritage belonged in Jamaica. His mother, Joan, came to England from the Caribbean in 1964; one year later, on 15 March, her first son, Michael, was born (she already had a daughter, Dawn, who was still in Jamaica). A few years later, the focus was on her second son, Jeffrey, two years younger than Michael, who was hit by a speeding car. So serious were the injuries to the toddler – he was seven months old at the time of the accident – that he was given the last rights. He had head injuries but he was too small to be operated on. He spent four months in a coma before beginning a remarkable recovery. The fighting spirit that would also become so obvious in his big brother in later years was evident in the younger sibling, whose only long-term repercussions from the accident would be a slight limp in the left leg and a slurring of his speech.

  The Watsons, including father, Jim, lived in Stoke Newington. This north London suburb is now regarded as a fashionable area by young professionals, but in the late sixties life in a council flat was somewhat removed from that modern ideal. The Watsons did not have much money, but they had a rich sense of community. The family would move around on a regular basis, through Dalston and Islington. The church remained a constant – Michael, Jeffrey and their mother would attend up to three times a week and that faith would play a pivotal part in Michael Watson’s later life. As a young boy and then a man, Watson was familiar to those in the area because of his strong ties to the church before his boxing career began to blossom.

  If Nigel Benn enjoyed boxing because it gave him an outlet for his restlessness, Watson’s reasons were altogether more complicated. By nature quiet (but not shy, he assures me), the young Watson remembers an altercation with a peer when he was a boy. The outcome left him feeling inadequate. ‘I didn’t know how to deal with it,’ he acknowledges now. Natural athletic ability meant he was already a member of a sports club but it wasn’t until he turned fourteen that destiny found him. He had watched boxing on television and was transfixed by Muhammad Ali and Roberto Durán, the great Panamanian multi-weight champion. There was no obvious comparison between those two men and, as Watson developed as a fighter, his ability to box as the situation required suggested that here was a keen student of the noble art. But that love of the sport, combined with the need to learn self-defence, took him into the ring. As soon as he learned the basics of the game and was allowed to spar, Watson remembers the feeling of joy, the sense that he had found both his calling and an arena in which boys quickly became men. Gentle outside the ring, Watson’s demeanour belied an inner toughness that revealed itself during the early stages of his ring career.

  Glyn Leach, editor of the magazine Boxing Monthly, says, ‘I had a friend in the amateurs called Jerry Hammond. He fought Watson twice, but the bouts were a few months apart. He lost them both, but it was the second fight he remembered. He said Watson had changed so much by the second fight, he barely recognised him. He’d grown physically and mentally so much.’ Whether it was the onset of puberty or his skill, Watson was turning into an imposing physical specimen. And also one who knew his own mind. Perhaps aware of his potential, Watson moved gyms, from the local Crown and Manor gym to the Colvestone gym in Hackney. At the Crown, he was surrounded by fighters looking to pass the time and get fit. At the Colvestone, he mixed with the likes of Dennis Andries, a future three-time world light heavyweight champion and one of the strongest British fighters of any era, and Kirkland Laing, one of the most talented and eccentric. Laing had the ability to beat and lose to anyone – he once defeated Durán and then went AWOL, unable, it seemed, to control his love of alcohol, women and drugs.

  The immediate goal for Watson was to be on the plane for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The north London teenager was one win away from securing a spot as Britain’s middleweight hope when he lost a fight to Scotland’s Russell Barker in Preston. A contentious decision had gone against Watson – historically, it would not be the last time he’d suffer such a disappointment – but his immediate response was to quit the amateur game and start earning money from the considerable amount of work he was putting into the sport. As a keen student of boxing, Watson knew that the promoter in Britain with the most clout and experience was Mickey Duff. A Polish Jew by birth, Duff escaped almost inevitable death when his father, a rabbi, conscious of the growing threat from the Nazi party in neighbouring Germany, emigrated to England from Kraków in the late 1930s. Duff had a brief career in the ring during the latter part of his teenage years and returned to the sport a few years later, initially as a matchmaker, before becoming part of the most powerful promotional alliance in British boxing history. The cartel, as the individuals who formed it became known, included Jarvis Astaire, Har
ry Levine, Terry Lawless and Mike Barrett. Because of their links with television, specifically the BBC, most of the top fighters of the 1970s and early 1980s were represented by these men. Watson’s decision to go with Duff was a logical one at that stage of his career; he would not be the star of the show by any means, but because of the nature of Duff’s promotions, with established fighters headlining his shows, Watson would get good exposure on the undercards.

  Signing as a professional did not bring about a dramatic change in Watson’s day-to-day existence; he worked as a painter/decorator during the mornings and afterwards he’d go to the Colvestone gym, where his trainers, Eric Secombe and Harry Griver, would put him through his paces, managing his sparring and suggesting future opponents. Managing and training Watson wasn’t the hardest job in boxing – he may not have trained as maniacally as Nigel Benn, but he understood the benefits of roadwork and honing his reflexes and stamina in the gym, on the speed and heavy bag. Aside from a love of nice clothes, there was nothing flash about Watson – he may have been developing as an artist in the ring, but outside it his was a strictly artisan lifestyle. He’d become something of a local star after winning his first seven fights as a pro; Winston Wray was his first victim on 16 October 1984. His next six fights took place over a period of around nineteen months. Such a number of bouts would be considered active today, but during the 1980s it was just about sufficient for a talent like Watson’s. Perhaps mindful of that, Duff put Watson into another bout thirteen days after he’d gone the distance against Carlton Warren. All seven of Watson’s bouts so far had been in London and number eight, against the experienced James Cook, was no different, Wembley Arena being the venue.

  Cook had fought twice as many times as Watson when the pair met, but the bout still looked a formality for the unbeaten Watson. Cook had been knocked out in three of his previous five fights. The chances of an upset in the eight-round contest seemed remote, but Cook used his experience to good effect to win the decision of the referee, the only man who scored in non-title fights in Britain. ‘It was just my time,’ says Cook, now a community worker who, in 2007, was awarded an MBE for his outstanding work on Hackney’s ‘Murder Mile’. Cook would go on to win British and European super middleweight titles, although his inconsistency was typified by defeat in his next bout to Mbayo Wa Mbayo, a future victim of Benn. Cook remembers that his three consecutive defeats before the Watson bout made it easy for his opponents to underestimate him, and that’s exactly what Watson did. Maybe believing Cook was a fading fighter and that he was on the rise, Watson didn’t train as hard as he might have. The intensity he brought to the gym was missing and, as if to underline just how lightly he regarded Cook, Watson went nightclubbing in the week of the fight. That failure to prepare cost him, although there were long-term benefits: ‘James Cook gave me a wake-up call – that fight made me the boxer I became.’