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  Not that Watson was especially fearful of his opponent. Lifelong friend Leonard Ballack confirms that his mate rarely, if ever, thought there was a better fighter around. ‘We’d be watching guys on TV and I’d ask Michael what he thought of this middleweight or that and the answer was always the same: “He’s OK.”’ His opinion of Benn, based purely on the evidence he’d accumulated from watching on television, was the same. Even so, he dedicated himself to a rigorous training schedule, after a final tune-up against American journeyman Franklin Owens, which Watson won in three rounds at the Royal Albert Hall. That bout took place on 8 March, leaving Watson more than ten weeks for preparation. He’d use his time wisely, sparring sixty hard rounds, some with Benn’s amateur Commonwealth Games nemesis Rod Douglas, who was now a highly rated middleweight prospect, and also the tough American Wilfred Scypion, who’d once challenged Marvelous Marvin Hagler for the world title.

  If Watson was quietly confident, then Benn was close to believing the hype that he generated. ‘I was the best thing since sliced bread. I’d had twenty-two fights, twenty-two wins and twenty-two knockouts. So what can he do to me?’ he says of that feeling prior to the bout. If he wasn’t quite Britain’s star boxer, he was close. Mendy’s PR campaign had been breathless – he’d made sure his client’s face was as familiar to the general public as possible. The extent of his fame was illustrated when, upon finding himself late for a flight from Heathrow, the police were persuaded to drive him and Mendy on the hard shoulder of the motorway to get him to the airport on time. ‘Crazy, crazy. Wow. We got away with murder back then. Going to St James’s Palace and Buckingham Palace and meeting Prince Charles and all.’ Even with that stardom, Benn knew he had a problem with Watson, because he struggled to find anything to hate about the challenger.

  ‘Good-looking guy, classic man. How could you hate him? Handsome-looking man, he was a gentleman. He just got on my nerves because everything about him was perfect. He was just lovely and you couldn’t fault him. It was hard to look at him in any other way,’ admits Benn, who also felt a little envious at the way Watson carried himself. Even so, the twenty-two knockout victories convinced him that Watson would pose no threat and he’d willingly use any form of verbal intimidation in the build-up to the bout, promising that Watson was going to get a beating like all the other men he’d knocked out. Even though the bout was billed as being for bragging rights in London, Benn’s only concern was remaining unbeaten and winning the fight. Even so, his preparations didn’t include much in the way of sparring. For years, boxers and trainers have sworn by sparring, the ritual of boxers fighting each other in the gym as part of training, in order to gain sharpness. Benn sparred just twelve rounds for the fight, hardly sufficient for an amateur contest. The venerable writer Colin Hart, who had covered the sport for decades for the Sun newspaper, questioned the preparations of the Benn camp and felt that Watson, who already, in his estimation, had a better chance of victory, would win in six rounds. Throughout his career, Benn’s sparring would be a bone of contention – for the Watson fight, it was claimed that trainer Brian Lynch had limited the number of rounds the champion did, but it probably suited him to do less, given that he frequently admitted to not enjoying getting ‘bashed up in the gym for free’. Sparring so little for the challenge of Watson indicated a touch of arrogance and also the fact that Benn probably had too much control over the way he trained. A stronger trainer would have insisted that Benn spend more time in the ring, conscious that Watson would pose problems the previous opponents hadn’t. It wasn’t just Colin Hart who felt Benn was making mistakes in his preparation. Frank Maloney, who was the official promoter of the bill, privately felt that Watson would win. ‘Ambrose Mendy was so arrogant, he just didn’t believe that his man could lose. But Watson was always more talented than Benn. He was a very clever fighter.’

  Mendy had other things to worry about, namely how and where to stage the show. ‘I’m driving home [after contracts for the bout had been signed] and the late Bernie Grant [back then, Member of Parliament for Tottenham] calls. Bernie was an amazing man, a mentor to me. He’d rung me to congratulate me on getting the fight signed and I said, “Bernie, where am I going to put it?” And he suggests putting the show on in Finsbury Park. I remember saying to him, “Bernie, how the fuck are we going to put it in Finsbury Park?”’ Grant encouraged him to put the bout on in the open air and said if there was the threat of rain, why not go for a tent? ‘You’re the marketing man … Be creative! Don’t put walls in front of yourself,’ Grant told him. Mendy had already been thwarted in his attempts to get traditional venues like Wembley, the Royal Albert Hall or even at his beloved Highbury, the home of Arsenal. The idea of Finsbury Park crystallised further when he drove past a circus and enquired about how many people the covering tent held. When he found a company in Belgium could put together a tent which would hold 10,000 fans, at a cost of just over £40,000, a deal was done.

  There were other hurdles to overcome, such as getting a licence from Haringey Council in order to show boxing, while the promoter, namely Mendy, incurred the wrath of Michael Jackson’s representatives for using a poster showing Benn asking Jackson ‘Who’s Bad?’.(In the end, to avoid being sued for misuse of intellectual property, the Jackson party were offered ten ringside seats.) Finsbury Park turned out to be the perfect venue, being so close to where Watson was based and allowing his fan base – which was pretty sizeable – to attend in numbers, while Benn’s supporters would also be there. ‘He inspired a passion and loyalty in fans like no British fighter ever before or since,’ says Glyn Leach. The support came from many social sectors – those who identified with Benn’s combination of savagery in the ring and his style out of it. More and more, he was being marketed as a yuppie with boxing gloves, his face adorning the covers of men’s fashion magazines as they bigged up alpha-male role models. The Benn image was also in keeping with the mantra of the Thatcher government – work hard, take your chances and you shall be rewarded. The yuppie revolution, albeit a short-lived one, had taken control during the final years of the decade, with young men taking advantage of a buoyant property market and displaying the fruits of their labour in the form of convertible cars, pinstripe suits, braces and the first mobile phones.

  There were also hardcore boxing fans and fighters who jumped on the Benn bandwagon. Around that time, women’s boxing was also finding a voice and Jane Couch, the first British woman to be granted a licence, was one of those who could be heard. ‘He was all action. You knew he’d either knock someone out or get knocked out. He always wore his heart on his sleeve. He always seemed like he was in a real fight,’ says Couch, who admits that one of Benn’s most stirring victories, against Gerald McClellan in 1995, was one of the moments that ultimately inspired her to take on the British Boxing of Control who, until 1998, refused to license women to box professionally. Perhaps the other most prominent sector of Benn support came from the wide base of celebrities that Mendy courted. Sir Bob Geldof, at that time one of the most recognisable men in Britain thanks to his tireless efforts to help starving children in Africa, was at ringside, with his wife, the late Paula Yates. Other stars were in tow, while some of the most promising young boxers, such as recently crowned Olympic heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and middleweight sensation Roy Jones Junior, were also present.

  What those people probably didn’t know then was just how much Benn’s corporeal vices could affect his preparations. The former soldier smoked, a habit that would have had a more obvious effect on his performances in the ring if his bouts had lasted longer. Before scientific research confirmed the negative effects of smoking on athletes, many footballers and other sportsmen could be seen smoking, but those days were coming to an end. If the odd puff was one of Benn’s problems, another was his love of women – even though he was in a long-term relationship with Sharron Crowley – which would derail him in the final hours leading up to the fight. By this stage of his career, Benn had dispensed with the stark mohawk haircut
and was now growing his locks. The day before the Watson bout, he went to get his hair ‘styled’. The lady doing the styling was ‘insanely pretty’, says Mendy. It was yet another sign that Benn wasn’t completely focused on the fight. Opinions vary on how long Benn spent getting his hair done. Some say three hours, others three or four times that. ‘Just so he could smell it,’ says Mendy. Either way, it meant trouble and someone should have got Benn to focus on the fight. To make matters worse, the fighter wasn’t even happy with how it turned out. ‘What in the blazes was I thinking? I went in a black man and came out looking like a Chinese man!’ he recalls, laughing about how his locks had been pulled up so high that it seemed to tighten the skin around his eyes. ‘You can’t imagine Watson spending so much time on having his hair done the night before,’ says Glyn Leach.

  Whether or not Watson knew of Benn’s distractions is not known, but the challenger was now exuding confidence. In the final press conference before the fight, he said to the champion: ‘Nigel, I hope we can be friends after I beat you.’ Benn smiled, perhaps taken aback by an opponent having such faith in his ability. It didn’t shake his confidence or alter his preparations, however, for the Watson fight was to be Benn’s coming-out party, the night he confirmed on live television in both Britain and America just how exciting he was. ‘There almost seemed a belief from the Benn camp that he was so good, he could treat Watson with disdain, even though his boxing career wasn’t nearly as expansive as Watson’s,’ says Leach.

  Scene IV

  ‘Watson couldn’t fill a hole. They come to watch me’

  – Nigel Benn

  ‘Why should he be getting all the attention? I’ve lost only once in twenty-three fights and been in with better men’

  – Michael Watson

  Anyone who’s spent any time in Great Britain will know that a typical May evening is neither dry nor necessarily warm. Sun, sleet, rain and snow have all been known in these isles during this most volatile of months. It goes without saying, therefore, that if you were thinking of staging a sporting event, such as a prizefight, you wouldn’t gamble on an open-air venue. If you were going to stage a fight in London – and it would make sense to if both the main-event participants were from the capital – then Wembley Arena, or maybe even the Royal Albert Hall, would be your automatic choice. You’d need imagination, flair, bravado, not to say arrogance, to contemplate having it anywhere else.

  For years, though, boxing promotion had been synonymous with exactly that – flair, bravado and arrogance. The flamboyant American Don King promoted ‘the Rumble in the Jungle’ in 1974 in Zaire because it was the only place where he could guarantee George Foreman and Muhammad Ali the enormous purses he’d promised them. Going further back in history, to the 1920s, the promotional team of Tex Rickard and Jack ‘Doc’ Kearns persuaded the town of Shelby, Montana, to build a stadium fit to stage a world heavyweight title bout between the pre-eminent fighter of the day and champion, Jack Dempsey, and an unknown challenger, Tommy Gibbons. Never mind that few paid to watch it and that four banks in the small western town went bankrupt – Dempsey got paid and went on to defend his title in bigger and better bouts.

  Chances are that people would remember the night that Nigel Benn and Michael Watson first met whether the fight was held in a small hall or in an iconic arena. But Frank Maloney, Ambrose Mendy and Mickey Duff – the brains behind the event – had something a little more unique in mind. Finsbury Park, a part of north London which has always been associated with the staging of music concerts (the venue used to be called the Rainbow), was transformed for one night only into a location fit for this kind of fury. In order to combat the elements, all punches would be thrown inside a purpose-built red ‘super-tent’. Nothing like it had been seen in British boxing before that night – and not much has come close to it since.

  A whole host of notable football stars were in attendance – Paul Ince, then of West Ham but soon to join Manchester United, the Fashanu brothers, John and Justin, and future Arsenal star Ian Wright. Frank Bruno, the most popular British boxer of the time, was also there. People who saw it said it was the London equivalent of the Ali–Frazier ‘Fight of the Century’ in 1971, when everyone who was anyone was there, an occasion not to be missed. Even if it was easy enough to watch it on television. After all, in 1989, boxing was still free-to-air, available on either BBC1, or, in this case, ITV. And it was Sunday night – what could be more natural than switching from Songs of Praise to a couple of hellraisers?

  Boxing’s pre-eminence on the screen in those days owed much to the endless supply of characters and stories that it generated. Kelvin McKenzie, the notorious former editor of the Sun, once told his staff that only three things sold his paper: ‘Football, tits and boxing.’ Certainly, there seemed little to dispute the health of the latter. February 1989 may have seen significant defeats for Bruno and another living-room regular, the former world welterweight champion Lloyd Honeyghan, but there seemed a surplus of men ready to thrust themselves into the limelight. In the three weeks after this fight, former world featherweight champion Barry McGuigan, multi-weight champion Duke McKenzie and rising cruiserweight Glenn McCrory would all make live appearances on both major channels.

  Those three were involved in world title fights. Benn and Watson were to brawl for the former’s Commonwealth middleweight title. As promoters have found in recent years, especially with the proliferation of spurious world titles, sometimes the prize is not as important as bragging rights. In this case, the winner could only claim to be the best middleweight in London. Herol Graham was almost certainly the top British fighter in that weight class – the Sheffield-based boxer had just eleven days earlier lost a very debatable decision for the World Boxing Association title against Jamaican Mike McCallum. Graham’s head and body movements were so unique that he often challenged visitors to his gym to try and hit him when his hands were tied behind his back. Such dares left Graham richer, but he would be studiously avoided by those at his weight and missed out on the bumper paydays his talents merited. It was his misfortune to have been born a handful of years too early. Graham would turn thirty later that year, and his reflexes were already starting to slow. Both Benn and Watson were still only in their mid-twenties.

  With Graham at home nursing his bruises, Michael Watson of Hackney, a stone’s throw from Finsbury Park, made his way to the ring. Watson walked to the squared circle like, well, like a fighter. There were no frills about him, no carefully manicured attempts to make him look more menacing than he was. The twenty-four-year-old, who had lost just once since turning professional in 1984, was flanked by trainer Eric Secombe and manager Mickey Duff. Depending on how you read body language, Watson was either nervous or confident. His handsome, black, mustachioed face seemed impassive enough, but plenty of people were looking for signs of nerves – after all, Watson was about to face the fearsome Nigel Benn, a man who had knocked out all twenty-two of his opponents, a man whose aura of intimidation had led people to christen him ‘the English Mike Tyson’. Some believed that Watson was daft even to contemplate such a fight. The only possible salvation for him would be if his beating was swift, rather than prolonged. Benn had talked about ‘hitting him with so many lefts, he’d be crying for a right.’

  If you were a boxing fan in the 1980s, especially in the latter part of the decade, you’d have more than a passing knowledge of the phenomenon that was Mike Tyson. A juvenile delinquent apparently made good (the truth about his inner demons didn’t come to light until the nineties), Tyson turned professional in 1985 after failing to make the Olympics and within twelve months was being talked about as the saviour of the sport’s most storied division, the heavyweights. The New Yorker seemed to share many of the qualities of some of the great champions of the past – like Jack Dempsey, he entered the ring in the plainest of attire, no socks or robe, just black shorts and shoes, with a haircut that could only be described as severe. Like Sonny Liston or a young George Foreman, he exuded menace, his bleak s
tare, almost soulless eyes making men who would normally walk fearlessly around the toughest of neighbourhoods cross the street to avoid him. And there seemed genuine rage behind his blows. What else would you expect from someone who never had a father to speak of and a mother without the means to provide anything but the bare essentials?

  Tyson benefited from a marketing strategy that was entirely of the time. His management team of Jim Jacobs and Bill Clayton, two experienced American Jews, matched Tyson against a series of opponents who would allow their man to show his talents. Tyson, still in his teens, would knock out or stop his first nineteen opponents in dynamic fashion and his management team would then send video highlights of these victories to some of the most influential journalists in America. Those montages, put together with such impact that they are still played in gyms around the world, generated both hype and aura. Before he was world champion, Tyson was already the sport’s star in waiting, eclipsing the likes of Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns and Roberto Durán as a box-office attraction. He was that rarest of things: a fighter who delivered exactly what people wanted – violence. A boxing audience will seek reassurance that the finer aspects of the sport are still being practised, and those who attend big bouts in fancy casino locations want their action served fast and with maximum brutality.

  Tyson’s profile in Great Britain grew during 1988 and 1989, as a fight with national hero Frank Bruno was put together. The bout would be staged on 25 February 1989, with Tyson defending his undisputed world heavyweight title against ‘Big Frank’ in Las Vegas. Although Tyson would win in five, mostly one-sided rounds, the fight would have lasting significance. Such was the clamour to show the action, the BBC, ITV and the fledgling satellite company Sky would all bid to show it. In the end, Sky would secure live rights, forcing a small portion of the country to pay for a dish to be placed somewhere suitable on the outside of their house. The BBC would share TV rights with ITV to broadcast the recorded bout, while radio coverage gave those who didn’t have Sky good reason for getting up in the middle of the night. The BBC’s coverage was made all the more memorable by Harry Carpenter, who had by now developed a bond with Bruno, urging his friend on. ‘Get in there, Frank!’ bellowed Carpenter during a torrid opening round, which saw Bruno stagger the champion.