Chris Eubank: The Autobiography

Chris Eubank: The Autobiography Chris Eubank Love him or loathe him, Chris Eubank is one of life’s more eccentric personalities who has transcended the world of boxing and established himself as a media celebrity and role model to millions of fans the world over. His story is both gripping and extraordinary.He exploded into the public consciousness in November 1990 with a ferocious defeat of Nigel Benn for the WBO middleweight crown. Once crowned champion, he made 19 successful defences of his title and became one of the most talked about boxers of his generation.But his early life was so very different. Aged 15, Eubank was ejected from the last in a long line of care homes and was living on the streets. His life was a mess of shoplifting, burglary, drink and drugs from which there seemed no escape. In 1981, in a last-ditch attempt to drag himself from the abyss, he relocated to New York with his mother. Here he started boxing and within two years he had won the prestigious Spanish Golden Gloves Amateur title.Some of the incredible experiences he recalls in his autobiography include: his involvement in a car crash which saw a man die, how he became Lord of the Manor of Brighton, his reaction to Michael Watson’s horrific injuries sustained in their 1992 super-middleweight contest and subsequent partial recovery, his views on the ‘mugs game’ from which he previously made his living, his relationship with Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali, his passion for his truck, jeeps and motorbikes, and his legendary sartorial elegance and extravagance.Eubank’s life as a ‘TV celebrity’ is even more enigmatic and compelling. He was the subject of a Louis Theroux fly-on-the-wall documentary, he was first to be voted out of the Comic Relief Big Brother house, and is the star of his own television programme At Home with the Eubanks. His story is truly extraordinary. DEDICATION (#ulink_f0ce899c-ef86-50e9-96bf-0b7951f29969) To Ena, Irvin, Christopher, Sebastian, Joseph, Emily and Karron CONTENTS Cover (#u083b7200-83f4-58be-aa91-d23c5ab8cdbc) Title Page (#ue70fc07c-bf34-5fce-bb5b-2be9fd3d8346) Dedication (#ulink_2096fcb9-1167-525d-b4f9-ea0c5adfabed) Prologue (#ulink_b559c7ba-8892-507b-86b0-376195129e8b) PART ONE: LEARN THE ART 1 A Hard-knocks Life (#ulink_231cfdbf-7425-5304-8668-3d40f959c650) 2 Designer Thief (#ulink_f94f20fb-3c2c-57b9-a780-50334cc018ce) 3 Posers, Bullies and Triers (#ulink_caa3ed05-d5d5-5bde-b93d-9feedea17d6d) 4 Golden Boy (#ulink_b871fa0a-a4a2-5434-bcb7-e46b19d4c874) 5 Doctor Johnson (#ulink_19e95633-6fd3-5ad2-b988-da5e6db7336f) PART TWO: APPLY THE PHILOSOPHY 6 Homesick (#ulink_ee63206f-63de-5438-bba3-2fdba91e41d3) 7 Hate me, but don’t Disrespect Me (#ulink_b0dc8662-617a-543a-b4a9-1df6478d42b0) 8 It’s a Mug’s Game (#litres_trial_promo) PART THREE: ACQUIRE THE FINANCIAL SECURITY 9 WBO Middleweight Champion (#litres_trial_promo) 10 The Warrior Within (#litres_trial_promo) 11 Godspeed Shattered (#litres_trial_promo) 12 This Spartan Life (#litres_trial_promo) 13 The Showman (#litres_trial_promo) 14 Destroying the Destroyer . . . Finally (#litres_trial_promo) 15 Tyson (#litres_trial_promo) PART FOUR: ACHIEVE THE FAME 16 The Sky’s the Limit (#litres_trial_promo) 17 Max (#litres_trial_promo) 18 Community Spirit (#litres_trial_promo) 19 Psychologically Challenged (#litres_trial_promo) 20 Luck of the Irish (#litres_trial_promo) 21 Style on the Nile (#litres_trial_promo) PART FIVE: EARN THE RESPECT 22 Winning the Lottery (#litres_trial_promo) 23 A Sweet Tooth and Swollen Eyes (#litres_trial_promo) 24 Samantha (#litres_trial_promo) 25 A Heavy Heart (#litres_trial_promo) 26 Just Being Me (#litres_trial_promo) 27 At Home with the Eubanks (#litres_trial_promo) Picture Section (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo) Career Statistics (#litres_trial_promo) Index (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Mandela To whoever it may concern: There isn’t any bigger slavery than the slavery of compromise and acceptance of all the wrongs perpetrated against the African and Africa. I never thought thoughts to make me otherwise than what I am, so my obliviousness to what you have been taught to think I should be is a statement of my humanity. As a footnote to that, it is a fact that human character is independent of colour and creed. PROLOGUE (#ulink_7b8ae0b5-727d-59b3-bb3a-204b0797937c) ‘Ice cream, jelly and a punch in the belly.’ Dorothy used to say this to me every time I went round to her house. She was a very old, German Jewish lady, aged 93, whom my mother worked for as a live-in nurse in New York. I was only 19, negotiating my way through life in one of the toughest cities in the world. I had been sent to the Big Apple to distract me from the life of delinquency that threatened to pull me under back in England. I loved Dorothy; she used to call me ‘sonny boy’. She accepted me. She was wheelchair-bound and I used to pick her up to put her into bed. I would sit and talk to her while my mother, a kind and extremely generous woman, busied herself. The house was crammed full of nostalgic bric-a-brac from over the years. There was also money lying around. In those days, I never had a penny, so I started to take $20 bills from Dorothy’s room. This went on for about two years and added up to over $2000. I knew it was wrong, but I assuaged my guilt by telling myself that Dorothy wasn’t using the money and my mother didn’t notice. There are certain things you do in your life that you regret but, if you put them right, you feel so much better. I knew I had to give that money back, especially when it became clear Dorothy was becoming progressively more fragile. By now, my fledgling boxing career had progressed quite nicely and I was taking bouts in England, flying back and forth between Brighton and New York. At that point, I was earning a small weekly allowance plus ?700 a fight, so I saved up the equivalent of $2500 over a period of months and the very next time I visited Dorothy, I put the money back in her home. If I hadn’t done that, my indiscretion would have weighed very heavily on my mind. Thankfully, I paid her back. Dorothy died two weeks later. PART ONE (#ulink_f2de9616-d687-5d78-94a5-038d535461f8) CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_a60b0e7b-22a5-58e2-acee-1d8d7ca67835) A HARD-KNOCKS LIFE (#ulink_a60b0e7b-22a5-58e2-acee-1d8d7ca67835) My father, Irvin Eubank, was a great storyteller. One of the many anecdotes he recounted described how he acquired his limp. When he was just a toddler, his own father had put some breadfruit in the stove. He was told not to take the breadfruit out and eat it, which, of course, was exactly what he did when he found himself alone for a few moments. When his father found out, he slashed the youngster’s lower leg with a machete. My father had a severely hard life, but he would have told this tale to one person one way and told another person a totally different story! Another version had him being cut out of a terrible car wreck and losing his calf muscle in the process. He was such a character, and I see some of that in myself. He was born on 28 August 1929, in the district of Mount Airey, Clarendon, in Jamaica. He cut sugar cane in the fields for most of his younger years. That is where he met and eventually married my mother Ena who was then, and always will be, deeply religious. She was well known in church circles in Clarendon. She had been married previously and had five children, my older half-brothers and sisters, whom I rarely see. My mother was born on 15 March 1931 in Clarendon. She left school aged 17 and became a nurse’s domestic helper. She met her first husband and married him at the age of 2 5, but unfortunately he died only three years later, leaving my mother on her own with their five children. Then, in 1960, she met my father. My father saved diligently for many years for the plane fares to migrate to the UK, stuffing his hard-earned cash under a mattress until such a time as the move could be made. They settled in south London and life was very difficult, an endless grind of poverty and hard work. I was born in East Dulwich on 8 August 1966, their fifth child, after David, the twins Simon and Peter, and Joycelyn. My mother told me their main goal was to get their own home and to do so with five kids around was very hard. So, we were sent to Jamaica to be with our grandmother, on my mother’s side, when I was still only a baby. My earliest memory is of being pulled on a banana leaf in the hills by my cousin Woodia. Other than that, I have no recollection of my time there. My grandmother was called Constance, but we called her ‘Uncun’. She has passed away now. When she was still alive and I had become world champion, I hired and flew in a helicopter packed with supplies of clothes and foodstuffs to Callington, the mountain-top village where she lived. To this day, when I travel to Jamaica, they say, ‘You’re the man who came in the helicopter.’ My mother visited as often as she could and was always sending money over too. On one of these visits, she came with the good news that they now had a house in Crystal Palace Road in south east London. Taking fright at how ill we looked, she convinced herself that we were malnourished, knowing as she did how tough life can be in the countryside of Jamaica. She immediately rounded up the four boys, packed our belongings and took us back to England, leaving Joycelyn to stay with grandmother. I don’t remember coming back from Jamaica, but I have clear recollections of my early life back in the UK. We lived in various council estates in London, including Crystal Palace Road, Peckham, Stoke Newington, Hackney and Dalston. My first memory in the UK was of my mother slapping me senseless for pretending I had a stomach ache, when I actually had four packets of Wotsits shoved underneath my coat that I had stolen from a sweet shop while with her in Stoke Newington. I was also quite adept at stealing from the bread van owned by the nearby bakery. I started smoking at six years old. I used to follow my brothers and go round to Old Ed’s house nearby. He must have been in his late eighties and used to give us cigarettes. If he wasn’t around, I would make roll-ups by stealing Old Holborn from my father’s tobacco tin as he was sleeping on the settee. Although at times we were desperately poor, I was a happy child. I adored the very ground my mother walked on, still do. I went everywhere with her. Unconsciously I used to follow her every step around the house. Sometimes she would suddenly stop, playfully stick her bum out and boom! I’d crash into her backside. I adored her, my mum. She ruled with a firm hand too – in Jamaican households you do what you are told and you do it the first time. That said, she only used to beat me with a foam slipper which weighed about two grammes! It was like being hit with a piece of paper, but I was more concerned about the expression on her face. I was desperate not to upset her. She never smacked me with her hand and my father only ever used a belt. Despite my father’s difficult circumstances, he always said he had a good life. Why? Because he never let it weigh him down, he never had a chip on his shoulder. These are two facets of his personality that I have inherited and are vital factors in my psyche and subsequent success. Like father like son. At first, life in the UK had been happy and in 1974 my parents were married in Hackney. However, shortly after, when I was eight, my mother left my father and went to live in New York. I didn’t see her very often between her leaving and me travelling to New York aged 16. It wasn’t until then that I found out one of the reasons why she had left. I kept asking over the space of a year why she had moved away; she broke down and explained the situation to me several times. She told me that when she would come in the front door another woman would leave out the back. He was a womaniser and she had had enough. At least, that’s what she told me. That is not what I subsequently found out to be the case, but I will come to that later in my story. Even then, as a 16-year-old boy, I knew that this is what some men are like, and I did not think ill of my father. The laws of morality are expounded by the scriptures but, to some people, actually applying these principles can prove very testing. I understand that a lot of men stray. I know men who stray; that is life. Back in 1974, however, leaving the marital home was not a decision my mother could have taken lightly, especially in the light of her deeply religious views. I think removing herself from that situation as a wife was relatively easy; what was hard was walking away from her children. Growing up without my mother, I knew that we had very little money even though my father worked incredibly hard. He took a job at the Ford plant in Dagenham, where he smoothed iron on long shifts, six days on days, six days on nights. He was a hard man, not least because he’d had a tough upbringing himself, but also this was back-breaking work for a pittance of pay. I can vividly recall us all getting up at 5am to jump-start his Ford Cortina so he could get to work. He earned ?90 a week. It is fair to say that my father was a disciplinarian. However, I wouldn’t say my upbringing was a hard life; it was correct. We got the strap as punishment so often that I began to become quite apprehensive of him. In retrospect, I have no problems whatsoever with him using the strap, even though I would not do the same with my own children (I use my hand on the bottom if I am going to smack them). The strap is not excessive, but the impression this gives a child is not necessarily always good. Although he sometimes made me feel anxious, he was a brilliant, colourful character whom I loved dearly. My father was a very generous man. Although we had very little money, he was still very giving. He would often buy six or seven mangoes, which he would wash himself, then take the plateful out into the tenement courtyard for his friends and neighbours to enjoy. Whatever he had, other people could have. My father also had a very good sense of humour. He was a character, with his limp, his bald head and his short stature. I haven’t known any other man with his degree of charisma and humour. In a Jamaican sense, my father was ‘dread’, meaning ‘magnificently cool’. When I was a teenager, I thought he spoke very good English but in fact he didn’t really, it was like a dialect he could switch on at times. He rarely gave me advice but when he did it was right; he was strict to ensure we behaved in a correct manner. He would talk to us into the small hours, making good points but repeating himself – as drunk people do. I would understand what he was saying the first time but we couldn’t fall asleep; if we were close to dropping off he would cut his eye at us, and bang the doors. This again was mostly for effect to get our attention. He was a man of few words but when he did offer advice, it was very telling, and as the months and years went by, I realised just how correct he was. Dad slaved away, bringing us up on a shoestring; he stayed the course for us. I remember the police coming for my brother Peter one night when he had been up to no good and my father slammed the door in their faces – he would chastise us if we stepped out of line, but he closed ranks when it was needed. He didn’t quit on us. One time I had broken into a games arcade with a friend of mine, stealing about ?2000 in ten pence pieces. We were dragging these very heavy sacks of coins along the floor, and needed some help. I called my father and he helped us load the money into the boot of his car and take it to a friend’s house. However, the police arrived shortly afterwards and we had to jump across their neighbour’s balcony to escape. This may sound like my father was happy to see me carry on in this fashion: he wasn’t but he didn’t give me a hard time about it either because he was resigned to the fact that he had to help his son. This was one of the reasons I was sent to America, I couldn’t stay out of trouble and this was my father’s way of helping me break free. His language was fabulous to hear; he was a yardman, a Jamaican. Ironically, he talked Jamaica down quite often, saying, ‘Jumayka a de wors’ country inna de worl’. Inglan a de bes’ cuntry inna de worl’. Jus’ look pon de nym . . . Jumayka!’ He lived his life to the full, for the here and now. He loved women, gambling, drinking and, when he was drunk, cursing. Life was never dull when my father was around. I loved my father. I adored him. I still do, even though he died in July 2000. Even though my father’s behaviour with other women had provoked my mother to leave, it was his approach to life that I drew on to keep myself buoyant in difficult times. He would never allow himself to be weighed down, as I have explained. This had rubbed off on me so much that when my mother left, I just looked at that as having one less person to dodge. With father working such long hours, I was pretty much my own boy, so in many ways her absence was a marvellous thing. I had so much to do and see and get on with. I could let all my rage out, which was good for me. Problems never lay heavily on my young shoulders, and that was, and still is, one of my greatest gifts. I know that parental splits destroy some kids, but I guess much depends on your frame of mind. Indeed, one of my brothers didn’t handle their split at all well and still carries some resentment towards my mother to this day. I have never held a shred of bad feeling towards my mother for leaving. That was the way my life was and I accepted that. She had not let me down because you have to take into consideration her circumstances. It wasn’t even a matter of forgiveness, that had nothing to do with it. It was a matter of acceptance. So many people tell me how my childhood must have been very difficult. It wasn’t. It was life; it was fun. I enjoyed my early years and had a fantastic time. Yes, those council estates were miserable sometimes, but that never dragged me down. Maybe I don’t remember the bad parts because I don’t want to, but that is not how it seems to me. People who are always bemoaning their lot have the mentality of those who are losing. The mentality of people who are winning is to adapt and accept. Of course, I did not articulate or even have an awareness of such an attitude when I was young; it was just the way I was. My mother didn’t let me down, neither did my father. After my mother left, our circumstances were naturally affected for the worse. Our behaviour became increasingly delinquent, but that was entirely of our own accord, it was not Dad’s fault. I vividly recall one council flat we lived in during 1975, in the middle of the Haggerston slums. We had no heating and no furniture. Not a stick. Father somehow managed to salvage enough money from his measly wages to ensure there were always eggs and bread on the top of the fridge, even if there was little else inside. He would give us 50p each to get some fish and chips, as he was often on shifts and couldn’t cook for us. Most of the time we ate egg sandwiches. People talk about hardship – my father had to bring up four boisterous kids on that ?90 a week. He was dutiful, which is one of the traits of a good man. He provided as best he could for his family. The relationships with my three brothers have proved to be of pivotal importance in my life. The central issue that has been a constant feature of my life is acceptance. I seek acceptance in so many ways, from so many people. This is something that has been ever-present for me and I have thought about it at great length. They say that many people spend their adult lives trying to work out their childhood. Well, I have mine worked out. I know why acceptance is such a force for me. It is because of the way I was treated as a child by my brothers, David, Simon and Peter. I was the youngest, although there were only four years between all of us. I was always keen to be around them, I always wanted to go where they were going, I desperately wanted to get into trouble like they did, smoke the same cigarettes, steal the same sweets. I wanted to be accepted by them and be with them. However, this was never the case. In fact, far from accepting me, my brothers openly and constantly denigrated me. They used to call me a c**t; one of them didn’t even talk to me, he said I was too ugly to be his brother. I was always the belittled younger sibling. It was the most inequitable of relationships, because I adored them. When I was in my early teens, I would sometimes suggest they might have done certain things differently. They would scoff, saying, ‘Shut up, you’re silly, you are only a fool.’ And they were always telling me how to do things, that what I was planning was wrong or how I had reacted to a circumstance was stupid. I used to fight all the time with David, but I only won once during all those years. That day, he had cornered me and was hitting my arm very hard, when I suddenly turned and smacked him one. I bloodied his nose so he went and told my father who chastised me! Every other fight with David I lost. Sometimes, the television set would get broken because we used to fight over which channel was showing. Peter never used to hit me, he just dismissed me verbally which was actually more damaging in the long run. Simon was a very hard puncher, which I found out when he knocked me flat in a playground in Peckham when I was only 12. So I kept out of his way and only had a couple of fights with him. I started to realise that nothing I said would get through to them. Even so, I still wanted their acceptance because I loved them. That became the key issue in my life as I grew up to be a man. In many ways, it was a very positive force, because I had to prove myself to the world, specifically in regards to the business of boxing. However, in the back of my mind, my blossoming career as a pugilist became a way of proving myself specifically to them also. Cheekily, after I had made champion, David once said to me, ‘You should be grateful for all those beatings we gave you; it has made you world champ.’ He said I owed him. That is the way they were, that is what I have had to put up with. They were harsh on me, but actually I realised they were also harsh on themselves. Later, as an adult, I still loved them but no longer needed their acceptance. However, this background has obviously had a deep effect on me. I find myself looking for acceptance as an adult, even though professionally I was world champion and personally I contribute, I am kind, I teach by example and I help people. However, the omnipresent desire to be accepted was deeply ingrained in me from my childhood and would indelibly colour the course of both my career and my life. My primary education was at Northwold Infants School in Stoke Newington. Other children didn’t play with me. I was told this was because I was too rough, but I didn’t have a problem with that. I was never a kid who played with toys and games, not least because we couldn’t afford any. I never liked that, I was more into stealing crisps and sweets. I was sometimes bullied because of my broad nose. They used to call me Hoover and Shotgun Nose. It used to bother me and I would wish for a slimmer nose. Now, as a man, I like it, it’s a beautiful African nose and the only one I have. It also works very well. My feet are like dragon’s claws, but they are the only two I have. I have a gap in my teeth but that is just me. As for the nose, it is actually a superb shape, it has made me a great deal of money. Why? Because when you hit my nose, it simply goes flat rather than breaking. We moved to south London when I was 11 and went to Bellenden Junior School before moving on to Thomas Carlton Secondary. Unfortunately, by now, I had a somewhat boisterous reputation and was suspended 18 times in one school year for misbehaviour. I used to get into fights all the time over marbles. If it wasn’t marbles, it was protecting smaller kids from bullies. As a kid, I watched movies like The Three Musketeers. I still love watching films. Back then, I wanted to be just like the characters I saw on the big screen. Take D’Artagnan – I was going to grow up to be that guy, swinging into battle from a chandelier, taking on and beating anybody while still being utterly chivalrous and stylish. I modelled myself on characters like that. That is one of the reasons I got suspended from school so many times, going to the aid of bullied kids. I was a loner and drew little influence from my peer group, instead looking towards those sort of movies for my inspiration. Occasionally, however, it was my short fuse that caused the problem – when you don’t know how to express yourself, your feelings manifest themselves in a fashion that is immature and angry. One time, for example, I said to this kid, ‘You are chewing your gum too loud,’ and that was that – bang! I dropped him. My build was only average but I was always ‘extra’ – namely I was a showman. I have never been a show-off, that is a negative word. My intention was always (and still is) to be a showman, to entertain. I wasn’t powerful so I lost as many fights as I won, but I was righteous. I fought at least three days a week with bullies and at least four days a week with my brothers. I then moved to Peckham Manor Secondary School, where such behaviour continued and I was expelled after only one month. When I was 13, I grew dreadlocks and became a rasta. I smoked a lot of weed too. I eventually cut the locks off, because my father stopped talking to me. He was a Jamaican who wasn’t into the rasta lifestyle, so he was very disapproving. However, he loved Bob Marley. The album Exodus was on my Dad’s record player all the time. I think at one point it was the only record he actually had. Despite being on constant rotation, I never tired of hearing that album, it was my homely feel cut into vinyl. Still today, whenever I hear the record, it brings back floods of memories. Marley was a great musician, and that style of music is in my soul. He has also been a great motivator for me – his words are all about strength of character, rectitude, correctness, righteousness: being an earth man. Back then, I had so much energy. However, I did not always do the correct thing, I still had a lot to learn. This energy carried over into my behaviour outside of school as well. If someone wanted to steal some sweets, I was always the first in the queue. And, I didn’t just take a single Mars bar, I would grab five. I would take the task in hand and do it. CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9ad18997-e6e0-5f02-894a-90b303149604) DESIGNER THIEF (#ulink_9ad18997-e6e0-5f02-894a-90b303149604) One day my father came back from work and said to my brothers, ‘Where’s Christopher?’ No one knew. At 9 o’clock that evening, there was a knock at the door and it was the police, who informed my father that I had been taken into care. I don’t know if the authorities can do that without consent, but they certainly did it with me. I’d had a social worker assigned to me for some time at Peckham Manor. He was called Mr Lord Okine, an African fellow who drove this little white Datsun. I didn’t even know what a social worker was, I didn’t understand. Peter was the first brother to be taken into care, then David, then me. Simon stayed at home. It was not my father’s fault: he didn’t give us up to care, the authorities took us away. It wasn’t a complete shame for me because it had become boring at home with Dad. I couldn’t stop misbehaving, it was in my nature. I remember thinking, why is this man beating me so much? I realised it was because I was getting caught . . . so I stopped getting caught. The first care home I went to was The Hollies in Sidcup. It was a massive complex made up of 36 different homes, each named after trees, and one called Reception Centre where I was. My brother David was in Larch. I was met at Reception Centre by a member of staff who took me on a tour of the building. He showed me a room which had a table tennis table, a pool table and a communal eating area. The tour continued, revealing a tuck shop, a storage room and the staff room, before finally ending up at my dormitory. They sat me down in there and gave me my briefing. Being taken into care was almost like winning the lottery. Can you imagine my sense of bliss? The fridge was full of food – beefburgers, sausages, everything. I could play pool. I had a dorm with new friends to meet and, most fantastically of all, my own warm bed – no more four to a mattress! The whole place was even heated! It was such a wonderful experience meeting these kids from Scotland, Manchester, all over the UK, seeing their different attitudes, hearing their different tales. That first term at The Hollies was one of the best experiences of my life – I had three meals a day, table tennis, pool, and there were girls. Heaven! We used to climb down the drainpipes to get into their dorms: it was such good fun. But just as at school, however, I found myself getting into trouble and was shifted between care homes several times in four years. In 1979 I went to Yastrid Hall in North Wales, which I now know to have been in the midst of the sexual abuse scandal that did not come to light until the mid-90s, when it was revealed that a network of adults appeared to have been involved in abusing children across the country. I wasn’t abused sexually or otherwise, I didn’t even know there was a problem. It has transpired that certain children were being abused, but at the time I never knew. Admittedly, I was engrossed in my own little world but, fortunately for me, that whole terrible saga passed me by. From Yastrid Hall, I went to Stanford House in Shepherds Bush for seven weeks in a lock-up for assessment. From there I was sent to St Vincent’s in Dartford for a month, before being expelled and taken to Orchard Lodge in Crystal Palace, for another seven-week assessment in a secure unit. From there, I went to Karib, a care home for ethnic minorities in Nunhead, SE 15, was expelled again after only one month, then sent to Davy’s Street in Peckham. All this time I was a highly unruly boy. I still had a short fuse, I was a very fast runner (ten miles in 72 minutes when I was 13), quite clever, and my sleight of hand wasn’t too bad. I took full advantage of my skills, always breaking into staff rooms and tuck shops or the newsagents down the road to pilfer cartons of 200 cigarettes. Such petty crimes later progressed to shoplifting and repetitive absconding. Yes, it could be described as a very itinerant childhood. However, my view is this: moving around so much is the perfect way to ensure that an individual continues to have new experiences. You never get stuck in a rut when you’re barely at the same place for more than three months at a time. Constantly having to make new friends was not a burden because I preferred my own company anyway; I was still something of a loner. Now, as an adult, I can travel anywhere and feel comfortable in any situation, an ability I put down partly to these teenage years spent on the move. It was around this time that, despite my antics to the contrary, I started to read proverbs. Although it would be some years before I succeeded in applying (or at least tried to apply) myself to many of the words I was reading, the wisdom they offered always appealed to me. I was always enthralled and intrigued by the wise man and words. In North Wales, there was a kid in care with me called Timmy Brian, who had this marvellous way of strutting about. I watched him swagger around and noted the effect this had on people, so I started to do my own version, with my own flavour. Timmy was a very courageous black kid from Nottingham who thought of himself as Superman. He used to point his hands skywards like he was flying through the air and I used to roar with laughter. Sometimes I still copy him. If you’ve watched me on television, perhaps on A Question of Sport, you may have seen me doing this. When a show starts, the warm-up man asks the audience to give a round of applause, even though no one has done anything of note yet. I always thought that was an odd situation, so when it happens and the applause starts out of nowhere, I often put my hand in the air like Superman, like Timmy Brian. It is just a fun thing but, of course, some critics say, Oh, look at Eubank, assuming they are clapping him.’ I’m not, I’m just being a big kid again, back in North Wales with Timmy. At my last care home, Davy’s Street in Peckham, I was always getting into trouble with one particular care worker. He was a huge man, very tall. It was not his considerable size that was most threatening however – what was most scary was the fact he never treated me for what I was, namely still a teenager. He saw me from day one as an adult and for that reason his obvious dislike for me felt much more tangible and intimidating. One day we’d had yet another disagreement over something I had done, so he cornered me. He was really angry and breathing heavily with fury. He leaned down over me and said in a truly menacing tone, ‘I don’t give a f**k about any of this, I will kill you.’ Now I had stood up to my fair share of bullies and bigger men in my younger years, but I knew this man was simply too big and too aggressive to mess around with. After this unseemly confrontation, I went to the bathroom and, because the home was a lock-up at the front, I crawled out the window and was gone. I was never in care again. I had been so unruly when I visited my father on leave from the care homes, he could not tolerate my behaviour and eventually refused to have me back home at all. For the next 18 months, I was homeless. My territory was around Peckham and the Walworth Road, I did not have a permanent roof over my head. Much has been made in the media, and indeed by the public I meet, about how awful this must have been. No, I won’t have this said. I lived like a king. I wouldn’t say it was bliss, because bliss is not having to work and being at ease with yourself. You can’t really be at ease when you don’t know where you are going to sleep that night. So it wasn’t bliss, but it wasn’t far off. I was a teenage kid, shoplifting daily and earning easily over ?100 by 6 o’clock each night. I was young, quick, had good sleight of hand and bundles of courage, so I was never really too compromised. I had girlfriends all over the place and as much marijuana, Special Brew and Treats as I wanted, I went to Blues dances, called Shobins, two or three nights a week and was driven around everywhere by taxi, wearing the finest clothes. I was my own boss, I had no parents to report back to, no school to trouble me. I was lord of my own manor. During this time, I was part of one of the most proficient shoplifting gangs in the country. On a bad day we would take home ?110 per man, but when we were on song we would make ?180 each. At the time, the average wage was perhaps ?60 a week. There were four of us in the gang: myself (Eu-ey), Sticks, Nasty and Beaver. Sticks took his nickname from the Jamaican term for a thief, while Nasty earned his monicker because he was girl mad. They were both Nigerians. Beaver was the last man to join up. I now realise that this behaviour is foolish, but having gone through it myself I can relate to youngsters and talk to them effectively about getting caught up in this kind of lifestyle. We worked Monday to Friday, consummately professional, and were very exacting in our standards. We wore suits, shirts and ties and always looked immaculate. Before a job, I would put on my Italian mohair suit, a crisp shirt and tie, and my prized Burberry coat. At the time, Burberry had just introduced these extremely sturdy security tags, so stealing one of their range was not an option, you had to buy your Burberry coat. I vividly recall going to Haymarket to purchase mine: it cost ?180 and was a sight to behold. Magnificent. Oh, man, I felt I had arrived. On the streets, how you dress is inextricably linked to how much respect you command, so I was always intimately fascinated by the latest fashions. That may well have something to do with my latter-day passion for dress code. The purpose of the Burberry coat was twofold. Firstly, you looked impeccable, not at all like a shoplifter. Secondly, if you bought the coat legitimately, you were given a Burberry’s bag, which was effectively a licence to steal anything. You would walk into some of the finest clothing shops in the West End and look as if you could afford to buy any item. The sales representatives never suspected a thing, they probably assumed I was some rich African youngster with money to burn. That uniform was crucial to our success. We had numerous locations to work, including Oxford Street. Of course, things would not always go our way and sometimes we would end up being chased. That year on the streets was so exciting. We were at the peak of our shoplifting prowess. I had all this money and freedom and never wanted to compromise that by staying at a hostel. Instead, I would crash on friends’ floors most of the time, flitting from one run-down flat to the next. I blagged it, as they say. I would go to someone’s house and get so drunk I couldn’t leave. It was during this time that I started to smoke weed very heavily. I had begun when I was only 12, but by this time on the streets I was a very heavy user. A lot of my shoplifting money was spent on weed, booze and clothes. I must have smoked thousands of pounds of ganja over the years. I still knew quite a few rastafarians and that influenced my attitude towards smoking too. About once a week I would not be able to get a floor for the night, so I would break into a car and sleep on the back seat. I spent many a happy night napping on car seats in Peckham, Camberwell or the Elephant and Castle. On a few occasions, I did end up sleeping under a mattress but I didn’t like that: the cold still got through to my bones. The longest stint I had under a proper roof was at Nasty’s. Even then, he got tired of this after a couple of weeks and said, ‘Look, Chris, I can’t handle it anymore, you need to find somewhere else.’ I was still only a kid but I had been living on my own instincts for so long, my sense of self-survival was deeply ingrained. When your mother isn’t there and you live with your father who is doing long shift work, you don’t have time to be a child. If you want food, you have to find it yourself. With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that my personality was becoming heavily predisposed towards the life of solitude, hardship and suffering that is boxing. I maintain to this day that my childhood never felt like this. I have no complaints, but looking back I do accept that in a sense I was in training for the noble art from almost my first breath. Of course, however buoyant I kept my disposition, life on the street wasn’t all a bed of roses. Inevitably, I found myself in compromising situations from time to time. One night, I had nowhere to sleep, so Sticks introduced me to a chef he knew vaguely. I later found out he was also gay but no one told me this at first. I needed a roof for the night, so I had to keep calm when I went inside his dishevelled flat and saw dozens of machetes and knives all over the house. I said, ‘I’ll be okay to sleep on the settee,’ but he was adamant, saying, ‘It’s a matter of principle that you sleep on the bed.’ I politely refused, but he was insistent. He seemed cool to me, so eventually I said, ‘Fine, okay,’ and settled down in this bed. At about 3 o’clock in the morning, I suddenly felt this big hand wrap around my waist and start to pull me backwards as he cuddled up to me. I was out of the bed like a flash! Then it struck me that I was with a complete stranger whose house was filled with cutlasses and various other blades, and now I may have offended his feelings. The night before I had burgled a house in Seven Sisters Road and took a camera, which I’d left on this man’s coffee table. I tried to say to him calmly, ‘I’m not like that,’ before grabbing my camera and clothes and hot-footing it out the door! I headed out into the street, but as I was halfway down the road, I got this bad feeling and decided to hide behind a wall, for no specific reason. Seconds later, a police patrol car slowly drove past. I was always blessed with an intuitive street sense that kept me out of trouble so often. Imagine if they had found me, a young black teenager wandering the streets in the middle of the night, out of breath and with a camera around my neck! People often ask me how it feels to possess the material things my boxing success has brought me, having come from being a homeless delinquent. I do not see it like that. Whatever our individual circumstances, we are all fighting and each person’s own individual predicament is relative, it feels like a hefty burden. I always say to people, ‘If I have ?1 billion and you have nothing, then my burdens are as heavy as yours. I still have things to do, I still have problems, I still have aches and pains. Nature doesn’t give anyone more than they can handle.’ Everyone’s burden is heaviest. I prefer to look at things this way. If I look at it any other way, it gives people who are less fortunate an excuse to say the world owes them something – it doesn’t. The world owes you nothing. If I had looked at my younger years in that way, I would have suffocated in resentment. I could not allow that, I had things to do. I had to fly, so to speak. One night, I took a taxi to a gentleman’s outfitters in Brighton. We usually hired a taxi to take us around our daily targets, the driver would be paid ?70 for the day and was aware of what we were doing. When I got there, the driver pulled up into a side street and I got out with my tool, namely a pickaxe. It was 3am and the streets were deserted. The store had a double set of floor-to-ceiling glass doors. They were alarmed but that was never a deterrent. I took the pickaxe and, smash!, embedded it in the top right-hand corner. Then, smash!, again in each corner, four very deliberate and targeted blows so that the large pane was weakened. It was then simple enough to kick the glass through and walk into the store. Of course, the alarm was going off, which in the still of the night always sounded amplified 1000 times. However, I was serenely calm. All the butterflies I’d had before the event had dissipated. This was how I was with any job, whether it was stealing clothes or fighting a contender – as soon as it started I would be at peace. I grabbed about six suits and then just stood there, stock still in the centre of the store, soaking up the peace. When I was ready, I simply walked to the taxi and headed back to London. Easy. On the M23, however, these two sleek police Jaguar cars pulled up alongside us. I looked behind and another one had taken position to our rear. It transpired that someone had heard the alarm, saw me break in and called the police. I was nicked. There was no escape. They hauled me up in court and I explained that it was just a matter of money, that this was not my usual behaviour. Things were looking quite bleak, but thankfully the judge granted me bail, which I jumped and headed for a new life which was waiting for me . . . in New York. CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_8173403d-69de-50c2-912d-97eb28fff332) POSERS, BULLIES AND TRIERS (#ulink_8173403d-69de-50c2-912d-97eb28fff332) ‘They know exactly who you are and what you are doing. They’re watching you, don’t kid yourself they’re not. Wait until you’re 17–you’ll get caught, you’ll be in and out of jail for the rest of your life. You keep on screwing up.’ This warning shot was fired my way many times by my father over the years, but I didn’t change my ways. Unless I was taken elsewhere, he was convinced I was being groomed as Borstal and prison fodder. It was actually my mother who plucked me out of my life of delinquency. She was hearing all these reports from Dad about my misbehaviour, so she asked him to send me to New York. She even forwarded the money for the plane fare. My flight was on 29 November 1982. I flew in a silk suit, with burgundy Italian shoes, but halfway across the Atlantic I realised this was not a clever choice of garment. I arrived at JFK after seven hours in a cramped seat with my silk suit looking like one big crease. I did a lot of thinking on that plane, though, and promised myself I would stop smoking, go to church and try to start behaving myself. I also thought it would be a good idea to go to a boxing gym, mainly to get fit. I knew that my peer group in London would make it very hard for me to forge a new life, so I was fully aware this was a chance of a fresh start. I collected my bags from the airport carousel and caught a taxi with my father to where my mother lived, at 161st Street on Melrose Avenue, South Bronx. Being from the street, I was not intimidated with settling into a new environment. One of my first impressions of New York was the culture – I didn’t understand how inconsiderate people were with their language and the disrespect they threw around. It took some time to soak in the new terrain – this was, after all, nothing like even the toughest parts of London. My acute sense of observation was to quickly prove invaluable. Pretty soon, I realised three basic facts that would remain constant during my time in New York. Firstly, it was very, very cold in the winter. Secondly, it was bakingly hot in the summer and, thirdly, I was just as poor here as in south London. In New York, it doesn’t matter what colour you are, if you’re poor, you’re made to feel like an outcast. You can be white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, whatever, if you don’t have any money, you don’t get any respect. It was very, very hard. I often had a dollar for my dinner and that would get me eight rotten bananas and a quart of milk. I’d put that in a blender with a little nutmeg and that was my dinner. Some days my mother would cook for me so I’d eat decently, but she wasn’t always with me as she worked as a live-in nurse for the aforementioned old Jewish lady, Dorothy. I started straight away on my new less deviant path. I’m not saying that I stopped all my vices overnight, of course not, but that was my intention; indeed, I would drift back into the shoplifting later when I travelled intermittently between New York and the UK, but for now I was determined to start a clean slate. There was no one to tempt me like my London friends and I knew what I had to do. I had one more chance. I wanted to be a success and that meant not stealing, not drinking and not fighting. As I’ve said, before I flew to New York, I drank very heavily. It was either Bacardi or Special Brew, often swilling several cans before I went out in the morning. Within three months, I had stopped smoking, no mean feat when you consider the quantity of nicotine and ganja I was getting through in London. Two devastating incidents happened which made me stop smoking cigarettes and joints completely. The first episode was after I had come from Manhattan and stopped off near Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx, to go into a bar that was near to where we lived. There were some guys whom I vaguely knew from playing pool with, and one of them offered me some weed. This was not just ordinary weed, like the weed I was used to in England. This knocked me for six! I walked the eight blocks home but, before I went upstairs, I trudged into the store on the ground floor. This was an amazing shop, a cornucopia of fascinating objects. They used to say they stocked everything from a pin to an elephant. It certainly looked like that, all old boxes crammed to bursting, piled high, teetering with the weight of the weird objects inside. The store was run by two middle-aged, real African American New Yorkers from down south, Mr Seymour and his sister Norval. This particular day, Norval was serving and as I asked her for whatever it was I wanted, she looked up at me. Now, when you smoke weed, your eyelids kind of shine and droop. I don’t know if she knew what I had been up to or not, but my perception told me she did. I could almost read her disappointed eyes saying, ‘. . . and I thought you were a good boy.’ That look, which I am sure she was not aware of, withered me on the spot. My spirit was crushed. I have always had a deep-felt respect for my elders and so this lady’s inner dismay really hurt me. I stopped smoking weed there and then. Some Jamaicans say weed is a herb of wisdom. I agree but perhaps from a different viewpoint, namely that the wisdom only comes if you stop smoking and apply yourself to something. Marijuana helped me because it made me appreciate my focus more when I had stopped. As with weed, I had always felt guilty about smoking cigarettes, but did it anyway, as you do when you are younger. The incident that stopped this habit was when my mother came down one day and caught me outside on the steps smoking a cigarette. All she said was, ‘Jesus Christ!’ but that was enough. Knowing how precious her religion is to her, she could not have hurt me more if she had whipped me with a cane. Those two words made me feel like crying. It levelled me and for days I was in despair, so ashamed. Whatever I did, I would always say to myself, Please don’t say those words. I gradually cut back on the drink too and started to get my life in order. Although I had been a persistent offender in London, I was street-wise enough not to steal one thing during my time in the Bronx. Over there, if they catch you stealing even the tiniest thing, they give you a good hiding first before they call the police. New York was a rough place and I was there in the early 80s, when it had one of the highest crime rates of any city in the world. This was not the place to be taking liberties with people’s livelihoods. I was surprised by the prevalence of the gun culture over there. In London there were knives at worst, and even then they were only brandished in extreme circumstances, and actually used even more rarely. Yet in New York it was common for everyone to have a gun. I would find out just how popular firearms were shortly after. I started attending church and enrolled at Morris High School in the South Bronx, where I studied from 1983 until 1986. I took North American History, Spanish and Geography. I didn’t have the same temptations around me as in London, so I became a good student who worked hard towards graduation. My transition was well underway (this period of cleansing, if you like, went on until I fought for the world championship in 1990 – it was constant application). By the time I was in New York, if I had learned one thing from my teenage years it was this: almost everybody lets you down. My initial impetus to enter a boxing gym was to get fit. However, I soon also realised that, with pugilism, I knew the parameters; no one could let me down, it was all to do with me. The only person who could let me down in the ring was myself. I couldn’t help but be drawn to that. There were no false promises any more. My brothers had previously started boxing – indeed, Peter went on to beat Barry McGuigan in the Irishman’s fourth professional bout (McGuigan won the return match). So, I was already aware of the sport before I travelled to New York. I’d actually been in the ring before in the gym where my brothers used to train. However, these few fights were just tear-ups, kids scrapping. In one particular brawl with a kid called Matthew, I’d got badly smashed up: all my teeth were chipped and I was heavily bruised. That early exposure to the business was a very negative experience, which totally put me off boxing. In New York, however, I was keen to get in shape. I started going to the Jerome Boxing Club, Westchester Avenue, South Bronx. It was a derelict building, so the gym fees were only $15 a month. However, this was money I just didn’t have. Fortunately, they let me be the ‘caretaker’ for the gym, which basically meant I swept the floors and put the buckets down to catch the rain that came through the roof – it was peppered with holes. I had the keys to the place, so I was always in there, seven days a week. Within three months of arriving in New York, I was in good physical condition. I was evolving into a very determined character. After four months, I was asked if I wanted to spar. By now, I was very motivated so they put me in with a young man nicknamed Horse, a strong Puerto Rican. I got in there and throughout the first round he hit me relentlessly. The second round was the same, I could barely catch my breath. But in the third round, something important happened – I hit back. My competitive spirit in the ring had been awakened and from then on there was no stopping me. Adonis Torres owned the gymnasium and was the first person who treated me with respect, like a man. He was effectively my first manager and really looked out for me in those early days. It was quite daunting in a Bronx gym at that age, being a foreign interloper with what was perceived as a peculiar way of speaking. They used to say, ‘This guy’s weird. He sounds like an English gentleman.’ Even though I came from south east London, I had been teaching myself better speech patterns, accents and articulation for some time. How I did that was by listening to the newsreaders on BBC1 and the World Service radio too. I copied them over and over until gradually it just became the way I spoke. I also learned by listening to how the Americans spoke English incorrectly. So, at first, I was the new boy. However, I gradually became a more permanent fixture. I was there every day and over the next three and a half years, I watched fighters come and go, all the fly-by-nights, the triers, the posers, the good-looking guys with no heart, all of them. I was there throughout. I am often asked if I was ‘spotted’ as a prospective champion – the answer is no; I never even believed I was a good fighter myself. I started to be drawn towards learning the art of boxing itself. I began to adore watching other fighters sparring. I loved to see them throw a left hook, take a body shot, go through their moves. The art is a beautiful thing once you can do it. I learned so much by watching other fighters. I don’t mean just in the ring either. How their personal lives impacted on their careers always compelled me. Really good fighters who were supposed to be going places would get caught up in complicated personal situations, and before you knew it, their aspirations were in tatters. Sparring was the gospel of New York gyms. It was their faith. Everybody spars. Sparring is how you become a good fighter. It is far more important than the road work, the bag work, the skipping, the shadow boxing, all of it. The most essential thing you need to do if you want to be a good fighter is to spar four or five times a week without fail. And in New York, sparring was not going through the motions either – these were merciless bang-ups. This was a boxing commandment I took with me when I returned to England and to which I adhered throughout my career. I started off with one set of three rounds, then over the months that progressed into six-rounders, then eventually full-blooded 12-rounders. We even did some 15-rounders to condition ourselves so that a 12-round fight felt easier. That was how I honed my ring intelligence. There is a ring fitness and there is a road fitness – if you don’t have ring fitness you may as well not even step into the arena. I started to notice one fighter in particular who inspired me. His name was Dennis Cruz, a southpaw. He had this seductively poetic way of moving, slipping, bobbing and weaving. He was a delight to watch. His jabs were like pieces of art – there was a sign in the gym that read, ‘The right hand will take you around the block, the jab can take you around the world.’ That’s a fact. I became obsessed with being able to box as well as Dennis. I wanted to be able to weave like he did, to throw shots, to retreat, dance around like he did. I wanted to be as smooth as he was in the ring. This man was poetry in motion. Over the years, I have been asked so many times which boxers influenced me and, to be honest, there was only one – Dennis Cruz. Everyone has ‘flavour’, everyone has a perception of how something should be done, some people have it much deeper than others. Dennis epitomised it for me. I have no idea where he is now. I’d love to see him again. The sad thing is that time and hardship have a way of wearing a man down. A young boy has all the possibilities laid out before him, you feel everything will be alright, but as a man things quickly change. For me, I didn’t miss my boat, I grabbed every opportunity with both hands. So many people don’t do that. They may have a trade and even see a plan before them, but very few people apply themselves and persist. They sometimes fall foul of the easy routes – laziness, drugs, women, squandering – but that’s not who I am. I’m not saying this was Dennis, of course. However, the shame of it was that, as with many fighters, he never made the big time. I have since heard he had personal problems. That was a terrible shame, because he was an astonishing fighter. He was only 1351b but was a grandmaster of the craft. This is not generous credit I am giving Dennis here, this is just a fact, an observation. The first trainer I had was an older man called Andy Martinez, a Puerto Rican. He was only about 5’ tall. He got me exceptionally fit. He taught me only two punches, which were the straight left and the straight right, no hooks to the body, no body shots. He only worked with amateurs, mainly getting them in shape – which he did superbly. After about two years with him, I wanted to work with Maximo Perez, the main trainer at the Jerome boxing gym. He was from the Dominican Republic and had trained Dennis Cruz: he was our undisputed, sought-after, top man. Maximo had been a fighter himself – for me it is only logical that the best trainers are former boxers, not enthusiasts or observers. You need a brain that knows how it feels to be punched, how to throw punches correctly. Maximo had all the moves and could teach you everything. For me, he was the definitive trainer. At the time I took a great deal of advice and counsel from the gym owner, Adonis. I said to him privately, ‘The time has now come for me to learn more punches and evolve into a better fighter and I can’t do that with Andy.’ Very diplomatically, Adonis said to me, ‘That will be seen as unkind by him because he bought you your first pair of boxing boots, he gives you money for orange juice after training every day. You need to resolve this matter with a great deal of care.’ I acknowledged this point but replied, ‘I appreciate immensely all the things Andy’s done, the time he’s taken with me, the nights he drove me home or gave me money for food because I didn’t have anything. I sincerely appreciate that, but am I supposed to hold myself back because someone has been nice to me? I am trying to make this my way of life. I want be a good fighter and to do that I need a better trainer.’ I had learned all he could teach me. Adonis was, of course, right, so I thought very carefully about how to speak to Andy with suitable tact. I was very anxious not to hurt Andy’s feelings. I said to him, ‘I don’t want to upset you, but it is time for me to move on now. I need to work with another trainer and if you don’t allow me to then all you are doing is holding me back. That is unfair, I’m sure you don’t want to do that. This is not about you, it’s about me, I’m not using you, I’m just trying to get ahead. The fact that you’ve helped so much, I thank you deeply, but I need to move on.’ I am proud that, although I was a young fighter, I had the courage to tell Andy. So many fighters do not tell their trainer anything, even in the gym, so they end up stifling their careers with the wrong trainer. Maximo took me on for about a week and then said, ‘You’re punching like a girl, I’m tired of telling you the same thing about the left hook – you’re slapping the left hook. Go back to Andy.’ I told him I would get it right, so I went into the corner of the gymnasium and stood close by the wall for over an hour and a half, throwing the left hook, over and over and over, hundreds of times. Trying to get the pivot right, I had to get the angle right. Over and over, thousands of times in the corner, every day, obsessively for weeks. This was a routine of my own making – if I was ever unhappy with a particular punch or move, I would stop, retreat into the corner of the gym and repeat, repeat, repeat. Thousands of times. By the end of each little punishment session, I would be drenched in sweat. This was intense, I wouldn’t just throw the punch, I was trying to perfect every intricate detail. So although my training with Maximo lasted only two weeks, I continued to train with him from afar. I had already been watching him work with his stable of six professional fighters from across the gym anyway. I would observe and listen to what he was saying and explaining, then mimic it myself. Even though he didn’t have the time to train me, he was, effectively, because I had a very watchful eye, which is the key to success at anything. In the end, I didn’t need him to teach me directly, all I needed to do was to watch him teach other fighters and duplicate that. For example, when one of his fighters was sparring, I would shadow box his every move from across the gym. If he threw a right, I would evade, then counter; it was as if I was physically in the ring with the boxer. I learned so much that way. Some of Maximo’s fighters were of an excellent calibre – there was a fellow called Salano who I took a few moves from regarding escape, moving away from an opponent. So I watched, I listened, I learned, then I repeated, reviewed and revised. Every minute detail of every move or punch was practised thousands and thousands and thousands of times. After a while, I took what I learned from Maximo and started to add my own spice, my own flavour and personality. That was when I started to evolve towards being a complete fighter. This process was equipping me in depth with the skills needed to do my job – the heart, that intangible, unquantifiable, primal factor, was another matter. People sometimes say to me why do you have to repeat one punch so many times to perfect it? Well, these are not simple skills. It took me two years to learn how to throw the right hand. Then there’s the left hook, the right hand to the body, the left upper cut to the body, the right upper cut to the body, the right hook to the body – these punches take years and years to learn. You don’t climb through the ropes and just do it. I was about 19 years old when I first learned how to throw body punches, that’s three years after I had first started boxing. Initially, they taught me to punch straight out, 1-2, 1-2, load up and keep on punching. Even that took ages to master, it was very hard. But I applied myself very stringently in the gym. Over months and months of repetition, I observed and criticised my every movement. I imagined taking myself out of my own body then analysing myself in minute detail from the other side of the gymnasium. People outside of the boxing fraternity do not realise what complexity is involved in throwing just one single punch. You don’t punch from the arm or even from the shoulder. You punch from the foot. The wave of movement travels from the toe, through the foot, knee, hip and chest, sears up the arm, forearm, wrist and finally into the knuckles. Then the index knuckle and middle knuckle are the two which need to connect. These two knuckles flow from a direct line straight up your arm. The other knuckles don’t have the same support, so if you connect badly with the other two you are likely to hurt your hand. Sometimes you connect correctly with the two correct knuckles and that is the perfect punch. When that happens they just go. Lights out – good night Charlie. If that is done correctly, which is hard enough, you then have to complete the procedure, which involves getting your fist back into the correct position by your chin, your body is pulled back into form and you are ready to go again. If you can do that meticulously, you will have probably taken two or three years to master it – and now you know just one punch. This was what I was learning all those years. I wanted to know everything. CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ccd02829-f222-5789-ab2a-7a4fc69241af) GOLDEN BOY (#ulink_ccd02829-f222-5789-ab2a-7a4fc69241af) In my first amateur fight, the referee stopped the contest after only 30 seconds . . . and declared me the loser. The guy wasn’t the same weight as me, perhaps only ten pounds heavier, but that is a big advantage in the ring. He hit me in the chest with a perfect punch and I was so startled by the weight behind it that I stuttered back and froze. I couldn’t move, so the referee stopped the fight. I won eight amateur bouts on the trot after that, all three-rounders, stoppages or decisions. My amateur career consisted of 26 fights, seven of which I lost and the remainder I won. I was already incredibly focused, but now I was beginning to develop some momentum. One day after training, I was in the McDonald’s on 149th Street and 3rd Avenue, South Bronx. I was carrying two heavy gym bags and was leaning up against the counter where a section is hinged for staff to push up and walk out. I was looking out of the window and didn’t notice a man who worked there waiting for me to move so he could get in behind the counter. He tried to lift it which startled me, so I turned to see what was happening. He stared at me and said, ‘Move out of the way, nigger! Move out of the way!’ I said, ‘What?!’ His aggression took me by surprise, so I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ to which he replied, Oh, what? You want some? Right, if that’s the way it is, I’ll go and get my boys.’ At that point, I knew this was a situation that had to be confronted. I pulled my shoulders back and held my head up high, chest proudly puffed out. My arms dropped down by my side and as they did, the bags dropped down my arms and finally fell off the wrists, leaving me standing there in that peacock pose that I later became famous for. If you had frozen that moment in McDonald’s, it would have been no different to how I looked in the ring against Benn for the world title in 1990. That was my natural stance. A porcupine puts his spikes out, a dog growls and shows his teeth – this was my stance of protection. I never held my hands up – with my arms so low and open, the message was very clear, ‘Let’s do this, whatever you’ve got, I’ll have it.’ You’re showing that person conviction, plus you’d be surprised what you can do from that position, if you know your boxing. I think someone tipped this fellow off about the fact I was an amateur boxer, because he went out the back to get ‘his boys’ but never came back. By the age of 18, I was sufficiently skilled to make it through to the light-middleweight final of the prestigious Spanish Golden Gloves tournament, widely seen as a testing ground for future champions. The semi-final was very tough – for the first time I sensed the flickering of white lights in my head that would have gone on to become a knock-out if I had not eluded further punishment. Fortunately, I went on to get the decision and won the light-middleweight belt. The final was just as tough. I was getting punched left, right and centre. I won because of my aggression; the judges appreciated the fact that I was always taking the fight to him. That was a landmark victory, the first rung on the ladder so to speak. I had just gone 19 when I turned professional. I was still at Morris High School but the decision to turn pro was simple – I needed the money. I was due to earn $250 for my first fight in Atlantic City. The day you turn pro is not the day you sign the contract, or get your license, it is the day you actually fight: for me this was 3 October 1985, at the Atlantis Hotel, against Timmy Brown. I was absolutely petrified. You are taught to exude confidence in boxing, but that is something which you don’t possess at first. You hear about all these great fighters who have 35-0 records, but all you want to do is have yourself respected and win your first fight. At the time, Thomas Hearns had this awesome record and I was just astounded that anyone could be so phenomenal. He was a great champion. You’re not thinking of being champion, you just want the first win and to pocket a few hundred dollars. They left me in a room in the Atlantis Hotel by myself beforehand for probably only half an hour, but it seemed like an eternity. I went through a searching, emotional self-examination. I really put myself through the mill: Are you going to do this or are you going to bottle it? Are you going to have courage or are you going to be a wimp? My heart was pounding almost out of my chest. I was going into the unknown, something that has always made me uncomfortable. The hardest thing about boxing is the unknown. Before every fight you get extremely nervous; there’s the pressure of the fight, the ring entrance, everything that comes with a bout, so you are naturally terrified. That only ends when the referee says, ‘Box’. At that second, I always had pure peace, blissful, sweet peace. Once he said that, I knew the territory, everything was a reaction, he made a move, I reacted, he made a wrong move, I scored a point. The chess game had begun and I knew I played exceptionally well. I always savoured that word, ‘Box’: it brought such serenity. It was a four-round fight and I won on points. That first purse was $250, which was a lot of money to me, but I had already spent it! I had been calling a girl in the UK called Carol Chevanne on the school phone and had racked up quite a bill. The school authorities found out and I apologised, explaining that I would pay back every penny. It was a serious enough offence to be expelled but they gave me the chance to keep my word. I won the fight and so paid the bill. So even when I did slip up, I was doing all I could to make amends. This first success was later followed by four more four-round points victories against Kenny Cannida, Mike Bagwell, Eric Holland and James Canty, all in Atlantic City. In the summer of 1986, I graduated from Morris High. I had been a good student in as much as I didn’t have any friends, not even any acquaintances really, to distract me. My personality in regards to succeeding in church, school and boxing was very focused and I suppose that alienated people. I always felt like my school mates were just kids – in England I had been living like an adult for years, feeding myself, earning my own money, looking out for myself. Succeeding at school hadn’t been easy, especially as my academic life in the UK had not been well spent. However, as I was training to box in parallel with my studies, I very quickly found that the same principles of application, repetition, hard work and perseverance paid off in the world of academia too. Boxing is like that – its philosophy is a blueprint for so much in life. Immediately after graduation, I began a course at SOBRO College of Technology in the South Bronx. I was on a course for six months learning on a Wang word processor, aspiring to become accomplished with computers. To bring money in, I also did various jobs. One year before I was to leave New York permanently, my mother introduced me to Alan Sedaka, who owned a building company called Durite. One job I took was on a building site run by Alan’s firm. I looked after this office block in Long Island and was paid quite handsomely. My father was in New York at this time and was working on the job with me. He used to wind me up all the time. Another part of the job was to make van deliveries, even though I had never driven in my life. One day I was given an automatic – which I tried to think of as just a go-kart! I got in this van and was doing okay until I hit the town and began to feel a growing sense of panic as the congestion built up. I stopped at some traffic lights but overshot and found myself in the grid where people walk across. So I reversed back – the van had no rearview mirror so I was only looking in my wing mirrors . . . Crash! There was an almighty bang as I hit a motorcyclist. This angry guy wheeled his motorbike round and parked it in front of my van so I couldn’t move. ‘Look what you’ve done to my bike!’ he snarled. Already I was thinking about what on earth to do. I was an illegal immigrant without a green card, no driving licence: we were talking deportation if the police got involved. The guy said, ‘Listen, what are you going to do? You hit my bike?’ So I said, ‘Yes, I’ve got my insurance papers and everything in here, let me just pull around the corner, we’re holding up the traffic, everyone is beeping, this is ridiculous.’ At first he wouldn’t hear of it, but I persisted and eventually after about five minutes he got on his battered bike and began to wheel it out of the way . . . Screeeccchh! I zoomed off into the distance! I was doing well at my studies, I had money from jobs and the fights I was winning, but this was all keeping me very busy. Alan Sedaka was always very keen to see me do well. His brother Maurice was also a kind man and one day he took me to one side and gave me a priceless piece of advice. He told me to choose studies or boxing. To use his words: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket or risk being mediocre at both.’ I thought about what he said and knew that he was right. So I made my decision. It was a relatively easy choice when it came down to it: one was safe, one was dangerous. I will always go for the danger: my grain has always been to take the riskier, harder route. I have always lived in black and white, hot or cold, violence or silence. If you just want to exist you have to just stay in the grey area. Easy is just existing. I don’t want that. I want to make a difference. Boxing was an extreme but fulfilling life. Plus, the potential earnings far outstripped any wage as an office worker. My mind was made up. Boxing it was. People often ask me what my mother thought of what I did for a living. She accepted it and prayed for me. She would have prayed for me whatever trade I had chosen, that is the way she is, intensely spiritual. I remember coming back from my seventh amateur fight. ‘How did you get on?’ she asked. I told her I had won. ‘Well, what about the other boy?’ ‘Well, I beat him,’ I said. ‘What is going to happen to him?’ I explained that he had lost the fight and that I would move onwards and upwards as a result. She just quietly said, ‘Well, remember he has a mother too.’ That is how a mother looks at the world. There’s a quotation by one of the great philosophers which goes like this: ‘The tragedy of woman is that they become just like their mothers. The tragedy of man is that they don’t.’ I have become like my mother in many respects and that I believe is a strength. Shortly after graduation from Morris High, I had started travelling back and forth to the UK. I had lived in New York for three and a half years straight, but for the next 18 months I bounced back and forth across the Atlantic. I found that because of a lack of money, I sometimes started to get pulled back into the old lifestyle of shoplifting. Ironically, one day back in New York, where I had always managed to steer clear of trouble, I had a near-miss when I was playing dominoes at a club in White Plains Road. For this particular match I was on song and winning. There were four of us playing cut-throat, it was very tense. This one onlooker was looking at my hand and said, ‘This guy can’t play, he just happens to be pulling it off, he’s making lucky money.’ He was jealous of me making cash because it was a Friday and everybody was losing their hard-earned cash to me. Deliberately confrontational, he said to me, ‘You can’t play,’ so I replied, ‘Rather than talking, why not just play and put your money on the table.’ He obviously didn’t have the money so this was embarrassing for him. They all knew I was boxing at this point and he said to me in Jamaican, ‘Yu kyan fight wid yu fis’ dem, but . . .’ – at this moment he pulled out a ratchet knife – ‘. . . yu kya’ fight dis. Gwaan a Inglan, Inglish bwoy.’ I said to him, ‘Where I come from in England, if you pull a knife you should use it, otherwise put it away. I haven’t done you any wrong, you have no reason to be pulling a knife on me.’ Fortunately, he bottled out and that was that. Or so I thought. A couple of weeks later, I went back to the same club. I started down the stairs and, as I did, I noticed the man who had pulled the knife on me and one other man. When I got to the basement, there was no one around so I headed back up to street level. As I emerged, one of these men blocked my path in between this Space Invaders machine and the bakery next door. He said, ‘Eh bwoy, yu a eedyat. Mi a go kill yu bwoy!’ He said he was the brother-in-law of the fellow with the knife and it was clear he had taken our little confrontation as a slight on his family which, of course, it wasn’t. Being as righteous as I am, I explained, ‘Listen, he pulled a knife on me, I didn’t do him any wrong,’ but he was totally disinterested and as I spoke to him he pulled out a .38 calibre gun, calm as can be, right in the middle of the street. I immediately ran around this Space Invaders machine to try to get into the bakery. The lady who worked there had seen what was going on and said, ‘Leave ’m alone. Him a good bwoy, let him go!’ He cornered me and grabbed my T-shirt, ripping it in the process, and thrust the gun under my chin. ‘Mi wi’ kill yu bwoy!’ I knew the law of the streets in New York, so I was well aware that people got killed when they were not remotely in the wrong, it was just a matter of violent ignorance. I pulled myself away and started to walk across to my cousin Woodia’s house. I was not strolling, I was walking as fast as I could while still keeping my dignity and not looking spooked. The first time someone pulls a gun on you, you’re shaking, you’re genuinely terrified. With typical Jamacian humour though, these two big ladies in their 30s were watching this scenario play out down below and as I walked very quickly across the street they were laughing. ‘Look ‘ow faas’ ‘im a waalk!’ New York . . . boy, it can be a tough place to live. A year later, I was in the same dominoes club playing a game with a man I was quite friendly with. He had heard of my close escape and knew the chap who had thrust the gun in my face. He told me that about three weeks after he threatened me, the same fellow had been killed in a shoot-out. The lesson to take from this was simple: if you are a bad guy, an inconsiderate ruffian or a bully, there is always someone nastier, more malicious just around the corner. That’s what happened – he got killed. You reap what you sow. My cousin Woodia, who had pulled me on that banana leaf all those years ago in Jamaica, lived in and ran his business from New York. He sold drugs. That was his trade. My business was training, succeeding at school and keeping out of trouble. These had been my obsessions. Despite my substantial dalliances with the criminal life, I could never have been involved in selling drugs, it wasn’t part of my make-up. Shoplifting I could do. Selling drugs was just killing people and bad karma, totally different. One was preying on the weak, the other was stealing to feed yourself. Although these were the very circles I was trying to avoid, Woodia was family: I loved him. After I had made a different life for myself and my family in England, whenever I was in New York I would always go and visit old friends, some of whom were still wrapped up in the darker side of life. On one trip I went to see Woodia at the house where he lived and from where drugs were sold. It was a basement apartment with a wire mesh covering the streetside windows. I rang the bell and noticed several faces peering through the meshed glass. The door buzzed and I started to work my way down the dark stairs, but halfway down Woodia’s friend, Freedom, met and escorted me towards the thick door at the bottom. He knocked twice on the door and I went in – next thing I knew, I had three guns pointing at my forehead, an Uzi, a Colt 45 and a .38 calibre pistol. I said, ‘Hey! Woodia! It’s Chris, I’m your cousin, man, what’s all this?’ He said, ‘That doesn’t matter, Chris, this is my business.’ Woodia died prematurely, aged 27. The word was that one of his girlfriends had poisoned him. One night, while eating a Chinese take-away, he died where he was sitting. One of the regrets in my life is that I didn’t go to his funeral. Forget a man’s wedding, they come and go, people get married several times. Always see a man off, it only happens once. I thought, wrongly, that I was too busy to fly to New York for his funeral. I was wrong: you can never be too busy for the people you care about. CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1dbfdb83-cf70-57f1-a01e-60a2be6569af) DOCTOR JOHNSON (#ulink_1dbfdb83-cf70-57f1-a01e-60a2be6569af) I met many people through Alan Sedaka, one of whom was Benjamin Aryeh, not a nice character. He didn’t do anything illegal, but in business he was very cold. None of the people who worked for him liked him and I could see why. The first time I met Benjamin, he offered me a job as a gopher. I really needed a job at the time, but I didn’t take him up on his offer – this is because I asked him about his footwear. ‘Nice shoes. Those are crocodile, right?’ He shrugged his shoulder and said, ‘I don’t know, someone bought them for me. Are they crocodile?’ From that second, I was not interested in him or the job, it was not for me. He had played down something which was just a simple compliment. That first impression sealed it. Even though I needed the money. I wanted the right kind of money. The going rate would have been fine. It’s respect I need. Benjamin had a brother, a lovely guy called Nathanial, whom I used to bodyguard for in New York. I would go to casinos or clubs with him and watch his back. It was a bit silly really, because I didn’t have a gun and if you are going to bodyguard someone in New York, you have to carry a firearm. However, my aura was one of psychological dominance. My presence was imposing, so people would instinctively back off. I looked very dangerous – my eyes burned with savage focus. Plus, I always dressed impeccably, even back then. I always had my designer clothes from England and snake-skin shoes; I was probably the city’s best-dressed bodyguard. In places like New York, if someone is thinking of attacking they will first survey the terrain and weigh up the risks. Even though I did not carry a gun, my presence was sufficient to nullify any threats, because Nathanial’s terrain was perceived as too risky to attack. I never thought about being unarmed, and the courage and presence I displayed meant that no one ever did pull a gun, thank God. In hindsight, Nathanial gave me the bodyguard job just to make himself look good with his girlfriends. Occasionally, he would ask me to go to a club with him and a girl, but mainly to watch her. If the couple separated, I would be following the girl through all the darkened rooms and labyrinthine passages of somewhere like The Tunnel (an underground station converted into a club) while she would play games and try to lose me. I got paid $200 each time I went out with him. This wasn’t a scary job, after all I was a fighter, but also he wasn’t a bad guy looking for trouble. He wasn’t a flash man, although he had his little Porsche. He wasn’t courting danger. He was just a nice guy. Nathanial was landlord of a building in a middle class area, a really run-down slum of a place, near 17th Street and Chelsea. One day in 1986, I went with him to collect some rents that were a little overdue. At this stage, I was 4 and 0 as a professional boxer. One of the tenants we went to see was a gentleman called Walter Johnson, whom I now know as ‘Doctor’. Nathanial had brought me to this property as the heavy guy. He said to me, ‘Look mean, be very quiet and menacing, and get us paid.’ Doctor lived in a little studio flat with all his belongings which he shared with his daughter Kali, whom he had brought up. Nathanial left me for a while when he went to see someone else and, although I had this very hard exterior, Doctor was not fazed at all. In fact, after a few moments he quietly said to me, ‘Come back another time, I’d like to talk to you.’ Nathanial had introduced me as this ultra-hard, up-and-coming boxer. What I didn’t know at first was that Doctor was heavily into the martial arts, having studied them since he was ten. He had been coached by his own father and become exemplary at jiu-jitsu and many other forms. That day we met, he relished the opportunity to talk to someone about his passion for such skills, how deeply he had studied and how much he knew about the philosophy behind them. Two or three months went by when, one day, I found myself in that same area of New York, so I decided to take Doctor up on his offer and drop in for a chat. Even though he is 17 years my senior, the relationship just took off from there. In fact, this older element of his wisdom was part of what fascinated me. He would come to the gym and just watch, he never said anything. I had trainers with me and he always stayed and observed the workout. He struck me as someone who had an innate and vastly experienced sense of the street – obviously his colossal knowledge of martial arts bestowed that upon him, but even little things made me smile and warm to him. For example, one especially cold day, I asked him if he had a hat and he pulled off his own, tugged another hat out of that one and gave it to me. I called him Doctor in reference to the combination of his knowledge of Eastern medicine plus his philosophy of life and martial arts. Despite our strange first meeting, we got on very well. When I moved to the UK in 1988, we kept in touch by phone. When I travelled to see the Mike McCallum-Steve Collins fight in Boston and stayed at the Plaza Hotel in New York, I met up with Doctor and we immediately continued where we had left off, reviewing martial arts techniques, ideas, diet and strategy. He eventually joined me in the UK and we are still great friends – I’ve known Doctor longer than anyone in this country, longer than my wife even. He was to be an invaluable presence during training and in my corner at many of my future professional fights. Initially, we were not exactly friends, though; it is more accurate to say that he was teaching me the martial arts; that was the common ground. As I was mastering the art of pugilism, the noble art, I wanted to hone it to near perfection. So, actually to incorporate the martial arts was a necessary evolution of my learning curve. As I have mentioned, Doctor had an expansive knowledge of internal and external martial art forms such as aikido, jiu-jitsu, karate, tai chi and Chinese boxing, and at first it was very difficult to incorporate this into my style. I found it very frustrating. For example, martial arts like pa-qua are open handed, but obviously boxing uses a closed fist. Doctor’s martial arts were about holding, striking with your palm and fingers, whereas boxing was about striking only with your knuckles. He was trying to teach me these forms, but because I liked him so much I couldn’t tell him that I was struggling to incorporate them into my boxing. This went on for perhaps three years. What I did extract from everything I observed about martial arts was the foot movement, which was all about positioning and escape. The stance and poise in martial arts is 98% on your back foot and 2% on your front. Boxing is 50/50, unless you go into a position to strike, at which point you vary the weight distribution. I took that and spliced it into my boxing style. People often ask me how the martial arts and boxing mix. The point is this: boxing is actually the highest form of martial arts, because you have to learn how to absorb punishment before you can initiate it. Another aspect Doctor brought to my game was stretching. Obviously, as a boxer, flexibility is vital, but many fighters only have flexibility in one dimension, namely that of the direction of the punch. So another aspect I took from the martial arts was to develop all-encompassing flexibility, or amplitude, and by that I mean agility in every direction. For example, I learned how to do the Japanese splits, which is where your legs are completely flat, then you roll your abdomen and chest to the floor. This is an excruciating skill to develop and can only be achieved by constant repetition. A fight is not just about strength, it is also about flexibility. These extraordinary skills, when taken into the ring, proved to be very powerful tools. Doctor could enhance the stretching I was doing, and did so right the way through my career. Some smaller elements also crept in, such as doing Doctor’s jiu-jitsu wrist exercises, which were very useful for extra strength – no matter how much you bandage that joint, it can still get damaged. Sometimes he even made me wring out a dishcloth or play a guitar for extra wrist and finger strength! I never did much weight-training – lifting weights and boxing never go together, it tightens you up. Boxing is about being loose and relaxed. Another factor I studied intensely was the philosophy of fighting, the art of war, psychological dominance and the like. Due to my passion for this aspect of the business, I became an exceptional adversary, because I was born with an intellect and the courage to actually apply that intellect. This gave me the character to manipulate situations before a fight, dealing with the mental strain and terrain. What martial arts allowed me to do was get away from the conventional. The conventional will see you beaten sooner rather than later, because people will be able to work you out. People cannot beat you if they don’t know what you are going to do next. If you box with your hands up, then no fighter will be scared of you, because they know that stance – they have been training for that all their boxing careers. Box with your hands down and it unsettles them; they haven’t seen it before, it is uncommon, unconventional, extraordinary. The opponent has to work out the terrain from scratch and while he’s doing that, you are hitting him. If you can think alternatively, you can go on to be champion for a long time. As I did. It has been said by some observers that it was quite advanced for such a young boxer to integrate the martial arts into boxing as I did. I don’t see it that way. When I met Doctor, I just thought, Here is a man who understands the philosophy of life and that can be applied to everything. He has applied that in medicine too; he was always giving me herbs, ginseng and all the oriental teas. I was always the type of person who was interested in the older man who knew something I didn’t. Doctor seemed to know so much and seemed almost mystical. I was the one who took certain aspects of the martial arts philosophy and applied this to boxing and that is why people said that I had a very unusual style. I had learned the skills in the gym, then I put my own flavour in there with the martial arts, the stances, the angles. It was a complex hybrid of all the arts with regard to the foot movements and my personality. I must reiterate that the actual striking did not draw from any of the other martial arts, because boxing has it all in its own manual. Plus, how you deal with punishment is essential to your success. Absorbing punches without telegraphing pain is another skill that only comes with repetition and training. You stand in front of a fighter and leave your abdomen exposed, allowing him to punch it time and time again. Initially, it is agony and your face contorts with the pain, but over the months and years of doing this you learn to absorb the punch and not even flicker when contact is made. It hurts your stomach, but you learn not to hold your breath because if you do that you’ll get tired. You’ve got to learn how to breathe and be tense at the same time. You see a heavy shot coming in, you brace into it. It is instinct gleaned from repetition in the gym. You condition yourself; you mask the gut instinct to grimace or wince, because otherwise your opponent knows you are hurt and will come on harder. If you show pain, you will probably lose the fight. The best boxers are those who can absorb punishment; being able to give it out is only half the equation. This philosophy of fighting extends to your mental attitude as well as your physical conditioning. People assume you go into the ring prepared to take a life. Incorrect. You have to go into the ring fully prepared to surrender your life, if that is what is required. In fact, not only did I go into the ring thinking: you may damage me, you may even kill me, but I used to think: if you can do that to me, I will appreciate it. But know this: you are going to have to take me because I am not giving up, ever. If this sounds extreme, let me clarify my position. It is not that you consciously think you will die every time you step into the four-cornered circle. It is not that prevalent. Your strength of mind and resolve of character are prepared to face this possibility. You don’t think you will die, because you have a faith in your ability and because it is all about a positive mental attitude. You must always think positively. As will become apparent from my story as it unfolds, it all comes down to one deep-rooted factor: integrity. PART TWO (#ulink_7882272c-3e48-52aa-9d85-8c12048f892a) CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_abde0cba-2a2e-55d8-b02d-b7fc16343cec) HOMESICK (#ulink_abde0cba-2a2e-55d8-b02d-b7fc16343cec) I returned to the UK in January 1988 to make my home there. I came back principally because I wanted to be with my brothers, whom I still adored. My first fight back in England was on 15 February of that year, against Darren Parker in Copthorne, whom I stopped in the first round. Then came a fellow called Winston Burnett, who was target practice, but he would have beaten me if I hadn’t known what I was doing. The next fight was a mismatch, against Michael Justin, who was supposed to have ability. He was hard and willing but did not have the ability to deliver shots. He showed lots of heart coming forward, swinging at me, but it was no contest. Two more middle-round stoppages against Greg George and Steve Aquilina and suddenly, I was 10 and 0. Over the next 24 months, I was to fight 11 times on my long haul towards a title shot. At first, however, it was tough. I had no money and lived in a tiny bedsit. Perhaps inevitably, I found myself occasionally drawn back into a life of shoplifting. Before I had left for New York, I’d been in many amazing chases with the police, but perhaps my finest was a two-day pursuit in mid-1988. It was an absolute classic. We had hired a taxi as usual to take us around our targets and he then escorted us while we took the gear around all the pubs in the Walworth Road or the Unity Centre in Peckham. That morning, the car that arrived was a big burgundy Granada, driven by this fat Turkish man, aged about 27. He picked me up at around 8 o’clock in the morning and we set off to collect Beaver. We drove to south London and headed for a large department store. On this particular occasion, I didn’t take anything but Beaver stole a leather jacket. As he walked past me he said, ‘It’s hot,’ meaning we were being watched by store security. So we started walking briskly (but not without style, even under pressure) towards the exit. It seemed at first that we had succeeded in not drawing attention to ourselves, but suddenly Beaver flicked his fingers in the air, which was the sign for us to take off. We split up instinctively. Beaver ran off in one direction and I headed for the car park, running up to the top floor where the Granada taxi was waiting. I said, ‘It’s hot, it’s on top, we’re being chased. I’ll get in the boot.’ The Turkish driver said, ‘No, don’t do that, just sit in the back seat and act normal.’ I should have gone with my gut instinct but instead I sat in the back. We started to descend the spiral ramp that led to the exit, down and round, down and round, all the time waiting for someone to stop us. We pulled around this final corner just before the ticket barrier, thinking we were going to escape when, dismayed, I saw two policemen stopping all the cars and checking the occupants. The taxi driver said, ‘Just stay where you are, you will be alright, they won’t know it’s you.’ I waited anxiously for our turn in line and decided to lie down on the seat. When the policeman stopped us, he looked in the back at me and said, ‘That’s him.’ ‘Step out of the car, please,’ he said to me. I got out and immediately started explaining to the senior officer, saying, ‘Listen, you’ve got the wrong man. I haven’t got anything, look in my bags.’ Unfortunately, the security guard from the store confirmed that I was one of the culprits. At that point, I played an old trick I’d learned from my brother David, which he always used to great effect. I began to act frantic, severely agitated. ‘I’ve got heart problems, I’ve got stress problems, this is making me unwell. I’ll take you to court.’ I started shouting and ranting at this officer, trying to work my way out of the predicament. After about ten minutes, I just started to think I was getting somewhere when the officer, in a truly disparaging tone, said, ‘Will you just shut up!’ So that was that, nicked. I sat down in the police Rover and slid my way across the seat. Already my mind was racing – it was a Friday and I knew that I would spend the weekend at the station and it would be Monday morning before I’d see daylight. I had a blues to attend on the Saturday which was going to be fun: good music, lots of girls, drinking and ‘crubbing’ (close dancing). That, I wasn’t going to miss. More worryingly, I knew that as soon as they put my name in the central computer, it would alert them to the fact that I had jumped bail from the gentleman’s outfitter’s theft, where I had been caught on the M23. Then it would be prison and who knows what future for me. This was a desperate predicament. I had to escape. The obvious thought was to jump out of the car, at high speed if necessary. As we slowed down to drive around this flyover, I tugged on the door latch but the child-lock was on. So now I was really in trouble. A change of tack was needed. I started to apologise to the policemen in the car. ‘Officer, sorry about my behaviour earlier, I was out of order.’ I continued being Mr Polite all the way back to the station, in full charm mode. They were very much more relaxed by the time the car pulled up. Don’t forget, I am an unbeaten professional boxer at this point and training almost every day, so I am the fittest man on the planet – and I do not say that in jest! The police officer’s grip on my arm had slackened just a little, so that when he turned away from me to unlock the over-sized lock on the door to the cells, I pulled free and I was gone, off like a bullet. The only problem was, I was wearing my cherished ?140 snake-skin shoes, which I had bought from Panache in Walworth Road. As stylish as they were, they were not best suited to sprinting, not least because they were dress shoes with smooth, wafer-thin soles. The officer was, of course, coming after me, so I ran around a car. He stood one side of the car, hands on the roof, staring at me. He said, ‘Now don’t be stupid, son,’ and, voice brimming with confidence, I replied, ‘Let’s see who’s stupid,’ and ran off across the yard away from the officer and security guard. Because of my fitness, within a few seconds I was twenty yards or so ahead. After all, I was running six miles every morning before I even opened the gym door, so these fellows were never going to keep up. At this point I banged past a middle-aged man who then joined the chase. He was wearing one of those army jumpers with shoulder and elbow patches. By now, though, I had built up a good speed and dived through a subway, then dashed up this long flight of steps to bring me back to street level, deliberately choosing the steps instead of the ramp to make their chase tougher. I can picture to this day the sight of this man, panting desperately for breath, face all reddened and flushed, skidding through the subway and coming to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up and I was standing there, grinning at the top of the steps. My heart at this point was barely beating above resting rate. This guy chasing me was so exhausted he was barely conscious. We stood there looking at each other waiting for the next move, then I heard another officer shouting, ‘Don’t stop! Get him!’ I calmly reached down and took off each shoe, held them up in the air triumphantly, before turning around and setting off at speed towards a street full of market stalls. As I weaved my way through the stalls, out of danger at last, I could just hear a faint voice shouting, ‘Thief, stop!’ I was so fit they never stood a chance. Once I was sure I was safe, I caught the train back to my friend’s house and slept there for the night. I was awakened at 7.45am the next morning by a knock on the door. I heard someone’s voice saying, ‘Is Christopher here?’ before being let in. It was the police – no, it was the ‘cozzers’. I know cozzers is a generic term for the police but real cozzers only come from certain police stations. This particular cozzer was like a huge bulldog, 6’ 4” with a furious scowl. He didn’t care very much for me because I was wrong. He came into the front room where I was sleeping and said, ‘Christopher, get up now.’ I was half-asleep, squinting through my eyelids, saying, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ I got up and stood in front of him wearing only my socks and underpants. My clothes were hanging up in the wardrobe but I knew I had to delay getting fully dressed because at that point they would cuff me, especially after my escapology of the day before. I couldn’t believe my bad luck; this chase had been going on for two days now! I surveyed the terrain and noticed that the sash window was too near the officer to offer a realistic chance of escape. So I asked him if I could brush my teeth. He wasn’t stupid, so he followed me into the bathroom where they knew there was a window. They watched me brush my teeth. I had acne at this time, so while I was standing at the mirror, I squeezed a pimple and the pus and a little streak of blood started running down my face. I turned to the disgusted officer and said, ‘I’ve got to clean myself up.’ ‘Fine,’ came the reply, and he continued to stand there. ‘Can I use the toilet now?’ I asked. ‘Sure,’ came the reply but he still stood there. ‘Can I have some privacy in here?’ ‘No.’ So he stood there and watched me use the toilet. Or rather, pretend to use the toilet. After a short while, I played out the charade, did a fake number two, used the toilet paper and so on, pulled up my underpants then came back into the front room. ‘Right, officer, I’ll get changed now.’ He was standing leaning against the door frame and had started talking to another officer and a girl who lived in the house. Alternately he would talk to them then turn around to keep an eye on me. Then, for one moment too long, he had his head turned away from me. That was all the opportunity I needed. Like a flash I was through the sash window, in only my socks (silk, mind you) and underpants. The estates around Walworth Road were real rabbit warrens so it was easy for me to lose anybody who would take up the chase. However, it was cold and drizzling so I was absolutely freezing. As I ran into one courtyard, this little kid, about 13, saw me and looked surprised to see someone wearing only socks and underpants running around at 8.15am in the rain. I went up to his front door and said, ‘I’m being chased by the police, I need a coat, I’ll bring it back.’ There was absolute sincerity in my eyes. I could see his brain thinking it over, while I’m standing there shivering, half-expecting the cozzers to come round the corner at any moment. Eventually, after what seemed like an age, he timidly said, ‘I’ll just go and ask my dad.’ As soon as he was out of the hallway, I grabbed a coat off a hook and ran off. Poor kid. I eventually made my way to Nasty’s flat and finally, after two days of being on the run, I was safe. I don’t have a problem with people who steal things. Well, don’t get me wrong, stealing is wrong but shoplifting at the time was justifiable to me, I was a kid. Anyway, I knew that the mark-up on some of those clothes was 400%, so I just thought of it as stealing from the rich to give to the poor, namely me. People need to make a living, it’s nothing personal, it’s not you they want, it’s just the money. However, if someone steals and hurts a person in the process, that is totally unacceptable, and against everything I stand for. I abhor that. After Maximo I trained myself. When I started working in the Jack Pook gym in Brighton, my brothers, who were boxing themselves, introduced me to a trainer called Ronnie Davies. He had been Southern Area Lightweight Champion himself in 1967, so he knew the business. I was constantly in the gym, but Ronnie worked as a site manager for a building company. He toiled a long day on site and would come to the gym, back bent double, and work with me. I used to say, ‘Come in from the cold, stick with me, I’ll take you to the top.’ And I did. He said to me, ‘You only need to train four days a week.’ I replied, ‘You can come in four days a week, I will be here seven days a week.’ Ronnie wasn’t training me. I knew how to box, all I needed was someone to be my eye outside of the ring, because there are certain things you can’t see. I would come back to my corner and his perception and observation would be very enlightening, because he could see things I was too involved to catch. Ronnie was also a brilliant bodyguard. By that, I don’t mean personal security, rather a man who knew which fighters were dangerous, which ones were under-rated or over-hyped. Plus, he could protect me from the litany of problems, situations and liabilities that boxing exposed me to. There would be so many people trying to get to me, hangers-on, charlatans and takers, and Ronnie had a faultless radar for that, he sniffed them out immediately. He always watched my back against things like that. He was a very good companion. I will always love Ronnie Davies. Ronnie also made me laugh. His humour was so cutting, so dry, that he would regularly have me roaring. Over the years, we had so many hilarious times, nights when our sides would ache from laughing, where we would fall asleep still sniggering. One time, we were planning to fly back from Portugal to Heathrow via Dusseldorf, but I had lost both the passports at the airport in the Algarve. So we had to disembark in Germany and wait overnight for the passports. I have never laughed so much as that night. From the moment we walked off that plane, we cried with laughter. We went for a walk around the streets of Dusseldorf and I was telling Ronnie, ‘You mustn’t eat pork.’ I have always had a love-hate relationship with pork and had recently been listening to certain people who would not touch it. I was saying, ‘It is not a clean meat, Ronnie, never touch it again, if you know what’s good for you!’ He was laughing at me about it but I really wanted to win him round to not eating pork. They’d offered us pork on the plane and I was saying, ‘This is a very dangerous meat, Ronnie.’ As we were strolling past all these shops and restaurant windows, we stopped near one which had this big spit roast of pork going around on a skewer, crackling skin and juices sizzling. I walked in, got their attention and, said, ‘Yes, sell me all that’s left of the pig!’ Ronnie was doubled over in stitches. A few more shops down the road, we were walking past a kebab shop and there was this big German guy shaving slices off the revolving meat. Despite this being Germany, as he saw me a bright light of recognition lit his face up and he immediately struck up my peacock pose, complete with kebab knives in hand. Yeeaahh! That night we were sharing a twin room and we took this Haagen-Dazs ice-cream back for our night-cap but it took hours to polish off because we were laughing so much. Eventually I said, ‘Quiet now, Ronnie, we need to get some sleep.’ I switched the lights off but after about ten minutes he just burst out laughing again. Another twenty minutes later I went to get some water out of the mini bar, but dropped the bottle, so more hysterics. My sides were aching more than after any body shot! Ronnie took the monotony out of boxing – that scathing sense of humour sliced the tedious side out of my spartan life. The public perception was that Ronnie was my trainer, so as soon as I could, it made sense for me to have Ronnie styled to suit my team image. He had his hair cropped very closely and began wearing immaculate suits too, no more training bottoms. When I went on to win the title, I insisted he bought a Jaguar too – it was far more stylish and made for a better show. This was all part of the business plan. It was about showmanship. All my team had to be well turned out, not just Ronnie. I had hooked up with a local promoter by the name of Keith Miles and he started to help me get fights. I worked two jobs, in Debenhams and the other in Wimpy, because the money I was earning from fighting was simply not enough. However, this was very tiring and coupled with my obsessive training, I knew it could have detrimental effects on my performances. So I voiced my fears to Keith Miles, who agreed to pay me ?120 a week as an allowance. It was at this time that I first met my future wife, Karron. Her sister, Phillipa, used to go out with my brother, Simon, one of the twins. One day I glanced through into his kitchen, saw Karron and thought, ‘What a beautiful woman. It would be a dream to be with a woman like that.’ But this was an impossibility. She was, and is, a gorgeous woman. What was I? Nothing. I had no self-esteem, other than my belief in my boxing ability. Back then, no one else knew that either. So, at first, to be with her was just an impossible wish. By coincidence, Karron had actually seen my seventh fight, against Winston Burnett at Hove Town Hall, back in March 1988. She’d come to watch with a male friend of hers. She wasn’t dating him but I still had not even spoken to her at this point. I had seen her since in a supermarket but couldn’t pluck up the courage to speak to her. I didn’t have a car as yet, so I used to walk everywhere. People began to notice me walking around Brighton, strutting even back then. Jack Pook used to train my brothers at the time and he said that I walked, ‘as if I owned the United Kingdom.’ I walked everywhere like that. I was always very, very proud, no matter how difficult my circumstances. One day I had walked about three miles into Brighton and as I was coming back past my brother’s house in Portland Road, I saw Karron talking to Peter. I was wearing a nice black cloth coat and went up to them and said, ‘Hi Peter,’ before turning to Karron and saying, ‘Hi, would you give me a lift please?’ She said, ‘Well, I am talking.’ I said, ‘Well, when you’ve finished, if you don’t mind, would you give me a lift back to my apartment? I’ll be in the 7–Eleven, buying a Lucozade.’ She looked stunning. Shortly after, she came and picked me up from the 7-Eleven in her old black, banged-up Fiat and took me to my apartment in Trafalgar Street. When we pulled up outside, I turned to her and said, ‘Did you come to my last fight?’ to which she said, ‘No’. So I said, ‘Would you like to see it on video?’ I was delighted when she said, ‘Okay’. She came up to the apartment, but while we were watching the video she began to have a severe headache and neck spasms. I gave her some painkillers but the headache just got rapidly worse. By now I was thinking: Okay, I’m a minority in this country, and where I’ve been living in New York, this kind of thing happens all the time, people get blackmailed or conned. I called an ambulance and they took her to hospital, where it became apparent that, fortunately, she was being genuine. At that point, Ronnie walked in and said, ‘What have you done? What did you do to her?’ to which I vehemently protested my innocence. What had happened was, unbeknown to her, she’d suffered a trapped nerve the previous day when, during a scuffle at the jewellery shop where she worked, one of the owners had accidentally hit her on the back of the neck as he was grappling with a robber. Keith Miles found out about what had happened and assumed the worst, so I had to tell him too, ‘I didn’t touch the woman, she broke down.’ They were all very suspicious. The next day I was walking through Brighton’s Norfolk Square, past where Karron worked, so I went in to see if she was better. She said she was fine now and gave me a ‘Thank you’ card. I said, ‘Thank you, it was not a problem. Would you like to go out for dinner?’ She said, ‘Yes’ and I was elated. We started to go out and, with my ?120 per week allowance, we had some good times. All I did was train, so that money went a long way – we went out quite often. I would train first thing in the morning, about 5.30am, finish at about 7.30am and then start gym work at 2pm or 4pm depending on how I felt. At this point, I was touched with it, I was on heat to train. It was a passion that I could feel within my solar plexus, an inner passion. At first, the people around me were sceptical that I could keep this focused and have a woman in my life at the same time, but it was never an issue. I know it is for some fighters, but it never even started to become a problem for me. I’ve always remained my own man. In a sense, because Karron was so easy to get on with, it eliminated the complication of having a difficult girlfriend. I knew this was the woman for me, so I started the relationship off correctly. I hadn’t been out with many women seriously up to this point. I had a girlfriend in England before I left for New York, and over a period of three and a half years, I only had two girlfriends over there. I was so focused with my training and also with the church. The scriptures taught me that you shouldn’t fornicate and I did the best I could! The thought was constantly in my mind but I took that energy and channelled it into training. Karron and I became close very quickly and moved into a flat together above a garage that Keith Miles owned. Bear in mind, I was not famous or wealthy at this point, so to this day I know Karron is with me for me, which for a celebrity is priceless. My relationship with Keith Miles, however, was not working so well. He used to talk down to me, like I was an idiot. He would say, ‘Do as you are told.’ I must state that at times he was very nice and a real character, but when he spoke to me in a way that wasn’t dignified, I couldn’t accept that. I said to him, ‘When you disrespect me, I’d rather starve than accept your disrespect.’ So that business relationship ended, and with it went the flat above the garage. We moved into a room in Karron’s mother’s house in early 1989, during which time Karron became pregnant with our first child, Christopher. We had all our belongings in this one little room, with a fold-up futon to sit on and a little kitten for a pet. I was training very hard by now and some of that time was spent with the superb boxer, Herol Graham. That first fight that Karron had watched before we were even dating was the only time in 47 contests that she came to see an actual bout. I would never have my wife, mother, father or children at the fight. Boxing matches are a desperate situation and I could never understand how fighters wanted their family present. I realise some say it motivates them, but I could never understand that. I wouldn’t even allow my father to watch (mind you, he wouldn’t have wanted to), he would have had a drink and torn the place down in excitement! When I later had a gym upstairs at home, my kids occasionally came up to watch me train but never saw me sparring. While we had been trying for our first child, I said to Karron, ‘It is not possible that we will have a girl. It will be a boy and his name will be Christopher.’ There was no more than a 0.001% chance of having a girl. Karron didn’t see it that way, but I was convinced. I spoke about this in the press (I was starting to attract media attention with my lengthening unbeaten record) in a very blunt fashion and they made a big headline out of it, but that was not fair. Sure enough though, Christopher arrived on 18 September 1989. I felt the same when we had our second child, Sebastian, on 18 July 1991. By then, I thought it would be nice to have a girl and I honestly feel that by relenting in my mind, we had Emily, who arrived on 19 April 1994. Since then we have also had little Joseph, on 23 October 1996. I was very proud to be present at all their births. Some boxers are affected for the worse when they have children but I was not softened towards the boxing business. Remember, I learned to fight in New York, and as the saying goes, if you can do it there you can do it anywhere. This was my job and I now had young mouths to feed and provide for. I always wanted to be successful, so I didn’t need a family to make me more motivated. Yes, they all have to be fed, clothed and put through school; with any child comes a responsibility which you have to attend to, your duty is to provide. However, I have always had a very strong sense of satisfying me, of becoming an accepted individual, something I am still chasing to this day. So, my drive for success in boxing never wavered one bit when the children arrived. As mentioned briefly before, people in the fight business worry about the effect a relationship might have on a boxer’s heart. There is a saying which goes like this: ‘After a personal quarrel between a man and a woman, the former suffers chiefly from the idea of having wounded the other while the latter suffers from the idea of not having wounded the other enough. Thus she will endeavour by tears, sobs and discomposed mien to make his heart heavier.’ Marvellous. Fortunately for me, this was not the case with Karron. I am very aware that my conduct in my private and public life can impact very heavily on my children’s lives as youngsters. Having a well-known father will mean that if there is a problem, everybody will know and they will have no refuge. So I must ensure that this never happens. You can’t get any closer than your family. My children are me, my children come before me and as an adult you come to realise that. Christopher is very intelligent but doesn’t let me know. When I listen to him talking around other children his age, you can see and hear the intelligence. All his reports from school say he is a clever child, he always gets good reports, all Bs, the occasional A. Away from his studies, he is slightly absent-minded. He handles who his father is very well and whenever he stays around other children’s houses, I always get good comments from the parents. He is very well behaved outside of our house, but inside he is always fighting with Sebastian! Everybody likes him and speaks well of him. I remember saying to him when he was only nine years old, ‘Don’t try to be like me, you may reach where I am, you may fall below or perhaps rise above, but just be who you are. Look to words, to passion, grow up to be a man. Remember this – if I can do it, so can you. Be the best you can be.’ He asked me once what dignity was and I said, ‘If you lose it, it is sad,’ and then explained why that was. I said if I ever tried again to become what I once was, namely champion, so long after retiring, then not only would I not be the father I once was, but also the public would recognise the fact that either I needed the money or still craved the fame. They would then laugh at me or say, ‘How sad.’ On hearing this explanation, the tears welled up in Christopher’s eyes, even though he was only nine years old. Sebastian is going to be the black sheep. He is his own person. Whereas Christopher will be influenced, Sebastian has his own mind, his own common sense. When we are on holiday, he goes off with a group of other kids without us. He is clever, a good kid. He is the one who will take a stand, which is good. He is more daring – for example, he will fight with me and I will hit him in the arm with a hard blow and he will go, ‘Owl’ but come back at me! Christopher is not interested in all that. Sebastian likes shells, fossils, books – he’s read all the Harry Potter books. He is his own boy and will be his own man. Emily is a really lovely girl. If she takes after her mother, she will do very well. I don’t know if her arrival made me more tender, I think perhaps that I had mellowed more with age anyway. I wasn’t brought up with any girls (as my sister stayed in Jamaica), so I didn’t see how my father would have treated a daughter but, suffice to say, Emily gets away with a lot more. The boys get away with NOTHING. I often let Emily get away with small things, although never the important stuff. That may be wrong, but I am yet to find out. I am tougher on the boys. The youngest, Joseph, doesn’t understand fear, he is boisterous and has fight in him. If any of the children could be a fighter (and I vehemently don’t want that), he could. His character is already without fear, it is in his grain. He has watched how I deal with the other three children above him, so he can surmise how much he can push things – he looks at me, raises an eyebrow and tasks me! He will be like me. His devil-may-care attitude will only be contained when he sees that it doesn’t work and only gets you into trouble. Joseph reminds me very much of myself when I was a kid. Back then, I had my own agenda and was always busy. With Joseph, if you tell him something, he will have forgotten it within seconds – he has other things to think about. I am quite strict with my children but only to discipline them about what is correct. I will not smack any of them for being naughty. If they do something that requires punishment, they will have to collect 20 bags of leaves from the lawns, or maybe write out 30 sentences using the key words I give them. Very often, I will not punish them at all in such a fashion. Joseph once scribbled on the wallpaper, so I said to him, ‘Did you do that? Don’t lie and there will be no punishment.’ He sheepishly nodded and so that was that. He knew not to do it again. You have to draw that sort of behaviour out of a child. The only time I will smack one of my children is when one of them has bullied one of the younger ones. That is not acceptable but it does not happen very often either. Some parents believe that the law should be involved if a parent smacks a child. If that is so, not only would I be prepared to go to jail, I need to go there. When I was in the Celebrity Big Brother house in early 2001, I had a discussion with Vanessa Feltz about how to bring up children. It seemed to me that she was advocating the politically correct way to teach children. I could not agree with her on that. The politically correct way to bring up children means they will call their mother a cow and tell their father to piss off. That’s the end result, in my opinion. I’ve seen this, I grew up in this country around certain people who did that. In a Jamaican household, there is no disrespect whatsoever: you do as you’re told. For parents, the best thing to do for your child is to have them exposed to the world. The problem is, the hardest thing for you to do also is to expose them to the world. Nevertheless, let the child go. Because of my background, I was given no choice, I was thrown in at the deep end. As a parent, I’m too much of a coward to put them through that. I don’t want to expose them. I want to protect them. My eldest child said to me one day that he wanted to hang out at Churchill Square in Brighton. I said, ‘No way, I will go to prison first. Do something, achieve something, don’t waste your time down there.’ Fortunately, I pulled myself back in time and did the clever thing, which was to let him go. I am somewhat like my own father when it comes to the children. I don’t have much time for playing with toys and such like. I never played with toys as a kid myself, largely because I didn’t have any. So I struggle to sit down with them for hours on end playing children’s games. I have to go out there and provide for them all. I was never that type of kid, so now I’m not that type of father. I’m more into teaching my kids reason, wisdom and discipline. Yet, I agree with Nietzsche’s thought that, ‘Women understand children better than men. But a man is more childish than a woman.’ Society, or the media, cajoles people to think that you should try to understand your child. But your child will be alright if they understand YOU, the parent. When they do, you will understand them. I say to my little ones, ‘What? Am I supposed to understand why you jump around making noises and ripping the wallpaper up? I’m supposed to understand you weren’t thinking? Well, no, think. I don’t like that.’ They have to come to understand you. Think about it. When I became a man, I thought how right my father had been and that I wish I had listened to him much more than I did. There is a natural chronological evolution at work here: my father was a complete loser when I was 15. At 17, he was just trying to hold me down, he didn’t understand anything I did. Yet at 21, he was all right. He still wasn’t for me, I couldn’t keep his company that much, but he was okay. Then you get to 30 years old and the only person you want next to you is your old man. Well, let me say this – he hadn’t changed. It was never that he didn’t understand me. It was me who misunderstood him. One shouldn’t make that mistake. With me in this experience of bringing up the children is Karron, and I am immensely fortunate to have such a wife. Karron is a good woman. She is an exceptional mother who doesn’t really allow anyone else to look after the children other than her sister. She sometimes burns herself out, though, as four children are a handful. My philosophy is this: my job as a fighter was by far, without any doubt, the hardest business or way of life in the world, bar none. The pressure, the solitude, the physical demands, the media attention, it was so demanding. My estimation is that to mother children is 15 times harder. We had little money, I was trying to get on the straight and narrow, plus I was constantly training. Karron used to work in the jewellery store for two fellows called Kevin Douglas and Burt Wilkins. They were into boxing and knew all the old boys of the business, like Mickey Duff and Jarvis Astaire. Kevin and Burt were very kind to me, they literally used to feed me and take me around to show me a good time. Even then, I was aware of what was correct. For example, one day I was in a car with Kevin and Burt, when this man took a parking space that we had been waiting for. Kevin was known as a hard man, a very streetwise Cockney, who was into his antiques business. He didn’t want to confront this man because of his size, ‘He can’t do that, it is a matter of correctness.’ So I got out and said to the man, ‘Move the car!’ He said, ‘I will only be a minute,’ but I firmly said, ‘Move the car now, not in a minute!’ He moved the car. Karron and I knew we couldn’t stay in that one room at her mother’s forever, so we managed to get a mortgage and bought a small three-bedroom maisonette in Hartington Road for ?64,000. During this time, I met someone who would become one of my closest friends, a man by the name of John Regan. Ronnie was working for him at the time and kept reporting back about my developing career. John started coming to fights and gradually we became very good friends. He has been with me through some of my finest and darkest moments. John is a man of integrity whom I would trust with my children, my mother and my wife. I would trust no one with my own life. I wouldn’t put myself in that position. Money was still short, so I went looking for a new promoter. I would travel up to London on the train, dodging the fare each time, and visit many promoters to discuss working together. My father had warned me about promoters and managers, saying, ‘Don’t watch the ones who take hundreds or even thousands of pounds. Watch the ones who take hundreds of thousands.’ So I was wary of who I wanted to work with. I had sourced the names of all the big promoters. One such man was Frank Warren, who had me come up to London every day for two weeks and kept me waiting every time. One time in his office, I had waited for ages then went out to get myself an orange juice. When I came back, the secretary said that Warren had left. This was the type of treatment one had to put up with from some promoters, Warren being one. It was only a matter of one-upmanship though – which failed. CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_55f8614e-21ca-5d3d-88bf-dc1e8f53b44a) HATE ME, BUT DON’T DISRESPECT ME (#ulink_55f8614e-21ca-5d3d-88bf-dc1e8f53b44a) As a professional boxer, it is vital that you keep your skills confined to within the ring. Used on a normal man in the street, they could be very dangerous, potentially fatal, even with smaller fighters. This is the reason why I haven’t had a fight outside of the ring all of my career. There is only one instance where I used my fists away from the business, not in a fight, but as a necessary action in a very specific situation. I was walking along Meeting House Lane in Brighton one afternoon. The streets known as ‘The Lanes’ are very narrow indeed, perhaps only five feet wide at some points. I was strolling along when I heard a commotion up ahead. I looked up to see a man running down the lane, carrying in his hands a tray of gold rings that he had just stolen from a jeweller’s window he’d smashed. He was shouting, ‘Get out of the way! Out of the way!’ and running very fast towards me. This was a power play, I had seen this all the time on the streets. I was walking in my usual precise fashion, but stepped to one side so this guy could pass by when he came level with me. When this man was about 30 yards in front of me, I could see he was quite large, about 6’ 2” and roughly 1901b. I was ready to stay out of his way. However, just in front of me there was an old lady. She was in her mid-50s, only small, maybe 5’, immaculately dressed with grey pleated trousers and a grey top. She wore circular horn-rimmed glasses, and her hair was 75% grey, 25% black, cut into a smart bob. To me she looked exactly like Miss Marple. She couldn’t have noticed this big man coming behind her but as he approached her, he shouted, ‘Get out of the way!’ and then BANG! he barged into her, knocking her heavily into the nearby wall. If the Lanes weren’t so narrow, she would have been thrown across the ground. Now I had a problem: take but do not hurt. He was now level with me so without hesitation I moved into him with a three-punch combination: left uppercut to the ribs, BOOM! Left hook to the chin, boom! Right uppercut to the head, BOOM! He folded. I held him on the floor with my knee while the police were called. I wasn’t famous at this time, I was still a promising local boxer. As he struggled underneath me, he turned his face to mine and snarled, ‘Do you know who I am? I’m going to kill you!’ I said, ‘Well, I’m Christopher Livingstone Eubank,’ and, crack!, I kicked him. There was a man watching who objected and said, ‘There’s no need for that,’ and, to be fair, there wasn’t, but that was just my boisterous nature at that time. The police took him away and I was later given a 999 Award for my actions. Had he not hurt that old lady I would have gladly let him pass by. Once he hit her, however, I had absolutely no regard for his well-being. I never considered that I might hurt this guy. I knew how to punch correctly so my hands were undamaged, but then I never thought about hurting my hands even in the ring, I’ve always had faith. He was hit with three very hard punches, all thrown correctly, with complete resolve. If I had hesitated I might have got into a fight with the guy. As it was, I just thought, you’re going to sleep for a little while. And he did. In August 2002 I performed a citizen’s arrest outside the Hilton hotel in London. This man had introduced himself to me as a prince and a businessman and I in turn had introduced him to a friend of mine, Rory McCarthy, who was keen to invest some money with him. After the money (the significant amount of ?500,000) had been exchanged Rashid could not be found anywhere. My friend lost many assets and money because of this man and I felt partly responsible, as it was me who introduced them. One Thursday night I was at dinner with Rory, who I had not seen in some time, but had to return to the Trader Vic’s restaurant, when I bumped into this man, who was coming out. I was shocked as I had been searching for him for over a year. I said, ‘Hello,’ not wanting to scare him, ‘Don’t move, I’ve been looking for you for a year. If you move I will have to restrain you.’ Despite my request he tried to get away, but I threw him to the ground and pinned him there. I called to some passers-by to call the police and when they arrived I handed him over to them. It was quite an ordeal and I suffered some minor injuries as he punched, kicked and attacked me with keys while attempting to escape. With my 10-0 record, I had begun to attract attention from boxing insiders. I was well aware that the fights I wanted would not just present themselves to me. So I had let it be known that my eye was on a fight with then Commonwealth Champion, Nigel Benn. Benn was a vicious fighter of huge power, who at that point was undefeated in 20 fights. Moreover, the ferocity and venom of his victories had made him one of boxing’s most awesome new talents. I was saying, ‘I can beat him, give me the fight.’ But so far, no one was giving me the credit I deserved, so my remarks were just laughed off. Part of their problem with me was that my style was very unconventional, no matter where you came from in the world, so they thought I would lose to Benn – indeed, most thought my statements were far too premature to be even taken seriously. Some snipers even laughed at my lisp and ridiculed me for that, as if that had anything to do with my boxing ability. I did see a lady once, Melanie Bloor, who taught me how to pronounce my ‘s’s more clearly. After a fight, though, your mind and body are so ravaged that you often talk very fast and my lisp would become much more pronounced. Throughout my career, my feelings on the matter were like this: if you want to ridicule my lisp, okay, but that’s me, you’re letting yourself down. Some journalists quote me in articles using ‘th’ instead of’s’, but that is such a cheap, puerile, unsophisticated shot, school-yard stuff, not very clever. That type of criticism doesn’t really bother me, because I feel I can be understood when I talk and that is the most important thing. If anything, I prefer to think of it as an endearing quality. Plus I would say that they are the ones with the speech impediment because they don’t get across any view and I do. Despite these petty criticisms, I had realised that I had a lot of flavour and that is what makes you ‘box-office’. It is fair to say I had only fought ten times thus far, but I knew the capability within me. My eleventh fight was against Simon Collins at York Hall, Bethnal Green. This fight was actually taken at six days’ notice, despite the fact that I had a very tough bout against Anthony Logan the following week. This Jamaican boxer was very hard; he came to the fight to load up and punch very hard. When you are faced with someone who wants to use their strength to beat you, you have to use your skill to beat them. Don’t try to match them with your own strength, even if you are stronger. That is not the way to progress. I beat Simon Collins on a technical knockout in round four. I was always in control, but what interests me about this fight when I watch it on video is the remarks of the commentators. They showed that they had no understanding of me as a boxer or as a person. As I have said, I broke him down with skill, used the jab, moved around, stayed out of the way, then moved in and took him out. I did talk a little bit in this fight, sometimes you can’t help yourself, but it was not something that was deliberate. Charlie Magri, who was commentating for ITV, was critical of my performance. You could hear the disregard in his voice, but he had to stop himself because he was quietly impressed. However, he made two major observations. Firstly, that I had my hands down too low and that Nigel Benn would mercilessly take advantage of such an exposed defence. I guarantee you that any man who had gone in with Nigel Benn at that time, in his prime, with his hands up in an orthodox defence, would have got knocked out. That stance means you’re not ready to fight, you’re ready to block. That was using too much of a textbook defence and, largely against the consensus of opinion in the game, I knew that you couldn’t fight Benn that way. I believed you would have to fight him in an unorthodox fashion: check and counter – everything would have to be unconventional because Benn was so vicious. Benn fought many opponents who had their hands up in a perfect boxing manual style. He knocked most of them out. Magri made his second observation of note when Collins had just been stopped in the fourth. He pointed out that Benn would have taken Collins out in round one. My answer? Exactly. Benn would have steamed in there and probably finished it in less than 60 seconds. The point was this – what use is about like that for a fighter? If a boxer has no control, that is what happens. I preferred to gain more ring experience, work my moves, draw something positive from the match. I wanted to play chess. I needed to entertain the public and enhance my own abilities at the same time, and the only way to do that was by a prolonged contest. I would bring the opponent to the brink of being stopped then, just as people were craving for the stoppage, I would pull back to the ropes, look at the crowd and gesture. It used to drive them crazy! That was my flavour, that was box office. A first round win is very explosive but all you have achieved is a missed opportunity for target practice. First round wins are just headlines. Substance is more important. At the same time, if you choose to take your time, you must be careful not to humiliate the man. If you do that, you can awaken the warrior in him and that, as I later found out in Watson 2, could be a dangerous scenario for both combatants. If you humiliate someone, you will only make yourself look bad. There is nothing the crowd hates more. So with Simon Collins, when the time came, I finished the fight. The end of this fight is a good example of the way I would move backwards in preparation for the finish. It is almost like a cobra recoiling before the fatal lunge. You know the end is near. After the fight, I was interviewed on television and I said, ‘My trainer said if you have him on the hook, take him out. This is a nasty business, it’s not a game, we are in this as professional businessmen. It’s sport to the spectators, but not to pugilists like myself.’ This was the most public expression to date of my supposedly controversial views on my profession. I was so sure I could beat Benn by now that I took on a world-class, highly-rated fighter in Anthony Logan. This was only my twelfth fight, so I was still classed by many observers as a novice. Logan had fought Benn for the Commonwealth Middleweight title and almost knocked him out. Then, just as Benn was teetering, he’d thrown a shot from down by his left ankle, a left hook that knocked Logan out. Even though it would be another 13 fights before I would come to finally face Nigel Benn, I was already aiming at getting that shot. With Logan, I knew that if I could win, it would eventually lead me to Benn. Everybody in the boxing fraternity thought I was taking the wrong fight, saying to Ronnie, ‘We’re surprised you’re putting the boy in.’ That’s how they talk. Even Ronnie asked me, ‘Are you sure?’ to which I replied, ‘Don’t even question me.’ My resolve was like stone. Previous to Logan, the calibre of the fighters I had been in with was journeymen, mainly seasoned fighters. That said, I was a novice and they still needed to be beaten; after all they were professionals too. When I took on Logan, I stepped up into the big league. It was only an eight-round fight for contention, not a championship bout. Don’t forget, I had boxed only eight days before against Simon Collins, but to take the next fight on so swiftly never troubled me. Boxing was my way of life, I was always fighting, it was a constant feature of my world. I had to make my name, so I took whatever fight I could get. I had to earn money. Never forget, this was a living. The idea was to earn money and win titles. I was relentless. In the actual fight itself, Logan tried to bully me from the outset and, indeed, throughout the bout. He kept putting himself on top of me, holding and hitting, holding and hitting. Previously in my career, I had never been held and hit like that, and they were really painful, very annoying shots. He also kept hitting me on the side of my ear, which again was a really annoying and painful punch. However, I knew quickly that I was a technically more refined fighter, so I had this one under control. As usual, I had studied many tapes of Logan’s previous fights, and I deduced that I could jab better than he could, I could punch better than he could and my style was more artistic. I was fully charged and irrepressibly enthusiastic. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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