Nigel Benn Vs Chris Eubank: Who’s Fooling Who?

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Here is a free chapter from the book Nigel Benn Vs Chris Eubank: Who’s Fooloing Who?, which is available on Kobo, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble: https://linktr.ee/leroy_fight_writer

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Lea 

Declaration of War

 “He (Chris Eubank) was the first person to come out and slag me off, and so he lit the fuse – he lit the fuse good.” – Nigel Benn. 

“For me it was never a matter of hate. This was an individual who I needed to win against in order to, well, get out of a maisonette flat and get into a house.” – Chris Eubank.

Chris Eubank made the second defence of his WBC International middleweight title at Brighton’s Conference Centre against Birmingham’s Kid Milo on 5th September. Milo, born Winston Walters, started his paid career in April 1985, and by the time he challenged Eubank, he had amassed a record of 13-3-1 (7 KOs).

        Milo threw himself at the champion from the start as Eubank was content to back off, sneak in counterpunches and tie the Birmingham man up. In round two, he wrestled the challenger to the floor and frustrated Milo by not allowing him to land a clean shot. When he did land his jab, Eubank was taking the sting out of it by backing away.

        After a clinch in round four, Milo found himself cut over the left eye. Realising that his injury would impede his chances of winning, Milo threw himself into the champion once more.

        Eubank’s performance was negative and when he landed a solid right in round six, instead of following it up, he looked to referee Larry O’Connell to intervene and stop the contest. The referee refused, and Milo upped his pace until the eighth round, where the blood flow of his injury was hampering his vision, giving O’Connell no choice but to stop proceedings.

        “The fight should have been stopped three rounds ago,” Eubank told ITV during the post-fight interview. “I was very disappointed with the decision there.

        “He’s not in my class. I didn’t want to hurt him anymore. The referee should have stopped it. I asked him to stop it two times - he wouldn’t - he’s a good referee, but I think the decision should have came a lot earlier.

        “Ambrose Mendy is standing here: I want your boy - he belongs to me, he’s mine!”

        Mendy, standing on the ring apron listening to Eubank was brought into the interview. “Nigel Benn, if he was here, would say: as Prince Charles once said, quoting someone more famous: ‘When I was a child, I would play with childish things, but now I’m a man.’ Nigel certainly isn’t a boy.

        “We’ve spoken to Barry Hearn, and we’ve been inundated with requests for the fight, and the criteria is that we want a hefty guarantee. I think it’s a fight which could earn Nigel Benn £1 million sold correctly, and there’s no better person to sell it than Barry Hearn. It’s a fight which the public seems to want. I’ve seen nothing here to overly impress me. I had a higher belief in the skills of Chris before I came here, but you know, we’re going to get you.

“I’m going to sit down and speak to Barry, but I was very disappointed with the way Chris fought tonight. I was expecting him to come out - he quite rightly says he was asking the referee to stop the fight.”

        “Disappointed?” Eubank asked in dismay. “I stopped working for three rounds because I already had beaten the man. I was waiting for the referee to stop it. How could you say such a thing? That’s ludicrous.”

        Barry Hearn was then brought into the interview when asked about whether we were getting the Benn-Eubank confrontation. “I don’t think it has anything to do with us. I think it’s a fight the public are demanding. Our responsibility as fight promoters and people involved in the fight game is to give the public what they want.

“Nigel Benn’s got to fight in England. We’re not having just watching him on television, and my man is ready to take him on.

“I’m prepared to back him. We’re talking to Ambrose Mendy. I hear all these stories. We’ll come up with enough money. Let’s get it on.”

Hearn was then reminded that he called Benn’s WBO title a paper crown. “It’s a paper crown on today’s standards. This is nothing to do with titles. This is about two men who are proud athletes and want to find out who’s the better man on the night. And I know, and Ambrose Mendy knows, there’s going to be several thousand - tens of thousands of people want to see the fight, and tens of millions of people in this country want to watch the fight. So, we have a responsibility to get it on - it’s got to happen.”

“This man (Mendy),” continued Eubank, who was desperate to get in another word, “has been watching me for at least a year and a half. He’s watched my fights close. I’ve watched him on tapes watching me. You know I can take your boy. You’re petrified. I know you are. Your boy is mine! It’s done! It's a foregone conclusion.” 

“Can I tell you what,” countered Mendy. “I’m quite lucky because I’m a lot prettier than you are but let me tell you this: Nigel teaches you to fight, and I’ll teach you to talk. Come see me afterwards, and I’ll get you a post-ring career.” 

However, before any potential bout could take place, Benn had to make peace with the British Boxing of Control. Once things were cleared up, the press conference to announce Benn vs Eubank took place on 18th September at Piccadilly’s Hotel Café Royal on Regent Street, London, with Barry Hearn describing it as “the biggest British boxing match since (Frank) Bruno vs (Joe) Bugner (in October 1987), possibly bigger than that.” 

        The hate between the two fighters was now well documented, and the war of words between both camps had been waged for quite a while. The two were tentatively scheduled to meet a few months previously when Benn’s fight with Iran Barkley seemed in jeopardy because of the American’s retina problems, but the American television moguls refused Eubank as an opponent as he was not considered a big enough name.

“It’s going to be so hot in that ring,” promised Benn, “Eubank will need a fire escape.”

Ambrose Mendy was holding out for his charge to get £1 million for the contest, though he received somewhere between the region of £400,000 to £800,000, with Mendy saying: “Benn’s purse will be the highest ever earned in a British ring - remember, Tim Witherspoon didn’t actually get paid his full purse for the fight with Frank Bruno (when Witherspoon defended his WBA heavyweight title at Wembley Arena in July 1986).” Eubank accepted £100,000, and Hearn said it was the second-highest purse received by a British middleweight.

“I’ve been wanting to fight him for a long time so I can give him a good hiding - one he will never forget,” said Benn.

“Michael Watson taught me a lesson. He beat my ass good. Now I’m going to teach Eubank a lesson.”

“This man is just a hard hitter, he will always have a puncher’s chance, but I am going to show you all that I am by far the better boxer,” replied Eubank. “I am the man, and as long as I remain undefeated, I will remain the man. This man has been beaten before, and I will beat him as well.

“This fight is nothing to do with hate. I respect the WBO title, but I want to beat the man more than anything else. I will spank him like he’s never been spanked before.” 

Ambrose Mendy, still smarting over his confrontation with Eubank after the victory over Kid Milo, could hardly hold his disdain for the challenger: “Don’t ever try to take me on at verbal, you have no class.

“Barry, if this man were green, you could sell him as a ninja turtle!” And when Eubank’s manager/trainer Ronnie Davies tried to enter the fray, Mendy quipped: “I don’t even know who you are, mate.”

Barry Hearn was the classiest act on show, as he kept a good-humoured dignity throughout the stormy press conference, which was always in danger of boiling over into a full-scale slanging match. The Matchroom boss functioned as a peacekeeper and made sure the tensions between the camps did not fall into a frenzy.

Eubank was the pantomime villain in the eyes of the attending national press, and most of the Fleet Street questions were directed at the challenger in an unashamedly antagonistic nature, designed to extract the type of controversial response from the outspoken boxer, who declared boxing as a mug’s game. His quote incensed many in the boxing business, but in his 2003 autobiography, he defended the claim by saying he was talking for the fighters, who are the most important people in boxing. 

Eubank refused to take the bait, even when British light-middleweight champion Gary Stretch, who was at the Café Royal on one of his modelling assignments, said: “Nigel, you will be doing everyone a great service when you knock this man out.

“Can I say something?” 

“No, you may not,” replied Eubank, cutting Stretch dead whilst remaining cool as a cucumber from behind the sunglasses he donned halfway through the press conference for the benefit of the hordes of photographers.

Hearn was hesitant of the photographers' demands for the obligatory faceoff as he did not want a repeat of the brawl that ensued between Errol Christie’s ill-tempered fight with Mark Kaylor when the two had a massive punch-up during the face-to-face in November 1985, plus Eubank had a scheduled contest in two days, and he did not want his charge to sustain an injury to postpone the match. 

Eventually, the photographers got their way, and both fighters posed as the camera flashes fired. Eubank stood motionless, staring straight ahead of him, whilst a fired-up Benn, who was only inches away from his foe’s ear, snarled, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and conducted some obscene gestures as he goaded the challenger to try something on.

Eubank remained impervious to Benn’s intimidation antics, and the potential flashpoint dissipated when both men made their way to separate areas of the conference room to conduct T.V. and radio interviews. 

As Benn and Hearn went to the hotel’s seventh-floor room to sign on the dotted line, another ugly scene almost erupted when Eubank inadvertently entered the room by chance. Once more, Benn tried to get it on, and the profanities started again. Eubank remained calm, declining the champion’s challenges, telling him: “I’m a professional, and I do my fighting inside the ring. Besides, I have my suit on, and I have no intention of damaging that.” 

Eubank then later said: “I will not come down to Benn’s level, ever. The man has no class. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s wild and has no self-control. I will tame him in the ring, not in some hotel room.”

 

Eubank continued to do his talking in the ring on 20th September at the Royal Albert Hall when he faced Brazil’s Renaldo Dos Santos in a ten-round non-title bout. Unlike his previous performance, the Brighton man came out entirely positive, walking across the ring to fire out a casual left jab before detonating a devastating right. The Brazilian dropped to the canvas within 20 seconds of the contest starting as Eubank improved to 24-0 (14 KOs). He later said: “I wanted to show Nigel that I can hit as hard as him. I am the man.”

        Six days later, on ITV’s Midweek Sports Special, presenter Nick Owen hosted a tense encounter between the two fighters as they sat next to each other, with Eubank keeping his back firmly to Benn, in the studio to sign the contracts live on air for their November showdown. They watched a VT of Eubank’s knockout of Dos Santos and a clip of Eubank’s interview when he said: “This is why I shall take you out on the night of 18th November. You are mine. You belong to me. I am the man.”

        The cameras clicked back to Benn in the studio as Nick Owen said: “Nigel Benn, he’s talking to you.”

        “Tell him to face me,” he replied. “The thing about him, he’s all hype, he’s all hype, you know, and I can’t wait until November the 18th to give him a good, good hiding.

        “You know, he went out there. He done a job on a guy. Who is he? Another Sanchez? Gomez? Lopez? Who was it? Another road sweeper? Hey, I’ve done that before. Now I’m with the big boys. I’m there. I’m there already. He’s got to prove himself. Not me!”

        “Will you prove yourself, Chris?” Owen asked.

        “On that particular night in question, I will show that I have what it takes. This man is nothing but a…he’s the real hype. I come up the hard way…”

        “You need to prove yourself, boy,” interrupted Benn.

“You’ve had your time. Let’s have some parliamentary procedure here, all right,” the reply brought a snigger from Benn and an “Oh, God,” from Ambrose Mendy.

        “I didn’t come up the easy way,” continued Eubank, “I came up hard. I didn’t have Frank Warren; I didn’t have Ambrose Mendy. You know, I came to Barry when I was 14-0.”

        “What makes you think you can beat Nigel Benn?”

        “Because he's just a puncher. He’s only got a puncher’s chance. I’m a skillster, I’m a fighter. I can punch as hard as he can. I can box, I can slug, whatever he can… Everything is loaded in my favour for this fight because, in my opinion, although he’s a great puncher, he has nothing else other than that.”

        “Do you go along with that, Ambrose Mendy?”

        “Not at all,” Mendy began. “Nigel Benn came up the hard way. Yeah, we’re going to find out on the night who’s fooling who. In my opinion, Chris Eubank tries to talk as if he came out of some silver spoon society. He’s a kid off the street, the same as us, and we’re going to find out on the night just who is fooling who. And regards to Chris saying boxing is a mug’s game; we’ve got something to show you,” Mendy said as he and Benn each produced a rolled-up piece of paper with Eubank’s face on a mug with a caption above reading: ‘Its a mugs game’. “If you’d like to home in on that,” Mendy said to the camera, “It's a mug's game. Can I say this? A Shakespearean quote for you young man to learn: ‘How much sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.’ That’s from all the professional boxers in this country.”

        “Barry Hearn,” said Nick Owen, bringing the promoter into the conversation, “Why is this man the boxer they all love to hate?”

        “Well, I don’t think they do. I think that's an image that's been afforded to him by some of the journalists in Fleet Street. It takes a bit of time to appreciate Chris Eubank. But, having said that, you know, I’m not detracting from either fighter, but we have a situation where Nigel Benn fought Michael Watson; Nigel Benn was the undefeated fighter that went in. Chris Eubank is now the undefeated fighter. He’s there on merit. He is the man until he’s been beaten. And it's going to be a very highly competitive fight between two great athletes.

        “But one point I must just say: Ronaldo Dos Santos is not a Gomez or a Sanchez or a Pedro, anything. That man had never been knocked out before, and in fact, in his professional career of some twenty fights, had never visited the canvas.”

        “Chris, how important is it to you to lay Nigel Benn on the canvas?” Owen asked.        

“That’s not important; I just got to beat the man. It doesn’t matter if I knock him out or take him twelve rounds and give him a boxing lesson.”

        “But why is it so important to beat this particular man?”

        “This is the business. This is the business, and I will do what is required on the night. Not only that, if he doesn’t extend me, which I’m sure he will, I shan’t do anything more than I have to do.”

        “Why won’t you face him tonight?”

        “I’ll face the man in the ring. I can face him; I’m speaking to you, asking me questions…”

        “...I could face you anytime. Anytime…” chipped in Benn.

        “...You’re asking me questions, and I’m being polite, I’m facing you, I’m looking in your face. I have nothing to say to Nigel. I find the man intolerable. In fact, he’s so wild; I have no time for such people. He has no class, as far as I see it.

        “About Nigel Benn, I will say this: the man is a powerful puncher, a very powerful puncher. For this, I would like his autograph because after I’ve finished with him, he isn’t going to be anybody.”

        “Nigel Benn, will he be anybody after the fight?”

        “The thing about it, I’ve seen both sides of the coin, like I was saying before. When Watson kicked my butt, hey, I got up, brushed myself down, went and fought Quinones, Jorge Amparo, Doug DeWitt, Iran Barkley…”

        “...It seems that this one is working you up more than any other fight…” Owen said.

        “...More than anyone else. I think the public is demanding this. I walk down the street, people say, ‘Hey, give this boy a hiding’, and I am determined to go out there firing on all cylinders.

        “Well, let’s make sure the fight takes place by signing the contract right now,” said Owen, as Barry Hearn handed the piece of paper over to Eubank to sign.

        “I have to say,” continued Owen, “there seems an element of genuine hate between these two, Ambrose.”

        “For sure,” Benn replied.

        “I don’t hate the man; I just want his WBO title,” said Eubank as he finished signing the contract. “I pray that I have enough dignity not to hate the man. Hate doesn’t come into it for me. Hate destroys the game and makes it look brutal, and that’s why a lot of people don’t take to it. I don’t hate the man, I want the man’s title, and I intend to prove that I'm a better fighter than the man, which I am.”

        “I personally do hate him,” said Benn after putting his signature on the contract. “I personally do hate him.”

        “So, is there any point in me asking you to shake hands after signing the contract?”

“No, no, no, no, no. I’m not shaking hands,” said Benn as Owen thanked the four gentlemen for taking part in the programme. 

 

There was a lot of hate generated in the tabloid newspapers, but for Benn, it was one hundred percent genuine. He hated Eubank with a passion and even said he would retire from boxing if he did not defeat his challenger. “I want to humiliate him,” said the defending champion, “because I detest him. I want to shut his mouth forever. I really do detest him.”

Eubank also added fuel to the flames by claiming he was a “boxer, slugger, trickster, craftsman, a mover, skillster, and a chess player. Critics claim I am over-confident, but ability gives you that feeling. They say I’m arrogant, I say I’m assertive,” and of his opponent, he said this: “Benn is a fraud, there is nothing genuine about the man…he’s not capable of teaching me any lesson.

“What we have here is a competent, intellectual boxer against the shallow-minded puncher. The objective will be to overcome the man and prove that he’s a fraud. I may just stand back and play with him before I maul him.”

        Benn, though, was a red-hot favourite to win, with The Times billing him as “...a wild animal in the ring, and we rarely had if ever, seen anything like that in this country. He was the epitome of an all-out warrior, bringing rage and fury into the ring that one might only encounter in the United States. Only Mike Tyson and Marvin Hagler have exuded such menace.”

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this chapter then you can get the rest of the book, along with my other boxing titles, here: https://linktr.ee/leroy_fight_writer