Nigel Benn (15 page)

But I didn’t worry too much about that. The promotors and television executives and the fans — everyone who mattered — knew I was now a world champion. I wasn’t the same fighter I had been with Watson. This had been the biggest fight of my life. It was make or break time and, had I lost, it would have been the end of me. Everyone had thought I was a coward when I lost to Watson.
When I got knocked down then, I didn’t want to get up again, but I did, even though I wasn’t sure what to do. With this fight I had a totally clear head and when I went down I knew I had eight seconds to get myself together. Something else that pleased me was that the Americans who had laughed when Bob Arum described me as ‘his English Hagler’ would now have to eat their words. I returned home in style, on Concorde, so that I could see my kids before they were tucked up in bed.

M
iami was a tough but beautiful place. There was no middle ground. You were either rich or poor and guns did a lot of the talking. As protection, although I never had use for it, I bought a 9mm Browning, the same kind of gun I had in the Army. I wish I’d had it with me when there was a showdown between a group of us and the driver of another car who fished out a sawn-off shotgun from under his seat and aimed it straight at me in the underground car park of a Miami nightclub. I dived to the floor and we sped off.

Later, I was involved in another fracas which could have come straight from a scene in
Miami
Vice.
It happened when I was surrounded by
half-a
-dozen tall, gum-chewing cops at a Daytona garage. They were the size of American footballers and they looked mean. In fact, they had been expecting my personal manager Peter De Freitas instead of me.

I’d been well and truly stitched up by the garage in question. The TV series
Miami
Vice
used
three identical Ferrari Daytonas. One was used for stunts, another was to be blown up and a third was a regular run-about. I liked the stunt car, which had been used by actor Don Johnson, and bought it from Paramount studios. The garage had been commissioned to do some work on it and I paid them $6,000 in advance, which should have covered the cost of the work. It was left there for quite a few months, during which time I fought in Las Vegas, returned to England and then came back to Miami to train.

By this time I had Peter De Freitas with me. Peter is a big man who was formerly my bodyguard and doesn’t mince his words. As a young man he had been in trouble with the authorities and had experienced a tougher regime than most.

I shied away from him a little at first because I received anonymous letters saying he’d been a bad boy. But that was all history as far as I was concerned. Nevertheless, it was useful having somebody around who could take care of himself. I was owed £60,000 once and Peter telephoned the debtor and suggested he check him out and then either tell him to push off or pay the money. The next morning, we collected £60,000 in cash. Pete is not scared of my Dark Destroyer image, either. I was giving him a hard time once when I’d asked him to organise a birthday cake for Sharron. It was quite late in the afternoon when he brought it round and I said I didn’t want it any more. Pete threw the cake at me and it splattered against the door of my apartment. The thought did cross my
mind to slam him one but I was exhausted from training and he’s a big bloke. I saw the funny side of the situation, wiped the cream off my door with a finger and said it tasted good.

Years later, we fell out. But at the time, I felt I could rely on Pete, so I asked him to sort out the Ferrari for me. I’d phoned a number of times and asked for the car to be returned and so had Pete. The garage was sitting on it and didn’t bother returning our calls. Pete and I then went round to the garage and saw that very little work had been done on the car. On my instructions, Pete took the garage owner to one side and told him not to mess us about. ‘Are you going to repair the car or not?’ he asked. The owner, who’d told us a number of different stories, said he would do it but it was the same old story.

Then the next time Pete went round, he told him, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll get another $6,000 out of the bank and I’ll give it to one of them herberts in downtown Miami and he’ll come down and sort you right out.’

Two days later a Miami detective was on the phone to Peter, accusing him of threatening behaviour with a gun. That was untrue — Peter didn’t have a gun — but the detective became quite belligerent and threatened to lock him up. He said: ‘You’re in my country now, not yours. We were told you threatened the man with a gun and that you wore a shoulder holster at the time.’

I had used some threats down the phone myself and these had been recorded. I’d decided to take Sharron, Dominic and Sadé with me to collect
the car, to show that I wasn’t interested in any trouble. But none of us had expected such a full-on welcome committee. Any moment now, I thought, one of these guys is going to pull a gun and lock me up.

It turned out that the police had been tipped off in advance. I pretended that nothing had happened and tried to smooth relations by offering to pay a little extra for the work.

The garage owner said it would be another 12. That’s a lot, I thought, but for the sake of peace I paid up $1,200. He turned to me, with the police standing around, and said, ‘Keep it coming, twelve
thousand.
’
There was no option but to pay up. I’m still angry about it. We had treated him with respect. If the police hadn’t been around he’d have been eating through a straw for the next six months. They said the garage man could have sued us for threatening him and Pete had to leave the country for a while. The car’s back here now. It’s one of my favourites. If I hadn’t paid up the money the police would have made sure the garage kept the car.

Before Pete’s unscheduled departure, we’d had good times in Miami nightclubs. He was with me when we wandered by mistake into a gay bar and I had my bottom squeezed. Pete joked about it, saying, ‘The guy who squeezed Nige’s bottom was a lovely feller. Nigel can’t remember his name but he made a lovely breakfast!’ Pete learned that champagne can be a great aphrodisiac. He called a blonde over after she’d been watching him crack a bottle and she said what a good-looking feller he
was. Next, her mate joined me and we made an interesting foursome. Pete borrowed my convertible jeep the next day to take his new friend to lunch and got soaking wet when he couldn’t work out how to put the roof up.

One of our friends in Miami was Mickey Rourke. We went out a lot with him, especially to Thai Tony’s. He was quite a fan of mine and used to train with me at the Fifth Street gym. We went with him to watch his fight in Fort Lauderdale, Miami. He had once tried to spar with me but had second thoughts when he realised what it might involve, especially when he saw me on the pads. We’d go out together after fights. He would wear jeans and drive his black Cadillac. He was a very down-to-earth guy but, with the greatest will in the world, I would never call him a brilliant fighter. People would boo him in the ring and he would scream ‘Up yours’ at them and give them the V sign. He fought in Tokyo as a super middleweight and, surprisingly, won most of his bouts. His childhood dream was to be a boxer and his acting has helped him to live out his fantasy. I respect him because he says what he thinks. He won’t crawl to film directors or sleep with them for a part as one well-known boxer did.

One of the best things to happen to me was meeting my idols Marvin Hagler and Mike Tyson, as well as all the other top international boxers. This was at an awards ceremony in Las Vegas where I’d picked up an award as best overseas boxer. Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns were also there. Marvin wanted me to meet his
girlfriend and he came over and introduced her. I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was great.

My broken hand delayed the defence of my new world title although another battle was gathering pace — my fight with the British boxing authorities. The
Times
reported on 1 May 1990 that, following my victory over De Witt, I was expected to be out of action for at least six weeks. It said, ‘Since hands are not designed for battering human heads it is not surprising that after the ferocity of his non-stop attack on the American, Benn suffered such damage. Since heads are not made to be hit by human baseball bats, it is not surprising that De Witt, an old campaigner, announced his retirement from boxing immediately after the bout.’

The British Board of Boxing Control refused my WBO world title opponent Iran Barkley a licence to fight in Britain because of eye trouble. A defence had been planned on 18 August at Old Trafford, Manchester, and a minimum purse of $1 million had been guaranteed, although it was likely to be much higher. As a result, I would have to fight Barkley in Las Vegas. The incredible situation had arisen whereby the BBBC would not recognise me as a world champion, and they would not grant a licence to Barkley to fight me in England. Their decision cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet despite the
non-recognition
and the refusal to grant a licence to fight, they
demanded
a percentage of my fight fees for the defence of a title they didn’t recognise which was being fought in a foreign country!

Who elected the people on the board? I’d like
to know that and so would many others. We certainly didn’t and we’re the fighters, the men who make the money which gives the board members their status. We help to pay for them and have no say about their jobs. I felt they didn’t do enough for Michael Watson. The BBBC is a
self-governing
body and I disagree with their rules. They’re quick to take their percentage and slow to support you. We’d like to see more black guys there. I don’t have confidence in some of the people on the board. There are a few who are all right, but there are others who shouldn’t be in that position.

I don’t think the public knows the powers they have. They can stop you fighting, they can demand payment from you and they can make you fight. It stinks to high heaven. I don’t want to have anything to do with them any more. In my experience, they’ve shown more interest in the managers than in the boxers. It is people like me, successful boxers, who help to give them a good lifestyle and all I’ve had is hassle. It’s a club for the boys.

They never liked Ambrose but, even so, he helped put British boxers on the map, which made them a lot more money. When I criticised them publicly for not granting Ambrose a manager’s licence, they glibly responded that he hadn’t applied, but nobody had the slightest doubt that, had Ambrose applied, he would unquestionably have been turned down.

In June, shortly before I returned to Miami to train for my contest with Barkley, I was invited to a
lunch thrown in my honour at the Tower of London by my old regimental commanding officer, Colonel Patrick Shervington. Captain John O’Grady, my old team coach, was also there and I was deeply touched by their gesture.

Back in Miami, my dietitian, Randy Aaron, made me cut out red meat, butter and salt and encouraged turkey, pasta, fish and vegetable juices. My hand had healed and I was feeling super-fit again, ready to take on the world. Iran ‘The Blade’ Barkley was a serious opponent. He was a veteran who had won and lost the WBC title with Thomas Hearns and Roberto Duran. He was nicknamed ‘The Blade’ because he was from the Bronx in New York, the toughest neighbourhood in town, where gang members boasted about the people they had carved up and murdered. He was a junior member of the ‘Black Spades’ street gang. Barkley’s manager, John Reetz, said if he stopped Iran fighting, the boxer would probably end up dead in a south Bronx gutter with a bullet through his head, or in jail.

He’d had a tough career, and the boxing journalist Harry Mullan put it in a nutshell:

Two days before my fight, Ambrose announced that the BBBC had sent him a letter saying that, as I had not paid the board the £2,500 fee for the De Witt fight, it would not give permission for me to fight Barkley. However, they would also expect another £7,300 from my purse of $400,000 for the Barkley fight. God knows if this story was true, but at least it was what Ambrose told me. I told them that they would not get a penny from me because of their failure to recognise the title fights and also for having cost me over £1 million in refusing to let me fight Barkley and Roberto Duran in Britain.

People in Britain urged me to stay away from
Iran Barkley. I had thought long and hard about our fight and decided it was a do or die situation. I was in two minds when I saw him. He was built like a brick shithouse. He was so ugly, tears wouldn’t run down his face. Giving him the eye, however, I felt his bottle had gone and I would be the winner.

You can tell a man’s fear from his eyes. I ran straight at him and my first punch separated his brain from his body. He looked like jelly. He was all over the place, wobbling and reeling. I was punching him, trying to nut him, elbow him, rough him up in every way possible. I beat the granny out of him, knocked him down,
boom
,
up he got,
boom
,
knocked him down again. I just gave it to him, left, right, left. I punched him until he went down on all fours and then I dug him one. Afterwards, I pole-axed him. Any minute now, I thought, we’re going to have a riot. Americans can dish it out but they can’t handle it when they’re on the receiving end. I was ready to give it to him without a referee and without gloves.

I got Barkley on a technical knockout — he went down three times in the first round. It was a hell-for-leather fight, but I knew I had it in the bag from the weigh-in. But the scenes at the post-fight conference were a joke. When you’re in the middle of a fight, you’re all hyped up, the adrenalin’s flowing. I don’t remember doing it, but I saw on the TV afterwards that I’d hit him once when he was down. Barkley’s camp made a right fuss, but they were just crying over spilt milk. The referee was one of the most experienced officials in the
world, and even he said, ‘It’s the momentum, the eagerness. That happens sometimes in a fight.’