Nigel Benn (17 page)

I
wanted to change trainers for my WBC
super-middleweight
title fight against Mauro Galvano and Jimmy Tibbs fitted the bill perfectly. He had trained world champions Lloyd Honeyghan, Jim Watt and Charlie Magri. Michael Watson had also trained with him and Jimmy was in his corner during his tragic last fight against Eubank.

Jimmy is one of the best trainers around. He had a promising professional boxing career himself until he got into a bit of bother in the early Seventies. Things got a little wild with enemies of his family who were very well known and lived in the East End. Jimmy tried to take the law into his own hands and, unfortunately, by doing so, cut short his career.

Just before he was sent to prison, he’d been hailed as the ‘golden boy’ of British boxing. He had wanted to avenge wrongs done to his family. Someone had tried to blow up a car containing Jimmy and his young son, and there had been other attacks as well. Since that time, Jimmy has
reformed. Now he is a born-again Christian, just like my dad, and the pair of them get on very well.

I began training for my fights in Tenerife. Going there removed the distractions of London and the domestic conflicts which arise in most relationships and which can lead to debilitating emotional upsets. Training is such an intense activity that it is almost impossible to do with a family around you. The Canary Islands also offered a more temperate climate in winter and the opportunity for high-altitude running on Mount Teide.

There is nothing more beautiful and fulfilling than running at an altitude of about 8,000 feet among snow-capped peaks in bright sunshine, well above the clouds. I can retreat into a world of my own, my own galaxy. Just me and my music and, later, the satisfaction that comes from physically punishing yourself. You can clear your mind of all anxieties and problems in that surrealistic ‘moonscape’ where they shot
Planet
of
the
Apes,
and be at peace with the world. That’s where I get my ‘high’. When I was training for the Wharton fight, Sean, my cook, used to accompany me, driving behind me as I ran past each milepost. I’d run six to eight miles and then increase it to ten and even more. That’s equivalent to running up to 15 miles at sea level. At other times, my father would come with me and drive the car, as would Peter De Freitas.

Back at my beach-front apartment in Torviscas, there was a gym and boxing ring where Jimmy trained me. He was particularly good with the
pads and took a hell of a slamming from me every day, brainwashing me with his technique while I hammered away at him. Both Jim and Peter then joined me in the gym, often working out themselves. I listened to their advice, but at the end of the day, they knew that
I
am the boss. It’s not what they said that matters, it’s what
I
said. I know what my body can do and how much I should train. If I wanted time off I’d take it without any feelings of guilt afterwards. If I wanted to go to a nightclub and stay out most of the night during my six-week training period, I’d do so. That was my prerogative.

Jimmy Tibbs set up a training schedule — this is it straight from the horse’s mouth: ‘We’re going to start with loosening up and stretching exercises, then do three or four rounds’ shadow boxing with weights on the hands and one round with them off, then four or five more with pads. After that, we’ll do some more shadow boxing, skipping and ground work and have a good loosening up.

‘Weight training will take place every other day and then, for two weeks before the fight, we’ll have a sparring partner for nine to ten rounds per day. We may take it down to six some days. The art of the game is to peak on the night. I don’t worry about an off-day here or there. Just relax and come back again. Nigel’s a mature professional now who can go the distance. He’s a very solid puncher and is physically strong.

‘But it doesn’t matter how strong you are, everyone gets tired, even if you’ve been training for months. A good fighter has got to get through
that. He’s matured and grown up and knows how to pace himself and when to let go. He’s a mature professional now. His main strength is his punch but he’s also got smarter. Rather than bang, bang, bang, he ducks and dives and makes a man miss. He can’t keep on taking whacks all the time.

‘He’s intelligent enough to listen as well. Some people won’t be shown things but Nigel asks and, even more importantly, listens when you give him advice. Nigel is a very determined person. If he can get that tunnel vision, that is how I want him. I also like him as a person. He’s got a good heart and he is a very gentle soul really. I know his family and his dad and I can see where they come from and I like what I see. They’re a very honest family. When we train in Tenerife, Nigel is very popular with the public. He takes time out for everyone, old grannies and young kids, and sits down with them after training to sign autographs and chat to them. His dad, Dickson, is also very popular. Everyone keeps asking after him. I know Nigel was very kind to one of his disabled fans, Timmy Matheson, who is a paraplegic. Timmy met Nigel at a charity do and Nigel spotted him and invited him to sit with his mates at a ringside table. He now makes sure he always gets a ringside seat at his British venues.’

Timmy Matheson is a great kid. He’s got cerebral palsy, and I first came across him at a boxing dinner ten or eleven years ago. I saw him with his mum at the back in a corner, and no one was really paying much attention to them. Some people were even walking away from them, and it
really got to me badly because nobody seemed to care about them.

I told the organisers that unless he sat next to me on the top table, I was walking out there and then. They brought him over and we have been great friends ever since. He can’t speak, but his eyes say everything. I look into them and know he understands every word I say. When I ran the London Marathon, I did it for cerebral palsy and for Timmy.

A lot of people make arbitrary judgements about what you should or shouldn’t do. That’s not me. I don’t want to die a boring man. I live for every minute. I had several friends who owned clubs and discos in Las Americas and they let me use them during the day to mix music and then invited me to dee-jay in the evening. Apart from being on top of Mount Teide, nothing gives me more pleasure, or is more relaxing, than dee-jaying or working on my own mixes. Sean, my cook and friend, was also a DJ and we did quite a bit of clubbing before the Henry Wharton fight. I had to smile when the press tried to make a feature out of the fact that I had brought my children down to Tenerife for a weekend shortly before defending my title. They said such a distraction could lose me the fight. Win it, more likely! It made me play happy families and kept me inside the flat.

To ensure that I had no other distractions, my girlfriend at the time gave me a present before I left London — a full-size, blow-up rubber doll! She has a good sense of humour and I can reveal that the doll remained folded up in my bottom drawer
throughout my stay, although I did offer her to a friend who turned her down, saying he preferred blondes.

I trained very hard for the Galvano fight. The WBC belt was superior to the WBO
super-middleweight
title and was recognised by all boxing authorities worldwide. I aimed to bring it back from Italy. I was confident of success although I distrusted the Italians and feared they would get up to dirty tricks in trying to retain it. When Jimmy was in Italy with Lloyd Honeyghan, he knocked out Gianfranco Rosi for a European title but the story on the street was that the referee took nearly half a minute to count to ten and only signalled the fight as over when he realised Rosi wouldn’t get up for a week. They also seemed to mess Pat Clinton around when he beat Salvatore Fanni by giving him weight scales which showed he was 2lb over and he took the weight off only to find he was 2lb under at the offical weigh-in.

Winning the title would put me back on course for large purses and bring me closer to retirement. A boxer can only go on for a limited time when he puts his body through a punishing regime as often as I had. Beating Galvano would also create a record in that I would be the only boxer this century to win two world titles outside Britain. Up until that time I had had 35 fights, 33 wins (29 inside the distance) and two defeats.

I would have travelled to Timbuctu if it meant winning a belt, so Italy was quite convenient, even though I hated fighting there. Galvano was an OK bloke, but the crowd was really hostile — they
couldn’t take the fact that a black guy was trying for the title, and they started spitting at me, and pelting me with coins. It was just a racist thing. In England, you don’t get that — nobody really cares if you’re black or white, as long as you give them a good show. In Italy, it was totally different.

But it took more than a few jeers to put me off what I had come there to do. I was ready for Galvano big time, and really gave it to him. He got battered left, right and centre. But even after I’d clearly beaten him, the Italians tried to take my victory away from me.

In the second round, I connected with a good, powerful right-hander which split Galvano’s eye. It was obvious he wasn’t going to be able to last much longer. Now, the WBC rules state that if a fight ends inside three rounds because of a foul, the match is declared a technical draw. Galvano’s camp saw the mess he was in and tried to pull him out before the fourth, claiming that I had
head-butted
him to cause the eye injury. It was just a load of bullshit, of course — I’d punched him fairly and squarely — and the Italians had no leg to stand on, but it pissed me off because it could have cost me the title.

Fortunately, the ref saw sense, and Galvano’s third-round retirement gave me the match. I was almost ready to cry. I thrust my arms in the air and shouted, ‘YES! YES! BENN IS BACK!’ The Italians didn’t like that much, but hey, I was now the WBC Super-Middleweight Champion, two-time champion of the world. I had plenty to celebrate. Chris Eubank had been ringside, and at one stage I
remember leaning over to him through the ropes and saying, ‘Now we can do business.’ He nodded and said he was ready …

I returned to Britain as champion, but for some reason it didn’t really seem as if I’d won a world title. I suppose it was because of the way they treated me, and I really took it out on Nicky Piper in London for my next fight.

Nicky was said to be a near-genius. When we fought at Muswell Hill on 12 December, he entered the ring with an IQ of 153. Let me tell you, when he left it was more like an IQ of 1. He was a big guy — 6ft 3in — and when he stripped down, I had to admire the shape he was in. His muscles were showing much better than mine, and he really looked like he’d been doing his training.

Nicky came from Frank Warren’s stable, so I now had my first dealings with Frank since we’d had those problems a few years back. But we were polite enough to each other, and showed each other the proper respect.

As I said, Piper was a tall guy, and I wondered how I was going to get hold of his jaw. I’ve also got to say he was a strong fucker, and seemed to be able to absorb some heavy punches in that big old head of his. And he managed to hurt me, too, until I got the measure of him. In the eleventh round I delivered a blistering succession of punches to Piper’s head which sent him reeling. Jimmy Tibbs said to me afterwards that he had said a silent prayer when I laid into Piper’s head. He didn’t want a repetition of what had happened to Michael Watson and couldn’t wait for the ref to stop the
fight. He’d had a terrible flashback.

Finally, the ref decided he’d seen enough. I was declared the winner on a technical knockout.

Now that I had secured my superior belt, Eubank was fuming. He didn’t like the fact that I held the premier belt and could dictate the terms of our next fight. I told everybody that perhaps I should be like him and line up ten fighters and fight a bum a month. But that wasn’t my style. I’d fight anyone, and not pick and choose like Eubank.

On 6 March 1993, I retained my world title in Glasgow against Mauro Galvano. It was a long 12 rounds, but I won on points even though he caught me with a good shot at the end which made my legs go.

My next fight was against Lou Gent, the Cockney WBC International Champion, at Olympia on 26 June. This was a fight that whetted the public’s appetite for the match everybody was waiting for — the unification fight against Eubank which was scheduled for 9 October in Manchester.

I had total respect for Lou Gent. We didn’t go in for any of the pre-fight stuff, slagging each other off. But, as I’ve said before, you can tell a lot from a man’s eyes, and when I studied his I could tell that he was totally intimidated by me. He went down three times in the third and twice in the fourth, but respect to him, because he kept coming back. But he was weak by the end, and the ref had to give it to me in the fourth.

So the next fight was the big one against Eubank. But before that, something even more important happened. On 12 July 1993, Sharron
gave birth to my second daughter, Renée — the most beautiful little girl in the world. I didn’t even know that Sharron was pregnant until she told me in the middle of an argument.

We were quarrelling, and I told her she was overweight. ‘Look at the state of you,’ I said.

She turned on me. ‘You
bastard
!
I’m pregnant.’

In sheer surprise and shock, I stupidly retorted, ‘Who’s the father?’ before realising my inexcusable mistake. I was, of course. She went mad, but I didn’t mean it to come out like that.

Sharron had a difficult time with the pregnancy, but the result was wonderful, although Renée got us really worried when she went blue at birth, and had to have a tube inserted up her nose. I thought she was going to die, and felt so angry and helpless I could have punched someone. She has big, big eyes and a cute face. Such a beautiful little girl, and funny with it. Really bright and inquisitive. At six months she had already worked out the TV controls.