Nigel Benn (13 page)

The news didn’t lighten my burden. I knew it would be a long, hard slog back to the top. Yet, in a way, it was a blessing in disguise. It brought me firmly back to earth with one gigantic thud!

D
efeat had weighed heavily on me and I was still licking my wounds after the Watson fight as I settled into my suite at the Doral Hotel at the end of July 1989. Miami smelled good. This was my first day and the palm trees, pools and tropical heat were uplifting. They softened the empty feeling in my stomach, brought on by this self-imposed exile away from my family and friends. I knew my destiny was here. This was going to be the springboard for my comeback.

My thoughts were thousands of miles away when the telephone rang. ‘Nobody knows I’m here,’ I thought, puzzled. Who could it be? The voice was husky and borrowed heavily from the casting couch technique. ‘Hello,’ it purred. ‘I saw you come in.’ There was a deep sigh, and the voice continued with a soft growl, ‘I like you. I want to make love to you. I want to do things to make you tremble…’

My face lit up. A cheerful grin spread slowly from ear to ear. My eyes sparkled. Hey, this sounds like fun. I’ve not even been here five minutes and
somebody’s already got my number and is doing the chat. Must be the gear I’m wearing. Americans like style. This lady’s impressed. Things ain’t going to be so bad after all!

The voice got steamier and the suggestions more obscene. ‘What’s all this about?’ I asked, getting more interested by the second. I invited the caller to come up to my room.

The voice changed. ‘I can’t. You might not like what you see.’

The penny dropped. I suddenly realised the voice belonged to a bloke. My horny admirer was gay! I shouted out for a friend of mine: ‘Graham, Graham!’

I was panicking. Everything happens in America. Something was going on here and I didn’t like it. I wanted Graham to get me out of there. If this geezer came up I was going to throw him off the sixth-floor balcony.

The door to my suite opened and I was fuming. I was totally on edge. As far as men were concerned, I was a virgin and aimed to stay that way. The voice walked in. He was the hotel waiter. I’d never seen a black guy dolled up the way he was. His nails were more manicured than Princess Di’s, he had a gold tooth and bounced along with a dainty step. I was ready to give it to him but definitely not where he wanted. I was going to gouge out his eye and mash his head. But he was so friendly and cheerful that, once he saw the situation was hopeless, we got on really well. He then filled up the mini-bar and said, ‘I just put that in there for free,’ and began telling me about his
conquests. I didn’t want to know that he found his black lovers too coarse and rough!

Ambrose had also come to Miami to settle me in and speak to promoters. He’d tried to cheer me up and help me to get over my post-Watson blues. Immediately after the fight, we had travelled to Jamaica for a week to attend the International Boxing Federation conference. Ambrose was his outrageous self and nearly got us involved in a fight with a taxi driver who looked like a tough Yardie. He’d asked for more than $20 for the fare, and Ambrose gave him less, and said, ‘Take it or leave it, you ain’t getting no more,’ and took his shirt off. He was ready to fight for his principles. However, when the cabby called his bluff by removing his own shirt, Ambrose began talking his way out of it. He tried scaring the guy by telling him that we were both top boxers with the IBF and, fortunately for him, it worked.

The taxi driver said he was not going to fight another black man and backed down. Had he wanted to do so, however, he could have torn Ambrose apart. And I would have loved nothing better than seeing Ambrose prance around like Sugar Ray Leonard. We had a good week out there and I remember going sunbathing on the beach and later wondering what the hell I was doing it for when I already had a good tan. After lying in the sun, I looked blacker than the ace of spades.

After the Watson fight, I’d spent a week in the West Indies, and coming back to London was painful. I had to live with the constant reminder of my defeat as I gathered together my belongings
and packed for Miami. I would be starting a new life and saying goodbye to Sharron and my kids so that I could concentrate on my comeback in the USA.

I told the press that I was going back to basics and turning away from all distractions to put myself on course for the world title. I told them I had been a real wally and fought like a berk against Michael Watson, but now I had learned a lot about myself and was so disgusted with watching my performance on television that I didn’t want to be seen outdoors. It was like a nightmare haunting me. I needed to learn to move differently, fight more rhythmically and work out how to handle clever boxers like Watson. Out would go the hangers-on around me and the jet-set lifestyle and other temptations to which I had always been so partial.

Brian Lynch could have taken part in my comeback but he chose not to come to America with me. To improve technichally, I wanted someone with more experience in the ring than him. He could join me as my trainer to condition me but I wanted Vic Andreeti, who lived in Miami, to train me in fighting techniques. Vic, who was also from the East End of London, was the undefeated British light welterweight champion in the Sixties and had emigrated to America. He could also provide top sparring partners for me at Fifth Street gym in Miami where boxing greats like Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis and Sonny Liston had trained.

A week before I left, Ambrose was charged
with conspiring to defraud banks and financial institutions. This was one more nail in the coffin that would eventually drive us apart.

When we left, I was like a dog with its tail between its legs. I had to make a fresh start and I was determined to put everything I had into training. I was convinced I had more to offer. Nigel Benn, trained soldier, would kick ass again. I had more ambitions to fulfil and one defeat was not going to make me stop. As I said, my loss may well have been a blessing in disguise. Had I gone on to beat Michael I might have messed things up with a world title. Now I was at at a major crossroads in my career.

The stardom and fame had happened too quickly. It was time to get off the merry-go-round. Vic Andreeti got down to business immediately and all the big boys came down to Miami. I liked the way they did business out there. They didn’t recognise defeat. No Eddie the Eagles were permitted to crash-land here. They wanted winners.

I rented an apartment in Collins Avenue on Miami Beach. It was millionaire’s row. Behind me was Julio Iglesias’ house and nearby Gloria Estefan’s sprawling manor which made my place look like a cardboard box. An English couple I got to know out there, Pat and Pete, befriended me and looked after me over the three years I was there. When I moved into the Carnage Club, a very classy place with lots of wealthy tenants, a Jewish lady asked me to carry her bags from her car. I had to explain to her politely that I was not a porter. I
would still turn heads in Miami. Not because they recognised me as a boxer but because I looked the part in my Armani suits and designer clothes and Americans appreciated that.

Although I had the best of intentions when I told the British press I would be living the life of a monk out there, I wasn’t lonely for too long after my arrival and my prediction of a quiet life was a little wide of the mark. My mate Rolex Ray unexpectedly turned up. He’d had a few problems in England and went to live in Spain for a couple of months. While there he met up with The Who and accompanied them to Miami for a concert. He phoned Sharron in London to ask about me and was told I was in Miami. By coincidence, he could see my hotel from his and, within ten minutes of calling Sharron, he was in my room. We ended up staying together for a while until Ray got his own apartment. Ray joined me in some of my training sessions and he and I would go for early morning runs along the beach.

Running before dawn involved some risk. Helicopters would come zooming down, training their spotlights on us to identify who we were. There was so much drug smuggling along that section of beach that everyone was a suspect until they got to know you. One of our friends once found a load of drugs washed up on the sand and, thereafter, would organise his runs according to the time of the tides.

I was training really hard, at least three times a day. The morning runs would be about five to six miles along South Beach. Ray would do about four
miles and then we’d go to the gym at lunchtime. At about five or six in the evening, we’d go to the health club at the Hilton.

Afterwards, we’d wine and dine at the top restaurants and clubs. There was a very good club scene in Miami and we took full advantage of it. When Ray came over with The Who, we took John Entwhistle to Stringfellows where I met a beautiful waitress called Lois Harrington. Later, she sold her story to the press and told them I’d eaten strawberries and cream off sensitive parts of her body. As a result, boxing writer Colin Hart delivered some strawberries and cream just before my comeback fight against Jorge Amparo in Atlantic City on 20 October, and said he believed it was a necessary part of my training and diet!

Apart from Ray staying with me for a while, Terry Marsh also came over before he was arrested on suspicion of shooting Frank Warren, and the three of us shared the same flat for a while. In fact, when Terry and I flew back together to England, he was arrested after going through Customs. I’d been with him and one moment he was there, the next he’d gone. I didn’t know what had happened. I thought he’d been hauled off by Customs over his duty-free allowances.

Terry was a laugh-a-minute while he was in America. When we went to Atlantic City he had everyone in fits of laughter with his antics. Once, Ambrose bought us (with my money!) ski-type
all-in-one
striped suits. They were in matching colours and we had just arrived at the airport and were waiting for our luggage when Terry went missing.
The rest of us — Ambrose, Ray, Vic Andreeti and I —looked everywhere for him without success. All of a sudden, we saw this figure wearing the same suit as us, curled up on the luggage carousel. It was Terry. He’d rolled himself into a ball, pulled up the hood on his ski suit and was going round and round with the luggage. He kept his head down and looked just like a package. It was the funniest thing you’d ever seen. But apart from getting up to tricks like this, he was very much a loner.

America was a crazy place. Once, in Las Vegas, we saw one lady who acted as a pimp for her daughter. The girl was only about 16 but very pretty and the mother tried to pair her up with me thinking she might get a few bob out of it.

On another night in Vegas, we met Tyson. I was with Ray and Ambrose in a black club. Tyson was sitting alone but recognised me from the television. Ray asked him if he could have a photograph taken with him and he declined saying he didn’t have photos done with white guys. ‘They’re pussies,’ he told him. Ray said he ought to feel his stomach before making statements like that. He took it as an invitation to test his muscles and hit him. I think it really hurt but he was only playing around.

We saw him later with six or seven girls and, judging from the way he was carrying on with them, it seemed clear that if Tyson were to ask anyone back with him they would know without any doubt what was going to happen. Every woman who comes up and asks for a kiss or
autograph gets asked if he can touch her pussy. He would grab every girl within reaching distance. We had a good laugh with him but he is so powerful and intimidating.

While in Miami, I met a dancer who was with an all-girl group. She was really sexy and the first time I made love to her I thought I was going to die. It was explosive! We walked along the beach talking about all the sexy things she would like to do. I said, ‘Here’s your man!’ That was it. She began taking off all my clothes and wouldn’t let me do a thing. She was an older woman with a beautiful body. We made love on the sand but were taking a hell of a risk because if the police had seen my black ass bobbing up and down they’d have arrested us.

On one of my trips back to London from Miami I chatted up an air stewardess and we tried to make love on the seat of the aircraft. Her boyfriend, a steward, found out and threatened to do me when we landed.

Ambrose and Ray got on well but were never great buddies. Ray knew Ambrose from Jody’s, a club in Spitalfields Market, east London, where he said a lot of trendy villains would go. The doorman, Roy Shaw, a bare-knuckle fighter, was one of the toughest bouncers in London. Ray was about 18 at the time and Ambrose was about to go to prison for fraud, where he shared a cell with a good friend of Ray’s.

While Ray thought Ambrose was clever and impressive, he was not too keen on his methods. He warned me, ‘Ambrose was always around
black sportsmen. He had lots of charisma, talked well and got into their family, becoming godfather to the children. By the time they got wise to him, it was often too late.’

In spite of my nights out, I trained with a new zeal and dedication. Vic Andreeti had calmed me down in the ring and showed me how to feel my way with a jab and to defend myself properly. He said I was ‘… all crash, bang, wallop, but he’s listening and showing me an absolutely lovely left jab’. At the same time Ambrose and I had talks with Bob Arum in New York, who was interested in signing me up for a fight deal. Arum said he had watched me fight Watson on TV and thought I was the most exciting middleweight he’d seen in years. He wanted to feature me on the undercard at a coming fight in Las Vegas between Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran. We signed a two-fight deal with Top Rank, Bob’s promotion company, on 29 August. I was on trial. If I did well in the two fights, I would be in line to fight a world title. If I lost, I’d be finished.

My début fight in America was to be against Jorge Amparo at the International Hotel in Atlantic City on 20 October 1989. Amparo, a 35-year-old veteran, had been the distance with four world champions and had never been on the floor. Shortly before the fight, panic set in. I had a health scare and was losing up to ten pounds in every training session. After extensive medical tests, I was told that my training had been too intensive and that I had sapped my body fat to dangerously low levels. Vic kept telling me to take it easy in the
amount of training I was doing but I wouldn’t let up. The doctor told me that if I went into the ring in this state, I was risking serious injury and even putting my life at risk. The doctors at Miami Sports Clinic told me to rest and fill myself with carbohydrates, which did the trick and got me back into A1 condition.