Nigel Benn (19 page)

Paul must have been thinking, Christ, a few months ago I saw this man on telly knocking the shit out of some guy, and now he’s a dribbling mess in my office! I was in such a state. But he put me under, and I can only remember a few details: Peter Pan’s holding my hand, and I’m flying through the clouds. All I can hear are whale noises in the sea, and it’s all so calm.

Afterwards, I tried to remember what he’d said to me, but I couldn’t remember a single thing — I suppose I was just trying to put Sharron out of my mind.

When I woke up, Carolyne was there and she was in tears, complete floods of tears. I couldn’t remember a thing, but she must have heard all the traumatic stuff I was coming out with. But you know, I wanted to be healed so badly that when I woke up I was a different man. Paul McKenna had helped me put the past behind me, and for that I want to thank him.

Afterwards, loads of people were saying that I’d gone to see Paul to help with my fighting. Complete bollocks! I don’t need help like that from anyone when it comes to what goes on inside the ring. If a man has two arms, two legs and a heart like me, then I can deal with that. But when you break up with a woman, the mother of your kids — the pain is like nothing on earth. The knife’s already in, and they can just turn it inch by inch. I don’t care how hard you are, but when a woman starts twisting that knife, then the pain is unbearable. I’ll go and fight Mike Tyson all day
long, he could fuck me up, and I wouldn’t care. You could get your ass beaten by Tyson — and you’re still £5 million richer! So what? That kind of pain goes, you get compensated. But the pain a woman inflicts on you lingers for years.

McKenna healed that pain for me. I never had to go back, because he’d done what he had to do. And when I thanked him after the fight with McClellan, I was thanking him for putting my life back on course. I’ll never get that low again.

Now, though, I was in the right frame of mind to start concentrating on the important business of my career. I was meant to fight Michael Nunn, but I was told, ‘OK, Nigel, fight Michael Nunn. But it’s an easy fight — you’ll have to take £100,000 less.’

Excuse me? I’m the world champion, and they want me to take £100,000 less? I told them just what I was thinking — bollocks to that!

So they said to me, ‘You don’t fight Michael Nunn, but then you fight Gerald McClellan — a mini-Mike Tyson.’

‘I don’t give a fuck,’ I told them. ‘Bring him on! Bring him on, Don!’ I don’t know if I was supposed to be scared, but it just made me more determined than ever. It got my goat, and I just didn’t want to fight anybody else. I wanted McClellan. Bring him on!

The hype about McClellan was amazing. He was being described as the most ferocious boxer ever to hit our shores, a freak of nature. Two things were at stake here — big money and my glory. I wanted both desperately, and I spent an intensive eight weeks of rigorous exercise in Tenerife to
prepare for it.

He came over to Britain for the fight, and was giving it
large.
But by this time, I’d got into my training mode, and for this fight, it was more mental training that I needed. I was like, ‘Right, mate. Don’t think you’re going to come over here and knock me out, not when I’ve got 20 million Brits on my side, supporting me all the way.’ My mental and physical training had gone perfectly, absolutely perfectly. I kept thinking to myself, Have I missed anything, what have I missed? But I’d missed nothing. The running and the sparring had been bang on — not too much, because I’m not one of those guys who likes getting all bashed up sparring only to leave it all in the gym. Food, vitamins, sleep — bang on. I’d done everything.

I kept a low profile, and stayed totally focused on the job ahead of me. To my mind, McClellan was nothing more than an obstacle to me fulfilling my dreams. He was stopping my family from having the best things I could give them. He had to be removed.

When we met at the press conference, I just looked him straight in the eye; I’m ready for you, mate. I felt hard as nails, and no Yank was coming over to beat me on my home ground.

All the papers had me to lose. None of them had backed me to go past three rounds, except the
Star.
I didn’t read them before the fight, but I read them all afterwards, so I knew who’d been predicting what. Not one of them said, ‘Let’s get behind our boy, let’s give him the support he needs.’

But I had my support from Carolyne. When the white stretch limo arrived to pick me up for the fight, she didn’t come outside to see me off. We’d kissed indoors and said how much we loved each other and I knew she was trying to hide her anxiety. I also knew she’d be there in the crowd at the fight. She didn’t wish me luck. She knew I didn’t need it.

As the limo neared the stadium, I felt like Spartacus going to the arena to fight to the death. The adrenalin was pumping hard, so hard I swear I could hear it. My blood was boiling and I was ready to swing some punches.

When I entered the ring that night, the atmosphere was electric. I looked across at McClellan and thought, ‘Yeah, the arms don’t look too bad, legs are skinny.’ The noise from the crowd was like nothing I’d heard before, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. They booed McClellan, and they cheered me — 12,000 Brits right behind me. I thought to myself, How the fuck is he going to beat me here? OK, let’s get this fight over with!

Once the bell goes, though, it’s different. You might have 12,000 people behind you, but at the end of the day it’s you and the other guy, alone in the ring — and neither of you want to give an inch. None of your supporters can help you, but sometimes you can feel them. You can feel their support, and it gives you a kind of strength that you don’t get from anywhere else.

The round started, and he hit me. Yeah, that’s not too bad, I thought. When he hit me again,
though, I felt all the ligaments in the side of my neck rip, and I went out of the ring! Everyone was saying, ‘We told you he’d do it. We told you he’d spark Benn in the first round.’

They wrote me off after that second punch, but I was like ‘Excuse me! Excuse me! I’m getting up now!’ And that was when I got back in the ring. I just thought, Fuck you, you’re not beating me. I’m not lying down. I don’t care how hard you hit — I’ve been hit with everything, pickaxes, baseball bats, so what? Let me see how you feel when I’m hitting you now.

But in that first round he carried on battering me around the place, trying to get me to end it.

When the bell finally sounded, my corner man Dennie Mancini took over the show. He grabbed me and said, ‘Fucking hell, Nigel, you’ve really got him in trouble, mate!’

But I’m bashed to pieces! What’s he talking about, I’ve got him in trouble? When I heard what Dennie said, though, it turned it all around for me.

‘Really? Yeah, too right, Den, he is in trouble.’ That was just what I needed to pick me up. If I’d had some guy in the corner saying, ‘Look, Nige, you’re taking a battering here,’ then my morale’s going to plummet. But thanks to Dennie, I went into the second round feeling like a champion, and now it’s me bashing him around, me making him run.
Bang!
Come on, mate, I don’t care what you throw at me.

By this time, my morale’s high. I remember in the third round, though, he hit me with a body shot like I’d never felt before. If he’d done that again I’d
have gone down, it hurt so much. But after I took that punch, I walked forward to show him ‘Yeah, come on, then.’ Really, I’m thinking, Please, don’t hit me like that again! And he didn’t, which gave me my energy back, and the ability to continue.

Round four, and his gumshield’s hanging out of his mouth; he’s exhausted. But I’m ready to go on. In round six, I sent his gumshield flying from his mouth, and it was clear I’d won the mental battle when, at the start of the seventh, McClellan stood up from his stool really slowly — he was tired. Even in round eight, when he put me down, I got straight back up and gave him a right uppercut and a left hook, and I said to him, ‘When you come up for round fucking nine, there’s going to be more of that.’ We went back to our corners and whose heart’s broken, his or mine?

When he went down in round ten, he’d taken two right-handers. I had a left hook ready but he was already on the floor — and he wasn’t getting up. The whole place went wild and the noise was something else; the roof just came off. Gerald McClellan, pound for pound the hardest puncher in the world, the Yank who’d beaten Roy Jones as an amateur, was on the floor, and what made me proudest of all was this: it was a British man who’d done it, on his own turf.

I’d done it, and I felt good. Outside the ring, a TV interviewer came up to me, but I grabbed the microphone and spoke my mind.

‘They just brought him over here to bash me up. Now I’m the man! Look at him now!’

By this time, though, I’m all bashed up myself,
and everyone’s coming up to me, patting me on the back. I couldn’t take any more and I just blacked out and collapsed.

When I woke up I was in hospital in so much pain, with Carolyne beside me, crying her eyes out. Gerald McClellan was in the same hospital, so I went in to see him. If I thought I was in a bad state — I had a fractured nose and jaw, my kidneys were so damaged I was passing blood, and I had a shadow on the brain — then McClellan was twice as bad. He wasn’t even awake. I went over to his bed, where I took his hand, kissed it, and simply said ‘Sorry.’

When I got home, I had a couple of friends with me and they put me in the bath. I lay there for two hours, unable to move. I couldn’t even get out by myself, so at about 4.00am, I had to call the guys and they lifted me out. When you’re in that sort of state, snaking from pain as though you’re going through cold turkey, you have to start wondering how much more you can take, how much more you can allow your body to be damaged to that extent. I’d always wanted my own little Rocky fight, and that had been it — blood and guts, excitement. But I’d never been hit like that before. I couldn’t even eat, my mouth was so battered. My tongue was split right down both sides, and Carolyne had to try and feed me with just rice, but I couldn’t even manage that. While my family were tucking into a roast dinner the next day, all I could manage was soup.

Up until that fight, my little daughter Sadé thought that my fights were staged, a bit like WWF
wrestling. It was Carolyne who had had to tell her the truth about what her daddy did for a living.

‘This is serious, Sadé,’ she said to her.

‘Can the same thing happen to Daddy that happened to Michael Watson?’ Sadé asked innocently.

‘Of course it can.’

After that conversation she came up to me and pleaded, ‘Do you know what I really, really want, Daddy? More than anything?’

‘What do you want, Darling?’

‘I want you to stop fighting.’

I had a big lump in my throat when she said that to me, and that one simple request changed my life for ever. The fight game just wasn’t the same any more.

A
fter McClellan, I started thinking seriously about retiring. I'd always known the risks of getting into the ring with men like that, and so had he, but that fight really brought it home to me. It brought it home to my family, too. My kids started begging me to stop fighting, and so did Carolyne. I started to realise that every time I took a battering, so did they. I wanted out.

But that didn't mean I was going to take anything lying down, and although I was sorry for what had happened to McClellan, I thought his family were well out of order in the way they had behaved after the fight. In the pre-fight build-up, you should have heard the things they were saying about me — they wanted me dead. After the fight, though, it was a different matter.

‘We wanted Benn dead, now we want his money.'

They wanted compensation from me for what happened to McClellan in the ring, but they were still bad-mouthing me.

If they want money, they can go to Don King
— he's the man with the big bucks, he's the man who brought McClellan over to bash me up. I'm just trying to make an honest living to support my kids, and if they think I'm going to part with my money after hearing what they said about me — no way. I know for a fact that if I was in McClellan's shoes, my dad would handle it with some
self-respect
. Sure, he'd be upset, but he'd say, ‘It happens. You're over 21. You knew what you were up against.' He wouldn't take it out on the other guy's family, and he wouldn't slag anybody off.

Although I was beginning to think about leaving the world of boxing behind me, I was still committed to a few more fights. The first was against the Italian Vincenzo Nardiello in July. The ironic thing was that in the match before us, Orlin Norris received the same treatment that McClellan had had from me.

When I got into the ring, though, it was business as usual. Nardiello was complaining about a slippery canvas, but I just kept quite about it — I wanted him to have a much closer view of that slippery canvas than I would! He gave me eight easy rounds before his corner threw in the white towel. To be honest, though, it wasn't my best performance. I remember saying at the time, ‘Everybody deserves a bad day at the office, and that was mine!'

I stopped Danny Perez in the seventh on 2 September 1995. I didn't know it at the time, but that was to be my last victory. My belt was taken from me exactly six months later by Sugarboy Malinga on 2 March 1996. I'd trained so hard for
that fight, but I don't know what happened to my performance. Perhaps I just left it all in the gym, or perhaps Malinga was just the kind of fighter who'd beat me all year round, the kind of player I couldn't deal with — I don't know. When I put him down in round five, I was just knackered. He wasn't in McClellan's class, and I thought I'd be in for an easy night of it. The hardest punch I'd ever felt was when Malinga hit me in the mouth. My teeth went through my gumshield and I actually felt them go through my tongue. I've still got the scar. Usually, you don't feel much until after the fight, but I felt that punch all right.

Looking back, I guess I just had nothing left. I was on my way down, but at the time you don't realise that. I just wanted to have a big fight, to show that I still had it, but when it came to the night I didn't even have the adrenalin rush I'd need to put in a good performance, and in the end he gave me a bashing. I lost on a decision, but still took home a purse of £800,000. The money was incidental, though. I was absolutely gutted, especially losing in front of all the Geordies, whom I love to death. I'd rather have lost to Eubank at Old Trafford than lost to Sugarboy Malinga on that night.

My last two fights were with Steve Collins on 6 July 1996 and then again on 9 November. For that last fight, I felt my pride was at stake, and I went there intending to win. Carolyne was in the audience with a friend, though, and had a premonition that I was going to lose that night, because as I got into the ring, I scanned the crowd
and picked her out. I'd never, ever looked for her during a fight before, not throughout my entire career. When I saw her, I winked at her, and she just turned to her friend and said in a quiet voice that was almost drowned by the sound of the crowd, ‘Nigel's going to lose tonight.' And that was my last fight.

I couldn't disagree with my corner when they threw in the towel as the bell rang for round seven. But I couldn't believe the reaction of the crowd. During the fight, they'd been cheering me on every time I got an opportunity. When I called it a day, they couldn't stop booing. But that didn't bother me — I knew I'd had enough, and I knew it was time to tell the crowd that they wouldn't be seeing me in the ring again. I threw my gloves towards the spectators, and grabbed the microphone.

‘Can I have a few words, please?'

The crowd responded with booing.

Again, I asked, ‘Can I have a few words?' Still the crowd booed.

It was then that Steve Collins stole the mike from me. ‘Give him his due,' he shouted above the din. ‘He's the greatest fighter in the history of British boxing!'

Now that got their attention. The crowd hushed as I took the microphone back.

‘It's time to call it day,' I told them. ‘The one thing I like doing is pleasing the British public. I can't take it any more. Thank you.'

And with that, I walked away from the ring. It was over, the end of a great career, and I felt good. I could look back on my life with pride, and enjoy
the memory of what I had achieved. I had absolutely no regrets when I hung up my gloves that night — I'd made millions, I was famous, I was still young and I hadn't been bashed to a pulp. My head was still screwed on straight and I was madly in love.

I knew I wouldn't miss the gruelling training, the pain, the pre-fight nerves. But more than anything, I knew I wouldn't miss distressing the people I loved every time I stepped in the ring. And I knew that I wouldn't have to worry about money. Through my boxing, I'd earned something like £10 million — but at least £4 million of that had gone to the tax man. Still, there was money in the bank and I could afford to take it easy. I was looking forward to being able to spend some time with Carolyne and the kids. But if I thought I was in for a bit of peace and quiet, though, I couldn't be more wrong. Even after the Collins fight, after I'd retired, there were people ready to knock me.

For ages, Prince Nazeem Hamed had been mouthing off about me. He came into my gym once in Tenerife, strutting around like he owned the place, and I had to tell him, ‘Out, mate! Get out of my gym.' He was giving it large, and I just thought, ‘Nah, mate, don't come in here, giving it all large. Show me some proper respect.'

He might have all those Mickey Mouse guys around him, licking his ass — ‘Oh Nazeem, Nazeem!' — but he's not going to get that treatment from me. What a bunch of pricks! And then you see them carrying him into the ring, like
he's some kind of king and they're his slaves. Have some respect for yourself!

And then, after the last Collins fight, he comes out in the papers slagging me off, saying, ‘You can break my legs and rip my arms off, but I would still come out fighting.' What a load of shit — try it on with me, and
I
will break your legs and rip your arms off and, at the end of the day, the public caned him for what he was saying. Maybe if he'd done half of what I'd done they'd have taken their hat off to him, but they all know! I've fought everybody, but Hamed hasn't had nearly the same calibre of opponents. Everyone knows that there are fighters out there who will annihilate him, and he's just avoiding them. If you're meant to be the best in the world, Nazeem, then go and fight some of the top Americans. Prove yourself, like I did. Then you can run your mouth off. But in the boxing fraternity, we all know that he's fighting nobodies.

When I saw him at the Brit Awards, I gave him a piece of my mind: ‘Let me tell you now, I'll punch you up in the air, you little shit.'

Does he reckon he wants to exchange punches with me? I'll screw him up in a little ball and throw him in the waste paper bin.

In fact, that evening at the Brit Awards was a funny one in other ways, too. I bumped into all sorts of people — Robbie Williams being one of them. I'd met him before when we were on a flight back from Manchester together. Now, I'm not a great flyer at the best of times. In fact, I hate it. Give me 12 rounds with some big feller any time
rather than a bumpy flight!

On that particular occasion with Robbie, there was some violent turbulence, and the plane was bouncing all over the place. So when the plane shook, I grabbed Robbie's hand! He must have thought, Hey, what's this big guy doing, grabbing my hand like that?

I just said, ‘Sorry, mate,' but I'm thinking, What a fucking idiot! Oh, man, I can't believe I've just done that!

I manage to settle down, and then we go through another patch of turbulence, and I grab his hand again! I couldn't
believe
it.

So we're at the Brit Awards, and Carolyne's got me going up to all the stars asking for their autographs for the kids, and she plays this joke on me, saying that Robbie Williams knew I was around and wanted to have a chat. So we go to his dressing room and knock on the door — and it's only then that Carolyne tells me that he's not
really
been asking for me.

I'm like, ‘Oh
no,
I don't believe it,' and then the door opens and some guy asks me what I want.

‘Just tell Robbie that Nigel called round, will you?' I asked him.

‘Yeah, sure mate,' said the guy at the door, obviously thinking I'm just some ordinary fan.

But later on, Robbie tracks me down.

‘Nige, mate,' and we get on like a house on fire. I had to get him to go and tell the guy at the door who I was, though, because I was so embarrassed!

I also knew that Eubank was going to be there
that evening, and I was ready to whack him if he came on all lairy with me. I meant it, too. My boxing days were finished, but if he came on with all that shit, I was ready to up him. So on the night, we found ourselves in the changing room, and my heart was beating hard because I thought he was going to come on all lairy.

But just the opposite happened. He came up to me, I shook his hand, and then he gives me a big hug! And that was it. I just thought, Wow, this is a different man. And we got on like a house on fire. I couldn't believe it — here was the man who'd said so many bad things about me, whom I'd caned in public, whom I'd been in the ring with in some of the most gruelling fights of my career, and we were chatting away backstage at the Brit Awards like old buddies. We even exchanged numbers, and he called me the next day. And a year ago we hated each other!

I don't really see him now, and we'll never get that close, but my opinion of him changed that night. Now I think, good luck to him, more power to the man. I can't knock a guy who'd defeated me. I've got to say, though, I still think he's a bit weird.

When I look back on my life, I realise that it's always been a bit like that. There are so many hangers-on that you can never tell who's your friend and who isn't. I'm not saying that Eubank and I are ever going to be like brothers, but things like that make you wonder whom you can trust. My whole boxing career has been a succession of people coming and going, and sometimes people really surprise you when they show their true colours.

Take Pete De Freitas, for example. When he started working with me we got on well, everything was cool. And when I was fighting, he lived the high life, flashing his gold cards everywhere, money rolling in largely because he was looking after Nigel Benn. He bought Elton John's Bentley and all that. With a lot of people, they think they run the show but, at the end of the day, he was was a sort of gofer. He wanted to feel important. When I quit the ring after the last Steve Collins fight, he tried to persuade me to carry on in the fight game. By this time I'm all fucked up, I had all sorts of problems and stuff, but he still wanted me to go on. That's how we fell out.

Peter De Freitas is still helped by my name — I got a letter from him a while back, all fucking grovelling and which he should be embarrassed to have sent me — it had my credentials on the letterhead! He used to have a big house, big car — now he's got shit.

He also thinks he's fucking hard but if he wants to try it on with me, he knows where I am, and he can come and find me. And I'll sort him out, because I was the one who helped to put him where he was.

For a while he was looking after my two cousins who are in the fight game, and it was not something I was happy about. Now I'm looking after them, but if it wasn't me then they should be with Frank Warren and Jimmy Tibbs, the best promoter and trainer in the business. I love Jimmy to death, even though we split before the end of my career.

Jimmy Tibbs's son, though, is a different kettle of fish. When I watched the video of the McClellan fight, I saw him appear to jump up and cheer my opponent when he put me down — I thought it was maybe because I didn't train with his dad any more. It doesn't bother me, though; I know I've achieved more in my life than he ever will. Things like that just make me more determined. My disagreement with Jimmy's son doesn't change how I feel about his dad though — he's the very best trainer I ever had, and my love and respect go out to him.

You can tell genuine people because they just say ‘Hi,' and then leave you alone. They're not on the make. Not that I mind chatting to members of the British public who come up to me in the street. They're the ones who put me where I am today, and if I can't spare a few minutes of my time to talk to them, then there must be something wrong with me.

I'm lucky to have come from such a loving, protective family. My brothers — I love them all to death, but they're all so different.