By Terence Dooley (Click Here For Bunce Part 1)
Back in June, David Haye’s projected challenge to Wladimir Klitschko was due to be aired on the Setanta network here in the UK; many believe that Haye was in with a chance in that one but it was not to be, Haye withdrew from the fight due to a back injury and had to wait for his title chance to come around. Steve Bunce, who hosted a weekly boxing show on the network, believes that, had things not gone to the wall, Haye would have eventually been crowned on Setanta, either in an rearranged dust-up with Wladimir or the tussle with Nikolai Valuev.
“It [Klitschko-Haye] was a winnable fight, and it would have been a good fight. The Valuev fight was always a winnable fight, but it was always going to be a bad fight. Either Klitschko is a better fight for David,” predicted Steve.
“Valuev was a punch perfect performance by Haye. Sure, it wasn’t a spectacle, but it was an event. If it is true that David has waked away with four million then great, we’ve got an independent fighter, a man who didn’t have to sign away his career and who has been watched by possibly 800,000 PPV customers on Sky, that is a British boxing success story. People who have said that the fight itself was a farce or a travesty are the people who picked Valuev to win. There has never been a spoonful of humble pie served in the history of boxing.
“In fact, the smallest book in the world is the Boxing Book Of Compliments, people just can’t hold their hands up and say it was the right performance because they’ve already started to write stuff in their columns or talked about it on the radio, or on TV, they can’t change their tune, no one likes to change their tune, they just say, ‘What if’? Haye goes out and knocks out both Klitschkos and someone says, ‘Yeah, but I didn’t like his boots’.
“Anyone in the boxing media who stands back and criticises him, like one guy in the tabloid media who suggested that the people who bought the fight will feel like they’ve been conned, doesn’t realise that it was a boxing performance. It wasn’t Rocky but you couldn’t take your eyes of it. People bought it to see a spectacle, the size - they bought it to see David and Goliath. I thought it would do under a hundred thousand buys but people realised before the fight ‘bloody hell, this guy is a bit entertaining, a bit special’ and they bought the fight in droves.”
Indeed, Haye has been familiar to Steve for a long time; he was one of the amateur hopefuls that Bunce picked out of the chorus line at an early age. Steve’s voice swelled with pride when recalling some of the careers he has followed. “A guy called Mick Carney, who runs the Fitzroy Lodge club, brought me to see David when he was only thirteen,” he said.
“Mick said David was a bit special but from very early on there was a concentration and stamina problem because Dave was working on raw talent, which is why he didn’t go through his amateur career unbeaten, he had the talent but not the same dedication that he’s found as a pro.
“There was one in my eye when David won Silver at the World Amateurs. You can also hear me all choked up on Five Live in Nuremberg. There was a tear in my eye when Naz beat Robinson. When Calzaghe beat Lacy, well I predicted that fight brilliantly on Five Live the night before, I said that I Joe would beat him for every second of every round and ruin Lacy and I had a blazing row with Gary Shaw, it is all transcribed somewhere, then Joe went and did it, and it was fucking brilliant. When Ricky beat Kostya Tszyu it was fantastic. I wrote about all those guys before they were seventeen.”
Then there are the other guys, the likes of Kirkland Laing, men who had skill to burn but were guilty of lapses in focus, or, in the case of Laing, an entire career improbably built on the back of these lapses.
“There is an expression in amateur boxing clubs where they say a guy needs a good kick up the arse, and you do sometimes feel that way,” admitted Steve.
“James DeGale, in my opinion, needed a good kick up the arse in the first few months of his career, although he’s turned the corner lately. David Haye, at the start of his pro career, needed a good kick up the arse. Naseem needed one at the end of his career, before that you couldn’t keep him out of the gym. Guys like Joe Calzaghe don’t need it, he was consistent, Ricky Hatton is consistent - these guys maximise the talent they’ve got.
“Naz’s ego went ballistic towards the end, more than that, the lunatics had taken over the asylum, guys who were skilled in the art of boxing bollocks. So you had a guy in charge of the camp coordination, the chief executive in making sure that Naseem had plush pillows in his five-star hotel rooms. We were in Spinal Tap territory by the Barrera fight.”
He continued: “Naz always had a big entourage, but they were an entourage of friends at first. When Naz was beating Steve Robinson he had the likes of Clifton Mitchell, Johnny Nelson and Ryan Rhodes with him, they are not poncing off him, they were going to McDonalds for breakfast. They weren’t hangers on - they were his friends.
“The problems came later, during and after the split with Brendan Ingle, that’s when the other people started appearing on the scene. There are two facts when it comes to these people. Firstly, they drain you financially and the next fact is that they always promise to make you money, but you go back to the first fact and see that they never do. These guys are suddenly in charge of press and other things and they shouldn’t even be in charge of making a cup of tea. These guys get a little bit carried away with it all.
“That is why I like Bernard Hopkins. When Bernard was preparing for the Calzaghe and Pavlik fights he moved his family out off the home in Philadelphia. He stayed on his own until about eight days before the fight. No contact with his family. Bernard’s making ten or twelve million and he’s alone in the house, cooking his own food.
“When I went to see him before the Calzaghe fight I was with him all day, in the gym, in his old haunts, places where he’d been arrested, where people had been shot, where his brother was found shot in the back, it took me a while to get to this level with Bernard.
“We then get back to his house, where he is eating moose meat that is specially flown in from Alaska, because you know Bernard is as mad as a March hare. When we walk in and turn on the electricity, the big screen comes on and it is something like round four of Calzaghe against Kessler. That was his training camp. No entourage needed. No need to pay someone to tell him he’s the big man, the champ, and to pat him on the back. Come fight night the three or four guys around him are the guys who’ve been in the gym with him. You can get his entourage into a taxi.”
Ah, would that be the taxi that is filled with Chad Dawson’s fans? Buncey has often blown up when discussing Dawson, who is a fine fighter, but who, also, oscillates between being stylistically sublime and tepidly tedious. Bunce believes that the likes of Chad represent a problem within the sport; they aren’t draws but act like the king of the hill when it comes to negotiations.
“The bottom line is this, Chad Dawson, terrific fighter, don’t get me wrong,” explained Bunce. “Zab Judah, terrific fighter, the point is that all of their fans collectively can fill a taxi. There are thousands of fans in the UK that love Chad Dawson, if Chad Dawson fought Antonio Tarver yet again, or Glen Johnson, he’d sell more tickets in this country than he could in America, because of the novelty value, this doesn’t make him a bad fighter. Then they price themselves out of fights, they talk themselves up but they need to get the public onboard. Chad needs to drop his asking prices in my opinion and take a few risks.
“It brings us back to Bernard Hopkins, a good pro, middleweight champion of the world, undefeated for years, blah, blah. He gets into the ring with Felix Trinidad at Madison Square Garden, I was there, great atmosphere, great night, and Bernard is taking less money than Trinidad. Fast forward eighteen months, he’s fighting De La Hoya, Hopkins looks invincible at this point and he is taking far less money, but he is still getting a lot of money, you’ve got to have the humility to do that.
“Say Bernard asked for ten million for starters, he doesn’t get it, but gets five million, which he’d have taken before the negotiations started. I was doing a Five Live show with Junior Witter and Clinton Woods. Clinton was chasing a rematch with Roy Jones. Junior was chasing Ricky Hatton. I said to Junior, ‘If Ricky offered you a million you’d surely take it’. Junior says no, he wants parity. I pointed out that a million is so much more than he’s ever made, why go for parity? I ask the same question to Clinton Woods who says, ‘I’ll take a million and I don’t care if Roy Jones is making ten million’. You’ve got to be sensible sometimes.
“Witter wins and he can make his money. A few hundred thousand is a lot of money for him but Junior was not even willing to consider a million, as he wanted parity, well that is why the fight never happened. Ricky isn’t scared of Junior Witter; he can make more money, or at least the same amount, without Junior. If Junior puts his figure down from parity and takes less then he’s still getting paid five times more than he’s ever made.
“Junior doesn’t get a penny from us talking about the fight now or from me talking about it on radio Five Live, we could have this conversation for two-years solid and Junior still isn’t getting a penny, so it is neither here nor there.”
Steve was nearly done, before he left us he talked not about but the past but about the future, the guys that he believes will develop over coming years. He said: “I like Luke Campbell, who won gold at the Europeans last year. A guy called Kirk Garvey from London, the British Junior ABA champion, who recently got a rematch win over Hosea Burton. Ronnie Heffron was a top amateur and he’s just turned pro with Warren, he’ll do some damage. I like this kid from Sheffield called Liam Cameron, Dennis Hobson’s guy, he’ll go far - I think there are a lot of good young fighters out there.”
So, does the future look rosy for British boxing? Buncey was optimistic: “The British people love boxing and the BBC hate boxing, let’s never forget that, but we have the Games coming up and the boxers will be the stars of the Olympics, we like them, it is that simple. Boxers are nice kids, they’ve always got decent back stories and they can generally talk, which puts them ahead of most kids in most sports, they’re a bit lively as well.”
Coda:
People expect rants, rages and bold statements from ‘Buncey’, the Youtube hits stem from his outspoken outbursts, and he had one for us, returning to the BBC’s attitude towards the sport of boxing.
“If twenty-five million people wrote in their still wouldn’t be any boxing on the BBC, save your breath, save your time, it is not part of the policy over there,” declared Buncey. “I think it is a little bit of classism at stake, I’d like to say that there is a little bit of racism at stake, 70% of boxers are black or Asian and about 95% of people who own the BBC are white, that is why you could call it racism and not classism.
“Classism doesn’t scare people, if you accuse the BBC of being classist and ignoring boxing because it’s a working class sport they’d dismiss it. If I were black and accused the BBC of being classist and racist, well I tell you what, maybe that’s the angle. Maybe we should attack the BBC for that. Tell them a few figures and have a look at the sports they do support: rowing - 99% white, gymnastics - 99% white, horse racing - 100% white, you cover these sports but not boxing. That’s not a bad idea is it?”
Hold those ‘Bunce accuses Beeb of racism’ headlines until you’ve thought about his point, the truth doesn’t lie in these, made up, figures or a covert policy of racism on the behalf of the BBC but, rather, in the attitude of the beeb, why do they ignore our sport? Why is boxing not part of the ‘crown jewels’, especially given the fact that we now have a heavyweight champion? The national football team, a bunch of prima donnas who have not won anything since 1966, is the crown jewel of the beeb’s ‘crown jewels’; forget racism, maybe the BBC hates success.
Ignore the claims that the sport is too unreliable and expensive. Pullouts have led to some thrilling fights: Lewis-Klitschko and Dodson-Quigley for example. As for expense, we put the money in, so why not cut down on chasing ratings via glossy reality TV and phone in shows and put some boxing back on the box?
No, the BBC has not given us a reasonable excuse for the boxing blackout, so we are left to make up the reasons for them. Institutional racism makes as much sense as any other line they trot out in regards to the sport, and it is better than the real reasons given by the beeb who, for all its public broadcaster bluster, is not listening to its customers. In that sense the organisation is no better than Sky, and it is time for us to decide if a service that provides second hand news and ‘Make Me An Opera Star In The Jungle With My Crack Addicted Mother’ is really worth paying for, we already get umpteen channels of shite via Sky TV so the beeb is not worth the money we are forced into paying for it.
Anyway, rant over, and Buncey, after laughing off the BBC situation, revealed that there is a bit of thought behind his TV persona, it is exactly that, designed to engage with fans, get people talking and, back in those golden days, bring punters into Setanta.
“I try to have a laugh, try not to take the business too seriously, and I certainly don’t take myself too seriously, despite what people believe,” Buncey revealed. “I rant and rave and call myself the voice but fuck me - I’m having a laugh, there is a degree of comedy in there. I will listen to you and your views and if there is a problem I’ll tell you what we’ll do, meet me at the School Boy finals and we’ll discuss it - that is one of the things I say.
“When I’m with proper boxing people it is not like that. I was in Dublin last night with guys who have been in the business for thirty years, guys who are these anonymous, hard working men, and when I’m around people like that I shut up, I assure you, as these are the people I learn from.
“Brendan Ingle said it best, ‘You can’t hear when you’re talking’, so I work on that principle. Then I’m around people sometimes who collectively know fuck all and they think they know trillions and zillions when they don’t, around those people I tend to either tell them to shut up or tell them they’re talking bollocks. When I’m around the other people I’m listening, as they can tell me things I don’t know.
“Fifteen kids from the Internet coming up to me and telling me that Kell Brook would beat Cotto, that means nothing to me, nothing, it is like plucking some stupid fucking thing out of the air like ‘A cheetah would beat a rabbit over twenty minutes’. I like being with proper boxing people talking about good kids who’ve lost their way over recent years and who no one has ever heard off, that is what I call good stuff.”
As for the ‘Big Daddy’ persona, it is a chance for Steve to have a bit of a laugh, to get people shouting at their TVs and radios.
“I like it, for fuck’s sake”, he laughed, “I do it as often as possible to keep people riled up. We’ve lost some big characters this year. Some of the guys working in the press pit are boring as bollocks; they were livelier a few years ago. I’m aching from laughing last night over in Dublin, boxing is one of the last places left where you can go for a laugh, a lot of those characters are fading away, it doesn’t mean that the ones replacing them are bad people or don’t have character. You don’t want to sound too nostalgic but when I started covering fights you’d get some unbelievable stick and ribbing from the older guys.
“I don’t want to sound like someone from a film but the only way to learn is to learn, you can’t suddenly become an expert, you’ve got to put the hours and miles in, you’ve got to commit, whether you want to be a plumber or a boxing broadcaster you’ve got to put in the hours.”
Buncey is putting three more nights in on the road. On Tuesday, the 24th, he appears at the Pullman Lodge in Sunderland, on the 1st of December he is at the Wallington Sports Club in London and his final roadshow of 2009 takes place at the Loughton Academy, London on the 8th. Further details are available via www.buncelive.com/wordpress/. So if you like the man, and liked his show, show some support, head down to his roadshow, and brace yourself.
