"I hate boxing"-
Chris Eubank a week before the fight
I went in search of Chris Eubank early the following morning, wondering if he had discovered happiness only nine days before he leapt over the ropes. I traveled down to Brighton by train, leaving behind a grey London to arrive an hour later in brilliant sunshine. The streets were still damp but the sea-breeze was as crisp as the air in King's Cross had been fifthly, matching the needles and sick dumped on the St Pancreas pavement.
An aesthete like Eubank loathed such squalor. He had carved out a more refined retreat; 'a happy home' of his own which did not hammer away at inequities in his past. On the Sussex coast, instead, a few elderly ladies walked their ****er-spaniels and sausage-dogs while a shaven haired girl flashed past them on her roller blades with a dainty wave. The old promenade looked radiant with cream and yellow Regency building shining on the beachfront.
The sad tale of Chris Eubank 1-2

Chris Eubank a week before the fight
I went in search of Chris Eubank early the following morning, wondering if he had discovered happiness only nine days before he leapt over the ropes. I traveled down to Brighton by train, leaving behind a grey London to arrive an hour later in brilliant sunshine. The streets were still damp but the sea-breeze was as crisp as the air in King's Cross had been fifthly, matching the needles and sick dumped on the St Pancreas pavement.
An aesthete like Eubank loathed such squalor. He had carved out a more refined retreat; 'a happy home' of his own which did not hammer away at inequities in his past. On the Sussex coast, instead, a few elderly ladies walked their ****er-spaniels and sausage-dogs while a shaven haired girl flashed past them on her roller blades with a dainty wave. The old promenade looked radiant with cream and yellow Regency building shining on the beachfront.
The sad tale of Chris Eubank 1-2

The man from Hove
Brighton had never been a great boxing town. But there had been a repeated claim since 1990 that its famous citizen was, in fact, a fighter. 'Well, this is Brighton at its most beautiful,' Chris Eubank agreed in his oddly piping and sibilant voice which reminded me most of Mike Tyson, his own hero from the ring. 'But I must tell you, my good fellow, it's quite wrong to say that I live in Brighton. I live in Hove - quite a bit further up the road. They are two different places. And, as you might assume, I favour Hove...'
'Where does Brighton end and Hove begin?' I wondered blithely, trying to explore a quintessential English subject bound up in themes of property and class. Perhaps I could yet prove to a meditative businessman like Eubank that I had the nous to appreciate his world beyond boxing.
'If you have any sort of eye,' Eubank sneered, 'it has to be obvious!'
'Which do you think Mike Tyson might prefer?' I asked, curious why a boxer who professed to hate his occupation listed a destroyer like Tyson as his favourite fighter.
'Who am I to answer that?' Eubank asked airily, before diverting the weight of responsibility. 'Who are you to ask this?'
I cleared my throat and considered the best answer to this blunt question.
'Well...I'm not to sure about that one..'
'Neither am I, my friend, neither am I!'
Eubank was a *****cat - an obtuse tabby who dabbled in minor heroics and showboating inside the ring and grand gestures and Versace suits on the outside. Despite the scorn he brought upon himself, I had always given the nod to Eubank. Unlike Watson, I did not have to fight him and so was inclined to give him the space he required to weave his tortuous allegiance to the words 'in accordance with.'
'Now,' he lectured, 'in accordance with what I have already said, it follows that I can speak for no man. I speak for myself. I am an individual. Now you may look at me and see an immaculately tailored suit and, in accordance with that and the words I use, you may se me as a gentleman. That I am.'
I visualised how the muscles in Watson's face would flex if he could have heard that speech; and the gentlemanly blast which would summarise his reaction.
'But,' Eubank continued, 'in the body and heart there is also the fighter. I may rightly be said to have this Jekyll and Hyde personality. A gentleman outside the ring, a gladiator inside it. I am these two parts combined into one. Perhaps Mike Tyson is the same - but I cannot speak for anyone else.
This is correct, is it not?'
'Surely,' I quipped.
Eubank's imposing shadow stretched across the chintzy table. I choked back the laugh I might have shed on my living-room couch. In person, almost nose to nose, I decided to pay him my humblest respects.
'What five words would you use to describe yourself?' I asked. It was the sort of query which I knew Eubank loved.
He did not need much time to answer, even selecting his adjectives in alphabetical order. 'Approachable..' he said. 'Brave..devious... generous..' He pursed his lips. 'Moody..' And then he nodded, 'resourceful..'
'But, Chris,' I protested, 'that's six words!'
'I needed six.'
'But I said five words!'
'Ah,' Eubank smiles, 'but I'm the fighter. I'll settle on six, thank you.'
Suitably described, the six -pack wordsmith veered away on a new tangent.
Eubank, however, regarded himself more ambitiously as a mysterious icon who could 'dabble anywhere and everywhere'. I suspected that his enunciated ridicule of boxing stemmed from public perceptions that fighters are invariably thick-tongued dolts. His verbosity tried to overcome British barriers of both class and race. Black boxers were not expected to be endowed with either imagination or intelligence. I admired Eubank's desire to prove the sneering chatterers wrong but sensed the futility of his efforts. It would not be a simple task to transform himself into the Renaissance Man from Peckham. When a fighter like Eubank became comfortable with his rise it was said that he'd rejected his 'blackness'; yet if he stayed the same as when he began to box he'd be considered little more than a virtuoso street thug.
Watson
We talked together quietly in his favourite beach-front hotel, the Hospitality Inn, sipping morning tea just after eleven, Eubank dressed in a darkly elegant Versace and impossibly shiny shoes. I plied him with the respectfully serious questions he most desired. He spoke glibly about Italian fashion, British politics, American film and Jamaican holidays - for he knew that whatever diversion he took I would eventually drag him back to reality. And he was ready to be pulled back. As Watson had said of him, he had only one man on his mind.
'Michael Watson is strong. He will not give in without a severe beating. I have the same feelings welling up inside me as I did before I fought Benn in Birmingham. I think it could be that tough - but I prevailed than and I will prevail now.'
'But why do you keep fighting, Chris? Is it just for money?'
'What else?' Eubank scoffed.’ You see, the glory is not worth the pain - but, for the moment, the money is...'
'Michael Watson speaks more about being compelled to fight for reasons other than money,' I suggested. 'He says he is also fighting for the world title, for respect, for the sake of boxing. Do you share any of those feelings?'
'Well, I am a gladiator, so I must have fire in me to fight for reasons other than pride. But if you have to fight it is not something that is pleasant, it is not something a sane person can love.'
'Watson seems to love boxing.'
'Yes, but then I would class him as an unpolished man.' He knows no better. But this is also what makes him dangerous. He lives for boxing. I merely use boxing as a stepping-stone to get me to the place in society I require. So I enter his territory. I know that. He will come to battle. But so will I. You see, we have no choice now - the die, as they say, has been cast.'
'He says his counting the days until he breaks your heart..'
Eubank smiled a sad smile, his mask slipping for once, as if he suddenly imagined how it might feel to have you heart broken. 'We'll see,' he sighed. 'We await our fate together, Michael Watson and I. Soon it will only be the two of us - face to face. Then, we will find out whose heart breaks first..'
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