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What was your goal in boxing, just the money and the fame mostly? Because you certainly got both in your prime, didn't you?
No. At first, get good at it in the hope of my elder brothers accepting me. They were all boxers and had never accepted me from birth. When I turned amateur, it was win medals, belts and trophies to show my brothers. It sounds crazy, I guess? It was. And when I turned professional, it was to pay off phone bills and ******** debts!
I went to see a Roberto Duran fight in New York City when I was 16, I tagged along with the boxers at my club - and a certain Mike Tyson mingled in, and the fellow he was fighting was the best fighter who'd sparred in the gym I trained at. At that time, I'd only just started sparring and had three rounds under my belt. I looked at Duran as a God that night.
I was a light-middleweight, and the other world champion at my weight was Thomas Hearns, and being a beginner you're working on the jab and the right hand. I admired greatly the jab of Thomas Hearns, but soon realised I couldn't have a jab like that because I didn't have the same body structure. At the start of my amateur career, it was somewhat discouraging to look at the amateur record and professional accomplishments of Thomas Hearns and all his accolades, and then what he did to Roberto Duran was just astronomical and made me see him as a God. It was all astrononmical but at the same time set standards for me to aspire to and helped me be the best I could be.
When I told Thomas Hearns this in 1999 when I met him, he said Ali was the same for him. I'd like to think I was the same for fighters coming up like Naseem. Infact, I know I was. In most cases, boxing is a last resort, and I was for the boxers. I wanted to help the boxers, because I'd been there. All I could do was try to set standards, and I did. I climbed all the way to the top and had 20 world championship fights in four years and four months. I had 43 good nights in a row.
In regards to God's in boxing - to be a God you have to beat a God, or if a man is a God you don't have to explain why he's a God. Tyson became a God, and I'd been everywhere he'd been.
My thing was this - I'd taken out of the community in my youth, and I wanted to put back into the community, and becoming champion would allow me to put back into the community, but only becoming a God would allow my messages of good conduct and correctness to last beyond my tenure. So, in 1987, I decided I wanted to make champion, and in the back of my mind I wanted to become a God.
The fame, as you call it, and yes, okay, to an extent it was intense fame; that wasn't expected by me. When I won the world championship, I remember being interviewed a short time later and I said the man I really want to fight is Roberto Duran, because to be a God you have to beat a God and if he can win one of the other belts next year - as in the following year to that - then he's still a God; that's what I said.
The fame felt like a God-send because then my message of good conduct and correctness could last, and that's what it was all about for me. But why was I getting the fame in the first place? It was because I was world champion and fighting world championship fights every couple of months. You have to earn fame.
Nigel Benn, of course, became a God with his triumph in the Gerald McClellan fight; getting knocked down and battered, yet still winning against a vicious opponent.
Wow mate, I didn't expect that. Who promoted you in your early career, by the way, and was Barry Hearn promoting you before the Benn fight?
I used promoters to get me the fights I wanted. I was the fighter, I was primary. To be a promoter of barbarity is not a moral thing - I could never do it, so I had no morals towards them.
I was without a promoter from April 1988 to October 1988 because they wouldn't give me the money I wanted, but I used my former promoter Keith Miles to get me the fight with Anthony Logan.
After Logan, I told Keith Miles to get me Nigel Benn or Randy Smith. I wasn't prepared to hang around, I had standards to set. He got me Franki Moro. So I dropped him.
Barry Hearn gave me the money I wanted and got me the fights I wanted: Randy Smith, Hugo Corti and a world title shot. If I lost the Randy Smith fight, I walked away from boxing.
If I had my way, I'd have walked to the ring with no robe or theme song and in plain white trunks and plain white boots. My thing was truth and integrity, not gimmicks. It wasn't until 1993 that I thought about offering an idea, when I saw empty seats at my fight for the first time in two and a half years. I thought for months and came up with a monocle, just for a crack!
What I've observed is that entertaining is a good thing, because it broaden's audience and broaden's smile. So, I first started purposefully entertaining in about 1993.
Contrary to belief, I wasn't Apollo Creed. My business was the gymnasium. I was a fighter, it's all I knew. I left everything else upto Barry and Ronnie (Davies). I just took care of the training and fighting.
Before I did the rounds of London and Irish promoters in the late 80s, the only briefing I got was from my dad and that was: 'Don't watch the one's who take hundreds or thousands, watch the one's who take hundreds of thousands.' That was it.
I hooked up with allegedly Frank Warren when I made my comeback in 1997 because he was capable of getting me the fights I wanted. I used him.
Do you get Christmas cards from the likes of Nigel Benn, Michael Watson, Henry Wharton, Steve Collins, Joe Calzaghe?
No, we're lions, we keep to our own domains. But we respect each other. My respect for Michael Watson is humungous, on a similar domain to my respect for Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali.
When I saw Michael laying in the hospital bed [after their tragic fight in September 1991], his body looked like that of a Greek God. But that's kid's stuff compared to the man's fortitude.
And did that fight have an affect on you, I mean everyone said you didn't go for knockouts and stuff after that?
Absolutely.
And what about those domestic superfights, though? Do you think those epics will be matched again some day or some day soon?
Well, I don't really know. Let me say this - when you have two men completely psyched up for something more than a world championship, you have an epic on your hands. I know of four epic fights: Benn/Eubank 1, Watson/Eubank 2, Ali/Frazier 3, Hagler/Hearns.
There's no such thing as a superfight, because you can only measure a fight after it's happened or as it's happening. Watson 2 was live in China, live in America, live everywhere; and all of those watching along with the 15.9 million watching on ITV are saying to me: 'Why are you getting up?'. Watson was Superman on that night, giving me the most vicious of one-sided beatdown's for 10.9 rounds.
It was at a time when I had, probably, 500 times as many fans in the Bronx - where my family lived and where I learned to box - than I had in England! Me on my hands and knee's is what the country wanted, all because of the incorrectness they had read in the newspapers about me. And incorrectness would inject me, and when I was injected I would respond, you know?
No. At first, get good at it in the hope of my elder brothers accepting me. They were all boxers and had never accepted me from birth. When I turned amateur, it was win medals, belts and trophies to show my brothers. It sounds crazy, I guess? It was. And when I turned professional, it was to pay off phone bills and ******** debts!
I went to see a Roberto Duran fight in New York City when I was 16, I tagged along with the boxers at my club - and a certain Mike Tyson mingled in, and the fellow he was fighting was the best fighter who'd sparred in the gym I trained at. At that time, I'd only just started sparring and had three rounds under my belt. I looked at Duran as a God that night.
I was a light-middleweight, and the other world champion at my weight was Thomas Hearns, and being a beginner you're working on the jab and the right hand. I admired greatly the jab of Thomas Hearns, but soon realised I couldn't have a jab like that because I didn't have the same body structure. At the start of my amateur career, it was somewhat discouraging to look at the amateur record and professional accomplishments of Thomas Hearns and all his accolades, and then what he did to Roberto Duran was just astronomical and made me see him as a God. It was all astrononmical but at the same time set standards for me to aspire to and helped me be the best I could be.
When I told Thomas Hearns this in 1999 when I met him, he said Ali was the same for him. I'd like to think I was the same for fighters coming up like Naseem. Infact, I know I was. In most cases, boxing is a last resort, and I was for the boxers. I wanted to help the boxers, because I'd been there. All I could do was try to set standards, and I did. I climbed all the way to the top and had 20 world championship fights in four years and four months. I had 43 good nights in a row.
In regards to God's in boxing - to be a God you have to beat a God, or if a man is a God you don't have to explain why he's a God. Tyson became a God, and I'd been everywhere he'd been.
My thing was this - I'd taken out of the community in my youth, and I wanted to put back into the community, and becoming champion would allow me to put back into the community, but only becoming a God would allow my messages of good conduct and correctness to last beyond my tenure. So, in 1987, I decided I wanted to make champion, and in the back of my mind I wanted to become a God.
The fame, as you call it, and yes, okay, to an extent it was intense fame; that wasn't expected by me. When I won the world championship, I remember being interviewed a short time later and I said the man I really want to fight is Roberto Duran, because to be a God you have to beat a God and if he can win one of the other belts next year - as in the following year to that - then he's still a God; that's what I said.
The fame felt like a God-send because then my message of good conduct and correctness could last, and that's what it was all about for me. But why was I getting the fame in the first place? It was because I was world champion and fighting world championship fights every couple of months. You have to earn fame.
Nigel Benn, of course, became a God with his triumph in the Gerald McClellan fight; getting knocked down and battered, yet still winning against a vicious opponent.
Wow mate, I didn't expect that. Who promoted you in your early career, by the way, and was Barry Hearn promoting you before the Benn fight?
I used promoters to get me the fights I wanted. I was the fighter, I was primary. To be a promoter of barbarity is not a moral thing - I could never do it, so I had no morals towards them.
I was without a promoter from April 1988 to October 1988 because they wouldn't give me the money I wanted, but I used my former promoter Keith Miles to get me the fight with Anthony Logan.
After Logan, I told Keith Miles to get me Nigel Benn or Randy Smith. I wasn't prepared to hang around, I had standards to set. He got me Franki Moro. So I dropped him.
Barry Hearn gave me the money I wanted and got me the fights I wanted: Randy Smith, Hugo Corti and a world title shot. If I lost the Randy Smith fight, I walked away from boxing.
If I had my way, I'd have walked to the ring with no robe or theme song and in plain white trunks and plain white boots. My thing was truth and integrity, not gimmicks. It wasn't until 1993 that I thought about offering an idea, when I saw empty seats at my fight for the first time in two and a half years. I thought for months and came up with a monocle, just for a crack!
What I've observed is that entertaining is a good thing, because it broaden's audience and broaden's smile. So, I first started purposefully entertaining in about 1993.
Contrary to belief, I wasn't Apollo Creed. My business was the gymnasium. I was a fighter, it's all I knew. I left everything else upto Barry and Ronnie (Davies). I just took care of the training and fighting.
Before I did the rounds of London and Irish promoters in the late 80s, the only briefing I got was from my dad and that was: 'Don't watch the one's who take hundreds or thousands, watch the one's who take hundreds of thousands.' That was it.
I hooked up with allegedly Frank Warren when I made my comeback in 1997 because he was capable of getting me the fights I wanted. I used him.
Do you get Christmas cards from the likes of Nigel Benn, Michael Watson, Henry Wharton, Steve Collins, Joe Calzaghe?
No, we're lions, we keep to our own domains. But we respect each other. My respect for Michael Watson is humungous, on a similar domain to my respect for Nelson Mandela and Muhammad Ali.
When I saw Michael laying in the hospital bed [after their tragic fight in September 1991], his body looked like that of a Greek God. But that's kid's stuff compared to the man's fortitude.
And did that fight have an affect on you, I mean everyone said you didn't go for knockouts and stuff after that?
Absolutely.
And what about those domestic superfights, though? Do you think those epics will be matched again some day or some day soon?
Well, I don't really know. Let me say this - when you have two men completely psyched up for something more than a world championship, you have an epic on your hands. I know of four epic fights: Benn/Eubank 1, Watson/Eubank 2, Ali/Frazier 3, Hagler/Hearns.
There's no such thing as a superfight, because you can only measure a fight after it's happened or as it's happening. Watson 2 was live in China, live in America, live everywhere; and all of those watching along with the 15.9 million watching on ITV are saying to me: 'Why are you getting up?'. Watson was Superman on that night, giving me the most vicious of one-sided beatdown's for 10.9 rounds.
It was at a time when I had, probably, 500 times as many fans in the Bronx - where my family lived and where I learned to box - than I had in England! Me on my hands and knee's is what the country wanted, all because of the incorrectness they had read in the newspapers about me. And incorrectness would inject me, and when I was injected I would respond, you know?
to your mom..
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