4 Nigel Benn v Chris Eubank

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In an edited extract from his new book, The Hate Game: Benn vs Eubank – Boxing’s Bitterest Rivalry, Ben Dirs recounts the minutes leading up to the Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank fight in 1990, a clash that gripped the British public…

Chris Eubank arrived at his dressing room at 6.30pm and set about making sure everything was in its correct place. Which was more difficult than it might have been.

“Ambrose Mendy [Benn’s manager] and his team pulled all sorts of strokes,” says Eubank’s manager Barry Hearn. “They knew Eubank liked nice, white towels and they gave us sh**ty, horrible towels; we liked to warm up properly, but they gave us the smallest dressing room we had ever seen.”

As Eubank went about his business, seemingly oblivious to Mendy’s machinations, his trainer Ronnie Davies soothed him by singing Irish rebel songs.

Meanwhile, down the corridor, Mendy was wrestling with Nigel Benn’s demonic fury. “Right before a fight, I’d always get everybody out of the dressing room and we’d usually have a hug and say some really personal things,” says Mendy. “About his well-being, about what would happen if he was hurt. And he’d morph from someone who was uncertain into a frightening, frightening character.

“It was incredible to witness, this brooding intensity. But this time the intensity is so great that Nigel is not listening to anything I’m saying. He’s already in the fight. There are no words, just a glare. I looked into his eyes and I could almost see inside him. When he looked at you, it was almost as if he paralysed you – you couldn’t move.”

Mendy’s application for a second’s licence had been rejected by the British Boxing Board of Control, meaning he was unable to be in Benn’s corner for the fight. However, this snub allowed Mendy to concentrate his efforts elsewhere, namely in attempting to cause as much unrest in the Eubank camp as possible.

“I knew that I had to unhinge Eubank, somehow, some way,” says Mendy. “And I knew I had one more chance to get to him, and that was the witnessing of his hands being wrapped. I went into Eubank’s changing room, he went absolutely nuts and attacked me. It was chaos. He’s trying to choke me up against a wall and I’m trying to knee him in the bollocks and right-hook him. If I’d got close enough, I would have bitten him. The guy from the WBO jumped in, Barry Hearn was involved, and Chris is screaming: ‘Get him out of my f***ing changing room, I don’t want him here.’

“Meanwhile, Barry’s trying to reason with him, saying: ‘Calm down, Chris, he has to be in here. He’s got to witness your hands being wrapped and sign your gloves.’ In hindsight, I should have left it at that, walked out and said no-one from our camp is going in there, until we got him at the point where he was demoralised. Instead, he calmed down immediately – as if someone had flicked a switch – smiled at me and said: ‘Thmart move. Thmart move. Okay, fine.’ I picked up the pen, calmly wrote on his gloves ‘Dopey c***’, and walked out of the changing room.”

Simply the worst

Mendy had one last trick up his sleeve. “Chris is strolling out to Simply the Best and, when he gets ten yards inside the arena, my mate, who was the DJ for the night, ripped the music off,” he says. “And Eubank stretches out his arms and says: ‘Barry – what the f***?!’”

“That was Ambrose who cut off Chris’s entrance music,” says Benn. “I wouldn’t have done it and it wasn’t my idea. Ambrose was into all that psychological warfare, but I didn’t have time for any of that.”

Hearn recalls now: “I said to Eubank: ‘Right, back to the dressing room.’ And I went upstairs and had a row with the geezer in the DJ booth.”

“Barry’s gone upstairs, but I’ve had two gorillas stationed outside the DJ booth,” says Mendy. “And they said to Barry: ‘Not tonight, go away.’ So Barry had to go back down and say: ‘Chris, we ain’t got no music.’”

Hearn says: “I came back down after this steaming row, with foam coming out of my mouth, and I’ve got ITV saying to me: ‘We’re live!’ And I went: ‘Chris, dressing room, now!’ But Eubank just looked at me and said: ‘Bazza – they gave me shitty towels, they gave me a shitty dressing room, they’ve f***ed up my music. Just keep calm and let me punish this man.’ And suddenly I felt like a little child standing next to him. Before that, I wanted to chin everyone. Now I was like: ‘Okay Chris, I trust you. Off you go…’”

A prism of hatred

More than two minutes after his entrance had been sabotaged, Eubank reappeared; the cacophony of boos and catcalls no longer masked by Tina Turner’s incongruous moans and groans, the lack of music lending the occasion a stark, old-school air. Eubank climbed the ringside steps and stopped for a moment on the apron.

He looked halfway over his shoulder – a tacit acknowledgement of the hatred of the crowd. From men who smelt of cigarettes and pubs, men who thought they were hard but had never laced up gloves.

Eubank negotiated the ring post, tested the tension of the top rope and vaulted into the ring, before turning on his heels and back-pedalling across the canvas. “I stood in the ring and sucked in the hate,” said Eubank. “I redirected it towards Nigel Benn. I was like a prism.”

When Benn finally made it into the ring, TV pundit and Eubank’s stablemate Jim McDonnell thought he resembled “a wild tiger”. But to many, he looked like a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “He put everything on the line that night,” says Mendy. “When he got into that ring he was ready to kill Eubank. No fighter was more aptly named: he was dark and his sole intention was to destroy.

“Eubank had his head slanted to one side and his gloves held together; Nigel was snarling, his hands down by his side. I remember the intensity of his stare across the ring: it was like Superman’s X-ray vision – you could almost see the rays coming out of his eyes.”

Eubank had vowed not to meet Benn’s gaze until they came face to face in the ring. And he had carried out meticulous mental planning for when the moment came.

“In the lead-up to the fight, myself and my fiancée Karron always referred to him as ‘Benjamin’,” said Eubank. “To think of actually fighting Nigel Benn would have been too awesome. In the ring, I looked at him and saw a relentless savage. But I also saw a man with a slight doubt on his mind. When he looked into my eyes he needed reassurance. I thought: ‘It’s too late for that, mate. You’re mine.’”

In a brutal bout, Eubank was knocked down in the eighth round, but stopped Benn in the ninth. Their dislike fuelled a rematch 20 years ago this month, which ended in a draw.

The Hate Game (Simon & Schuster) is out later this month. Ben Dirs will be talking about his book at the London Sports Writing Festival at Lord’s on October 19 (http://tickets.lords.org) and the Sports Book Festival at the University of Liverpool on November 16 (sportsbookfestival.com)