Chris Eubank: The Autobiography

Sparring was the gospel of New York gyms. It was their faith. Everybody spars. Sparring is how you become a good fighter. It is far more important than the road work, the bag work, the skipping, the shadow boxing, all of it. The most essential thing you need to do if you want to be a good fighter is to spar four or five times a week without fail. And in New York, sparring was not going through the motions either – these were merciless bang-ups. This was a boxing commandment I took with me when I returned to England and to which I adhered throughout my career.

I started off with one set of three rounds, then over the months that progressed into six-rounders, then eventually full-blooded 12-rounders. We even did some 15-rounders to condition ourselves so that a 12-round fight felt easier. That was how I honed my ring intelligence. There is a ring fitness and there is a road fitness – if you don’t have ring fitness you may as well not even step into the arena.

I started to notice one fighter in particular who inspired me. His name was Dennis Cruz, a southpaw. He had this seductively poetic way of moving, slipping, bobbing and weaving. He was a delight to watch. His jabs were like pieces of art – there was a sign in the gym that read, ‘The right hand will take you around the block, the jab can take you around the world.’ That’s a fact.

I became obsessed with being able to box as well as Dennis. I wanted to be able to weave like he did, to throw shots, to retreat, dance around like he did. I wanted to be as smooth as he was in the ring. This man was poetry in motion. Over the years, I have been asked so many times which boxers influenced me and, to be honest, there was only one – Dennis Cruz. Everyone has ‘flavour’, everyone has a perception of how something should be done, some people have it much deeper than others. Dennis epitomised it for me.

I have no idea where he is now. I’d love to see him again. The sad thing is that time and hardship have a way of wearing a man down. A young boy has all the possibilities laid out before him, you feel everything will be alright, but as a man things quickly change. For me, I didn’t miss my boat, I grabbed every opportunity with both hands. So many people don’t do that. They may have a trade and even see a plan before them, but very few people apply themselves and persist. They sometimes fall foul of the easy routes – laziness, drugs, women, squandering – but that’s not who I am.

I’m not saying this was Dennis, of course. However, the shame of it was that, as with many fighters, he never made the big time. I have since heard he had personal problems. That was a terrible shame, because he was an astonishing fighter. He was only 1351b but was a grandmaster of the craft. This is not generous credit I am giving Dennis here, this is just a fact, an observation.

The first trainer I had was an older man called Andy Martinez, a Puerto Rican. He was only about 5’ tall. He got me exceptionally fit. He taught me only two punches, which were the straight left and the straight right, no hooks to the body, no body shots. He only worked with amateurs, mainly getting them in shape – which he did superbly. After about two years with him, I wanted to work with Maximo Perez, the main trainer at the Jerome boxing gym. He was from the Dominican Republic and had trained Dennis Cruz: he was our undisputed, sought-after, top man. Maximo had been a fighter himself – for me it is only logical that the best trainers are former boxers, not enthusiasts or observers. You need a brain that knows how it feels to be punched, how to throw punches correctly. Maximo had all the moves and could teach you everything. For me, he was the definitive trainer.

At the time I took a great deal of advice and counsel from the gym owner, Adonis. I said to him privately, ‘The time has now come for me to learn more punches and evolve into a better fighter and I can’t do that with Andy.’ Very diplomatically, Adonis said to me, ‘That will be seen as unkind by him because he bought you your first pair of boxing boots, he gives you money for orange juice after training every day. You need to resolve this matter with a great deal of care.’

I acknowledged this point but replied, ‘I appreciate immensely all the things Andy’s done, the time he’s taken with me, the nights he drove me home or gave me money for food because I didn’t have anything. I sincerely appreciate that, but am I supposed to hold myself back because someone has been nice to me? I am trying to make this my way of life. I want be a good fighter and to do that I need a better trainer.’ I had learned all he could teach me. Adonis was, of course, right, so I thought very carefully about how to speak to Andy with suitable tact.

I was very anxious not to hurt Andy’s feelings. I said to him, ‘I don’t want to upset you, but it is time for me to move on now. I need to work with another trainer and if you don’t allow me to then all you are doing is holding me back. That is unfair, I’m sure you don’t want to do that. This is not about you, it’s about me, I’m not using you, I’m just trying to get ahead. The fact that you’ve helped so much, I thank you deeply, but I need to move on.’ I am proud that, although I was a young fighter, I had the courage to tell Andy. So many fighters do not tell their trainer anything, even in the gym, so they end up stifling their careers with the wrong trainer.

Maximo took me on for about a week and then said, ‘You’re punching like a girl, I’m tired of telling you the same thing about the left hook – you’re slapping the left hook. Go back to Andy.’ I told him I would get it right, so I went into the corner of the gymnasium and stood close by the wall for over an hour and a half, throwing the left hook, over and over and over, hundreds of times. Trying to get the pivot right, I had to get the angle right. Over and over, thousands of times in the corner, every day, obsessively for weeks. This was a routine of my own making – if I was ever unhappy with a particular punch or move, I would stop, retreat into the corner of the gym and repeat, repeat, repeat. Thousands of times. By the end of each little punishment session, I would be drenched in sweat. This was intense, I wouldn’t just throw the punch, I was trying to perfect every intricate detail.

So although my training with Maximo lasted only two weeks, I continued to train with him from afar. I had already been watching him work with his stable of six professional fighters from across the gym anyway. I would observe and listen to what he was saying and explaining, then mimic it myself. Even though he didn’t have the time to train me, he was, effectively, because I had a very watchful eye, which is the key to success at anything. In the end, I didn’t need him to teach me directly, all I needed to do was to watch him teach other fighters and duplicate that.

For example, when one of his fighters was sparring, I would shadow box his every move from across the gym. If he threw a right, I would evade, then counter; it was as if I was physically in the ring with the boxer. I learned so much that way. Some of Maximo’s fighters were of an excellent calibre – there was a fellow called Salano who I took a few moves from regarding escape, moving away from an opponent.

So I watched, I listened, I learned, then I repeated, reviewed and revised. Every minute detail of every move or punch was practised thousands and thousands and thousands of times. After a while, I took what I learned from Maximo and started to add my own spice, my own flavour and personality. That was when I started to evolve towards being a complete fighter. This process was equipping me in depth with the skills needed to do my job – the heart, that intangible, unquantifiable, primal factor, was another matter.

People sometimes say to me why do you have to repeat one punch so many times to perfect it? Well, these are not simple skills. It took me two years to learn how to throw the right hand. Then there’s the left hook, the right hand to the body, the left upper cut to the body, the right upper cut to the body, the right hook to the body – these punches take years and years to learn. You don’t climb through the ropes and just do it.

I was about 19 years old when I first learned how to throw body punches, that’s three years after I had first started boxing. Initially, they taught me to punch straight out, 1-2, 1-2, load up and keep on punching. Even that took ages to master, it was very hard. But I applied myself very stringently in the gym. Over months and months of repetition, I observed and criticised my every movement. I imagined taking myself out of my own body then analysing myself in minute detail from the other side of the gymnasium.

People outside of the boxing fraternity do not realise what complexity is involved in throwing just one single punch. You don’t punch from the arm or even from the shoulder. You punch from the foot. The wave of movement travels from the toe, through the foot, knee, hip and chest, sears up the arm, forearm, wrist and finally into the knuckles. Then the index knuckle and middle knuckle are the two which need to connect. These two knuckles flow from a direct line straight up your arm. The other knuckles don’t have the same support, so if you connect badly with the other two you are likely to hurt your hand. Sometimes you connect correctly with the two correct knuckles and that is the perfect punch. When that happens they just go. Lights out – good night Charlie.

If that is done correctly, which is hard enough, you then have to complete the procedure, which involves getting your fist back into the correct position by your chin, your body is pulled back into form and you are ready to go again. If you can do that meticulously, you will have probably taken two or three years to master it – and now you know just one punch. This was what I was learning all those years. I wanted to know everything.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_ccd02829-f222-5789-ab2a-7a4fc69241af)

GOLDEN BOY (#ulink_ccd02829-f222-5789-ab2a-7a4fc69241af)

In my first amateur fight, the referee stopped the contest after only 30 seconds . . . and declared me the loser. The guy wasn’t the same weight as me, perhaps only ten pounds heavier, but that is a big advantage in the ring. He hit me in the chest with a perfect punch and I was so startled by the weight behind it that I stuttered back and froze. I couldn’t move, so the referee stopped the fight. I won eight amateur bouts on the trot after that, all three-rounders, stoppages or decisions. My amateur career consisted of 26 fights, seven of which I lost and the remainder I won. I was already incredibly focused, but now I was beginning to develop some momentum.

One day after training, I was in the McDonald’s on 149th Street and 3rd Avenue, South Bronx. I was carrying two heavy gym bags and was leaning up against the counter where a section is hinged for staff to push up and walk out. I was looking out of the window and didn’t notice a man who worked there waiting for me to move so he could get in behind the counter. He tried to lift it which startled me, so I turned to see what was happening. He stared at me and said, ‘Move out of the way, nigger! Move out of the way!’ I said, ‘What?!’ His aggression took me by surprise, so I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ to which he replied, Oh, what? You want some? Right, if that’s the way it is, I’ll go and get my boys.’

At that point, I knew this was a situation that had to be confronted. I pulled my shoulders back and held my head up high, chest proudly puffed out. My arms dropped down by my side and as they did, the bags dropped down my arms and finally fell off the wrists, leaving me standing there in that peacock pose that I later became famous for. If you had frozen that moment in McDonald’s, it would have been no different to how I looked in the ring against Benn for the world title in 1990. That was my natural stance. A porcupine puts his spikes out, a dog growls and shows his teeth – this was my stance of protection. I never held my hands up – with my arms so low and open, the message was very clear, ‘Let’s do this, whatever you’ve got, I’ll have it.’ You’re showing that person conviction, plus you’d be surprised what you can do from that position, if you know your boxing. I think someone tipped this fellow off about the fact I was an amateur boxer, because he went out the back to get ‘his boys’ but never came back.

By the age of 18, I was sufficiently skilled to make it through to the light-middleweight final of the prestigious Spanish Golden Gloves tournament, widely seen as a testing ground for future champions. The semi-final was very tough – for the first time I sensed the flickering of white lights in my head that would have gone on to become a knock-out if I had not eluded further punishment. Fortunately, I went on to get the decision and won the light-middleweight belt. The final was just as tough. I was getting punched left, right and centre. I won because of my aggression; the judges appreciated the fact that I was always taking the fight to him. That was a landmark victory, the first rung on the ladder so to speak.

I had just gone 19 when I turned professional. I was still at Morris High School but the decision to turn pro was simple – I needed the money. I was due to earn $250 for my first fight in Atlantic City. The day you turn pro is not the day you sign the contract, or get your license, it is the day you actually fight: for me this was 3 October 1985, at the Atlantis Hotel, against Timmy Brown. I was absolutely petrified. You are taught to exude confidence in boxing, but that is something which you don’t possess at first. You hear about all these great fighters who have 35-0 records, but all you want to do is have yourself respected and win your first fight. At the time, Thomas Hearns had this awesome record and I was just astounded that anyone could be so phenomenal. He was a great champion. You’re not thinking of being champion, you just want the first win and to pocket a few hundred dollars.

They left me in a room in the Atlantis Hotel by myself beforehand for probably only half an hour, but it seemed like an eternity. I went through a searching, emotional self-examination. I really put myself through the mill: Are you going to do this or are you going to bottle it? Are you going to have courage or are you going to be a wimp? My heart was pounding almost out of my chest. I was going into the unknown, something that has always made me uncomfortable.

The hardest thing about boxing is the unknown. Before every fight you get extremely nervous; there’s the pressure of the fight, the ring entrance, everything that comes with a bout, so you are naturally terrified. That only ends when the referee says, ‘Box’. At that second, I always had pure peace, blissful, sweet peace. Once he said that, I knew the territory, everything was a reaction, he made a move, I reacted, he made a wrong move, I scored a point. The chess game had begun and I knew I played exceptionally well. I always savoured that word, ‘Box’: it brought such serenity.

It was a four-round fight and I won on points. That first purse was $250, which was a lot of money to me, but I had already spent it! I had been calling a girl in the UK called Carol Chevanne on the school phone and had racked up quite a bill. The school authorities found out and I apologised, explaining that I would pay back every penny. It was a serious enough offence to be expelled but they gave me the chance to keep my word. I won the fight and so paid the bill. So even when I did slip up, I was doing all I could to make amends. This first success was later followed by four more four-round points victories against Kenny Cannida, Mike Bagwell, Eric Holland and James Canty, all in Atlantic City.

In the summer of 1986, I graduated from Morris High. I had been a good student in as much as I didn’t have any friends, not even any acquaintances really, to distract me. My personality in regards to succeeding in church, school and boxing was very focused and I suppose that alienated people. I always felt like my school mates were just kids – in England I had been living like an adult for years, feeding myself, earning my own money, looking out for myself.

Succeeding at school hadn’t been easy, especially as my academic life in the UK had not been well spent. However, as I was training to box in parallel with my studies, I very quickly found that the same principles of application, repetition, hard work and perseverance paid off in the world of academia too. Boxing is like that – its philosophy is a blueprint for so much in life.

Immediately after graduation, I began a course at SOBRO College of Technology in the South Bronx. I was on a course for six months learning on a Wang word processor, aspiring to become accomplished with computers.

To bring money in, I also did various jobs. One year before I was to leave New York permanently, my mother introduced me to Alan Sedaka, who owned a building company called Durite. One job I took was on a building site run by Alan’s firm. I looked after this office block in Long Island and was paid quite handsomely. My father was in New York at this time and was working on the job with me. He used to wind me up all the time.

Another part of the job was to make van deliveries, even though I had never driven in my life. One day I was given an automatic – which I tried to think of as just a go-kart! I got in this van and was doing okay until I hit the town and began to feel a growing sense of panic as the congestion built up. I stopped at some traffic lights but overshot and found myself in the grid where people walk across. So I reversed back – the van had no rearview mirror so I was only looking in my wing mirrors . . . Crash! There was an almighty bang as I hit a motorcyclist. This angry guy wheeled his motorbike round and parked it in front of my van so I couldn’t move. ‘Look what you’ve done to my bike!’ he snarled.

Already I was thinking about what on earth to do. I was an illegal immigrant without a green card, no driving licence: we were talking deportation if the police got involved. The guy said, ‘Listen, what are you going to do? You hit my bike?’ So I said, ‘Yes, I’ve got my insurance papers and everything in here, let me just pull around the corner, we’re holding up the traffic, everyone is beeping, this is ridiculous.’ At first he wouldn’t hear of it, but I persisted and eventually after about five minutes he got on his battered bike and began to wheel it out of the way . . . Screeeccchh! I zoomed off into the distance!

I was doing well at my studies, I had money from jobs and the fights I was winning, but this was all keeping me very busy. Alan Sedaka was always very keen to see me do well. His brother Maurice was also a kind man and one day he took me to one side and gave me a priceless piece of advice. He told me to choose studies or boxing. To use his words: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket or risk being mediocre at both.’ I thought about what he said and knew that he was right. So I made my decision. It was a relatively easy choice when it came down to it: one was safe, one was dangerous. I will always go for the danger: my grain has always been to take the riskier, harder route. I have always lived in black and white, hot or cold, violence or silence. If you just want to exist you have to just stay in the grey area. Easy is just existing. I don’t want that. I want to make a difference. Boxing was an extreme but fulfilling life. Plus, the potential earnings far outstripped any wage as an office worker. My mind was made up. Boxing it was.

People often ask me what my mother thought of what I did for a living. She accepted it and prayed for me. She would have prayed for me whatever trade I had chosen, that is the way she is, intensely spiritual. I remember coming back from my seventh amateur fight.

‘How did you get on?’ she asked.

I told her I had won.

‘Well, what about the other boy?’

‘Well, I beat him,’ I said.

‘What is going to happen to him?’

I explained that he had lost the fight and that I would move onwards and upwards as a result. She just quietly said, ‘Well, remember he has a mother too.’ That is how a mother looks at the world. There’s a quotation by one of the great philosophers which goes like this: ‘The tragedy of woman is that they become just like their mothers. The tragedy of man is that they don’t.’ I have become like my mother in many respects and that I believe is a strength.

Shortly after graduation from Morris High, I had started travelling back and forth to the UK. I had lived in New York for three and a half years straight, but for the next 18 months I bounced back and forth across the Atlantic. I found that because of a lack of money, I sometimes started to get pulled back into the old lifestyle of shoplifting.

Ironically, one day back in New York, where I had always managed to steer clear of trouble, I had a near-miss when I was playing dominoes at a club in White Plains Road. For this particular match I was on song and winning. There were four of us playing cut-throat, it was very tense. This one onlooker was looking at my hand and said, ‘This guy can’t play, he just happens to be pulling it off, he’s making lucky money.’ He was jealous of me making cash because it was a Friday and everybody was losing their hard-earned cash to me. Deliberately confrontational, he said to me, ‘You can’t play,’ so I replied, ‘Rather than talking, why not just play and put your money on the table.’

He obviously didn’t have the money so this was embarrassing for him. They all knew I was boxing at this point and he said to me in Jamaican, ‘Yu kyan fight wid yu fis’ dem, but . . .’ – at this moment he pulled out a ratchet knife – ‘. . . yu kya’ fight dis. Gwaan a Inglan, Inglish bwoy.’ I said to him, ‘Where I come from in England, if you pull a knife you should use it, otherwise put it away. I haven’t done you any wrong, you have no reason to be pulling a knife on me.’ Fortunately, he bottled out and that was that. Or so I thought.

A couple of weeks later, I went back to the same club. I started down the stairs and, as I did, I noticed the man who had pulled the knife on me and one other man. When I got to the basement, there was no one around so I headed back up to street level. As I emerged, one of these men blocked my path in between this Space Invaders machine and the bakery next door. He said, ‘Eh bwoy, yu a eedyat. Mi a go kill yu bwoy!’ He said he was the brother-in-law of the fellow with the knife and it was clear he had taken our little confrontation as a slight on his family which, of course, it wasn’t.

Being as righteous as I am, I explained, ‘Listen, he pulled a knife on me, I didn’t do him any wrong,’ but he was totally disinterested and as I spoke to him he pulled out a .38 calibre gun, calm as can be, right in the middle of the street. I immediately ran around this Space Invaders machine to try to get into the bakery. The lady who worked there had seen what was going on and said, ‘Leave ’m alone. Him a good bwoy, let him go!’ He cornered me and grabbed my T-shirt, ripping it in the process, and thrust the gun under my chin. ‘Mi wi’ kill yu bwoy!’

I knew the law of the streets in New York, so I was well aware that people got killed when they were not remotely in the wrong, it was just a matter of violent ignorance. I pulled myself away and started to walk across to my cousin Woodia’s house. I was not strolling, I was walking as fast as I could while still keeping my dignity and not looking spooked. The first time someone pulls a gun on you, you’re shaking, you’re genuinely terrified. With typical Jamacian humour though, these two big ladies in their 30s were watching this scenario play out down below and as I walked very quickly across the street they were laughing. ‘Look ‘ow faas’ ‘im a waalk!’ New York . . . boy, it can be a tough place to live.

A year later, I was in the same dominoes club playing a game with a man I was quite friendly with. He had heard of my close escape and knew the chap who had thrust the gun in my face. He told me that about three weeks after he threatened me, the same fellow had been killed in a shoot-out. The lesson to take from this was simple: if you are a bad guy, an inconsiderate ruffian or a bully, there is always someone nastier, more malicious just around the corner. That’s what happened – he got killed. You reap what you sow.

My cousin Woodia, who had pulled me on that banana leaf all those years ago in Jamaica, lived in and ran his business from New York. He sold drugs. That was his trade. My business was training, succeeding at school and keeping out of trouble. These had been my obsessions. Despite my substantial dalliances with the criminal life, I could never have been involved in selling drugs, it wasn’t part of my make-up. Shoplifting I could do. Selling drugs was just killing people and bad karma, totally different. One was preying on the weak, the other was stealing to feed yourself.