Chris Eubank: The Autobiography

Although these were the very circles I was trying to avoid, Woodia was family: I loved him. After I had made a different life for myself and my family in England, whenever I was in New York I would always go and visit old friends, some of whom were still wrapped up in the darker side of life. On one trip I went to see Woodia at the house where he lived and from where drugs were sold.

It was a basement apartment with a wire mesh covering the streetside windows. I rang the bell and noticed several faces peering through the meshed glass. The door buzzed and I started to work my way down the dark stairs, but halfway down Woodia’s friend, Freedom, met and escorted me towards the thick door at the bottom. He knocked twice on the door and I went in – next thing I knew, I had three guns pointing at my forehead, an Uzi, a Colt 45 and a .38 calibre pistol. I said, ‘Hey! Woodia! It’s Chris, I’m your cousin, man, what’s all this?’ He said, ‘That doesn’t matter, Chris, this is my business.’

Woodia died prematurely, aged 27. The word was that one of his girlfriends had poisoned him. One night, while eating a Chinese take-away, he died where he was sitting. One of the regrets in my life is that I didn’t go to his funeral. Forget a man’s wedding, they come and go, people get married several times. Always see a man off, it only happens once. I thought, wrongly, that I was too busy to fly to New York for his funeral. I was wrong: you can never be too busy for the people you care about.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_1dbfdb83-cf70-57f1-a01e-60a2be6569af)

DOCTOR JOHNSON (#ulink_1dbfdb83-cf70-57f1-a01e-60a2be6569af)

I met many people through Alan Sedaka, one of whom was Benjamin Aryeh, not a nice character. He didn’t do anything illegal, but in business he was very cold. None of the people who worked for him liked him and I could see why. The first time I met Benjamin, he offered me a job as a gopher. I really needed a job at the time, but I didn’t take him up on his offer – this is because I asked him about his footwear. ‘Nice shoes. Those are crocodile, right?’ He shrugged his shoulder and said, ‘I don’t know, someone bought them for me. Are they crocodile?’ From that second, I was not interested in him or the job, it was not for me. He had played down something which was just a simple compliment. That first impression sealed it. Even though I needed the money. I wanted the right kind of money. The going rate would have been fine. It’s respect I need.

Benjamin had a brother, a lovely guy called Nathanial, whom I used to bodyguard for in New York. I would go to casinos or clubs with him and watch his back. It was a bit silly really, because I didn’t have a gun and if you are going to bodyguard someone in New York, you have to carry a firearm. However, my aura was one of psychological dominance. My presence was imposing, so people would instinctively back off. I looked very dangerous – my eyes burned with savage focus. Plus, I always dressed impeccably, even back then. I always had my designer clothes from England and snake-skin shoes; I was probably the city’s best-dressed bodyguard.

In places like New York, if someone is thinking of attacking they will first survey the terrain and weigh up the risks. Even though I did not carry a gun, my presence was sufficient to nullify any threats, because Nathanial’s terrain was perceived as too risky to attack. I never thought about being unarmed, and the courage and presence I displayed meant that no one ever did pull a gun, thank God.

In hindsight, Nathanial gave me the bodyguard job just to make himself look good with his girlfriends. Occasionally, he would ask me to go to a club with him and a girl, but mainly to watch her. If the couple separated, I would be following the girl through all the darkened rooms and labyrinthine passages of somewhere like The Tunnel (an underground station converted into a club) while she would play games and try to lose me. I got paid $200 each time I went out with him. This wasn’t a scary job, after all I was a fighter, but also he wasn’t a bad guy looking for trouble. He wasn’t a flash man, although he had his little Porsche. He wasn’t courting danger. He was just a nice guy.

Nathanial was landlord of a building in a middle class area, a really run-down slum of a place, near 17th Street and Chelsea. One day in 1986, I went with him to collect some rents that were a little overdue. At this stage, I was 4 and 0 as a professional boxer. One of the tenants we went to see was a gentleman called Walter Johnson, whom I now know as ‘Doctor’. Nathanial had brought me to this property as the heavy guy. He said to me, ‘Look mean, be very quiet and menacing, and get us paid.’

Doctor lived in a little studio flat with all his belongings which he shared with his daughter Kali, whom he had brought up. Nathanial left me for a while when he went to see someone else and, although I had this very hard exterior, Doctor was not fazed at all. In fact, after a few moments he quietly said to me, ‘Come back another time, I’d like to talk to you.’ Nathanial had introduced me as this ultra-hard, up-and-coming boxer. What I didn’t know at first was that Doctor was heavily into the martial arts, having studied them since he was ten. He had been coached by his own father and become exemplary at jiu-jitsu and many other forms. That day we met, he relished the opportunity to talk to someone about his passion for such skills, how deeply he had studied and how much he knew about the philosophy behind them.

Two or three months went by when, one day, I found myself in that same area of New York, so I decided to take Doctor up on his offer and drop in for a chat. Even though he is 17 years my senior, the relationship just took off from there. In fact, this older element of his wisdom was part of what fascinated me. He would come to the gym and just watch, he never said anything. I had trainers with me and he always stayed and observed the workout. He struck me as someone who had an innate and vastly experienced sense of the street – obviously his colossal knowledge of martial arts bestowed that upon him, but even little things made me smile and warm to him. For example, one especially cold day, I asked him if he had a hat and he pulled off his own, tugged another hat out of that one and gave it to me. I called him Doctor in reference to the combination of his knowledge of Eastern medicine plus his philosophy of life and martial arts.

Despite our strange first meeting, we got on very well. When I moved to the UK in 1988, we kept in touch by phone. When I travelled to see the Mike McCallum-Steve Collins fight in Boston and stayed at the Plaza Hotel in New York, I met up with Doctor and we immediately continued where we had left off, reviewing martial arts techniques, ideas, diet and strategy.

He eventually joined me in the UK and we are still great friends – I’ve known Doctor longer than anyone in this country, longer than my wife even. He was to be an invaluable presence during training and in my corner at many of my future professional fights.

Initially, we were not exactly friends, though; it is more accurate to say that he was teaching me the martial arts; that was the common ground. As I was mastering the art of pugilism, the noble art, I wanted to hone it to near perfection. So, actually to incorporate the martial arts was a necessary evolution of my learning curve. As I have mentioned, Doctor had an expansive knowledge of internal and external martial art forms such as aikido, jiu-jitsu, karate, tai chi and Chinese boxing, and at first it was very difficult to incorporate this into my style. I found it very frustrating. For example, martial arts like pa-qua are open handed, but obviously boxing uses a closed fist. Doctor’s martial arts were about holding, striking with your palm and fingers, whereas boxing was about striking only with your knuckles. He was trying to teach me these forms, but because I liked him so much I couldn’t tell him that I was struggling to incorporate them into my boxing. This went on for perhaps three years.

What I did extract from everything I observed about martial arts was the foot movement, which was all about positioning and escape. The stance and poise in martial arts is 98% on your back foot and 2% on your front. Boxing is 50/50, unless you go into a position to strike, at which point you vary the weight distribution. I took that and spliced it into my boxing style. People often ask me how the martial arts and boxing mix. The point is this: boxing is actually the highest form of martial arts, because you have to learn how to absorb punishment before you can initiate it.

Another aspect Doctor brought to my game was stretching. Obviously, as a boxer, flexibility is vital, but many fighters only have flexibility in one dimension, namely that of the direction of the punch. So another aspect I took from the martial arts was to develop all-encompassing flexibility, or amplitude, and by that I mean agility in every direction. For example, I learned how to do the Japanese splits, which is where your legs are completely flat, then you roll your abdomen and chest to the floor. This is an excruciating skill to develop and can only be achieved by constant repetition. A fight is not just about strength, it is also about flexibility. These extraordinary skills, when taken into the ring, proved to be very powerful tools. Doctor could enhance the stretching I was doing, and did so right the way through my career. Some smaller elements also crept in, such as doing Doctor’s jiu-jitsu wrist exercises, which were very useful for extra strength – no matter how much you bandage that joint, it can still get damaged. Sometimes he even made me wring out a dishcloth or play a guitar for extra wrist and finger strength! I never did much weight-training – lifting weights and boxing never go together, it tightens you up. Boxing is about being loose and relaxed.

Another factor I studied intensely was the philosophy of fighting, the art of war, psychological dominance and the like. Due to my passion for this aspect of the business, I became an exceptional adversary, because I was born with an intellect and the courage to actually apply that intellect. This gave me the character to manipulate situations before a fight, dealing with the mental strain and terrain.

What martial arts allowed me to do was get away from the conventional. The conventional will see you beaten sooner rather than later, because people will be able to work you out. People cannot beat you if they don’t know what you are going to do next. If you box with your hands up, then no fighter will be scared of you, because they know that stance – they have been training for that all their boxing careers. Box with your hands down and it unsettles them; they haven’t seen it before, it is uncommon, unconventional, extraordinary. The opponent has to work out the terrain from scratch and while he’s doing that, you are hitting him. If you can think alternatively, you can go on to be champion for a long time. As I did.

It has been said by some observers that it was quite advanced for such a young boxer to integrate the martial arts into boxing as I did. I don’t see it that way. When I met Doctor, I just thought, Here is a man who understands the philosophy of life and that can be applied to everything. He has applied that in medicine too; he was always giving me herbs, ginseng and all the oriental teas. I was always the type of person who was interested in the older man who knew something I didn’t. Doctor seemed to know so much and seemed almost mystical. I was the one who took certain aspects of the martial arts philosophy and applied this to boxing and that is why people said that I had a very unusual style. I had learned the skills in the gym, then I put my own flavour in there with the martial arts, the stances, the angles. It was a complex hybrid of all the arts with regard to the foot movements and my personality.

I must reiterate that the actual striking did not draw from any of the other martial arts, because boxing has it all in its own manual. Plus, how you deal with punishment is essential to your success. Absorbing punches without telegraphing pain is another skill that only comes with repetition and training. You stand in front of a fighter and leave your abdomen exposed, allowing him to punch it time and time again. Initially, it is agony and your face contorts with the pain, but over the months and years of doing this you learn to absorb the punch and not even flicker when contact is made. It hurts your stomach, but you learn not to hold your breath because if you do that you’ll get tired. You’ve got to learn how to breathe and be tense at the same time. You see a heavy shot coming in, you brace into it. It is instinct gleaned from repetition in the gym. You condition yourself; you mask the gut instinct to grimace or wince, because otherwise your opponent knows you are hurt and will come on harder. If you show pain, you will probably lose the fight. The best boxers are those who can absorb punishment; being able to give it out is only half the equation.

This philosophy of fighting extends to your mental attitude as well as your physical conditioning. People assume you go into the ring prepared to take a life. Incorrect. You have to go into the ring fully prepared to surrender your life, if that is what is required. In fact, not only did I go into the ring thinking: you may damage me, you may even kill me, but I used to think: if you can do that to me, I will appreciate it. But know this: you are going to have to take me because I am not giving up, ever.

If this sounds extreme, let me clarify my position. It is not that you consciously think you will die every time you step into the four-cornered circle. It is not that prevalent. Your strength of mind and resolve of character are prepared to face this possibility. You don’t think you will die, because you have a faith in your ability and because it is all about a positive mental attitude. You must always think positively. As will become apparent from my story as it unfolds, it all comes down to one deep-rooted factor: integrity.

PART TWO (#ulink_7882272c-3e48-52aa-9d85-8c12048f892a)

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_abde0cba-2a2e-55d8-b02d-b7fc16343cec)

HOMESICK (#ulink_abde0cba-2a2e-55d8-b02d-b7fc16343cec)

I returned to the UK in January 1988 to make my home there. I came back principally because I wanted to be with my brothers, whom I still adored. My first fight back in England was on 15 February of that year, against Darren Parker in Copthorne, whom I stopped in the first round. Then came a fellow called Winston Burnett, who was target practice, but he would have beaten me if I hadn’t known what I was doing. The next fight was a mismatch, against Michael Justin, who was supposed to have ability. He was hard and willing but did not have the ability to deliver shots. He showed lots of heart coming forward, swinging at me, but it was no contest. Two more middle-round stoppages against Greg George and Steve Aquilina and suddenly, I was 10 and 0. Over the next 24 months, I was to fight 11 times on my long haul towards a title shot.

At first, however, it was tough. I had no money and lived in a tiny bedsit. Perhaps inevitably, I found myself occasionally drawn back into a life of shoplifting. Before I had left for New York, I’d been in many amazing chases with the police, but perhaps my finest was a two-day pursuit in mid-1988. It was an absolute classic. We had hired a taxi as usual to take us around our targets and he then escorted us while we took the gear around all the pubs in the Walworth Road or the Unity Centre in Peckham. That morning, the car that arrived was a big burgundy Granada, driven by this fat Turkish man, aged about 27. He picked me up at around 8 o’clock in the morning and we set off to collect Beaver. We drove to south London and headed for a large department store. On this particular occasion, I didn’t take anything but Beaver stole a leather jacket. As he walked past me he said, ‘It’s hot,’ meaning we were being watched by store security. So we started walking briskly (but not without style, even under pressure) towards the exit. It seemed at first that we had succeeded in not drawing attention to ourselves, but suddenly Beaver flicked his fingers in the air, which was the sign for us to take off.

We split up instinctively. Beaver ran off in one direction and I headed for the car park, running up to the top floor where the Granada taxi was waiting. I said, ‘It’s hot, it’s on top, we’re being chased. I’ll get in the boot.’ The Turkish driver said, ‘No, don’t do that, just sit in the back seat and act normal.’ I should have gone with my gut instinct but instead I sat in the back. We started to descend the spiral ramp that led to the exit, down and round, down and round, all the time waiting for someone to stop us. We pulled around this final corner just before the ticket barrier, thinking we were going to escape when, dismayed, I saw two policemen stopping all the cars and checking the occupants. The taxi driver said, ‘Just stay where you are, you will be alright, they won’t know it’s you.’ I waited anxiously for our turn in line and decided to lie down on the seat. When the policeman stopped us, he looked in the back at me and said, ‘That’s him.’

‘Step out of the car, please,’ he said to me. I got out and immediately started explaining to the senior officer, saying, ‘Listen, you’ve got the wrong man. I haven’t got anything, look in my bags.’ Unfortunately, the security guard from the store confirmed that I was one of the culprits. At that point, I played an old trick I’d learned from my brother David, which he always used to great effect. I began to act frantic, severely agitated. ‘I’ve got heart problems, I’ve got stress problems, this is making me unwell. I’ll take you to court.’ I started shouting and ranting at this officer, trying to work my way out of the predicament. After about ten minutes, I just started to think I was getting somewhere when the officer, in a truly disparaging tone, said, ‘Will you just shut up!’ So that was that, nicked.

I sat down in the police Rover and slid my way across the seat. Already my mind was racing – it was a Friday and I knew that I would spend the weekend at the station and it would be Monday morning before I’d see daylight. I had a blues to attend on the Saturday which was going to be fun: good music, lots of girls, drinking and ‘crubbing’ (close dancing). That, I wasn’t going to miss.

More worryingly, I knew that as soon as they put my name in the central computer, it would alert them to the fact that I had jumped bail from the gentleman’s outfitter’s theft, where I had been caught on the M23. Then it would be prison and who knows what future for me. This was a desperate predicament. I had to escape.

The obvious thought was to jump out of the car, at high speed if necessary. As we slowed down to drive around this flyover, I tugged on the door latch but the child-lock was on. So now I was really in trouble. A change of tack was needed. I started to apologise to the policemen in the car. ‘Officer, sorry about my behaviour earlier, I was out of order.’ I continued being Mr Polite all the way back to the station, in full charm mode. They were very much more relaxed by the time the car pulled up.

Don’t forget, I am an unbeaten professional boxer at this point and training almost every day, so I am the fittest man on the planet – and I do not say that in jest! The police officer’s grip on my arm had slackened just a little, so that when he turned away from me to unlock the over-sized lock on the door to the cells, I pulled free and I was gone, off like a bullet. The only problem was, I was wearing my cherished £140 snake-skin shoes, which I had bought from Panache in Walworth Road. As stylish as they were, they were not best suited to sprinting, not least because they were dress shoes with smooth, wafer-thin soles.

The officer was, of course, coming after me, so I ran around a car. He stood one side of the car, hands on the roof, staring at me. He said, ‘Now don’t be stupid, son,’ and, voice brimming with confidence, I replied, ‘Let’s see who’s stupid,’ and ran off across the yard away from the officer and security guard. Because of my fitness, within a few seconds I was twenty yards or so ahead. After all, I was running six miles every morning before I even opened the gym door, so these fellows were never going to keep up.

At this point I banged past a middle-aged man who then joined the chase. He was wearing one of those army jumpers with shoulder and elbow patches. By now, though, I had built up a good speed and dived through a subway, then dashed up this long flight of steps to bring me back to street level, deliberately choosing the steps instead of the ramp to make their chase tougher. I can picture to this day the sight of this man, panting desperately for breath, face all reddened and flushed, skidding through the subway and coming to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. He looked up and I was standing there, grinning at the top of the steps. My heart at this point was barely beating above resting rate. This guy chasing me was so exhausted he was barely conscious.

We stood there looking at each other waiting for the next move, then I heard another officer shouting, ‘Don’t stop! Get him!’ I calmly reached down and took off each shoe, held them up in the air triumphantly, before turning around and setting off at speed towards a street full of market stalls. As I weaved my way through the stalls, out of danger at last, I could just hear a faint voice shouting, ‘Thief, stop!’ I was so fit they never stood a chance. Once I was sure I was safe, I caught the train back to my friend’s house and slept there for the night.

I was awakened at 7.45am the next morning by a knock on the door. I heard someone’s voice saying, ‘Is Christopher here?’ before being let in. It was the police – no, it was the ‘cozzers’. I know cozzers is a generic term for the police but real cozzers only come from certain police stations. This particular cozzer was like a huge bulldog, 6’ 4” with a furious scowl. He didn’t care very much for me because I was wrong. He came into the front room where I was sleeping and said, ‘Christopher, get up now.’ I was half-asleep, squinting through my eyelids, saying, ‘What? What are you talking about?’

I got up and stood in front of him wearing only my socks and underpants. My clothes were hanging up in the wardrobe but I knew I had to delay getting fully dressed because at that point they would cuff me, especially after my escapology of the day before. I couldn’t believe my bad luck; this chase had been going on for two days now!

I surveyed the terrain and noticed that the sash window was too near the officer to offer a realistic chance of escape. So I asked him if I could brush my teeth. He wasn’t stupid, so he followed me into the bathroom where they knew there was a window. They watched me brush my teeth. I had acne at this time, so while I was standing at the mirror, I squeezed a pimple and the pus and a little streak of blood started running down my face. I turned to the disgusted officer and said, ‘I’ve got to clean myself up.’

‘Fine,’ came the reply, and he continued to stand there.

‘Can I use the toilet now?’ I asked.

‘Sure,’ came the reply but he still stood there.

‘Can I have some privacy in here?’

‘No.’

So he stood there and watched me use the toilet. Or rather, pretend to use the toilet. After a short while, I played out the charade, did a fake number two, used the toilet paper and so on, pulled up my underpants then came back into the front room.

‘Right, officer, I’ll get changed now.’

He was standing leaning against the door frame and had started talking to another officer and a girl who lived in the house. Alternately he would talk to them then turn around to keep an eye on me. Then, for one moment too long, he had his head turned away from me. That was all the opportunity I needed. Like a flash I was through the sash window, in only my socks (silk, mind you) and underpants.

The estates around Walworth Road were real rabbit warrens so it was easy for me to lose anybody who would take up the chase. However, it was cold and drizzling so I was absolutely freezing. As I ran into one courtyard, this little kid, about 13, saw me and looked surprised to see someone wearing only socks and underpants running around at 8.15am in the rain. I went up to his front door and said, ‘I’m being chased by the police, I need a coat, I’ll bring it back.’ There was absolute sincerity in my eyes. I could see his brain thinking it over, while I’m standing there shivering, half-expecting the cozzers to come round the corner at any moment. Eventually, after what seemed like an age, he timidly said, ‘I’ll just go and ask my dad.’ As soon as he was out of the hallway, I grabbed a coat off a hook and ran off. Poor kid. I eventually made my way to Nasty’s flat and finally, after two days of being on the run, I was safe.

I don’t have a problem with people who steal things. Well, don’t get me wrong, stealing is wrong but shoplifting at the time was justifiable to me, I was a kid. Anyway, I knew that the mark-up on some of those clothes was 400%, so I just thought of it as stealing from the rich to give to the poor, namely me. People need to make a living, it’s nothing personal, it’s not you they want, it’s just the money. However, if someone steals and hurts a person in the process, that is totally unacceptable, and against everything I stand for. I abhor that.