YES – 819 votes
NO – 117 votes

I don’t use X much these days, for a multitude of reasons, so when I put up a relatively innocuous poll on Tuesday, I wasn’t expecting much take up to the question, ‘Is boxing broken?’

I asked for feedback and offered two replies as part of a poll, option one was Yes, it’s broken. Option Two was No, never better.

Had I been giving it more thought, I would have thought of one or two middle ground replies. That was suggested to me.

We could have had, ‘It’s broken, but a couple of small fixes and it would be great.’ Or, ‘It’s in a slump, but things are changing,’ or ‘It’s great, but we need to be careful.’

And I was called out for the lack of options, which is fine.

Tom Houston said: “I’m not voting because that’s a crazy dichotomy. How about a few choices in between.”

“Somewhere between the two,” wrote Karl Gibson.

JohnnyBoyRejoin stated: “It’s neither broken nor better than ever. The sport has been fractured for many years but in the midst of that we’ve always managed to get some big fights made. I’m concerned about Dana White getting involved. Zuffa could well be our version of LIV Golf. But generally it’s okay.”

*

But I can’t lie, the court of public opinion was unbothered by the lack of nuance because the concern for boxing’s health is very real.

By the end, there were 936 votes with 87.5 per cent believing the sport was broken and just 12.5 per cent thinking it was thriving.

At my last count, there were some 115 comments (and a few quote tweets) and plenty of common themes, too.

We will go ahead and look at the comments, providing analysis and opinion as we go along, but for me it feels like the sport is being inhabited by strangers when it was the familiarity of what came before that had created such a community.

Fighters were, to start with, more accessible. That is a big part of it, I’m sure.

As an example, the likes of Frank Bruno, Ricky Hatton, Joe Calzaghe and Chris Eubank would attend events like the British Boxing Board of Control lunch or the old Boxing Writers’ Club dinner, but nowadays fighters would see themselves as above that. Traditions are no longer being passed down.

This was noted by Lucas Ketelle looking at the history of the sport.

“We are getting away from respect for history,” he said. “We used to value history too much in boxing, and now it seems like we are at an utter indifference towards anyone who came before the here and now.”

It’s interesting to note, too, that when DAZN tried to say George Liddard had become the youngest British middleweight champion and I pointed out he might not have even been in the top 10 youngest on X, I was decried a killjoy who shouldn’t be trying to ruin his big night. Damn the facts, and the likes of Mark Kaylor, Randolph Turpin, Terry Downes et al

Still, many fighters would rather be getting content done somewhere now, or be on a red carpet, and I think that comes through the generations. The likes of Stephen Smith, Tony Bellew, Jamie Moore and countless others would consume every page of Boxing News every week because they loved the sport and wanted to learn about it. Do young fighters today even pick up Boxing News?

And the magazine part led into another point made by @GaryAGray. He used to peruse the magazine selection in the newsagents where there was Boxing News, Boxing Monthly, The Ring, KO and Boxing Digest. Now, it’s so costly to get on the newsstand, BM has fallen by the wayside, KO has gone, so has Boxing Digest, Boxing News is monthly and The Ring is part of the problem.

“I was a boxing nerd,” wrote @GaryAGray. “For many years from a teenager buying all the mags watching as many fights as I could and recently listening to boxing pods all day. Now it’s too many PPVs, overhyped mismatches and subscriptions, so I’ve stopped everything.”

But it is hard to compare today’s coverage with yesteryear’s because times have changed just as much as boxing.

As I stated in a recent Mailbag, it wasn’t too long ago that British title fights would get coverage in the newspapers. Now I’m not sure Dalton Smith or Josh Kelly would get a mention. But, of course, newspapers were big business then and their print readership has dramatically declined.

Of course, when big names get involved, the newspapers come back. We are bracing ourselves for Fury-Joshua and everything that will come with it. It will get wall-to-wall coverage. But it won’t be written about in the newspapers by dedicated boxing writers as they scarcely exist today. Initially, many boxing journos were asked to take on another sport. Now, with most of them gone, covering the sport will be handed to a generic sports hand. That doesn’t help.

But it doesn’t seem all that long ago that I’d be sat next to the late Ron Lewis at The Times, Pat Sheehan and Colin Hart from The Sun, Kevin Francis from The Star, Kevin Mitchell and Donald McRae from the Guardian and Observer, Niall Hickman and Brian Doogan from The Express, Bob Mee at the Daily Telegraph, Ian Gibb at the Daily Mail, and that’s before you got to the US, where you’d have Tim Smith from New York, Dan Rafael at ESPN, Kevin Iole from Yahoo, David Mayo in Grand Rapids, John Saraceno from USA Today, Lance Pugmire and Steve Springer at the LA Times, Steve Carp in Vegas, Bernard Fernandez in Philly, Michael Katz, Bert Sugar…

When I was at Tim Tszyu’s first fight with Sebastian Fundora in Vegas a couple of years ago, I was asked to sit and wait with a table of written journalists while the fighters were brought over to speak to us. By the time Tszyu came over, there was me and one other. That was the only written press.

“Massively broken,” said @jagoboxeo of the sport today. “It’s now ran by teenagers with cameras pushing narratives from promoters so they can keep access.”

“The sport has been in decline as newspaper coverage began to die,” wrote Gabriel Montoya. “Free TV deals gave way to cable and PPVs. The sport is run by short-term thinkers and was sold out to the Saudis with much the same thinking. Boxing is where it is because of the people who have been running it.”

Michael Carter felt like good old-fashioned competition was best for business. “But Saudi control has ruined it. Promoters no longer compete, fighters don’t need to sell themselves, small halls are dying and most fights are PPV. Criticise the regime and you’re frozen out. Greed will prevail. And now Misfits is mainstream.”

“Young fans that walk in the boxing gym chatting about Misfits boxing one weekend, but with no mention of a decent domestic dust-up the following weekend isn’t great,” added Sean Anderson. “I mean, you could say at least they’re talking about boxing.”

Rob Hoar said that while the best have “somewhat” been fighting the best, he added: “Influencers and YouTubers fighting has beens is not of interest to me but I guess it does numbers and brings young fans to the sport.”

And, in part, that is another issue, that there are so few storytellers left, but also because there are so few outlets wanting to tell stories. Now it’s short-form, snappy, clicks, hits that are the markers for success. It’s not about five-star reviews for quality or a powerful product. Everyone wants success at surface level without realising that if you dig deeper into the characters, you can develop ‘buy in’ from an invested audience that cares.

And there is a lack of knowledge about what good long-form content looks like. For DAZN, some of their ‘long form’ is barely 20 minutes long but there are few inquisitions in the interviews, little pushback in their conversations even though what they do produce looks lovely and glossy, there’s not much substance behind the style. I watched 20 minutes with Teofimo Lopez recently and learned nothing. Same thing with George Liddard. Nothing I watched made me want to see their upcoming fights.

And DAZN has its critics and, according to my spot survey, plenty of the detractors are on X. Much of the criticism is to do with paywalls and subscriptions, but plenty also comes down to sycophantic commentary.

As well as “the five-belt era, Hamzah Sheeraz (more tomorrow), Conor Benn, Fury-AJ tedium, Steve Hunt of the Desert Island Fights podcast said one of his major problems was with, “arse-licking commentators.”

The positive commentary has become a bug-bear of mine, too. We are constantly being told that boxing is in such great shape, but if it was, this feature would have been a hell of a lot shorter. Sure, it’s great for those who have been touched by the money of Russian oligarchs and Saudi billionaires, but that’s a small percentage of the overall sport.

Glen Fraser said he was likely going to give up his DAZN subscription because “I hardly watch it.”

@saintsman1982 took it a stage further when he said there were too many platforms “and PPV has gone mental.” “Some domestic fights being branded PPV is wrong only world title fights being branded PPV is wrong only world title fights should be PPV. And promoters and fighters dodging certain fights is all wrong.”

One of the most significant concerns is around Turki Alalshkih, who a couple of years ago shared a picture of himself on social media as ‘the face of boxing’ and who was recently just rated the No. 1 most powerful man in the sport by Boxing News (I was on the panel).

But Matt Elliott, who feels the sport is broken, believes the financial bubble that has provided boxing with such a false economy in the last three years has caused a vacuum. “Turki came in paid over the odds for fights and gave some average fighters an inflated sense of their worth and now we are paying for that. Without him we wouldn’t have had some big fights but the minimum payday many expect is now too high for the market.”

“Turki has ruined the sport,” added British Boxing Hub. “He came in got close to all the promoters and fighters paid them crazy money. But it was all a ply to try to take over with Zuffa the sport has never felt more divided and shady. I mean they paid Benn 13mill to fight an injured Regis so MR couldn’t match.”

“Two fights in,” wrote Eddy Hebbron, “And everyone is going to be a world champion and only want to fight for money not legacy. Turki has ruined it.”

“Turki arrived as the saviour,” wrote @TheBoxingMadMan, “Did a few good shows then all went to shite. Warren and Hearn thrown to the kerb. Turki hooked up with Dana and things have gone from bad to worse.”

I’d also contest that we’ve had this glut of dream fights. You can hold some heavyweight fights up there, and both Beterbiev-Bivol fights, but we’ve also had Shakur Stevenson versus Josh Padley (yes, the Englishman was a late sub), Jai Opetaia against Jack Massey and Ellis Zorro, Chris Eubank Jnr versus Kamil Szeremeta, Joshua and Fury against Francis Ngannou, Usyk against Rico Verhoeven, Hamzah Sheeraz against Alem Begic and Simon Zachenhuber, Richard Riakporhe-Tommy Welch, Adam Azim-Kurt Scoby and plenty of other fights that don’t fit with the remit of the best fighting the best.

And, yeah, I’m saying it, Crawford-Canelo. Who wanted that, really? Great final act for Crawford, if that’s what it was, but it wasn’t a dream fight. And as for Canelo, we also got the William Scull bore.

“The best stopped fighting the best within their weight class,” offered Belle Boxing Club who added, importantly, “lack of activity.”

That hyper-inflation has led to fighters boxing barely once a year. Three outings for a top fighter is seen as revolutionary and “old school.”

In fact, Jonathan Lewis said “I find the undercards are poor these days. Chief support used to be a for the world title, now I find them very poor, now PPV ain’t even for a world title.”

There are some who felt the previously-questionable regime to challenge boxing’s status quo, MTK, was still responsible for deep wounds in the sport.

Stephen Dempster said: “The Kinahan/MTK era badly damaged the sport. The Daniel Kinahan enablers and supporters in the sport – boxers, trainers, promoters etc ­– still in the sport and we know who they are – they polluted boxing and that cannot be repaired. They know who they are too! We see them.”

Another common theme was that the best were still not fighting the best, even with the influx of Saudi wealth.

Richard Allan said, “No one fighting each other” and “nothing on tnt/Sky [although Sky now has the deals with Zuffa and MVP] making it expensive to access” and he added “zero drugs checks.”

And Allan was not alone with the latter sentiment, either.

“Failure to deal properly with issues re drugs from Fury to Benn demean the sport,” wrote Andrew Collingbourne. “Money as ever talks and no coincidence that the bigger the profile of the boxer concerned the inevitability of being exonerated with the most ludicrous excuses invariably involving foodstuffs.”

“The PEDS issue for me needs to be stamped out once and for all,” wrote Danny Coveney. “None of this serving undisclosed bans. Name and shame so we all know when a fighter is serving a ban. Second catch, ban for life.”

Part 2 coming tomorrow

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Total Boxing with Tris Dixon – the next chapter in a journey that began 30 years ago when I covered my first amateur fight.

That first assignment sparked a passion that would ultimately become my profession. Three decades later, boxing remains as fascinating, unpredictable and compelling as ever, and I’m as driven as I’ve ever been to tell its stories.

As the former editor of Boxing News, I’ve experienced almost every side of this sport. From world title fights to the small halls, from the gyms to the corporate offices, and from organised crime to the politics and business that shape boxing, I’ve written about it all. I’ve been fortunate to meet extraordinary people, witness remarkable moments and gain an insight into a world that never stops giving you something to talk about.

For much of that time, I’ve done it for other people, other publications and other brands. Now, it’s time to build something of my own.

When I launched The Boxing Stack on Substack three months ago, my priority was simple: get started, create great content and challenge myself creatively. I wanted to see what I could build by doing things my way, and the response has given me the confidence to take that next step.

That’s why I’m rebranding as Total Boxing with Tris Dixon.

This is about more than a new name. It’s about building a distinctive boxing media brand that reflects my experience, my perspective and my passion for the sport.

You can expect more content, more opinion, more debate and more interviews, alongside the quality writing and broadcasting that have always been at the heart of my work.

Plans include new content both on Substack and YouTube, too.

I have plenty of ideas I’m excited to bring to life, new subjects I want to explore and a long list of people I want to sit down with. I’ll still be taking you ringside and covering the fights, but I also want to take you beyond the ropes and into the stories, personalities and issues that make boxing what it is.

Most importantly, I want to give you something different. My perspective, my access and my experience, delivered with honesty, curiosity and a genuine passion for the sport.

Thank you to everyone who has supported The Boxing Stack and helped me get to this point. Your support means more than you know, and I’m excited to take you with me on what comes next.

This is Total Boxing with Tris Dixon. This is my next chapter. And I’m only just getting started.

The announcements have come thick and fast today and everyone is claiming to be making it.

Team Joshua, Matchroom, manager Freddie Cunningham, promoter Eddie Hearn and, of course, Anthony Joshua, as well as PR agency Soapbox, have all announced that Tyson Fury will fight Anthony Joshua on December 11 at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.

We knew it, but it hadn’t been confirmed.

“WE DID IT,” Hearn triumphantly wrote on social media. “Forever indebted to the U.K. public for their support of @anthonyjoshua. We couldn’t have got this over the line without you.”

Well, that’s all well and good. Hearn has gone public many times stating they were fighting to have the contest in the UK, despite many powerful forces attempting to lure the bout towards New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Then there was the equally triumphant announcement from Turki Alalshikh, who said: “For 15 years no one has been able to make this fight. Back in April, I said that any announcement would come from me. I can now confirm that Fury vs. Joshua will be coming to the UK, as I promised British boxing fans. The time for talking is over.”

Let’s not mention that 15 years ago fight fans were talking about Tyson Fury fighting David Price and Anthony Joshua was still an amateur, let’s not talk about the replies blowing up Turki’s X account (far from congratulatory, I will say), and let’s not talk about it being a ‘British fight’ if we are to believe Hearn, who told IFL today: “TKO started getting involved in the Netflix deal, Turki Alalshikh, Netflix, they all wanted to do the fight at Madison Square Garden in November… Everybody wanted the fight in America.”

Read more

Tris, I have question about boxing’s popularity in the UK versus its “niche sport” status here in the US.

I’ve seen boxing’s popularity steadily decline here since the late 80’s & 90’s for a multitude of reasons. However, in the UK boxing is booming and thriving. To what do you attribute boxing’s success & popularity in the UK? Do you feel it’s cultural or is it something that the US market can learn from?

David Gomez

Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not a niche sport here, or that it’s not treated like one. Let me provide some context.

Twenty years ago British title fights would appear in every newspaper. Now, I’d be surprised if Dalton Smith bouts get a mention. Now, newspapers don’t have a dedicated boxing guy.

At small hall level, Steve Goodwin has quit trying to make it work and Johnny Clark is giving it to the end of the year before jacking it in if things don’t work.

At Team GB level, in the amateurs, the heavy days of Beijing and London are in the past and we’ve declined ever since.

What’s mad about this all is boxing still does massive numbers and has a huge casual audience.

TalkSPORT, the big radio broadcaster, has turned boxing into its second sport - behind football/soccer - and I heard cable channel TNT Sports, formerly BT Sport, wanted to do the same but they lost their bid, whatever they were going for. I’m not sure if it was Zuffa or Misfits but they were in for something a year or so ago.

But when Eddie Hearn came in and started to sign fighters at the start, you could see the quality of fighters in or near the top…. Kell Brook, Tony Bellew, Darren Barker, Carl Froch, Carl Frampton, Scott Quigg…. That’s before you pack in the 2012 Olympians. If a promoter came in now, I’m not sure you’ve got anything like such strength as an equivalent.

Also, as the former editor of Boxing News, while reading habits have – of course – changed, the drop off after the Hatton and Calzaghe era was steep and even Haye, Froch and Khan issues never reached the same heights.

Tris who do you think is the most poorly promoted and undervalued fighter in the sport at the moment? Writing a bit about Bautsi currently, occurred to me he’s 33 and his career so far just feels so underwhelming - anyone at the moment who’s a nearly guy in that vein and how would you maximise the rest of their career from here on out?

Danny, In-Boxing

Ouch, this is a hard one and tough to answer without throwing someone under a bus.

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When you look back on it now, it was lunacy. I was living in Atlantic City, as close as you could be to being broke while being able to stay alive and I’d not spoken to anyone back home in months.

Life for me was training in between the Atlantic City Police Athletic League Gym and the Pleasantville Recreation Center and trying to do just about anything I could in the sport.

But one day, having had one interview published in Boxing News, with Micky Ward, I thought I would try to do three in a day.

Now I was not in a position to pitch anything. I had no idea if anyone would speak to me or if Boxing News would take anything else from me. I would write the pieces, send them in and hope they made the grade.

I also knew that there was no space for fan-style pieces in serious boxing journalism. No one wanted to read what a twenty-year-old kid thought would happen if Mike Tyson fought Jack Dempsey, or whether Lennox Lewis was “overrated.”

I had to offer something unique and that, I decided, was interviewing old fighters.

A couple of years earlier, I met an autograph collector from New Jersey called Tom Jess. He was at the International Boxing Hall of Fame with bantamweight legend Jeff Chandler and told me he had a few addresses and numbers for retired fighters. He sent me a list and, being an absolute nobody, I looked longingly at the names and imagined what it would be like to meet some of these incredible fighters.

It was a dream.

*

It was a year or so on and I had these names and addresses in front of me. Autograph collectors back then would share newsletters and swap information about celebrities from all walks of life and would speculatively send items off to addresses to be signed and returned. Somethings came back – signed no less – some did not. It was pot luck.

Well, I had three addresses on this morning in late 2002. One was of former middleweight contender Rocky Castellani, and it was in Atlantic City. One was a number for ex-middleweight champion Joey Giardiello, and one was for Chandler. I only knew Chandler’s information, an address, to be up to date.

But this was in an era before mobile phones and using the internet was not as commonplace as it would become.

*

It started, paper map from the bus station in hand, with a long stroll down the famous Boardwalk to Ventnor to visit Castellani. That went well enough and is a story for another day. It culminated with a bit at the end which was one of the most memorable sections of my book, The Road to Nowhere, with me eventually tracking down Chandler in Philly.

The middle part of it all might have been the most haphazard stroke of luck I’d had in a while.

After speaking to Rocky, I made my way to a phone box and called Joey Giardiello. He said he would see me and he was in Cherry Hill. He told me to call when I arrived and he would come out and meet me. That instigated a walk back to the bus station so I could get a ride to Cherry Hill, which was on the route to Philly, where I held hopes of meeting Chandler later in the day.

I arrived in Cherry Hill and called Joey, who handed me over to a friend of his. He was an Englishman called Peter Green, and he said he’d been invited to join us because he was a friend of Joey’s and a countryman of mine. That made things very easy.

My instructions were to make my way to the Diamond Diner and they would meet me there and it all felt rather surreal.

I had been around a lot of fighters by this point, but it was crazy to think I was in Rocky Castellani’s house in the morning and then about to have lunch with Giardello just hours apart. Ironically, they had boxed each other in 1951 with Rocky climbing off the canvas to win a decision over 10 rounds in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

I arrived at the diner shortly before they did, and when they came in, Peter and Joey embraced me like an old friend and Joey started chatting up the waitresses.

He smiled and joked and, not long after being seated, he was talking about desserts and sweet things.

I played the straightest and most boring bat I could and ordered a chicken salad. With hindsight, it was a ridiculous choice. I’d not had anything of significant sustenance for weeks but was too polite to pick anything else. Plus, I was not assuming anyone else was paying and that was the cheapest selection.

And then, with our orders taken and the seventy-two-year-old Giardiello being reined in from flirting with the staff by the similarly-aged Peter, we started to chat about Joey’s life and career.

While I was familiar with Joey’s accomplishments, there is no question I looked into what he’d done even more in the aftermath of his portrayal in the film The Hurricane, with Denzel Washington playing Rubin “Hurricane” Carter in the lead role. But we will get to that.

*

“Are you looking for me?” smiled the small man with short white hair and a cosy looking autumnal golfing jacket.

It was Joey Gairdello and rather than shake my hand, he opted to embrace me.

I told him I’d just seen Rocky, and that Castellani had told me he was going to make a comeback to fight Joey again.

“Is that what he said?” Joey smiled. “I beat the shit out of him but I didn’t get the decision. It’s a long time ago now.”

As we sat down and ate, with Joey charming any waitress that came close to the table, he went through his story. He talked about joining the army and then deserting the forces because he missed his friends and couldn’t settle in. He was in the 82^nd Airborne Division and was ultimately given a dishonourable discharge.

That saw him start his pro career and he boxed 33 times in his first three years as a pro, and as Joey talked, occasionally you could see patrons at other tables start to listen to his stories and sometimes he was stopped mid-flow with a visitor to the table who said: “Hey, Champ.”

Joey’s colourful stories tumbled from him and he spoke about everything. I even ventured to ask him about his suspected ties with organised crime figures.

“If I was with The Mob, they didn’t do a very good job because I was always begging for a title shot,” he insisted. “I was the top contender for a long time but no one would fight me. The Mob was meant to be able to help people get title fights, weren’t they?”

There was a hint of a smirk when Joey said it.

Joey had been born in Brooklyn but later moved to Philadelphia and he fought a long list of top fighters and some of them several times.

He fought Gene Fullmer to a bloody draw, defeated Sugar Ray Robinson to finally get his rating as No. 1, fought Dick Tiger four times and, of course, defeated Rubin Carter in a fight he deservedly won but that Hollywood producers telling the ‘Hurricane’ story took liberties with, making it look like Joey won because of racist judges.

Joey won a lawsuit over that, and that had happened not too long before we met.

Recalling the movie premier, Joey said: “I climbed out of my chair and felt like shouting, ‘That never happened.’”

Press cuttings at the time revealed Joey had been a worthy winner.

In his 97-26-8 (30 KOs) record, Joey boxed the likes of Wilf Greaves, Juan Carlos Rivero, George Benton, Henry Hank, Ralph Dupas, Peter Mueller, Terry Downes, Spider Webb, Del Flanagan and Holly Mims.

He got robbed on the road a few times, but by the early 2000s he could smile about it all.

“The one thing I will say,” he added. “My mangers were the bravest guys in the world. They didn’t give a shit who I fought. They made me fight all the toughest guys around… In those days the champions could fight. They were all good fighters. These days I don’t many of them and it seems everybody is a champion.”

*

As we said our goodbyes in the entry hall to the diner, I asked Joey if he’d stop and pose for a photo. On his insistence, we had one together. Then he wanted one of me, Peter and himself. Finally, as he left the diner, I said I might just need one of him on his own. He relented and stood there, on an autumnal midday in Cherry Hill, held his hands in a fighting pose, and I snapped him with the crisp blue air in the background. I was buzzing. What a day. Now it was on to Philly to find Jeff.

*

I was so grateful for everything Peter had done, bringing Joey, encouraging conversation and also picking up the tab at the diner, that we stayed in touch until around 2010.

Throughout that time, he’d give me sporadic updates on Joey.

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For 40 years, Thomas Hauser has been one of boxing’s great writers.

A winner of dozens of awards, author of many books and, not least, Muhammad Ali’s official biographer, Hauser has chronicled the fights, the fighters and the business of boxing with real vigour and without fear.

His recent pieces on the heinous BoxRaw/Riyadh Season sparring club shows, the Ali Revival Act and the ill-fated Times Square event in 2025 have highlighted the gap between Hauser and the rest of those covering the sport.

His contributions to boxing are likely unmatched, and that is not hyperbole. Of course, he is in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

There is a great quote about Thomas and – to paraphrase – the gist of it is, “Oh God, Thomas Hauser is writing about me,” said in a way that conveys honour and privilege. The other quote is, “Oh God, Thomas Hauser is writing about me,” said in a way that speaks of alarm and fear.

“Boxing is a great writer’s sport,” Hauser told me on a recent visit to London. “And you know that because you’ve made it the centerpiece of your professional life. But my interests go beyond boxing. The first book I wrote was Missing, which was then made into the feature film with Jack Lemon. I’ve written non-fiction about race relations. I wrote a philosophy on moral values book about Chernobyl. The Charles Dickens and Mark Twain books led me into that world. I wrote a book called The Beethoven Conspiracy, which is a thriller about the search for a lost Beethoven conspiracy.

“And really the reason I did that was I realised all the music I was listening to was from the 1960s and earlier, which was my time for growing up. And I missed the infusion of new music into my life. And I said, ‘Well, Beethoven’s been around for hundreds of years and if I understood him and his music, maybe I’d appreciate it. And what better way to learn about something than to write about it?’”

But boxing, with both its endearing qualities and malevolent politics, continues to entice Hauser.

(Hauser, far right, and the author, left, collect their plaques at this year’s BWAA awards ceremony in New York)

“Boxing is ever-changing,” he says. “There’s this ever-changing cast of characters.

“And it’s something I keep coming back to, partly socially, because a big part of my social life revolves around people I’ve met in boxing. It’s something I’m good at. And you like to keep your finger in something like that. I like boxing people, and I like being one of them. It’s an honour to be part of boxing. And again, as I’ve said many times, some of the best people I’ve met in my life were in boxing, many of the worst people I’ve met in my life were in boxing. But I enjoy the exchange. And I feel privileged to have spent as much time as I have in boxing.

“The most obvious example of that being the years I spent with Muhammad Ali. I will never have a professional project that brings me as much joy as the time I spent with Muhammad, working with him, writing about him, because that was a very special experience with a special man.”

Hauser is an attorney by trade, but he started writing in 1977.

In 1983, he peeked behind the curtain of the boxing business when he wrote The Black Lights, documenting the story of Billy Costello while exploring what life was like in boxing’s gyms, boardrooms and, of course, prize rings. Hauser saw it all, from the underbelly to the bright lights.

The sport was a different world then, and while boxing remains easy to infiltrate, back then the doors were open wider still.

By Hauser’s own admission, he couldn’t walk into a Yankees training session. He couldn’t get into the Knicks locker room. But he could go to Gleason’s and speak to world champions.

While you can still go to Brooklyn and get into Gleason’s without an eyebrow being raised, much has changed, not least how the sport is covered.

Back then, the major newspapers in the UK and the US had dedicated boxing scribes – and they were some of the finest sportswriters in the world.

The big fighters were big news in pop culture, not merely retained in social media silos, and boxing was a TV staple.

While boxing boasts incredibly impressive online analytics today, it is not the same, and Hauser has witnessed that and agrees with the statement.

“I do,” he continues. “You write complete articles, not just books. I read you regularly, and you write full, complete, in-depth articles. But there’s so much clickbait out there. I’ll have people tell me, ‘Oh, I wrote 600 articles last year.’

“No, you couldn’t write 600 articles. You might have posted on social media 600 times or put up two-paragraph regurgitations of press releases. But it’s not real, in-depth, thoughtful writing.

“And we need more people telling the stories the way they are, not posturing, not from the point of view of shilling, but talking about it honestly. Years and years ago, a fan sent me an email, and he said, ‘I’m in marketing and one of the things I’ve learned in marketing is I can sell perfume that smells bad. I can sell a shirt that’s ugly. I cannot sell bad sports because sports fans know whether or not they’re being entertained.’ And too often, boxing fans are not entertained.

“If there’s a fight, they turn on the TV, and they see one-sided A-side versus B-side undercard fights. They see a boring main event where they know in advance who’s going to win. Very often, it comes on at a ridiculous time. In the United States, when you have a major pay-per-view event, the main event goes on sometimes around midnight. Can you imagine the National Football League or NBA putting on a flagship event that starts at midnight? It’s quite possible that if you people in the UK want to see Fury-Joshua, if it happens, you’ll have to wait till four o’clock in the morning to watch it. I mean, this is not how you build a fan following.

“In the United States, I don’t even know half the time when the fight I want to watch starts because they’ll tell you that the telecast starts at 8pm Eastern time, but they don’t tell you when the main event fighters are going to walk to the ring. And if they do tell you, sometimes they’re off by 45 minutes. No sport holds its middle finger up to its fans as often as boxing does.

“It does not treat the fans well. If you go to a fight in the United States, you might watch a fight, it lasts a round, then you have 45 minutes of downtime and then there’s another fight, and then there’s more downtime. And boxing is a great sport. I feel, and I’ve said it, that boxing at its best is the greatest sport in the world. But I’d like to see the people who run the sport be a little more solicitous of the fans in a genuine way. You know, don’t say, ‘We’re doing this for the fans,’ and then screw the fans.

“Really give the fans what they want. Now, the National Football League in the United States does that in a very real way when they televise football. The [soccer] World Cup did that. The on-site fan experience was pretty exploitative. There were a lot of problems that I had with the World Cup. But for the most part, when people around the world wanted to watch the World Cup on whatever platform they were watching it on, they knew when the game was going to start. They had a satisfying experience watching it. They knew how to market it and present it. I’d like to see boxing do that more.”

Hauser lives in New York, but his interest in boxing’s machinations is not restricted to the USA. He follows big-time boxing and has a contacts book that would be the envy of many in the sport. And when he calls, people pick up.

But he is quick to identify the difference in the health of the sport when it comes to separating the United States from the United Kingdom.

“Certainly, you have people in the UK, Frank Warren, Eddie Hearn, they know how to promote it at the grassroots level. They know how to engage their constituencies,” Hauser states.

“But as things move up the ladder, the fans tend to be marginalised more and more and more, because that’s where the money is. And it’s a shame. I understand.

“I’m a traditionalist. But there are some things about tradition that are good, that stand the test of time, and we should go back to them. There’s a reason that the fans in the United States at least have turned away from boxing.”

In the US, he refers to boxing as “a niche sport.”

“There was a time when the heavyweight champion of the world was the most coveted title in sports,” he recalls.

“My mother could have told you who the heavyweight champion was, and it didn’t have to be Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali, she could have told you that it was Ingemar Johansson, that’s how famous the heavyweight champion was. And now, if you go out on the street and ask 50 people who’s the heavyweight champion of the world, I don’t think a whole lot of people are going to say, ‘Well, [Agit] Kabayel has the WBC title, and Murat Gassiev is the WBA champion, and Filip Hrgovic has this belt.’

“Sport has been destroyed by the lack of [credible] champions, by the high paywalls. Back when I started, the highest paywall in the United States certainly was HBO. In fact, it wasn’t even HBO.

“When I was writing The Black Lights, it was ABC, CBS, and NBC, the three broadcast networks that really were the centre of boxing. And then eventually HBO came in, but that was a fairly low-price paywall. The best fought the best, as you saw from Ray Leonard, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler.

“You became a star by winning big fights. You didn’t have to wait to become a star and then fight the big fight. So the sport has really been shooting itself in the foot.

“It’s easy to look and say, ‘Well, that’s just a grumpy old man.’ And, you know, old people think the music was better when they were young, or the food was better when they were young, and everything else.

“But boxing, certainly in the United States, was better when you had recognisable heavyweight champions, not just heavyweight champions, but champions in all weight divisions. And the best fought the best, and people had access to the sport.

“And when Turki Al-Sheikh came into the sport, people were saying he will save boxing.

“But it now looks as though Riyadh Season is getting close to exiting boxing. Might not, but right now the only two fights on the drawing board, I believe, are Fury-Joshua, which may or may not happen, and Canelo-Mbilli. And we have to ask ourselves, ‘Is boxing better off now than it was when Turki Al-Sheikh came in?’ And yes, he gave us some very good fights, specifically, the heavyweight fights involving Joshua and Fury and Oleksandr Usyk. But right now, are we as a sport better off than we were when he came into it? I don’t think so. And Zuffa Boxing, certainly in the United States, doesn’t show any signs of making it better, just making it worse.

“So there’s a lot of work to still be done, but boxing is such a great sport that I hope it gets done.”

Hauser was in London on business this month. He spoke at the Houses of Parliament about his life in boxing, on a night during which it again became clear how important the sport is in communities. It was there where London mayor Sadiq Khan discussed his belief that Anthony Joshua-Tyson Fury had to take place in the UK.

But Hauser was also promoting a new book, and it’s not a boxing one.

Hauser scratched another literary itch of historical fiction by writing a Sherlock Holmes novel – Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Rutledge.

“I’ve written historical fiction about Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Beethoven,” he explains.

“I had written three previous detective stories. I enjoyed both genres enormously and I decided to blend the two together and write about Sherlock Holmes. And the genesis for it all was, I had this line in my head, ‘She is a beautiful woman, Watson.’

“And everything flowed from there, the plot, the characters. Now, I changed the opening line a bit from ‘she is a beautiful woman’ to ‘she is an unusual woman’ but I had a wonderful time writing this book. It’s great fun to have Holmes and [his sidekick] Watson and Mrs. Rutledge rattling around in your head.”

Obviously there have been many iterations of Holmes and his ensemble of characters, and Hauser has focused on traditional Holmes, with the first half of the book set in 1891 and the second in 1906.

It’s not Holmes vs. the Nazis. Holmes is not depicted as a James Bond-type action hero. He’s a sleuth who uses his cunning and guile to level any playing field.

And Hauser has created a powerful and formidable female lead in Mrs. Rutledge.

Often, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the original Holmes author, has female characters in more submissive roles, whether they’re cooks, maids or victims.

But Hauser is used to making women the stars. Two years ago, he wrote a book called My Mother and Me. His mother, Eleanor, died, aged 96, four years ago.

“My mother lived a long, very rewarding life,” Hauser says.

“And My Mother and Me reached out to a totally different audience. It was not just about relationships between parents and children, but what it’s like to get old and then very old, and finally reach a point where you really feel you’ve lived long enough and you’re ready to die.

“And one of the most rewarding things for me is when I get emails from a reader who will say, ‘I just read My Mother and Me and it resonated with me because of my mother or my father or my son.’ And there are a couple of new Muhammad Ali anecdotes in My Mother and Me, so I keep coming back to that. But I just love writing in all genres.”

His new book tells the story of Holmes and Mrs. Rutledge.

“And I enjoyed creating that character, having Mrs. Rutledge and Holmes interact with each other,” he adds. “And then, as the story evolves, see how they change each other. One of the things that makes good fiction work is that the characters change over time. And they do that together here in a sense. And I’ve got a murderer, I’ve got villains, I’ve got good characters, there’s betrayal, sexual obsession. I touch on a lot of themes. But at the end of the day, I hope that people simply read this and say, ‘Hey, I enjoyed this. This was a fun read. This was a good book.’

“One of the most satisfying things about writing for a living is the realisation that on occasion people actually read what I write. You’re a writer, you’re a creative artist, you have that feeling.

“So if people read Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. Rutledge and they enjoy it, then I’ve done my thing on that.”

Hauser implores those who read the new book to reach out to him with their thoughts by contacting him directly at thomashauserwriter@gmail.com.

“I promise that I will respond,” he says. “I like hearing from readers. And if they have something negative to say, I’m open to listening to that too. If all somebody writes me is, ‘Oh, I loved it,’ that’s nice to hear, but I don’t learn anything new. So, if somebody has something thoughtful to say on the other side of the coin, I’d love to hear that too.”

**

But Hauser is far from done with boxing. He has a couple more books in the pipeline, including a quotations book he’s worked on for years that stretches over 100,000 words and that dates back from the Iliad all the way up to the present day and would serve as the complete collection of boxing quotes. And there’s more to come on Ali.

“I also came upon, several months ago, a treasure trove of unpublished photographs from Ali-Frazier III in Manila,” Hauser reveals. “And those will be published in book form sometime next year by Pear Publishing along with the text that I will write based, in large part, on 75 hours’ worth of old tapes with Joe Frazier that have never seen the light of day before. I love writing about boxing and I’m hoping that both of these books, The Treasury of Boxing Quotations and the coffee table Ali-Frazier III book, will add to what’s out there to help people understand and appreciate boxing in general and Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in particular.”

Hauser’s literary contributions are already beyond significant in boxing. The more he can offer the sport, the better, even if we have to share him with Beethoven, Sherlock Holmes and Mark Twain and, of course, Mrs. Rutledge.

Ryan Garcia smoked Conor Benn in two rapid rounds in Las Vegas on Saturday and while Garcia was a significant favourite, not many saw it as being a quick rout.

Benn got caught early and often and had no answer for Garcia’s speed. But it was a huge event, a massive build-up and, on the face of it, a commercial success.

What does Garcia-Benn mean now for the fighters and the sport moving forwards.

How good is Ryan Garcia?

Look, take away the social media following, the failed PED tests, the zany behaviour, the derogatory stuff he’s said and all of the crazy and when you focus on the fighter, he’s really bloody good. It helped that he was not in against a world-class fighter on Saturday but he appeared levels above Benn. Garcia’s electric left hook is both beautiful and ferocious. His right hand is the shot that buckled Benn. His movement kept him out of harm’s way. He was a top amateur. In short, he’s really bloody good. Does he have the minerals for when the going gets tough, as it did against Tank Davis? Can he be consistent and condemn performances like that against Roly Romero to the past?

Of course, there will rightly be an asterisk next to the Devin Haney fight, but when he’s good, he’s exceptional. At 28, he’s in his prime – particularly with his tools – but he needs consistency and activity.

Where did it go wrong for Benn?

When the first early left hook landed. I’d love to know what Benn thought then. He was taken to hospital as a precaution but Benn did what he could. I’d suggest he did all that he could. I can’t volunteer anything he should have done differently. The gap in class was too great. One doubts he will stay at 147lbs, though, and that might have been his biggest mistake.

Was the stoppage correct?

I thought it was bang on. The bloodlust of a fan is strong and I can see why many wanted a couple more clean shots. But that Benn did not complain about the stoppage and that he still wound up in hospital indicated he did not need anything else to land to determine the outcome or to validate Thomas Taylor’s intervention.

Can Conor Benn become a world champion?

At 147, it looks very tough. At 154lbs, it looks impossible. At 168, I can’t see it. Is he too small for 160lbs? I’m not sure. One could see him getting the chance for a belt at some point, at some weight, but there are some hard, hard fights out there. And, as things stand, who do Zuffa have at those weights for him to fight? Perhaps there could be a bout at 160lbs against Denzel Bentley in London for the WBO belt? I could see that. But I’m not convinced Benn wins.

But the likes of Janibek, Boots, Vergil Ortiz, Crawford (who I’m sure came up on a DAZN graphic as a future foe, along with Canelo!), Adames, I don’t make him better than and 80/20 underdog in any of those.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see him stay in the “attraction” bracket. You can’t tell me him against Kell Brook and, yes I’m saying it, Conor McGregor, wouldn’t do big business.

He’s 29. I can’t see a rebuild, an eight-rounder, a drop down in levels. Zuffa will surely want to maximise his audience and that list of possible opponents won’t include anyone who is not a big name.

What next for Ryan Garcia?

We are led to believe he has one more fight left on his Golden Boy contract, so could that be the Teofimo Lopez bout? Lopez was making his presence felt at ringside on Saturday and Garcia said that was the fight he wants. With Teo signed to DAZN and Garcia to GBP, it’s do-able. The money and the storyline might still lie with the Haney return, but that’s not going anywhere, either. You’d assume Garcia could still make 140lbs but the big fights for him are by name, not by division. Was Tank watching?

What does Benn need?

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It was a year ago when I was driving home from the airport when fight manager Brian Peters messaged me.

He sent me a link to a story that said Ricky Hatton had died.

My initial thought was it was one of those cruel internet hoaxes and I put the phone down, thinking Brian should know better.

Then it hit me.

“Oh no. Not Ricky. No. Please no.”

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I was so engaged listening to his story that nothing else mattered.

George Chuvalo had arrived a little late to meet me in a coffee shop in rainy Toronto, but I was grateful he’d made it at all.

I’d been blown off by Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and Chuvalo proved a failsafe, but I wasn’t ready for what was to come.

Sure, I knew about his family tragedy and that he’d fought Ali, Frazier, Foreman and the best of his generation.

I knew he was arguably Canada’s greatest heavyweight.

And I knew about the rock-solid chin and that he was often heralded as one of the fighters not to exhibit signs of his brutal profession long after he retired. Given he was known for his durability, that was quite the compliment and he must have had neurologists scratching their heads.

How did a man who’d taken so many bombs from so many huge punchers remain so lucid? Where was the short-term memory loss, the slurred speech, or the unsteady walk?

Well, when George came bowling in to meet me, I was thrilled.

George Chuvalo won 73 times as a pro, losing 18 fights and drawing twice. Famously, he was known for never being dropped, though he didn’t hear the final bell against Frazier or Foreman. No matter. He was a walking lump of granite and he could really fight. Chuvalo was 4-0 after his first night as a pro after he chinned his first four opponents in Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens in a tournament named after Jack Dempsey. There were a couple of early losses as he cut his teeth, but in 1959 he won the Canadian title with a 12th-round stoppage of Yvon Durelle.

He won and lost in equal measure through the early sixties, picked up a DQ for headbutting small Welsh heavyweight Joe Erskine (claiming he was retaliating for being thumbed in the eye) and lost to the decent Zora Folley. But he stopped contender Doug Jones, Syracuse heavy Mike DeJohn, and lost a blistering 1965 battle with Floyd Patterson in the Fight of the Year. I remember George telling me that Patterson, “had a left hook that could tear your brains out.”

George had to gulp down a good few of them.

George, who told me “Two Ton” Tony Galento taught him how to headbutt, felt he was robbed losing a decision to Ernie Terrell over 15 rounds and always believed the Chicago man’s manager, Bernie Glickman – who had colourful ties to the underworld – made sure the fix was in.

He actually went into a heavyweight title fight against Ali coming off a loss to Eduardo Corletti in London, and that came after a victory over Joe Bygraves in London’s Royal Albert Hall. My friend George Zeleny was at both fights, and said of Chuvalo: “Hard, hard man.”

That could be on his headstone.

Chuvalo lost a decision to Ali over 15 rounds having accepted the fight with less than weeks’ notice and lost a decision to Oscar Bonavena.

As I interviewed him, I recall Chuvalo snapping at me – given the big names he fought – “I see what you’re doing, you’re only asking me about the fights that I lost.”

As I meekly apologised, he interrupted to tell me he was joking.

He won 11 on the spin through ’66 and ’67 but then ran into Frazier in Madison Square Garden and Chuvalo was cut badly early. The would by his eye went down to the bone, which was broken. He needed surgery, but he fought on.

Reporter Mark Kram said Chuvalo had “a rocklike head” and that was meant as a compliment.

He took some monstrous blows against the Philadelphia left-hooker, his face turned purple, wrote one ringside scribe, and a blood vessel leading to his eyelid exploded.

“I thought my eyeball had been knocked out,” he later said.

Chuvalo had damaged it in an earlier fight and then again in sparring, so said he was “damaged goods” for that contest even before the first bell.

He was out for nearly a year and former heavyweight champion Joe Louis refereed his next fight, a stoppage of Canadian left-hander Jean-Claude Roy.

Chuvalo lost only one of his next 13 and scored arguably his best win, claiming the scalp of Jerry Quarry, back in the Garden, in 1969.

During that bout, Chuvalo’s eye again started to balloon but a left hook dropped Quarry and he was unable to beat the count. At least, he didn’t beat the count. Quarry later claimed he had not heard the referee over the din of the crowd.

“If you get hit with a good punch and you can’t tell nine from 10, what can you tell the guy?” joked Chuvalo, who made a respectable $15,000.

But a few fights later he was up to $50,000 when badly whipped by a marauding Foreman. As Chuvalo tended to his wounds afterwards, he was offered an ice pack.

“What’s that for?” he asked dryly.

In 1971 he lost to Jimmy Ellis but beat Cleveland Williams. In 1972 he lost a rematch to Ali over 12 but won two other bouts later that year, won two fights in 1973, two in 1977, one in 1978 and that was that.

“The Toronto Tank” – a name that never stuck – had fought 502 rounds as a pro.

He had more than played his part.

“When people think about the best heavyweights they think of my era,” he said. “It was the best era. There’s no question.”

**

Three of George Chuvalo’s sons left this world too soon, two by suicide and one by overdose. His wife, Lynne, kept a container of pills in the wardrobe for when all hope was lost and, after 36 years of marriage, she ventured upstairs, opened the wardrobe, opened the container and ended her own story of heartbreak.

George’s family had been decimated, but as he had done in the ring, he stood firm.

To this day, I remember asking him about suicide and he said, “Who in a normal life doesn’t consider it?” And it was the first time I learned that it was okay to talk about not being okay and learned the difference first-hand between suicidal ideation and suicide.

Drugs had ransacked Chuvalo’s family and he made it his mission to help others who were at risk. He started a charitable foundation, Fighters Against Drugs, and went to schools, prisons, and other community centres to tell his tragic story. Often, he’d receive a standing ovation.

He spoke with passion and from experience.

“It’s true, what can I say?” he replied, when I told him he’d led a tragic life.

“I’ve had more than my fair share. More than the average guy. I don’t know how to explain it. I guess I have whatever is in a person’s make-up that enables them to go through it. I don’t know. I only know how I would deal with it. I couldn’t tell you how anyone else would because I’m not you and I’m not them.”

Chuvalo was left with one son, Mitchell, and his grandchildren, and he said his world revolved around them.

In the coffee shop, George showed me photographs of his dead children, but he never cried. Like he was never dropped in the ring, he never shed a tear when we talked.

***

When lists of great features fighters possess are reeled out, Chuvalo is often the gold standard when it comes to ‘chin’.

Mike Tyson might have power. Ali might have charisma. Holmes might have the jab, but chin goes to George.

I asked him about his durability.

“If you have a neck like a stack of dimes you can know that guy’s getting knocked out,” George said. “I used to stand on my head a lot. A lot of people don’t understand. Fighters pay scant attention to the punch-absorbing muscles…. Very few fighters spend time on muscles to absorb punishment. I used to spend a lot of time on it. It’s important.”

But while Chuvalo knew he’d seemingly come through the battles unscathed, others were not so lucky. By the time we talked, many of his contemporaries had passed or were showing signs associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison,” he stated.

“Before I started fighting, I used to stutter and couldn’t remember a God damn thing. Now I remember everything and don’t stutter at all. I’m lucky that way, but to be honest with you, there’s a very popular misconception. The misconception is I got hit with every punch in the book. I didn’t get hit with one-tenth of the punches people thought I did… But you never know how you are going to be tomorrow. Like today I’m all right. Who knows how I’ll be tomorrow?”

****

Fortunately, it would take many years to reveal itself, but by 2019, the ugly decline brought about by too many punches to the head had taken a firm hold.

There were sad stories about George being so diminished that he was in a custody tug of war between Mitch and his second wife, Joanne.

In fact, a year earlier, in a Chuvalo vs. Chuvalo family case, the court heard that Chuvalo, then 80, “doesn’t have the cognitive ability to make a decision on whether to reconcile with his wife amid a family dispute.”

Even then, eight years ago, the Toronto Star told of Chuvalo’s “significant cognitive decline.”

It was sad to hear. While I’d met Chuvalo amid the autumnal showers in Canada, he was bright and breezy when we spoke, but he had to endure a long, cruel winter of his life.

*****

That will not be Chuvalo’s legacy, nor should it be. George’s story of survival and courage – particularly out of the ring – was inspiring, motivational and stirring. He had withstood a terrible burden but he’d carried it on his broad shoulders.

I asked George – more than 20 years ago – how he’d like to be remembered and he answered: “I just hope they remember me,” he smiled gently. “I kind of like, ‘He was a warrior.’ Exclamation mark. If my great, great, great, great-grandchildren say, ‘He was a warrior!’ then that’s good enough for me.”

It was after 13 seconds when you could tell Conor Benn was bang up against it against Ryan Garcia.

Benn dipped to his right and Garcia cracked him with a left hook that might not have changed the narrative of their encounter, but it revealed the plot.

Twenty-one seconds after the first bell, the same shot landed and it became glaringly obvious what the final scene would look like.

Benn was made to look cumbersome, having to over-reach with his right hand, and while he attempted to bomb forwards, as is his custom, he was raked by faster shots and couldn’t match Garcia’s quick feet.

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You can’t please all the people all of the time and, with that in mind, promoter Eddie Hearn has his supporters and his detractors.

I like Eddie. We are a similar age. I probably was the first person in boxing to interview him, or certainly to write a significant feature about him.

We haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, but damn, I respect his hustle. I was there when Prizefighter kicked off at Bethnal Green. I was there when David Haye steamrolled Audley Harrison.

I’ve been with him messing around with people in Las Vegas, taken pictures of him and Don King when they first met, have been to his family home – Matchroom HQ – countless times, and I’ve spoken to him in Vegas, New York, Atlantic City, Kiev, Germany and probably half a dozen other places – including all around the UK.

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It’s 25-1 versus 25-2. It’s a 29-year-old against a 28-year-old. It’s a snarling Essex son of a legend against a pretty-boy darling of California. It’s speed against strength, finesse against grit.

It’s everything you want from a big fight in Las Vegas.

But there’s a hitch when it comes to this WBC welterweight title fight.

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I’ve not worn this shirt for 25 years.

It was the summer of 2001 and I was crashing on any number of sofas and pull-out beds in and around Atlantic City and spending countless hours with former light-heavyweight world champion Matthew Saad Muhammad.

He was labouring by day, making early starts, but we found plenty of time to talk, whether it was grabbing a sandwich here or there, going to fights, going to the gym… For it was Saad who often found me a place to stay at night.

I’d had plenty of nights in Atlantic City where I hadn’t had anywhere to go, and it’s not a pleasant place to be.

The homeless population drifts around the Boardwalk and the further you leave that comparative safe haven and head inland, well, you could be in real trouble.

Saad made sure I wasn’t.

*

(Matthew and I in Atlantic City)

During our chats, Matthew would confide in me about how and why life had gone wrong for him. He hadn’t got off to a great start. He was abandoned by his brother on instruction of an aunt when he was only four, left alone on the streets of Philadelphia.

An orphanage, foster care, prison, it all followed, but what he wanted more than anything was to find his family.

In my early-twenties, it was unfathomable how a man who’d made millions no longer had a home, many possessions or much of anything, and I recall asking him about his memorabilia.

Later, people told me it was stolen or sold. He assured me it was in a lock-up in New Orleans, and I think there’s a chance all three could be true.

I was broke. There’s no other way of putting it. I can’t even really explain how I stayed out in the US as long as I did on rations but I guess it doesn’t cost a lot if you’re often without a place to sleep and you build up a tolerance of going two or three days at a time without food.

But I decided, anyway, that I would thank Matthew for all he was doing for me so one day, out near Pleasantville, I went to a printing shop and had two T-shirts created, one for him and one for me.

They were the same. They were navy blue and had MSM and a pair of boxing gloves on the left chest and Team Saad emblazoned across the back.

Even me, at I think about 22, thought they looked like cheap knock-offs, but later that day I presented Saad with his.

“Oh geez, who’s this for?” he asked shyly.

“It’s yours,” I replied.

“Maaaaannnn. No way. Look at this,” he said holding it up and investigating the front and back.

He was infinitely more thrilled with it than I was, and if he was faking it he did a stellar job.

He hurriedly put it on over his existing T-shirt and looked at himself in a mirror.

He was genuinely elated. I felt both embarrassed at the tacky gesture but delighted it had gone down so well.

**

I didn’t see Saad in the T-shirt for a while, nor did I expect to. Team Saad was something from 1980, when Matthew was flying high as the WBC champion. His entourage reached out well into double figures… a photographer, a chef, a bag carrier, trainer, security, publicist et al.

During this summer of 2001, I had Matthew pretty much to myself. We went for a sandwich at the famous White House in the city. We went to a boxing event in Delaware and I served as a ring card guy for a women’s fight.

We spoke at length about life, death and religion in the aftermath of 9/11 and we - along with a mutual friend - came up with an elaborate plan to attend the postponed bout between Felix Trinidad and Matthew’s fellow Philadelphian Bernard Hopkins at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

The mutual friend was a low-key crook who’d spent years on boxing’s peripheries and, given that Don King was promoting the show, this guy hauled out an old DKP credential on a lanyard and started trying doctoring it so it would look like he had a way to get into the fight.

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It was September 27 in 1986 and Tony Sims was in his flat in Bethnal Green, in the East End of London, working on the doors while, 3,000 miles away, in Atlantic City, Lloyd Honeyghan was wrecking the world of Donald Curry.

Curry was perceived to be the world’s best fighter but the wild ‘Ragamuffin Man’ backed himself, even supposedly wagering $5,000 on victory, when he produced what is still seen – 40 years on this month – as the finest win scored by a British fighter overseas.

“I remember it,” smiles Sims. “No one gave him a shot, did they? No one even knew he was in America at all. And obviously he won the European title in Britain. But outside of that, no one knew he was over here. Going into that fight and all everyone talked about was that his [Curry] speed and his left hook. Even when you watch the fight on the telly, they talk about, ‘Oh, we don’t think Honeyghan’s going to be able to get out of the way of his left hook.’ And that’s all they spoke about. And it’s funny because it’s 40 years this month that that fight happened.

“And I remember it clearly. And I remember Mickey Duff talking about the fight and [being] confident that Honeyghan was going to beat him and Honeyghan was confident. I remember all that. And then he just went in there and just took him apart. There was no respect. He jumped on him from the bell. That’s exactly what Conor Benn’s going to do as well.”

A month before the fight, publicist Irving Rudd called the Boxing News offices and said of Lloyd: “Who is this guy, how can I sell him?”

“Lloyd facing his toughest test” was the coverline of the Boxing News preview issue on September 26, 1986. The headline inside simply said: “King Curry looks much too sharp for Lloyd.”

Curry was brilliant and many thought unbeatable as the undisputed champion at 147lbs.

There was early talk of him being “a modern great” in Tim Mo’s preview and while he pointed out Honeyghan’s form leading into the match, he surmised: “Honeyghan looks able to give what the Americans may find a surprisingly good account of himself for the first four or five rounds but somewhere before the halfway stage a vicious shot from Curry will have his legs buckling and from then on the writing will be on the wall. It looks like those three titles will be staying on the other side of the Atlantic.”

**

A week later, with the cover of Honeyghan celebrating under the headline “World of his own”, was a report headlined “Super Lloyd hits Curry for six.”

Rudd, the Top Rank publicist, was now well acquainted with exactly who Honeyghan was.

“I’d come here to win, not mess about,” said Honeyghan.

Tony Sims said they’ve had a productive five weeks in the US, sharpening the tools for Garcia.

There are echoes of Honeyghan-Curry: the title, the weight, the nationalities, the odds…

And Sims couldn’t be less fazed by being the underdog.

“We had a really good camp. You know, it’s been quite amusing listening, watching everybody on social media,” he joked. “Because all the narrative’s been about just Conor Benn’s weight. Even Garcia, that’s all he spoke about. He didn’t speak about nothing else but Conor Benn’s weight. But Connor Benn, anyone who knows him personally, he’s been getting this weight off four months ago, mate.

“He’s been walking around at this weight for the last two months. Before we started sparring, even, he was already down. So there’s absolutely no problem whatsoever with his weight. He’s absolutely as strong as a lion.”

Sims said Benn deliberately released pictures of him looking slender and gaunt as a ploy, and that the bait has been gobbled up.

“He’s done all that on purpose, Conor has,” Sims explained. “He’s made the narrative that he can’t do the weight. He’s had [coach] Dan Lawrence on him for months and months, doing his calories. He’s absolutely as strong as a lion. He really is.”

It was in April when Conor Benn fought Regis Prograis and won a decision over 10 rounds.

It’s a fight Sims was not a huge fan of, but it made financial sense and so they moved ahead and then moved on.

“I got a phone call six weeks out from the fight, when he wasn’t even in camp at all, saying, ‘I’m fighting Prograis in six weeks’ time.’ So I went, ‘You are joking.’ And then he told me how much money he was getting for it, because I would never have accepted that fight.

“He was nowhere near, anywhere near doing 150. And he [Prograis] was a southpaw as well. He [Benn] ain’t sparred a southpaw for four years.

“But, listen, the money talks at the end of the day, so we had to take the fight. But he was nowhere near prepared to go into that fight and lose that weight. It was a ridiculous amount of time that we got to do that.

“This is different. He’s been on this for months and months and months. This is a different kettle of fish altogether.”

Many years ago, Tony would tell me about how hard Conor Benn worked. He said about him staying back to “do the extras” after training, and what he meant by that was an extra ab circuit, accessory work, a few more rounds shadowboxing. It was the optional homework after school not everyone chose to do.

Did Sims believe that, as he invested time into a fighter so many doubted, it would pay off in such a fashion as it has this week in Las Vegas?

“You don’t know where you’re going to get with any fighter, Tris, no matter who they are,” Sims says. “If they’re top amateurs, you never know, because anything can happen in boxing and it’s a long old road and journey to get to where you need to be. So you never know that. But what I can say is he worked extremely hard to get where in position he’s in now and extremely hard and had 10 years of absolutely gruelling, gruelling grind.”

Benn’s Donald Curry is Ryan Garcia, the flashy Californian with the good looks, the rapid left hook and fast hands. Asked how highly he rates Garcia, Tony says “good fighter” three times in his opening sentence.

For good measure, he adds “top amateur”, “WBC champion”, but here comes the caveat.

“I just don’t think he’s a true 147 fighter. He was talking about after [Mario] Barrios fight, before this fight was made, to drop him back down to 140. Because if you look at his performances at 147 against Roly [Romero] and Barrios, like, I don’t really know. The jury’s out on him at 147. I mean, against Roly, he was absolutely shocking. He got put down and against Barrios, I mean, what can you really take? Everyone’s going on about a Barrios fight. What can you really take from that? Barrios looked like he didn’t want to be there at all. Bearing in mind, Barrios, just the fight before, drew with a 45-year-old Pacquiao who hadn’t boxed for years. What are we actually talking about here, do you know what I mean? He quit against Tank [Davis] with a body shot. Don’t care what anyone says, you go down from a body shot, you stay there on one knee… I’m not really sure. I’m not really bothered about it [how good Garcia might be].”

One thing Sims has unflinching belief in is his fighter’s ability to handle the neon lights of Las Vegas when he gets down to business against Garcia on Saturday night.

Benn has shown to have his dad’s snarling temperament and is always ready for a fight. Sims saw that when he was a sparmate of Nigel’s many years ago.

“Oh, yeah, he’ll absolutely love it,” Sims said of Benn striding out at the T-Mobile. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not the same as walking out on White Hart Lane, is it? Do you know what I mean? 60,000 people. Obviously, there’s a smaller crowd here, but it’s still a great thing to fight in Vegas, WBC title. Obviously, [it’s] the biggest fight of his career. So he’s going to love it.”

(Garcia-Benn pictures courtesy of Zuffa Boxing)

It sounded like there was a significant British contingent at the public workouts this week. Sims said there were still more fans to come, especially after the air traffic control shenanigans through the UK that saw Sims’ family delayed getting to Vegas and this writer having to abort his scheduled trip.

“There’s loads over here,” Tony adds.

“I know there’s a lot of landing today and Friday. There’s going to be loads over here, I think, by the sounds of it.”

Asked what it was about Benn and why his popularity has not only endured but accelerated in the last two years since the enormous controversy and scrutiny he came under following the clomiphene issues, Sims believes it was the fighting heart he showed in the first Eubank fight that endeared him to the masses.

“I just think people all want to criticise him because of what his name is, because he’s Nigel Benn’s son. They all want to give him loads of stick for anything he does,” Sims says.

“That’s the trouble with social media, it’s good for one thing that you’re advertising yourself, you’re putting yourself out there and you get all these followers, but on the other hand, then you’ve got to take the abuse as well off of everybody when you do one thing wrong, and that’s the problem with it. Listen, I think people took to him after the first Eubank fight because everyone wrote him off saying a welterweight can’t beat a middleweight and he’s going to get stopped. He got Fight of the Year, and I think after that fight, everyone realised he does fight with his heart on his sleeve. Every time he fights, you’re going to see an exciting fight. It’s not going to be like a Roly and Ryan Garcia fight where they jump 10-foot away from each other and don’t throw any punches. You know what you’re going to get with him. On Saturday night, you know what you’re going to get. He’s going to come out and Garcia’s getting it stuck on him. Do you know what I mean? People think that Garcia’s going to knock him out. I just don’t think he carries the firepower to do that. I really don’t… 147… I just don’t think. When Conor had been fighting Eubank, I had him in with super middles and light heavies for that fight because Eubank’s really a super middle. I just don’t see him putting a dent in him, really. That’s my opinion, obviously. I just don’t see Garcia hurting him at all. I just think he’s going to break him up.”

**

Tony Sims said he will have strong words with Thomas Taylor about Saturday’s rules of engagement. He doesn’t want Garcia to run or to hold. Sims said he will make a point of speaking to the official, because of Garcia he added: “as soon as someone gets near him on the inside, he’s like an octopus, just wraps his arms around you. We ain’t come all this way, thousands of miles, to be held to death in a fight. We want this to be a proper fight. That’s my only concern about Garcia.”

It was nearly 20 years ago when another British idol, Ricky Hatton, suffered from Joe Cortez’s constant interventions against Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas.

But Sims said of Taylor, who refereed Benn’s Sin City fight against Peter Dobson, “He’s a top referee.”

Taylor also did Garcia’s fight with Barrios.

Sims remembers 1986, when he was in his flat and he heard the news that Honeyghan had bested Curry in what is still rightly heralded as a one-of-one win by a British fighter overseas.

Danny Williams beat a faded Tyson. Randolph Turpin beat a disinterested Sugar Ray. Lennox was favoured to beat Holyfield.

But Sims reckons Benn beating Garcia in Vegas will go up alongside all of them.

“If Conor Benn pulls this off on Saturday night, that’s got to rank alongside what Honeyghan’s done. Because I ain’t seen one American press person, or British one really, that’s favouring Conor Benn to win this fight. Only the only people who are favouring him are people who actually know him. But no other fighter, not one person, is fancying Conor Benn to do this. So when he does do it, he needs to get that recognition what he’s done here. He’s done what Honeyghan’s done. He needs to get recognised that this is a massive upset what he’s going to cause here Saturday night.”

When you look at Conor Benn, as a contorted, aggressive, bombing force, it is clear that particular apple did not fall far from the tree.

Father Nigel was a brilliant warrior, courageous, all heart, known for being at his most dangerous when either hurt or with his back to the ropes.

As a significant underdog this weekend against Ryan Garcia in Las Vegas, Conor’s back is to the wall.

He is not expected to win. Many don’t think he will hear the final bell.

But he has inspiration in his corner in the shape of his father, who has no doubt his boy produces an upset.

Then, he will emerge fully from his Hall of Fame father’s vast shadow. No longer would he be Nigel Benn’s son, but Nigel would become Conor’s father.

Nigel, 62, chuckles at that.

“That’s what people have been saying, ‘You’re Conor Benn’s dad, isn’t you?’ Now I go, ‘Conor Benn’s my son.’ Just bring him down a bit, you know what I mean? Bring him down a bit. But yeah, he’s doing really well, I’m so happy for him, really happy for him.”

The Benns have been in camp in Los Angeles for several weeks before wrapping up preparations in Las Vegas ahead of the fight.

The Benn name is up in lights up and down The Strip, and Nigel could not be prouder. It was the revenge win over Chris Eubank that elevated Benn to the levels he now operates at.

“It’s after the second Eubank fight, he put himself back on the map,” his dad told me. “He won that fight convincingly, then he fought Regis Prograis and done really well. So I’m just happy to see where he’s gone. And you know what, he’s gone out there and he’s done it. He’s worked hard, he’s grafted for the last 10 years to put himself in this position. So I can’t fault him, you know?”

When his son turned over, despite debuting at the O2 Arena, there were not high hopes for where Conor could get to, and Nigel admits that.

“I never thought it’d be like where he is today,” he said. “And it just surpassed what I thought he was going to get. I do think he surpassed himself.”

Benn was a Hall of Famer who notched several huge wins and was a two-weight champion, at middleweight and super middleweight. Is he more satisfied that Conor has made a fortune, or that his son is now challenging for titles?

“Well, I think at the end of the day, one thing is I’m glad that he’s has got financial security, because at the end of the day you can have a guy that fights for titles, he doesn’t go nowhere,” Nigel said. “He then leaves boxing, he’s got to go back to work. So with me, I look at it, it’s like I wanted to win titles, because I know me personally, me winning titles, money’s going to follow automatically because I can put bums on the seats. Some fighters are good but just can’t sell a ticket. And Conor can do both. And he’s proved that he can do it. He can go there, he can go and do 12 hard rounds and he can get the crowd excited. So he’s got everything that he needs. And he’s doing well now. He’s doing really well.”

Back when Nigel was fighting, the internet was an optic-fibre pipedream, social media wasn’t an idea and there were only four TV channels in the UK on British televisions. Newspapers were big business, and if you were in them, frankly, you were famous. Nigel was very famous, but now Conor has a social following that stretches into millions.

How would he compare their different experiences of fame?

“Well, I think because even now it’s so funny, we had the young and the old [people tuning in to watch], when we were fighting Eubank and all that, we had the crowd, we had the British population watching these two guys fight. But now you’ve got social media, which is completely different.

“It’s another level. But would I prefer to be in this time or my time? I would always choose my time over everything because I really enjoyed my time. Because here now, it’s just something different. It’s something I don’t really understand.”

How does he feel his son is coping with the fame, and how did Nigel handle it?

“I don’t know, I didn’t really cope with it well really. I just… you just get caught up in that razzamatazz.

“And I don’t think Conor’s actually done that. I think at the beginning, he was a bit off the rails, but now he’s got his feet firmly on the ground, got a third children, and yeah, he’s just living, he’s absolutely living the dream. We talk about him now and we look at his lovely big mansion that he has and we look at it and think, ‘Mate, look at you, son. Look what you’ve achieved.’ And you’ve got to pinch yourself to know that he’s not just totally secured his kids’ lives, but his great-grandkids’ lives. That’s how much he’s making. Which is good because at the end of the day, that’s all you want your son to do, be successful in everything that he does. And now he has a shot at the WBC. How good is that?”

That is all well and good, but Conor has come this far in 26 fights and he’s now 29. But there is only one thing that Nigel really wants to see his boy get out of boxing.

“Be a world champion,” he said.

“That’s it. Win the green belt like I did. And then at the end of the day, he decides if he’s going to carry on or if he’s going to leave and start a new life… But it’s very hard if you’re a world champion, which I believe he will be. I’ve never seen anybody train like my son, ever. Ever, ever. I ain’t seen nobody train like my son. He’s another level. Since day dot. It’s even more intense now. He’s got his strength and conditioning coach Dan [Lawrence], Pedro [Neymar], Tony [Sims]. He’s got everything. He’s got his chef that cooks him special foods and everything. So he’s got everybody working around him.”

And the Benns have been going to church often in the build-up. Sims is a born-again Christian, Nigel is a man of God and Conor has followed that path, too. And this is something else Nigel has gratitude for.

“I think he had a tough time [with] at religion going to school,” Nigel said of his boy.

“He found it very hard. But now, he knows that he needs faith and he realised everything that he went through [with regards to the doping tests], he thought like, ‘Why did God let him go through things like that?’ And now he’s seeing, we don’t understand why he went through it, we might never know why he went through that but he knows that, without Jesus, he would never have been here. He would have been six-foot under. I believe that he was suffering with depression the day that Jesus got him through all this.”

Conor has spoken about the gloom that descended as he tried to prove his innocence and fought the authorities tooth and nail until he was allowed to fight in British rings again. But it wasn’t just Conor who felt it. Seeing his son through that period took a toll on Nigel, too, and he, of course, remains convinced his son is a clean athlete.

“I was suffering with him because I stayed in England for six months. And so what he was going through, you’re watching your young boy broken,” Nigel recalled. “And yeah, I don’t even drink. I ended up drinking, this is no word of a lie. For six months, I must have drunk a half a bottle of wine at night. I don’t drink. And plus I had bipolar, so everything I was taking was really affecting me. And then when I come back to Australia, I was sitting on the bed and [wife] Carol said, are you alright? And I just burst out crying because I think to myself, ‘I just watched my son go through that.’ But yeah, it affected me as well. And I didn’t realise I just had to get out of that. It went on for a while. But by the grace of God, we both got through it. And now we’re looking at the other side and we’re in a great position. Three beautiful kids, a lovely wife. He’s got everything you could ever dream of. I don’t know if I can say [it was good] God putting him through that and the way he went through that, but he’s come through the other end and he’s in a good place now. He’s in a good headspace. “Very good headspace.

“I think after this fight, when he’s got that belt around his waist, I don’t know where he’s going to go. I don’t know who he’s going to be looking at. But he’s going to have so much opportunities. I know he’s going to win that fight. I’m 100 per cent sure.”

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It’s been more than three decades since Nigel Benn saw his name up in lights in Las Vegas. This week, he has seen his son, Conor, repeat that feat ahead of his WBC welterweight title challenge of Ryan Garcia.

“I think I’m just going to take a picture of it, frame it, put it up on the wall… WBC champion,” Nigel said, asked how it would feel to see his son’s likeness in Sin City.

“You know what I mean? That’s it really, knowing that my son’s made it, to have his name up in lights like I did in Vegas. How good is that? And fighting out at the T-Mobile, brilliant, brilliant.”

Benn had some big fights against some top Americans, including Doug DeWitt, Iran Barkley, and Gerald McClellan, who travelled to London to face the Essex warrior in a tragic fight that McClellan never fully recovered from. Benn had five consecutive US bouts between 1989 and 1990, having lost to the brilliant Michael Watson before he returned to England for his historic fight against Chris Eubank.

He has been in Los Angeles in camp with Conor before they arrived in Sin City this week, and just three months ago, Benn was in the sleepy town of Canastota in upstate New York to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Benn is a very fit 62 years old. He won 42 times as a pro, lost five and had one draw – which came in the Eubank return.

One of his big wins came in Vegas, 36 years ago last month, when he destroyed Iran Barkley in a roughhouse one-round blitz.

Benn remembers mauling the New Yorker well.

“I didn’t actually want the three-knockdown rule,” he said. “Because I know for a fact I would really have ironed him out. I knew that. I think we were fighting in eight-ounce gloves. I don’t even think there were 10-ounce gloves then, they were little small gloves and I mean, I was hitting him hard. He hit me but I just knew that I had the strength to stop him. And I would have stopped him. I know I would have stopped him. I really would have stopped him. I didn’t want the three-knockdown rule.”

Benn and Barkley have only crossed paths once since, at a WBC convention, and Barkley has constantly labelled Benn as a dirty fighter.

“He still keeps whinging and all that. I hit when he was on the ground and all things like that,” said Benn.

“Dirty fighter.”

“All that rubbish, you know what I mean? It was the emotion that got me. When he got up, he was okay. It’s just he wasn’t going to beat me, that’s it, so they’ve got to make up some frigging excuse. Americans like doing that when they’re not on top.”

Whatever Benn says, the history books show he took on some audacious challenges. It is his heart, spirit and courage that eventually got him his plaque at the Hall of Fame.

Ironically, the Hall of Fame reached out to me to get in contact with Benn, and he wasn’t having it. He didn’t want anyone to have his number and so told Ed Brophy, via me, to go through his lawyer.

“I’ve heard about being inducted many years ago,” Benn laughed. “I didn’t know if it was real. I just thought ‘Oh no.’ I just thought it might have been a Mickey Mouse company. I really don’t know.”

I’d told Nigel it was legitimate, but he remained suspicious.

“And then, when I found out it was real, me and my wife, we were over there,” he said. “It was a good experience meeting all the ex-world champions, referees, that was really nice. I enjoyed it and it’s like I look at it, it’s the guy from little Ilford, Essex getting inducted to the International Boxing Hall of Fame. It was just amazing, and then you go down and they’re driving cars down these roads in the parade and you’re waving at everybody and the street is all packed with people down there and it’s going on for a couple of miles. It’s just an experience. I was part of that [2026 class] with Antonio Tarver and Triple G [Gennadiy Golovkin], so what a great time to get inducted to the Hall of Fame and Nigel Benn’s in there.”

This year, both Benn and bitter rival Eubank Snr were on the ballot but only Nigel was elected.

Does he think Eubank should follow him in?

“I don’t know, really,” Benn said.

*

The relationship between Benn and Eubank is complex at best. They could not be any more different. Benn was a straightforward warrior, no frills. Eubank was the show pony, substance, yes, but style, too.

But Benn’s body of work included top US fighters and that is, he contends, what sets his career apart from Eubank’s.

“I think because I fought everybody,” Benn said. “I didn’t avoid nobody. I went over to America and I fought. I fought all the best, they put their best over here and I fought them all. I didn’t avoid nobody. Anybody that they put in front of me, I came to fight. I didn’t have hand-picked fighters. I fought everybody that come my way, win, lose or draw, fighting Eubank, fighting Watson, fighting Steve [Collins], fighting Gerald McClellan, fighting Iran Barkley, fought Doug DeWitt, Robbie Sims, everybody. Didn’t avoid anybody in my time. Nobody.”

Eubank has often talked about facing less capable fighters to maximise his earning potential. That was not Benn’s attitude.

“No. I didn’t do that,” he added. “I just think fighting the people that the public wanted to see… I didn’t care. I’d fight anybody, whoever they put in front of me. That was my whole attitude. I just wanted to fight. The British public, I know the kind of fights that they like and that was me. Didn’t avoid nobody.”

It was after he was upset by the superb Watson that he travelled to the US to train. Benn went to the gyms and learned what he could from some of the best fighters and coaches and there was a marked difference in gym cultures.

“Yeah, it was different because I actually didn’t really like sparring,” Benn revealed. “But in America, they live for sparring. That’s their life, sparring. I wasn’t like that. All I needed, all I wanted to do was just get my distance. Some fighters, you look at Tommy Hearns, you look at Terry Norris, all of them, they’re all punch drunk because you know what they’d done? They had wars in the gym, left it in the gym. I wasn’t going to be one of them people.”

Benn is in shape today, and he believes the discipline he has has allowed him to keep his health.

“I kept all my faculties intact and I keep training, I train twice a day, every day without fail,” he said. “So I’m always keeping myself active. I’m in good shape.”

Benn was in some brutal fights, but it was never about how he might be remembered. It was about testing himself against the best. His legacy stands there now, but he never considered it at the time.

“Do you know what? You know, at that time, Tris, I wasn’t thinking about legacy,” Benn said.

“I’m just going out there and I’m just going to fight the best Americans that come my way… To Iran Barkley, to Doug DeWitt, to Robbie Sims. I just fought everybody that came my way.

“I didn’t care who they were. America got what? But, you know, I wanted to show them that, you know, that... Because back then, Americans were the best fighters. They had all the gold medallists in the Olympics and everything. I just wanted to fight whoever was around. As you know, I’m against everybody. I’m not going to avoid nobody. And in those days, if you want to be the best, you had to beat the Americans. And that’s what I did. I never lost to an American.”

*

It was a different story for Benn in England, where he lost to Watson, once to bitter rival Eubank and twice to Irishman Steve Collins.

Unlike Eubank, Nigel has remained on very good terms with Collins; Steve defeated Benn in the final two fights of the Dark Destroyer’s career.

There is a reverence in his voice when he talks about Collins.

“I think because me and Steve, we know what we have to do,” Benn explained.

“It’s not like the other person [Eubank Snr]… Me and Steve, we can go out, we work together [doing after-dinner speaking], me and Steve. When I come back to England, I’ll be working with Steve and Michael Watson. We have no pressure and no one’s trying to nick the stage, nick the limelight. We all work together. We all know that we all make a living together and we love it. You know, we don’t try and talk about frigging poetry and all that rubbish while we’re talking… while we’re talking about our careers.

“He’ll come out with a poem or something rubbish like that, it kills the atmosphere all the time. But with Steve, we talk, we laugh, we joke, we’ve got time for each other.”

While the bouts involving Eubank Jnr and Conor were sold with the backdrop of spite, both appear to have mildly softened their stances on one another since.

But the fathers’ up-and-down relationship continues as they both mature, and it was the fights between the youngsters that seem to have driven a further wedge between the dads.

Eubank Junior contends he was ill and terribly weight-drained, which resulted in his rematch loss to Conor after he edged their first bout, a war, on points.

“Right, right,” Benn added.

“Let me explain something. How many fights has Eubank fought at middleweight? Most of his career. All of a sudden, he fights a welterweight and then ‘Oh, I’m struggling at the weight’ but all through his career he’s fought at middleweight?

“‘Oh, I’m struggling. I’m going to let people see me sweating.’ Mate, grow up. And then Eubank [Senior] said, ‘Oh look, they’re trying to kill my son.’ Nobody’s going to kill your son. Your son’s like 33 or 34 years old. He knows what he’s doing. He’s fought at middleweight all the time but all of a sudden – and this is what drives me up the wall – Eubank Senior comes in there saying like, ‘Oh, they’re trying to kill my son.’ Nobody’s trying to kill your son. Your son chose to fight because he’s getting paid good and he knows he can make the weight, so that’s whatever he’d done. That was all down to him. Nobody had a gun to his head. That was all his decision. So when you come out with it all, it’s a load of baloney.”

Does that mean that the old opponents are no longer on good terms at all? There had previously been a thaw in their relationship.

“Nothing, we’re just like… we’re as far from the east to the west and the north to the south,” Benn said. “We’re just different people: me and Conor and Chris Eubank Senior and Junior, we’re just different people. Before the fight, at the weigh-in, I went to shake his [Senior’s] hand and he put his arm in my chest and I thought to myself, ‘You got no respect. You ain’t got no class.’ He thinks he’s all class but you know what… I thought, ‘How are you so disrespectful’ and I told him to, ‘F off, don’t come near me.’ That was it. And he was lucky that I didn’t actually put my fist in his face because that was so disrespectful, but I won’t speak to him again anyway. Got nothing to do with him.

“Me and Chris set this platform for them [the sons], we set a platform for them… You know he loves the limelight, but hey, ‘Chris, look what we done.’ It’s sad because of how he’s carrying on. He just wants to be in front of the cameras posing and doing what he normally does. We don’t care. So when he comes out and put his elbow in my chest like that, I thought, ‘Mate, nah.’ He ain’t doing that again to me. I got no time for him. I’ll never work with him again. “We’ll never do a show with him ever again.”

**

Benn has been absorbed into Conor’s camp for this fight. He and Tony Sims have been pumping iron at Gold’s Gym where they managed to see Arnold Schwarzenegger working out, but the Austrian icon escaped before doing any pictures with anyone.

But Benn is about peace now. He’s religious, and thrilled that Conor has followed him and has the church as a significant part of his life.

Nigel has suffered openly with depression, but his love for his family is his priority when it comes to enjoying life today.

“My journey is me now spending time now, I’m over the other side of the clock [living in Australia], it’s about me now spending quality time with my wife. That’s all,” Benn said. “All I want to do is travel the world with her now, once Conor’s fight is out of the way, all I’m going to do is dedicate my time to my wife … My little boy Levi, he wants to be a professional footballer. Now I’m going to have to channel my energy into him. He’s 16 now and he’s a good little footballer and I can see God’s hand is upon him. He’s an anointed one and I want to see him do well, like Conor, so I’m going to try my best to help my little boy get there and that’s what I’m going to do: spending quality time with him because he’s coming back to England. First, he’s going to Barcelona to play football out there, then he’s coming to France and then back to England, then we go back to Australia. So he’s got the opportunity. I’m just encouraging him to get that mindset like what Conor’s got.”

That is the mindset Nigel had, too, as one of the great British boxing warriors and, yes, as a Hall of Famer, even if he thought it was a prank.

(Pictures courtesy of Matchroom Boxing)

Part 2 is coming tomorrow and will feature Nigel talking about Conor and his upcoming fight with Ryan Garcia, Conor leaving Matchroom, the dark days they’ve shared and much more

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman is headed to Las Vegas to preside over the big T-Mobile Arena bout between WBC welterweight champion Ryan Garcia and challenger Conor Benn. Here, we’ve spoken about Zuffa’s arrival in the sport, Benn-Garcia, Turki Alalshikh, why the title is not yet on the line between Noël Mikaelian and Jai Opetaia, where Fury and Joshua should take place and what he does to relieve stress.

Okay, Mauricio, it’s been a while since we’ve actually had a catch-up, so how has 2026 been for you and the WBC?

Well, it’s been a sensational year in many ways. The activity worldwide has been tremendous, great fights, great match-ups, historic events, a fight at the Pyramids, which was unbelievable, also to see the Tokyo Dome sell-out with Inoue and Nakatani.

So it’s been a great year overall, and I believe that boxing is in very good shape, with many great fights coming up in the second half of the year, and I feel very well about the status of the sport.

You mentioned there a couple of highlights, but what are the biggest challenges boxing is facing right now?

Well, the challenges are the constant battle between the promoters and the networks and the creation of that league that has created too much confusion regarding the changing of the law [the Ali Revival Act] in the United States, which has not happened. Everybody is talking in different directions, but boxing is global.

Boxing is a sport that depends on the value of the fighters, and every fighter comes from different backgrounds, from different countries. They all come from a platform that is already established, that begins with a small gymnasium, small trainers, small promoters, and they come up the ladder to become superstars. I’m hopeful that all these powerful entities will continue to work together, will continue to try to make things happen, and that boxing grows as a sport deserves to grow worldwide.

And this week is an example of them actually working together. Obviously, Zuffa have the show but Ryan is a Golden Boy fighter and they’re fighting for a WBC belt, having said that they weren’t necessarily going to follow the sanctioning bodies. So this week is an example of people working together, is that right?

That’s absolutely right. It’s a great example. I am very proud of both our champion Ryan Garcia and challenger Conor Benn. The way they both have spoken about the WBC green belt is humbling.

Ryan has displayed his belt with pride, and Conor has proudly given many interviews saying how much he has dreamt of conquering the green belt that his father won decades ago. So it is a special fight and the attention will be fully on Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, with television networks working together, Paramount and DAZN, Golden Boy and Zuffa. So it’s a good moment for the sport.

Hopefully, that will carry on, with more agreements and more understanding that we all can work together.

And your cruiserweight title is on the line too, right, with Noël Mikaelian against Jai Opetaia.

Not at this moment.

The WBC ordered Noël Mikaelian, who is WBC cruiserweight champion, to fight David Benavidez. And Benavidez’s promoter Samson [Lewkowicz] reached an agreement with Mikaelian’s promoter Don King. They reached an agreement to fight in December and Mikaelian went ahead and committed himself to another fight other than the one that the WBC had ordered.

We have made a strong effort to mediate, to try to accommodate all parties to make this work, and we’re still hopeful that the promoters can work it out between themselves and make this a WBC fight.

Do you have a deadline for that?

Well, there’s never a deadline.

Our goodwill is on the table. I remember when Cotto fought Canelo, we were still in the arena an hour before the fight trying to solve it and resolve a problem. So it is not about deadlines or threats.

It is simply about rules, about the facts that are clear and our good disposition to try to make things work out. We accept agreements between promoters. We accept step-asides.

We accept people reaching agreements to grow something for the future. So we will see what happens this week.

Ryan Garcia is a big favourite to beat Conor Benn. Do you see it that way?

I don’t think it’s a landslide. I think Conor Benn is coming off an unbelievable win against Eubank and, being such a brave and strong fighter, has all the chances in the world in the fight.

I think people are expecting an exciting fight, though, with obviously Ryan being so quick and Conor so aggressive.

Yes, the styles are what make big fights. Conor Benn is an aggressive fighter, has a good technique and Ryan has fast hands… and his power, his ring generalship.

It’s going to be a tremendous fight this Saturday night.

I know that the belt is on the line for that main event. Does it bother you that they’re not putting WBC on the posters and marketing materials? They’re just saying world title.

It doesn’t bother me. We know what the fight is all about. I hope it was a mistake by a human being doing the art or artificial intelligence doing the artwork.

But this is not exclusive. We have seen other fights in the past where they do not put the WBC belt, the WBC logo, the WBC letters... That is not proper and it takes a little bit away from the hype and the importance of the event, but it doesn’t bother me.

I don’t think it was done with bad intentions.

They didn’t include it with the IBF middleweight title in Ireland when Aaron McKenna won the title last month and they called it a world middleweight title fight, but they didn’t credit the IBF either. So I don’t know.

Maybe it is human error. I’m not sure. Well, it’s minor things.

I am not into getting into arguments about this. I believe things will be working better in the future for everyone. And, of course, artwork is a beautiful piece that remains for eternity.

When we see posters from the era of Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Leonard, all those great fights, Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed, it’s always nice to see what that event was for. So it’s one small piece of a big puzzle that should be resolved.

Obviously, both fighters have had positive tests before for PEDs. Has there been testing for this through the Clean Boxing Program?

Yes, yes. They’re both enrolled in VADA and tests have been performed. And also both fighters have submitted the safety weigh-ins, the 30, 14 and seven-day weigh-ins – they’re en route to making the weight this Friday.

There are critics out there who don’t think Conor should be ranked number one at welterweight given he’s not been down at that weight for so long. What would you say to those people?

Well, I respect anyone who has a critical belief. I respect it.

The WBC has been in very close communication with Conor Benn for several years. He was mistreated and abused through a missed or a positive anti-doping test, a banned substance. We did full research that took a lot of effort, a lot of resources from the WBC.

We had meetings with Conor personally and the ruling from the experts proved him not guilty. He was maybe banned… or he suffered the consequences for two years. But all this time we kept close to him and he always expressed his desire to fight for the WBC welterweight title.

He took and advised us of the fights he was doing against Eubank at a higher weight, these being two good opportunities for him to make the money that he made. But at all times he requested the WBC to keep him at welterweight and after his last fight he contacted me directly and pleaded to be named mandatory contender for the winner of Barrios-Garcia, which we did.

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Katie Taylor made her final ringwalk and as I looked into the crowd behind me, tears rolled down cheeks from men and women.

Just because we predicted this would be emotional, we didn’t know quite how remarkable it was going to be.

Nothing but Katie mattered and the date will be seared into Irish folklore: September 5, 2026. It was special, and that is not a cliché or hyperbole.

An hour or so before her final walk to the ring, Matchroom’s Jamie Ward interviewed Katie Taylor in the dressing room and the images were shown on the big screens, there was the first ear-splitting scream of the night from the legions of fans.

“All of the hard work has been done, I’ll just go out there and enjoy myself,” she said, and the rapture in the audience picked up once more.

Promoter Eddie Hearn, then interviewed on the stage where all the fighters but Taylor made their entrance at the historic Croke Park, talked of Taylor “taking the roof off this place”, which was not lost on me being seated so high up in the sky in the media box that I could clearly see there was no roof.

“We’ve got one more job to do, that’s win this fight tonight…. She’s nervous, she’s about to walk out for one final time, she’s warmed up for one final time.”

“This is a moment that we shall savour forever. Let’s raise the roof for a true Irish girl.”

*

While the ending of Paddy Donovan’s fight with Tyrone McKenna was anti-climactic, Donovan had been well in control, and he’d decked the Belfastman early on.

Donovan split open McKenna’s eye with a counter left and the doctor almost immediately stopped it with less than 30 seconds left in the fourth.

Donovan had received a superb ovation both before and after the fight.

In the contest prior to the Limerick man’s win, Southampton’s Taylor Bevan had been too sharp for Emmet Brennan, flooring the Irishman five times for the win of his career to date.

The fifth, final and hardest knockdown was unnecessary as there was no way back for Brennan by that point.

Still, it was before the heavyweight bout between Dave Allen and Thomas Carty that the atmosphere started to buzz, with well-known hits and Irish folk songs bringing the crowd toward an inevitable climax that would peak with the ringwalk and the heroine of the piece having her hand raised.

It’s not often Dave Allen is booed when he’s announced, but there was understandably a warm ovation for Dublin’s own Carty.

It was getting cold by this point. Various media members had scurried off to grab small bowls of chips and even a late coffee, given the heavyweights started at 8.50pm.

By 8.53pm Carty was flat on his back on the floor outside the ring and no one seemed to really know what had happened.

Allen was left alone inside the ropes, Carty was given oxygen and the crowd initially hummed with curiosity before big-screen replays showed Allen had clubbed Carty on the back of the head and the Irishman had then lurched headfirst out of the ring and all the way down to the floor.

That fight was all over in 82 seconds on the recommendation of the ringside doctor.

It looked as though Allen wanted to fight on but, once he was able, Carty trudged back to the locker rooms and the Croke Park party continued for everyone else, but not for Allen and there was, of course, no party for Carty.

*

I thought the fans were here for the boxing but even through the main support bouts there were rows of empty seats and, as I went out to the concourse between fights, thousands of fans, many wearing Katie Taylor T-shirts, scarves and hats, queued for food, drinks and Katie Taylor merchandise. They were here for one thing.

There was a long pause and then the crowd’s real co-main event started when Westlife came on and unexpectedly brought the audience to its feet. Boxing on X might have mocked it, but there were no audible complaints from the 83,000 who lit up Croke Park with their phone lights in their thousands to You Raise Me Up. It was one of the most un-boxing moments I had seen. But this was not about boxing. This was about paying homage – and not to the famous Irish group. It was about Katie Taylor and how she had raised up a nation. It wasn’t about a fight. It was about saying a heartfelt thank you.

The band performed two songs and then the lights cut, the concert was over and fight night was upon us. The fact that one contest had been cut short and another had ended bizarrely after less than two minutes meant nothing.

The “where-were-you moment” was about to start.

Taylor’s opponent Flora Pili, from France, came out and soon after her ringwalk music was drowned out by the “Ole Ole” chants of the Irish. Instead of watching the Frenchwoman’s journey to the ring, many craned their necks to the corner of the stadium that had all night been reserved for only Taylor. The Irish star’s walk from the inner sanctum of the stadium was greeted by another roar and when Pili’s music stopped, the sense of anticipation was palpable. The stadium was bathed in neon emerald green, and then Taylor’s music hit – All Hail King Jesus – and she made her slow, measured final walk to the ring with fireworks and pyro.

*

I can’t lie, I felt it even though I had not expected to. But this was not for me, of course, or my colleagues on press row. I wanted to see what it meant to the Irish people and I nudged Tom Ivers, my friend and colleague next to me, and pointed to the row of men and women behind us who were weeping. Two women were crying uncontrollably, dabbing their eyes in their tricolour Katie flags while the men looked towards the ring through watery eyes. Another man, his wife and their daughter, held hands, transfixed by what they were witnessing. They were seemingly trying not to crack but nonetheless hooked on the emotion of it.

These weren’t VIPs. These were the people of Ireland who’d won the virtual ticket lottery and were quickest on the phonelines to get in.

We were a long way from the centre circle, but they were there, walking with Katie. This was their “I was there” moment and they were sharing it with the nation’s idol.

As for the fight, the chorus was interchangeable between “Ole Ole” and “There’s Only One Katie Taylor.”

It was a celebration, not a fight.

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DUBLIN – When you cover a fight, you want to live and breathe it. You want to see it everywhere. You want to know it’s captured the imagination.

If it’s a fight in London, you want to see adverts on t…

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I talked to Tyrone McKenna a few weeks ago ahead of his big fight with former sparmate Paddy Donovan in Dublin’s historic Croke Park.

There has always been so much value, for me, of taking yourself out of your comfort zone in camp and paying the price, and often that means travelling and often that means travelling to America.

It’s different out there, as McKenna eloquently describes.

Here, we speak in the midst of his camp ahead of his crunch crash on Saturday.

Hey Tyrone, thanks for doing this. Do you feel it’s another level, going to Philadelphia to prepare?

Yeah, it’s a different level. The last few years, I think, I’ve kind of just picked the easy way, the easy camps back home, and I’m training. It’s still hard training back home, but when you go away, you come over to Philly, it’s just a different level.

I’m sparring some world-class fighters. I’m in the gym with Boots, Andy Cruz, some unbelievable world champions. Bozy is a world-class coach, so the training’s just next level. It’s really, really tough, but it’s the best camp that I could get myself.

What made you decide to go out there, and why specifically Philly?

Bozy actually phoned me. I started off my career in Bozy’s gym years back. Twelve years ago. I had about three fights with him before he was even a major name in coaching. Before Boots was even known, he wasn’t even pro at the time, and he had me boxing absolutely unbelievable. He had me quite possibly in the best form I ever was in. So when he phoned me just before this fight was announced, he said he wants me back over.

He thinks that he can get me the win. He believes in me. He knows what he’s doing.

He can bring out the best in me, and I thought, you know what? This is a massive opportunity. It’s a historical night, and when I get this win, it catapults me into massive, massive fights.

So I want to give myself the best opportunity possible. I thought coming over here, being away from my family again, being away from my kids, just focusing on boxing, being in a camp where it’s tried and tested… There are world champions in there.

There are some of the best fighters in the world in that gym, and Bozy is an unbelievable coach. So I think this is my best chance to be part of that.

Getting up, I’ll be sore. I’ll be working very hard. I’ll be doing weights.

I’ll be doing sprints. So I’ll not be feeling fresh every day. So there are days that I’ll spar shit.

But sparring, as long as you’re learning, you’re learning. And as long as the sparring opponent is better than your opponent that you’re fighting, it fills me with confidence. I can’t get any better sparring out here.

It’s perfect. I’m so confident going into this fight that Paddy isn’t as good as my sparring partners. Even some of the people you wouldn’t even know are over here.

Philly is just a boxing city. It’s a real tough city. Their average boxer would probably be British champion over in the UK.

They’re very, very tough places. Spars are very, very like a doghouse. You’re shouting at each other.

You’re giving each other shit during the rounds. I’m just out of sparring right now. Me and my sparring partner talking shit the whole time.

Giving each other shit throughout the whole rounds. So yeah, that’s just a different vibe out here. And I think you need to go through a kind of tough, tough sparring to get you ready for the fights.

I’m going to walk into this fight very confident and knowing that this guy is not as good as my sparring partners. It’s not going to be as tough as my sparring partner.

How far out of your comfort zone are you in terms of living?

I’m hating life. I’m hating every day. That’s where it’s going. I’m counting down every day to go home.

It’s just tough. It’s hard being away from the kids and the family. It’s hard to go into this gym.

Like, I’ve come from gyms back home where I was only sparring, maybe six or seven spars at camp. I’m sparring three times a week over here, every single week. It’s tough, tough work.

And it’s not just easy spars. This is hard, hard work. So yeah, there’s no comfort in this at all.

Like, I haven’t got an easy day. I’m dreading every single day. But it’s for a purpose.

It’s to get me in the absolute best shape. And I know I’m so confident I’m going to be in unbelievable shape on September 5th. There’s not going to be any what-ifs after this fight.

I’ve done absolutely everything I can do to win this fight. And I believe in myself. I’ve come on leaps and bounds.

And the change in me is massive. I think I’m going to shock a lot of fighters, or a lot of people, during this fight. I think people on the inside think, ‘He’s a bit washed up, and he’s passed it, and he’s not that good anymore.’

They’re going to be shocked.

Has it made you think about, ah, if I’d done this four or five years ago?

I wish I had done it 10 years ago. But then again, would I have been where I was if I did? It’s hard to say. Obviously, I was getting the fights back home. I mean, if I was over here, would I be getting fights for an American? Would it have been different? So I can’t really complain about my career.

My career’s been unbelievable until now. So it’s a change I needed for this fight. It would have been great to have stuck with Bozy from the start because he’s an unbelievable coach.

But I can’t regret my career. I’ve had an unbelievable career so far.

And you’ve got this underrated gauntlet of fights that you’ve been on. Like the last 10 or 12 have all been against very good fighters.

I think people, a lot of people, sleep on the people I fight. I always, as I’ve said, I want big fights or no fights. I’m not one of these guys that gets beaten and has three or four journeyman fights and then fights another big fight. I fight big fight after big fight.

Back to back to back, always. I want to get in. I want to be worried in my comps.

I want to have to get up in the morning. I know I have to put it in the gym or I’m going to get beat. I don’t want to be in a camp where I go, I can slack because I’m going to win this fight.

That’s not what I’m in boxing for. I’m in boxing to test myself in every aspect in life. I don’t want to be away from my family for a journeyman.

If I’m going away, I want to be away for a reason. And yeah, so I love being in big fights. I love being involved in big fights.

I love testing myself. Seeing how good I am.

And I was there in Waterford for possibly the best two-round fight I’ve ever seen, you against Dylan Moran.

And do you know what? Going out, that wasn’t the game plan, but sitting there before, and I’ve spoken on this before, I genuinely didn’t sleep the night before. I don’t know what happened, but I could not sleep for the life of me. And then I was getting in my own head.

‘You’re not going to sleep tonight. You’re not going to sleep tonight.’ And I didn’t.

I didn’t get one minute of sleep. And then I tried to sleep during the day. Same thing happened.

It was just in my own head and I couldn’t sleep. So going into that fight, I had five rounds maximum in me. And I said to myself, I need to go out, pile the pressure on, stop this guy as quick as possible, because if this goes past four or five rounds, I’m beat.

So I went out bombing. Thankfully, I got him out in two rounds, but if I’d have gone any longer, I’d have been in trouble.

I think, you know, consensus probably had you down as the favourite in both fights against Dylan, right? Which is fair, but going into this one with Paddy, obviously they’ll certainly have you down as the underdog.

There’s no pressure.

I had a lot of pressure on Dylan because a lot of people expected me to blow him out of the water. And at the end of the day, you’re in a fight, so anything can happen.

So I was in my head, and it was like, I need to win this fight, and there was a lot of pressure in that fight, whereas this fight, everyone’s written me off. Everyone.

I don’t realise, you know, how hard of a bastard that I am. Like, I’m out here. I’m training my bollocks off.

I’m on the other side of the world. I put absolutely everything in this fight. No one should write me off.

I’m very confident. As I said, there’s no pressure on me. There’s all the pressure on him.

He’s number one in the world. He’s this future star of Irish boxing, or an Irish star of boxing now. I’m just this old man that people think is washed out.

So it’s lovely to have the pressure like that, to have people really doubting you, to have the bookies not giving you a chance, because I know for a fact that this is a winnable fight for me.

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Have you done much with Paddy in the past?

I’ve sparred Paddy about 100 rounds. I’ve sparred Paddy about 50 times, so more than 100 rounds. We know each other inside out. But I wouldn’t read into spars.

We sparred each other for about four years solid. So there were times where he was in camp, and I was out of camp, so he’d probably got the better of me in those spars. There’s spars where he was out of camp, I was in camp, I was getting the better of him in those spars.

There’s spars where I was hungover and sparring him. There’s spars where he was probably hungover and sparring me.

I don’t think we ever sparred when both of us were in camp for a fight, to be honest. So it’s hard to read spars because you don’t know where people are at in their journey. How fit they are, how sharp they are.

Are they even taking it seriously? You actually can’t read spars. What I do know is we know each other’s faults, we know each other’s weaknesses, we know each other’s strengths. And I know he’s very good.

I don’t doubt that. I know how good Paddy is. But he is beatable.

And I’m confident in exploiting his weaknesses.

What do you think of his sort of Jekyll and Hyde performances against Crocker?

Yeah, well, I think Lewis made it easy the first fight. He didn’t know what to expect. And he kind of sat up perfectly for Paddy Donovan.

That’s the kind of style Paddy likes – is what Lewis was giving him. And I think Lewis came back, read the game plan from the first fight, and came up with a new game plan. And it worked a treat for him.

So, but yeah, it’s completely different. Lewis and me, we’re completely different fighters. So I don’t read into the fights previously.

I mean, he could have had an off day against Lewis the second time. Something could have happened or whatever. So you never know what it is.

I’m just preparing for the absolute best Paddy Donovan there is. I’m sure he’s preparing for the best Tyrone McKenna.

Is there a best fighter that you’ve faced so far in the pros?

Harlem Eubank was very, very good, I think. But it’s hard to say because sometimes your camps go better than other camps, so your fights are easier or harder.

I think with that fight, I didn’t spar enough. I wasn’t as sharp as I should have been in that fight. So Harlem Eubank was on his game that day.

He’s very fast, so it was a tough fight for me that night. But my favourite fight was Jack Catterall, even though I got beat.

It kind of announced me on the world stage. No one really knew me before then. Everyone thought I was going to get stopped and I gave it to Jack Catterall in a war. People loved it. I was only beat by a point.

I was put down two or three times that fight. I only lost by a point.

And I loved it. I loved announcing myself on the world stage that night.

What do you think of this occasion that you’re going to be a part of with Paddy, Croke Park, Katie Taylor, the whole thing?

Unbelievable. As I said in a few interviews, you would never have dreamed of us. It’s too big to dream. It’s huge.

It’s Croke Park. It’s the biggest stadium in Ireland. The last boxing event was Muhammad Ali.

That’s how long ago boxing was in that place. So you never would have thought, ‘I’m going to be boxing in Croke Park. That’s my dream.’

Because it’s nobody’s dream. Unless you’re an absolute legend like Katie Taylor. That’s the only person in Ireland who could ever achieve something like this, I guess.

And to be part of this is massive. There was everyone in Ireland queuing up to fight in this show. Apart from me, I didn’t even step up.

I didn’t even think I could get on the show. So I wasn’t even thinking about it. I genuinely was like, there’s no chance.

I’m trying to get other fights on different shows. And then out of the blue, my manager just texted me here. ‘It looks like you could be on the show.’

And I was like, ‘Fucking hell.’ And trying to keep it secret for three weeks, it was killing me.

And I was worried. I still didn’t believe it when I got told until he was saying it’s sealed.

I was still doubting. I was like, ‘Is it actually happening?’ Because every other boxer is saying they’re on it. We all can’t be on it.

So someone’s lying. So when I got the phone call to come down to the press conference, that’s when I knew it was definitely on. And honestly, it’s beyond my dreams.

It’s something I’ll talk about. I’ll be the new Carl Froch. I’ll be in the bars. I’ll be telling absolutely everyone, ‘Do you know I boxed in front of 80,000 people?’

That’s going to be my new line to everyone. I’ll be drinking on this for the rest of my life.

I’m just buzzing. I’m buzzing to be part of it.

(Main picture Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing, the remainder from McKenna’s Instagram)