Nigel Benn

T
he first draft of this book was written five years ago. As you will understand when you read it, my life was very complicated then, and I decided at the time that I did not want to publish it.

That first version could not have been written without the help and skill of John Lisners, and this final version has been based on his original work. I would like to thank him for his contribution.

Nigel
Benn

‘L
et’s go to work …’ My corner man gave me the word and I nodded. We left my room. I was dressed in black shorts and black boots, a Clint Eastwood-type poncho covering my body. My blood was boiling, and I was psyched up like never before — ready to go out there and do some damage to the man they all said was going to hammer me.

Do you know how much noise 12,000 people can make? The roar of the crowd brought goosebumps to my flesh. It was so loud you might have thought the roof of the stadium was going to burst. Man, I was buzzing, and when I raised my hands in the air, the crowd went wild — I knew then that they were on my side. We were like gladiators, ready to fight until one of us dropped.

Gerald McClellan, the challenger, was already in the ring. He was the most ferocious fighter ever to hit our shores, a freak of nature. I heard later he’d been shooting his mouth off, bragging about how he was going to finish me off quickly. But I don’t read those pre-match reports; you never know how they’re going to affect you. In my mind he was just an obstacle in my way — there was £700,000 at stake and he had to be removed.

The bell went for the start of the first round. When I got into the ring, I thought to myself, ‘Yeah the arms don’t look so bad, legs are skinny.’ I didn’t even think about being scared of the man until I felt his punch. Man, I didn’t know where I was; I didn’t know a guy could hit that hard. I went straight through the ropes. I clambered back into the ring, but he kept at me, bashing me from pillar to post. By the end of the first round, I was a mess.

When the bell finally sounded, my corner man Dennie Mancini took over the show. He grabbed me and said, ‘Fucking hell, Nigel, you’ve really got him in trouble, mate!’

But I’m bashed to pieces! What’s he talking about, I’ve got him in trouble? When I heard what
Dennie said, though, it turned it all around for me.

‘Really? Yeah, too right, Den, he is in trouble.’ That was just what I needed to pick me up. If I’d had some guy in the corner saying, ‘Look, Nige, you’re taking a battering here,’ then my morale’s going to plummet. But thanks to Dennie, I went into the second round feeling like a champion, and now it’s me bashing him around, me making him run.
Bang!
Come on, mate, I don’t care what you throw at me.

In the second, I had him running round the ring with half his gum-shield hanging out. Everyone was going crazy. I was throwing big hooks and he was on his back foot.

At the end of round eight he put me down. I hardly knew what hit me, but I just thought, ‘Yeah, that’s good. Now feel one of mine!’ I got up, he rushed in towards me, and I gave him a right uppercut and a left hook. I’d regained the initiative, and I could feel that the fight was mine. I put him down twice, and then a final right uppercut brought him to his knees. I remember saying, ‘When you come up for round fucking nine, there’s going to be more of that!’ The crowd went wild, and I screamed, ‘WHO IS HE? WHO’S THE CHAMPION?’

The ref stopped the fight in the tenth round; McClellan was just sitting in the corner. I didn’t know what was wrong with him. My head was spinning, and I was so bashed up I wasn’t even sure if I had won. It wasn’t until I felt my arm being lifted into the air that I knew I’d done it.

The next thing I knew, my dad was there. He
gave me a pat on the back that nearly knocked me to the floor. Then there was a television camera.

‘They brought him over here to try to bash me up,’ I shouted at the interviewer. ‘Look at him now!’

The roar of the crowd was still deafening.

And then I blacked out with the pain. The whole thing hadn’t lasted longer than 20 minutes. I woke up in an ambulance with my wife Carolyne beside me, crying her eyes out. Man, the pain was wracking my body, but I managed to turn to her and smile.

‘You want to go out partying?’ I whispered. Somehow she managed to smile despite her tears.

I ended up in the London Hospital in the same ward as McClellan. The man had done me some serious harm — I had a fractured nose and jaw, and I was passing blood because of the kidney damage. But McClellan wasn’t even awake. I managed to hobble over to his bed where I looked at him, kissed him, and said simply, ‘Sorry.’

That was my ultimate fight, and let me tell you something — inflicting that kind of damage does something to you. Sure, I’d wanted to win, but not at this price. I’d helped nurse Michael Watson after Chris Eubank did the same to him back in 1991, and the nightmare for me now was that Gerald wouldn’t recover. On that night in 1996, my heart went out of boxing, the sport that had been my life for the previous ten years. Even Sadé, my little girl, could see the wreck that her daddy had become, and whispered softly for me to retire.

And so I did. Sure, there were a few more
fights, but I’d given it everything I had. That fight was the last chapter in the story of the Dark Destroyer, and the first in the story of my new life. Now it’s time to tell everyone how it is, to tell the truth about the fights, the women, the money.

I’m Nigel Benn, the Dark Destroyer, two-time champion of the world. This is my story …

I
was eight when I heard the devastating news. Even at that tender age, I knew my world would never be the same again. Andy was lying on a table in the mortuary and my dad had to identify his body. He was just 17. Drained of life. A warrior at peace with the world.

Andy was my god. He was my eldest brother and the bond linking us had grown far beyond the usual blood ties that exist between siblings and had progressed into a form of sincere love and adulation. He had been a hero to whom I could reach out and touch. He was handsome, powerful and invincible. A conqueror. A charismatic knight. Never mind that he threw me out of the top bunk in our cramped bedroom when tiring of my games, or that he cut a race track into my head. Andy could do no wrong. I would feel safe and contented snuggling up to his strong frame, gently bringing my lips to his face and daring to lick or suck his eyebrow while stroking his cheek.

The outside world, the suburban jungle of Ilford with its row upon row of terraced houses,
corner shops, cafés, police stations and street gangs, had formed a different opinion. Andy spelled trouble —
big
trouble. He was too tough for his own good, and it was out of respect for his strength that small armies would have to take him on in a street fight. One brave youth against many. The police, too, had grudgingly bowed to his physical superiority by once sending seven officers to arrest him at home. On that occasion he demanded, and was granted, the dignity of being allowed to walk unhindered to the Black Maria, free of handcuffs and without being escorted, pushed and shoved by over-zealous or bullying policemen.

There were many who had predicted that he would come to no good. My mum, Mina, and dad, Dickson, were to regret the fact that they had not insisted Andy remain permanently in Shorey Village, St Andrew, Barbados when Dad emigrated to England in 1956. A year later, Mum followed Dad, leaving Andy behind to be brought up by our grandmother while my parents established themselves in London. This was quite a common occurrence among West Indian people who could rely on an extended family for support.

Dad was 23 when he arrived here, and Mum was 19, both of them hoping to find a land of opportunity. Most of his best mates had already sailed or were about to sail to Britain. Like him, they were hard-working, honest folk who wanted the best for their families and were prepared to slog it out doing menial jobs in order to better themselves and provide careers for the children.

When the boat train rumbled into Victoria, Dad was dismayed with his first impression of London. He thought he'd made a disastrous mistake and wished there was another train to take him straight back home. It was March and he couldn't understand why he'd been so daft as to leave the Caribbean for a dirty, mucky, cold country.

In fact, it was only a short time after Dad's arrival in London that Andy was born in Barbados, so he never saw his first-born son until he was eight years old. Those were difficult times. After the war years and before independence, people didn't starve in Barbados. They might have gone hungry but they would not starve and they didn't have to rely on shops for their provisions. They grew a lot of their own food and flying fish, a staple diet, was cheap and plentiful. As British passport holders, Barbadians had every right to settle in Britain and came here to earn more money and create better lives for themselves than was possible in the West Indies.

Back in Shorey Village, in the northern part of Barbados, Dad had worked on sugar cane plantations during harvest time and had also trained as a carpenter. However, the thought of being a chippy in Britain and having to endure the freezing cold didn't appeal to him very much so he chose an engineering job with British Rail.

In those days, it was easy to change jobs and Dad eventually ended up in Ilford, Essex, working for such companies as J Burns, which supplied car parts for the big automobile manufacturers. One of
their sidelines was to make ceiling tiles. He became an expert at this and was promoted to foreman. He stayed with them for 15 years until he was made redundant, and then joined Ford Motors in Dagenham, building engines. He was a supervisor for 14 years until his retirement at the end of 1992. He has always said that if he had had his time over again, he would have joined the Metropolitan Police.

Like Dad, Mum never stopped working. Even now she works evenings as a cleaner at the hospital where I was born. I've told her many times that she needn't bother as I would help her out financially but she's not interested. Both of my parents have a very strong work ethic thanks to the tough times they knew when they first arrived.

They bought their house in Henley Road, Ilford, in 1960 and still live there. I guess it holds too many memories for them to move, even though I've tried to coax them away. In those early days, there were times when Dad was so skint that he would come home in despair, not knowing where he was going to get his next penny. Yet somehow they managed. He would also take on second jobs at night to make ends meet.

I give them full credit for their efforts. They deserve a medal. They never took anything from the state and paid for their own house and fed and clothed seven boys. Dad, who is a born-again Christian, but was not overly religious when we were little, would pray to God for strength and good health.

‘Please, Lord,' he'd say, ‘please let me live long
enough to see my boys grow up. After that, even if I die the next day, I will be happy and grateful that you let me live this long.'

Andy was about 11 when they finally sent for him. He was running wild and our grandparents had begged Mum and Dad to relieve them of the responsibility of looking after him.

When he arrived, we totalled seven brothers living in a three-bedroom terraced house in Henley Road, Ilford, Essex. It was about 12 miles from the West End of London and both Mum and Dad had saved, slaved and sweated to buy it, sometimes taking on two jobs at once in order to give us a home we could call our own.

Andy had traded palm trees, sugar cane fields and the tropical sea for a patch of grey suburbia in east London. It must have torn his world apart to arrive as a stranger in a foreign land into a family and home to which he intimately belonged but where he also felt totally alien. Even so, the pecking order of the brothers was quickly redefined and Andy became firmly entrenched as our number one.

But he wanted more than just to stay at home arguing with his brothers. That was never going to satisfy his passion for excitement and physical release. Both of these demands were partially catered for by his friends who roamed the streets of Ilford, and Andy quickly became a force to be reckoned with. By the time my brother was 17, he had been in and out of Borstal, caused palpitations for Mum and Dad and had got himself a girlfriend who was more than twice his age.

When I remember Andy, I think to myself, ‘He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.' But I never really found out what happened to him the day he died. To this day, we have not been told the full story. The sketchy details I have been able to piece together still bother me and if ever I should discover that some individual is responsible for what happened to Andy, then God help that person — they'll have Nigel Benn to answer to.

We were told that Andy had been visiting his girlfriend and that there had been a disturbance at her house. There is a suggestion that a number of people had grouped together in another room and that Andy considered a quick escape to be preferable to an unfairly matched battle. He is said to have leapt from an upstairs window, hoping to clear a glass conservatory roof and land in the garden from where he could jump over the back fence. In his rush, he fell through the conservatory roof, shattering the glass and severing a main artery in his groin. Did anyone try to help him as he bled to death? That is another question that continues to trouble me but may never be answered. We all wept for him then and I still grieve for him now.

There have been times when I have thought very seriously of joining him prematurely, to hold him close to me once more. If death means that there is a chance of being with my brother again, then I am tempted towards that unknown journey. Sometimes, when things have been harder than they are now, I felt like ending my life in the hope that I would find consolation with Andy. I wanted
to be with him and cuddle him as I had done before he left me. I still dream about him and I guess until I meet him again, my life will be an unfinished chapter. I don't care when death comes or what fate has in store, as long as I can see my brother.

Mum and Dad told us to remember Andy as he was and for that reason not one of us six surviving brothers went to the funeral. In fact, to this day our parents have not revealed the whereabouts of his grave in Barkingside Cemetery, although they visit the spot themselves.

My memory of him is as strong and poignant today as it was when I was eight years old. It is of a well-built, handsome youth who always wore crew-neck jumpers, brown corduroy trousers and Doc Martin boots. He was no big-time criminal. Sure, he was someone who knew how to look after himself but, most importantly, he meant everything to me. He may have got into some bad company but, generally, he was only guilty of minor misdemeanours. As for me? I wanted to be like my idol — a street fighter. The toughest of them all. Just like Andy.

I weighed in at 6lb 4oz at precisely 9.30am on Wednesday, 22 January 1964. It was an unusually mild winter's day, but the good weather was little consolation for the misery my parents suffered. My entry into the world was a total anti-climax. I was born the wrong sex!

What a way to begin life. I was a disappointment to my parents before I'd barely had a chance to draw my first breath. Mum had
pinned her hopes on me wearing frilly pink knickers. She and Dad had been praying for a little girl and this time — having already had five boys — they were convinced that their prayers would be answered.

That just shows what a lottery life can be. Had my parents given birth to a girl after their first two sons, they might well have called it a day and not had any more children. I guess there are probably a lot more people out there who also wish I'd been born a girl.

My dad later told us why he and Mum were so convinced I would be female. Quite simply, they were conned by a gypsy woman who came knocking on the door of our Ilford home two months before I was due. She'd probably heard about us from a mutual acquaintance, because she told Dad, ‘You have five sons and your wife is expecting another child. This time your baby will be a little girl.'

Dad jumped with joy. He was ecstatic, delirious and grateful. To reward this herald of good news, he went rummaging about the house for money and flowers and gave the gypsy woman his last few pence. In 1964, that amount of money was very important to him and could mean the difference between eating a proper meal or not eating at all. But that didn't matter in the least. This was what my parents wanted to hear and believe.

When, some time later, my mum gave birth to me, Dad rang her at King George's Hospital from a public phone booth. Guessing the worst from the tone in her voice, he said, ‘Go on, tell me it's
another boy.'

Mum responded in the repentant tones of a sinner at confessional. ‘Yes, it's a boy,' she whispered.

Dad went berserk. Angrily, he kicked and punched the red telephone kiosk in unbridled fury, hoping it would fall over in the misguided belief that it might help to relieve his frustration. A woman neighbour, who happened to be passing by at that moment, brightly remarked, ‘It's another boy, then, Mr Benn?' He gave her a grim look and stormed into the house, muttering that he would be going out in search of the gypsy woman.

Later that day, he visited Mum in hospital and she asked if he was still disappointed with her. He replied, ‘I'm disappointed, but not with you.' Apparently, she just smiled and said she was going to be happy with her boys.

When they'd got over the shock of another son, they christened me Nigel Gregory Benn. However, in spite of everything that had happened, they were determined to learn their lesson the hard way and five years later tried once more for a little girl. This time, there was no gypsy woman on whom they could heap disappointment and anger when their seventh son was born.

What a shame we weren't Irish because I learned during my army days in Northern Ireland that the seventh son of a seventh son has special powers.

With hindsight, the number of men in the Benn family should have been expected because Mum's brother had six sons and her sister, five,
before she gave birth to a daughter.

Andy was the only child in our family to have been born in Barbados. He was eight years older than me. The rest of us were all born in London. Dermot is five years older than me, then John who is three years older; next is Danny, two years older; Mark, one year; and Anthony, the baby of the family, is almost six years younger than me.

Although they already had five sons when I was born, Mum was still only 26 and Dad 30. It's just as well because they needed to be young, healthy and strong, as it would have been impossible otherwise to feed and control seven boisterous lads, each of whom had the appetite of a horse.

Although we never went hungry, there were lean times and seven lively boys sharing a small three-bedroom house put a strain on everyone. The brothers were forever fighting over food or clothes or just brawling with one another for amusement.

Thankfully, Mum was a genius at making ends meet and creating meals out of virtually nothing, while Dad provided a heavy-handed discipline in an attempt to keep us all on the right side of the law. I always feared his temper if I did wrong. He is a big man, 6ft 1in and powerfully built. Before he whacked us — and he did so only when we deserved it — he would say in a broad West Indian accent, ‘If you don't hear it, you must FEEL it.' And feel it I did, far too often for my liking because, when he hit, it was like being struck with the force of an express train.