The Hate Game by Ben Dirs

Author:Ben Dirs [Dirs, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471129056
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Somehow, I remember

While Chris Eubank was hogging the headlines, whether through his courageous feats in the ring, his outlandish outfits or his endless philosophising, Nigel Benn was rebuilding his shattered career. Not for the first time. Only this time he would do so without the help of Ambrose Mendy, with whom he had become terminally disillusioned. ‘Ambrose was a great promoter and a great businessman,’ says Benn. ‘He could have gone far, been bigger than Frank Warren, bigger than all of them. If he’d kept his head right.’ Instead, Mendy was imprisoned for fraud in May 1991, shortly after Benn’s knockout of Robbie Sims, his first fight since his defeat by Eubank the previous November. Benn, who served as a character witness at Mendy’s court case and claims he paid Mendy’s lawyers’ fees, decided it was the right time to walk away.

‘It was one of the best times in my life with Ambrose,’ says Benn. ‘I learned a lot from him. I just wish he hadn’t carried on the way he did. Sometimes people try to build their own platform and convince people they made me who I am. And people get greedy and spoil it for themselves, that’s what it boiled down to. At the time, Ambrose had a big house and I was still living in my terraced house. But when I left Ambrose I went from the three-bedroom terraced house to a six-bedroom mansion. I started lining my pockets. He was a big part of my life, but as long as I was with him I hadn’t really hatched. When I left him I was able to flap my wings and take flight.’

Benn’s defeat by Eubank had the press men falling over themselves to write off his career. But Benn’s seventh-round knockout of Sims, a former world title contender and the half-brother of Marvin Hagler, had at least some of them believing again. ‘Nigel Benn is still very much a force to be reckoned with in the world,’ said The Times ‘s Srikumar Sen, who had been so scathing of Benn following his loss to Eubank. Benn, hinting at his coming split with Mendy, said: ‘Let Chris Eubank be the bad boy now. I don’t want to be known as the “Dark Destroyer”. I have got all that aggression out of my system.’ Sims, who had never been knocked out or stopped in a 42-fight professional career, no doubt disagreed. Certainly Barry Hearn thought Benn still carried enough threat to form one third of a British ‘three kings’, which the thrusting promoter thought could rival the Leonard-Hagler-Duran-Hearns quartet that thrilled American boxing audiences throughout the 1980s. To this end, Hearn signed Benn on a fight-by-fight agreement and promised him the winner of Eubank-Watson I and 40 per cent of a £2 million purse.

The controversial outcome of the first fight between Eubank and Watson frustrated Benn’s ambitions before the tragic outcome of the second meant he would have to spend even longer lurking in the wings, away from the limelight.

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