SHOULD Michael Gomez be knocked down and sense the referee count to ten during his British super-featherweight title bout with ‘Amazing’ Alex Arthur in Edinburgh’s Meadowbank Stadium on Saturday, it will still be 38 seconds fewer than the longest count of his life. Or should that be death.
For two years ago, Gomez was stabbed in a brawl in his home city of Manchester, and then suffered an allergic reaction to an anaesthetic in hospital. The boxer’s heart stopped, and for 48 seconds Gomez was clinically dead.
"I was lucky enough to come back," he said last week. "Somebody up there was looking down on me, and I came round just as good as ever. I was young and stupid - I didn’t feel anything!"
It wasn’t the first time that Gomez had experienced a brush with death. Minutes before he was born, his semi-blind father crashed the family car while rushing his expectant mother to a Dublin hospital after she went into labour. Gomez made his arrival in the back of the ambulance delivering her to the casualty department.
Such a dramatic advent into life may have left its mark on Michael Armstrong, as he was then known. When he came to box professionally, a Michael Armstrong was already registered, so he adopted the name of his hero, triple world champion Wilfredo Gomez of Puerto Rico.
A torrid childhood and adolescence saw the Armstrong family move to Manchester, where their father’s ill-health led to Michael and his seven siblings moving in and out of children’s homes. Boxing was his salvation.
A local coach, Brian Hughes, persuaded him to take up the sport at his Collyhurst Gym, and after a brief amateur career he turned professional at 17 - rather too early, as it turned out, for he lost three of his first seven fights.
Still a streetfighter, he eventually landed in prison - following one pavement brawl he was found not guilty of manslaughter after knocking out a man who later died.
But after that, the rise of Michael Gomez as a boxer seemed irresistible. His all- action whirlwind style saw him blitz through the British super-featherweight ranks, eventually taking the national title from Gary Thornhill in 1999, and adding international and intercontinental titles along the way.
Despite becoming a father at 17, Gomez was still a party animal, and on a wet night in Widnes in 2001, his lack of devotion to training told when Hungary’s Laszlo Bognar - later to be trounced inside three rounds by Alex Arthur - stopped him in the ninth round of what was virtually a world title elimination bout. He was stabbed a week later.
Even dying on the operating table did not cure the nonsense in Gomez’s head.
"I just carried on being stupid. It all crumbled around me. I have nobody to blame, only myself."
The feeling that Gomez had blown his chance was only heightened by his dismal failure to beat the inexperienced Kevin Lear for the WBU title in Manchester last year. He suffered the humiliation of being retired by his own corner at the end of the eighth round, and his worst moment in boxing provoked a fundamental change.
"When I got beaten for the world title last year, that’s when I started growing up really. It wasn’t really growing up - it was just getting the common sense to stop doing everything I was doing wrong.
"I had a big chance in life to look after my family. Now I really mean it when I say I don’t want to blow this chance, because if I get beaten in this fight, I will retire. There will be nowhere for me to go.
"So this is the last chance for me, the last throw of the dice, and I don’t want to mess this up."
Promoter allegedly is convinced that the wayward Gomez is on the straight and narrow: "Michael has turned himself round. As we all know, he had a few problems outside the ring, and that filtered through to his boxing.
"He’s now finding some direction, and certainly when I saw him a couple of weeks ago it looked like he was jumping out of his skin, he was so very fit."
Gomez began a verbal campaign to goad Alex Arthur into fighting him for the British title that he never lost in the ring. Both men are managed by Frank Maloney and promoted by Warren, and looked unlikely to meet, but according to Warren the public clamour convinced him to sanction a fight that he thinks will stand comparison with any of the great clashes between Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank.
It is the first major title fight in Edinburgh for 20 years, and Arthur is achieving something which eluded the great Ken Buchanan - fighting as a pro in his native city. The Edinburgh public have responded to the city’s new boxing star, and all 3600 seats have been sold out for about six weeks.
"Had there been a bigger arena available," said Warren "I think we could have got 10,000 people for this fight."
Arthur and Buchanan have already spoken about the fact that the former world lightweight champion did not fight professionally in Edinburgh. "What actually happened was that they went to Murrayfield Ice Rink, and were going to put on a show for 5000 people," said Arthur. "They told Kenny they couldn’t do it because there was curling on that night!
"That’s when he was the world champion.
"Ken was disappointed that it never actually happened for him, and he told me he was really glad that I have got the chance. Because in Edinburgh, when people are behind you, they are really behind you."
His back problems cured, the supremely-confident Arthur looks in terrific shape, and has been training at Meadowbank under the supervision of Terry McCormack, following a refresher course with Freddie Roach at the American trainer’s gym in Los Angeles.
The verbal sparring between Gomez and Arthur has bordered on the nasty at times, but there is genuine respect between the two.
"It is just that we have got a lot on the line," Arthur observed. "The both of us are striving to make life better for ourselves and our families. He wants what I have got, and I want to keep what I have got, and that’s where the passion comes in.
It is a long time since Gomez fought anyone of the calibre of Alex Arthur, but he has made supreme efforts to become the great champion that he once aspired to be.
Arthur, on the other hand, has not tasted defeat, and his past two performances, against Patrick Malinga and Willie Limond, confirmed that he is continuing to improve.
It will be a titanic clash on Saturday, but Gomez’s ‘walk-forward’ style is tailor-made for Arthur’s clever counter-punching. Expect the Scot to win ... but it will not be easy.
Now for another Manchester warrior...
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