Definitely worth a read imo:
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/a ... he-beating
Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
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Boxerbeetle
- Light Heavyweight
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- Joined: 19 Sep 2011, 10:59
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
Interesting interview though I'd disagree that Nick Blackwell's corner knew that Nick was seriously injured. If Gary Lockett had an inkling that the boxer was seriously hurt he'dhavecalled the boutoff and got medical attention immediately. Lockett is an intelligent man who has always come across as decent and level headed, he knows what's important and what's not. The author of the article, Decca Aitkenhead, has made a step too far with that statement.
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Boxerbeetle
- Light Heavyweight
- Posts: 32967
- Joined: 19 Sep 2011, 10:59
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
For the benefit of those unwilling/unable to click on the link provided, here's the full interview:
Boxing has always been a cinematic sport, and when you meet the Eubanks, it is easy to see why. Installed in a luxury suite on the 17th floor of a lavish Knightsbridge hotel, they look less like human beings than high-definition CGI fantasy creations. Chris Eubank is wearing a heavily tailored, high-concept jacket and shirt over stonewashed jeans that appear to have been customised by Jackson Pollock, and cling like stockings from the knee down, to boots that my command of fashion vocabulary does not stretch far enough to describe. His son, Chris, known as Junior, is dressed in a more recognisable ensemble of flawless designer jeans and fitted T-shirt, but the impossible perfection of both men’s physiques, and detail of their grooming, are unlike anything I have ever seen outside a cinema screen.
Two Saturdays ago, Junior challenged the British champion Nick Blackwell for the middleweight title. By round seven, it was clear he had won. Blackwell’s corner could see their man was seriously injured, but he kept telling them he was fit to fight on. Watching at the ringside was Junior’s father. Eubank had fought an infamous fight 25 years earlier that left his defeated opponent,Michael Watson, in a coma for 40 days, and disabled for life. He recognised the warning signs and began pounding the canvas, imploring the referee to stop the fight. In the 10th round the referee stepped in. Moments later, Blackwell collapsed. Bleeding from the brain, he spent seven days in an induced coma, only regaining consciousness the day before the Eubanks and I meet. If the drama were a movie script, it would feel too farfetched even for Hollywood.
Both men look rather tense and wary at first, understandably. Blackwell’s injury has revived the blaze of controversy about boxing that last raged when Watson lay in a coma, and cast Junior in the same invidious role forced upon his father before him, simultaneously champion and culprit.
“It was tough,” the 25-year-old admits quietly. “I haven’t actually ever experienced anything like that. Going from complete elation and happiness to ‘Wow, he’s on the floor unconscious with an oxygen mask over his face’.” The Eubank camp issued a statement postponing all celebrations until Blackwell had recovered, and Junior tweeted his opponent’s family, asking for permission to visit when they felt ready. As yet there has been no reply.
“I’m sure at some point we’ll be in touch and can sort something out. Hopefully. But at the same time, I did this to this man.” Junior speaks slowly, reflectively. “So I could understand his family not wanting me to be around him. How would you feel if the man who put your son in hospital turned up? Because a lot of people would think: ‘Oh well, they fought, he was trying to beat him up, they must really hate each other for him to do that to him.’ Which is not the case at all. But they might think that.”
It is, of course, precisely what lots of people are thinking. And on social media, plenty let him know it, too. What they fail to understand, Junior says, is the difference between hitting a man because you hate him and want to hurt him, and being a boxer.
“Obviously, in the buildup to some fights, there’s animosity and testosterone and banter,” he says, “but at the end of the day, we all understand that this is a business, just two men who are trying to further their careers and provide for their families. There shouldn’t be any true malice towards your opponent.
“I learned very early on once I started boxing as a kid that if you go into the ring emotionally charged you make mistakes. It’s a mental game, it’s a chess match, you’ve got to think, you’ve got to strategise and make tactical decisions. And you can’t do that if all you’re thinking is: ‘I really hate this guy, I want to kill him.’ I have fought fighters in the past who I don’t like as people, but you have to block out any type of dislike or hate. Whatever he’s done, whatever he’s said, you can’t be thinking about that. You just have to see him as a man that you have to outpoint, outgame, and beat on the night.”
His father has been nodding, but has a more poetic point to make. Junior speaks in the conventional register of the professional sportsman – colourless, economical, prone to cliche (“I dominated the early rounds”) – but Eubank Senior sounds more like a Jamaican preacher, and animates his monologues with a pantomime of dramatic pauses and growly whispers.
“The feeling between two fighters is profound,” he states. “We go places where normal people don’t go. You smell a man’s blood, it smells like rust. You get into a clench, you feel his strength, you feel his desperation, he feels yours. You’re sharing this.”
I think this might sound a bit over the top to Junior, but he agrees: “You’ll never be as close to anyone. It’s not like anything else you can experience with another human being.”
Eubank Sr murmurs reverently: “Only warriors get to experience this ...” before his son completes the sentence, “merging of souls.” Sr continues: “Inexplicable perception. This is modern-day gladiating. And other people do not get to experience this relationship. It’s very difficult to get across what that feels like.”
What would be the closest analogy, one a non-boxer might understand? “There isn’t one,” says Junior. Then he thinks for a while. “Maybe it’s like a woman giving birth. As a man, we will never know what that’s like: the emotions, the pain, all of that, what it feels like. We will never understand what that is. Being in a fight with another man is very similar.”
“Ah!” Eubank purrs. “Yes! That’s good. Ahhh.”
The conversation becomes increasingly mystical when the pair explain why a young man’s willingness to risk his life, rather than quit a fight he had already lost, was neither a pointless tragedy nor proof that the sport should be banned. On the contrary, it exemplified the “honour and integrity” of what they call boxing’s code, which obligates every boxer to fight to the death, and elevates the sport above all others. “You play football, rugby, tennis. You do not play boxing,” Eubank says. “When a sportsperson is in a game, when it gets too much, you quit. But in boxing you can’t quit. You have to be taken out.” So to fight on with a bleeding brain and no hope of winning was a wise and advisable decision? “Yes, because he’d got no choice.” The voice drops to a gravelly hiss. “Blackwell, he’s a warrior, he’s got no choice. The only ones who can pull him out is his corner, and they didn’t.” Yes but only, I point out, because the boxer kept insisting he was fit. “He had to say he was good!” Eubank cries triumphantly. “You see? The integrity of the warrior means you have to stay and take the beating.”
Presumably Eubank would not want to see his own son box on with a bleeding brain, rather than quit a fight? He shakes his head. “By my perception, Junior can’t quit. You know why? He’s his father’s son. He knows that’s not what we do. I could pull him out, throw in the towel – and I would. If he was in danger, I would. But he could never make that decision. He could never decide to quit.”
I turn to Junior, and he is nodding solemnly: “I would never quit. It is the most dishonourable thing you can do in boxing.”
Eubank shows me YouTube clips on his phone of a pre-fight press conference, in which he taunts Blackwell for quitting a previous fight after suffering a broken rib. The uncomfortable thought occurs that this might help explain why Blackwell fought on so suicidally. But Eubank knows how dangerous the kamikaze code of boxing can be – it was why he tried so hard to ban his children from the sport.
Unlike himself, who grew up in poverty on south London council estates, Junior and his two younger brothers and sister enjoyed an affluent upbringing in Brighton with their mum, Karron, and their celebrity dad. Privately educated, he never saw his dad fight, or even understood what a boxer was. “But I’ve got the same DNA as my father. I grew up in a big house with everything I needed, but I still ended up in scraps on the street. Why is that?” He was 11 when a friend showed him a VHS of a famous Eubank fight, but it took three years of pestering before his father relented. Junior’s promise was instantly apparent, so at 17 he set off with another brother to train in Las Vegas, and has been in single-minded pursuit of a world title belt ever since.
“He is his father’s son,” Eubank says repeatedly, with undisguised pride, and Junior says so himself once or twice, but not as often as he says, “I am my own man.” Each time his dad launches into another theatrical monologue I glance across at him, but if he is embarrassed or bored you would never know. He listens in respectful, impassive silence, and says he and his father have always been close. The exact terms of their professional relationship today are mysteriously opaque, for Eubank claims to be his son’s coach and his manager, but is also an “inspirational speaker – not motivational, inspirational”.His second wife, Claire, lives in the UAE and works for an airline, but also appears to oversee Team Eubank. Had his sons not gone into boxing (Sebastian, the second eldest, also fights professionally), he says he would spend his time watching ballet and gymnastics.
If both father and son were in their prime, I ask, who would defeat the other in the ring? “I can’t answer that cos I’m not in my prime now,” Junior replies. Eubank leaps to his feet and is suddenly dancing round the hotel room as if in the ring, jabbing and skipping, squaring off, muttering wildly. “If he followed strategy, he would have beaten me even now. But if you didn’t, then I would beat you. Cos I’m clever. I would wait around, pick you off, I’m not engaging in a toe-to-toe with you.” Junior stands and watches, as inscrutable as ever. I ask what he is thinking.
“He’s right,” he says quietly.
“I hope you know!” his dad shrieks.
But Eubank has always said that he lost his killer instinct after the fateful fight with Watson. Does he worry that the Blackwell fight may rob his son of his? “No. He doesn’t suffer from the sensitivities I have. Because I have sensitivities I shouldn’t have had. As a fighter. And that did compromise me. I don’t think he has that sensitivity.”
The sensitivity I can see in Eubank is not as a fighter, but as a person. He always used to say he hated boxing and only did it for the money, but now he admits this was nonsense. “Of course I loved it.” What he hated was his public image as a risibly eccentric buffoon, which he blames on sports journalists too stupid to recognise a man of substance. His various reality TV appearances since retiring from the sport were his attempts to “cut out the middleman” and show the public “who he really is”. Their success in this endeavour is a matter of debate.
I suspect it was his longing for approval that made the Watson fight so devastating for his career. The only approval I see Junior craving is his father’s.
“People have asked me: ‘Do you think it’s going to affect you like it affected your father?’ And the answer is no. I understand the sport I’m in. Now that I’ve seen first-hand what can happen to a man in a fight, this isn’t a movie, this isn’t a story. A man I have fought was in a coma for a week. So I know that this is real, this really can happen. So it’s changed me insofar as now that I know this can happen, I’m going to be even more relentless in my fighting and my training. Because I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. I want to become a world champion.”
Boxing has always been a cinematic sport, and when you meet the Eubanks, it is easy to see why. Installed in a luxury suite on the 17th floor of a lavish Knightsbridge hotel, they look less like human beings than high-definition CGI fantasy creations. Chris Eubank is wearing a heavily tailored, high-concept jacket and shirt over stonewashed jeans that appear to have been customised by Jackson Pollock, and cling like stockings from the knee down, to boots that my command of fashion vocabulary does not stretch far enough to describe. His son, Chris, known as Junior, is dressed in a more recognisable ensemble of flawless designer jeans and fitted T-shirt, but the impossible perfection of both men’s physiques, and detail of their grooming, are unlike anything I have ever seen outside a cinema screen.
Two Saturdays ago, Junior challenged the British champion Nick Blackwell for the middleweight title. By round seven, it was clear he had won. Blackwell’s corner could see their man was seriously injured, but he kept telling them he was fit to fight on. Watching at the ringside was Junior’s father. Eubank had fought an infamous fight 25 years earlier that left his defeated opponent,Michael Watson, in a coma for 40 days, and disabled for life. He recognised the warning signs and began pounding the canvas, imploring the referee to stop the fight. In the 10th round the referee stepped in. Moments later, Blackwell collapsed. Bleeding from the brain, he spent seven days in an induced coma, only regaining consciousness the day before the Eubanks and I meet. If the drama were a movie script, it would feel too farfetched even for Hollywood.
Both men look rather tense and wary at first, understandably. Blackwell’s injury has revived the blaze of controversy about boxing that last raged when Watson lay in a coma, and cast Junior in the same invidious role forced upon his father before him, simultaneously champion and culprit.
“It was tough,” the 25-year-old admits quietly. “I haven’t actually ever experienced anything like that. Going from complete elation and happiness to ‘Wow, he’s on the floor unconscious with an oxygen mask over his face’.” The Eubank camp issued a statement postponing all celebrations until Blackwell had recovered, and Junior tweeted his opponent’s family, asking for permission to visit when they felt ready. As yet there has been no reply.
“I’m sure at some point we’ll be in touch and can sort something out. Hopefully. But at the same time, I did this to this man.” Junior speaks slowly, reflectively. “So I could understand his family not wanting me to be around him. How would you feel if the man who put your son in hospital turned up? Because a lot of people would think: ‘Oh well, they fought, he was trying to beat him up, they must really hate each other for him to do that to him.’ Which is not the case at all. But they might think that.”
It is, of course, precisely what lots of people are thinking. And on social media, plenty let him know it, too. What they fail to understand, Junior says, is the difference between hitting a man because you hate him and want to hurt him, and being a boxer.
“Obviously, in the buildup to some fights, there’s animosity and testosterone and banter,” he says, “but at the end of the day, we all understand that this is a business, just two men who are trying to further their careers and provide for their families. There shouldn’t be any true malice towards your opponent.
“I learned very early on once I started boxing as a kid that if you go into the ring emotionally charged you make mistakes. It’s a mental game, it’s a chess match, you’ve got to think, you’ve got to strategise and make tactical decisions. And you can’t do that if all you’re thinking is: ‘I really hate this guy, I want to kill him.’ I have fought fighters in the past who I don’t like as people, but you have to block out any type of dislike or hate. Whatever he’s done, whatever he’s said, you can’t be thinking about that. You just have to see him as a man that you have to outpoint, outgame, and beat on the night.”
His father has been nodding, but has a more poetic point to make. Junior speaks in the conventional register of the professional sportsman – colourless, economical, prone to cliche (“I dominated the early rounds”) – but Eubank Senior sounds more like a Jamaican preacher, and animates his monologues with a pantomime of dramatic pauses and growly whispers.
“The feeling between two fighters is profound,” he states. “We go places where normal people don’t go. You smell a man’s blood, it smells like rust. You get into a clench, you feel his strength, you feel his desperation, he feels yours. You’re sharing this.”
I think this might sound a bit over the top to Junior, but he agrees: “You’ll never be as close to anyone. It’s not like anything else you can experience with another human being.”
Eubank Sr murmurs reverently: “Only warriors get to experience this ...” before his son completes the sentence, “merging of souls.” Sr continues: “Inexplicable perception. This is modern-day gladiating. And other people do not get to experience this relationship. It’s very difficult to get across what that feels like.”
What would be the closest analogy, one a non-boxer might understand? “There isn’t one,” says Junior. Then he thinks for a while. “Maybe it’s like a woman giving birth. As a man, we will never know what that’s like: the emotions, the pain, all of that, what it feels like. We will never understand what that is. Being in a fight with another man is very similar.”
“Ah!” Eubank purrs. “Yes! That’s good. Ahhh.”
The conversation becomes increasingly mystical when the pair explain why a young man’s willingness to risk his life, rather than quit a fight he had already lost, was neither a pointless tragedy nor proof that the sport should be banned. On the contrary, it exemplified the “honour and integrity” of what they call boxing’s code, which obligates every boxer to fight to the death, and elevates the sport above all others. “You play football, rugby, tennis. You do not play boxing,” Eubank says. “When a sportsperson is in a game, when it gets too much, you quit. But in boxing you can’t quit. You have to be taken out.” So to fight on with a bleeding brain and no hope of winning was a wise and advisable decision? “Yes, because he’d got no choice.” The voice drops to a gravelly hiss. “Blackwell, he’s a warrior, he’s got no choice. The only ones who can pull him out is his corner, and they didn’t.” Yes but only, I point out, because the boxer kept insisting he was fit. “He had to say he was good!” Eubank cries triumphantly. “You see? The integrity of the warrior means you have to stay and take the beating.”
Presumably Eubank would not want to see his own son box on with a bleeding brain, rather than quit a fight? He shakes his head. “By my perception, Junior can’t quit. You know why? He’s his father’s son. He knows that’s not what we do. I could pull him out, throw in the towel – and I would. If he was in danger, I would. But he could never make that decision. He could never decide to quit.”
I turn to Junior, and he is nodding solemnly: “I would never quit. It is the most dishonourable thing you can do in boxing.”
Eubank shows me YouTube clips on his phone of a pre-fight press conference, in which he taunts Blackwell for quitting a previous fight after suffering a broken rib. The uncomfortable thought occurs that this might help explain why Blackwell fought on so suicidally. But Eubank knows how dangerous the kamikaze code of boxing can be – it was why he tried so hard to ban his children from the sport.
Unlike himself, who grew up in poverty on south London council estates, Junior and his two younger brothers and sister enjoyed an affluent upbringing in Brighton with their mum, Karron, and their celebrity dad. Privately educated, he never saw his dad fight, or even understood what a boxer was. “But I’ve got the same DNA as my father. I grew up in a big house with everything I needed, but I still ended up in scraps on the street. Why is that?” He was 11 when a friend showed him a VHS of a famous Eubank fight, but it took three years of pestering before his father relented. Junior’s promise was instantly apparent, so at 17 he set off with another brother to train in Las Vegas, and has been in single-minded pursuit of a world title belt ever since.
“He is his father’s son,” Eubank says repeatedly, with undisguised pride, and Junior says so himself once or twice, but not as often as he says, “I am my own man.” Each time his dad launches into another theatrical monologue I glance across at him, but if he is embarrassed or bored you would never know. He listens in respectful, impassive silence, and says he and his father have always been close. The exact terms of their professional relationship today are mysteriously opaque, for Eubank claims to be his son’s coach and his manager, but is also an “inspirational speaker – not motivational, inspirational”.His second wife, Claire, lives in the UAE and works for an airline, but also appears to oversee Team Eubank. Had his sons not gone into boxing (Sebastian, the second eldest, also fights professionally), he says he would spend his time watching ballet and gymnastics.
If both father and son were in their prime, I ask, who would defeat the other in the ring? “I can’t answer that cos I’m not in my prime now,” Junior replies. Eubank leaps to his feet and is suddenly dancing round the hotel room as if in the ring, jabbing and skipping, squaring off, muttering wildly. “If he followed strategy, he would have beaten me even now. But if you didn’t, then I would beat you. Cos I’m clever. I would wait around, pick you off, I’m not engaging in a toe-to-toe with you.” Junior stands and watches, as inscrutable as ever. I ask what he is thinking.
“He’s right,” he says quietly.
“I hope you know!” his dad shrieks.
But Eubank has always said that he lost his killer instinct after the fateful fight with Watson. Does he worry that the Blackwell fight may rob his son of his? “No. He doesn’t suffer from the sensitivities I have. Because I have sensitivities I shouldn’t have had. As a fighter. And that did compromise me. I don’t think he has that sensitivity.”
The sensitivity I can see in Eubank is not as a fighter, but as a person. He always used to say he hated boxing and only did it for the money, but now he admits this was nonsense. “Of course I loved it.” What he hated was his public image as a risibly eccentric buffoon, which he blames on sports journalists too stupid to recognise a man of substance. His various reality TV appearances since retiring from the sport were his attempts to “cut out the middleman” and show the public “who he really is”. Their success in this endeavour is a matter of debate.
I suspect it was his longing for approval that made the Watson fight so devastating for his career. The only approval I see Junior craving is his father’s.
“People have asked me: ‘Do you think it’s going to affect you like it affected your father?’ And the answer is no. I understand the sport I’m in. Now that I’ve seen first-hand what can happen to a man in a fight, this isn’t a movie, this isn’t a story. A man I have fought was in a coma for a week. So I know that this is real, this really can happen. So it’s changed me insofar as now that I know this can happen, I’m going to be even more relentless in my fighting and my training. Because I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. I want to become a world champion.”
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
To even think that Gary Locket knew Nick was "Seriously Injured" is disgraceful. There is no way Gary would have let Nick go on if he had any thoughts like that. I hope the author never bumps into Gary and should apologise immediately for ever writing such nonsense.
Shame on him......
Shame on him......
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
The article was written by Decca Aitkenhead, a woman. Her stuff is generally good but that statement ought to be removed or substantiated.Realistic wrote:To even think that Gary Locket knew Nick was "Seriously Injured" is disgraceful. There is no way Gary would have let Nick go on if he had any thoughts like that. I hope the author never bumps into Gary and should apologise immediately for ever writing such nonsense.
Shame on him......
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Boxerbeetle
- Light Heavyweight
- Posts: 32967
- Joined: 19 Sep 2011, 10:59
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
Erm, the interviewer was femaleRealistic wrote:To even think that Gary Locket knew Nick was "Seriously Injured" is disgraceful. There is no way Gary would have let Nick go on if he had any thoughts like that. I hope the author never bumps into Gary and should apologise immediately for ever writing such nonsense.
Shame on him......
She also incorrectly wrote it was a bleed from the brain rather than the skull, and apparently missed the rather obvious detail that no-one knew Blackwell was injured during the fight itself. But I thought overall the responses from the Eubanks were good.
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
So what if she is Female? Gary would give her a piece of his mind the same as a male And rightly so. She is bang out of order.Boxerbeetle wrote:Erm, the interviewer was femaleRealistic wrote:To even think that Gary Locket knew Nick was "Seriously Injured" is disgraceful. There is no way Gary would have let Nick go on if he had any thoughts like that. I hope the author never bumps into Gary and should apologise immediately for ever writing such nonsense.
Shame on him......
She also incorrectly wrote it was a bleed from the brain rather than the skull, and apparently missed the rather obvious detail that no-one knew Blackwell was injured during the fight itself. But I thought overall the responses from the Eubanks were good.
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Boxerbeetle
- Light Heavyweight
- Posts: 32967
- Joined: 19 Sep 2011, 10:59
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
Yeah I know, but it should have been 'Shame on herRealistic wrote:So what if she is Female? Gary would give her a piece of his mind the same as a male And rightly so. She is bang out of order.Boxerbeetle wrote:Erm, the interviewer was femaleRealistic wrote:To even think that Gary Locket knew Nick was "Seriously Injured" is disgraceful. There is no way Gary would have let Nick go on if he had any thoughts like that. I hope the author never bumps into Gary and should apologise immediately for ever writing such nonsense.
Shame on him......
She also incorrectly wrote it was a bleed from the brain rather than the skull, and apparently missed the rather obvious detail that no-one knew Blackwell was injured during the fight itself. But I thought overall the responses from the Eubanks were good.
'Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
The journalist should stick to writing books about taking drugs. Sebastian Eubank is not a pro. Chris Eubank is missing his reality shows.
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
Fair enoughBoxerbeetle wrote:Yeah I know, but it should have been 'Shame on herRealistic wrote:So what if she is Female? Gary would give her a piece of his mind the same as a male And rightly so. She is bang out of order.Boxerbeetle wrote:
Erm, the interviewer was female
She also incorrectly wrote it was a bleed from the brain rather than the skull, and apparently missed the rather obvious detail that no-one knew Blackwell was injured during the fight itself. But I thought overall the responses from the Eubanks were good.
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PredatorHayds
- Super Welterweight
- Posts: 4891
- Joined: 08 Jul 2015, 08:23
Re: Really Interesting Interview with Eubank Sr & Jr
More shocking journalist work.
There's enough good freelance boxing writers the papers can turn to as opposed to getting existing employees write about a subject they clearly have no knowledge in.
The Lockett statement in that article is potential libel.
There's enough good freelance boxing writers the papers can turn to as opposed to getting existing employees write about a subject they clearly have no knowledge in.
The Lockett statement in that article is potential libel.