The hardest thing about boxing is the unknown. Before every fight you get extremely nervous; there’s the pressure of the fight, the ring entrance, everything that comes with a bout, so you are naturally terrified. That only ends when the referee says, ‘Box’. At that second, I always had pure peace, blissful, sweet peace. Once he said that, I knew the territory, everything was a reaction, he made a move, I reacted, he made a wrong move, I scored a point. The chess game had begun and I knew I played exceptionally well. I always savoured that word, ‘Box’: it brought such serenity.
It was a four-round fight and I won on points. That first purse was $250, which was a lot of money to me, but I had already spent it! I had been calling a girl in the UK called Carol Chevanne on the school phone and had racked up quite a bill. The school authorities found out and I apologised, explaining that I would pay back every penny. It was a serious enough offence to be expelled but they gave me the chance to keep my word. I won the fight and so paid the bill. So even when I did slip up, I was doing all I could to make amends. This first success was later followed by four more four-round points victories against Kenny Cannida, Mike Bagwell, Eric Holland and James Canty, all in Atlantic City.
In the summer of 1986, I graduated from Morris High. I had been a good student in as much as I didn’t have any friends, not even any acquaintances really, to distract me. My personality in regards to succeeding in church, school and boxing was very focused and I suppose that alienated people. I always felt like my school mates were just kids – in England I had been living like an adult for years, feeding myself, earning my own money, looking out for myself.
Succeeding at school hadn’t been easy, especially as my academic life in the UK had not been well spent. However, as I was training to box in parallel with my studies, I very quickly found that the same principles of application, repetition, hard work and perseverance paid off in the world of academia too. Boxing is like that – its philosophy is a blueprint for so much in life.
Immediately after graduation, I began a course at SOBRO College of Technology in the South Bronx. I was on a course for six months learning on a Wang word processor, aspiring to become accomplished with computers.
To bring money in, I also did various jobs. One year before I was to leave New York permanently, my mother introduced me to Alan Sedaka, who owned a building company called Durite. One job I took was on a building site run by Alan’s firm. I looked after this office block in Long Island and was paid quite handsomely. My father was in New York at this time and was working on the job with me. He used to wind me up all the time.
Another part of the job was to make van deliveries, even though I had never driven in my life. One day I was given an automatic – which I tried to think of as just a go-kart! I got in this van and was doing okay until I hit the town and began to feel a growing sense of panic as the congestion built up. I stopped at some traffic lights but overshot and found myself in the grid where people walk across. So I reversed back – the van had no rearview mirror so I was only looking in my wing mirrors . . . Crash! There was an almighty bang as I hit a motorcyclist. This angry guy wheeled his motorbike round and parked it in front of my van so I couldn’t move. ‘Look what you’ve done to my bike!’ he snarled.
Already I was thinking about what on earth to do. I was an illegal immigrant without a green card, no driving licence: we were talking deportation if the police got involved. The guy said, ‘Listen, what are you going to do? You hit my bike?’ So I said, ‘Yes, I’ve got my insurance papers and everything in here, let me just pull around the corner, we’re holding up the traffic, everyone is beeping, this is ridiculous.’ At first he wouldn’t hear of it, but I persisted and eventually after about five minutes he got on his battered bike and began to wheel it out of the way . . . Screeeccchh! I zoomed off into the distance!
I was doing well at my studies, I had money from jobs and the fights I was winning, but this was all keeping me very busy. Alan Sedaka was always very keen to see me do well. His brother Maurice was also a kind man and one day he took me to one side and gave me a priceless piece of advice. He told me to choose studies or boxing. To use his words: ‘Put all your eggs in one basket or risk being mediocre at both.’ I thought about what he said and knew that he was right. So I made my decision. It was a relatively easy choice when it came down to it: one was safe, one was dangerous. I will always go for the danger: my grain has always been to take the riskier, harder route. I have always lived in black and white, hot or cold, violence or silence. If you just want to exist you have to just stay in the grey area. Easy is just existing. I don’t want that. I want to make a difference. Boxing was an extreme but fulfilling life. Plus, the potential earnings far outstripped any wage as an office worker. My mind was made up. Boxing it was.
People often ask me what my mother thought of what I did for a living. She accepted it and prayed for me. She would have prayed for me whatever trade I had chosen, that is the way she is, intensely spiritual. I remember coming back from my seventh amateur fight.
‘How did you get on?’ she asked.
I told her I had won.
‘Well, what about the other boy?’
‘Well, I beat him,’ I said.
‘What is going to happen to him?’
I explained that he had lost the fight and that I would move onwards and upwards as a result. She just quietly said, ‘Well, remember he has a mother too.’ That is how a mother looks at the world. There’s a quotation by one of the great philosophers which goes like this: ‘The tragedy of woman is that they become just like their mothers. The tragedy of man is that they don’t.’ I have become like my mother in many respects and that I believe is a strength.
Shortly after graduation from Morris High, I had started travelling back and forth to the UK. I had lived in New York for three and a half years straight, but for the next 18 months I bounced back and forth across the Atlantic. I found that because of a lack of money, I sometimes started to get pulled back into the old lifestyle of shoplifting.
Ironically, one day back in New York, where I had always managed to steer clear of trouble, I had a near-miss when I was playing dominoes at a club in White Plains Road. For this particular match I was on song and winning. There were four of us playing cut-throat, it was very tense. This one onlooker was looking at my hand and said, ‘This guy can’t play, he just happens to be pulling it off, he’s making lucky money.’ He was jealous of me making cash because it was a Friday and everybody was losing their hard-earned cash to me. Deliberately confrontational, he said to me, ‘You can’t play,’ so I replied, ‘Rather than talking, why not just play and put your money on the table.’
He obviously didn’t have the money so this was embarrassing for him. They all knew I was boxing at this point and he said to me in Jamaican, ‘Yu kyan fight wid yu fis’ dem, but . . .’ – at this moment he pulled out a ratchet knife – ‘. . . yu kya’ fight dis. Gwaan a Inglan, Inglish bwoy.’ I said to him, ‘Where I come from in England, if you pull a knife you should use it, otherwise put it away. I haven’t done you any wrong, you have no reason to be pulling a knife on me.’ Fortunately, he bottled out and that was that. Or so I thought.
A couple of weeks later, I went back to the same club. I started down the stairs and, as I did, I noticed the man who had pulled the knife on me and one other man. When I got to the basement, there was no one around so I headed back up to street level. As I emerged, one of these men blocked my path in between this Space Invaders machine and the bakery next door. He said, ‘Eh bwoy, yu a eedyat. Mi a go kill yu bwoy!’ He said he was the brother-in-law of the fellow with the knife and it was clear he had taken our little confrontation as a slight on his family which, of course, it wasn’t.
Being as righteous as I am, I explained, ‘Listen, he pulled a knife on me, I didn’t do him any wrong,’ but he was totally disinterested