Notorious: The Maddest and Baddest Sportsmen on the Planet. Richard Bath

37-year-old, he eventually lost his title to Kansan Jess Willard in 1915, losing in forty-five rounds in Havana.

       ERIC CANTONA

       Kung fu fighter

      Gav, a misguided mate of mine who’s a Manchester United supporter, has a picture of Eric Cantona on his wall. It’s not a usual pose for a star of the beautiful game, though. The Frenchman isn’t exactly laid-back, although he is horizontal—he’s hurtling through the air kung fu style towards a Crystal Palace fan who has had the audacity to badmouth him from the stands. The fans in the photograph are slack-jawed and wide-eyed, waiting for the moment when the budding martial artist will connect with the fan’s chest. Taken in 1995, it remains the most famous picture in English football since Gazza cried at the 1990 World Cup.

      For that assault at Selhurst Park Cantona was banned for eight months and given 120 hours of community service. (When asked to explain why he did it, he told the assembled journalists that ‘When the seagulls…follow the trawler…it’s because they think…sardines will be thrown…into the sea’). But at least he didn’t retire (again) after Alex Ferguson talked him out of it. For observers of the self-proclaimed gifted one, that at least was a major surprise because by that stage Eric already had a well-worn track record of spitting the dummy.

       In fact, if he hadn’t retired from football in his native France at the tender age of 24, he would never have been at Selhurst Park on that damp night in south London. The French weren’t remotely surprised by his antics. After all, this was the same Cantona who went on television in August 1988 to call Henri Michel, the then manager of the French national side, a ‘shit bag’ (actually ‘un sac de merde’) and was promptly banned. He was sacked by Marseille for throwing his shirt to the ground after being substituted during a match against Torpedo Moscow, and then fined and suspended for fighting with Montpellier team-mate Jean-Claude Lemoult. Finally, he was banned for three matches for throwing the ball at the referee while captaining Nimes. When he shouted ‘idiots’ (best said in a very Freeeench accent) in the face of each of the three members of the disciplinary panel at the French FA from twleve inches or so, they doubled his ban to two months. Cue Eric’s first retirement in December 1991.

      So when his trawler hit rocky seas across the Channel, no one was too surprised. After helping Sheffield Wednesday to the first division title and then doing the same in the Premiership with Leeds United, Cantona moved to the club Leeds fans hate above all others, Manchester United. (The move came amid scurrilous but untrue rumours that Cantona had been too friendly with a team-mate’s wife at Elland Road, hence the cry from Manchester United fans when Leeds came to Old Trafford: ‘He’s French/He’s Flash/He’s been up Leslie Ash/Cantona! Cantona!’, a reference to the other half of Leeds’ star centre-forward). Even there, under the nose of the disciplinarian Ferguson, he managed to skirt close to the wind, particularly in Istanbul in 1993 when he took on Istanbul’s baton-wielding riot police single-handedly after one of them cracked him over the head as he walked from the pitch having been sent-off.