Nigel Benn - Nigel Benn

25 FEBRUARY 1995

You have to go to war,
and in war you have to be prepared to die.
Thats what boxing is.

Gerald McClellan,
Thursday, 23 February 1995

L ets go to work My corner man gave me the word and I nodded. We left my room. I was dressed in black shorts and black boots, a Clint Eastwood-type poncho covering my body. My blood was boiling, and I was psyched up like never before ready to go out there and do some damage to the man they all said was going to hammer me.

Do you know how much noise 12,000 people can make? The roar of the crowd brought goosebumps to my flesh. It was so loud you might have thought the roof of the stadium was going to burst. Man, I was buzzing, and when I raised my hands in the air, the crowd went wild I knew then that they were on my side. We were like gladiators, ready to fight until one of us dropped.

Gerald McClellan, the challenger, was already in the ring. He was the most ferocious fighter ever to hit our shores, a freak of nature. I heard later hed been shooting his mouth off, bragging about how he was going to finish me off quickly. But I dont read those pre-match reports; you never know how theyre going to affect you. In my mind he was just an obstacle in my way there was 700,000 at stake and he had to be removed.

The bell went for the start of the first round. When I got into the ring, I thought to myself, Yeah the arms dont look so bad, legs are skinny. I didnt even think about being scared of the man until I felt his punch. Man, I didnt know where I was; I didnt know a guy could hit that hard. I went straight through the ropes. I clambered back into the ring, but he kept at me, bashing me from pillar to post. By the end of the first round, I was a mess.

When the bell finally sounded, my corner man Dennie Mancini took over the show. He grabbed me and said, Fucking hell, Nigel, youve really got him in trouble, mate!

But Im bashed to pieces! Whats he talking about, Ive got him in trouble? When I heard what Dennie said, though, it turned it all around for me.

Really? Yeah, too right, Den, he is in trouble. That was just what I needed to pick me up. If Id had some guy in the corner saying, Look, Nige, youre taking a battering here, then my morales going to plummet. But thanks to Dennie, I went into the second round feeling like a champion, and now its me bashing him around, me making him run. Bang! Come on, mate, I dont care what you throw at me.

In the second, I had him running round the ring with half his gum-shield hanging out. Everyone was going crazy. I was throwing big hooks and he was on his back foot.

At the end of round eight he put me down. I hardly knew what hit me, but I just thought, Yeah, thats good. Now feel one of mine! I got up, he rushed in towards me, and I gave him a right uppercut and a left hook. Id regained the initiative, and I could feel that the fight was mine. I put him down twice, and then a final right uppercut brought him to his knees. I remember saying, When you come up for round fucking nine, theres going to be more of that! The crowd went wild, and I screamed, WHO IS HE? WHOS THE CHAMPION?

The ref stopped the fight in the tenth round; McClellan was just sitting in the corner. I didnt know what was wrong with him. My head was spinning, and I was so bashed up I wasnt even sure if I had won. It wasnt until I felt my arm being lifted into the air that I knew Id done it.

The next thing I knew, my dad was there. He gave me a pat on the back that nearly knocked me to the floor. Then there was a television camera.

They brought him over here to try to bash me up, I shouted at the interviewer. Look at him now!

The roar of the crowd was still deafening.

And then I blacked out with the pain. The whole thing hadnt lasted longer than 20 minutes. I woke up in an ambulance with my wife Carolyne beside me, crying her eyes out. Man, the pain was wracking my body, but I managed to turn to her and smile.

You want to go out partying? I whispered. Somehow she managed to smile despite her tears.

I ended up in the London Hospital in the same ward as McClellan. The man had done me some serious harm I had a fractured nose and jaw, and I was passing blood because of the kidney damage. But McClellan wasnt even awake. I managed to hobble over to his bed where I looked at him, kissed him, and said simply, Sorry.

That was my ultimate fight, and let me tell you something inflicting that kind of damage does something to you. Sure, Id wanted to win, but not at this price. Id helped nurse Michael Watson after Chris Eubank did the same to him back in 1991, and the nightmare for me now was that Gerald wouldnt recover. On that night in 1996, my heart went out of boxing, the sport that had been my life for the previous ten years. Even Sad, my little girl, could see the wreck that her daddy had become, and whispered softly for me to retire.

And so I did. Sure, there were a few more fights, but Id given it everything I had. That fight was the last chapter in the story of the Dark Destroyer, and the first in the story of my new life. Now its time to tell everyone how it is, to tell the truth about the fights, the women, the money.

Im Nigel Benn, the Dark Destroyer, two-time champion of the world. This is my story