Dangerous

Probert Ian

Description

A quarter of a century ago journalist and author Ian Probert decided never to write about boxing again, a decision prompted by the injuries sustained by boxer Michael Watson during his world title fight with Chris Eubank. Now, in common with so many fighters, Probert is making an inevitable comeback. Here, in the course of numerous meetings with a number of leading figures in the fight game, including Herol Graham, Steve Collins, Michael Watson, Nigel Benn, Ambrose Mendy, Rod Douglas, Frank Buglioni, Kellie Maloney, Glen McCrory and Jim McDonnell among others, Probert takes a look at how lives have changed during the time he has been away from the sport. From an illuminating and honest encounter with transgender fight manager Kellie Maloney to an emotional reunion with Watson himself, the result is one of the most fascinating and unusual books ever to have been written about boxing.

Sujets

• Boxing
• Xian de Boxing

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785312564
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2016
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Ian Probert, 2016
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-199-4
eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-256-4
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Scars
Whisky
Session #3
Kiss
Session #4
Sweet
Sour
Back
Crackers
Cry
Lung
Alarm
Pain
Green
Lazarus
Press
Frank
Scream
Stars
Session #5
Gone
Loss
Supertent
Stare
Bone
Fury
Love
Redemption
Boots
Ash
Session #6
Carrying
Missing
Epilogue
For Laura and Sofia, how lucky I am.
Acknowledgements
I T S safe to say that this is the first time that I ve ever even considered writing acknowledgements for any of my books. But in this case I really do not have a choice.
During the past eight or so months I have been completely overwhelmed by the kindness and - dare I say it - love that has been extended towards me from the boxing community. As such I have to thank, from the very bottom of my wallet, all those people who gave their time to me in what was very much a selfish, self-indulgent project. Legends all of them:
Ben Doughty, for giving me the confidence to write about boxing again.
Herol Graham, for unorthodoxy.
Karen Neville, for being wise and beautiful and changing my perspective on life.
Michael Watson, for allowing me to begin to make amends for past mistakes.
Lennard Ballack, for being a true friend to Michael Watson and making things happen.
Frank Buglioni, for giving me back my appetite.
Clinton McKenzie, kindness and gentleness personified.
Leon McKenzie, for making me realise what I had to do next.
Alan Minter, for being there at the beginning and at the end.
Ross Minter, for laughter and love.
Mark Prince, for opening up his giant heart.
Glenn McCrory, for opening up his even bigger heart.
Ed Robinson, for his kindness and generosity.
Colin McMillan, for his innate decency.
Kellie Maloney, for allowing me to witness her bravery at first-hand.
Ambrose Mendy, for leading me a merry dance.
Derek Williams, for proving that it s always better late than never.
John Wharton, for asking me.
Steve Collins, for advising me to cry it out.
Anthony Leaver, for letting me come back to play.
Richard Maynard, for a ticket to the circus.
Steve Lillis, for that good word.
Sabrina and Tayla.
Sedat Sag, for loyalty.
Natasha Graham, a force to be reckoned with.
To Glyn Leach, dearly wish we d had that drink.
All the staff of the Whittington Hospital, for saving my daughter s life.
And to an unnamed Chinese therapist, for sitting and listening to me witter on about myself.
Prologue
F OR anyone out there who is interested (and I m not entirely sure that even I m that interested) I visited my therapist for the second time this week (although I don t know why I m calling her my therapist; she certainly doesn t belong to me).
Once again I didn t learn very much from her (does one go to therapists to learn stuff?) except for one very small, minor thing: I m really not very good at going to therapists.
Being someone who is pathologically punctual (she said we d address this issue at some point in the future if we had time), I was early. She was late. And all of this set my mind off, not necessarily into a panic, but it got me to thinking as I sat there in a shabby NHS waiting room next to real sick people. Why was she late? Was it my fault or was it hers? Last time I saw her she had told me to wait in a specific location at 10.00am sharp and she would be there to meet me. Had she not shown up yet because I hadn t announced my arrival at reception? Yes, that was probably it.
My knuckles began to sweat. I waited until 10.05am and with still no sign of her I decided to be proactive. I would go and look for her.
I had only been there once before but somehow my radar managed to locate her office in the subterranean rabbit warren of identical rooms. But as I went to tentatively knock on her door it suddenly sprang open leaving us standing face to face. If I hadn t been paying attention and able to stop myself it s highly likely that I could have ended up punching her on the nose three times. I don t know what Freud says about hitting therapists. He probably wouldn t encourage it.
There was a shocked silence. It was as if by coming to look for my tardy therapist (she s not mine, by the way) I had broken some kind of fundamental brain-malaise house rule. She looked at me for several long moments, like a granny eyeballing a mugger, and then she sort of said something like, Oh... I couldn t be sure. She s got a very strong Chinese accent.
I broke the silence by apologising for being early and for her being late. I told that there was nothing suspicious about my coming to look for her. Really there wasn t. I was quite normal actually and I was going to try and prove it. Then she asked me to go away and sit back in the waiting room which I said I would but didn t because - let s face it - who likes waiting in waiting rooms? Instead I loitered on the stairs outside her office. If I was still smoking I would have lit up a fag.
All of this meant that a few minutes later when she came to collect me from the waiting room I wasn t there, I was standing on the stairs. And once again there was an awkward silence as she blundered into me, almost falling over in the process, and gave me another shocked look followed by another oh .
It wasn t going well.
We went into her office and I politely asked if I could take a seat. She gave me a shrug, which I quickly translated as meaning, Why are you asking me if you can sit down you moron? What a ridiculous question... Or perhaps she thought I was actually going to take a seat, pick it up and exit the building with it under my arm. I apologised for being polite and her lack of response seemed to indicate that there was obviously something uniquely absurd about somebody being polite. I told her I was always polite on account of being well brought up. And as the words left my lips I couldn t help but wonder that if I was so well brought up why, at the age of 53, was I seeing a therapist about my nasty and abusive recently deceased father? Then I apologised for apologising.
There was a silence. Then another silence. And then, finally, the silence was broken by a further period of silence.
We stared into each other s eyes. It was very intimate. One of those occasions when you know that if you break the stare the other person has won.
She won. I looked down at my feet and then gathered my senses for another bout of protracted staring. I d get the bitch this time. Then she finally spoke. What would you like to talk about? she asked.
What would I like to talk about? Nothing, I replied.
Of course I don t want to talk about anything, I explained. Why would I? I ve only met you once before and you re expecting me to launch into when-I-was-a-kid-my-dad-was-horrid-to-me mode. When I talked intimately, I explained, it was usually with someone whom I knew intimately. Or there was alcohol involved. Perhaps, I suggested, we could both retire to the nearest boozer and after three or four pints of Guinness I d talk about anything she wanted. Liberally. Honestly. Candidly. And in comfort.
She demurred. Then it was back to the silence. And the staring match.
I talked about Chinese people. It seemed somehow appropriate. Of how I ve actually known very few of them in my life. And of how their seemingly innate impassivity always made me feel clumsy and unsophisticated around them. She didn t offer any reaction to these observations but simply continued staring deep into my eyes. Didn t the woman ever blink?
I talked about my illness. About being an undiagnosed hypothyroid disease sufferer for several decades and how it fucked up my life in so many ways. I spoke about this at length, as I m prone to do. I even managed to bore myself. And finally she showed a reaction. She frowned and in so many words told me to stop telling stories about myself and instead try to articulate my real feelings. She said that my illness was undoubtably a direct result of my childhood.
Now it was my turn to frown: such a comment seemed to me like a monumentally simplistic clich . But I didn t get time to tell her this because instead I was launching into a description of phatic communion - a form of communication in which words were used not to transmit information but to fill empty spaces. She said she d never heard of it but that I was doing it now. Of course I was, I agreed. Of course I was.
I told her a few jokes, which she didn t find funny. I told her the same jokes, slower this time, having decided that I was talking too fast for her the first time. They still weren t funny. Fortunately, I wasn t paying for any of this. David Cameron was.
And then for some reason I accidentally-on-purpose started talking about boxing. About how I used to be involved in the sport. About how, many moons ago, I wrote about it for newspapers and edited magazines about it. About how a friend was injured during a fight and this led me to withdraw from the sport and write a book about why I was never going to write about boxing again. I do this a lot. I seem to slip boxing into the conversation more than is healthy or coincidental