Читать книгу Chris Eubank: The Autobiography - Chris Eubank - Страница 12

I met many people through Alan Sedaka, one of whom was Benjamin Aryeh, not a nice character. He didn’t do anything illegal, but in business he was very cold. None of the people who worked for him liked him and I could see why. The first time I met Benjamin, he offered me a job as a gopher. I really needed a job at the time, but I didn’t take him up on his offer – this is because I asked him about his footwear. ‘Nice shoes. Those are crocodile, right?’ He shrugged his shoulder and said, ‘I don’t know, someone bought them for me. Are they crocodile?’ From that second, I was not interested in him or the job, it was not for me. He had played down something which was just a simple compliment. That first impression sealed it. Even though I needed the money. I wanted the right kind of money. The going rate would have been fine. It’s respect I need.

Benjamin had a brother, a lovely guy called Nathanial, whom I used to bodyguard for in New York. I would go to casinos or clubs with him and watch his back. It was a bit silly really, because I didn’t have a gun and if you are going to bodyguard someone in New York, you have to carry a firearm. However, my aura was one of psychological dominance. My presence was imposing, so people would instinctively back off. I looked very dangerous – my eyes burned with savage focus. Plus, I always dressed impeccably, even back then. I always had my designer clothes from England and snake-skin shoes; I was probably the city’s best-dressed bodyguard.

In places like New York, if someone is thinking of attacking they will first survey the terrain and weigh up the risks. Even though I did not carry a gun, my presence was sufficient to nullify any threats, because Nathanial’s terrain was perceived as too risky to attack. I never thought about being unarmed, and the courage and presence I displayed meant that no one ever did pull a gun, thank God.

In hindsight, Nathanial gave me the bodyguard job just to make himself look good with his girlfriends. Occasionally, he would ask me to go to a club with him and a girl, but mainly to watch her. If the couple separated, I would be following the girl through all the darkened rooms and labyrinthine passages of somewhere like The Tunnel (an underground station converted into a club) while she would play games and try to lose me. I got paid $200 each time I went out with him. This wasn’t a scary job, after all I was a fighter, but also he wasn’t a bad guy looking for trouble. He wasn’t a flash man, although he had his little Porsche. He wasn’t courting danger. He was just a nice guy.

Nathanial was landlord of a building in a middle class area, a really run-down slum of a place, near 17th Street and Chelsea. One day in 1986, I went with him to collect some rents that were a little overdue. At this stage, I was 4 and 0 as a professional boxer. One of the tenants we went to see was a gentleman called Walter Johnson, whom I now know as ‘Doctor’. Nathanial had brought me to this property as the heavy guy. He said to me, ‘Look mean, be very quiet and menacing, and get us paid.’

Doctor lived in a little studio flat with all his belongings which he shared with his daughter Kali, whom he had brought up. Nathanial left me for a while when he went to see someone else and, although I had this very hard exterior, Doctor was not fazed at all. In fact, after a few moments he quietly said to me, ‘Come back another time, I’d like to talk to you.’ Nathanial had introduced me as this ultra-hard, up-and-coming boxer. What I didn’t know at first was that Doctor was heavily into the martial arts, having studied them since he was ten. He had been coached by his own father and become exemplary at jiu-jitsu and many other forms. That day we met, he relished the opportunity to talk to someone about his passion for such skills, how deeply he had studied and how much he knew about the philosophy behind them.

Two or three months went by when, one day, I found myself in that same area of New York, so I decided to take Doctor up on his offer and drop in for a chat. Even though he is 17 years my senior, the relationship just took off from there. In fact, this older element of his wisdom was part of what fascinated me. He would come to the gym and just watch, he never said anything. I had trainers with me and he always stayed and observed the workout. He struck me as someone who had an innate and vastly experienced sense of the street – obviously his colossal knowledge of martial arts bestowed that upon him, but even little things made me smile and warm to him. For example, one especially cold day, I asked him if he had a hat and he pulled off his own, tugged another hat out of that one and gave it to me. I called him Doctor in reference to the combination of his knowledge of Eastern medicine plus his philosophy of life and martial arts.

Despite our strange first meeting, we got on very well. When I moved to the UK in 1988, we kept in touch by phone. When I travelled to see the Mike McCallum-Steve Collins fight in Boston and stayed at the Plaza Hotel in New York, I met up with Doctor and we immediately continued where we had left off, reviewing martial arts techniques, ideas, diet and strategy.

He eventually joined me in the UK and we are still great friends – I’ve known Doctor longer than anyone in this country, longer than my wife even. He was to be an invaluable presence during training and in my corner at many of my future professional fights.

Initially, we were not exactly friends, though; it is more accurate to say that he was teaching me the martial arts; that was the common ground. As I was mastering the art of pugilism, the noble art, I wanted to hone it to near perfection. So, actually to incorporate the martial arts was a necessary evolution of my learning curve. As I have mentioned, Doctor had an expansive knowledge of internal and external martial art forms such as aikido, jiu-jitsu, karate, tai chi and Chinese boxing, and at first it was very difficult to incorporate this into my style. I found it very frustrating. For example, martial arts like pa-qua are open handed, but obviously boxing uses a closed fist. Doctor’s martial arts were about holding, striking with your palm and fingers, whereas boxing was about striking only with your knuckles. He was trying to teach me these forms, but because I liked him so much I couldn’t tell him that I was struggling to incorporate them into my boxing. This went on for perhaps three years.

What I did extract from everything I observed about martial arts was the foot movement, which was all about positioning and escape. The stance and poise in martial arts is 98% on your back foot and 2% on your front. Boxing is 50/50, unless you go into a position to strike, at which point you vary the weight distribution. I took that and spliced it into my boxing style. People often ask me how the martial arts and boxing mix. The point is this: boxing is actually the highest form of martial arts, because you have to learn how to absorb punishment before you can initiate it.

Another aspect Doctor brought to my game was stretching. Obviously, as a boxer, flexibility is vital, but many fighters only have flexibility in one dimension, namely that of the direction of the punch. So another aspect I took from the martial arts was to develop all-encompassing flexibility, or amplitude, and by that I mean agility in every direction. For example, I learned how to do the Japanese splits, which is where your legs are completely flat, then you roll your abdomen and chest to the floor. This is an excruciating skill to develop and can only be achieved by constant repetition. A fight is not just about strength, it is also about flexibility. These extraordinary skills, when taken into the ring, proved to be very powerful tools. Doctor could enhance the stretching I was doing, and did so right the way through my career. Some smaller elements also crept in, such as doing Doctor’s jiu-jitsu wrist exercises, which were very useful for extra strength – no matter how much you bandage that joint, it can still get damaged. Sometimes he even made me wring out a dishcloth or play a guitar for extra wrist and finger strength! I never did much weight-training – lifting weights and boxing never go together, it tightens you up. Boxing is about being loose and relaxed.

Another factor I studied intensely was the philosophy of fighting, the art of war, psychological dominance and the like. Due to my passion for this aspect of the business, I became an exceptional adversary, because I was born with an intellect and the courage to actually apply that intellect. This gave me the character to manipulate situations before a fight, dealing with the mental strain and terrain.

What martial arts allowed me to do was get away from the conventional. The conventional will see you beaten sooner rather than later, because people will be able to work you out. People cannot beat you if they don’t know what you are going to do next. If you box with your hands up, then no fighter will be scared of you, because they know that stance – they have been training for that all their boxing careers. Box with your hands down and it unsettles them; they haven’t seen it before, it is uncommon, unconventional, extraordinary. The opponent has to work out the terrain from scratch and while he’s doing that, you are hitting him. If you can think alternatively, you can go on to be champion for a long time. As I did.

It has been said by some observers that it was quite advanced for such a young boxer to integrate the martial arts into boxing as I did. I don’t see it that way. When I met Doctor, I just thought, Here is a man who understands the philosophy of life and that can be applied to everything. He has applied that in medicine too; he was always giving me herbs, ginseng and all the oriental teas. I was always the type of person who was interested in the older man who knew something I didn’t. Doctor seemed to know so much and seemed almost mystical. I was the one who took certain aspects of the martial arts philosophy and applied this to boxing and that is why people said that I had a very unusual style. I had learned the skills in the gym, then I put my own flavour in there with the martial arts, the stances, the angles. It was a complex hybrid of all the arts with regard to the foot movements and my personality.

I must reiterate that the actual striking did not draw from any of the other martial arts, because boxing has it all in its own manual. Plus, how you deal with punishment is essential to your success. Absorbing punches without telegraphing pain is another skill that only comes with repetition and training. You stand in front of a fighter and leave your abdomen exposed, allowing him to punch it time and time again. Initially, it is agony and your face contorts with the pain, but over the months and years of doing this you learn to absorb the punch and not even flicker when contact is made. It hurts your stomach, but you learn not to hold your breath because if you do that you’ll get tired. You’ve got to learn how to breathe and be tense at the same time. You see a heavy shot coming in, you brace into it. It is instinct gleaned from repetition in the gym. You condition yourself; you mask the gut instinct to grimace or wince, because otherwise your opponent knows you are hurt and will come on harder. If you show pain, you will probably lose the fight. The best boxers are those who can absorb punishment; being able to give it out is only half the equation.

This philosophy of fighting extends to your mental attitude as well as your physical conditioning. People assume you go into the ring prepared to take a life. Incorrect. You have to go into the ring fully prepared to surrender your life, if that is what is required. In fact, not only did I go into the ring thinking: you may damage me, you may even kill me, but I used to think: if you can do that to me, I will appreciate it. But know this: you are going to have to take me because I am not giving up, ever.

If this sounds extreme, let me clarify my position. It is not that you consciously think you will die every time you step into the four-cornered circle. It is not that prevalent. Your strength of mind and resolve of character are prepared to face this possibility. You don’t think you will die, because you have a faith in your ability and because it is all about a positive mental attitude. You must always think positively. As will become apparent from my story as it unfolds, it all comes down to one deep-rooted factor: integrity.