LIVE24SEVEN // Interviews
Chris, you are one of the most imposing characters to ever come out of boxing, not just because of your wins or your swagger in the ring, but because of your sense of style and your outspoken ways! You probably have too much material for your one man show, so what exactly will you be covering, or will the evening go the direction the audience on that particular night want to take it? Umm, yes, it probably depends on where the audience want to take the evening, because I ‘feel’ rather than actually predict, so I actually feel the audience. It’s honed by being a fighter, as you have to feel your opponent out, so I have to feel the audience and see where they want to go with it.
Your career was a mix of many, many highs and just a few lows; is there a fight that you’re most proud of or one that you feel changed the direction of your life and fortunes? Well, world championship fights you have to win are very tough fights, let me say this for the sake of theatre, you can condense 17 world championships that I won, but there were two that I couldn’t win and these are the ones that define you. When you are in true crisis, those are the fights that define you.
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You’re quoted as saying in an interview that your son is one of the most dangerous men on the planet and you’ve called for referees to be vigilant. How much of yourself do you see in your son and how much of his character do you think you’re responsible for creating or shaping? Well now we stop talking about training and we talk about parenting and parenting is a very peculiar phenomenon, because what you don’t teach them, then parts of you naturally rub off on them, so over and above what I taught him he would have picked up other elements. One of the most important elements in a man is the essence, what are you in your gut, what’s your makeup. As a teenager he watched me stand up against power, he has watched me pick people up in the street who aren’t being well behaved, he’s seen me be kind and giving to people, so all these things are building blocks of a person. For instance, I’ll say this to you because it’s powerful – I never saw my mother with another man even though they were separated.
Image Is condItIonIng, I was pIcked up for not havIng the abIlIty to dress nIce or have nIce clothes and I suppose that stIrred somethIng wIthIn me to fIx that. from the day a gIrl looked me up and down In peckham In 1979, I don’t thInk I’ve never been Ill-dressed sInce then…
What do you think that does to a young man or boy? It empowers him. You carry those principals into a fight. Imagine your mother saying to you when you’re calling her up as an eight-year-old to say, “Mum, mum I won the fight” (an amateur fight), imagine your mother saying to you, “What happened to the other boy?” Imagine the shock in me? Mum, it’s not about him, it’s about me? But then she says, “He has a mother too”!
Grounding and thought provoking…
That’s the kind of strength I brought into the ring and therefore I’m pointing out to you that parenting is powerful and unconscious, so I haven’t been the perfect individual, but I’ve been an outstanding member of the community at large since I was born, I was reckless as a kid, but I straightened myself out, I’m a reformed character if you will [laughing]. So all these things he’s seen and they’ve rubbed off on him, so therefore he has that part of me in him and the meat and potatoes, as in be what you are, so there’s a good combination in him.
❞
The boxing scene is a very exciting place at the moment with some big names and characters, such as your son, Anthony Joshua etc. Who do you think the world should be watching? Who are the ones to watch out for? Umm do you mean in relation to this Boxing Super Series or just in general? The series! Umm, Junior, but he will see it as nepotism. For the last five years I’ve been speaking in a way that is glowing of him and I thought everyone else could see it, but I’ve just realised that after he knocked Avni Yildirim out in just three rounds,
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