Chris Eubank - English

Full transcript: Chris Eubank on London Real

6:07 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Chris Eubank, who was the British boxing world champion for over five years and undefeated in his first 10 years as a professional. Your epic world title contest against fellow Britons Nigel Benn and Michael Watson, combined with your eccentric personality, made you one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world in the 1990s. You have since been known for your anti-war activism, reality television, lately training your son, Chris Eubank Jr., and boxing.

6:35 Welcome to London Real. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for being here. You know, Chris, you were known, uh, back in the day for quoting Shakespeare, and one of your favorites, I believe, was “The world is a stage and we are all actors.” And I was wondering what you referred to when quoting Shakespeare and saying things like that.

6:57 I know once you said, “My job isn’t just a fight. A fight is a show, and that’s entertainment.” And I was just wondering how you viewed the whole art of what you did. Well, okay, where that’s concerned, what are you projecting? You know, if you project greatness then you may appear to be great.

7:32 In 1984, Adonis Torres, the first manager I had in New York when I started to learn how to box, he saw that my personality was always quite gentle and I would always explain myself to people, and he said, “You should stop explaining yourself,” especially when people ask you about, you know, how you’re getting on for your coming contest. He saw that I would explain, I would always kind of be inside out, and he said, “Really, you should guard that.” And he said, “When people ask you, you know, how you feel, tell them, tell them you feel great.”

8:30 I said, “Okay.” Now, we’ve been brought up in the church, you know, as a Jamaican, you know, you kind of understand the concepts of being honest. The church kind of teaches you that: be honest, be well behaved, be true, have integrity, all of these virtues. So when he told me to be great, it wasn’t just saying that. It wouldn’t be right to just say it, especially if you were going to fight, then the idea is to also act it and show that you mean it.

9:12 Now, in acting it, so, “How do you feel, Chris?” “It’s right and I feel great.” And you’d be like, “Yeah, I feel I’m great,” and you’d give the expression and you’d be true. True as in, well, if I feel great and I am great, then you’d act it. And so I began to act when I was asked, “How do you feel?”

9:38 And I suppose in taking on this spirit of being great, just a word, but what does the word mean and how would you act if you should use this word? So I started to act this way and I started to talk this way and project this way, and I was fierce this way. And yes, it was an act, but it was a real act. It was true to me. So I asked the question.

10:07 Today my peers now and the critics now say that I was great in my career. I don’t think I was. I was just kind of acting, but I was being real. I was being true towards this term “great.” So today, I suppose, when I mentor and I speak to, you know, the up-and-comings, I explain, you know, what you want, you should project it.

10:32 You know, if you if you’re shy, that’s how people will treat you. People will not believe in you if you’re shy. You know, if you’re out there performing, you have to be it. You know, so it’s acting in the truest form, in the truest sense of the word. Act great, and it’s almost as though you self-prophesize what you’re doing.

10:57 People will treat you as you act. So again, I don’t say that I am, but my peers, they say that I possibly was able to garner a perception of this word, of which I don’t say that I am. And is that a lesson that you picked up in Peckham, or was that one that you picked up in New York City, when you went to New York City, to the South Bronx? Yeah. And do you think if you hadn’t made that move you might not have that, might not have clicked?

11:28 Is that, and is there an Americanism in that, or was it something just that was said to you in the boxing? Well, I mean, the question was, you know, Shakespeare’s quote, “The world is a stage and we are all actors.” Well, it’s true, whether you know it or not, you’re acting, whether you actually know it or not. You know, if you are naturally shy, to the onlooker you’re acting shy. So it could be an act, it could be pretend, I mean, or it could be real.

12:02 Nevertheless, he’s going to have that perception, or the person will have that perception of you, that you are shy. So, you know, in the world of entertainment you have to act bold. You have to be. It isn’t about trying, it is about being. And then when you actually are being, then you will resonate, you know.

12:28 And at that point I should actually say that manners then becomes you know, the most important of virtues. You know, see, acting great without the manners, it’s trouble, because, you know, again, I don’t say that I’m great, but greatness without manners, it’s foul. It doesn’t work. Did your manners have to catch up to some of your greatness, or did they always come hand in hand? Did you notice that early on?

13:04 I am not this, this is not a term I’ll use. Yeah, you can do, but I don’t accept this term. I’ve met great men. I am not this, you know, I’m, and it’s not something which is, you can’t pin it down, it’s it’s an everyday aspiration, you know. You know, you are what you do.

13:34 So if you don’t give somebody your time on one particular day, you are not great that particular day. So it’s something you’re always managing. Are you with me? Yeah, that go hand in hand. Yeah, I mean, being a warrior is something I aspire to being.

13:51 I was always able, apart from one particular fight, I was always able to act the correct warrior outside of the ring. Some, most days I do well, but some days I fall. I fall. So it’s a constant aspiration. You know, I strive, I yearn to be a warrior, because when you are, people love you for it.

14:24 They love your your deed or your deeds, because it’s an act, you know. I was coming here today, I wanted to get here on time and so I took the tube. There was a lady, she had a bag, a suitcase, and she took down the handle, she put the handle down and was about to pick it up and I picked it up for her and brought it downstairs. She didn’t ask, but this is how I’ve been brought up. One, two, as far as she’s concerned, this is a great act.

15:03 You know, again talking about manners, what good is you know, being or having so much wealth or so much currency in a particular regard without actually having manners? Because people will only say, well, she’s, he’s successful but, or, you know, the person is successful but the person is foul. Manners make up the man. It doesn’t have anything to do with the clothes. It doesn’t have anything to do with the person’s achievements.

15:39 It has to do with humility. You mentioned warrior there. You said that the people that would come to see your fights were coming to watch warriors. What did you mean by that? When you enter this cauldron, when you enter the arena to fight, you know, you are no longer a personality.

16:10 So it’s not about, thank you very much, a warrior is going in there to actually put his life on the line. So the behavior of such a person, he should be projecting fortitude, integrity, he should be projecting resilience, you know, a code, a seriousness, a darkness even. And when someone does that, it immediately resonates with an audience, where, you know, people will compulsively have to watch you. It’s like if you’re looking at Mike Tyson in his Ellis Park ’89, 1991, he embodied what a warrior was, which is why even today, you know, regardless of whatever convictions he’s been convicted of, people still gravitate towards him, because he was true, a true embodiment of a warrior.

17:25 He let himself down in a particular regard, yes, but what he embodied leaves him being the stuff of legend. You know, the real deal, the real thing, you know, an awesome, a force of nature in his art and his craft, in his chosen field. So people aren’t necessarily going to watch to see who is the winner. It’s almost, there’s something going on underneath where we’re going to take an observation of someone who maybe we aren’t, and just to see how a real warrior is and to feel that energy.

18:06 Do you think that’s what people are really tuning in for? I think that’s why I tune in. Well, once in a while particular characters come along and they embody this spirit, and it becomes what they refer to as box office. But sometimes you have individuals who are not this way but they are very good at what they do, but they may not necessarily project the spirit of a warrior. You know, Naseem Hamed was a very, very good fighter.

18:47 He embodied the spirit of a playful warrior. The ones that come along who have a serious edge to them are far more, I would say, engaging to the public, because, you know, and if you talk about man, the first instinct of a man is to protect, that is to fight, and so it resonates with everyone. Everyone respects someone who can fight. Women too? Yes, I mean, you know.

19:26 Yes, of course. It’s power. Power is attractive in in all forms to everyone. You said one time, “I was never a bad boy, I was a rude boy. I was born to love, but the environment was unkind.”

20:07 Was that impeccable? Well, that’s growing up, period. I mean, in the city, you know, respect is what you want, and it’s not given, you have to earn it. And there are quite a few ways you can earn it. And I thought about earning it in every which way I could, and the ways in which it could be earned is one, being able to dance, two, being able to communicate, the most important is being able to fight.

20:47 You bring it to another level once you become a man, because then it’s doing it with measure, being a professional, right? Never doing it outside the ring, never being unkind, because that is bullying, right? So it goes to a real heavy degree. So yeah, dance, fight, speak, where I came from, back in my day, to be able to shoplift, of which again I was, I’m sorry, I was quite handy. And could you dance as well?

21:27 Oh yes. Okay, because this was these were also when, the point of speaking, being able to speak, being able to communicate, you know. And I suppose, you know, today they say, as you kind of introduced me as a part eccentric, this is a wonderful term, something of which you know, I understand, you know, in the city where I come from, being of Jamaican parentage, the synonym for that word there is a synonym, and it’s called dread. So he’s an eccentric, that person is dread.

22:16 Another term is cool, that person is cool, or that person is different or unique. And as a youngster I always wanted to be dread. I wanted to be like my father. My father was dread. So, you know, he could tell jokes, he was a storyteller, gambler, womanizer, you know, he was a rude boy of the old school, so much so that they gave him a nickname that I’d love to be able to, in fact, I’m going to ask the viewers, perhaps you can call me what they call my father: English.

22:55 What a great name. Great name. Anyone, anyone who calls me English, I’m coming and I’m with you for a cup of coffee. That’s, oh, I’ve won many accolades, but to win that accolade, to be called English, something of which my father, I mean, how did he get that? Let’s see.

23:19 He spoke a few words of English, proper English. So for example, he would say, “Good morning, how do you do? Delighted, delighted.” And it seems to me because he said those few words so perfectly well, like an Englishman, they gave him this name English. And I, second generation now coming up, embody all things which are English.

23:50 I love English football, the bulldog, you know, I love English, you know, everything. For me it resonates to me, I just get it. Okay. And could you always speak when you were younger, or is that something you developed and you worked on? I had to work on it.

24:07 I developed it to really well in New York City, where I went to school. At 16 years old I moved from London to New York City, and because of how incorrectly the New Yorkers spoke, it actually taught me how to correct my English, and listening to the BBC World Service, I just picked, I just got it, you know. And I suppose you know, they say that, you know, being clever is just really about how or whether you have the ability to get to the top, and I kind of just got it.

24:50 I, you know, speak the Queen’s English, and it’s a wonderful it’s a wonderful speak. It’s, it’s dread. How did you survive in New York City speaking like the Queen at 16 years old? Well, I didn’t have any friends. I don’t know whether that was because I was really focused on boxing or whether it was because I spoke quite oddly, as it would have sounded to them, but I was very insular.

25:23 In New York I had messed around too much as a youngster here in the United Kingdom, and it was kind of like my second chance. And my father, I remember him saying to me, “You have one more chance, you know, and this is it. You’re gonna go and live in New York City with your mother.” My brothers were boxing, and as far as I was concerned, I wanted their respect, and so I thought, maybe if I can do it better than them, then maybe they will respect me, and the community would respect me, and people wouldn’t ignore me.

25:53 And everything I wanted I actually earned, and it’s not just the fighting, it’s not just the winning, it’s how you lose, it’s also how you win. So it’s manners. If you win and you’re ill-mannered because you are [expletive] and haughty and you think the world is you, you’re the big I am, then you’ll never win the hearts of the people. So many people, so many fighters like my son today, they are chasing the symbol they give you when you’re victorious, and this isn’t the symbol that you’re really after, but he doesn’t know that yet.

26:34 You know, what you’re really after is the hearts of the people, but you only win with manners and understanding that, you know, if I’m bigger than you, then you will be looking up to me, and no one likes looking up to anyone. So if you are lower than the person you’re speaking to, if you are humble, if you’re just one of the guys with all your achievements, and then it’s then you can win their hearts. So it’s about him, it’s about being emotionally intelligent, you know.

27:08 No one’s really, however, you show me a really big guy, you show me a guy who thinks he’s big and I’ll show you a very small man. You show me a man who’s humble, I must tell you the story. Tell me. In 1996, one particular morning at the Dorchester, there was a knock on my door, and the lady’s name was Cheryl. She was the High Commissioner to the South African Embassy.

27:42 Nelson Mandela had come into the Dorchester the night before, and I asked her whether she could get me his autograph. And I gave this beautiful piece of hard card, kind of like a chocolate brown, light chocolate brown. So I forgot about this. Quarter past eight, there’s a knock on the door, and this Cheryl lady handed me the card, and it said, “To an outstanding and dynamic sportsman, Mandela.” True.

28:21 I said, “Thank you so much.” She said, “He will see you in suite 710 in 15 minutes.” That was just, I just came out of the shower. I put my clothes on and I was nervous. Here’s a man who, for me, not just for me, for for mankind in the 20th century was a beacon and a motivator and, you know, a figure of pure inspiration.

29:06 At this time in 1996 there wasn’t any of these camera phones, and I remember I had a Canon, one of these big Canon cameras, and I took it upstairs, got dressed, overall tang suit, orange shirt, orange tie up, you know, and and I was pacing up and down, I was really nervous, and I thought, no, no, be cool. So I sat down, and the door was open, I sat down, and about two minutes later a figure of six foot two walked through the door. And I always thought nothing, Mandela would be short, I don’t know why.

29:55 Six foot two, he walked through the door and he says, “Okay, someone wanted to meet you.” So humility personified. How can you say that to me? “I’m just a guy, I didn’t do 27 years in prison for the rights of the human.” So in that, and you know that what I saw, and my response to him was, my response to the comment was, “That’s why you’re such a great man.”

30:31 So here’s a man, a mountain, comes walking into the room and gets beneath me and tells me that he is honored to meet me. So you see where manners maketh you a bigger man. Humility makes it, it makes you a bigger, a bigger man. So when people talk about ego, we all have it, and it’s how mankind thrives and raises themselves and, you know, it’s, it is a good thing so long as you have manners. How do you teach that to a young man?

31:12 How old is your son? 25, 23, 18. How do you teach that to a young man, how especially a successful young man, a successful fighter in my view? How do you teach it by example? I wrote a quote, I wrote a quote of which I’m almost ashamed of.

31:45 It was a fantastic quote before I heard “The Pale Blue Dot,” written by Carl Sagan. I thought, now this is just a real, this is a really good quote. And it says like this, I wrote this: “If I am humble, then please don’t walk tall. I have 19 world championship wins, and if I am humble, then you don’t have any right. I don’t matter, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done, you do not have the right to walk tall if I am humble.”

32:20 Okay, I then read, my wife sent me “The Pale Blue Dot,” shocked, stunned and amazed that it was written in 1994. I read this and it grabbed me, and I read it again and it grabbed me tighter and held me tighter, and it was only a few weeks afterwards where I remember, I remembered that I had written this quote which I thought was a great quote, that if I’m humble then please don’t walk tall, and felt ashamed. Who do you think you are to say that, talking of yourself as though you are something because you’ve got 19 world championship wins?

33:15 So it means I’ve got to tell you the pale blue dot. So from what I understand, to the Pale Blue Dot, and correct me if I’m wrong, the Voyager space probe was was getting near the end of the solar system, and I believe it was Carl Sagan that was petitioning that it make one last photo, which was to turn 180 degrees and take a picture of Earth. And a lot of the scientists at NASA thought, there’s no point in doing this, it won’t be visible, et cetera, et cetera, and I think it took months and months to convince them to do it, and they finally took that picture with one of the two cameras, and you can see it, and it literally shows our planet as a tiny, tiny pale blue dot.

33:51 And I hope you tell me more. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read through the book, and I believe that is a metaphor for what we’re all about on this Earth. If we look at ourselves as nothing more than this pale blue dot, am I understanding what Carl was trying to say? Is the picture itself enough to convey it to another human, just to say, “Look at this”? Well, it is, but then one has to then engage their intellect.

34:19 So you have to engage your intelligence, you know. Who are you? I mean, I’ve had, I watched this Stephen Fry denigrate God. Are you a religious man? This is a very dangerous question.

34:38 I believe in nature. Now, God means different things to different people. If you believe that if you plant a seed and it grows, then you believe in nature, and nature and God is the same thing. Okay, rather than explain all of that, keep it very simple. Okay, if you believe in nature, you believe in God.

35:01 If you believe in nature, you believe in the universe. So going back to your point of saying, well, looking back at the Earth, the Pale Blue Dot, does it give enough of an impression? It only does if you think, if you philosophize. So you know, in explaining it, and thank you for helping explain the plain, the Pale Blue Dot, thank you for that, because it’s quite difficult to put it in perspective. So this Stephen Fry says, you know, you know, God is a stupid God and a maniac.

35:51 Yeah, I think someone asked Stephen Fry about God, and I know he says he is an atheist, and he was kind of speaking off the cuff, but you know, I think he said, he said, “Bone cancer in children? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery? It’s not our fault, it’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”

36:14 And just to finish off, he said, “It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous, utterly monstrous, deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in,” in my opinion. Really? Really? Okay, you know, now I have been trying to debate him for the last three months, or since, not quite since he made the statement.

36:40 I would very much like to debate him, and apparently he’s one of the most intelligent men. Let me take that back, he’s supposedly one of the better intellect. Intelligence and intellect, or being intellectual, are two different things. Intelligence, first of all, you purport to be a gentleman. Well, why would you say something that would infer that my mother was stupid?

37:13 I have to fight for all the mothers and fathers and the people who live with God in an omnipresent type way every day and gets them through their lives. I have to take on this debate for them. It’s wrong, but he should say that. Think of his particular challenges. Should you really be leaning on your own understanding?

37:52 And keep in mind, this is a man we admire. I was a huge fan, in fact I still am, but an apology and confession should be shown. You can’t infer that we are stupid. This is not fair and this is not being a gentleman. So I believe this show goes out to some 40 million viewers.

38:23 This man I’d like to debate. I think we should do it in his home, here, Cambridge is where he actually went to school. I’ll debate him anywhere. This was unkind, this is a type of bullying, and I’ve never been able to abide bullies, which is why I was suspended from so many schools so many times, and expelled for protecting people who were being bullied by people who were more intellectually inept or physically bigger, stronger. I always took the side of the smaller man, whether in mind or in body, and it’s an intellectual or intelligence debate, you know, there’s nothing physical going on here, but I believe it’s something that I cannot fail to win.

39:29 I think a lot of people would like to see that debate, so if they’re listening, I think they should, you know, send a tweet out to Stephen Fry, you and ourselves at London Real TV, and let’s set it up. We can do it here in about a month’s time, so we’ll let the public decide. But I think that’s fascinating. I do think that he should be accountable for what he said, or at least defend it and expand upon it. Yes.

39:51 And so I think it should be a debate, I think, just to throw it out there and leave it, leave it alone. Yeah, I don’t think that’s the most responsible thing. So, well, you know, I’m sure I’m not the only person saying, listen, I would like to debate you. Come on, the Queen believes in God for here, the United Kingdom, huh? Right.

40:10 On the American dollar bill, “In God We Trust,” right? Who are you? As clever as he may be, we’re going to go back now to the Pale Blue Dot. As clever as he may be, I’m not afraid of bullies, if indeed he is one. Certainly if he’s not, he should explain his point of understanding the Pale Blue Dot.

40:47 When I read this, I had to commit it to memory because I wanted it to be part of me. When you commit something to memory, it becomes part of your own entity. You start walking a particular way, you start talking a particular way, it makes you a better person, it makes you humble, it makes you look into yourself, it makes you want to better yourself, it makes you want to be kinder, it makes you want to be more responsible, it makes you want to actually display more manners.

41:34 So the way I’ll I would like to set it up. You know what, before I say that, let me make this particular point. However intelligent, no, however much information he may have amassed about the Earth, oil, economics, the constellations, math, history, however much he may have amassed in terms of information, how much can you possibly know to speak like this? You can’t lean on your own understanding, and the elders tell us one shouldn’t lean on their own understanding.

42:25 After all, what do you know? You’re just one human. But let’s say he had amassed more information than anyone, you know, in history. Let’s say he had amassed as much as anyone, as much as you could go onto a computer and find out. The Pale Blue Dot makes reference to someone like him because whatever you have amassed, it’s only about this particular dot, and there are hundreds of thousands of millions of these dots, planets.

43:08 So you know, when I’m putting across this wonderful philosophy that I so wish, I so hope, and I so imagine that Carl Sagan tried to get across to the public, if politicians or the people who have control of our pale blue dot, the Earth, if they could hear this, it would push them and motivate them to looking after the planet, the people on the planet. It would fall, it forces you. So let me start and go through it. So I usually always say, in fact, if you imagine you’re looking at a star now, imagine you are sitting on that star or standing on that star, that star may be six billion miles away, and you’re looking back across the cosmos and you’re looking at the Pale Blue Dot, and again the hundreds of thousands of millions of other dots around it.

44:24 So it would start and it would say, “Look again. Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.”

44:34 Right, and I think, comment, can I? Yeah, of course. It’s going to take a few minutes. Yeah. So it says, “Look again at that dot.

44:47 That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you have heard of, every human being that ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and every coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and every peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and every sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

45:51 The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another.” This is why you are against war.

46:36 “How fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is but a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all of this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life.

47:18 There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.

47:40 There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, to us, there should be a responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve, protect and cherish the pale blue dot, our Earth, the only home we’ve ever known.” Now, hearing that, can you see why I was ashamed of my quote, “If I am humble”? Yeah. While I was listening to you, I couldn’t believe that you had said that quote, because it’s almost the antithesis of that.

48:27 Yes. Yeah, you know, and it’s a wonderful perspective, and I think that’s why you’ve done a lot of the things over the years, and when you say something like that, it does make you wonder about the rivers of blood being spilled over a piece of land or of a barrel of oil. And I guess that’s something that’s always been running through you inside, because you were doing these, taking these stances 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Well, you know, the vocation I chose, being a fighter, if you’re a fighter you just have integrity, you live with truth, you know, the idea to be a good fighter, you have to first be willing to take a beating, if indeed you’re getting one, and stay there and take it.

49:08 So you know, justice becomes part of your grain. So in standing up against the war or the invasion of Iraq, I thought I was doing the right thing, and indeed I was, but I didn’t realize I was going to pay the price I paid, and most people don’t understand that a fighter can be against violence, because they put those two together. I’m sure you’ve dealt with this perception most of your life. I don’t see, now I don’t see it either, but it’s common. You know, okay, now I’m a bit older, now I’m a bit older, yes, I can see how fighters are stereotyped, right?

49:47 But surely, you know, during my career, you know, my posture, my posturing would have been one thing, and it would have actually engaged the public and made me box office. It wasn’t a rude or crude mouth or behavior that actually won me a box office, a box of his position, it was really just a spiritual type of entity. I was never rude, I was never ill-mannered, I was never a base, I never used that language. Right, but you postured in the ring, and it seems that the posturing was equivalent to actually telling the public, you know what, but I wasn’t, no, I was behaving, I was going, I was going in to fight another man, you know, and for me it’s like, how am I supposed to behave?

50:47 And if I’m going to behave real, you know, I’m actually doing a great act. I’m fighting another man fairly. I’ve trained for this man, this man has trained for me, you know, it’s under the auspices of the British Boxing Board of Control, there are rules here, the Queensberry rules, gentlemanly conduct is expected at all times. But in terms of projection, you know, in order to be real you had to project a type of greatness, a kind of insular majesty, you know, a grace, a fortitude, a resilience of perseverance, all of these things you had to project, you know, and it had to be delivered and executed with style, majesty and grace.

51:45 It did. Where did that come from, the stance, the jumping over the rope? Was that just something that came to you, or was that something you practiced? That’s the Adonis Torres. He he said to me, whenever you enter the ring, you vault the ropes.

52:07 I vaulted the ropes every one of my 26 amateur fights, which started in New York City in 1983. Now, I talk about two, when I speak to corporates or universities, debating unions, Cambridge, Oxford, I try to explain to these young and up, and these young up-and-coming men and women there’s nothing you can’t do, you just have to really mean it. So what’s needed is imagination and being in love with what you do. If you’re in love with what you do, then you have the fuel.

52:58 So when I fought Nigel Benn, for instance, there is no way he could have stopped me, because the fuel, which is passion, there was no end to it. I refused to quit. But this wasn’t just in the fight, this is in how I lived. So you know, no friends, no nightclubs, solitude, fierce, a fierce solitude for months and months and months. Oh no, seven years, seven years, seven years.

53:41 And I point out in truth that if you, any individual out there who wants to be a fighter, and a fighter is the hardest of them all because you are physically taking punishment and you cannot be subjective about it, you have to be objective. You get hit, you have to say, you know what, good shot, must never happen again, you mustn’t get angry. So I’m just going back to the point, talking about passion, which is your fuel. If you have fuel, if you are in love with what you do, then nothing is supposed to be able to stop you.

54:24 Nothing. And it’s, you know, that’s not about nutrition. Nutrition has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. And so therefore I’ve been referred to by some of these specialists as an elite athlete. Why?

54:43 Because it wasn’t about nutrition, it was about focus, it was about mind, it was about will. I don’t think I was that good, but I was intelligent about what I did. I worked it out, I measured people. Where I left in a particular area of the craft, I made up for it in other areas. For example, well, if a fighter or a boxer I was competing against, if he was stronger than me, then I wouldn’t pitch my strength against his.

55:20 I would then use my feet and my ring craft and I would move around and pick him off until he got a little weary or just beat him on points. So it was about being able to read the weaknesses of your adversary and use your strengths to take advantage of his weaknesses. So when I say I fought many men who had more talent, many men who had more ability, I always applied my intelligence and I was true, and in being true I was able to, I suppose, be involved in one, two of the greatest fights ever seen.

56:07 Take me back to 1990, round four, I believe Nigel hits you with an uppercut, I believe splits your tongue. What goes through your mind right then? Good shot. Do not telegraph that you’re hurt, and don’t become emotional about it. Oh, that was yours, but you know, no, but I’m saying, I mean, in in my view, emotion wouldn’t come into it.

56:36 This is purely objective, this is business. You know, I am not showing you, I’m not telegraphing that I’m hurt. Yes, I’m hurt. Do I want to be in here? No, I do not want to be in here, but I’ve made my bed and I’m going to sleep in it, and if I’m taking a beating, I will stay there and take it.

56:55 In doing this there is another prize: respect of the people. You can lose, if you lose with dignity and you lose on your shield, you don’t give up, you have the hearts of the people, which is a wonderful wealth. It just, I can’t tell you, it’s a privileged position in which I now sit, in that, to you know, people smile at me for reasons that, for reasons of my behavior 24, 25 years ago, because we got to see the way a warrior behaves. Yeah, that’s what we saw, that true something.

57:33 Yeah, yeah, a pure purity. And so you moved past that fourth round and you stayed to business, you stuck to your business. Oh, absolutely, yes, purely objectively. You knew you were gonna win that night? What I knew was, beforehand I’m measuring him, I’m saying to myself, well, you know, I’m always told I should believe in me, but I don’t believe in me because I’m me.

58:00 I’ve been locked up, you know, I’ve been chased, I’ve been in fights, I’ve been beaten up, I’ve been put underneath the thumb of, you know, bigger brothers, as the normal things within a family of boisterous boys. I’ve been through the system, the care system, the lock-up system, you know, this was something of which I had just, I’ll just move this slightly to the side and say, I had full control of this, you know, everything depended on me. And it wasn’t, it’s never what happens on the night.

58:48 What happens on the night is only determined by what you do in the weeks, months and years beforehand. So I had lived the life of the warrior, I had suffered the extreme solitude, you know, I had persevered when I couldn’t, when I couldn’t run, I walked my 7.6 miles, when I had a headache I still sparred, nothing ever stopped me, so it followed that nothing would stop me when I was actually in competition. And really that’s how you do it, in short: truth, integrity.

59:35 You know, the Warrior’s Code actually ends by saying, well, I’ll take you through it. It says, “The warrior is strong yet to sleep is fragile, his wisdom an amalgamation of precedent, yet his decisions cannot be based on the frailties of man. He is rather fueled by divine inspiration descending from the heart. He knows not anger and only fear is the unknown. The warrior does not judge, for his true assignment is to deliver evidence of superior behavior to the creator of all men.

1:00:12 The warrior doesn’t dream of frontiers, he only sees horizons. The warrior is a creature of irony, for his genuine task is to ensure peace. The true warrior knows, accepts and embraces, above all, integrity, which is his course in life, reason and the application of reason, which is his only weapon, and forgiveness, the only true cleansing virtue. And only when one can fully absorb these most the divine of all virtues can one at last see how impossible and futile it is to make war.”

1:01:03 It teaches you to be calm, gentle and true, and you know, as I said to you before, we yearn to be this, it’s romantic to be this. Tell me about Nigel Benn and your rivalry, through the first fight to the second fight, possibly a third fight, who knows. Tell me about the extremes of your characters, the oppositeness, the tension. Is that part of this chess match that you’re talking about, the months of preparation, getting in each other’s minds or not? And at the end of the day, were you thankful to have someone like that in retrospect, when at the time it might have been something you didn’t want?

1:01:49 This man was frightening. I need a strong word, he was terrifying. Terrifying man. See, Nigel, he was real, he was pure. Very dangerous, very dangerous man when you’re pure, when you’re not doing it for the money, when you’re doing it because it’s what you do is who you are.

1:02:31 Very dangerous man. I hear my wife told me that he posted something on Twitter yesterday saying that he wants a rematch. Well, I don’t know whether I would want to give him a shot at that. That’s this is a very, he’s a very dangerous man. Can I do it?

1:02:57 You know, as was seen a few nights ago, boxing is a business, and I’m astute enough to know this. I shouldn’t get involved where my expertise doesn’t lie, this is for my wife to do. So if he wants to talk about actually having a rematch, it’s like, speak to my wife. You said that, does it scare you a little bit, your own energy of that fight, energy, do you get a bit fearful of yourself when you turn into that fighter? I’m not afraid, but others are.

1:03:44 And there was a conversation there was a conversation that was had, and it was someone’s wife, and the wife said to me, “I could not live without this man and I don’t want him to fight.” Now I understand that things have changed. The point, the reason I tell you that is this: it was only then that I was able to look at myself outside in, because I’m always looking at the world inside out, it’s just, I’ve always been this way. So it was then I saw how dangerous I actually am when I switch into this particular spirit or entity or character, you know, they would have to, you know, if anything, my ego, and I said we all have it, but manners is what make up the man, and so therefore I’m aware it’s a business, and so my ego is like, well okay, well I know I can do that, because it’s my spirit, it’s always there, it’s only that it’s parked, I park it and always keep it parked.

1:05:24 But the ego of actually being able to actually make more of a financial reward than what Mayweather did the other night, now that is tempting, you know. My wife was reading to me all of these comments on Twitter, which has been going ballistic, and everyone points out that it was the financial fight of the century, it wasn’t the fight of the century. Not to be compared to Eubank-Benn. I know the viewers always say Benn-Eubank, but I’m talking, so I have to, that little ego is still there.

1:06:00 You bank ban one or two. I’m, well, I’m saying that if there was, if there was a third fight, yeah, that my ego is right now, look, because my spirit isn’t engaged at this point, it doesn’t have to be, because you know, this may be, this may not even be Nigel Benn talking. You know, but looking at what they did the other night, there’s no reason why we couldn’t do that, and my ego says, you know what, that may be quite fun. Obviously I would have to have the lion’s share, as I’m the premier guy.

1:06:35 Again, a little bit of ego, but true. I mean, it would have to be something like a, well, again, let me leave that to my wife, okay? She is my business consultant and everything goes through Claire. Well, for the people listening, if they are interested in this, they should tweet us as well and let us know if they want to see that third one. I think it would be fascinating.

1:06:54 I want to know what you thought of the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. I watched your first fight with Nigel Benn a few nights ago and I was just fascinated by the way you move and the speed and the technical ability, and it was just everything felt like it was on the line and there was an energy that it’s hard to describe, but I haven’t seen it in the ring for five or ten years, and I didn’t see it in the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight either. What’s your read on that fight, boxing, and when you were doing it?

1:07:40 My read on the fight, I think it’s best I tell you this. What Mayweather did was show that boxing is a business, and he is a very good businessman because he listens to his advisors. My advisor says to me, “Do not speak about the business, that’s not what you do. You know, you are pure as a warrior, not a businessman.” I’m a businessman in the ring and this is commercial.

1:08:16 So you know, it’s almost like, you know, speak to my wife about that, because where that’s concerned, my my mind starts thinking, are people really interested in that? Would they actually, you know, would the public say, well, you know, we’ll even give you like a few pounds, like 10 pounds, if you’d make a comeback? That would be interesting. Funny, but true. I’d like to see that, really, definitely.

1:08:47 Well, maybe we can set something up with you with some type of, we’re gonna do the debate with Stephen Fry, and then we’re gonna have the big three, the debate with Stephen Fry. You see, where intelligence is concerned, you know, it isn’t ego, but you know, these people are calling me eccentric, which really is, again, a synonym for the word dread or cool when I was a kid. It’s a compliment. It’s a compliment, yes. I’m thinking, well, this guy here, look at the ego creeping back in, this guy here is an encyclopedia, yet I have no fear for debating him, and I truly have within my spirit the knowledge that I cannot possibly lose in a debate to him, not on this subject.

1:09:40 We’re going to do that and that’s going to be fantastic. Boxing, has it changed? Is it too much of a business? Do we not see warriors go out there and leave it all in the ring? I mean, you didn’t fight like a businessman.

1:09:53 I mean, you were taking care of business in the ring, you weren’t thinking about the bottom line. Well, it is, I am always thinking about the bottom line, but what is my bottom line in the ring? It is about the integrity of persevering. That’s my bottom line. You know, where the financial aspect of it is concerned, that’s another story.

1:10:19 What I know about is being true. So you know, I’ve been asked flippantly, what was your trick? How did you have 19 world championship wins? What was your trick? And I tell people what my trick was: I was willing to give my life.

1:10:46 It’s a great trick, only a few people can do that one. Do you watch mixed martial arts, the UFC, you know, the new some call it cage fighting, you know, it’s kind of the other sport besides boxing where, you know, two men fight with slightly different rules, and you know, there’s a fighter from Ireland, he calls him, his name is Conor McGregor, and he says he is a student of human movement and this is what he talks about, but when I watched you in in the Benn number one fight, I just see a man who moves, I see someone who is all about movement and distance and positioning and dropping ipads, and I see a specialist in movement. And is that something that you consciously thought of, or is that something that was just you, in your spirit?

1:11:39 Yeah, everything has to be developed through contest. In my view, again, as I say, I lacked in particular areas and movement was mostly where I actually made up for what I lacked in other abilities. You see, if you can’t hit me and I can hit you, because I am not there when you want to hit me but I am there when I want to hit you, then I have the advantage. That’s why I’ll always have the advantage of the Nigel, in truth, because I’m not fighting with this, I’m fighting with this.

1:12:32 This is steadfast, meaning that if I’m taking a beating I’ll take the beating for the 12 rounds and I’ll walk out on my shield, but I’m not using this, I’m using this. I will only take punishment if I have to, and when Nigel is concerned, he certainly can dish it out, and with a man like him you truly have to be willing to give up everything. If you’re not willing to give up everything then don’t get into the ring with the man, he is a very dangerous man, his entity, his spirit is dangerous.

1:13:13 Let’s talk about punishment. And it’s interesting you say a lot of people think that fighters are about giving punishment, but any fighter will tell you, and I’ve been around a lot of them, that they say a lot of their business is taking punishment. And your fight with Michael Watson, when it came to the second and third round, did you say to yourself, okay, this is going to be a lot of punishment that I’m going to have to take to get to those later rounds?

1:13:40 Was there, is that an agreement you have with yourself, or a conversation you have with yourself in the first few rounds of about, or that about where you kind of know what’s going to happen? When I came back to the corner after the first round, Ronnie actually, he said exactly what I thought. “No one can fight at this pace, he’ll slow down.” So third round, there’s no talking, I’m not listening to anything, because he has to slow down. Only in the sixth round he’s coming at me at the same intensity.

1:14:19 There is no slowing down. So I gave up in the sixth. I gave up. I knew I couldn’t beat him. I knew that I couldn’t be.

1:14:29 You remember thinking that? Yeah. If you watch the fight now, can you see it in your body language? No, because you never showed anything. No, because you have to act.

1:14:36 Yeah, there is nothing enlightening about telegraphing that you’ve given up. I acted so well because I continued to take the beating without letting on that I knew I couldn’t win. Right, because that’s the warrior code, that’s the professionalism. Yeah, that’s the purity of a fighter. If you have that, then you’re going to, amazing things can happen, and amazing things did happen.

1:15:12 Yeah. How do you win a fight like that? How do you end up winning a fight like that? How did you, I and again, integrity, perseverance. There is a quote that ends like this, I can’t give you just the end, I’ll have to give it to you from the start, but it’s short.

1:15:31 It says, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; the world is full of unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

1:16:01 Omnipotent, all-powerful. Eleventh round, you are still fighting, he knocks you down towards the end of that round, and a lot of people probably didn’t think you were getting up from that. Well, I mean, it’s now, you know, yeah, that’s, when you get up at that point then you know that is, well, this guy should be sectioned, he’s mad, he’s lost his mind, why are you getting up? And you made a note to spring up, didn’t you, and you almost said you had a peripheral vision of the crowd and you just wanted to show them that you were back up?

1:16:45 No, no, I had recovered. When my knee hit the ground I actually had recovered, and I was clear, my mind was clear, I wasn’t groggy, clearer maybe than you were in the previous round at that point there. I was, I had clarity, I had pure clarity for me at that point there. But it was like, you can’t do that, and you shouldn’t have done that, because it was mo, it was like you could just outbox me, you could leave me alone, you don’t have to punish me this much.

1:17:28 It was just punishment and it was just maniacal, you know, there wasn’t any measure to it. And I guess it pushed, it just, I’m clear, and I put my ancestors within this one punch, everything. Everything was in this punch, and at that particular point in time, let’s say just before the knockdown, I had nothing, nothing. What Rudyard Kipling says in his “If,” “If you can force your heart and now then sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them, hold on,” that’s where I was.

1:18:29 Just will. There was, I remember, I remember I threw this flurry of punches, and he stepped back, but in the flurry of punches there wasn’t any strength, there was nothing, there was, it was more, it was more, put your hand out, put your hand out, put your jab out, but there wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t, it was like this, it was just, there was nothing there, there was no essence, there wasn’t any sharpness, there wasn’t any strength, and he pulled back and hit me with this one too, which can cuss me, but again, when my knee hit the ground I was clear, because then I’d been pushed beyond, I had been, not I, my spirit had been pushed beyond, so you know, it’s no longer kind of like a conscious, it’s not, it’s no longer, it was almost like it’s no longer my will, this is something else now.

1:19:54 You’ve gone, you’ve gone too far, you didn’t need to push me, you didn’t need to do that, I’m beaten, you could just box me, leave me alone, don’t, you didn’t have to antagonize this which I cannot, I can’t contain this spirit. But that’s now being pushed, isn’t me doing it now, this is something else. This is essence, this is, it’s spirit, it’s intuition, it’s like you’ve pushed it now, that’s not me, the physical me is no longer here. And what happened next?

1:20:34 I threw, when I say I was clear, I was clear, almost revived, slightly. Right now it’s like the spirit is now alive. It’s almost like you create the time, he created, I remember writing about this actually, I wrote an article about this, time where it doesn’t matter who creates this moment, where there is fever pitch in the arena, where the creation of the opportunity to finish the fight is created by the other point, by, where, let me say that again, where the opportunity to finish the fight is created by your adversary.

1:21:23 When it’s created, it’s open for anybody, it’s open for me too. It’s being created, that moment is there, and it’s who is he who dares wins. I dared. He created the moment and I dared. And what I contract back to now in my perceptions, what I can track back now to is the fact that if you dare, you do win.

1:21:55 Nature never allows you to fall on your face. Embarrassment, if I go forward, in fact, there is something that actually puts all of this into perspective. I don’t write anything, I pick up things which resonate to me, and it says something like this: “If you laugh, you risk appearing to be a fool. If you weep, you risk appearing to be sentimental. If you reach out for another, you risk rejection.

1:22:41 If you love, you risk not being loved in return. If you place your dreams in front of the crowd, you risk ridicule. If you go forward in the face of overwhelming odds, you risk failure. But risk must be taken, for the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing has nothing, does nothing, is nothing.

1:23:08 Well, in the world of ego is nothing. That person may avoid suffering, pain and embarrassment, but that individual will not learn, love, change, feel or grow. Only the person who takes the risks is truly free.” I like that. And so you hit him with a punch from your ancestors at the end of that 11th round.

1:23:32 Well, you know that terminology, I was looking at the time, at the time, no, I’ve never used that before, but just, I was looking for a word. I threw that punch from my past, from everything that’s been done to me, and every time I was suppressed, every time I was ignored, every time I was beaten up or disrespected, every time I was blocked, and perhaps before that unconsciously, I threw everything, all of that angst, all of that despair was thrown into that one punch, and it hit, and you know, if ever I’ve seen divine intervention, that was it. When I look at it now, how do you do that?

1:24:34 And for people that don’t know what happened next, what happened to Michael? He, the shot created the blood clot on his brain, and he could no longer function, but no one could see that. And here’s a man who had you know, physically controlled and shaped and had managed and had outboxed, now punched, now thought and outmaneuvered and out-strengthed me. So you know, I think the referee may have known, but then how do you stop that fight? He got up automatic, or let’s say automatic pilot, he got up, but he wasn’t, that the clock must have happened by then, but no one could see it.

1:25:35 He looked normal, his eyes were glazed over, you can see that in looking at the footage now. Yeah. And for Roy Francis to have stopped at that point, you know, put yourself in his shoes, how do you stop it when the man hasn’t lost a round and he has comprehensively controlled and have he had, it was his fight, he won every round, every round, 11 rounds? So you know, how does he stop the fight? So he didn’t, and then in him not stopping the fight, and in the Board of Control not having the correct facilities in place, you know, even when he came out for the 11th round, sorry, when it came out for the 12th round, you can see he can’t move.

1:26:29 Yeah, but still no one, his hands are down. Yeah, but his leg, you can see he can’t move his leg. Right, but still that, I haven’t caught this one. What are you thinking, and what did Ronnie say to you in the corner? Are you thinking, well, you have to, you have to try to finish this?

1:26:44 Yeah, I mean, you know, your intellectual capacity kicks in in terms of the craft that you’ve learned, if I can screw, I thought to myself, if I can throw 15 to 20 punches, if they’re not answered, the referee has no choice but to stop it. Right, of course you’re exhausted at this point. And, but no, you weren’t? Okay, no, I was exhausted up until the knockdown. After the knockdown there was just an injection of life.

1:27:15 You know, when I came out for that left 11, the 12th round, sorry, when I came out for the 12th round, I had one minute of very fast punching speed and power left. I just had it. I was just injected with it, I don’t know how. I knew that if I could throw 15 to 20 punches, if he didn’t answer those punches, then I would, the referee has no choice but to stop the fight. Right, which is exactly what happened.

1:27:51 Exactly what happened. 30, 20 seconds in, the referee calls the fight, he collapses in his corner fairly soon afterwards. Yeah. And what was the aftermath of that? What was, do you remember that night, and did people know what was happening?

1:28:04 Did people know it was serious at the time? I had a kiss on my forehead, who I found out years later that was my brother Peter, who kissed me on my forehead and told me, “Watson’s touch and go now.” What I suffered no one knows about, but I was close to death that night myself. You were concussed. I was, I had been beaten to within inches of my life.

1:28:36 I had been beaten severely. Yeah. And you know that was, I mean, like, you know, and I hope this is inspirational, this is not supposed to be a sad thing, this is the greatest fight of my career. Nigel Benn, yes, that was also a great fight, but what I had to overcome that night and what I went through, you know, in the weeks afterwards, and it’s become the stuff of legend because he survived. Thank God he survived, and you know, as I said the other night at his birthday party, 50th, you know, I went there with a whole script committed to memory, but seeing Michael and the way he is, I just said, well, I, you know, I’m just humbled, there’s nothing I can say actually.

1:29:38 All what I had prepared, I didn’t say any of that, I just said, I’m just humbled by the man. He was in intensive care for a year, he suffered some brain damage. Why is he inspiring to you? Why? Humility, he is humble.

1:29:55 All that he has gone through, he does nothing but inspire people, helping helping charities, showing people who are in positions like he was that they can survive. You know, no bitterness. And so you see that as kind of a moment of triumph for both of you, for the the human spirit? This is the human spirit, which is what boxing is supposed to be projecting, the human spirit. Right, but it almost left two men nearly dead, and that’s why boxing will always have the imagination of the mass.

1:30:41 It always has and always will because it’s pure, you know, one man against another, you have the rules. Let’s jump on the conduct, who’s the better man. Nigel yearns for the position that I now hold, you know. I played by the rules, I was objective about what I was doing, and it’s the reason he wants another shot. And they say that you were never the same fighter after that Watson fight.

1:31:21 I think you might have even said that. Is that accurate, that something in you changed after you saw what happened to him, or maybe what happened to you that night? Well, I lost the instinct to force a stoppage. If I didn’t take someone out clean with one shot, I wouldn’t force it, and I lost a few fights on the strength of that, that view, that became part of me. Yeah, part of the instinct to finish a fight, that left, you know, being coming up having a mother who she was pure benevolent, pure kindness, pure letting go, pure forgiveness, so coming up around that, those virtues have endowed themselves on me, so it’s kind of natural to my upbringing why I would have actually lost the instinct to force a stoppage.

1:32:56 But I love being the tactician, you know. Can I? I loved being the, you know, the guy who could who could not get hit, could be quick and play and, you know, have the time run out of the round scoring maybe one or two more points more than my adversary. You know, having power, being able to do all of that to me wasn’t as sexy as, you know, being elusive, being technical, being masterful. So for me I think it just, it, you know, I could I could become, I could, I had, I didn’t have to have that finishing instinct.

1:34:07 I had other ways of which actually worked better for the audience. I was a better entertainer for it. The public do love a knockout, I know, which is why they love Nigel Benn, because of his exceptional power. I think 27 of his opponents didn’t last two rounds. 27.

1:34:31 He hits hard. Yeah, you stay here when he hits you, but anyway, I mean that’s that you perhaps, that’s for my wife to talk to him about. All right, we’ll do that. That’s powerful, watching you move, it’s scary watching you move. You’re very power, it’s power and very centered, your movement, and very technical and you know that inside game you have is just something I don’t see very often these days.

1:35:00 Well, you know, that’s it’s always there. How can we, don’t see fights like yours anymore. Perhaps there is a lot of fighters today who they want to be celebrities now. This is not a criticism, it’s just the sign of the time, this is just the way things are. I was, in truth, you know, they’ll say I was a showman, but then look at my upbringing, look at where I come from, I wanted nice clothes, you know, I wanted to be dread, which they call eccentric, I wanted to be different, I wanted to be intelligent, I wanted to be respected, so all of these things combined makes up someone who performs for real, but it’s a real performance, it isn’t just hitting the guy, it is being, as I said, you’re on stage.

1:36:11 So titillate, talk to me about the style, the monocle, the riding boots, English, English, the English, the Harley-Davidsons, the Peterbilts, the flare, the panache, talk to me, is that all back to those roots of wanting to be dread? Yeah. Or is it you taking it to the next exponential level? Well, what does dread mean, or what does being cool mean? It doesn’t mean doing what everybody else does, it means doing and being unique.

1:36:48 And I mean, I don’t know whether you believe in star signs, but they say Leos are individual, so I’m a Leo, what am I going to do? And as far as I was concerned, so long as you’re not being ill-mannered, so long as you are not projecting anything base and ill towards the grassroots who are coming up, as long as you’re being positive and so long as people are actually engaged in conversation, it means I’m doing the right thing. I don’t know that I was doing anything wrong.

1:37:21 You weren’t. So you know, in terms of why aren’t people this way, you know, fighting is not celebrity, it isn’t, you know, you cannot be all things to all people, you have to be one thing for yourself with manners, that’s what a fighter is, and if you can be that, if you can have that purity, then you’re going to win the hearts of the people somewhere along the line. You won the hearts of the people after losses in the late 90s, and it was a strange thing, and you said once, I think you said it was a beautiful thing, is that when you had the bravado and you were winning, for some reason you didn’t have the hearts and minds, but when they saw maybe you with a bit of vulnerability, then all of, maybe this energy, maybe it was some love, was allowed to spill out and you became embraced.

1:38:15 Can you explain that? Well, actually I, but I’m me and I’m looking at it inside out, and just for the viewers, you know, I must say this, that I am aware that when I use the word I and me, that I am on the verge of being despised. You know, one shouldn’t talk about me, me, me, me, me, but it is an interview and you are asking me the questions about my career, so I do apologize to you, the public, who may think that it’s all about me. It is today. It is about you.

1:38:44 Yeah, well, what was the question? The public seemed to really embrace you and love you after a loss. Well, you know, I would say I would position that a little differently by saying, well, I lost like a gentleman. I lost with my head held high, with my eyes wide open, like a man, not a child who would complain and say it wasn’t fair. So you know, again, it’s how you lose, and there isn’t any losing so long as you pitch yourself in that cauldron.

1:39:33 It doesn’t matter what the sport or the field, pitch yourself, do something there, and when you’re there, all you have to do is have manners, and you will capture the imagination of someone if the public are watching on TV, if there’s a public, if there’s a if it’s a public arena under the TV screen, you’re gonna win the people who are watching. It’s manners, always manners, number one thing, manners, men as menace, and it’s almost the white. But when they saw the way that you lost, then they, I think that’s when they thought, wow, this man is exceptional, because maybe when they saw the way you won, they just chalked it up to this, that maybe they couldn’t see the nuance that you saw clearly.

1:40:13 Yeah, well, I, and I had a great a great help, like when I say great, it may not be actually all positive, but I had a great help from the media, who actually loved the villain, of which seemed to them that they could actually use to sell their newspapers. So in one way I’m grateful, but then in another, not really fair, I didn’t really see myself as cannon fodder for the media, because I was real, I was true. You know, there’s no pretending in boxing, I, and really, I’ve, you know, celebrity is a very tough word, I have an issue with that particular word, because I’m a fighter, there are particular things I can’t do, that’s why you wouldn’t have seen me on any of these I’m a Celebrity…

1:41:03 Get Me Out of Here. Come down, say I’m not a dancer, I’m not a cook. I’ve done particular programs when I was coming up, but then there comes a time when you have to step away from that, because indeed you are a fighter, you are a warrior, and then there becomes principles of which you have to stand by, because you never stop being a warrior, it’s always with you. What did you think when you spent time with Louis Theroux and some of these other pieces that documented your life?

1:41:34 How did you feel about those portrayals, or even being documented? It’s great fun, it’s great fun, it is fun and it’s a privilege, and something like this in the world I come from can only be won by winning, you know, this is the price, these are the prizes that you win. You win the ability to project your character to a nation, and you know, speaking to grassroots, you know, going to prisons and speaking to inmates, going to universities and schools and junior schools and colleges, speaking to people about being true, and imagination, so important, imagination, without imagination, you know, what garnered, what actually engaged my imagination when I was really young, maybe nine years old, Michael York in a movie called The Three Musketeers.

1:42:45 You know what this man is actually projecting, that I want to be that, I want to be, I want to save the woman, you know, I want to fight for the weak, you know, and I want to be, and I want to do it in a very cool way, and I want it to actually look good. I want it to be heroic. And then I caught on to a character called the man with no name, Harmonica, in a movie called Once Upon a Time in the West, Charles Bronson, and his cool demeanor, you know, in battle, gunfighting and just being still, all of these things had an impression on my imagination.

1:43:34 I want to be like this, but how can I do it? In the ring is what it came to one day. You know, being a Jamaican, my parents being Jamaicans, you know, the strawberry hat and, back in the day, the Farah trousers and the handkerchief in the back pocket and the kabichi, you know, like suede and cardigan, suede and cotton cardigan, you know, and you know, there was a sense of cool. What we said in the city, we said this guy’s dread, the English would say this guy’s eccentric.

1:44:25 You know, how do you not become affected when you see a man, the normal walk, where can I, where can I have a space to walk up there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, just right around here. So when you see a, when you see the Rasta, you know, and you’re coming up and you’re trying to make sense of the world, you know, you’re 13 years old and you see a man walk, and in his walk is dignity, cool, or wow, he’s dread. The dignity part, you know, always having that manners, you know, I’m decent, I’m to be respected, and you could imagine being able to see that in the way the person walks, and this is what we were within our community, we were gifted with this, this was the mindset, and Bob Marley and the prophecy of the prophet that he was, and the uprightness and the the courage and fortitude and, you know, self-respect.

1:45:32 So you know, when you’re visualizing this on a daily basis, that’s how a man’s, he’s like, you take a lot out of that. Unconsciously you’re taking a great deal out of it. Then you’ll have another guy who walks like that. Can you read a man by his walk? Yeah, of course, in a second, of course.

1:46:02 Then you’ll have the Peckham boys who do like this, gangsters, you know, but the most inspiring to me was the Rasta. He had his head like this, and you know, it just made such an impression, I wanted, I wanted to be this, I wanted to embody the spirit that these men had, and it revolved around being dignified and having respect, but the community does not give you respect for the way you walk, you have to earn it. And the number one thing within the community I came from, and I suppose mankind, is being able to fight, like, can you be a gentleman with it?

1:46:53 Can you do it and have manners? Can you do it and then be protective of weaker people in all regards? You know, can you stand up for the man who is disenfranchised? Can you stand up for the woman? You know, you develop a mindset that you will not hit a man.

1:47:13 If a man struck me, I’m not hitting him back, because it makes me a bully, he doesn’t know that I’m a fighter. So me taking advantage of him because of what I’ve learned all over all these years doesn’t make me a bigger man. So it becomes my duty to point out to my children, if a woman hits you, you can’t have her back, meaning that you don’t even know her, she slaps your face, you can’t hold her back, you have to protect men and women. You can’t touch a woman physically, that’s not what I teach.

1:47:48 What I teach is you protect the dignity of the woman, her female state. That’s where we’re coming from, we are being really magnanimous, we’re being big, we’re being protective, we’re gatekeepers of the community, small and large. What’s good here is going to be good over there. One of your children has become a fighter. Yes.

1:48:15 Did you ever see that coming? Not when he was 12, but directing him and him actually going through these six months tests, one-year tests, two-year tests, passing all of them with flying colors, supervised by you. Yeah, and Ronnie. Well, you see, when I say supervised, or when you say supervised, I give you an instruction, then I’m watching to see whether you can follow it, because if you can follow it then you’re going to win, and he has followed it. It’s not that I have to watch you, you see, look, the integrity within a fighter, it’s not that you have someone to account to, you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, you’re following a code.

1:49:02 You don’t know better than I, if I’m giving you the information that I have learned through trial and error, if you trust me then listen to it, and if you can do it then I’ll see that you can do it, not because I’m watching you, I’ll see it in the way you speak, I’ll see it in the way you refer to me, I’ll see it in your manners towards me, I’ll see it in how you treat other people. You know, it’s not about watching someone. Did you run this morning at six o’clock in the morning?

1:49:33 I don’t have to ask you that, you know you’re gonna do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because you have to account to me. That’s why boxing, that’s why boxing is, it’s such a good principle for young men. The physical aspect first teaches you, don’t use it. The physical aspect of boxing first teaches you, you mustn’t use it outside the ring. That is an awesome lesson, and then to be kind, you want to be a good fighter, you have to be kind, you have to be gentle, calm, gentle and true, I was telling you earlier, and then young men have to be accountable for everything they do, because it all comes back to the ring, as you said, years and years and years you put in to make those performances.

1:50:25 And so he’s deserved this and he’s earned what he has here. And you, yes, and you’ve guided him and and you’re happy that one of your sons is a boxer? He will be happy he is a boxer, because it is a, it’s a noble you know, to be called a boxer, this is a big thing, I can see now it’s the really big thing. So what do you do? I’m a boxer.

1:51:00 Who does this? You fight other men, that’s all they know, they don’t know about the depth that goes into it to be a boxer, that you can’t hit man and you must be protective of the community. Intellectually certainly, physically, it’s a wonderful vocation, it’s wonderful. You know, I, you know, people may say, you know, how comes well, sponsors don’t get involved with boxing, I don’t understand why they don’t. Okay, perhaps there’s some behavior which is unbecoming, but when you think about it, you know, this is you know, this is a noble art, it’s truly a noble art, and when it’s practiced correctly, inside and out, you know, what better teacher, what better teachings for youth?

1:51:59 This is coming from a man who said boxing is a mug’s game. Yes. And I will not promote boxing because it is barbaric. I was young at one time, not only was I young at one time, but I was in the thick of it, and I had to give myself distinction, so in order sometimes to talk a great deal and get across a wider point of view, sometimes you have to maybe even speak against what you do. However, it doesn’t really make sense that someone would speak against what they do, then be so accomplished at it.

1:52:34 You only can be accomplished in what you love. I think you did love it, and I think you were speaking true. I think something about you did feel it was barbaric. Oh no, certainly it is, but once you intellectualize the gentility that one must have if you’re going to be a practitioner, not inside the ring but outside the ring, because you have the masses looking up to you, so what are you going to project? You can’t project that you’re a blockhead or a meathead, you know, you should be projecting the fact that in actual fact you are a person with first manners and consideration, that you never use it against people, you use it to empower people.

1:53:15 It reminds me of Mandela. He says, “Our deepest fear isn’t that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, talented, fabulous and gorgeous?

1:53:36 Well, actually, who are you not to be? After all, you are a child of God. The world cannot be served by your playing small. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so others around you won’t feel insecure. We were born to make manifest the glory of God which is within us, and when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously allow others to do the same.

1:54:02 And in liberating ourselves from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.” I love that quote, isn’t it? And so many people, the first time they hear it, it’s like they’ve never heard anything like that before. And you know, it’s something that we will not understand you know, for generations to come, it’s going to be always enlightening. Always.

1:54:30 I mean, these words are so powerful, and there’s so much in these words that we can’t yet see, and they’re all true, you know, but this, it goes into the spirit of the human. We are amazing, we the human being, we are amazing, but we can’t see how amazing we are as yet. If you go through this, “Our deepest fear isn’t that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” What is that talking about, powerful beyond measure?

1:55:02 “It is our light.” Do you know what light is? If you break down light, it is our light, it is our the light within that most frightens us. You know, we ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, telling to establish some fabulous and gorgeous? Well, actually, who are you not to be?

1:55:23 You are a child of God. Stephen Fry, what you think this is an accident? I may not be able to actually pin it down, but this can’t be an accident that we walk and talk. You say there’s no God, yet I’m looking at you, I’m looking at your nose that you breathe, that there is a language, that I can run, that I can smile and see and hear. To me it is that obvious.

1:55:56 To me, I get it. But because it’s so obvious to some people, or to, yeah, some people, because it’s so obvious they can’t see it. I want to see this debate. Let me ask you a question. How do you, how does a man stop boxing?

1:56:18 How do you retire from a sport that’s giving you these highs, these lows, that’s brought out these moments like you know, you and Michael, a testament to the human spirit? How can you ever replace that, or what comes next? What comes back? How did you figure that out when you finally did stop? Dignity.

1:56:39 That’s how I figured it out. Dignity. There’s a quotation and I’m not going to be able to find exactly where it is within this letter found in the church yard in 1692, I believe. Does the Desiderata, have you ever heard of this? No.

1:57:06 And I’ll stop when the line comes which makes reference to what you just asked. You have a photographic memory, I think. “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth clearly and quietly, and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant, for they too have their story.

1:57:36 If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble it may be, it is a real possession in the changing 14th of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery, but let this not blind you to what virtue there is. Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

1:58:13 Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the council of the years, take kindly the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune, but do not distress yourself with imaginings.

1:58:46 Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond the wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. After all, you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You do have a right to be here, and whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

1:59:20 With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful and strive to be happy.” How do you remember these things when you come across, when you find something that resonates? It’s almost like everything I just said there, I’m sure if you were to play it back, you knew all of what I said. If anything, I’m only reminding you, you already knew it.

1:59:56 It’s already within our essence. So when I come across these philosophies, I commit them to memory, because really I already know them, and it’s a duty I have, being or having the position that I do have to inspire, to help people grow, to open, you don’t have to stay down, you can climb. You know, ignite your imagination, just keep on looking at pictures. Look at the pictures, you know, if you put something on your wall, like a house, okay, it is very likely within 10 years either you will gravitate towards it or it will gravitate towards you, and I’m talking about the real thing, not the picture.

2:00:52 We are amazing, but it’s too obvious, we can’t see it. You know, it is said we only use 10 of our brains, we cannot access the other 90. What if we could? When I say, or when it is said, that this is a magical experience we’re having, it is that we are talking, that we dream, think about that, we dream. I once had a dream, and I saw in the dream that I had recorded something, I don’t know whether I was I was maybe walking in the woods, maybe that was when I was in North Wales, and yesterday at all school, I was walking in the woods, somehow I was watching this and I I’ve seen that, and the thing about the dream was this, was that I could hear a projector, so you know, like old film, I could hear the projector, and it’s kind of like, so I truly believe, and I’m sure if anyone who’s watching this researches it, we record every action we do, it’s there, it’s only that we cannot access it when we want to.

2:02:22 We are amazing. Mandela was absolutely on point. He was. Can I ask you about some of your own personal, you know, success secrets? I mean, do you have daily things that you do in your life, like you discuss, some people call that a vision board, well, they’ll put something on the wall to visualize, or do you have a daily routine, meditation, or anything that you do that kind of keeps you on the top of your game?

2:03:08 Someone asked you one time if you liked fame and you said no. I loved it to make people smile and to have people be relaxed and to have it so that people are open to you. It’s just it’s a wealth that I wouldn’t give up for anything. It’s a privilege, which is why you have to be calm, gentle and true, you mustn’t be sharp with people.

2:03:46 People are genuinely, people are generally shy, so embrace, smile, people will reflect you. If you smile, they smile, if you’re, if you reflect them and you’re shy too, then nothing happens. You know, let’s strike all of that, I’m gonna give you a better answer. Let’s go back. Ask me the question again.

2:04:14 When someone asked you once if you liked fame, you said, no, I don’t like it, I love it, coming from where I do, wanting respect, every time someone says to me, Chris, like what you do, it is a reinforcement that I achieved my objective. So for me fame is, for me fame is something that I wouldn’t swap for anything. It’s the hearts of the people, it’s we, not I. I doesn’t work. When your eye, people have contempt for you when you’re I, when you’re we, then you have your shoulder to shoulder with people, you know, they cry with you, they laugh with you, they win with you, they stay with you, you feel there’s care there, there’s some type of consideration there for you.

2:05:29 That’s it’s huge, it’s a powerful currency, powerful, and it doesn’t compare to money. Money is wonderful, it’s great. Right, okay, but this is another currency that so many people don’t know. Right, and some people who do know it do not respect it and go ahead and lose it. You lose it like that.

2:05:49 You go out there in the street and hit somebody, it’s gone, and you don’t get it back. You get one chance with the hearts of the people, one chance, and it’s a great responsibility. Look after it. It takes a lot of working to get. In 2025, and 10 years from now, when you and I sit down again and have this conversation, what are we going to be talking about?

2:06:16 What’s going to be on Chris Eubank’s mind? What are you going to be doing at that point? I would say that, you know, the base will be the same: be calm, be gentle, be true. If you want to make it in whatever field you are pursuing, application, application, sorry, focus, application and persistence, if you want to make it in what you’re doing, focus, application and persistence. Injuries are in the mind, especially when you’re young.

2:07:03 I saw a girl in Manchester not too long ago, and I had to take a phone call and I was walking past this cafe and I put my bag down and I said, “Excuse me, I just need to get the phone out my bag,” took the call, and I said to her, “What do you do?” Some people came up and they’re asking for pictures and the like. I said, “What do you do?” She said, she said, “Well, I used to dance.” I said, “Well, how old are you?”

2:07:34 She said, “I’m 20.” I said, “What do you mean you used to dance?” She said, “I hurt my knee.” And I said to her, I berated her, I said, “If you’re going to allow an injured me to stop you from dancing, then you don’t deserve to actually be a dancer. That is not supposed to stop you if you’ve got the fuel here.

2:07:57 This injury, it’s just an illusion, you can work through it.” How do I know? I did it so many times. Many injuries you didn’t talk about. If you talk about them, you manifest, you bring them out, it becomes a real problem because people know about it.

2:08:20 Be quiet about your injuries. If you’re in some type of sport like boxing, let’s say, or football, you’re supposed to have injuries, people are kicking you, people are tackling you, people are hitting you, you’re supposed to have injuries, work with them. What you may find, as I did, is when the referee says “box,” in my field, all those injuries disappear. They may reappear after the fight, but during the contest they don’t exist. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing.

2:08:52 Did you have a favorite post-fight ritual? Was there anything that you did, a meal you would have, a visit to someone, to see your mom, or a phone call, anything after a fight to reward yourself? Maybe reward? No, that’s what I did. It was a job.

2:09:10 Everyone else enjoyed the crack, everyone else enjoyed the night, I was working. You know, I’d call my wife afterwards, coming home, “I haven’t seen you for three weeks.” Pardon? Staying away from gentle talking, any type of body, bodily relationship, because stay away from that to actually heighten your tension. It’s good, it’s necessary, it’s needed, you know.

2:09:46 My father used to say, you know, no man can come off of a woman’s stomach and then go and win fights. Doesn’t work that way, and he didn’t know anything about boxing, but not absolute fact, you can’t. Do you still box? Someone asked me not too long ago, do I miss it? And I explained to them that I don’t miss it because I am it, you know.

2:10:13 My son keeps me in. Now I have to get down, now I’m down to kind of like, I’m 13 stones, 13-2, because physically I have to be able to show him things. Speaking and teaching by way of speak is good but is nowhere as good as teaching by example. So when I show him, if I will show him physically, you know, if I slip a punch, if a punch is coming, a jab, if I slip it, so I’m now in, when my legs are bent like this, I have leverage in my shots. So when I do like this, it doesn’t look much, but a hundred and 150 pounds is behind the fifth.

2:11:15 Yeah, your head, so that it will break your ribs. It’s only traveling this much, but the leverage from, you know, if I was to swing, there’s no power, or there’s only maybe six or eight pounds here, but if I use the weight in my thighs and my back, my shoulders, if you stand, you’ll see what I mean. Brace yourself, breathe, brace yourself, and I get close to you. Yeah. Watch what happens.

2:11:55 So this is what I’m hitting you with. Hey, you see? So but now it’s a stab. It will break your ribs, on my jaw, yes, wherever I hit you, but they’re short, because every time a shot is short, then you have your whole body weight behind it. When it’s long, it’s on your arm.

2:12:14 When it’s short, that’ll knock you out. And that was your style, you had the mean uppercuts and the tight hooks and then, yeah, that was you, and you would move and then keep it short. Right, keep it short in this area here, if you’re in this area, then you’re in a very dangerous position, because that’s where I can and body weight, the body weight is what’s doing the damage. Right, it’s not the hand, it’s the body weight rotation in the body. Yeah.

2:12:46 Okay, you’re a scary man, you know that. There’s nothing scary about me, at least not in this particular spirit. This spirit, I’m a teacher. It’s a nice energy, Chris. I always ask everyone a few questions at the end, I’m going to ask you the same ones.

2:13:08 If you could pick up the phone and make a call to the 20-year-old Chris Eubank and give that young man a bit of advice, a lot like what you do to your children now, and speak to him, what would you tell him? I know the answer, I don’t really have to think about the answer. The answer is actually nothing. Okay, no, there is something, because now I’ve processed it a little bit and there is something, but I knew that, I kind of knew when you are talking, you understand what you’re saying, you have to be able to communicate what you’re saying to others, especially if it’s something that isn’t common.

2:14:04 Light boxing, on the art of boxing, you know, the way, you know, it seems normal and obvious to you, to other people it is a completely different understanding, they do not understand. But then I did actually get that, I did get that. What would I say to a 20-year-old me? Be gentle with yourself. But no, not even that, because I couldn’t be gentle with myself.

2:14:39 Life is, the world is a very cruel world, people can be very cruel, it’s unforgiving, people care about themselves, people, it’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that they need and they want. So, but no, but I’m glad I was always benevolent, I was always giving, and this has me today in a fortunate position where I am light, I’m not heavy, and I’ve shared and I still have so much, I have plenty. You know, I was saying to my daughter the other day, Emily, share, always share your food, it tastes so much better.

2:15:35 I know you don’t get it now but you’re going to get it. You know that now, right? Share your food. You know, the principle goes back to when you were, when we were kids, walking down the high street eating chips. You know, I couldn’t afford a packet, so I’d ask my friend for one or two.

2:15:56 He gave me it’s just so good, having only the one or two, and when I had the packet, when I ate all the chips myself, I learned very quickly that I didn’t really enjoy it. Share, share, share. When you share your knowledge, I guess it lives on. Are you a harsh critic on yourself? Yes, the only way to actually better yourself.

2:16:21 Remember, I’ve been in a field of extremes, and so in order to better yourself you have to be critical, you have to watch yourself and you have to watch the reaction you’re having, that people are having towards you. It’s very, it’s a wise thing in my view to consider, you know, how you deal with people. Very, very wise, and being critical of yourself is only bettering yourself, nothing wrong with that. What is the best advice you’ve ever received? Could be business, could be personal.

2:17:06 It was, I told you earlier on, which was when someone asks you how you feel before a fight, tell them that you feel great. That’s the best advice, because that in actual fact made me, in my field, in my field of endeavor, my vocation, it made me that. You know, that’s the perception people have, that I was great at what I did. I’m just a man. So today, you know, I tell people, have an imagination, imagine.

2:17:48 What do you think about? Imagine, look at pictures. You know, there are about 100 people around the planet going around buying 400 million pound yachts. These people exist, they’re men. You know, Floyd Mayweather is a champion, he’s a man, he just made 180 million dollars in one fight, he’s a man.

2:18:12 If he can do it, why can’t you? You can, it’s imagination. So look at these things, look at these things and all of these things you see, focus them on your imagination. I can do it too. I looked at the fighter called Thomas Hearns back in about 1984 at the Golden Gloves tournament at Madison Square Garden when I was living in New York, and I remember his waist being like this and his shoulders at the top being like this, and I almost had a contempt, not for him but for the people who were swarming around him, because I was thinking, well, he’s just a man, if he can do it why can’t I?

2:19:06 Because that was my focus, to become a champion. Actually no, I had broken it down a little bit easier: just win your next fight, because if you keep on winning your next one, you’ll get the championship. Shot, but going back to Thomas Hearns, you’re just a man. Your blood is no different from mine, you have to brush your teeth in the morning too. You feel, you want, you desire, you love, you hurt, just like me.

2:19:35 If you can do it, then why can’t I? And that’s why I did, because there is no difference between people, it’s about imagination. In my view it’s about imagination, so ignite it. Whoever is listening to this, ignite it, there’s nothing you can’t do, you just have to mean it. Beautiful.

2:19:56 Final part of that, to the 20-year-old that’s listening to us around the world, could be in Brazil and China, Indonesia, somewhere in America, what advice do you have to them? When you see me, call me English. I’m your man, I’ll give you some of this, I’ll give you some of this knowledge I have. You give them a hug. Always.

2:20:14 Yeah, yeah, it’s a non-English thing to do. No, no, well, my parents were Jamaican, so you know, hugging is a big thing. I’m always saying to people in the street, hug it out, come on, hug it out, you know, get rid of that shyness, hug it out, that’s it. The guys say, “What about me?” I say, “Hey, you take it easy, I’m good, I’m not that good.”

2:20:34 Those five o’clock shadows, we stay well clear of them. That’s a a joking observation. Anyway, carry on, sorry. No, that was it. Chris Eubank, you are dread, you are English, you are a geezer.

2:20:49 Oh, amazing, as they would say. I’ve really treasured this couple hours I spent with you. I’m very excited to see Nigel Benn, Chris Eubank three, but I’ll leave that to your lovely wife. Well, no, I don’t know, I don’t even know if it’s realist, I don’t think it’s real, it’s just conjecture. And I challenge Stephen Fry to be here maybe six weeks’ time and we can have a supervised debate.

2:21:14 I will do it. We will broadcast it live and we can hammer out some of these issues, followed by a big hug, and get to the bottom of some of these points. I think they need to be debated, you know, in an intelligent way. Yes, and we need to talk about these things. Yes, I think we should do that.

2:21:29 Yes. So if you’re feeling the same, anyone listening, please blow up all of our Twitters and let us know how you feel. Chris has been really special. I’m glad to learn a lot more about you and I would like to do this again in 10 years. So well, it may come sooner than that.

2:21:46 That sounds good. On London Real we have an expression, we always say it’s about the journey, and so I always try to remember that goals are wonderful and they keep us and they keep us motivated and they keep us human, but we also must enjoy the journey and every moment, and so I wish you well on yours. That’s kind, thank you. And thank you very much for your time. I’m privileged that you actually had me on.

2:22:12 That’s really kind, to going out to as many people as who actually follow your show. It’s a real privilege for me, thank you. You dropped some real knowledge on us today. Any one of the probably ten pieces you quoted to me will mean a lot to the people that listen, and it’s a very introspective and spiritual crowd and I think you’re perfect for the show. So thank you for being on London Real, and it was real honor, I appreciate it.