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Candid Chris lifts lid on fight fixing!
05.09.2007 Candid Chris lifts lid on fight fixing!
CHRISTOPHER Eubank, poet, peacock, part-time protagonist and full-time prat, talks candidly about being London's best shoplifter at 15, the boxing politrick, and big shot London promoters trying to sign him over fish and chips.
After escaping from the last in a long line of lock-up boarding schools, Christopher found himself homeless and needing to pinch suits to survive. In next to no time, though, his savvy led him to thousands of pounds and regular roofs over his head.
"I'd get up in the morning, buy my newspaper, catch the number 12 bus from the Elephant & Castle to get to Oxford Street, then within an hour my empty shopping bags would be filled with the finest clothes known to man - what I call 'sleight of hand'!
"I'd set up my stool on the Walworth Road near Peckham and sell them on at 25%.
"These clothes had 250% mark-up value, but I made sure they had 400% mark-up because my heart was good. I never wore the same clothes twice, and I'd wear only mohair suits, Versace, the most expensive trousers, Italian shoes, the full whack.
"Summer? Crocodile (shoes), silk shirts, £80 sunglasses, burberry jacket for when the sun went down, twice as much marijuana and I literally lived off Treets. Summer was my time, man."
Where would he stay seeing as he was homeless?
"I'd go round to friends flats and get so drunk they'd have to let me kip on their furniture. I blagged it, as they say. Otherwise it was breaking into a car somewhere and kipping on the backseat.
"It was near-bliss when I was 15. I caught taxis everywhere, always walked with a swagger, spoke like royalty to disguise the fact I was from a council flat in Dalston, and pretended to be some rich, 18-year-old African kid to attend blues dances.
"I had a new bowler hat for each blues I attended, a new pair of Farah Slacks each time too."
He didn't and doesn't feel guily because as far as he's concerned he was "Robin Hood!".
But there was and is always a code of conduct with Eubank.
"Preying on the weak has never been part of my make-up and is what I impulse against. I know for a fact I could have made atleast twice as much money by selling drugs, for example.
"The best example I can give you is that, in January 1989, when I got my 999 Award for stopping a jewelry thief, at my speech when I accepted the award I said plain and clear: 'I'd have let the man go if he didn't barge into an old lady'.
"The guy stole jewelry, and I respected that, and I was going to let him run past.
"That was until he shoved an old lady out of his path, only then I moved in, without hesitation, and decked the man with a perfect three-punch combination, snapping a few of his ribs and putting him to sleep.
"I only wish somebody taped it so I could watch it over and over and over and over again, admiring my punches and positioning."
As a penniless pugilist in 1988, he did the round of British promoters.
"One said to me: 'I'm not a Sugar Daddy. I'm not buying you a flat or giving you a wage. You're going to have to go out and work and do it the hard way.'
"I was seeking a manager to work on my behalf, but over our fish and chips I had to listen to him tell me how great he was and go through all the champions he'd 'made'. I felt like bringing my boots up."
Another couldn't even be bothered to see him.
"One made me come up to London every day for two weeks, I dodged the train fare each time, and he somehow couldn't find the time to see me.
"One day in his office, I had waited for ages so went out quickly to get an orange juice, came back and his secretary told me he had just dashed off!
"It was just a case of one-upmanship, though, which failed."
Controversially, he lifts the lid on fight fixing, saying issues are "immensely complicated" behind the scenes.
"Suffice to say the best man does not always win ... Am I saying some fights are fixed? Absolutely."
He reveals that he said, one year before Nigel Benn and Michael Watson fought eachother and years before Eubank shared a ring with either of them, that he'd beat Benn and Watson and be world champion.
"I said I'd play with Benn and maim him and play with Watson and maim him. And I did. I talked the talk and walked the walk which, you'd be suprised to know, 99.8% of people don't.
"Whenever I said I was going to be world champion, nobody believed me bar myself.
"When I took a fight against an established, world-class fighter in Anthony Logan while still a primitive novice, nobody believed me when I said I'd win."
Watson and Benn were on BBC1 and ITV, Eubank was (according to himself) better than them and on small hall shows in front of 50 or 60 people. No TV. Or fighting on Watson and Benn undercards, nothing live. You can't begrudge his achievements or the money he made.
At 16, however, the boy from Peckham's future as prison fodder seemed assured when he was caught breaking into a tailor shop in Brighton in the early hours of one morning. But then his mother Ena sent the plane fare to New York and with that flight, Christopher's life took an unexpected turn.
He was shamed into giving up smoking and drinking and decided to get body and soul in shape by going to church and joining a cheap neighbourhood gym.
A classic example of the hungry boxer syndrome, he worked as caretaker to pay his way and learnt his skill on the hoof.
He went to the gym every night and started boxing some months later when a Bronx fighter nicknamed 'The Horse' asked him to spar with him. Christopher was too embarassed to say no.
He didn't hit the guy in the first round, but in the second round started hitting him back. He was told he punched like a girl.
But in time he learnt the "beauty" of the boxer's skill.
"I watched, I listened, I learnt, then I repeated, reviewed and revised. Every minute detail of every move or punch was practised thousands and thousands and thousands of times."
It took him two years to learn how to throw the right hand.
Christopher had few friends and devoted his time to training. His first amateur fight lasted 30 seconds - the referee stopped the contest and declared Christopher the loser. But, driven to succeed, he won the next eight fights and never looked back.
What's in store for Christopher's future?
"Prison. I want to be mentioned in the breath below Mandela."
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