Frankie Pryor fills my Zoom screen with warmth and humour – and a little anger at boxing’s failure to discuss the damage it did to her husband and most fighters. “I took care of everything,” she says of her 30 years with Aaron. “I didn’t understand the damage was caused solely by boxing until he started showing anger. Aaron was so easy-going until then. I started taking him to a neurologist around 1994. At that point we didn’t know [it was CTE]. Initially it was just front temporal lobe damage but he never stopped going to a neurologist until he died. A neurologist said: ‘This is the only Hall of Fame fighter I’ll ever work with and we need more proof to confirm what we believe.’”

Was there sufficient proof Pryor had been brain-damaged by boxing? “Oh yes. You see that damage in every old fighter – without exception. I noticed all the fighters acting the same when we got together. His wife would go to the restroom and that fighter would get confused. One of us other wives would handle the situation. We educated ourselves about CTE because it’s not something you talk about to your regular girlfriends. We had this group – me, Brenda Spinks, Marvin Hagler’s wife Kay, Ken Norton’s wife, Rose.”

Amid the mess of boxing will their experience of CTE be shared widely? “You said it. Boxing is a mess and that’s why I have no hope this will ever get solved unless there is one central governing body. I’d talk for hours if you get me started on the crooks in boxing. It’s awful and they take such advantage of dedicated fighters who love their sport. Nothing will ever originate from boxing itself.”

Pryor believes the only hope is to educate a new generation of fighters and trainers about CTE. It was too late for her husband but she stresses: “I’ve no hate for boxing because Aaron loved it so much. It took my husband but his choice to box came before me. One of his nurses said: ‘Don’t you wish you’d never boxed?’ He said: ‘What do you mean? No. What would I have done?’ Aaron was a fighter. Whenever we went out people always yelled: ‘What time is it? Hawk Time!’ Aaron was born for it and his great achievement was to become this amazing athlete, The Hawk, who came out of a desperately troubled childhood.”

She laughs when I ask if she also called him The Hawk? “Of course. I’d say: ‘Even the Hawk has to take out the garbage.’ He was The Hawk the day he died.”

Tony Jeffries was called “Jaffa” or “The Mighty Mackem” when he boxed. We talk on a beautiful morning in Santa Monica, where he teaches boxing exercise to fitness professionals at his Box N Burn Academy. His accent is pure Mackem as he remembers being punched in the head as a 10-year-old. “I got the black flash. When I was 12 there were times sparring where I would cry because I’d been hit that hard. But I got through it.”
I went on the podium, got the gold medal, and I didn't have a clue where I was. I said: 'Did I win?'