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Chris Eubank interview from Boxing News 1988!!!
Some of the Quotes
June 1988 (just after his fight with Male Justin)
"Gary Stretch is nothing more than a pretty face. He gets all this publicity for dating glamorous women, yet he's never fought anybody. In the Jerome gym in New York, every pretty face i saw lacked heart, punch them and they wouldnt be back again."
"I told a Hove newspaper before i fought him (Winston Burnett) that i was the most experienced boxer in britain, Ive being doing this for five years and you'd need hundreds of sets of fingers to count how many gym wars I had in the Bronx. I know all the tricks of the trade."
"I graduated from high school, Morris High in the Bronx, two summers ago. I spent 3 and a half years studying, simultaneous to my boxing. Then 6 months later i qualifed as a typist, i had been simultaneously learning some martial arts techniques those 6 months and sometimes spending the weekends in Brighton or Peckham, sometimes sparring at the Jack Pook gym or Peckham ABC. I failed my real estate exams though so started boxing seriously again around February or March last year while still into the martial arts. I had two fights fall through last summer at the Felt Forum, and then my manager Adonis Torres passed on last October and i had to pull out of my supposed fight with Sam Houston at the Atlantis Hotel at short notice. Thats when he fought Watson at short notice, when he became available. Ive had 8 fights, but im the complete package. In my first couple of fights which were televised over there, the commentators said that while my jab and combinations were looking world class, i was cuffing with the left hook and had no flexibility at the waist. I went away, i learned to turn the hook in with my shoulders and elbows, i learned more punches, i learned martial arts and became flexible at the waist, i pittied Darren Parker."
"If you want the truth, i started boxing because the South Bronx was a place of nightmares. I hid away in the gymnasium because i hated it out there. I trained like a maniac to get out of that place and here i am, a world class professional athlete in my opinion and looking for a good promoter. I only started sparring a few months before i turned 17, and i turned professional a few months after i turned 19, i dont know if anybody has gone through the mill that quickly, but its testament to how hard i trained, we're talking 7 days a week i was in that gymnasium. Admittedly i had to turn professional to pay a debt, but i won those first four fights and at times looked brilliant."
"The other reason i started boxing i suppose was because my brothers were boxers, you see, and i was always abit of an outcast to them growing up for whatever reason, you know? i wanted their acceptance so i put everything i had into boxing during my time in New York, to get good at it. I spent 3 and a half years over there from the age of 16 and a half, ive been back and forth these last couple of years though but i want to settle over here, in Sussex."
"My best asset is my concentration. My game is timing. Im a thinker, the most relaxed of fighters before and during a fight, though my focus is intense."
December 1988
"Nigel Benn is a coward and a fraud, stand up to the bully and he crumbles. In the playground at school in peckham, all i remember doing is protecting others from bullies. Its my nature. This guy Benn, he can bang abit, but he's so wild and flawed that it's not even funny. Personally i think it's an easy fight if i can get the best out of my jab. I know how to absorb punches, it is a skill, its something i learned myself from my earliest days boxing. My chin is made from cast iron which helps, but i also have the skill to absorb a punch and know how to clear my head quickly. Id wish Benn good luck."
"I dont really have any boxing idols, i suppose the closest thing to a boxing idol i had was a fellow at the Jerome gym in New York, a fellow called Dennis who moved so eloquently. Id copy moves from other fighters in the gymnasium, but modified them to my own liking or added my own touches or, if they weren't effective for me, dropped them. Thomas Hearns was a fighter i admired when i was an amateur, and i suppose Pernell Whitaker was another i enjoyed watching, but it was like looking at them through square eyes really, you know? It's easier to pick things up from fighters at the gymnasium and then work on things right there, you know?"
"I know what im doing, i can beat this guy (Benn). You people can laugh it off, but in my mind it's already happened, ive beaten Benn, ive got the beating of him. He just has to accept the fight. I dont have to prove myself, i know my ability. Give me the fight and that will prove me. I know what im doing, i was beating open-class boxers in their 20's while a 17 year old novice to boxing, just outsmarting them, just straight punches getting their before they could load up their hooks, trying to be fleet footed, trying to dis-locate them."
"I will be world champion, it's a fact as far as Im concerned. Ive commited myself to boxing because of the potential earnings in this game, Im desperate to move up in society and a world title belt is the tool that i need. My upbringing consists of humble roots, my dad was taking all the overtime hours available moving iron at Ford Dagenham just to keep a roof over our heads and some eggs and bread to eat or, if we were really lucky, 50p each to get some fish and chips, we never really had breakfast or lunch. This gives me drive to succeed at my chosen career, you know? Ive seen fighters like Dennis Cruz who wasted his talent, i wont make those mistakes. Im a tee-totallist. I had my last drink, smoked my last cigarette, and trained like a maniac-5 and a half years on and Im thinking 'Ive not done this for nothing, you know?'. My dad told me last christmas that my first manager Adonis Torres told him just 3 weeks after i entered the boxing gym for the first time that i might be a future world champion , this was 2 or 3 months before i even had the courage to get in the ring, i never knew this until my dad told me at christmas. Adonis sadly passed away last yr and thats just more determination for me to make him proud, to become world champion. Adonis was the first person i was ever able to trust, in my life, i remember i couldn't afford the gym fees at first but he let me work as a cleaner there and allowed me to join in. Listen, I will be world champion, or they'd have to carry me out trying."
He also talks about british boxing promoters/managers as "skullduggers" and "slags" and how he went to see every one of them and none of them took him seriously, thats the main part of the interview, after watching the Nigel Benn-Anthony Logan fight Eubanks old promoter Keith Miles contacted him and said "we can take this guy" and chris said he was thinking the exact same thing and they got bakc together instead of Eubank looking for another manager/promoter
Theres another 1 i have where Eubanks says he took the Simon Collins fight at just 6 days notice, despite having his 'acid test' against Anthony Logan already scheduled for just 8 days after that ( he thought Logan would lead him onto Benn).oh and he also says his first fight in the UK the announcers called him "Steve Eubank" and he felt disrespected
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