Q: Tell us about your early boxing days? NB: I started boxing at 18 years old in the army, within days I was the best boxer on my regiment's boxing team and they'd all been doing it for years. I was just raw talent I guess. I remember my first fight, it was in Germany and I stopped a guy when he broke his hand on the top of my head. But I was already vastly experienced because I'd been fighting people all my life, my knuckles were messed up before I ever stepped foot through the ropes. And you know what? I've had some good rucks in the ring, but I've had some even better ones in the street. Q: Before entering the professional ranks, you won the 1986 Amateur Boxing Association tournament did you not? NB: And before I did the ABA's I'd won every tournament I entered when I was in the army, I thought I could beat Marvin Hagler. I'd of won the ABA's in 85 had Rod Douglas not beat me at the divs (divisionals), that was my only ever loss in the amateurs but I reversed it the following year when I beat Douglas at the divs to go to the nationals. We were two of the best in the world really, he went to the commonwealth's (Commonwealth Games) in 86 because I pulled out injured and he got the Gold. I reckon he'd of won Gold at the 88 Olympics had he not turned pro, he was robbed at the 84 Olympics. I turned pro at the start of 87, and I thought that if do-or-die, hell-for-leather fights came my way then let's rumble, let's party, let's have it out. Q: What was your pre-fight meal? NB: Fish and rice or fish and pasta. Half a jar of honey. Very good for you. Gets in your blood real quick. Q: And pre-fight feeling? NB: Confident. I knew I had tools and I knew I had punching power, but I also knew that once that bell rings it's just man against man and more often than not comes down to who wants it most and who had trained hardest. When someone hits me I just think that's good, now feel one of mine! Q: What made you so confident? NB: I knew I had trained two times, three times or sometimes four times a day for months and I knew I had gone up to eating six or seven meals a day because I was training so hard. I knew my body was ready for the fight. The hard part was training, the fight is the easy part. All of those hours in the gym and all those hours on the road, but the fight seems to go by like a flash. Before you know it, your back in your locker room again like you were before the fight and it's as if it was just a quick flash. I was good at peaking for the night of the fight. I never had any fear of my opponents. I was nervous, but never afraid. Q: Which of your pro fights were tough? NB: All of them, with the exception of the first 20 or 25 when I was beating up Mexican Roadsweepers. None were as tough as all the training, but most of my fights were tough. It's not a walk in the park you know, this boxing game is a pretty tough game. There were only two tough fights in the first 20 or 25 - Logan and my first loss. But in the 1990's, all of my fights were tough because I was then at a higher level. When you get to that level, nobody is going to lie down for you. You have to work for it, you have to tell yourself during training that your opponent is working his ass off too and that's what brings you up to go through those pain barriers. Just the thought of losing was horrifying for me. If I gave 80 or 90% after my first 20 or 25, I'd of lost more than I'd of won. Q: Who were your toughest opponents? NB: Gerald McClellan. Robbie Sims was the strongest, stronger than Eubank and Watson, I had to watch out for his body punching. Henry Wharton was one of my toughest fights, I never came out of the ring as bruised as I had after that fight, I had to undergo hospital checks on my kidneys. McClellan caught me with a couple of clubbing shots that I'd never felt before, the hardest head shot I ever felt in round one and the hardest body shot I ever felt in round three. Q: When McClellan knocked you out of the ring in the first few seconds of the fight, what were you thinking? NB: I was just thinking that I'm not going to let him beat me, no way, he's not beating me. I don't care how hard he hits, I've been hit with everything, pickaxes, baseball bats so what? Let's see how he feels when I'm hitting him... that's what I was thinking. I knew that I could punch as hard as anybody if I dug deep. Yeah he got me with the one on top of the head and it was sickening and I fell through the ropes and, man, I didn't know where I was. Then near the end of round three, he slammed in a body shot and I had to wave him on pretending it didn't hurt because I didn't want him to hit me with that again. I never felt a body shot like that before. That was my toughest fight, it was the most draining night of my life and caused my most agonising stay in hospital. It finished me. Q: What does it feel like being knocked down? NB: You go into a dark room and it's down to your conditioning how fast you get up. Q: And what was the worst pain you ever felt? NB: I'll fight Mike Tyson all day long, I don't care. That kind of pain goes. But the pain a woman inflicts when she twists the knife lasts for years. Q: Have you always enjoyed fighting? NB: Not necessarily. But if you don't enjoy a good scrap, you HAVEN'T had a good scrap! Q: And what do you think of Mike Tyson, by the way? NB: I really love that guy, he might be meeting up with me in Africa to do some Christian work. My type of guy, not so much his out of ring conduct. I met him in Las Vegas during Leonard-Duran III, at a club. He was sitting down. He knew of me. Outside, I was acting like a bad mofo. Inside, I was excited, I've just bumped into Iron Mike. Love him to death. Q: Nicknames? NB: The Dark Destroyer, Nigel 'Rambo' Benn. Q: What was your Greatest Sporting Moment? NB: Crossing the Atlantic and whipping DeWitt in Atlantic City to become Middleweight Champion of the World. I was bashing the granny out of him. There were five knockdowns in that fight, I stopped him in eight (rounds). I'd never seen a man take so much pain, DeWitt saved every punch with his face. Both his eyes were split, his ear was so smashed it turned blue. My eye was split as well. And I broke my wrist with the very last punch of the fight, a left hook. Three knockdowns in the eighth round, what a moment. Q: A funny boxing moment? NB: DeWitt walked over to me in the ring and said "You're going down", I replied "I might be going down, but you're STAYING down!". Q: And your most painful moment? NB: McClellan fight, put that down as my most painful memory. Inflicting that kind of damage does something to you. I'd wanted to win, sure. But not at that price. On that night, my heart went out of boxing. I pray for him every day. Q: Could you please tell us what your training regime was? NB: When I was knocking guys out for fun in the 80's, I didn't work on defence as much I should of, didn't work on endurance. When I trained in America for 18 months, I did more sparring than I'd done in my life, more ground work than I'd done in my life. Then for every fight between Eubank in 1990 and McClellan in 1995, I was working with Jimmy Tibbs. Tibbs was big on padwork and learned me more about head movement, I was most complete under Tibbs. But I peaked with Kevin Sanders for McClellan, that was my peak. Nigel Benn's training regime (1991-1994) My camp usually lasted 12 weeks, the first six weeks in England and the second six weeks in Tenerife. Otherwise just six weeks in Tenerife. I worked from 6-8 miles to 8-12 miles over the first six weeks. Then six weeks in altitude, working from 5-6 miles to 12-15 miles all in altitude. But when it was a six week camp for Dan Sherry and Nicky Piper I went for two runs a day at 3-5 miles in altitude. Gymwork 3x3 shadow boxing with 15-20lb weights 2x3 shadow boxing with no weights 4x3 punch pads 3x3 double-end bag -all with minute breaks as usual. I did that for 10 weeks (otherwise four weeks), then the next week was three and a half minute rounds with 45 sec breaks, and then the last week was for four minute rounds with 30 sec breaks. Groundwork 20 mins skipping. 400 sit ups 100 push ups. Then, alsorts of crunches, alsorts of planks, lying leg lifts (ala Rocky IV), neck exercises on the floor. And on top of that, every other day I worked out in the weights room. I worked every muscle in the body with weights, every other day. I loved the neck harness. I didn't do sparring, I saved myself for the fight. I won the WBC World Championship with Jimmy and defended it six times with Jimmy, but I just felt that I was going abit stale after Wharton. When Kevin took over for the McClellan fight, he had me running up mountains, we were doing a lot of medicine ball work to get some snap back because in my previous fight I'd lacked snap in my work, and in my last session before resting up for the fight (against McClellan) he had me spar 15 or 16 rounds on the trot with three or four different sparring partners.
