I Should Have Been at Work. Des Lynam

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СКАЧАТЬ other guys slumped every time they saw me hop into this red sports car with my gorgeous companion.

      We got on very well, but of course the few weeks we were together flashed by. I was sorry to leave both New Zealand and my new friend. Of course I told her that, while it was unlikely that I would be returning to New Zealand in the near future, if she ever came to Europe I would be delighted to see her again. Our parting was emotional, and I thought that, in other circumstances, the relationship might have developed into something more meaningful.

      While in New Zealand we had a chance to sample the marvellous beaches. One morning we went swimming and John Helm pointed to a lookout tower with a lifeguard perched on top. ‘He’s very high up,’ remarked John. ‘That’s so he can see the sharks,’ I said. Helmy left the water, never to return for the rest of our trip.

      We came back from New Zealand via the West Coast of America and spent a couple of days in San Francisco, where I met up with an old school friend of mine, Charles Trinder, who had emigrated to the States.

      A month or so after returning home, there was a call for me one morning in Broadcasting House. ‘Hi, Dis. It’s me,’ said the voice from the other end. Unmistakable New Zealand accent. ‘Wow. This is a good line,’ I said to my Christchurch companion. ‘I’m downstairs in reception,’ she said. Shona had set out, as so many New Zealanders do, on her European tour. She had just decided to make it a little earlier than planned. Like about two years.

      We saw each other a couple of times, but I think we both decided, without saying anything, that perhaps our blissful short relationship had its beginning and end in Christchurch. Off she went to see Paris and Rome and I never saw or heard from her again. I hope she has had a wonderful life.

      It was the start of a busy year. I did my first commentary on a world title fight as John Conteh beat an Argentine boxer, Jorge Ahumada, to become the World light-heavyweight champion at Wembley; then I was off to Kinshasa in Zaire to cover the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ – George Foreman, defending the World heavyweight title he had taken from Joe Frazier, against the former champ, the great Muhammad Ali.

      I had been fortunate enough to have met Ali when he came to London a year or two earlier and he did a marvellous interview for me. Now I found myself in the company of Ali once again in a bungalow provided by President Mobutu, whose government had put up much of the money to bring this extraordinary sporting extravaganza to the heart of Africa. Also there were two or three British boxing writers. Ali was explaining to us how he was going to beat Foreman. None of us believed a word of it. Foreman was hot favourite, a colossus in the ring and one of the hardest-punching heavyweights of all time. I was sitting next to Ali while he was going through his routine because I had my trusty tape-recorder under his nose. Close to my nose was the Ali left fist as he explained how he was going to win the fight with his jab. He kept thrusting it towards my face and at first I flinched a few times. Then I thought, if Ali actually misjudges and makes my nose bleed, what a scoop that would be. So steadfastly I resolved not to move an inch backwards as he continued his tirade. In fact I edged forward ever so slightly. When he finished, he gave me that old Ali sideways glance and that big smile. ‘You’re not as dumb as you look,’ he said. I was hugely complimented. Of course Ali’s timing and judgement was so impeccable, the chances of him actually connecting with my hooter had been extremely slim.

      He went on to shock the world by regaining the heavyweight crown, hardly throwing a jab in the process. With extraordinary courage and durability he allowed Foreman to punch himself out, and then went in for the kill.

      Recently I spent some time with Big George in London, when he did a splendid interview with me for BBC Radio 5 Live. Just before Ali knocked him out all those years ago, he had whispered in George’s ear, ‘Awful bad time to get tired, isn’t it George?’

      Another of the former World heavyweight boxing champions I met was Floyd Patterson. A BBC producer, John Graham, had come up with the idea of a series of programmes on the history of boxing in the Olympic Games. Patterson had won the gold medal in the middleweight division at the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Finland. He had been involved in just twenty-two bouts before being selected for the American Olympic team.

      He turned professional straight after his success and campaigned as a heavyweight, one of the smallest of modern times. He became World heavyweight champion at just twenty-one years of age, then lost the title to Ingemar Johannson of Sweden before becoming the first man to regain it when he avenged the defeat.

      So John and I found ourselves flying to a little airport in upper New York State to meet the man, now in his early sixties. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground as we drove to the small town of New Paltz and as we approached the Patterson household, there was the old champion himself, waving to us from his front garden.

      Patterson was Chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission and at the time was a wonderful advert for the sport of boxing. Despite a gruelling career which involved two meetings with the fearsome Sonny Liston, Floyd looked at least ten years younger than his age. We filmed him shadow boxing and hitting the heavy bag which he did as a routine every day of his life in his own gymnasium. He still had rhythm and timing and looked spritely but there was an air of sadness about the man. For many great sportsmen, life after the competitive years goes cold. In his mind, Floyd was ‘boxing on’ because everything since paled in comparison.

      But at least Patterson had retained a little wealth and was living in some style.

      Jimmy Ellis, a contemporary of Muhammad Ali, having begun his boxing in Louisville, Kentucky alongside his young friend, the then Cassius Clay, was not so lucky.

      Ellis, a wonderful ring craftsman, had held a version of the heavyweight crown too, but when I went to see him, still living in Louisville, he was wearing the green overalls of a worker in the city’s Parks Department. Ellis had also lost the sight of one eye, from an old ring injury. Wealth had passed him by. Did he have any regrets? Not a bit of it. If he had his youth, he would do it all over again, he told me.

      My time as the BBC Radio boxing commentator lasted nearly twenty years and overlapped with my television work. It gave me some great times and I made many friends; but one of the saddest days I ever had while I was covering boxing came in 1980 when, along with a BBC Television producer, Elaine Rose, I attended the funeral in Wales of Johnny Owen.

      Johnny was known as the ‘Merthyr Matchstick’ and, together with Elaine, I had been to Merthyr some weeks before to film a television feature on him. He was a painfully shy young man who, despite his slender frame, expressed himself best in the boxing ring. And he was good. Our feature was to preview his challenge to Lupe Pintor for the World bantamweight title in Mexico. Tragically, Owen had been injured in the contest and seven weeks later died from those injuries.

      I remember the entire population of Merthyr lining the hills of the town as the funeral cortège passed by. On that day some of the toughest men of British boxing cried their eyes out as they paid homage to a brave young boy whose great ambition had cost him his life.

      During my time in boxing, I covered around forty world titles and numerous British and European championship fights. For most of them, the legendary Henry Cooper was my ringside summariser. No finer man to have with you and after a nervy beginning, he became a master at filling the minute between each round with his pearls of boxing wisdom. Once in a while Henry would find himself up a verbal cul-de-sac but always extricated himself. ‘’E’s as big as a brick . . . [pause] . . . building.’

      Once, when talking about the British heavyweight Richard Dunn, Henry was praising him after one round when he said: ‘He knew what he had to do and in that round Dunn . . . done it.’ Strange syntax. Wonderful man.

      I had met Henry several years before we became ringside СКАЧАТЬ