The Big Fight: Roy Jones jr versus Ian Stafford

I barely saw the first punch. But I felt it. The jab crashed through my upheld gloves and straight on to the bridge of my nose. Everything went numb for a couple of seconds, my vision became temporarily blurred, and the insides of my head seemed to shake like a nut inside its shell.

I believed I had prepared for such a moment by spending the previous six weeks learning how to box, including a final seven days in the ring sparring in an East End of� London gym. But this was different. Very different. That first punch was worse than the hardest my sparring partner, a former English champion, could land on me in training. It was as if a slab of concrete had just been slammed into my face.

What had always appeared a questionable idea suddenly became an utterly idiotic one. It was just past midnight in the Florida panhandle city of Pensacola. Facing me was Roy Jones jr, the best, pound-for-pound boxer in the world at the time When we met the American had already systematically, ruthlessly and effortlessly moved up the weights from middleweight to super-middleweight and finally to light-heavyweight which, at 175 lbs, was my weight.

His one and only loss throughout his long and successful career came when he was judged to have whacked Montell Griffin when his opponent was on the floor and was subsequently disqualified. In the rematch a furious Jones removed Griffin in less than one round. Enough said.

Jones jr would go even further. By defeating the defending world heavyweight champion, John Ruiz, in Las Vegas he became the first former middleweight to win a portion of the world heavyweight title since “Cornish” Bob Fitzsimmons knocked out “Gentleman” Jim Corbett with Wyatt Earp in attendance in Carson City 106 years’ ago. In the process Jones not only made sporting history, but elevated himself to the mantle of an all-time sporting God.

Back in Pensacola, however, he was resembling a midnight mugger facing an easy victim. Refusing to wear a protective headguard Jones had warmed up by pummelling a nearby speed ball, the rat-a-tat-tat created by his devilish fists serving only to heighten my state of unease. His only concession that night was to wear his mouthguard and to strap up his fists with bandaging, just in case he might damage them in the process of damaging me.

If my own headguard was supposed to make me feel secure it failed abysmally, although this might have had something to do with Jones’s pledge as we clambered into the ring. Nursing a severely bruised ribcage from my previous six weeks apprenticeship in the ring, I mentioned this to my opponent. “Don’t worry,” Jones assured me. “I’ll be concentrating on hitting your face.”����

For a few seconds we stared at each other from our opposite corners, Jones appearing about as perturbed as a lion facing a field mouse. This was the moment I had been waiting for. As a participatory writer I saw this as just about the ultimate challenge. I was intrigued to discover what it was really like to first feel the nerves of a pre-fight boxer, then to be hit, over and over again, and to withstand the pressure. I wanted to know whether I, in turn, could respond to such measured provocation in a calm and assured manner. Now that the moment had come, however, I felt frozen in fear.

The bell tolled to denote the start of the first round, a mournful, doleful sound rather apt for the occasion. We touched gloves and circled each other for fifteen seconds or so, Jones staring straight into my eyes with his yellow gloves thrust out menacingly towards me. The tension became unbearable, like two gunfighters itching to make the first draw of their pistols.

I let fly with an exploratory jab. Jones flicked his head to one side and watched as my left fist shot harmlessly by. I was almost willing him to hit me, just to get the first taste of brutality over with. I jabbed again, then twice more. The first two shots rebounded off his gloves, the third, a split second after a feint, caught him full in the face to no effect.

Then he hit me, a shot that left me groping for my senses. Two further, lightning quick jabs followed, forcing me back to blink in the shiny lights of the gym. I landed a jab into his exposed stomach. Jones gave no reaction whatsoever. His stomach felt as firm as a wall. With a minute to go he suddenly upped the tempo. The ring became very small as Jones began to strike.

I took three punches in quick succession, none of which I actually saw. Although I stepped back and to my side as quickly as I could, with my gloves held out in some kind of desperate defence, he seemed to be able to pick his way through at will. It was like the sea breaking through a barricade of sandbags.

The sound of the bell ended the first round and, seemingly immediately another initiated the second. The current heavyweight champion of the world started to punch at will. I would take a couple and then let fly with a few jabs in retaliation which either missed his swerving head or plopped innocently against his gloves. Occasionally I would connect with his head, his complete lack of emotion unnerving me even more.

Suddenly Jones unleashed a right hook. I saw it at the very last moment but had no time to react. It was like waiting for a bomb to explode. I felt a sickening thud to the side of my head and my body was thrown sideways and on to the middle rope, where my body lay, horizontally, for a few seconds before I clawed myself back up to my feet.

During the minute’s interval between the end of the second and the start of the third and final round I surveyed the scene. For all the fitness I had developed and for all the specific training undergone my threat to Jones that night was evidently non-existent. I did not regard myself as a physically weak man. Far from it. Yet there, in the deep south of the United States, I felt completely exposed and utterly helpless.

Something else scared me, too. It was my mood. I had grown bullish, almost confrontational. Even though I knew Jones could finish me off whenever he chose to, I was desperate to last that final round. I wanted to look Jones in the eye when it was all over, I wanted to keep standing and I wanted him to see that, although he may have been a better boxer than me, he was not a better man. A supposedly intelligent person should know better. But I was in the ring and, in there, where the laws of life are very different, boxing takes a firm grip on you.

I gave up trying to defend myself in the final round, instead choosing to trade punches as he returned my popgun fire with bazookas. My face began to feel wet. Torrents of tears were flooding down my cheeks, sparked off by continual punching to the bridge of my nose. There was something all over my face, too. Blood began to appear on Jones’s yellow fists. My throbbing nose began to feel blocked, my breathing became harder, my heart began to pound and my mouth filled with my own blood. Bleeding, crying and now scared out of my wits, I resigned myself to a state of unconscious oblivion.

The fact that it never quite came was down to time favouring me. Jones built up to a frightening climax, landing seven consecutive punches on to my face without reply until I had to turn away and run to a corner. Still he came, stalking a prey that now had a vest dappled in red spots and nostrils matted in his own blood. The previous six� minutes in the ring with Jones had felt like six hours. Those final three minutes felt like three days.

The bell denoting the end of the fight was the most beautiful sound in the world. I collapsed against the ropes whilst the cornermen wiped the blood from my face. Jones ambled over, looking as if he had just undergone nothing more arduous than a stroll down a street, and hugged me. “You’ve got the heart of a lion,” he said. “You’ve shown a lot of courage and nerve to get out there and do what you’ve just done. I know what kind of a person you are when you can fight three rounds with me.”

And I know what kind of a person I am, too, as a result of the most painful experience of my life. After enduring medical concussion for a week, a state that included dizziness, nausea and severe headaches, plus a general mental slowness, a broken nose, a trapped nerve in my neck causing subsequent faintness, a sprained left pectoral muscle, and a cut nose, mouth and lips, I realised that a heady cocktail of stupidity and a previously dreamlike ignorance of the harsh realities of the ring can lead to a very sorry state of affairs, as witnessed one late night in Pensacola, Florida.

As for Roy Jones jr, like all boxers who go on too long, his dominance dissipated until, last November, Joe Calzaghe defeated him. I’d like to think I softened the American up for the Welshman. But then I was so concussed, I’d believe anything.