"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
The Biggest Fight
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Michael Watson, Time Warner Books, 2014. ISBN 0 316 725641
The book is the autobiography of a top boxer. The title, and most of the book, is taken ups with the 1991 fight with Chris Eubank in which Watson suffered near fatal injuries and his recovery.There is a reference to his mother’s deep Christian faith right at the beginning of the book and Joan Watson is a central character and there are about 20 references to prayer in the book.
Watson believes strongly that God saved his life for a purpose: “God gave me my life back so that I could give to others” and “I had been saved by God and he had given me a destiny to help and be an inspiration to others”.
That he had two children with a (Muslim) woman to whom he was not married is reported in a matter of fact way.
Watson saw boxing as “the perfect way to express myself. I felt I had a gift from God and that I had natural talent in the boxing ring”. Of one fight he writes: “a simple prayer had given me strength, and for several weeks I knew the fight was won, victory secure and my life was about to change”.
There is no discussion of the ethics of boxing but he makes two interesting comments about his fights with Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank.
“I felt for him [Nigel Benn] when he landed on the canvas and I prayed that he would be fine”.
“I had forgiven Chris a long time ago. I knew that it not been intentional and it could so easily have been the other way round”.