LLOYD HONEYGHAN was the first British boxer I went to the US to write about during my time as a journalist, when I was sent to Las Vegas in February 1989 for his world title fight with Marlon Starling.
Honeyghan, who called himself the “Ragamuffin”, got well beaten. I had a front row seat. Mike Tyson, then world champ, was commentating ringside.
That week it actually snowed in Vegas. I also recall walking through a sandstorm to get to Johnny Tocco’s gym near downtown in order to watch Tyson prepare for his first fight with Frank Bruno.
Honeyghan and I would talk a lot in later years, right up to when I finished with boxing and journalism. But he probably doesn’t recall the first time we chatted.
As a teenager, I used to travel each week to south London to train and spar at the famous Thomas A’ Becket pub above which was a gym steeped in history.
I used to watch Honeyghan box Michael Watson and Kirkland Laing amongst others. The gym at that time was buzzing with talent and characters – Errol Christie, Glenn McCrory, Clinton McKenzie and Gary Stretch, now a Hollywood actor, to name a few.
One morning, close to what must have been exactly 30 years ago, I had finished training at the Becket and was getting changed. Lying face down on the massage table was Honeyghan, but I didn’t realise it at the time.
We were the only ones there and got chatting casually about Honeyghan’s impending fight with Sylvester Mittee.
“Who’s going to win?” he asked.
“Mittee,” I told him after some thought.
Then, as he got up, not saying a thing, I recognised who he was.
I never did tell Lloyd this story and he never did hold it against me when he next saw me.
Of course, Honeyghan took care of business against Mittee and, less than a year later (1986), went on to become world champion, famously defeating American Donald Curry (above).