Greatest Ever Boxing Workouts - including Mike Tyson, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Roberto Duran. Gary Todd

       FIGHTING TALK

       AN INTRODUCTION

      Looking back, my first memory of boxing features me sitting on my old man’s knee, watching Muhammad Ali fighting some other guy on our old black and white TV. The other guy, I later found out, was Joe Frazier, and we were watching the brilliantly brutal ‘Thrilla in Manila’ fight of 1975.

      I remember my dad saying to me that the great man was at the end of his run, and that he should hang up the gloves up for good. I didn’t know what he was talking about as I was only a kid, just happy to be watching the fight with him.

      Since that time I’ve watched the fight over and over again, and I can see he was right. But Ali and Frazier were two proud champions, both refusing to quit; both throwing over a thousand punches between them, trying to knock each other out in the sweltering heat of the Araneta Coliseum; both willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to settle a career-long score.

      Each fighter was ragged and jaded from years of combat, but still desperate for each other’s respect inside and outside the ring.

      From that day onward, I was hooked on the sport of boxing.

      To me, boxing is the greatest sport in the world. Over the years I’ve heard people call it barbaric, violent, even claiming that it’s not a sport at all. I disagree. I know what violence is. As a kid growing up in Dundee, Scotland, I lived with it every day of the week.

      And boxing is so much more than two guys punching the crap out of each other. I’ve always been fascinated by what these men did to become champions, and what they did to stay at the top of their game. Men who do battle with themselves every day, who give everything of themselves even before they step through the ropes. They are unique athletes. These working class heroes inspired me to reach for the stars, to try to do the impossible – and, more importantly, to be a better person. In this, my follow-up to Workouts from Boxing’s Greatest Champs, I decided to write more about the fighters and tell the story of their time in the ring.

      Since writing my first book, I’ve often been asked how I managed to get close to the boxers. It was never easy, for a number of reasons, but it was a real labour of love for me. Tracking them down in their gyms was always a challenge, and it got me into some sticky situations. I’ve been surrounded by gangs ‘in the hood’; I’ve almost been mugged inside my hotel room; I’ve had a gun pulled on me, and I also survived a couple of natural disasters along the way.

      These were the things I had to go through to get into the press conferences, weigh-ins and dressing rooms of the stars, but these days (I’m glad to say) things are a lot easier in that respect.

      Getting the money to go on the trips was also very tough, but the worst thing of all was leaving my wife and kids. Without their support, I couldn’t have done it. And leaving was one thing, but getting on the plane was another. I’m scared of flying, you see, and I remember one embarrassing occasion when I was flying on an 18-seater plane from New York. It was a bumpy old ride and we seemed to be bouncing off every cloud in the sky.

      I looked up from my sick bag to the right-hand side of the plane, looking for reassurance from someone. That ‘someone’ just happened to be the former world welterweight champion, John H. Stracey. He smiled across at me, then winked and