The first time I was on a bed with a boxer, it was with Mike Tyson.
I was in Las Vegas to cover the ferocious champion’s WBA world heavyweight title fight with James “Bonecrusher” Smith.
A couple of days before the fight I met a girl called Desiree, whose brother was of one Tyson’s sparring partners. They took me up to meet the champ.
Entering Tyson’s vast suite, there were a few people quietly playing video games on a table near a window.
The man himself, was lying on his bed in a separate room.
When Desiree introduced us, he sat up on the sheets and tapped a spare section of the bed.
After all I had heard, seen about this beast, it took an effort of will to sit down.
It was truly bizarre to look into his eyes, close enough to smell sleep on his breath.
He was quite happy to meet me, because I was from Australia. And because I was young (24).
“Everyone around me is so old,’’ he said.
He told me he hated losing control of his “self”; that he only ever felt at home in the ring, where he knew his purpose.
He told me he was “magnificent” inside those ropes, but lonely outside. Told me he could “literally” see his opponents fear “running out of their bodies.”
At the time he was 20. And before his 21st birthday he would become history’s only boxer to unify the WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight titles.
The second time I was on a bed with a boxer was yesterday morning. With Brisbane’s Jeff Horn.
I went to Room 918 at Sydney’s Airport Pullman Hotel. It was a lot smaller than Tyson’s pad in Vegas.
There wasn’t really anywhere to sit, so we shared the bed.
This time I was one of those old guys Tyson hated running his life, but I still felt nearly as awestruck because Jeff Horn is my mild-mannered cousin and I can’t comprehend he is about to fight Manny Pacquiao, the only man to win world titles in eight weight divisions!
“Jeff, where does your self-belief come from, how do you know you can win?” I asked.
“I don’t know where it comes from. All I know is I can see him in front of me and I know where to hit him.
“I know he will give me opportunities, make some mistakes and I know I can hit him.”
Jeff told me he always knew he had something great in him, that boxing was the outlet for something “strong” within in.
I asked him if he’d ever doubted himself in a fight.
“Once. I fought a tough guy in Perth and he tagged me in the first round. I thought “whoa, what’s going on?”
“But I just wouldn’t let him beat me. I just told myself I had to win and I did.
“It will be the same against him (Pacquiao). I just will not let myself be beaten.”
