By Elliot Worsell
(PART I of The Intervention: Froch vs. Groves can be found here; PART II, meanwhile, can be found here)
AFTER
Chapter VI
NO longer alone, with him both surrounded and human again it is almost impossible to tell whether the boxer on the plastic chair has won or lost. The slight cut along the top of his head, seen to by a doctor, suggests an arduous battle, as do welts beneath his eyes and scuff marks along his neck, shoulders and back, accentuated by alabaster skin, yet juxtaposing this is a wide smile, surely that of a victor, and the positivity of family and friends, all of whom crowd him and declare how proud they are.
“Two weeks ago,” Groves says, “Paddy said to me, ‘I’m a bit worried about Howard Foster because he has a habit of jumping in early,’” which, to some, is exactly what Foster, the referee, did in round nine: he jumped in early. There was, at that stage, a sense Froch had altered the flow of the fight, having been dropped heavily in round one, but still the stoppage appeared more presumptuous than well-timed.
“Howard Foster said t’me dat de reason he stopped it was because George was hurt,” says an irate Fitzpatrick. “Now, Froch was hurt six times before George had even taken a solid shot from him. Being hurt isn’t good enough. Dis is a world title fight. Dis man didn’t even give him a chance, let alone a count. No benefit of the doubt whatsoever. Anyway, as far as stature is concerned, an’ as far as experience goes, he’s come out a winner anyway.”
While it may not feel like victory, it certainly doesn’t feel like defeat. “I thought the referee was breaking it up, not stopping it,” says Groves, before his mother, Yvonne, keen to add some perspective of her own, tells the room, “I’ve never seen a boxer get booed into the ring and then get cheered out like that. It was amazing. I had Carl Froch fans all around me and they were annoying me throughout the fight. But at the end they all said, ‘George won that fight. He was robbed.’”
One way of applying plasters to gaping wounds is to shower a defeated man with praise and the promise that things will be better next time. This is never more apparent than when Barry Hearn enters the room and sees the doctor patching up Groves’ head. “Remember what you said before the fight? ‘Ching, ching,’ Hearn says, genuflecting at the fighter’s feet. “Well tonight’s a ching, ching moment, George Groves. In my thirty years I’ve never before seen a crowd boo someone into the ring and then unanimously cheer everything they did.”
The boxer forces a smile.
“You know what, it doesn’t mean a row of beans. All it means now is that you’re on the landscape, you’re the next superstar, and I’m really, really going to enjoy watching that happen. I thought you were sensational tonight. I’m not going to get involved with whether the referee was right or wrong…”
“Yeah, I understand,” says Groves, doing his best to delay tears.
“That’s someone else’s job. It’s done, finished, we move on. Tonight you came of age, George Groves, and you were very, very impressive. I’m really looking forward to it. I think I’m going to have some fun. You see, at sixty-six, I’ve got all the money in the world. What I need is a buzz, George. I need to walk into big fights with winners. In you, I’ve got the big fight and I’ve got the winner.”
The gathered crowd cheers and claps Hearn’s kindness, while pound signs continue to cloud the promoter’s eyes like cataracts. “Let the disappointment calm down, that’s natural, and I’ll speak to you next week,” he concludes. “Well done, son, I’m proud of you. You did great and the crowd spoke volumes at the end.”
As Hearn exits the room, Groves, a promotional free agent, wipes his eyes. Once dry, he then sees Mark Seltzer, the spy from Froch’s camp, enter the room for what is the second time, albeit for a different reason than before. “George, well boxed, mate,” he says, sincerely, shaking Groves’ hand. “You did f**king brilliant.”
“I didn’t think it was over when I put him down,” says Groves. “Sometimes when you chin someone you get this feeling of emptiness. Everything drains from your body and you’re left with nothing. It’s as if nothing has happened. It’s just a shame it was in the first round because otherwise I would have put it on him and properly tried to finish him. In the first round you don’t want to do anything stupid and empty your tank.
“But in the second or third round I remember buzzing him and then he came firing back, and I was just thinking, Right, at some point he’s going to get so desperate he’s going to walk on to the same shot I nailed him with in the first round.”
At the time of the stoppage there were three and a half rounds still to go. Froch would argue this represented an ample period in which to complete a remarkable comeback and finish a fatigued challenger, whereas Groves, once in the ascendancy but now flagging, saw it as three and a half rounds to either survive or add to the other rounds he had already won.
“It was hot in there, and it was physical and tiring,” Groves admits. “He kept hitting me on the break and when we were tied up, and I was letting him do it because I thought it would make it really blatant to the referee. But he just kept handing him final warnings without actually deducting points or stopping him. The more he did it, the messier the fight got. We kept clashing heads a lot as well, which didn’t help my face.”
“You didn’t have to mess around on the ropes and drop your hands, though, George,” Sophie, his wife, tells him.
“I don’t remember that.”
“Well, I do! You showboated against the ropes and dropped your hands.”
“What do you mean showboated?” says Groves, patently amused by his wife’s concern. (Him being so blasé about it results in not only his wife but George’s mother now impersonating his earlier display of hubris in the sixth round. Hands down, head bobbing back and forth, the likeness is uncanny.)
“Yeah, so what?” says Groves. “That’s what you’ve got to do. I dropped my hands and made him miss.”
“No, you were almost sticking your tongue out at him,” argues his mother. “It was risky, George.”
A man suddenly in demand, Groves escapes further inquisitions and impersonations by absconding to the bathroom with the doping control officer, somehow of the belief he will, in his dehydrated state, be able to provide urine for a post-fight sample. It is then during this predictably prolonged trip that “Prince” Naseem Hamed, the former world featherweight champion, announces himself in the room. “Is he doing a piss test?” Hamed asks, scouring the premises. “I know all about that. Takes hours sometimes. Anyway, I’ve come to give my respects. I was very impressed. Don’t ask me if it should have been stopped, though.” He grins at anyone who so much as dares. “It was a good right hand, weren’t it? That first round was wicked.”
Hamed, five foot three and covered in a large white shirt, is, despite his lack of height, maybe the night’s biggest convert. After all, before the fight started, he had used an interview with Sky Sports, shown on the arena’s big screens, to predict Groves’ demise, reckoning he was horribly out of his depth and destined to crumble within three rounds. The course the fight eventually took therefore both surprised and humbled Hamed in a way no fight had done since the night Marco Antonio Barrera shoved his face into a ring post en route to victory in 2001.
“Are any of his family here?” he asks, his eyes falling on Yvonne. “Are you his mum?”
“Yes, I am,” Yvonne replies, proudly.
“If I upset you, I apologise.”
“I couldn’t quite hear what you said anyway.”
“I didn’t shout that much, but I’ve come to pay my respects to a guy who has got one hell of a heart,” says Hamed, placing his hand on his own. “He showed me something tonight that he hasn’t shown me throughout his whole career. I went to watch him against DeGale and I didn’t see it.”
“They were tactics against DeGale, though,” Yvonne explains. “He needed to fight that way to win.”
“Well, yes, those tactics worked for him that night…”
“And what if he went in there and didn’t use those tactics?”
“But he can do some damage, boy!” Hamed points out, winding up his right hand. “He didn’t have to fight DeGale like that. The kid’s got power and a big heart. How many people have we seen do that to Carl Froch?”
Lost in reverie, Hamed continues to circle the room, shaking his head in disbelief. “He wants to hurry up, though!”
“He’s probably struggling to do a wee-wee now,” says Yvonne.
“Can’t his mother just clip him round the ear? I only want to give him a big hug and say, ‘Well done.’”
Not used to being made to wait, Hamed now approaches the bathroom door and gently taps his fist against it. “George, you better hurry up, man!” he yells. “Or do you need a slap? You ain’t gonna want a slap, boy. Not in front of your mum.”
Hearing nothing back, Hamed pulls himself away, yet still grins like a fan as he returns to the centre of the room. “Was George a good kid growing up?” he asks next.
“An extremely good kid,” says Yvonne.
“Honest?”
“Yes. A quiet little boy. I never thought he’d be like this.”
“He’s got a big old heart on him now,” says Hamed, chuckling. “Now I feel really bad about not giving your son some love beforehand. I hope he gets a rematch. There’s still a lot of doubt hanging over Carl.”
Chapter VII
LATER, Adam Booth stands at the back of a different room and watches as Groves and Fitzpatrick make their way into the press conference to sit alongside one another at a table. Standing beside him, there is no detectable envy or bitterness on his part, only sympathy and sadness, for Booth presumably would have loved nothing more than to see his old pupil win the very thing they had both been working towards for five years.
It is for this reason he embraced Groves in a backstage corridor after the fight. Despite all that had happened between them, he held him in that moment as though he had finally located his child following years of searching, the denting of egos, which boxing is apt to do, allowing them both to rest in this embrace and not accuse the other of being the reason for their untethering. Runaway child or neglectful father, for those few precious seconds it didn’t matter. Back to being human, they simply used one another’s clothes to dry their tears, acutely aware that this was not the trigger for reconciliation but rather acknowledgement of a life they had, albeit briefly, shared.
In truth, it had been a long, hard, emotional night for Booth. Having cornered Andy Lee in an earlier bout, the trainer was then asked to commentate on the main event for BBC Radio; something akin to a divorcee being asked to describe the sexual prowess of the new man with whom his ex-wife now shared her bed. In accepting the gig, Booth would not only have to sit inches from the ring, and from his usual spot in Groves’ corner, but also somehow objectively analyse a man he had helped to mould. The thought alone made him want to go home, yet an hour or so later here he is: standing in the shadows, careful not to be seen, watching as his crestfallen former fighter answers a flurry of questions from journalists. Powerless, just as he has been for ten weeks, there is no longer anything Booth can do or say to help.
“I’m so proud of him,” he whispers. “I thought he was absolutely brilliant. As it turns out he was more than ready for it. I just wish he didn’t get so reckless and drunk on his success. He let Carl back into the fight because he wanted to hurt him too much. He just needed to settle down.”
Similarly, Booth, with the press conference in full flow, now craves a quick and quiet exit; or a settling down. He says, “I feel sick. Physically sick. I’ve felt sick all day. Honestly, this is the worst day I’ve ever had in boxing.”
And it is easy to believe him. Groves, all swollen and distracted, won’t see him standing at the back of the room tonight, nor see him leave, but that, alas, is how it must be from now on. Even then, it will likely take time, for old habits die hard. “When the adrenaline goes,” says Booth, “make sure he doesn’t vomit. He might be concussed.”
I tell him I’ll pass on the message.
