Sports Calendar

WHEN fragments of Watson’s memory returned, he remembered the fight. He has also watched it several times on video. It was on September 21, 1991, at White Hart Lane, at Tottenham, north London, with 22,000 present, a world title rematch against Chris Eubank, who had won a hotly disputed split points decision three months earlier.

“I felt really at home,” Watson said. “I was beating him up. I didn’t want to let it go to a points decision, which would have been the same old story, and I came on very strong in the middle rounds. I was there to destroy him. He was taking a hiding!” In the 11th round, Watson caught Eubank with three successive right-hand punches. Eubank sank to his knees. When he rose unsteadily, he was given a standing count of eight by the referee “I was relaxed,” Watson said. “I was imagining becoming champion at last. I was expecting the referee to stop the contest and count him out. That’s why my hands were down.”

When the referee waved the fight on, Eubank stepped forward and produced an uppercut that knocked Watson backwards, his head bouncing off the lowest of the ringside ropes. When he staggered to his feet, the bell rang for the end of the round.

“I had been knocking him from pillar to post,” Watson said. “I visualised the championship belt being put around my waist. Then he got up. Then everything goes blank.”

The fight was stopped in the 12th round. Watson returned to his corner and collapsed soon afterwards. With a blood clot forming between his skull and the right side of his brain, he went into a coma. He was taken by ambulance to the North Middlesex Hospital, where he was resuscitated.

Watson was the victim of a succession of misfortunes. The ringside doctor took several minutes to arrive, and was not experienced in brain trauma; for half an hour, Watson was not administered oxygen; and he was taken to a hospital without neurosurgical or full intensive care facilities. Without those mistakes, he might have made a full and speedy recovery.

That night Watson was transferred to St Bartholomew’s Hospital, where he was put into Hamlyn’s care. “The blood clot was removed in the early hours and he was put into the intensive care unit,” Hamlyn said.

“But halfway through the next day the pressure in his brain went up again. It was swelling, and another clot had formed. We took him back into theatre and took out one side of his skull to allow his brain to swell. He was now in very serious trouble. He had shown fixed and dilated pupils, signs of brain-stem failure. He was close to brain-stem dead.”

Watson’s mother, Joan, had attended the fight, sitting at ringside as usual, next to “Uncle” Joe White, a former professional boxer who is like a father to Watson. They had followed the ambulances by car from hospital to hospital and waited until they were allowed to see Michael after his first operation. They were told that he might not live, and that if he did, he would be terribly disabled and completely dependent.

For 40 days and nights, Watson lay between life and death. His mother, Uncle Joe and a friend from their church, Sister Lyn, kept vigil. During the days, Joan Watson sat beside her son, talking to him and praying. At night, the three slept on the floor in a box-room beside the intensive care unit.

“Most people who come in with such head injuries recover quite quickly or die,” Hamlyn said. “Michael just hovered in that predicament for ages. He lay there in a profound coma, like a statue of a Greek god encased in muscles, and I reckon he only survived because he was so physically fit.

“He had a breathing machine, but there were problems with his lungs and heart failing, and with fluid on his brain. We took him to theatre again and again. Joan, Uncle Joe and Sister Lyn were the most gentle and encouraging people I’ve ever met. They just said, ‘Do what you can, doctor’.”