A Boxing Memory: Tim Witherspoon vs. Frank Bruno

A Boxing Memory: Tim Witherspoon vs. Frank Bruno

Tim Witherspoon rode into London to fight Frank Bruno in 1986, looking less than fit. He blamed it on a large consumption of orange juice. Not many believed him. His night ended with his 30-strong security army trying to protect him from a thousand-strong drunken mob enraged by a fighter who had broken a nation’s heart. Witherspoon said they were trying to kill him. Trust me, he might not have been exaggerating. They managed to get as far as the changing room door. The wannabe assassins weren’t giving up easily. They were banging heavily on the door, trying to force their way in. Muhammad Ali was inside. Somehow, he managed to talk the mob down. Ali’s final miracle. Witherspoon told me that Ali probably saved his life. A crazy end to a crazy week.

Bruno was supposed to be the one to break the mould. A near century of failure for British heavyweights on the world stage. No British heavyweight could lay claim to the biggest prize in the sport since Bob Fitzsimmons in the previous century. ‘Big Frank’ was the fighter seemingly set to end that near-century of misery. Some of those failures were glorious, others not so much. Heavyweights from British soil had that horizontal label attached to them. Often, with good reason. They were not viewed with suspicion. They were viewed with disdain. But Bruno was different, or so it seemed. The British public loved him, the tabloids whipped up a media frenzy, and victory over an out-of-shape Witherspoon was viewed as a mere formality. Anita Dobson, Angie Watts in Eastenders, was in the studio for the BBC pre-fight build-up show sitting alongside Des Lynam and Barry McGuigan. A mix of the celebrity with the hard core of the sport. But Bruno brought that kind of mainstream attention. Bruno even had a couple of songs written about him in the lead-up to the Witherspoon fight. Johnny Wakelin had a history in the sport, Black Superman, a song about Muhammad Ali, was followed up by Love Yah Like a Brother. A band called The Contenders released Where’s Harry? Bruno carried extremely big expectations into that fight with Witherspoon for the WBA heavyweight championship of the world.

But the Americans saw it differently. They remembered the past. They remembered what James ‘Bonecrusher’ Smith had done to Bruno a few years earlier. They saw what we didn’t want to see. Or could see. The faults, the suspect, stamina, and chin were ignored. Bruno had the sculptured physique that Witherspoon lacked. But he also had the basic flaws that hadn’t yet been ironed out. Too many easy fights on the way had given his public, and maybe Bruno himself, a false sense of security. A win over the former world champion Gerrie Coetzee inside a round earned Bruno his chance, but the manner of the win, while impressive on paper, flattered to deceive somewhat. The South African had come over with little ambition and would later say that he threw the fight. But nobody cared. Only Boxing News seemed to offer some kind of balanced coverage. They knew what was coming.

Much of the pre-fight narrative was about Witherspoon and the portly body he had arrived in the UK with. Was he fit enough to fight? But most forgot that regardless of conditioning, we knew he could fight. Bruno was the ultimate physical specimen, but we didn’t know for certain if he really could fight at this level. Too much emphasis was focused on the paunch versus the punch angle. Boxing is rarely that simple.

There was no live UK broadcast of the fight. Unthinkable in the modern era. ITV and the BBC had to share delayed rights to the fight. ITV aired the fight the following Sunday morning. The BBC had to settle for the early evening slot on the same day. The UK fans had to be content with live radio commentary. The voice and words of Ian Darke held many a memory from those times.

Bruno was only 24, and he had dreamed of winning the world heavyweight title and doing it in 1986. Everything seemed to be aligned for Bruno to make and change history. But the burden and the size of the task were too great even for his broad shoulders. Bruno boxed well behind his heavy jab in the early stages and hopes more than flickered that he would leave Wembley Stadium with all his dreams coming true. And Bruno soaked up plenty of heavy artillery from Witherspoon to at least partially dismiss the myth that his chin was made out of china. In truth, it never was, Bruno just wasn’t a naturally gifted fighter who could spoil his way out of a crisis. Many years later, he would finally learn that side of his art.

But the chances of a famous win would slowly fade as the rounds progressed. The stamina was ebbing away, Bruno wasting the remains of his gas tank on silly little pointless arm punches that did no damage to his opponent. Only the man throwing them. Bruno was brave and was always in the fight, but the hopes of a British win on the biggest stage in the sport were getting slender with each passing minute. In the days of 15-round contests, Bruno, who boxed with some degree of caution in the early rounds, might have been better served if he had gambled when his energy and power were at their greatest. The end came in the closing stages of the 11th when both simultaneously threw heavy punches. Witherspoon got their first, and a nation started to mourn. Bruno was just another British heavyweight who had failed when it mattered the most. But in defeat, he gave his finest performance to date. The judges all had Witherspoon ahead by varying degrees. They failed to give Bruno credit for his work. Maybe they were blinded by history and what came before. Boxing News had Bruno ahead at the finish. They were far closer to reality.

There were calls for Bruno to retire, but at 24, he didn’t listen. And didn’t need to. Bruno kept trying and eventually after two more failed attempts to lift the world heavyweight title against Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis he finally realised his dreams on a return visit to Wembley Stadium in 1995 when he survived a late surge from Oliver McCall to lift the WBC heavyweight title. It was a famous night, and many a tear was shed on that September evening.

But for Witherspoon, the Bruno fight started a more than steady decline. The motivation waned even more. He was financially short-changed for the Bruno fight and was blown away inside a round by ‘Bonecrusher’ Smith in his next fight. Witherspoon claimed he threw that fight, and he never did win or even fight for another version of the world heavyweight title. Witherspoon, like many heavyweights from that era, never did reach his full potential, and he slowly slid into obscurity as his career moved further and further away from the heavyweight summit.

Alcohol-fuelled yobs ruined the evening for many and threatened to steal the headlines away from the two fighters. It was the last time we saw Witherspoon resemble anywhere near a top heavyweight. As for Bruno, his heroic but ultimately losing effort seemed to indicate that nothing would ever change in the perception of British heavyweights. But in hindsight, it indicated that very soon, it would. And it did. For Bruno and for all those that followed.