Written by Elliot Worsell
THIS time 20 years ago I was about to start writing my very first feature Debate News for the purpose of having a place in the August magazine. There have been two previous attempts – a news piece about Paulie Ayala, and a piece of pro-Audley Harrison fluff – but this, I was promised, would be the first post submitted BN that would eventually be printed.
Even though I was only 17, it already felt like a trip. The Harrison piece, for example, although it was very bad, took too much time and effort to get no response when it was posted. Worse than that, my interview with Ayala, the former bantamweight world champion, was not only ignored when I submitted it but a week later I saw excerpts of it appear in the old news section of the front of the magazine – without, alas, reference to the source.
However, instead of holding a grudge, I kept trying and in the summer of 2004 there was a big fight that I had absolutely no access to. BN it can be the same. The fight in question was the cruiserweight fight between David Haye and Carl Thompson at Wembley Arena and the assignment was simple: write 2,000 words about Haye’s training camp.
So, that’s what I did. I interviewed the challenger many times and, when I was part of his training camp in Bournemouth, the story was already written and published. This time the song not only attached my line to it but also a few special photos provided by the boxer himself, so he was eager to experience the joy of being featured in the magazine he collected as a child.
It was a happy time for both of us. For Haye, the prospect of 10-0, the idea of a huge spread Debate News it was a sign that he was leading the way, and it was great for me, at 17, to be trusted to write something as long and detailed and personal as that. For days I admired the finished article in its published form and the only validation I received or could ever need came from having it in my hands. After all, it was a physical thing, something to be held and seen. It did not need to be shared, liked, or discussed, as is the case these days. The mark of its success was in execution instead of acceptance; happiness is a pure and self-generated result.
In fact, the only disappointment was to find that a small part of the feature had been cut, probably for reasons of space, and that by cutting it the way they did, and shortening one of its sections, the editor had conspired to create a grammatical error. It was then, rather, with dismay, that I understood that although there were many advantages to having your work published, there were also disadvantages; especially, the permanence of it all.
Anyway, I think both of our lives were on the line, Haye trained Thompson wholeheartedly in a ballroom in Bournemouth in August and every afternoon I watched him. Then I watched him day and night as I left our beach front hotel to visit strip clubs and take it with me or, as happened one night, I was turned away at the door because I couldn’t convince the bouncer that I was 18.
As for the war itself, that too was explained by the ignorance of the youth. First, I accepted a colorful band from Haye’s girlfriend, whose purpose was thought to be to get me into the party. “You’re 18 now, right?” he asked me before the fight, and yes, at the time, I was. However, after a few more weeks of understanding and maturity, I had made hopeless friendships. So, I asked him, “Shouldn’t we wait until he wins the battle first?” I mean, isn’t this a tempting ending?”
Which it is, of course. But he shouldn’t have known. We were all young and dumb back then, you see, and despite my mature instincts to see danger and prepare for the worst, I was sitting there in the press row that Friday waiting for youth to overcome experience and Haye, who is 23 years old. about whom I had written earnestly, in order to conquer. Only that didn’t happen, did it? Being young and dumb, I was wrong. It is absolutely wrong. Instead of giving up, 40-year-old Carl Thompson mocked the slowness, rust and old school in his approach, weathered the early storm and exposed Haye’s training methods in the most humbling way; style to conquer things.
This fight, for Thompson, was not a changing of the guard, as has been billed, but it was an opportunity to show everyone that just because you are new, and have new ideas, doesn’t mean that these ideas are necessarily good. There was, as I feared, no party that night.
Carl Thompson takes down David Haye (John Gichigi/Getty Images)
Indeed, it was a lesson not only for Haye but for all of us; a reminder that nothing is worth celebrating until it happens, regardless of excitement levels or the need to plan for the future. It was also a lesson in respecting experience and understanding that new ideas are nothing unless they have weight, resonance and, of course, thing.
Both of these lessons I took from that fight and Haye, a losing fighter, did too, I think. His journey, which was once thought to be simple and straightforward, was not and he was able to accept this early on, which is probably why he is still not able to achieve much of what he wanted to achieve. Mine, on the other hand, will follow the same path as well, despite the slower writing Debate News from 2004, until 2017 when I was finally offered a full-time job with the magazine by its editor Matt Christie. By then I knew a thing or two; with life, with boxing. At that time I was almost writing.
Now, almost seven years later, I find myself thinking about my very first article BN while putting this together – sadly, my last. In doing so I try not to fight everything I know and believe right now but instead think about how this 17 year old boy would feel if he was told that after so much pride when he saw his first line Debate News he would be lucky enough to be twenty years old and see it for weeks. In fact, it’s all he’ll ever want.
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