JOLLY BOY’S OUTING
OF course I had no business going to Paris to cover a world title bout. I’d been a professional journalist a few days over three months, having been “rescued” from an insurance office by a BN editor who said he saw “raw promise” in the articles I’d submitted for consideration, and offered me a job when a vacancy came up.
Carlos Monzon of Argentina was due to defend his world middleweight crown against French glamour boy Jean-Claude Bouttier on September 8 1973. The editor planned to go over – he’d covered several high-profile bouts in France – and shortly afterwards he’d booked a holiday in Majorca with his new girlfriend. Unfortunately for him, the fight was put back three weeks, to September 29 – when he’d be away.
As so often, when it’s a close decision, it was a long time coming – but when it did come, it was what I’d so hoped to hear. “You’d better go to Paris, Simon.”
I was elated. The previous year I’d gone there to see the first meeting between the pair (in a trip organised by Bernard Hart, with whom I remained friends until his death this year). That was a great trip (Monzon won on a 12th-round retirement – title bouts were over 15 then), but I could afford only a cheap ticket – to be at ringside, and reporting, was brilliant.
It was quite a week leading up to the fight. On the Monday I celebrated my 24th birthday in the luxurious surroundings of the London Hilton (covering an Anglo-American Sporting Club promotion – in the heavyweight eight-rounder Les Stevens outpointed Dave Roden); on the Tuesday it was Wolverhampton for the first-ever British
