![]() ![]() It can be used as a weapon, a way of instilling fear in an opponent. For some, being on edge and outwardly hostile is in fact viewed as a character trait conducive to intimidation and a successful career. In a sport like boxing, characters like Hide are hardly rare, let alone anomalies. Others days he seemed eager to rip an arm off. He was, it’s true, the dangerous dog of the boxing world. You also then had to carefully concentrate on what he was saying, perhaps harder than you normally would with someone else, for fear of either upsetting or misunderstanding him. Get him to talk, which, I’ll confess, was no easy task, and you typically got something interesting, or at least something worth listening to. In boxing terms, his was a voice quite distinctive, with the things he said largely different from the insipid and uninspired soundbites of his peers. ![]() Indeed, such is the Hide mystique, most encounters with him tended to be memorable. Without even turning his head, much less addressing the smoker, Hide had changed the mood and smell around him and, as far as sheepish looks go, the one the smoker offered me, not Hide, upon putting out the cigarette was one, clearly, I have struggled to forget. Too young and naïve to sense this, of course, when I got to asking Hide how he was feeling with just days to go, he said something to the effect of, “I’m doing all right, but I’d feel a lot better if I wasn’t smelling cigarette smoke,” and it was then, almost immediately, with the smoking man standing twenty yards to his left, a cigarette was put out and the smell of smoke no longer an issue. ![]() He wasn’t that week having to cut weight, yet any freedom this gifted him had no bearing on his levels of agitation, nor did it make Hide any more thrilled to be attending a public workout on a wet Wednesday. Hide, back then, was still a heavyweight, not yet a cruiserweight, and was preparing to fight a Russian called Alexander Vasilev over 10 rounds a few days later. THE first time I met and interviewed Herbie Hide we were in Spitalfields market on a weekday and he somehow managed to force a stranger to stub out his cigarette without so much as looking in the stranger’s direction. ![]()
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