Seconds out, round two

Published on Sunday 20 April 2003 01:00

FRANK Bruno was once Britain’s most curious and beloved athletic hero - a one-time brass polisher, sales assistant and labourer who became a world heavyweight champion. Twice Sports Personality of the Year, his image is part-child, part-warrior - a boxer who has squared up to Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson then hunkered down to play panto with relics from EastEnders.

In his prime, Bruno was built like a carthorse, but had fewer moves. But this did not matter - in fact, his failures somehow added to his popularity, as did the image of Bruno the Lovable Buffoon. The banter with Harry, the sports commentator who knew what he meant, delighted his fans, but Bruno chafed against the stereotype: "Deep down, I’m a serious person," he has said. "But if I act serious then people think I’m soft."

When he last hung up his gloves he declared: "I will never come back. No way. I’m comfortable for life. You can offer me 20m, 50m, even 100m, and I won’t come back. That’s one chapter in my life I’m done with. I haven’t got a big ego like George Foreman or Ray Leonard. I’m just happy."

It gets worse. "You can dig me out and show me no respect if I ever come back. The only way you’d see me back in the ring is if I couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes."

Yet 41-year-old Bruno seemed well-shod when last week he announced his return to boxing, a decision that seems to go against instinct, common sense and medical advice. Forget concerns about age and a seven-year absence from the ring - Bruno has been warned by his doctors that just one more punch could blind him. Yet he considers this an acceptable risk for a comeback against Olympic gold medallist Audley Harrison, a match he believes could earn each boxer 5m.

Bruno started boxing at the age of nine - although the fighting began a lot earlier. "We used to get parents coming to the door all the time to complain about him fighting their children," said his mother, Lyn. His father, Robert, who died of a brain tumour when Frank was 14, was keen for his son to be self-sufficient and once dumped him in a phone box miles from home, leaving Bruno, not yet 10, to make his own way back.

He used to beat him with a curtain rail, too. Bruno, always one to look on the bright side, said his father was only trying to keep him on the straight and narrow. Parents are not recommended to try Robert Bruno’s tough-love technique at home, since Bruno went on to become one of inner London’s 12 most problem teenagers. Expelled from his primary school for hitting a teacher, he was sent to Oak Hall boarding school for enthusiastically delinquent children in Sussex. There was the inevitable hierarchy of hardness among the residents of Oak Hall, and after enduring his share of bullying, Bruno made sure he was the boss of the yard.

He has never been a natural boxer but as a former headmaster noted, he did have a huge desire to excel at something - anything. Boxing seemed the most obvious vehicle. After Robert Bruno died, it also provided him with something else, a father figure in the shape of his first manager, Terry Lawless.

As an amateur, he represented England and became the youngest ever ABA heavyweight. Then he discovered he was chronically myopic in one eye. Lawless invested several thousand pounds in flying his young prospect to Colombia for experimental surgery.

He turned professional in 1982, winning the Commonwealth and European heavyweight titles before being upstaged in 1986 by Tim Witherspoon in a world championship challenge at Wembley. The murmurs against Bruno’s physical and mental stamina had already begun. Bruno had a powerful punch but tended to run out of breath at the same rate as he ran out of ideas.After a string of undemanding "rope-a-dope" opponents, Bruno was out of his depth with Terrible Tim, who gave him such a battering the referee stopped the fight. Three years later Bruno squared up to the tanklike Mike Tyson. Despite a good start, Bruno was clubbed so severely that by the seventh and final round a commentator described him as "resembling a tree leaning against the ropes".

Further surgery at Manchester’s Royal Eye Hospital to repair a torn retina followed and for 26 months, he seemed to have resigned himself to retirement. Then he successfully reapplied for his licence in 1991, insisting: "I’m at no more risk than any other boxer, and life’s all about taking gambles." In October 1993 he lost to world champion Lennox Lewis before finally winning the WBC heavyweight title from Oliver McCall in 1995.

So far, Bruno has been the only British-born, British-raised heavyweight champion of any kind. Lewis was raised in Canada, and Herbie Hide was born in Nigeria. It was an emotional night for Bruno and crusty sports hacks. Lower lips quivered as Bruno called out: "I should have packed up years ago but this was my dream. I just feel happy, man."

However, soon afterwards he announced his retirement after surgeon Professor David McLeod advised the former world champion to quit or risk losing the use of an eye.

Frank seemed to accept this, telling the media that he had everything he wanted now. The Brunos enjoyed an Essex millionaire’s lifestyle: 176 acres, horses and the girls in private schools. Yet he is bothered by a sense of legacy. The libel action against Lewis’s alleged "Uncle Tom" name-calling indicated he is hurt by the response of the younger generation in the black community. To them, he has sold out, married a white wife and steers clear of black issues.

"I hate it when people say I’ve gone and left myself," he has admitted. He also left some blood on the carpet after a bruising few rounds with Celebrity Sleepover, a BBC 1 programme where a star stays the night at a fan’s house. Bruno’s visit was disastrous from the opening bell. Surly to the production team and monosyllabic to boxing fan Denis and family, by the end of the 30-minute show the nice-guy celebrity image which Bruno had painstakingly built up was KO’d. This seemed to be the real Frank, grumpy, graceless, self-pitying and desperate to get away from his wife and kids. "I just wanted to get out of the house, away from all the hysteria and the nagging all the time," he whinged.

Taken out for a few swings at a driving range, Bruno refused to be jollied along and drawn out by his punter interviewer, brusquely dismissing Nelson Mandela as "a fella, like you and me", and abruptly concluding the interview by telling his inquisitor that "I’m a human being just like yourself. If you got that [club] and hit me on the head, I’d go ‘Ow!’" Denis appeared to be considering this idea, before realising that having a camera team in tow would not help him in court.

Bruno now says this had been an off day. "I had received a letter that was not very nice to me from someone. Anyone who had received that letter would have been in a bad mood." And that leaves you to speculate whether the letter was from his formidable wife Laura, who was trying to divorce him.

Their long romance began in Battersea Park, when Frank spotted Laura roller-skating and they married in 1990 - the year Frank was honoured with an MBE. By then she was his manager, and estimated to be a tougher opponent than Frank himself. Laura was at the ringside at Wembley in 1995 when he defeated McCall to win the world championship. While Frank was washing the blood from his body, Laura was busy negotiating her husband’s exclusive story with the highest bidder.

Their troubles seemed to begin after his retirement. In 1997 Mrs Bruno went to court to gain an order banning her husband from "assaulting and molesting" her. She later disclosed the court action was the culmination of two years of arguing: "He would tower over me, waving his arms around. And I kept thinking, ‘Oh my God, something’s going to go bang here.’"

For a while, the couple appeared to have patched up their marriage, but in September 2001, after 20 years together, a quickie divorce went ahead on the grounds that the marriage had broken down irretrievably. Her lawyers secured the huge settlement - the biggest ever awarded to a partner of a British sportsman.

Now it is Laura - or rather Laura’s substantial alimony - that has sent Bruno back into the ring. But what else is a boxer like Bruno to do? He’s already worked as a commentator for Sky TV, and demonstrably lacks the eloquence of a Barry McGuigan. When he flagged up the notion of becoming a Conservative MP, even the publicity-hungry Tories came over all silent and shy.

Bruno could be forgiven for struggling to reconcile past glories with a more mundane present. In his time, boxers were still respected gentlemen fighters. They did not end up being patronised by Vanessa Feltz on Big Brother, like Chris Eubank. Or wearing Tara Palmer Tompkinson’s underwear, like Nigel Benn.

And he could be forgiven for some bitterness when he looks at Henry Cooper’s career; despite an overall record that shows 14 losses in 55 contests, Our ’Enery is still the most popular British heavyweight of the last 50 years and makes a good living as the national institution who once shattered the cockiness of a young Cassius Clay. Bruno, on the other hand, is the warhorse who became a panto horse.