2014 will mark the 25th anniversary of Nigel Benn and Michael Watson stepping into a purpose built tent in Finsbury Park to contest the WBO Middleweight Championship, marking the start of an epic saga in British Boxing. I Hate You More will do for this golden era of the sport what George Kimball's Four King's did for American boxing.
Between 1989 and 1993, Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn and Michael Watson fought each other repeatedly for the World Middle-weight championship belt. The first fight took place a month after the Hillsborough disaster and each fight was screened live on TV, where we now see Strictly Come Dancing. It was a time when boxing was seen as the purer and cleaner than most other sports, when kids could stay up late to watch 12 rounds of hate-fuelled madness. It was also the last Golden Era of British Boxing.
I Hate You More is the story of the greatest, and last, rivalry between three of the most talented fighters this country has ever produced. Rivalries exist in every sport, but put it in the ring, in the form of the prancing, gleaming Eubank or the heavy set of The Dark Destroyer (Nigel Benn) and suddenly it becomes dangerous. But this is what the British public tuned in for. And they certainly got it, with Michael Watson comatosed on the canvas at the end of one brutal fight.
Sanjeev Shetty takes us back to when these three boxers graced the heavy bags and tells their story as well as that of Britain's love affair with the sport. He traces their journeys to centre stage and tells the story of the dark side of Thatcher's nation - the blood, the sweat, and the dangerous hatred that fuelled these men before the pantomime of Sky took over and revealed a new age of boxers crafted not from the salt of the earth, but from brand-managers flipcharts and the sport we revered, which defined us, disappeared behind a curtain of advertisements forever.
