Boxing: Watson benefit gives Witter the limelight
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Your support makes all the difference.Michael Watson and Junior Witter were both close to becoming the forgotten British boxers of their respective generations and it is fitting that British light-welterweight champion Witter challenges Ghana's Laatekwei Hammond for the Commonwealth title in the main event of a unique benefit night for Watson at the Grosvenor House, London, tonight.
Watson was the British middleweight that few of the sport's emerging stars wanted to fight back in 1990 and he was also the type of boxer that television executives were less than thrilled to have to screen because he was a thinker, not a fighter.
Witter is convinced that he too has been excluded during the last few years from a lucrative fight in a division that has been dominated by Ricky Hatton and Eamonn Magee. Tonight he will get the chance to show his contemporaries and hundreds of veterans just how good he is.
Watson suffered a head injury in his last fight against Eubank at White Hart Lane in September 1991 that required emergency surgery and four years ago he initiated legal proceedings against the beleaguered British Boxing Board of Control for negligence.
Watson was successful and tonight's benefit, which could raise as much as £200,000, was brokered by promoter Frank Warren when it was clear that Watson's solicitors and the British board's legal experts could not reach a deal on a settlement. Witter said: "To be performing on a bill in front of him [Watson] and other great celebrities is just unbelievable."
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