IN a busy changing room, above the noise of nervous chatter and machine gun rattle of gloves against pads, trainer Paul ‘Soggy’ Counihan looked up from the hands he was wrapping and pointed to Sam Eggington.
“Sam’s just a totally different animal,” he said. “He was born to do this game.”
The man’s matter-of-fact tones were not that of an excited sales pitch. He was speaking a simple truth endorsed by a career studded with epic battles, belts and upsets.
Eggington is made from something stronger – in both mind and matter – than you and I.
There is something in the blood that drives him beyond a point when even fellow fighters would falter.
And the Stourbridge Savage will continue as long as that warrior mixture pumps through his veins.
“One of the most instinctive fighters we’ve ever had,” Jon Pegg, the other half of Eastside gym’s backroom duo, chipped in.
Eggington, wrapped in a grey, hooded coat – an observer, not participant in the evening’s entertainment, brushed off the compliments.
He has been too long in the game and had too many big fights to be moved by mere words.
A string of top boxers have attempted to get under the 31-year-old’s skin with harsh words and found it boot leather tough.
Attempting to stare-down Sam is akin to attempting to halt a Chieftain tank with an icy look. Mind games won’t mess with him.
Words have to be backed-up: if not, they will be rammed forcibly and violently down a tormentor’s throat.
As if revealing, a closely kept secret, Sam stepped nearer, looked at me from under hooded eyes and said: “I get nervous, you’re not human if you don’t get nervous, but I’ve never been scared. They’re close, but very different.
“If you’re scared, you’re in the wrong place. I’ve never been scared.”
For years, experts have been writing the remarkable battler’s ring obituary.
The hard fights have caught up with the former British, European and IBO world champ, they say. He has been to the well too many times.
For years, he has proved them wrong by walking back to the well and drinking deeply. He admits with a shrug: “Everyone has an opinion. Nine times out of 10 they’ve been proved wrong.
“One day they’ll have to be right, won’t they?”
That day, his team insist, will not be April 20 when Eggington take part in another potentially epic on Boxxer’s huge BP Pulse Live arena show.
In the opposite corner will be Bournemouth’s Lee Cutler, a fine fighter who has lost only one of 16 and stopped seven opponents. At stake is the 29-year-old’s WBC international light-middleweight belt.
If Cutler is a drop less than what those around him believe he is, the champ will be drawn into a terrible meat grinder.
Southampton’s Joe Pigford, a man with a near unbelievable run of knockout victories, was portrayed as a monster before facing Eggington. By the fifth round, he was mincemeat.
“I’m bringing what I have to do to win,” Sam, whose features betray his violent approach to the sport, said.
“He (Cutler) may try to jab and move, I don’t know. Personally, I think if he meets me in the middle of the ring from the beginning, he’s crazy.”
What makes Eggington’s 44 bout, title-laden career so extraordinary is the fact it began without fanfare or any expectation. He turned over without a glowing amateur CV after being made redundant.
“I just wanted to earn some dough,” he said, “I was just doing my job, I didn’t think I’d be doing it past 30. It was just a job and I think that’s why my nerves are so good.
“Things just snowballed – I never really had the chance to take in what I was doing.”
The titles fell like skittles…Midlands welter, Commonwealth, British, European, IBO light-middle and a clutch of international belts. In all, he has collected 11.
Unbeaten records were trashed and trampled. Eggington has handed eight fighters their first loss.
He twice won the country’s “fight of the year” accolade. He has featured in a staggering 25 10 or 12 rounders – the majority away from home.
Eggington has played his part in some of the most sensational domestic scraps of recent history – and that reputation for trench warfare has altered public perception of his bouts.
“If Sam doesn’t have a war in a round, they think he’s losing it,” manager Pegg said.
Sam Eggington is a family man just doing his job – and his job is ring warfare, it is professional violence.
Win, lose or draw, that’s something Lee Cutler will discover on April 20.
