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I didn’t know Minter or Hagler at the time. However, I remember my father putting down his newspaper to concentrate on the fight, which signified its importance. It wasn’t too often that our 19-inch colour television commanded my father’s full attention. He had purchased it with my mother’s premium bonds winnings in 1970, just in time for the World Cup in Mexico, the first finals to be televised in colour. Ever since, it had become the most vocal member of our family. It was always on, whether anyone was watching it or not. It drowned out the noise of cars speeding down our street, the screeches of kids playing knock down ginger and the metal on metal bangs from our neighbours working on their cars. My father controlled the TV, always claiming to be watching something even if he was asleep or reading the Sun. I was his personal remote control.

On screen, the fighters were standing in opposite corners in the ring. Minter, a white boxer from Crawley in West Sussex was the reigning world middleweight champion, having wrestled the title from Italian-American Vito Antuofermo in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas in March 1980. Minter’s victory had been controversial. Most of the boxing writers sitting ringside thought Antuofermo won the fight. An informal poll of ringside writers had 10 siding with the Italian-American, five with Minter with two scoring it even. Two of the three judges on the night were split in their scoring between Minter and Antuofermo. However, the third judge, Roland Dakin from England, gave Minter 13 rounds to just one to Antuofermo with one round even, causing Boston Globe writer Bud Collins to remark: ‘He [Dakin] wasn’t the usual burglar, stealing in the comfort of the home precinct. He had gone into another man’s country to perform the overwhelming act of larceny, and never tiptoed.’