‘F***, how did that happen?’ Julius Francis volunteered to fight Mike Tyson and was KO’d after five knockdowns in two rounds
Mike Tyson was rebuilding his career after serving a 15-month ban for biting Evander Holyfield when in January 2000 he fought in Britain for the very first time.
His opponent that night at what was then known as the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester was Julius Francis – then the British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion, 35 years old and in his prime.
In his previous three fights Francis – partly owing to the experience gained after having lost to world-level fighters Vitali Klitschko, Axel Schulz, Zeljko Mavrovic and John Ruiz – had recorded victory over Scott Welch, Danny Williams, a future conqueror of Tyson, and Pele Reid. Successive defeats by Holyfield had preceded Tyson’s ban, but it remained unclear the extent to which he was past his considerable peak.
“I volunteered for this job,” said Francis. “My manager asked me and I jumped at the chance. Tyson is not the fearsome fighter he was in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He’s still a force to be reckoned with, but I’m prepared to go in there and put everything on the line.”
That manager was Frank Maloney, also guiding the career of the great Lennox Lewis – then the IBF, WBA and WBC champion, and the heavyweight the world truly wanted Tyson to fight. Maloney, in turn, recommended that Francis and his long-term trainer Mark Roe recruit the services of the respected Harold “Shadow” Knight, once of Lewis, to help them to prepare for the challenge presented by none other than “Iron Mike”.
Francis, born in Peckham to Caribbean parents, and his three siblings had been placed into foster care when he was 10 because their father was working away and their mother was struggling with her mental health.
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By 16, often on the streets of Woolwich, south London, where there were times he encountered the National Front, he was dealing drugs, gradually stabbed a total of eight times – he required 60 stitches when being stabbed in the stomach with a carving knife in a fight at a party – and shot at once. The only time he was intimidated by Tyson was therefore weeks before fight night, when he encountered an enlarged cardboard cut-out of the former champion who remained so widely feared.
Paid a career-high purse of £350,000 – Tyson received £7m – Francis invested not only in Knight but in a training camp at the army barracks at Aldershot in Hampshire. “I'd experienced going into camp with Lennox, but Lennox was the main man,” the heavyweight explained in retirement. “Now everything was geared towards making me the best I could be on the night. I enjoyed it – every day at the gym I was the one everyone was focused on. My sparring partners come at me every day like they wanted to take my head off. I had to be that horrible, selfish, nasty person every day.
“Camp was sparse. I had a single bed – one of those metal-framed ones – a thin mattress, springs, no TV, a radio, a little wardrobe, plenty of books and plenty of fresh air. I didn’t have any luxury whatsoever. If I was still in London I’d have had press camped outside my door; the neighbours coming round. You had to get past the guard to see me, so I was happy with that. I had to work.”
The 33-year-old Tyson – who by then had stopped 40 of his 50 opponents, 33 of them in three or fewer rounds – arrived in Britain at a time when, off the back of the six-year prison sentence given to him in 1992 for rape and the four months served for attacking a pair of motorists in 1999, it was argued that he shouldn’t be allowed.
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Jack Straw, then the home secretary, granted him special dispensation to come to Britain, but it was only after he did so that the Tyson-led chaos truly began. The extravagant heavyweight and his entourage went on a shopping spree for jewellery in central London that they attempted to persuade Frank Warren, promoting the fight between he and Francis, to fund.
A visit to Brixton then led to him being holed up in prison – Francis had previously been on remand at Brixton prison – to protect him from his thousands of fans. “I have got to get back to training, so I would appreciate if you let me break out,” he said via megaphone. “Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I love you.”
Justice for Women had by then appealed to the courts to deny Tyson the right to enter the country, and when he learned that they had done so Tyson said: “They are just a bunch of frustrated women who want to be men.”
A crowd gathered near his hotel room window during fight week in Manchester – Warren had wanted to stage the fight at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium but those around Tyson had feared it wouldn’t sell out – and, when Francis unintentionally stumbled on to the scene at street level, he, instead, was mobbed.
Roe recalls being relatively unmoved by Tyson’s “aura” until in the ring on fight night, when he insists Tyson appeared to have grown considerably since the previous day when they had weighed in. Tyson’s increased presence perhaps even contributed to Francis abandoning their tactics to box and move to instead brawl with the most celebrated of all brawlers after he was hit by the first hurtful right hand.
Francis was sent to the canvas a total of five times before being stopped 63 seconds into the second round, justifying the investment of The Mirror, who had agreed terms with Maloney to sponsor the bottom of Francis’ boots following a joke made by Warren to the newspaper’s then-editor in what the promoter had intended as a throwaway line.
On the undercard that night in Manchester, Joe Calzaghe outpointed David Starie and Ricky Hatton stopped Leoncio Garces. Both were unaware that at the very same venue their finest nights were to come.
“When the fight was finished they said ‘Julius, you were knocked down five times’ and I was saying to myself, ‘No way, there’s not a chance he knocked me down five times’,” Francis later said. “Then I watched it back, and I thought, ‘Fuck, how did that happen?’.”