“This man is my hero,” Michael Watson says simply as he turns to Peter Hamlyn, the neurosurgeon who saved his life and carried out seven operations on the stricken boxer’s brain in the aftermath of his fight against Chris Eubank in September 1991. “We are like family, me and Peter, and we have unusual banter. Peter says I’m a little bit dark to be family.”
Watson chuckles at his friend’s quip but, having interviewed Watson multiple times before and after the fateful bout that pushed him close to death, and having spent the morning with Hamlyn, I sense an essential truth. The brain surgeon and the boxer share a deeply compassionate intent to help each other.
