I was numb for days, lying in bed seeing his little boy without a daddy
When Dale Evans fought Mike Towell, it ended in a fatality that shook British boxing. Now Evans is getting back in the ring again. And he’s scared...
‘I used to be a lion when I saw weakness. Now I don’t know’
THERE’S a recurring thought in Dale Evans’ mind, a dark image that comes at him every so often and he can’t quite duck out of its way. When it hits, it hurts.
It’s a vision that one day he’ll be the other guy — the fighter lying on the canvas surrounded by medics. When he pictures the scene, his girlfriend and mother are there at ringside, crying. Then there’s a stretcher, a hospital and that same terrible ending.
‘It comes into my mind from time to time,’ he says. ‘It’s so horrible.’
It’s a possibility that stalks a fighting man who used to be fearless but is now altered in ways he can’t fully understand; a fighting man who listened to David Haye talk this week about ‘caving in’ Tony Bellew’s skull and felt appalled.
This is what it’s been like for Evans since he and Mike Towell accepted a pair of modest, four- figure pay cheques to contest a British title eliminator in a hotel function room in Glasgow last September.
One talented young boxer lost a fight that Thursday night and lost his life a day later; another talented young boxer won a fight and lost something as well.
‘These thoughts just come and go,’ Evans says. ‘It’s this thing of my girlfriend and my mum, there at ringside. What if I end up on that stretcher in front of them? What if they never see me again? I find myself worrying about that.
‘You just can’t think like that as a boxer, but I’ve seen it with Mike. He left a girlfriend, Chloe, without a boyfriend, a two- year- old son without a daddy and a mum without a son. I have seen the realities.
‘It could be me and my family next. Now that I’m about to get back in that ring again, I’m not going to lie to you — I’m scared.’
EVANS is sitting in a cafe in Newport, south Wales. He has finished his morning gym session and will head out shortly to run six miles on the back roads around Magor. It’s a daily routine built on pain and hard thoughts.
Less than five months have passed since British boxing faced up to its second fight-related fatality in four years and Evans has been dealing as best he can with life after death.
‘It’s not been about me, it’s about Mike’s family,’ he tells Sportsmail in his first major newspaper interview. ‘They are the ones who deserve sympathy. Me? I’m just trying to get my head right.’
That process saw weeks spent in a darkened room and endless days when he would collapse into tears. He has been to a funeral, felt the stares of strangers, and received a beautiful hug he never expected.
And now it’s almost time to get back in the ring again, with a tough comeback scheduled for March 25 against Tony Dixon for the Welsh welterweight title. The intention is to stay busy until he gets his shot as the mandatory challenger for the British crown. It’s a career on the cusp of a breakthrough, but for now the 25-year-old is still in the grey area between being a professional fighter who makes up the numbers and being the sort who gets numbers worth counting.
If he goes on to win the British belt he can expect upwards of £15,000 a go, but when he was called in July with an offer to fight Towell, both men were more used to purses in the hundreds or low four figures.
The fight was their gateway to bigger things.
‘We were just two guys trying to get on,’ he says. ‘The money wasn’t great but that fight really felt like it was going to be the start of something. For one, it was the first time I trained as a full-time fighter. That’s a big moment for a boxer.
‘For my previous fights, I’d be doing up to 60 hours a week in a window factory — up at 4am, run for an hour, do a 12-hour shift before driving to Cardiff for training. I would then fight for pennies and wouldn’t cover my fuel costs.
‘But then I was offered the fight with Mike and everything changed. Just after that call I got one from Castle Scaffolding in Carmarthen saying they’d sponsor me to train full-time. Two calls and bang — everything was looking up.’
He could not have known that two months later he would be scrolling through jobs on the same phone, looking for anything that didn’t involve boxing.
THE fight at the Radisson Blu on September 29 was frantic.
Evans had Towell down in the first and then the Dundee fighter had the better of the Welshman in the next two. But in the fifth, Towell was down again.
He was checked over by the referee, Victor Loughlin, before the fight continued. Within seconds Evans charged forward and finished it. Towell collapsed and was rushed by ambulance to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
He died of brain injuries a day later at 11.02pm, having held on for 12 hours after life support had been switched off. His partner, Chloe Ross, wrote a moving tribute: ‘ I’m absolutely heartbroken to say my annoying best friend passed away.’
She would also detail the bad headaches he had suffered in the build-up to the fight and post the final picture taken of her partner with their infant son, Rocco, sleeping in each other’s arms. The family’s pain was immeasurable; 450 miles south Evans was struggling in his own way.
‘I was numb for days,’ he says. ‘I would lie in bed, picturing his little boy without a daddy.
‘I was just sitting in the house, locked away eating rubbish. My head was spinning — “Why am I fighting to entertain people I don’t know?”
‘I felt responsible. We know the risks but I threw the punches. My missus hadn’t seen me cry in three years and suddenly I just couldn’t stop.’
Evans travelled to Scotland a fortnight after the fight for Towell’s
funeral. ‘I felt it was only right to go,’ he says. ‘But I was actually quite scared — I didn’t know what the reaction would be to me being there. I felt people looking at me, thinking, “That’s him”. But I was shocked by how supportive and lovely people were to me.’
It was at the end of the service when Towell’s mother, Tracey, approached Evans.
‘His mum was getting in a car, but she saw me and came over and gave me this big hug and kiss,’ Evans says. ‘I was struggling to keep it together and she was saying to stop being silly. I can’t tell you how much I respect her and the whole family.
‘I had no right for it to be about me but they were trying to make me feel better. If they hated me I would have understood — but what lovely people.’
The bond forged in tragedy has been nothing short of remarkable. EVANS is smiling. He can’t believe the correspondence he has received. ‘It started before the funeral — I had messages from the family on social media. Mike’s mum had heard I was struggling and wanted to tell me they didn’t blame me.
‘We then met at the funeral and since then Mike’s family have said that when I fight for the British title, they want tickets to support me. That blows my mind.’
It has proved the spark of motivation he needed in the bleakest of times. ‘I am doing this for Mike,’ he says. ‘His dream was to win the British title and so was mine. Now I am doing it for both of us. A lot of bad came out of that fight and I will never fully get over it. I just wanted to pack it all in, to go work on the railway with my brother. But boxing is all I’ve known since I was nine and I want something good to come from what happened. I owe it to Mike.’
First he has to beat Dixon and get over the hurdles in his mind.
Aside from his sharpened sense of what might happen to him in a ring, he must handle the inevitable moment when an opponent is hurt and the referee allows the fight to continue.
‘That’s something I’ve gone over in my head,’ he says. ‘I used to be a lion when I saw weakness — straight in there. Now? I honestly don’t know. There is a lot I don’t know any more. I need to rebuild myself.
‘It’s hard — I can’t let myself forget what happened, but I do have to find a way to move on with my career, to not be scared for me or the other guy.’
With that comes a shake of the head. He says he can’t stand those ‘media whores’ Chris Eubank Jr and his father for what he saw as attempts to ‘ market themselves’ in the wake of the fight that put Evans’ former sparring partner Nick Blackwell in a coma last year. And Haye’s comments this week were ‘wrong, very wrong’.
But that is outside his control. All that matters now is getting back in the ring for his Welsh title fight and being ready for his crack at the British belt.
‘ I often find myself thinking about winning that British title and taking it up to Scotland for Mike’s family,’ Evans says, and then he pauses.
‘It won’t bring him back but it’s the best I can do.’