When the writer and the fighter thought they’d met their match
BOXING STAR MCCRORY TELLS OF CUBAN TRIP TO SEE TEOFILO STEVENSON...AND HIS GUN
THIS summer John Gibson is celebrating 50 years as a Chronicle sports writer.
His good friend Glenn McCrory knows how fortunate Gibbo is to still be around to celebrate it!
Gibbo has been following McCrory around since the man from Stanley was a teenager rising through the amateur boxing ranks.
He was ringside at the Stanley Leisure Centre when McCrory became the North East’s first boxing world champion and in Moscow for his final fight.
Far from being the end of their friendship, it was just the end of the beginning.
Yet the pair nearly did meet their end when they paid a visit to a boxing legend Teofilo Stevenson eight years ago.
“I suppose one of the most memorable and scary times we spent together was when we went to Cuba,” says McCrory, now a respected boxing pundit.
“I went out there because I had a lot of links with Cuba at the time through the gym I was running in the west end of Newcastle and I was due to meet Stevenson, the threetime Olympic champion, so John came out too because we wanted to interview him.
“Two days had gone by and we had heard nothing from Teofilo. John was starting to become impatient.
“Then one day I just got a phone call out of the blue.
“He was ready to speak and we were being summoned.
“John said he was not ready but I told him we could not pick and choose when he spoke to Stevenson.
“I also told him we would not get an interview but he would get plenty of colour to write about.
“He went off on one. He said, ‘I have sat down with Maradona, Pele...’ but I told him we just were not going to get one with Stevenson.
“Teofilo sounded bad when I spoke to him on the phone. His voice was really husky.
“We went and knocked on the door and when he opened it, he looked even worse.
“He was standing there in just a tiny pink towel, his eyes absolutely glazed over.
“He invited us in and told us his wife had left him and he had hit rock bottom.
“We told him to get changed and we would go out for some food.
“He went upstairs and came back wearing a Cuba tracksuit. He pulled out a big silver magnum Fidel Castro had given him and took us out to the back of his house.
“His garden was all grown over with weeds and there were cans of rum everywhere.
“He sat down, told us what happened to him and waved his gun about as he talked.
“Throughout the entire conversation John, who had been so desperate to interview him, did not say a single word.
“Then Teofilo started waving his gun at our heads.
“John thought it was his Buddy Holly moment. He thought he was going to die.
“I managed to talk Teofilo out of it and get him into a taxi.
“We went to this building and Teofilo wanted me to go first but I wouldn’t and he wouldn’t so John and Idid a Usain Bolt!
“I had been saying to John all through that morning, ‘It will be okay, you will get
your colour.’ As we were sprinting down the road I was screaming at him, ‘You’ve got your f***ing colour now!’”
McCrory is just one of the sporting superstars who will be present when the Variety Club pays tribute to Gibbo for his incredible half-century.
It was the summer of 1966 he left Fleet Street to work for the Chronicle, giving him the chance to not only cover Newcastle United but also rub shoulders with a host of sports stars from the North East and beyond.
Gibbo has had more than his fair share of stories out of McCrory over the years.
However, their trip to Havanna gave the former boxer his priceless anecdote about the journalist.
“I can laugh about it now because we got out of there alive!” chuckles McCrory.
“Teofilo rang me a week later to tell me he had been admitted to hospital and he apologised for scaring John. How often does something like that happen?!” ■■Tickets for the black-tie dinner, on Sunday September 25 at the Hilton Hotel, Gateshead, cost £75 each of £750 for a table of 10. It includes a red-carpet champagne reception, threecourse dinner, plus interviews with John, Glenn and a hosts of big-name guests. For more information, or to purchase tickets, contact the Variety office on 0191 214 5959, visit www. variety.org.uk/events/ john-gibson-50thanniversary-tribute-dinner or email north@variety.org. uk All proceeds from the night will be donated to Variety.
John did not say a single word...He thought it was his Buddy Holly moment. He thought he was going to die