Neurosurgeon Peter Hamlyn and courageous retired world title contender Michael Watson will soon cross the finish line of another challenge.

Hamlyn was the man who operated on Watson in the aftermath of his fateful fight in 1991 with Chris Eubank, one which meant Watson spending the next 40 days of his life in a coma from which he emerged greatly damaged but with a resolve and determination that has not dimmed, despite him turning 60 in March.

They are, on April 16, going to walk a mile – “Michael’s Mile” – through London to raise money for i-Neuro, which is involved in research work to help those suffering with brain illnesses and injuries, as well as finding and implementing preventative measures.

Hamlyn and Watson have, over the past 30 years, truly become friends. 

“Well, it would be a gross understatement to say he wasn't very well when I first met him,” Hamlyn told BoxingScene. “That was in the early hours on Sunday morning, back in 1991, about two-and-a-half hours after his fight had finished. 

“And it was that gap [the two-and-a-half hours] that damaged him. At that point, I’d operated on three boxers with identical blood clots to Michael’s, and their outcome, very clearly to me, was determined by how long it took them to get from the ring to the hospital. And he’d taken a very long time and had come incredibly close to death. In fact, he hovered there for months. And I got to know his family – both his real family and the boxing family around him. And it just struck me that they [in boxing] needed better medicine.”

It was through that period that the British Boxing Board of Control encountered significant legal consequences, but they – with the financial support of the promoter Frank Warren – avoided closure, and Watson’s case sparked a reform that even today sees the governing body heralded as a world leader. As the Board healed and repaired, having to move from London to Cardiff in cost-saving measures, so, too, did Watson. 

“And then, over the years,” Hamlyn added, “he gradually emerged from that coma. And it really was a gradual thing. He did the [London] Marathon for the first time in 2003. That’s 12 years after the injury. And he could then crack jokes – pretty terrible jokes – [Watson’s humor] is about the only bit that didn’t recover, as far as I can see.”

Over six gruelling days, Watson, with his hand on his former career – known through the British boxing world as Lenny – took on and completed the marathon. They did a couple of hours in the morning, and a couple in the afternoon, of what was a remarkable journey that captivated the nation.

“The Force,” as Watson was known in his fighting days, showed real spirit.

It proved a harder fight than beating Nigel Benn; it was tougher than getting stopped late on by Mike McCallum, or even taking Eubank to a majority decision in their first fight. While it was not proof of a complete recovery, which was never going to be attainable, it signified a remarkable transformation from bed-ridden and brain-damaged patient to inspirational-and-transformative figure. 

Hamlyn witnessed the changes as time went on.

“He had endured an incredible level of disability, year on year, to gradually draw things back,” he said. “And now you’ve got this – there’s no other word for it – inspiring guy, who is just indomitable in his will, and is committed – these are his words – to helping those less fortunate than himself. And most of us would look at his burden and think you can’t carry a much heavier one than that. But he does it with great cheer.”

 

*

 

Theirs is a two-way bond. As much as Hamlyn might have aided Watson’s recovery, Watson’s recovery has shown Hamlyn more about the human spirit and taught him life lessons he wouldn’t have seen on the operating table. 

“I’ve done a few things for him physically, but what he’s done for me as a person and as an individual more than outweighs that,” he said. “And I really love working with him, particularly on this new project, which has energized us both.”

Science, of course, has been part of the recovery. But Hamlyn puts a lot of it down to Watson’s willpower and character, too.

“There has been no greater example of that, to my mind, than Michael, and his ability to just endure and overcome,” Hamlyn smiled proudly.

The two pursuits – neurosurgery and boxing – make for strange bedfellows. Hamlyn has watched on as long-term issues arising from sports have become part of a global conversation, through soccer, football, and rugby. 

“In sports in general, there are two issues with a head injury,” he explained. “There’s the big, major acute head injury, like you see rarely in boxing. You see it in horse racing; you see it in motor racing of all forms. Those big, severe head injuries that actually can occur in any sport – those are the big ones. And that’s all about having everything set up that you need to resuscitate, evacuate and then definitively treat those people. 

“And that pathway, how to do that, was really trailblazed in Formula One with [neurosurgeon] Sid Watkins and what they did through the 70s and 80s,” he continued. “And then really, it’s been about rolling out that methodology. ‘Who’s going to get injured? Where, when, how? What equipment do we need on site? Where are we going to take them once they’ve got injured and getting things sorted?’ So for boxing, the risks were – which you could clearly see when you looked at the data back in the early 90s – the title fights, where they were just allowed to go on longer, because they were trying to decide something. And now the referees step in earlier to stop harm coming, and that’s massive. 

And the referee feeling a sort of duty of care has been a real game changer. 

“The weigh-in is important, trying to move that away [from fight night]. More particularly, having the weight divisions quite narrow, so you’re not trying to descend too far or go up too far. Not having mismatches, so late replacements – they were clearly at risk – where you’re outclassed. Because even a tired boxer can throw a really heavy punch, but a tired boxer can’t get that neck rigidity to stop their head being shaken about. So they’re lethal when they’re tired, but they’re also very fragile. And so it’s just engineering things to stop that.”

But sometimes the worst still happens, which is why they have an aesthetically-trained doctor at ringside, evacuation routes, and ambulances in place. 

There are also the long-term issues of boxing, dementia-related illnesses, and specifically CTE.

“Everybody’s sort of rather over-focused on concussion,” Hamlyn said. “When I first entered this debate in the early 90s, people were arguing that concussion didn’t matter. It’s now pretty clear that blows that don’t even cause concussion matter, if there are enough of them. 

“If you look at the career of a footballer [soccer player], they’re very seldom concussed. Rugby players get concussed quite a bit, but footballers don’t. And yet they’re the ones in whom we’ve got probably the best evidence for there being long-term brain consequences.” 

Is Watson more at risk of CTE after the huge trauma he suffered in 1991? Hamlyn doesn’t necessarily think so, and acknowledges Watson’s light might shine brighter than it did even 10 years ago. “He seems to be on the reverse trajectory of most people,” grinned Hamlyn. 

 

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The science part of what Hamlyn is doing with i-Neuro, and what he and Watson are raising money for, should sound complex, but in many ways it is made easier to understand by the impossibility of trying to fix neurological diseases. 

“In general, we’re all born with more neurons than we use,” explained Hamlyn. “They die every day. If you have sufficient to carry on a normal life and die from something else, you don’t get dementia. If you run out before your time is done, you do. It’s pretty clear there are some quite aggressive dementias where something bad’s happening. And it’s also clear that if you’ve developed a dementia relating to repeated head injuries, that becomes a rolling sort of snowball. So once you’ve got the symptoms, it’s a bit late. 

“The really exciting thing is that – and why Michael and I are back and talking about [climbing] mountains and doing stuff – what AI now allows us to do in terms of diagnosing those conditions, what we call the neurodegenerative disorders, disorders that have a gradual decline with Parkinson’s and dementia. The really exciting thing is that we can now diagnose those even before they become symptomatic. We’ve got some quite powerful drugs for slowing dementia. But at the minute, we give it when the person becomes symptomatic, and they’ve already lost a critical amount of brain. It’s a bit like plugging a leak in a petrol tank of a car at the point it splutters. The car still stops. 

“But if you could diagnose that seven years earlier; five years earlier; 10 years earlier, and gave the same treatment, they would carry their journey on to their end. And that’s now what we can do with AI. So we can take your mobile phone data, analyse the speed of your voice – the vocabulary; tone of your voice; your eye movements; how quickly you press the buttons; how many calls you make; the length of those calls; how much of that calls you as opposed to just listening; how long your answers are – and we can monitor all of that and give you the heads up five-to-seven years before you become symptomatic. We can plug the leak in your petrol tank before you start to splutter. That’s a complete game changer. 

“There are other really exciting things. You can use AI to interpret brainwaves and you can then get people to think about moving artificial limbs and they can actually do it. So I was in Paris the other day watching a group and they trained a guy who had a paralysed arm to pour a cup of tea with a robotic arm just by thinking. 

“And this computer was interpreting his brainwaves. And another group had just connected up someone who’d lost their speech to an automatic voice box – and so they’re able to think and the box speaks what they’re thinking. 

“Amazing. You have to be careful with that one. You don’t turn it on when they’re musing to themselves.” 

Hamlyn’s humor has doubtless caused many wry smiles. But he’s extraordinarily passionate about what he sees, what he can do, and helping those just like his dear friend.

When he is asked whether it all sounds like it could be the premise of a science-fiction movie, he responds with haste.

“But it’s science fact, because that business I’ve just talked to you about with dementia – that’s not that we have to develop some new biological drug,” he said. “We’ve got one. It stops progress. It’s just when we apply it is seven years too late. You’ve got to do it before the person becomes symptomatic.  And now we have a way of finding them. It’s a really exciting time. When I started neurosurgery, which was in the mid 80s, rather a long time ago, most – even neurosurgery units – didn’t have a CT scanner working all night.”

His colleagues would have to spend their nights drilling holes in skulls trying to find blood clots. The scanner was revolutionary, and then the Royal London Hospital had a 24-hour one, and they could find clots before the damage was done. Today they’re part of every hospital.

Next, AI could be the future to develop diagnosis and treatments that once would have seemed impossible. 

 

***

 

As one might imagine, there’s a moral dilemma that neurosurgeons who operate within the boxing sphere feel. It is known what repeated blows to the head do, and neurologists know that that will likely cause more work for them – work that could have been classed as avoidable. But Hamlyn, like some of the top neurologists who have been drawn to boxing, refuses to look at the sport through its most simplistic prism. And even if fighters were going to avoid damage – short or long-term – then it would not dismiss the moral argument entirely.  

“I think it’s really – it’s very difficult,” Hamlyn said. “You know, there is definitely a moral, ethical, social question about whether it’s a good thing to have people paid to fight one another. My position throughout this whole thing has been that that is precisely a moral and ethical, social question. It’s not a medical one. My duty as a doctor is to try and deal with the medicine that people face. And I felt that the boxing community chose to do what it did. How can we make that as safe as possible? 

“The other attitude amongst medics is to just call for a ban. And I never felt comfortable with that role. I never thought that was appropriate for medics. And if you’re calling for sports to be banned on medical grounds, you’re not going to start with boxing – you’ll start with the ones that cause the most injuries to the most participants. What I wanted to get banned was the bad medicine. And what I saw in boxing back in the early 90s was not up to standard. It now is.”

Does that mean he can watch a fight, as a fan or a supporter? The question provides a tempered response. 

“I love the boxing community,” Hamlyn stated. “People in sports are usually pretty extraordinary. But boxers are very extraordinary to my mind. I think ‘like’ would be a different word. But I can watch boxing. And then I see something where I think we’ll need to step in [to stop a fight]. And sometimes it’s really interesting. Sometimes I’m right. Other times, actually, the person seems to rally and it goes on. 

“Would I like to be a referee? I think that must be one of the toughest jobs in the world, being a boxing referee. If you’ve got two guys’ lives in your hands and your job – one of your main jobs is to put your hand up when you think it’s gone too far. And the guy’s too vulnerable. And that’s it. It’s a very difficult, difficult call. But they’re getting it right a huge amount more often than they did.”

 

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Michael Watson is the team captain for the Brian and Spine Foundation, and i-Neuro is one of their projects. 

When they start their walk on April 16, they have no idea how long it will take. When they did the London Marathon some two decades earlier, they were both in their mid-thirties. In 2025 Watson’s health presents him with constant challenges, while Hamlyn is the proud owner of “tin knees.”

Watson has been training hard, but he hasn’t managed a mile in his preparation yet. Hamlyn is both excited and nervous. He’s protective about Michael, and says this is another example of Watson “putting it on the line.”

 

*****


Michael Watson joins us on the Zoom call and the warmth between the two men is instantly detectable. They look at one another with pride and respect and while they might be able to finish one another’s sentences, they allow each other the time and space to say what they need to.

“There’s the man – morning, Michael,” says Peter.

I asked Watson about the bond he has with Hamlyn from their shared history, and Michael fires answers out of the blocks.

“Peter, my friend, is truly an amazing man,” starts Watson. “For the sake of many lives, not only my life he’s saved, but other lives in general. He should be awarded [a knighthood]. He is an amazing man. People don’t give him the credit he deserves. And I do.”

While Hamlyn might have been more measured in his response to their efforts to complete the mile, Watson is gung-ho and there’s no doubt in his mind.

“I just can’t wait – I’m buzzing,” said Watson. “It’s like I’m back in my fighting days. I’d look forward to my event and this is the same I feel right now. It’s for an amazing corporation. For Peter, I’ll do anything. He saved my life. Now it’s payback time. For everything he’s done for me throughout my life.”

And there is no indication that Watson is biting off more than he can chew. On the contrary, he is motivated.

“I love it, it keeps me on my toes,” he said. “It keeps my guard up. I love the buzz and the energy, it brings out the best of me,” he added.

And Watson still loves boxing. Despite living more than half of his life with the injuries he sustained in that almighty battle with Eubank, he remains as passionate as ever about boxing and the good it does.

“Boxing is a lifesaver for me,” said Watson. “It turned a young boy into a man, all of a sudden. Look at the greats, like Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard. Boxing takes you off the streets. Look at this knife crime that’s going on. Boxing’s good for the young generation. When you look at the knife-crime situation – who knows, I could have been in the same dilemma.” 

But, asked about how long Wednesday’s mile might take, Watson is not looking to set records.

“It’s not a race – it’s a situation of endurance,” he acknowledged. “Training is going very well. All is going very well. I’m training every day. That’s what is creating the buzz. It’s like my fighting days. I’m very confident.”

Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.