Thirty-five years ago this week, the paths of two wrecking machines crossed when Terry Norris obliterated John Mugabi inside a round to win his first junior middleweight title. Neither was destined to emerge unscathed. 

Norris had lost to Julian Jackson in two rounds, a defeat that served to galvanize his ambition to rule the world, just seven months before he stepped into the ring with “The Beast”. Mugabi had suffered losses, too, but they had an altogether different effect.

In March 1986, Mugabi had met his “idol” Marvin Hagler only to be stopped in 11 brutal rounds. It not only ruined his perfect unbeaten record it also changed him irrevocably. He remembered how he felt – “completely invincible” – before he stepped into the Las Vegas Caesars Palace ring that night and he’ll never forget the alien sensation of defeat in the aftermath.

“It upset me when I lost [to Hagler],” Mugabi told me in 2010. “I still remember what I felt like as a man before that. As a fighter I was the best. I never thought about losing. So, I struggled to cope with that feeling of not winning after beating everybody. I wanted to give up boxing. I lost the love for boxing, the one I had before.”

Nine months later, Mugabi would lose his next fight too. Before that contest with Duane Thomas for a vacant junior middleweight title he’d argued against using gloves with attached thumbs. In round three, the unattached thumb on Thomas’ glove slammed into Mugabi’s left eye socket, triggering “incredible pain” and the end of the fight. Mugabi, not so long before 25-0, was now 25-2.

“I didn’t know who I was after that,” Mugabi explained. He would eventually come back in 1988 and score eight consecutive knockout wins. “I was winning but I didn’t feel the same. In my head I knew I could lose. You are a human being like all the rest of them.”

In July 1989, Mugabi defeated Rene Jacquot in the opening round, a freak injury to the Frenchman’s ankle forcing the stoppage. 

The Ugandan, rightly still regarded as one of the premier hitters of his era, looked down at Jacquot writhing on the canvas. “I felt sorry for him,” Mugabi confessed, all but admitting again that the savagery he once embraced had deserted him. “I don’t know why because I knew you must cut their head before they cut yours. If you get the chance you have to go for it.”

Even as a world champion, Mugabi struggled for motivation. He would weigh 167lbs for a non-title blowout of Ricky Stackhouse at the end of 1989 and 163lbs while knocking out Carlos Atunes in London in January 1990. In March he was forced back down to 154 for his showdown with Norris in Tampa.

“I wasn’t fit,” Mugabi claimed. “I trained to lose weight but not to fight.”

Norris, meanwhile, was in the shape of his life. Against Jackson, a man with a knack for inducing sleep, Norris had dominated the opening round before growing overconfident in the second. The nature of that July 1989 reverse haunted him but Norris, then only 22 years old, invited the ghosts to join him during three comeback victories over Nathan Dryer, Jorge Vaca and Tony Montgomery in September, October and November respectively.

“I didn’t know if I’d be gun shy when I got back in the ring,” Norris admitted to me in 2016. “I had to get back in the ring, so I had a few fights and wanted to get hit in those fights. I had to know. When I did get hit, I responded well. I wasn’t scared. So it became easy to get over [the loss to Jackson] because I told myself it would be. Every true champion gets beat so I told myself that I was a true champion, a true warrior.”

Inside a minute, Norris had hurt Mugabi with a left hook born of confidence and desire. The legs of the 30-year-old Mugabi buckled on impact. As he instinctively tried to settle them he was surrounded by the rapid fire arms of his opponent. Lefts and rights hit Mugabi as he stumbled helplessly to the mat. Groggy but not yet beaten, the older man somehow convinced the referee he could continue upon rising and looked to be on the brink of surviving the session – even landing two solid blows himself – before the fearless Norris unpacked a fight-ending right hand that plummeted Mugabi into dreamland. 

“Are you a human being?” Mugabi asked when questioned about being knocked out. “That punch would finish anyone who was a human being. It’s over, there’s no coming back. When you wake up, you’re dizzy, and you don’t understand why the fight is over.”

For Norris, however, it was the coronation he’d long envisioned.

“It was the greatest feeling ever,” he said. “I started fighting when I was nine years old and I wanted to be champion all my life. So, to be WBC champion, it was a great feeling. I felt like a king.”

Norris feasted on more fighters on the way down for a while. Sugar Ray Leonard, Meldrick Taylor and Donald Curry were among the unfortunates taught the same lesson that had been dished out to Mugabi. But the circle of life would catch up with Norris eventually, too. By 1998, after one of the most thrilling careers of the decade, Norris was in dramatic freefall and he suffered three consecutive defeats, each of them damaging his future. “I got a concussion that never went away,” he described.

In 1999, with slurred speech telling tales on his brain, Norris’ licence was taken away. “I can’t tell you when it [the decline] started but it came on kinda fast. It was noticeable that my speech was going, my brain started to slip, my memory started going… I was sparring in camp and there was one time I stumbled over my own feet… I was still young, I wanted to fight.”

Using treasured memories as their weapons of choice, both Norris and Mugabi battle their demons. “I was invincible and do you know what that feels like?” Norris asked. “I would walk in a room and everyone would look at me. All my opponents would say, ‘That’s Terry Norris.’ I won fights just by being me.”

Mugabi can relate. “When you are winning all the time there is no feeling like it,” he said. “Life is beautiful. It is so beautiful when you are not thinking negatively.”