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DAVE the Plasterer hurt Roberto the Fighting God in round four when the pair somehow met at a casino in South Africa. This happened, by the way. At the end of eight rounds, Roberto Duran got the decision and Yorkshire’s Dave Radford got the memories from one of the sport’s oddest nights and fights. And friendships. Duran went to the opening of Radford’s gym in Hemsworth back in 2010, 13 years after their fight.

“David can take a punch better than a horse,” Duran said. “He arrived very late for the fight and I knew nothing about him – I knew one thing: David was not scared.”

Radford looked up and smiled: “Too right, I was not bloody scared.”

Well, that was the translation at a meal one night at Bar Sport in Cannock, a night when Roberto spent 20 minutes detailing his early career knockout of a horse. It is, by the way, a complicated story of love and knockout precision, and not just a tale of a big left hook sparking a pony.

It was a pleasure to be stuck in the middle of them that night.

The story of Radford vs Duran is simple, I guess. Roberto Duran was fighting at the Carousel Casino in Gauteng, South Africa, in November 1997 on a Saturday. On the Monday, Duran needed a new opponent when PJ Goossen, his opponent, broke his ankle. Meanwhile, in Yorkshire a plasterer called Dave Radford was out at 6am on the Tuesday of that week plastering a kitchen in Pontefract.

Six weeks earlier Radford had drawn over six rounds with Danny Ryan in Belfast. That had also been short notice, a lot of Radford’s fights were short notice by that time in his career.

“I had to stop work and get home, get me gear and get over to Manchester in a hurry to start the journey – I just left the kitchen,” said Radford. “I never really had a chance to think about what I was doing or who I was fighting – I just got on my way.”

Duran was looking for his 100th win that night. He had beaten Jorge Castro in his previous fight, lost on points to Hector Camacho over 12 the previous year and just a few months later would lose a world title fight in Las Vegas to William Joppy. Radford would box just twice more.

“I got there and they treated me like a king – I had never had that,” said Radford. “It was an honour to share the ring with him and going the full distance was about all I could hope for.” At the end of the night a bottle of champagne was delivered to his suite, but Radford was in too much pain to drink it. That was a first.

It took Radford nearly 15 years to finally get a copy of the fight, a copy that he could carry on his phone to prove to people that he fought Duran. “I was getting sick and tired of telling people that I fought Duran and nobody believing me – I just show ‘em the fight now,” Radford told me at Bar Sport that night. I imagine doubting Radford’s word, basically calling him a liar, was not a smart thing to do.

“Roberto was a dirty fighter and a good dirty fighter,” added Radford, his words bringing a genuine smile to Duran’s face. “He was clever with it, but I knew that there was no chance of the referee throwing him out – I gave him back a bit of it, don’t worry about that.”

After the fight Radford needed a hernia operation, a painful reminder of Duran’s loose fists. “He hit me so hard, so hard – I never knew a man could hit like that,” added Radford with pride and looking down at Duran, whose son was whispering the translation in his ear. “I was a plasterer from Yorkshire and he was Roberto Duran, one of the greatest fighters of all time. You know what? It was a bloody good scrap.” Duran stood at that point and the pair punched their chests. I was six feet from Duran and I swear there was a tear in his eye.

Radford last fought in 1998. It was a simple and painless loss on points, his 12th loss in 28 fights.

“You have to remember that I was working and working hard full-time to put food on the table for my family,” Radford told me. “I got inside the British top 10 once and I could have stopped working and trained full-time and who knows what would have happened? But that was not me – my training? Yeah, I kept off beer for a week.”

In his retirement from the sport he had bare-knuckle fights, unlicensed fights and some under MMA rules. He fought and lost to Michael Bisping in the cage, claiming that he only went as a spectator on the night he fought him. The tale might be exaggerated slightly – so what? “He needed an opponent and I had done a bit of floor training – I was just sitting there; I took it, I would take any fight, against any man, at any time. I lost, but that don’t matter.”

He also fought Nigel Benn on the unlicensed boxing circuit in 2012; it was a real scrap, not an exhibition. Up close, Radford’s face has the history of his life in fights, puffy, raw in parts and scarred. His fists were equally formidable the night I sat with him at the Duran meal. Dave Radford was a hard, hard man.

Radford is part of a lost breed of men that just love to fight, have no fear of damage and consider it a privilege to entertain. That night in Cannock he met another lifelong bruiser. “I’m a fighter, he’s a fighter and we never wanted to stop,” he said.

Sadly, that also translates as ‘never knew when to stop.’

Patrick Mahomes had lost just one of his past 26 games as the Chiefs’ starting quarterback going into Super Bowl 55. In his three seasons at the helm, he had never experienced more than a one-possession loss, operated a touchdown-less offense or seen his team score fewer than double-digit points.

That all came to a screeching halt when Kansas City was routed by Tampa Bay 31-9 on Sunday. The Chiefs were denied a chance to repeat as Super Bowl champions and Mahomes failed to get his second consecutive ring at age 25. He was shell-shocked in his worst game as a professional and in what will go down as one of the most legendary team defensive performances in NFL history, right up there with the 1985 Bears, 2000 Ravens and 2002 Buccaneers.

What the 2020 Buccaneers did to rattle Mahomes in Super Bowl 55 would make Warren Sapp, Derrick Brooks and brand-new Hall of Famer John Lynch proud. The Chiefs were kept out of the end zone while Mahomes was sacked three times and pressured a Super Bowl-record 29 times on an uncomfortable and inefficient night (26-of-49 passing, 270 yards, zero TDs, two INTs). His 5.2 yards per attempt set a personal NFL low and his 69.3 passer rating was his second-lowest single-game mark.

DeCOURCY: Mahomes’ run of sheer genius ends abruptly

“They were the better team today. They beat us pretty good. It’s the worst I’ve been beaten in a long time,” Mahomes said.

The Chiefs’ 350 yards of total offense were empty, and they were diminished further by the offense going 3 of 13 on third down and 0 for 3 in the red zone. The Chiefs did rush for 107 yards on just 17 attempts against the Bucs’ No. 1 run defense, but a good chunk of that yardage came on Mahomes’ desperate scrambles and two bursts on a single drive by rookie Clyde Edwards-Helaire. 

This wasn’t just slowing down Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense. This was an uttter beatdown, on every level. The Bucs’ defense had been building to this with strong performances against Drew Brees’ Saints in the divisional playoffs and Aaron Rodgers’ Packers in the NFC championship game. They saved their best for last against the greatest challenge of Mahomes’ Chiefs.

So how did the Buccaneers pull off what every team has failed to do against Mahomes in all of his NFL games? They simply won their battles against everyone around Mahomes and kept their foot on the gas with speed, quickness and power, doing what the Chiefs’ offense tends to do to its opponents.

BENDER: Chiefs face challenging road back to Super Bowl in loaded AFC

The Buccaneers went in with one major personnel advantage: red-hot edge pass rushers Shaquil Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul working on Chiefs backup offensive tackles Andrew Wylie and Mike Remmers. They exploited that mismatch, with Barrett getting another sack and Pierre-Paul disrupting other plays, including a batted ball.

After seeing his team drop Rodgers four times, defensive coordinator Todd Bowles, one of the most frequent blitz-callers in the NFL (39 percent in the regular season), changed tendencies for a second straight game. He sent more than four rushers after Mahomes only five times. Barrett and JPP did win as expected, but as a literal massive bonus, defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh helped by turning back the clock, going Sapp-like with inside pressure to account for half of Mahomes’ sacks.

Blazing-fast second-year linebacker Devin White had another massive game flying around in coverage and getting sideline-to-sideline to make tackles. The older Lavonte David was right there with him. With the Bucs settling into zone coverage like they did against Rodgers, both looked like Brooks making big plays in the old “Tampa 2.”

Mahomes couldn’t hold the ball long with the constant heat, and when he got it out quickly on short to intermediate routes, the Bucs swarmed to the ball with sound tackling to limit the damage from wide receiver Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce after the catch. When it wasn’t White or David owning the middle of the field, it was rookie safety Antoine Winfield Jr., who channeled Lynch and joined White in the interception fun.

With all the work the front seven was doing and all the help Winfield was giving, the Buccaneers’ talented, but sometimes undisciplined, cornerbacks, Carlton Davis, Sean Murphy-Bunting and Jamel Dean, didn’t need to last long in coverage or face any real trouble downfield knowing they weren’t the last — or only — line of defense. Mahomes’ best throws came when he was on the run, scrambling to buy time, but the Buccaneers’ secondary stayed disciplined Sunday and never gave up fighting on such plays.

MORE: Winfield’s taunt of Hill was long-awaited revenge

Another factor: The Chiefs’ lack of a consistent third receiving option behind Hill and Kelce finally caught up to them. Hill saw double-teams and triple-teams, a natural correction after he destroyed mostly Davis one-on-one in Week 12 for 13 catches, 269 yards and three touchdowns. Hill couldn’t make enough contested catches Sunday and was held to seven receptions for 73 yards in the rematch. He even was followed around on shorter routes that started in the backfield. Other than Kelce, who also had key drops, catching 10 passes for 133 yards, there was no reliable outlet for Mahomes.

“They took away our deep stuff, they took away our sidelines. They did a good job of rallying to the football and making tackles,” Mahomes said of how the Bucs left the Chiefs’ offense discombobulated. “They executed at.a higher level defensively. They had a good game plan. We weren’t able to make adjustments and find our way into the end zone.”

There was no elaborate scheme or rocket science by Bowles. His best defensive players whipped the Chiefs’ makeshift offensive line, and the rest of the defense worked in unison to contain the Chiefs’ best offensive skill players. The numbers game was in the Buccaneers’ favor; they were able to drop seven in coverage and concentrate on just two threats.

Had the Buccaneers not tried to blitz so much — and gotten burned so badly — against the Chiefs in the first game, perhaps their mastery of Mahomes doesn’t happen. Had the plan to blitz less and play more zone coverage not worked so well against Rodgers, then it might have not been deployed as much against Mahomes. Had sturdy tackles Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz been protecting the edges for Mahomes without help rather than Remmers and Wylie, it might have been a different story.

MORE: Super Bowl 55 winners & losers

But everything lined up for Tampa Bay’s strengths stacking up well against the Chiefs’ weaknesses. The Buccaneers’ offense provided a big assist by building a big first-half lead and putting Mahomes and the Chiefs in predictable passing situations that took the deep ball out of the arsenal and further compressed the short passing game. The deficit also forced Reid and coordinator Eric Bieniemy to be more predictable and less creative with their play-calling.

When laying out the Buccaneers’ blueprint for an upset before Super Bowl 55, winning on third down and pressuring Mahomes into turnovers were two crucial elements. What wasn’t expected was how they would win most every matchup everywhere on the field.

When they watch the game film, Mahomes and the Chiefs won’t be frustrated most by what they weren’t able to do, but rather that, physically and mentally, the Bucs just outplayed them, led by frontline talent and fundamental coaching.

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The 1997 Paris World Championships was to be Jeon Ki-young’s last hurrah at the world level. Judo fans would have loved to see one final rematch with Yoshida but the Japanese champion had suffered an arm injury at the Atlanta Olympics, which put him out of training for nearly a year, and thus out of contention for the 1997 World’s. Interestingly, the person who broke Yoshida’s arm in Atlanta was Germany’s Marko Spittka, who would turn out to be Jeon’s final match opponent. Oon Yeoh writes about Jeon Ki-Young.

Jeon had a relatively easy ride to the final. He threw Andre Akoury of Lebanon with a perfectly-timed drop ippon-seoi-nage, then threw Keith Morgan of Canada with his trademark drop morote-seoi-nage. Against Jose Vicbart Geraldino of Dominican Republic, he did a standing cross-grip seoi-nage followed by a drop sode-tsurikomi-goshi. The preliminary rounds were a breeze for Jeon. But his semifinal match was a hard one.

He was up against Algimantas Merkevicius of Lithuania, whom he had beaten twice before but the Lithuanian player had clearly studied Jeon’s judo. Jeon wasn’t able to throw Merkevicius but since Jeon was ahead on penalties, it was he who progressed to the final. 

Spittka was on fire, throwing beautiful ippons to the left and to the right, on his way to the final. Once he faced Jeon though, he become a different player. Gone was the confidence and aggressiveness he had displayed in the preliminary rounds. In fact, Spittka seemed to be more focused on not being thrown than attempting to throw.

Jeon, in contrast, attacked Spittka relentlessly with uchimata after uchimata. These were not strategic attacks designed to make him look busy but real attempts to throw the German. Though none managed to score, Jeon was clearly the aggressor here. Spitttka’s non-combativity earned him penalties up to keikoku, which back then meant Jeon had a waza-ari. This was enough to win him the match. There wasn’t a big throw involved but it was a great third World title for Jeon. Today, he is still the most successful South Korean judoka.

Enjoy more Judo history written by Oon Yeoh at JudoCrazy

Steve Lott – a crucial member of Team Tyson in the early days – revealsed some extraordinary insight on why he might just have been the greatest underachiever in boxing history

STEVE LOTT lived with a young Mike Tyson for three years and has known him for 35. A crucial member of the team – alongside the likes of Cus D’Amato, Jim Jacobs and Kevin Rooney – who turned Tyson from angry young man into one of the most fearsome fighters in history, Lott claims to know the workings of Tyson’s mind better than anyone.

Has the Tyson story worked out the way you thought it would?

It’s changed, of course. It started out great in ’85, ’86, ’87, ’88 but it changed dramatically with the introduction of Robin Givens and Don King. And people think that Mike just self-destructed. It wasn’t like that. In the same meticulous way that Cus D’Amato, Bill Cayton and Jim Jacobs looked at every single facet and made every single decision for Mike that resulted in him becoming the world’s most popular athlete, on the opposite side of the coin King and Givens made decisions that were in their best interests that resulted in the destruction of Mike Tyson. There was two completely separate objectives.

What if Mike had stayed with Kevin Rooney?

Well, it didn’t look like Mike was getting any worse, that’s for sure. If you look at the Tucker fight and the knockouts over Biggs and then Holmes, and then Tubbs, then Spinks and being voted the world’s most popular athlete, even when Mike broke up with Robin Givens and came back to the office to apologise to Bill in that summer of ’88, Bill told him the fights he had lined up, with [Francesco] Damiani in Italy in an outdoor stadium, with [Adilson] Rodrigues in South America in a huge stadium, with [Frank] Bruno in England, Lennox Lewis, then Evander [Holyfield]. Mike was thrilled and the big fights that would have taken place that would have been the monster fights would have been Tyson and Tommy Morrison and the fight of all fights would have been Tyson and George Foreman. Those are the fights that would have happened if he’d stayed with Kevin and Bill. But missing out on those fights wasn’t as bad as what happened to him outside the ring, losing his hero status, from going in 1987 and being voted the world’s most popular athlete to two years later the New York Daily News, the biggest newspaper in the world at the time, voted Mike the most unpopular celebrity. 

How long do you think he would have reigned for if he had stayed with Bill and Kevin?

That would have depended upon the competition, of course. But unless there
was a distraction I would have thought that Mike would have found a way to beat
the likes of Lewis, Holyfield, Moorer and Foreman. The guys that we are talking
about were fine fighters but they all got hit, and whenever Mike fought a guy
who was not elusive, it was a rather easy fight for Mike.

Where does he stand on the list of all-time great heavyweight based on his
accomplishments?

Now there are two parts to that and I always try in my own way to
distinguish it and I think there’s a difference between great and best.
Greatness involves a lot of stuff. It involves not only the ability of a
fighter, what his accomplishments were in the ring, his notoriety, his hero
status, his longevity… A lot of stuff goes in that package. Best means you put
two fighters in the ring, who will win? Greatest? You have the Greatest Of All
Time, Ali, of course. Number two, probably Joe Louis. Number three, maybe Rocky
Marciano. Maybe Evander at four. That’s putting all that stuff together. The
best, Ali and Tyson. Now I don’t know who would win that. I would give Ali the
edge in the first fight, if they fought more than once. Mike would have been
very nervous. After the first fight, and when Mike realises Ali was easy to hit
and not a great puncher, the second fight I would bet on Mike. The greatest?
Mike would be down the list because of the unpleasant things he’s done outside
the ring, with the rape, the ear biting, his demeanour. Everyone will vote him
down the list on greatness, but best? That’s different.

Was Mike a wasted talent or did he fulfil his potential by becoming
heavyweight champion of the world?

That’s a very interesting question. Usually, when a fighter trains they
train at 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 80 per cent, and when they fight they
fight at 100 per cent of whatever they got. Mike was the opposite in that there
were some sparring sessions when Mike was spectacular, bobbing, weaving and
coming up and he never fought like that. Maybe, after the Spinks fight, had he
become more relaxed, some of that would have come out and I’m telling you he
could not have fought any worse than he did against Biggs, Tubbs and Holmes and
Spinks. He never fought 10 per cent of what was in him, yet he still beat those
guys. Even without the stuff he was doing in training, he blew out everyone. So
potential, I don’t know if he ever fought up to 50, 60 or 70 per cent.

Will anyone break his record of being world heavyweight champion at 20?

It is possible but the thing that makes it difficult is mathematics. There
are less gyms around today than there were back then. If there are less gyms,
there are less fighters. If there are less fighters there is a lesser pool of
talent from which a fighter can rise, especially at heavyweight. There’s a
difference between the United States and the UK. In the UK, there’s really no
baseball [US] football or basketball. So any big kid who has athletic ability
would probably try boxing, like Klitschko, or Joshua, Lennox… They are not
sophisticated fighters but they are so f***** big, it gives them the edge. If
you’re in the United States, it’s completely different. If you’re 12, 13, 14
and you’re 6ft 2in and 215 [lbs] and someone’s father says let’s try baseball,
and the kid sees the beautiful fields, the beautiful girls, then the dad says,
let’s try football. And he sees beautiful fields, beautiful girls… Let’s try
basketball, and he sees the beautiful arena, the beautiful girls… Then he says,
‘Son, if you become heavyweight champion you can make more money in one fight
than your whole career in another sport.’ They drive 20 miles to a gym, a spit
bucket of a dump. ‘No way, Dad. No way.’ So I don’t think there’s a chance of
an American fighter ever becoming a great world heavyweight champion again.
It’s just not possible.

Also, Mike was having 10 fights a year at the start, that’s not often done
these days.

That’s because the managers are either stupid or they don’t want to spend
their own money to do what is in the best interest of a fighter. If a manager
had a heavyweight kid, 18 years old, turning pro, and wanted to do what is best
for the fighter, if he wanted the kid in New York to fight on a show in Chicago
the Chicago promoter would say, ‘Really? Your guy is not a draw. We don’t need
him.’ Then the manager would say, ‘I will pay for my fighter. I will pay for
the opponent. You just put the fight on.’ Then the promoter would say, ‘You got
it.’ And they would do that two weeks later somewhere else, then two weeks
after that somewhere else. And that’s what Jim and Bill were doing with Mike.
Mike was getting no purses whatsoever. They were paying for everything. Why?
Because Mike needed that experience. Jim and Bill were spending $1,000 a week
on sparring when Mike was still an amateur. That will never happen again.

What do you think Cus, Jim and Bill would have made of what has happened
to Mike?

They would be very sad. Jim and Bill, Bill especially because Mike sued
Bill and it is very emotional when someone you love and someone you put a lot
of time, effort, money and energy into sues you. It would have hurt Jim if he
was alive at the time and it definitely would have hurt Cus D’Amato. Don’t
forget, Cus made Jim and Bill the managers. Cus was very smart and no one cared
for Mike more than Cus and he made every decision for Mike based on what’s best
for Mike. Cus put Mike in the hands of people he trusted and that would have
hurt Cus.

What do you think people will remember Mike for?

I believe that most likely only boxing people will remember Mike as a boxer of incredible ability. Outside of the world of boxing they will remember Mike and think, ‘Yeah, he was a champion. And that tattoo. And The Hangover. And the One Man Show.’ All that stuff. The boxing people will remember the boxing, the rape and the ear biting. The non-boxing people will just remember him as a celebrity. Just a celebrity.

Read the Descent of Mike Tyson here