By Ian Aldous: To celebrate the 20th anniversary of his WBO world featherweight championship victory, Colin McMillan (31-4) will release an updated version of his autobiography ‘Fight The Power’. This week the former British and Commonwealth champion took some time to talk with me about his career.
It was May 16th 1992 and the Alexandra Palace in London was the venue when Colin was announced as the new champion when he convincingly tore the title away from Maurizio Stecca whom had only lost once in his career at that point and was a bantamweight gold medallist at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. “It was quite evenly balanced, a lot of journalists thought I was going to win and a lot of journalists thought he was a bit too advanced, it was a great opportunity. My aim when I started boxing was to go to the Olympics and become world champion and obviously I didn’t get to go to the Olympics. To get the opportunity to fight (and beat) Stecca kind of killed two birds with one stone because he was an Olympic champion and I got the opportunity to become world champion too.” Unfortunately his championship reign was halted by a shoulder injury in his following fight against Ruben Dario Palacios despite being ahead on all three scorecards when the finish came in round eight.
‘Fight the Power’ covers McMillan’s early career and the struggles that were to see him fall victim to the amateur system, and the fight he faced in the professional ranks, as he tried to exert more control over his destiny and become self managed. It details the shooting of his then promoter Frank Warren and his meeting with America’s most powerful promoter Don King.
One fight that Colin craved during his career was a dream bout with fellow Brit and the man who went onto hold the same WBO featherweight championship as Colin, Prince Naseem Hamed. “Yeah, that would have been a great fight. In all honesty, after the shoulder (injury) I was never quite the same fighter. Prior to that fight (Ruben Dario Palacios) we’d sparred when he was coming through and I always knew then that he had a lot of respect for me. You know, boxing is all about styles and I thought I had the style to pose him a lot of problems.”
After the end of his career, Colin undertook the role of advisor/manager for 2000 Sydney Olympics super-heavyweight gold medallist and all-round pantomime villain, Audley Harrison. “We had a lot of fun, to be fair. We parted company after two years, it was great to be involved and I’ve still got a lot of respect for Audley and what he did. When I finished boxing, I wrote my autobiography ‘Fight The Power’ and that was about taking control of your career and that’s what Audley tried to do, perhaps a little bit too much, but it is good to see fighters have more control over their career.”
For more information on Colin, please visit his official website: www.colin-mcmillan.com
The book will be officially launched at SENI, which takes place on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd June at London’s ExCeL Centre, the official venue of the boxing events at the London 2012 Olympic games. Colin McMillan will sign copies of the books for fans and speak to members of the press at Boxfair, the UK’s only consumer boxing expo, which takes part within the SENI show over the Jubilee weekend.
SENI: ‘The International Combat Sports Show’ takes place on June 2nd and 3rd at the Excel, London. Visit www.senishow.com for more information