James Cook MBE leaned in towards me and pointed to a framed photograph of him meeting the Queen.
“You know what, T,” he said – and he’s the only person who has ever called me that – “I’m proud of that picture and I’ll tell you the reason why. When I was at school in Peckham in the seventies, I used to run round telling people that a Black guy like me would never meet the Queen. I remember it very clearly, and to meet her, talk with her, and shake her hand. Listen, the only time I sweated like that was when I was in trouble with my mum! The Queen made me sweat.”
Cook was awarded an MBE in 2007 for his youth work, and he looked around Buckingham Palace thinking, “I wonder how much this room is worth?”
He had made it. A former Southern Area, British, and European super middleweight champion – who never got a shot at a world title – had earned an MBE, and that meant more to him than any world crown.
The day he met Queen Elizabeth II, he ranked alongside the birth of his six daughters and winning the Lonsdale Belt.
Cook never left the sport when he retired in 1994. He was a trainer, mentor, a regular at ex-boxers’ meetings and later became a staunch advocate for Ringside Charitable Trust, a charity that helps former fighters with an end goal of building a care home for them.
Cook did not need such a place, but he knew plenty of others who would benefit and so leant his support.
“They need a home, they need a place,” he said.
Cook, however, had no complaints about where he found himself.
“Life is good. I must admit, I can’t moan about life. It’s been pretty good.
“You know what, T. I think I’ve been blessed. I’ve been lucky.”
***
The lucky ones were those who got to know James Cook. You can tell from the sincere and humbling outpouring of grief that he meant so much to so many.
Former pro Spencer Fearon was just 17 met James Cook at Notting Hill Carnival, with Cook attempting to get youngsters to enrol in boxing programs. Fearon is now 50, and the two ran together, sparred, and Cook mentored Fearon outside the ropes.
“James would tell me, just, life stories, and I’m just trying to work out how he did it, because James Cook was loved by everybody, old people, young people, Black people, Asian, white people, everybody loved James, right? And he did it without selling out. It was just organic. He was just James.”
Cook enriched lives, and while boxing was a tool he used, it was not the only one. He never needed money to throw at a problem, instead choosing care and attention.
“He was that person that could put his arm around you and say, ‘It's going to be all right,” said Fearon. “That’s James Cook. You know what I mean? It's going to be all right, and if you don't worry about it, it's going to be all right. And you’re thinking, all right, yeah, for real. And he just put his arm around you, and you think to yourself, right, yeah, we’re going to be all right.”
They might well put a statue up for James Cook.
His work at the Pedro Youth Club in Hackney was, for years, the centrepiece of a neighborhood so rough it was dubbed “Murder Mile.”
That area in London was subsequently invested in, coffee shops, brunch spots and high fashion stores sprouted, house prices rose and while there was outside investment, there are plenty who contend it was Cook’s investment that improved the area from the inside out.
“He changed the heartbeat of the place,” said Fearon. “It was simply because when you’ve got a community, and then you’ve got community spirit, and the people… James didn’t get financial rewards off the back of what he did, right? He didn’t do that for it.”
And it has become commonplace for older and more experienced members of a community in England ‘Uncle.’
Cook, for many, was a pioneer of that crown.
When Fearon talked at schools and events, he was often inundated with pupils of all ages coming up to him and saying he knew their Uncle; that they knew ‘Uncle James.’
“Who’s your uncle?” asked Fearon.
“James Cook… And all the kids, it’s like these little kids, Black and white kids, would say, ‘Yeah, you know my uncle.’ And I’m seeing little white kids, right, who are like, ‘Yeah, he’s my uncle,’ because that is the spirit of James Cook. James Cook could have solved race relations in this country a long time ago.
*
James Cook was a gifted fast bowler when it came to cricket, admits he was very average as soccer, but man could he fight. It came naturally to him. Cook was born in Runaway Bay in Jamaica in 1959. His mother left for England when he was just one and he moved in with his grandmother. He did not like the idea of the cold, wet, weather, but his mother returned for him when he was nine and took him to England.
His mum was the strict disciplinarian, his father was more laidback.
Cook found his way to the boxing club at 10, and had his first fight at 14.
Unsurprisingly, he looked up to Muhammad Ali.
“The legend of James Cook is, from even when he was young, he was one of them where he was the best fighter in school,” said Fearon.
Cook learned the trade inside out. In fact, he learned many trades. James Cook became a pro fighter when it was about £15 for a ringside seat (about $50 with inflation today), and he was paid £150 for his 1982 debut.
He never made enough from boxing to go full-time, so held down jobs in metal work, driving, and as a mechanic before, years later, he found his calling in helping and mentoring young people.
Up, run, work, gym, sleep, repeat.
He trained every day, even Christmas Day.
Outside the ropes in London, he witnessed some of the country’s worst social and racial riots, in Brixton, Peckham, New Cross, Lewisham, and Tottenham.
“My time was hard, but it’s a blessing,” he’d say.
He also knew that through it all, boxing taught him to be respectful and humble.
“We are the only people who, after beating the hell out of each other, we hug each other,” he smiled. “That’s the sport and that’s the sport I love and the sport that made me have the love and respect for people. I always said, ‘If it wasn’t for the sport of boxing, I wouldn’t love people.’ I’d get annoyed with people because I think the world is unfair but because of boxing I could tolerate anybody. I could be in the room with the devil and probably not get upset unless he pushed me too hard, and that’s the difference with this sport.”
**
When Cook turned over, he would have been happy being a Southern Area champion. But he won that and pushed on. He kept pushing, although did so while in the blue corner.
He took the unbeaten record of a young Michael Watson, who would go on to beat Nigel Benn, and he was – like so many – bedazzled by Herol Graham in Sheffield in a losing effort. He fought Frenchmen in France, a German (future world champion Graciano Rocchigiani) in Germany, a Dutch fighter in Holland and even the best Icelander in Iceland. He was given nothing and had to fight for everything.
He sparred the likes of John Mugabi, Dennis Andries and Prince Rodney.
Mugabi’s power was for real.
“He hit me with the left and I was like, ‘Wow,’ he hasn’t hit me with the right yet,” Cook would laugh.
He trained alongside John Conteh and remembers the Liverpool legend singing as they took cold showers, he sparred with Mark Kaylor several times before he beat him in a fight, defeated one of England’s great amateurs in Errol Christie, and apparently impressed so much against Kaylor that Darrin van Horn’s representative ringside had no interest in giving Cook, highly-ranked at the time, a shot at the IBF championship.
It was the same with Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn. Their respective trainers both told Cook, “No thank you.”
That says a lot.
****
Derek Williams arrived with a pair of dice to play with Cook last Saturday, ready for them to play, but his best friend had just died.
Williams, a former European heavyweight champion, was like a brother to Cook. They went to school in Peckham and came through the ranks together. Williams was distraught that Cook was ill.
“It’s crazy,” Williams messaged me a few days after his friend had passed. “James was my ride or die.”
They did everything together, from mentoring youths at the Pedro to making appearances, and they were constantly joking with one another.
“Me and Derek Williams have the argument every day,” Cook smiled as we once spoke. “You’re not better looking than me.”
“He’s taking it bad,” said Fearon of Williams. “Out of everyone I know who’s taking it bad, and today it hit me badly, but Derek is taking it really, really badly.”
Michael Watson had earlier in the week visited the hospital to raise Cook’s spirits. Watson is one of boxing’s miracle men, a warrior who came through significant brain injuries from a fight against Chris Eubank and who can still be the life and soul of a party three decades on.
But before all of that, Cook was the first man to defeat Watson as a professional.
Of course, that was in an era when a loss was not the end of the world. In fact, it made both the man and the fighter.
But Watson never forgot. As he sadly looked at the man who made him 7-1 in 1986, Watson smiled: “I’m ready for that rematch now.”
Cook – who in later life even had a key to Watson’s front door – had once told me that after he beat Watson, they spoke and he said: “When your friends have come and gone, I’ll still be here.”
Now, on his deathbed, Watson was there for him.
*****
Cancer had been in Cook’s family. In 1992, he was stopped in a round in France by Frank Nicotra, caught cold, and it cost him his European belt.
In France, he’d taken a call and found out his mum was sick.
“T, we never knew about cancer,” he told me.
His thoughts were to go into the arena, win and race home. Cook prided himself on feeling his way into fights. Now, he thought, “Go in there and hit him – but he hit me first.”
Having lost his mum to cancer, which sadly took James’ life last week, soon after he always tried to help others who suffered in a similar way.
“That’s why you see me do anything for cancer – because I know it took my mum, and I wanted to help people,” he said.
******
Cook was a tough man. He united warring factions wherever he went. Even opposing gangs were respectful in and around Homerton Hospital where he lay last week. He felt his experience as a boxing road warrior toughened him up, and when he joined Anthony Yarde’s team as an advisor, he felt certain Yarde’s experience against Sergey Kovalev would have done the same.
Yarde and coach Tunde Ajayi were under fire after the light-heavyweight contender lost to Lyndon Arthur, and Cook was drafted in to steady the ship. Many in boxing backed off knowing the knowledge that was now in the camp and improvements were almost instantly visible.
With Cook’s passing, men too tough to cry have not stopped weeping and the British boxing community has mourned.
The loss is being felt in his community, too. It might no longer be Murder Mile, but the Pedro Club will forever be changed without ‘Uncle James,’ and that goes for the wider area.
“It's one of them places, I’m just going to be real, James doing the youth work that he did, forget about his accomplishments when he boxed, right?” added Fearon, “but the youth work that he did, he stopped a lot of that gang bullshit, right? And this is actually factual, because they got the statistical facts, hence why he got his MBE. He lowered the crime rate between a certain demographic of ages with the stuff that he was doing.”
Fearon is also hurting. He was often a guest at the home James lived in with his wife, who Spencer affectionately calls ‘Miss Carmen’.
They would sit and eat; rice, stewed chicken, peas. But that inner circle was hallowed turf, even though others felt they lived within it because knowing James Cook made you feel that way.
“You will not find a church hall big enough to hold his funeral,” said Fearon. “Because I know the well wishes he has already received. You will not find a big enough place to hold that. If anyone is going straight to heaven that I know, it’s got to be James Cook. Straight to heaven.”
James Cook will forever be a force for good and a permanent reminder of what boxing can do. Even if it did not treat him that well, living his life in the blue corner and on the road, he had no regrets.
“You can be great and don’t make it and you can be rubbish and make it,” he once told me. “Sometimes in boxing, it’s just luck of the draw.”
With James Cook, the luck of the draw was getting to know such a fine man.
