"Football is not a matter of life and death, it is more important than that."
Dark Destroyer
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Nigel Benn, London John Blake, 1999/2017 ISBN: 978 178 606 262 8
Nigel Benn held two world titles in the 1990s. The book is his ghosted autobiography. Alongside the account of his boxing career, which is described in detail, the book is effectively in two halves. He describes petty crime in his youth, sexual exploits before and during marriage and then his conversion to Christianity. While his conversion and repentance seem genuine, the account of his pre-Christian life is described in matter of fact terms with no regret expressed.
When his second wife starts going to church and reading the Bible, it has a deep effect on Benn. His own journey to faith is slower and involves living apart from his wife for a year while she needs convincing that his conversion and change of lifestyle is genuine. His conversion was life-changing: “If you know Jesus, something has to happen in your life. Once I had accepted Him, miraculous things started happening. I stopped smoking. I had been smoking since I was eight years old. I’d tried everything to stop and it had never worked Now, though, I had the strength to quit. I stopped doing spliffs and I stopped chasing women. You cannot be in the same position if you meet Jesus. Something has to radically change. It says 1 John 2:6, ‘If we say we abide with him, we ought to walk in the manner like him’. I couldn’t pretend that I was a follower of Jesus and yet walk like Satan”.