Dangerous: An Intimate Journey to the Heart of Boxing

by Ian Probert

A quarter of a century ago journalist and author Ian Probert decided never to write about boxing again. His decision was prompted by the injuries sustained by boxer Michael Watson during his world title fight with Chris Eubank. Now, in common with so many fighters, Probert is making an inevitable comeback. Dangerous sees Probert return to the scene of an obsession that has gripped him from childhood. In the course of numerous meetings with a number of leading figures in the fight game, including Herol Graham, Steve Collins, Michael Watson, Nigel Benn, Ambrose Mendy, Rod Douglas, Frank Buglioni, Kellie Maloney, Glen McCrory and Jim McDonnell among others, Probert takes a look at how lives have changed, developed and even unravelled during the time he has been away from the sport. From an illuminating and honest encounter with transgender fight manager Kellie Maloney to an emotional reunion with Watson himself, Probert discovers just how much the sport has changed during his absence. The end result is one of the most fascinating and unusual books ever to have been written about boxing.

Genres: Nonfiction

267 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 28, 2016

About the author

Ian Probert has been scribbling down words ever since he learned to spell the phrase: 'Once upon a time...'. He is the author of Internet Spy, Rope Burns and a bunch of other titles. Internet Spy was a bestseller in the US and made into a TV film. Rope Burns is a book about why books shouldn't be written about boxing. Ian has also written things for a shed load of newspapers and magazines. When Ian was a student he used to write lots of letters to the bank manager.

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in two sessions, and could barely put it down.

It's not about boxing. It's about depression and addiction and love and loss and regret and it's most of all about fathers and sons.

It's just told through a prism of intimate conversations with men who fight. Brave, proud men like Benn and Eubank and Collins and Graham.

It's touching and sad and funny. And it'll stay with me for a while.

[Phillip Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mirror for the brutality of everyday life

Ian Probert devotes Dangerous to interviewing England's premiere boxers of the eighties and nineties as well as their sons who follow them into the game. Don't dismiss Dangerous as a boxing book, however. Probert appropriates boxing as a vehicle to drive down the twisting lanes of chronic pain, depression and disfunction that many families live with when a parent is driven by obsession. Probert discovers how often these themes intersect in the lives of successful boxers and those with marginal careers, and how they seem to perpetuate in the need to see the next generation follow the same self-destructive road.

Probert parallels the stories of the boxers slowly degenerating bodies and family lives with the story of his own long undiagnosed illness, alcoholism, near loss of a daughter to the health system, and the abuse he suffered that steered him away from an arts career to a career in sports writing.

The book hit home. I underwent the second of two knee replacement surgeries and a lower back procedure while reading the book. My surgeon consented to performed the knee replacements only after I lost 120 pounds over the course of a year and a half. I suffer lifelong chronic depression, and abandoned a career in the arts for teaching spurred by a lifetime of indifference and assurance that my talent would never measure up from my own family.

Dangerous opens with Probert's chance to reunite with Michael Watson, a promising boxer and close friend, whose career ended with a brutal beating in the ring 23 years before. The experience shook Probert so badly he walked away from boxing reporting. A chance reuinion with Watson inspires Probert to examine the lives of boxers out of the ring, when their careers are over.

In counterpoint, Probert introduces us to his National Health Service appointed shrink who seeks to put him through the traditional ropes without paying attention to his real concerns. (At least, this is how he perceives their encounters.) She makes a good foil anyway, against which to bounce his frustrations at his progress with the book and progress with his bouts of personal depression.

The book's storyline involves Probert's blunders as he retrains himself to be a reporter in the era of social media—setting up the interviews and engaging the fighters as much as reporting the interviews themselves. More to the point, he can't avoid becoming entangled in their lives in ways he never anticipated. He discovers some want to use him for their own promotional ends, and some simply need someone more mature to help them sort their lives out.

Making his project more difficult, his daughter Sophie contracts an unidentifiable illness as well, and spends months in and out of the hospital. At the same time Sophie suffers Probert inherits an senior boxer with a burst appendix and a spouse in no condition to care for him (or even herself, it turns out). Probert juggles the boxer's care, the boxer's wife's care, as well as Sophie's from the same hospital, while trying to keep track of his interviews.

During the course of the book Probert still manages to engage boxers who won and lost world championships, and engaged the boxing headlines and kept boxing fans glued to their television screens, including Nigel Benn, Alan Minter, Chris Eubank (who ended the career of his friend Michael Watson), Herol Graham, Colin McMillan. American readers may find these names meaningless, but many were good enough to land spots in the ring with the likes of Mike Tyson and Marvin Hagler.

Probert's interviews depart from the standard fare I hear on ESPN and Showtime or HBO. Instead he offers intimate portrayals of the boxers' lives after boxing including, in one case, a detailed deconstruction of a lost title bout in which the fighter takes satisfaction from his losing performance.
Many recognize their careers needed to come to an end, others seek to return to the ring in their forties and drag their sons with them. Some dragged their families into the cycle of abuse and poverty that drove them to the ring. Others found a way to channel the pain they continue to feel into a meaningful life of service.

Let me be honest. I don't enjoy boxing. I don't enjoy boxing movies. I don't enjoy a sport whose only purpose is to inflict punishment on another human being. Until I read Dangerous, I thought boxers were privileged assholes who threw away any chance at a good education to pound on people. By the time I finished Dangerous, I realized how much I misjudged them. But I won't enjoy the sport one iota more.

Dangerous moves to the top of the list of the best books I've read this year.

Rating system:
5 = Delicious dialogue, crisp prose, clever characters & compelling plot
4 = Great read, won't want to stop (Some reviewers rate this 5 stars)
3 = Worth buying (but…)
2 = I will tell you what audience will like this, but other readers might want to look elsewhere
1 = If I review a book this bad I felt seriously compelled to warn you

Phillip T. Stephens is the author of Cigerets, Guns & Beer, Raising Hell and the new release Seeing Jesus. You can follow him @stephens_pt.

[Lizzy Baldwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not quite sure how to review this book because it’s like nothing I’ve ever read before and I’m not sure I’ll ever read anything like it again. This is a book about a journey, about self-worth, about family and roots and finding, or trying to find answers that might have always been slightly out of reach. In the book Probert tries to come to terms with the death of his father. Their relationship, built so strongly through the passion for boxing has become weathered and tense through the lives of both, and now that he has passed Probert wants to break free of the shackles of a tumultuous relationship and delve back into the sport that drove the two of them together – maybe more so than the bond of father and son.

Through the book Probert visits and talks to many boxers from his past – you see this book is almost a sequel to the novel Rope Burns published in 1998 which I will link for you. Being a sports journalist for rather a long time Probert became well acquainted with LOTS of boxers and we get to visit so many of them. Chapter by Chapter Probert delves into his history meeting boxers such as Michael Watson, Chris Eubank, Nigel Benn and interestingly Kellie Maloney. This is all contrasted with the author going to see a rather awkward therapist for sessions to talk, just talk. It’s a really interesting concept as we see both sides of the ‘healing’ process

The writing style is incredibly personal – it’s as if you’re inside the authors head throughout, feeling his inner thoughts, and seeing all of his memories converge as we kind of wade through a lot of boxing knowledge. Which is what I wanted to come to next I actually read this book on my computer because ya know the joys of ARC copies, but I actually found myself googling and watching a lot of different fights, finding out facts and researching different boxers. I was actually shocked at how engaged I felt with a book that talked about something I have, before now, had no interest in at all. This book opened my eyes to a completely new world of boxing.

The end is also utterly beautiful – we don’t quite get a perfectly sewn up ending but, I’ll leave that to you because you have to go and pre-order it and then go and read it because it’s awesome. So yep. #NOSPOILERSHERE.

SO, time to sum up. This is one of those reviews where there is JUST TO MUCH TO GET IN. I can’t tell you about all the special moments, the sweet stories, Probert’s bittersweet pain of delving into his past and then comparing it to the present and the current lives, loves and health of the boxers that we get to meet. Go and order the book. Go, because it is fantastic, it is wonderful and it is a brilliant book that might open your eyes to a completely new world.

[Andrew Updegrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some two and half decades ago, an up and coming sportswriter focusing on boxing watched as the middleweight that had taken him under his wing was critically and permanently injured during a world title fight. The emotional impact of that event was enough to keep him from writing about his favorite sport ever again - until now.

Not long after that fight, the author was stricken by a chronic, undiagnosed illness that left him, like his boxer mentor, unable to lead a normal, productive life. But unlike that boxer, an accurate diagnosis eventually led to his recovery, as well as to a decision to revisit some of the demons in his own life following the death of his emotionally unavailable and abusive father.

The boxer was British middleweight Michael Watson, and the sportswriter is Ian Probert, an author who has written in multiple genres. Dangerous, the resulting book, is a deeply personal and extremely readable account of where many of the top fighters in the world of boxing in the 1990s are today in their personal lives and struggles. The book’s title reflects the often severe mental and physical toll that boxing has taken on many of them, while recognizing that even those who are most damaged would return to the ring in a heartbeat.

Boxing fans, and particularly British fans, will no doubt find the book to be a fascinating updating of many former World Champions who are no longer in the public eye. They will also find that Probert’s interviews provide a level of insight into the sport and its practitioners that is devoid of the hype and typical writing style that accompanies a great deal of sporting journalism.
Those that aren’t boxing fans (like me) will be equally drawn in by the well-developed portraits of some of the most highly skilled and dedicated athletes in any sport, as well as by the second story arc of the book, which involves the author’s coming to grips with the concurrent serious illness of his young daughter, and the realization that his ardor for boxing – his father’s favorite sport – arose in no small measure from a doomed effort to connect with, and earn the respect of a father who had no interest in either to his dying day.

The result is a unique combination of themes and insights that does not attempt to reach any pat solution or heart-warming resolution. Instead, we leave the author and the boxers he has profiled the way we found them – damaged by their life experiences and making the best of the hard-won lessons they have learned along the way, but still entranced by the sport that has by turns served them so well and so dangerously.

[Angela Meas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not a fan of boxing. Not that I dislike the sport, I have no reason to dislike it. I've never had the opportunity to be introduced to boxing, nor have I ever had the inclination to take the initiative and go to a real boxing match. I'm telling you this now because though I have never felt the exciting rush of seeing two men deck it out in front of me as described in Ian's work, I have indeed read, and enjoyed, Ian's work since discovering Johnny Nothing a few years ago.

So while I am not a fan of boxing, I am a fan of Ian Probert's writing and when I happened upon a tweet about his new and upcoming book Dangerous, I knew I was going to read it.

Ian Probert, if you don't already know who he is (or if you haven't read his previous book Rope Burns), used to write about boxing. Boxing was his job, interviews, press conferences, sporting events, they were his life until he faded from the scene, taking a hiatus from the sport for his own personal reasons.

Now, however, he has reason to return. He's at it again, attending events and seeking out boxers for interviews, but not for the reasons he used to. He's not looking for the next big name in boxing, he's digging up the past and putting regrets and memories to rest.

Dangerous is a deeply emotional journey through Ian's past and the struggles now plaguing him and his former colleagues. Both physically and emotionally, the abuse these guys take is astounding and absolutely heartbreaking.

And they would do it all over again...

Ian's writing keeps me hooked, he's witty and makes me laugh out loud with his awkwardly subtle humor. He's brutally honest and has put his soul on the line here, but what's more is he's opening the minds of his readers to the darker side of boxing, and to that of life itself.

The depression among the athletes, the secret suicide attempts, the injuries and permanent damage done in the ring. That sudden, vacant stare when the athlete is unaware they've momentarily blacked out...

Dangerous is a captivating, eye opening book revealing the true risks and sacrifices of becoming a world champion. It's a difficult climb to the top of any mountain. The hikers leave themselves open to the elements, biting winds and crumbling peaks. So the real question to ask before taking the climb is;

Is it too dangerous?

[Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite frankly, a book about boxing would not be an automatic go-to read for me, but because I had read Johnny Nothing, Ian Probert's satire for kids, I was confident that I would enjoy the writing style, if not the subject.

Years before, Michael Watson was critically and permanently injured during a world title fight with Chris Eubank. Traumatised, Probert vowed never to write about boxing again, a decision brought about by shock and guilt that he had been unable to help someone he truly admired and was proud to call his friend.

Now he has returned, with all the wealth of information he has amassed about the colourful characters, triumphs and tragedies of the sport he has always loved. And thank goodness he has, because anyone who loves boxing should have this on their bookshelf.

I wasn’t expecting an incredibly personal, moving and brutal look at a much maligned and misunderstood sport. The sacrifices are obvious, the prizes huge and the downfalls spectacular – anyone who follows sport knows that already – but it is also a sport where people look out for each other. The amount of care, love and support people have for fellow competitors is something other sports could learn from.

Probert is an experienced journalist who isn’t afraid to put his own fallibility on display. As well as a rich seam of stories about well-known figures in the boxing world, there lies his own, sometimes excruciating, experiences as he followed stories, fumbled interviews, allowed his insecurities to get in the way, the smoking and drinking, the poor diet, the overall grubbiness of it all. The book isn’t just about boxing, but about the trials of being a journalist, written in Probert’s modest, inimitable style.

But in the end, the sportsmen take centre stage, and what comes through most strongly is the affection. Posturing aside, this is a close-knit community of people who look out for each other. I’m guessing this would have been a tough book to write, with all the painful memories Probert has, but the world of sports writing has become richer for it. I for one will never watch a boxing match in the same way again.

In one word: Respect.

[Rachael Ritchey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about so much more than boxing. There is a good deal of that, but when it says intimate it is true. The men and women you will meet in this book are real and raw. I enjoyed this true life story so much, and my biggest take away was the importance of fathers. For better or worse, fathers matter in the lives of their children. And the choices fathers make, to be there or not be there, to care or abuse, to support or discourage, will all be written onto the hearts of the the ones who love them most.

Dangerous is a story of self-discovery and a road to healing. Totally worth a read!

[Paul Forbes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not a boxing fan or even sports fan but I’ve just finished reading ‘Dangerous’ by Ian Probert. It’s a very personal account of his work as a boxing writer and journalist, how he stopped writing about the sport and how and why he started again. This is a really moving tell-all story, the author barely holds back revealing many personal secrets about his life to the boxers he interviews, his therapist and us the readers. This book had me laughing one minute and welling-up the next. It’s superbly written and at times unbelievable. This might be his last written work about boxing but whether he writes more about sports or not I’m looking forward to the next book by Ian Probert.

[Jack O'Donnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reminder—if we need one— how Dangerous boxing can be is the Sunday Mail front-page headline: ‘My baby has lost his daddy, I’ll never let him fight,’ with a prominent picture of Chloe, holding her infant Rocco, with an insert photo of her partner, and the baby’s father, twenty-five-year old Mike Towell, crouching in a standard boxing stance and fighting Dale Evans on Thursday evening at St Andrew’s Sporting Club. Towell lost more than the bout, he lost his life. The Observer ranks it further down the news order and puts it on page 14, but the headline message is much the same. It asks ‘How many more lives will have to be lost?’ The answer follows. ‘Boxing ban calls grow after Glasgow death.’ It also cites the brain-injury charity Headway’s call for boxing to be banned and offers as further evidence the bout between Chris Eubank junior and Nick Blackwell, seven months ago, with the latter stopped in the tenth round and taken to hospital bleeding from the brain. Boxing is dangerous.

Here’s Probert’s take on it at the standard media meet and greet at the Hilton in London’s Park Lane. ‘And then I spot the Eubanks arrive... A pair of Eubanks: father and son. Boxer and ex-boxer… ‘What everyone here is aware of, however that his son’s last fight ended in near tragedy. Just as his father did almost 25 years earlier when he fought Michael Watson, the younger Eubank managed to put his opponent into intensive care…Although Blackwell is now out of danger he will never fight again. It’s fair to say that our malprop of Eubanks have since endured a perfect storm of negativity, bordering on abuse, both in the news and in social media’.

‘As press conferences go it’s a pedestrian affair. Nobody is that that interested to hear about Eubank Jr’s latest fancy promotional deal. Equally, no one seems particularly concerned about Eubank’s next fight, not even it must be said, his next opponent, one Tom Dorran of Wales’. The business as usual model has been restored and in several months we can expect to see Dale Evans's manager doing the same thing.

But the intimate part of the Probert’s journey comes from the world-title fight over 25 years ago between Chris Eubank and his friend and boxing mentor Michael Watson, whose rise up the boxing ranks somehow seemed linked to the writer’s own success. He decided after Watson’s near-death experience and subsequent brain damage, not to write about boxing again, but like many of the boxers he meets on his return journey, he couldn’t stay away from boxing. Boxing really is their life and it’s his too.

I’m a fan of Probert’s writing. Rope Burn marks out his younger days with the kind of honesty you get after drinking twelve pints, spewing up, and saying, I shouldn’t have ate the last three kebabs. Dangerous is more of the same, but I wasn’t knocked out by the Prologue. Probert describes meeting his therapist who has a very strong Chinese accent. ‘We went into her office and I politely asked if I could take a seat. She gave me a shrug, which I quickly translated as meaning: ‘Why are you asking me if you can sit down you moron? What a ridiculous question…’ Or perhaps she thought I was actually going to take a seat, pick it up and exit the building with it under my arm.’

The jokey tone doesn’t work for me and almost all the episodes with his therapist could be deleted as they detract from what is a smashing book. I was privileged to be one of the few to read at least two of Probert’s chapters on ABCtales, including ‘Scars’ which follows on from the Prologue, is where the book should really start in a windswept hotel on the outskirts of Essex. A before and after shot of the author and Michael Watson. Pan in. ‘It was 23 years ago when I last saw him. His eyes were closed and an oxygen mask was strapped to his mouth. His magnificent muscular torso was a tangle of tubes and sensors…he could never again be the person he used to be.’

What we find out is every boxer thinks he can be, until that notion is punched out of his head, and even then he remains unconvinced. Steve Watson, one of the few undefeated world champions, who retired, tells Probert he got bored with the game and could no longer get himself up for a fight, but is back training boxers and there’s a hint that he might have had some kind of fit, or blackout that forced his hand. But for warriors like Watson, every school should have a boxing ring. ‘There are very few bullies who are successful boxers’ he tells Probert. ‘Because if you get a punch in the face that is not a nice thing.’

I’m not going to go head to head and argue with Steve Watson. The usual anecdotal evidence pops up that playing rugby, for example, is more dangerous, which is unremarkable. But the message Probert keeps reiterating is ‘How nice boxers are’ seems contrary to the popular view. Even Tyson Fury and his family come out sounding not too bad. A sport of contrasts. ‘Perhaps more than any other human endeavour, boxing can be an unforgiving business…On the basis of little more than an off-night today’s champion can be tomorrow’s forgotten man’. How many days or weeks, for example, will it take to forget Mike Towell and business to go on as usual?

The most poignant part of the book, which gives it real bite, is another chapter which appeared on ABCtales, ‘Lung’. It shows how Probert's thirteen-year-old daughter Sofia started with a shallow cough, but almost died. Probert berates himself for all the things he did wrong. How he should have been more assertive with his GP, how he should not have went to McDonalds to get something to eat and allowed his wife and child to be sent home from hospital…how he was too trusting and human. These are not particularly bad characteristics and it shows in his writing. I’d go as far to say I like Ian Probert and don’t think he’s very Dangerous. I’m not interested in boxing, but this is an up close and personal account of those inside the sport, inside the passion and outside the money and chicanery. Read on to find out what makes us human.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unexpected read that delves deep into the issues that athletes and fans face when things go wrong in sport.

A few decades after leaving the sport behind following a rather harrowing event, ex sports journalist Ian Probert returns to investigate boxing and all the changes that have occurred since his last foray into the sport. And change it has...

Based on the blurb, I was expecting a book on boxing but, instead, I got a memoir punctuated by meetings, memories, and the good (and bad) that the sport brought out in the author. This was an interesting story that delved into the depths of the human psyche, and charts the effects that wins, losses, and retirement can have on fighters and fans alike. It is not always comfortable or indeed pleasureable reading, but it is a very interesting memoir cum investigation that makes you think about the sport in very different ways.

*Thank you to the author and to #RBRT for my free review copy.

[Paul Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

An in-depth look at the boxing world

Though not a major fan of boxing and someone who rarely takes in a full 12 rounds of televised boxing, usually clicking onto the highlights to see the fight. I was weary of what i would read within these very pages....i could not imagine how emotional i felt after being taking on an frank journey into the world of boxing. Superb excellent book.

[Sue Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexpectedly compelling

"As I sit here with this remarkable man, I realise that sometimes it takes another person to articulate your own feelings before you can begin to understand them."

Were I to pick one phrase that stands out from this book and exemplifies it for me, it would be this.

What have love and boxing got to do with each other? Very little, you might think, outside of a trashy romance, yet in ‘Dangerous’, author Ian Probert reveals an unexpectedly gentle facet of a hard-edged world. ‘Dangerous’ is a book about boxing that has little to do with sport and everything to do with being human.

I am not a fan of boxing. I began reading ‘Dangerous’ because I have enjoyed Probert’s writing, both in his children’s books and on his blog. I didn’t really expect this book to appeal to me...and was surprised to find I had read it cover to cover in a single day.

It is a compelling read.

Ian Probert gave up writing about boxing 25 years ago after witnessing the fight that left boxer Michael Watson fighting for his life. He walked away from boxing altogether until a chance comment by his therapist sent him back, during the depression that followed the death of his father. Why the two should be linked in his mind, Probert himself did not know, except that boxing had been the one part of life where he and his abusive father had seemed to share common ground. In returning to the world of boxing, perhaps he might find some kind of resolution.

As the premise for a book, it didn’t sound appealing. It could easily be little more than a maudlin and self-indulgent meander with a chance to drop a few famous names. That is very far from being the case.

In revisiting the people and relationships of his past, Probert’s self-deprecating humour takes the focus away from himself and places it firmly on the people he meets. Here too I was surprised..., I knew all their names and most of their public histories, showing just how much the sport is part of our culture. What I did not know was who these people were and what their own stories might be.

In a series of informal interviews with some of the great names of the ring, that lift the veil on the unseen face of boxing that the spotlights and flash bulbs ignore, we are given an intimate glimpse of the laughter, tragedy and camaraderie that exists within the sport. For anyone with any interest in boxing, for this alone it would be well worth the read. Yet there is another story running through the book that steps to one side and frequents the shadows cast by the lights of the ring...and that is the author’s own story.

There is a theme that develops as he meets people who care, both for and about each other. Unacknowledged guilt is offered a chance for a personal redemption when his daughter is taken seriously ill and a boxer is admitted to the hospital. And there is a dawning realisation of who he, himself, might be... and why. You are not told; Probert simply takes you with him and lets you feel it for yourself.

Written in a tight, yet conversational style, ‘Dangerous’ is a fascinating look into the closed world of boxing... and an intense and evocative glimpse into the heart of a man.

[Wendy Unsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the hardest things is to understand the motivations of others when they move in a world so alien to you that it might indeed be another planet.

This is the way I feel about boxing, a sport that lives on the periphery of my universe. I know of its existence and yet I have no desire to explore it depths and cannot fathom why anyone would. Of course the fascination lies in that, to some, this world is wonderful, desirable and the centre of their existence. The fascination is that we humans are capable of so many different reactions and responses to the world around us.

I know Ian Probert's writing from his very funny children's book, Johnny Nothing and that was what brought me to reading Dangerous, a book, of all things, about boxing. And yet, it isn't. Dangerous is about love and loss and finding a place in the world comfortable enough to inhabit.

Ian Probert pulls no punches (sorry, but the phrase is entirely the most appropriate!) in this honest account of his relationships within and without the boxing world. Making his living as a boxing reporter some twenty -five years ago he admits that he loved his job and the circles he moved in. Then a tragic 'accident' in the ring left a boxer on life support and Ian, who counted himself a friend and supporter of boxers was suddenly seen as nothing more than an outsider by the boxer's family, an interfering reporter who was only interested in his 'story'. Ian was shattered by this rejection, that so mirrored his personal life, and left behind the job he loved.

In the book, the author tells the story of his determination to reconnect, to revisit the boxing world and meet with those characters, new and old that have been so important to his life. He very ably describes a life of camaraderie, even love, amongst the boxing fraternity and helps outsiders to see that there is much more than just punches and pain.

At the same time we hear about the author's personal life, a crisis with his daughter's health and the long-standing conflict with his father which is at the heart of the story.

The book is painful, heartbreaking, funny and above all human; the story of man who has decided to 'say it how it is'. If you like brutal honesty you will appreciate Dangerous. If you love boxing you will, I think, find this a fascinating insight. And if you don't, you will experience a little of an alien world and maybe in the process understand it just a bit better.

[Chantelle Atkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having previously read Rope Burns, and the amazing Johnny Nothing, I was very much looking forward to reading Dangerous. I follow Ian's blog and have always enjoyed his writing style and content. I'm not a fan of boxing, but like a lot of other reviewers have mentioned, you do not need to be to appreciate this book. In Rope Burns, we followed Ian's journey into journalism and writing, and there were mentions of his fraught relationship with his father. Boxing was the only thing they had in common. At the end of Rope Burns, Ian gave up writing about boxing, because he felt guilty that he was making a living out of a sport that so often wrecked the bodies and minds of the people involved. However, in Dangerous, he makes his comeback for a variety of reasons which are explored throughout the book. Having lost his father and suffered a serious illness, it is not until the end of the book that the writer realises he is writing about boxing again in an attempt to explore father and son relationships. This book is funny (the scenes with his therapist are both awkward and amusing) and painful in equal measures. I found myself getting increasingly involved with the characters he proceeds to interview, many of whom are people from his past. It was both sad and inspiring to read their stories of depression, mental illness, loss and suicide attempts. As the writers mentions from time to time, boxers are on the whole, people tremendously full of love and the ability to share their emotions. It really is quite an emotional book, and the last few chapters I read in a row without being able to put it down. This is an amazing book, with so many human traits and flaws explored. It's a very personal book and written in an engaging and witty style that will really draw you in. You want to know what happens next! People who enjoy boxing will absolutely adore this book, but I implore anyone who enjoys a dramatic, emotional and amusing read to also give it a go.