“I never travel with the team because that would increase the chances of them getting killed and they are already at risk because of me,” admitted Watkins.Last November, after some assistance from a British colonel called Steve Bruce, 24 of Iraqi’s best amateur boxers gathered at a makeshift structure in Hillah for the first of many pre-Olympic training camps “Some of us had not boxed for two years or even three. There was a lot of talent but they had all lost their competitive edge, they were all weary from six months of conflict. However, Watkins is genuinely a pest controller and in 1980 he lost on points over 15 rounds for the World Boxing Council light-welterweight title against Saoul Mamby on the same night that Larry Holmes stopped Muhammad Ali. His profession is listed as pest controller, which is like a bad joke, and he has been in Iraq for over a year ridding American bases of pests like spiders, rats and cockroaches He has a crewcut, loves God and the American flag. A few days ago – it is not entirely clear – the seven men stopped at the Kuwaiti border were released after eight or nine days of detention. This weekend they will all be together in London and able to prepare for an Olympic boxing qualification tournament in Pakistan next week.When the boxing convoy arrived at the border with Kuwait there was one man missing and that was by choice.

Ten miles behind the boxers, in an unmarked car, was an American called Maurice “Termite” Watkins and he is the reason that Iraq has a boxing team.At first Watkins appears to be yet another quiet American from one of the many mysterious agencies that operate in foreign countries. Apparently, the seven fit the profile of various wanted men.The remainder of the Iraqi national boxing team travelled on and arrived in London late last week: Three boxers, two trainers and a translator. He heard the rockets, the mortars, the guns and the sounds of fury that destroyed the boxing club in Hillah and he felt, not for the first or the last time, a sense of personal loss. Ubdelzahia Juraid knew the ring was gone before he found the hole in the earth, he knew that his boxers had lost one of their last links with a normal life.

There was nowhere to train, no equipment and the ongoing death and struggle in Iraq occupied his mind. “Boxing was important to me and important to all of the boxers for many, many years but then all of the upheavals and deaths take over. The type of crumbling wreck that Saddam Hussein himself would have been proud of.At the border “Special Forces” stopped them and five of the boxers, the man from the Iraqi Boxing Federation and a coach were detained. They travelled in an innocent convoy with the blessing of the governing coalition and their destination, with a bit of help from the people behind London’s 2012 Olympic bid, was the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.