IN HIS day, Nigel Benn was one of the most fearsome middleweights and super middleweights to occupy a boxing ring, known for his love of a ring war as he ascended near-unparalleled heights of popularity and filling out arenas wherever he fought.

A look back at his career confirms that he fought some of the best of his era at both weights — the likes of Michael Watson, Iran Barkley, Henry Wharton, Robbie Sims, Sugar Boy Malinga, Gerald McClellan, Steve Collins and of course Chris Eubank.

Indeed, some of the classic fights of British boxing have involved Benn and this is before factoring in his double-header against Eubank as part of the most fiercely contested domestic rivalry there’s ever been.

Who will ever forget the first fight they had in 1990 at Birmingham’s NEC, during which they took one another to hell and back in what one writer described as a fight that went beyond the hype.

Benn — whose ring moniker was the “Dark Destroyer” — has long since revealed that he went to a few dark places in those years. Between fights he partied, took liberal amounts of recreational drugs, slept around and behaved like a man whose demons were firmly in the driving seat.

And what demons they were. His infamous fight with Gerald McClellan, which left the US fighter permanently brain damaged, is one that makes a convincing argument against boxing being regarded as a sport.

In fact it was so brutal that still today it succeeds in eliciting a sense of guilt when watching it.

Yet boxing continues, not because those involved — the likes of Benn in his day — get their kicks out of brutality but because it’s the sport that comes closest to mirroring the human condition — its victories and defeats, fear and courage, triumph and despair — and the desire to push the boundaries in pursuit of ideals that have been submerged beneath centuries of civilisation and its stultifying constraints.

Benn was never the same after the McClellan fight. How could he be? The knowledge of being responsible for rendering another human being permanently brain-damaged and disabled must have sat on his shoulder like an incubus, forcing him to constantly re-examine his profession and moral compass.

After retiring from boxing in 1996, going out on two back-to-back defeats against Steve Collins, he admits to trying to take his own life as he plunged into depression.

It was then, at his lowest point, that he found God and became born again, moving to Tenerife to become a pastor. He’s since relocated to Australia, where he oversees his son Conor’s fledgling boxing career.

Benn has been making regular appearances back in Britain of late, recently making the headlines by claiming that boxing is therapy for rage.

From a fighter who experienced first-hand the brutality that boxing is capable of producing in the ring, to a retired elder statesman seemingly at ease with himself and with life, Benn is now extolling the sport’s positive aspects, leaving no doubt that he’s come full circle in the course of a life that’s been rich in ups, downs and in-betweens.

The wonder is that he survived the punishment he took both inside and outside the ring intact, while rediscovering his love of the sport that made him a household name in the early to mid ’90s.

There are not many who fought with the intensity and aggression he did and manage to emerge intact.

Compare Benn, for example, to James Toney, an even more fearsome middleweight and super middleweight than Benn was.

They never met in the ring but if they had the smart money would undoubtedly have been on Toney, whose skill was on another level during the period they were both making a name for themselves in the ring.

Toney, unlike Benn, never walked away from the sport. Instead he continued fighting, moving up through the weights until ending up as unsightly-looking a heavyweight as you’ve ever seen.

Nowadays his speech is garbled and he spends his time turning up on social media

calling out names of fighters who would run a mile before sharing a ring with him — not because they fear what he brings, but because it would tarnish their record to fight someone who is so clearly way past the point at which he should be climbing into the ring.

That Toney has managed to retain a licence to box is a scandal, debunking the claim that those charged with the welfare of the fighters and the sport are competent.

Unconscionably, rumours have been gathering steam on the boxing grapevine that Toney and Mike Tyson are in negotiations to fight one another.

If true we can only hope the ring is placed inside a tent so nobody can see it.

Another former world champion talking about making a comeback is Oscar De La Hoya. In a recent interview, the Golden Boy revealed that he thinks about making a comeback every day and misses fighting more and more.

De La Hoya was a fantastic fighter who had a fantastic career both as an amateur and professional.

He fought legends and became a legend himself, but he was humiliated in his last fight against Manny Pacquaio in 2008, seven years ago. He’s now 42. What the hell is he thinking?

Someone needs to take these guys in hand and talk sense into them, before they do themselves and the sport they love some serious damage.

Thinking about it, perhaps this is a job for Nigel Benn.