Chris Eubank Jr silences press conference with moving speech on brother’s death and dad thinking he’s a ‘disgrace’
CHRIS EUBANK JR poured his heart out in a moving speech during the press conference ahead of his bout with Conor Benn on Saturday.
Eubank Jr opened up on losing his brother and his fractured relationship with father Chris Eubank Sr as he stunned the press room into silence.
Eubank Jr, 35, lost his brother Sebastian to a heart attack in 2021 while watching the sunset in the sea in Dubai.
While he and his dad have fallen out of each other’s lives in recent years after Sebastian’s death drove a wedge between the pair.
Now Eubank Jr has said that the pain of making weight and getting lumped in the face by his opponents is nothing compared to the pain he has suffered in losing his brother and stopping speaking to his dad.
He said: “The weight is painful, I’m in pain right now. I’ll be in even more pain tonight and tomorrow morning.
“But the question I ask myself is, ‘What is pain?’
“I have a 31-year-old brother, he is buried in the desert in Dubai. That’s pain.
“I have his son Raheem, three years old, he asks: ‘Why can’t I see my daddy, why can’t he take me to school?’ That’s pain.
“My own father, a man I idolised for my entire life, doesn’t speak to me. We haven’t spoken for years. He thinks I’m a disgrace.
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“These things are what pain is to me.
“If I can deal with all of these trials and tribulations, then the weight-cut and the rehydration clause… these are all things that are not an issue.”
Eubank Jr revealed last month that his brother’s passing was a huge factor in the breakdown of his relationship with his dad.
He said: “You have the situation with my brother passing away. That affected him in a deep way – it affected all of us. Mental health is a real thing.
“That incident, coupled with the fact that we were already not seeing eye to eye, destroyed a large part of the relationship. And it still doesn’t seem to have recovered.”
Despite that, Eubank Jr is still continuing his father’s legacy as he takes on Conor Benn in the reignition of a 25-year-old rivalry between Eubank Sr and Benn’s dad Nigel Benn on Saturday.
Benn Sr and Eubank Sr came to blows twice in the early 1990s, sparking one of British boxing‘s biggest rivalries.
And Nigel Benn has been by his son’s side through all the build up to the next generation bout, something that can’t be said for Eubank Sr.
The 58-year-old has voiced his disapproval of the fight, revealing that the tragic death of his own brother Simon is one of the main reasons.
Discussing his son’s dramatic changes to make weight, Eubank Sr told SunSport: “I am more concerned about that than anything else.
“I don’t want my son getting down to 160lb. And that is why I have spoken about people trying to murder my boy by boiling him down to 157lb.
“Trying to boil my son down to 157lb a few years ago, would have killed him.
“You might think the word ‘killed’ is a bit strong but my brother is dead from boxing.
“He lost his life from boxing, with frontal lobe dementia.
“In the end, Harlem was feeding him with a baby bottle, he had to feed his own father.”