I felt sick after I cheered Chris Eubank Sr’s most infamous punch, but now he’s the hero of Eubank Jr vs Benn farce
IT’S the most high-profile boxing event staged in Britain so far this year — which says everything you need to know about the state of the fight game.
Chris Eubank Jr versus Conor Benn has more in common with the grotesque YouTube celebrity bouts of Jake Paul & Co than the classic world title fights their fathers contested in the 1990s.
The venue, fittingly, will be the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium — home to some of football’s greatest clown shows this season.
A full house of 60,000 will witness a scrap between a natural super-middleweight who has never quite been world class and a natural welterweight who is nowhere near world class.
And yet millions will be gripped by it simply because Eubank and Benn carry the names of their fathers — infinitely better fighters, with far more compelling personalities, who fought two world super-middleweight title battles more than 30 years ago.
But what’s in a name? That which we call a rotten egg, by any other name would stink just as bad.
Those spectators and TV viewers might as well head to the M25 and rubber-neck at a car-crash site.
The sporting integrity of tonight’s fight was highly questionable even before Conor failed a drug test for the female fertility drug clomifene ahead of its original scheduling, for the O2 Arena, in October 2022.
Now the venue is bigger, the purse has been doubled by Saudi money — and the question of integrity is laughable.
When the pair met at a February press conference, Eubank slapped Benn with an egg, mocking his explanations for how performance-enhancing clomifene had entered his system.
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Benn has been cleared to fight because his guilt was not proven due to legal, rather than scientific, technicalities.
Back in 2017, I separately interviewed the Eubanks, Chris Sr and Jr, and the Benns, Nigel and Conor, for SunSport articles.
On both occasions, I asked whether Eubank Jr may one day fight Conor and, from both families, it was met with the derision it deserved.
It’s funny how the offer of £7million apiece can alter opinions.
These two families, more than most in boxing, understand the deep dangers involved in their sport, even when two elite fighters clash at their correct weights.
Nigel Benn almost killed Gerald McClellan in one of the most brutal bouts ever seen in a British ring in 1995.
Chris Eubank Sr nearly killed Michael Watson at the old White Hart Lane, just yards away from tonight’s venue, in 1991.
I was there as a teenager, roaring on Eubank in a venue dominated by Watson fans.
When Eubank detonated an uppercut on Watson’s chin it was one of the most thrilling sporting moments I’ve witnessed.
It wasn’t until the next day I learned Eubank’s punch had left Watson in a coma. He would suffer permanent brain damage.
That I’d cheered that punch left me feeling sick — and refusing to watch boxing for years.
Boxing doesn’t have a God-given right to exist. If it were invented today it would never be legally sanctioned.
It needs integrity. It demands stringent levels of safety. It must be clean. And it requires a level playing field.
It’s highly questionable whether tonight’s fight has any of that.
Eubank Sr, who is no longer on speaking terms with his son, has had nothing to do with this entire circus.
As a result, he is the one member of either fighting dynasty to emerge with any credit.