After two-and-a-half years, the waiting is over. Or 31-and-a-half years, depending on how you want to count this.
Chris Eubank Jr. takes on Conor Benn at a sold-out Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on DAZN on Saturday night in London, a middleweight bout laden with historical resonance, controversy, and enmity, both real and imagined.
It’s a heady cocktail that will always draw attention to the prize ring, even in the absence of any notable title significance whatsoever.
When these men’s fathers clashed twice in huge all-British fights in the 1990s, the value of the WBO belts that Chris Eubank brought to the ring was still disputed. Indeed, that fledgling sanctioning body gained plenty of much-needed traction from their man Eubank winning a middleweight thriller over Nigel Benn inside nine rounds in Birmingham in 1990.
By the time their rematch arrived at a packed Old Trafford in October 1993, Eubank was the WBO’s super middleweight champion, while Benn had regrouped superbly to become WBC king at 168 lbs. That bout was scored a draw. Punishing elite-level careers caught up with both champions after that. Each lost twice to Ireland’s Steve Collins, and a third fight never materialised.
The timing of the initial Benn-Eubank rivalry is key in terms of explaining why it still resonates so strongly with the UK’s sporting public. Their fights were huge events, played out before gargantuan terrestrial television audiences. The rematch drew 16.5 million to ITV.
Soon afterwards, Eubank was at the forefront of British boxing’s move to pay television on Sky. This had the effect of freezing Benn and Eubank in time, in an era when boxing was a mainstream sport to rival football as a national obsession, when big fights were important matters for the pub and the water cooler.
MORE: Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn’s incredible rivalry remembered
The past decade has been a wonderful time for the sport in the UK, with Conor and Chris Jr. the latest in a long line of stadium-fillers. Carl Froch and George Groves got the ball rolling, stepping into the shoes of Benn and Eubank Sr. as hard-hitting heroes at super middleweight, while Anthony Joshua blasted his way into the public consciousness as a two-time heavyweight champion and undoubtedly one of the most famous people in the country.
But Joshua is the exception, and the Benn-Eubank era is easy to sell as a time when everything about boxing was romantic, and everyone in Britain loved it. It’s nonsense, of course, but that’s the nonsense we’re all buying this weekend as a fighter who has never won a legitimate world title takes on a boxer without a British title from two weights below, who failed two drug tests to force the postponement of this bout back in October 2022.
(CHRIS DEAN/BOXXER)
Chris Eubank Jr. vs. Conor Benn odds, betting
Per BetMGM, Eubank is the betting favourite at -160, with Benn priced +150. You can get the draw at +1600.
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Chris Eubank Jr. vs. Conor Benn prediction
Aside from tapping into lingering love, adoration, and nostalgia around the combatants’ fathers, the promotion – helmed for the first time by Ring Magazine and featuring Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn and Boxxer’s Ben Shalom in the respective Benn and Eubank corners – has done a fine job in whipping up interest.
Hearn has labelled it a “genuine 50-50 fight.” This taps into Benn-Eubank lore when, in reality, it should be considered nothing of the sort.
There are legitimate reasons to see the 35-year-old Eubank as vulnerable. After the Benn fight was pulled, he jumped straight into a bout with former light middleweight world champion Liam Smith and was brutally battered to a fourth-round defeat. It was the first stoppage loss of his career, a previously granite chin shattered.
A possible factor in that January 2023 reverse was Eubank swiftly returning to camp after boiling himself down to the initially agreed 157-pound catchweight for the Benn fight. This one will take place at the traditional middleweight limit, three pounds north. It is a more agreeable situation for Eubank.
Even though super middleweight would probably be a more natural home at this stage of his career, he has not boxed at 168 pounds since retiring James DeGale in February 2019.
Nevertheless, Eubank was a couple of ounces over 160 at Friday’s weigh-in and paid a heavy fine. He must also abide by a rehydration limit and scale no higher than 170 pounds at a Saturday morning weigh-in.
So Eubank is an aging fighter who has shown signs of punch resistance and might be depleted by the terms he has agreed to for a reported £7.5 million payday. The question is whether Benn is good enough to take advantage.
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At best, we don’t know. Benn has spent the majority of his career at welterweight against opponents not exactly noted for their punching power. He failed to make much of a dent in Rodolfo Orozco and Peter Dobson on his two light middleweight excursions, winning wide points decisions.
Yet Benn is talking about taking Eubank’s head off. Fourteen stoppages in 23 professional fights against largely moderate welterweight opposition does not suggest a decapitation machine is looming into view for Eubank, a consensus top-10 middleweight.
Eubank was flattened by Smith and won the rematch. The Liverpudlian has been a world-class fighter and shared the ring with the likes of Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and Jaime Munguia. Benn has done nothing to show he is an operator of that calibre.
Stylistically, he is similar to his father, Nigel, who was an authentically brutal puncher. Unfortunately for Conor, his impressive run of stoppages over Samuel Vargas, Chris Algieri, and Chris van Heerden exists in the context of those failed tests for clomiphene that followed in 2022. Benn has always denied knowingly taking any banned substances.
Team Benn have had their request for an 18-square-foot ring granted, but he will have to be the wrecking ball of their dreams rather than the 28-year-old fighter we’ve seen so far to make this pay. Benn will be aggressive and come for Eubank. Provided ‘Junior’ isn’t shot to pieces, expect him to emerge from an early storm to land crisp counters and his favourite uppercuts with increasing regularity to stop a tenacious and determined foe in the final third of the fight.
Eubank could end this sooner, but we must factor in his tendency to coast and play with his food. It would be understandable if he wished to make a humiliating night for Benn a long one after all the ill feeling.
Then we’ll have to find some sort of excuse for a rematch, because there’s too much money to be made, and that has driven every decision so far in this confected, imitation rivalry.
SN Prediction: Eubank TKO 10 (+2000)
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