Nigel Benn had insisted he was stepping away from his son’s career for good.
The 10,000-mile trips from Australia – where Nigel is based – were done, and Conor Benn was on his own after his grudge-match win over Chris Eubank Jr.
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Yet in the build-up to Conor’s WBC welterweight world title challenge against Ryan Garcia in Las Vegas, the ‘Dark Destroyer’ was by his son’s side at the news conference and holding court at their Essex media day – as embedded as ever.
Ask Nigel why and he claims Conor “twisted my arm” into helping with one final hurdle.
“I don’t know if he was lying or if he believed it himself,” Conor says with a wry smile.
“He lives through me. He goes, ‘son, this is my last fight, I’m done.’ Then the next one it’s, ‘son, it’s your first defence.’ There’ll always be something.”
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Perhaps neither man is ready to cut the cord.
Conor has stepped out of his 62-year-old father’s shadow – not by matching the legendary ring achievements, but through the sheer turbulence of his own journey.
Navigating a career-threatening doping case, surviving the ferocious Eubank rivalry and acrimoniously splitting from long-time promoter Eddie Hearn transformed him from ‘Nigel’s boy’ into one of British boxing’s most polarising headliners.
Through those storms, Nigel has been there in the trenches.
“It’s what Conor thinks and what his dad thinks – that’s what it’s about, not what everybody else says,” Nigel Benn says.
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“Everyone’s not going to love my son. Everybody didn’t love me. But once you get that belt around his waist, we’ll go from there.”
The storms, sceptics and chasing history
Thirty-six years ago, Nigel flew across the Atlantic as the fiery outsider, tearing through Doug DeWitt in Atlantic City to secure his first world title.
Now, Conor lands on the Las Vegas Strip chasing the exact same milestone. A victory would place the Benns alongside the likes of Floyd and Tracy Harris Patterson, Julio Cesar Chavez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr and Leon and Cory Spinks in the lineage of father-and-son world champions.
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“I’ve watched him religiously for 10 years put his life on the line,” Nigel says. “He’s just going from strength to strength, from glory to glory. I see him being victorious. I’m not actually worried whatsoever.”
Yet reaching this point has required navigating a volatile road fraught with controversy.
The adverse drug test findings that wiped out two years of Conor’s career cast a long shadow, fracturing public perception and leaving unanswered questions that still follow him.
He has always denied doping, a provisional suspension was lifted in November 2024, and he says he has fought throughout his career as “an advocate for clean sport”.
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Inside the ropes, the jury remains stubbornly out on his talent.
A laboured points victory over Regis Prograis in his last outing did little to convince purists he belongs at the sport’s highest echelon.
But Conor cares little for the outside noise or winning over the boxing fraternity.
“To some people, I’ll never be good enough,” he says. “One day they love you, some day they hate you.
“You keep talking about what other people think, but I don’t care. Winning the world title for me, it’s personal. If I listen to other people, I wouldn’t be where I am.”
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‘It’s not personal with Garcia’
Garcia has walked an equally chaotic path, having served a one-year suspension after testing positive for banned substance ostarine following his win over Devin Haney in 2024.
Both men deny intentionally ever taking performance-enhancing drugs, but away from that issue their showdown is wrapped in the contradictions that define modern boxing.
It will be staged by UFC-backed Zuffa Boxing – following Conor’s high-profile split from Hearn – yet featuring the traditional green-and-gold WBC belt on the line, despite Zuffa’s public rhetoric about disrupting boxing’s old-guard sanctioning bodies.
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Social media spats between the fighters have brought plenty of heat, but Conor Benn does not compare it to the raw nature of the Eubank saga, which spilled over into face-to-face fury. An egg was even slapped across Benn’s face by Eubank.
“Listen, it’s not personal with Ryan. It is personal with Eubank – this ain’t no comparison,” Conor says.
“One person I wanted to put in hospital; the other one I don’t. I just want his title and I want his number one position. I’ve been at world level for years and for me to claim the number one spot officially is the goal here.
“[Garcia] is like a child. It doesn’t bother me. You need people like Ryan in the sport of boxing.”
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Nigel urges son to follow his blueprint
Garcia is proven at the top level and enters as the favourite, bringing blinding hand speed and a fight-ending left hook.
But Nigel Benn believes he has mapped out the exact antidote to Garcia’s firepower. He says his son should attack Garcia using suffocating, bobbing aggression – the kind that Nigel used to blow out Iran Barkley in 1990.
“When he goes under pressure, what happens? He falls and his heart doesn’t go into it,” Nigel says.
“For the first time, [Conor] is actually sitting there listening. He has to be not the destroyer, he has to be the Dark Destroyer. Controlled aggression.
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“Don’t give him room. Roll under his punches, left hook to the body, left hook to the head. He knows what to do.”
The hostile Vegas spotlight, meanwhile, evokes memories of Benn senior’s ferocious 1995 battle with Gerald McClellan.
“Everybody had me to be blown out within round three. Exactly the same thing as what they do with Conor,” Nigel says. “And I know he’s going to prevail.”
Win, lose or draw, Nigel insists this time he will walk away for good and let Conor do his own thing.
“I can walk out of that arena, go home, and be with my family, and that’s it,” Nigel says.
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Whether Nigel finally catches that one-way flight back to Sydney is another matter.
If Conor leaves Las Vegas with the WBC belt around his waist, you would not bet against his father being back for defence number one.
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