Latest news with #EubankJnr
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Chris Eubank Jnr reveals emotional phone call with estranged father on the night before his victory over Conor Benn - as he admits the TRUTH behind shock reunion with boxing legend dad
Chris Eubank Jnr has revealed the details behind his dramatic reunion with his father, Eubank Sr, prior to his victory over Conor Benn. Eubank Jr finally settled the score with Benn after a bitter build-up as he claimed victory via unanimous decision in a fight of the year contender on April 26th. The fight itself was an epic affair, but the night had already sparked into life long before the opening bell when Eubank Sr and Jr arrived at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium together, just days after Sr had branded his son 'a disgrace'. Eubank Sr had been angry with his son for boiling himself down to 160lbs to fight Benn, while also slapping his rival around the face with an egg at their launch press conference. He had vowed not to attend the fight, but then performed a remarkable U-turn and walked his son to the ring before watching on from ringside. Now, Eubank Jnr has lifted the lid on his shock reunion with his father and detailed a phone call with Sr one the eve of the fight. Speaking on the Diary of a CEO podcast, Eubank Jnr explained: 'On the subject of my father, regardless of what he said about me and about the fight, he was there when it mattered the most. 'And that means everything. I didn't know he was going to come. He called me. He texts me the day before the fight, the night before the fight. He said 'call me when you see this.' 'So, I saw the text and I thought you know what? We are less than a day away.... this is the night before the biggest fight of my life. 'A couple of hours go by, maybe nine, ten o'clock, I'm like 'you know what, I've been through so much s*** these last two months, what more could possibly be thrown at me?' At the end of the day, he's my old man. He's text me, I'm going to hear him out. 'So, I call him. I was about to go to sleep and I thought 'I'll call him.' As soon as he picked the phone up, there was a tone in his voice that I hadn't heard for years. It was a tone of happiness, likeness, joy, 'hey, how you doing son? What's going on? How're you feeling?' 'I said 'how am I feeling? When have you worried about how I'm feeling? I'm good dad, everything is cool. Just getting ready to go to sleep. Got a big day tomorrow.' He said 'yeah, I know you've got a big day tomorrow and I want to be there for you.'' Eubank Snr, just days after the bout, also revealed how he reached out to his son via text in order to wish him well for the fight. 'At 10 past eight on Friday night I sent him a message,' Eubank Sr revealed on his Call Chris Eubank YouTube channel. 'The message said: 'Call me when you're in private, please'. 'Maybe 10 past 10, I got a call back. Jr called and he said 'I didn't want to call, dad, because I can't hear anything negative'. In my mind you have the world's media there so I put on a disguise. 'When he saw me he said 'no one is going to recognise you'. You couldn't see me. I had an Issey Miyake coat on which is down to your ankles. I had a hoodie which is a green mod coat. The coat they wore in the 1960s on their mopeds. And then I had a mask that went up and a cap. The shoes I wore were plimsolls. 'He had booked me a room so we went up to the room and we sat and we spoke. These were my words to him: 'what do you want me to do, son? This is your show.' And he said lots of things have to change now because we had this set up. We had an orchestra, a rapper, and all were to substitute for me not being there. So when I came in, everything else went. The only thing that actually stayed was the orchestra.' Eubank Jr and Sr shared a number of memorable moments on the night, including arriving together, having a joint ringwalk, and them embracing after the final bell.
Daily Mirror
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Chris Eubank Jr's face compared with Conor Benn's after fight speaks volumes
Chris Eubank Jnr secured a statement victory over rival Conor Benn on points at the weekend but he's still sporting some serious injuries when compared to his rival Chris Eubank Jnr is still sporting some serious war wounds following his victory over Conor Benn at the weekend. Eubank Jnr emerged as the winner with all the judges backing him in a unanimous points decision. The 35-year-old though was quickly rushed to hospital for precautionary checks after taking some heavy blows to the face. Benn suggested that he may have picked up a more severe injury, but Eubank Jnr ultimately walked away with some notable cuts and some stitches around his eye. He claimed that Benn and Eddie Hearn "ran away with the story of a broken jaw" but laughed those off and detailed an injury to his eye, which is very visible. He said: "I got headbutted above my eye around the middle of the fight. It opened up and I had to go and have surgery on that to sew it up." Eubank Jnr has been out and about since and was on the set of 'The Gentleman', taking pictures alongside the likes of Vinnie Jones. It was clear that the son of the great Chris Eubank had been on the receiving end of some huge blows. He joked in a social media post: "Maybe I should just become an actor… not getting punched in the face to make money sounds so nice." Despite losing the fight Benn is cutting a far less damaged figure. He recorded himself walking around New York but had few visible injuries. Eddie Hearn has already claimed a rematch between the pair is "done" with the promoter desperate to see Benn as a world champion. He told Matchroom's YouTube channel: 'The future is massive for Conor Benn, the contract was a two-fight contract, the rematch is already contracted and done,' 'I said in the press conference after, 'we'll have to look at the weight classes and that,' but Conor said to me on Sunday night, 'you thought that was a war? Wait until you see the rematch!' We're confident in terms of what Saturday will give him. 'The activity, the confidence, the weight, everything, he's ready to go now! He's back in the gym. We have to look, I want Conor to be a world champion, he's proved he's a world class fighter. But the rematch is twice as big as the first one." Eubank Jnr meanwhile is keeping his options open and has talked up a potential bout with Mexican superstar Cancelo. He defends his world super-middleweight titles this weekend and the Englishman has claimed a fight between the pair would sell out. He said: "That is another stadium filler, absolutely. Wembley, Tottenham, any one of the large football stadiums in the UK will be filled for a fight like that. "He is an opponent I've been looking at for many years now. And the fans would love to see that. So 100 per cent that's a name in my line of sight. And we will be doing whatever we can to secure that fight in the future."
Daily Mail
25-04-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Chris Eubank Jr's weigh-in farce shows Conor Benn showdown is more of a marketing masterpiece than a bona fide brawl, writes JEFF POWELL
Roll up, roll up for the greatest show on earth. The old fairground barkers had nothing on the modern merchandisers drumming up a frenzy for Saturday's showdown at Tottenham Hotspur. Forget Waterloo, never mind Agincourt, ignore Bannockburn. Eubank Jr versus Benn The Younger, so we are told, is the real British Battle for the Ages. That is but one of several slogans emblazoned on an event which might have been generated by Artificial Intelligence. They include The Family Feud, Born To Brawl, History in the Remaking and — how convenient that this falls at Easter — In The Name Of The Fathers. A more fitting title might be A Fight For Nothing since there are no major championships at stake for two men who, unlike their fabled dads, have never held a proper world title between them. Or to be more precise, A Fight For Nothing But The Money. That is how it is being characterised by Chris Eubank Sr, who has been urging his son to withdraw at this late hour even though he stands to pocket the thick end of £6million, and who is threatening to boycott the event. Eubank Sr is by no means alone in believing this to be a fight so ill-conceived that it puts both combatants at abnormal risk. His lad, Chris Jr, through being contractually denied more than 10lbs in rehydration after narrowly failing to make the 160lb limit. Nigel Benn's boy, Conor, by bulking up two divisions above his natural welterweight to take on a significantly larger man. Throughout this entire fiasco Eubank Jnr has been claiming the moral high ground as the righteous, self-styled protector of the game's integrity…while taking the money. If Benn was being labelled the cheat, Eubank is the hypocrite. Even before he came in half an ounce over the weight limit to which he had contracted. By preferring to make victory more likely by paying the £375,000 fine rather standing by his signature — penned in the name of the family reputation he proclaims to be protecting — he has dragged this fiasco out of the fairground into farce. Can he be surprised that his own father called him a disgrace for involving himself in this ill-conceived venture? Fight of the Century, as the tub-thumpers have been broadcasting? No, a farce without honour. This is not the match made in heaven which the ad-men would have us believe. It is by accident that the offspring of two legendary boxers, who clashed in epic fights in a golden age for British boxing, have followed in their fathers' bootsteps at around the same time. Normally, given the disparity in size, the pair would not be boxing each other. This match has been contrived to trade on their surnames, manicuring a legacy, with an exaggeration of their respective talents and some juggling on the scales. The promoters — Eddie Hearn with Benn and Ben Shalom for Eubank Jnr — have produced a masterpiece of marketing. There is often talk of letting fights marinate in the anticipation of the public. Every last ounce of juice has been sucked from this one in the two and a half years since the first attempt was scotched at the last minute by revelations that Benn had failed two drugs tests. By hitching his star so firmly to Benn's protestations of innocence, Hearn surely trapped himself in a spiral of costly litigation. It would have been cheaper, and simpler, if Benn had just copped a plea and served his two-year ban. The purses he picked up for fighting a couple of American sluggers in obscure venues while the legal arguments wrangled on amounted to little more than loose change. Worse, he made dreadfully hard work of outpointing them. Hearn kept the faith, grinding the organ with every soundbite from the various court hearings. Shalom came on board, making good on his pledge to find one big pay-night for Eubank by steering him back towards Benn despite reservations about the convoluted process which had found a way to circumvent Benn's alleged performance-enhancing transgressions. He was cleared by the National Anti-Doping Panel and Eubank made his opinion on that clear by cracking an egg on Benn's cheek-bone at a media conference. That unspoken statement about his rival's initial excuse that he had failed the drugs tests because he had eaten too many eggs — subsequently dropped amid much amused clucking — cost Eubank a £100,000 fine. And it kept the publicity mill churning. As have the several face-to-face TV confrontations where the gloves have been on and off with greater frequency than clothes on Love Island. 'It's hate,' thunders Hearn. 'Real hate. Honest.' Shalom believes him: 'Chris really doesn't like Conor.' The snake-oil salesmen back in the Wild West used to hawk their wares off the back of a wagon. Shalom and Hearn have the benefit of a much more powerful platform, the internet, on which to broadcast their message to the world. This high-tech carpet bombing grabs the interest way beyond the boxing audience. Stadium fights in England have become the perfect excuse for the lads to go on gung-ho Saturday nights out, bolstering a sell-out crowd in north London between pre-and-post-match visits to the boozer. One curiosity of these occasions is that once inside the ground, the mates tend to keep only half an eye on the action while joking and laughing among themselves. Nevermind the quality. Love the craic. It matters not that when Hearn trumpets the 28-year-old Benn and 35-year-old Eubank as 'two world-class boxers in their prime' he pushes hype closer to hysteria. Benn appears to buy into the gym narcissism when he declares himself 'shocked' to be told that he is the underdog in the betting. There is nothing in his resume to suggest that he walks with the gods of the ring. His unbeaten record has been built on novices, journeymen and veterans. Eubank's three defeats were inflicted by Brits of world-championship pedigree. Narrowly by Billy Joe Saunders, comprehensively by George Groves and concussively by Liam Smith. The latter he avenged in similar knockout fashion. He also holds a victory over James DeGale. None of which rules out the possibility of an entertaining contest. Not only superstars put on a good show. Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti came together equally matched at their level and produced one of the most thrilling trilogies ever. The contrast in styles between the laconic Eubank and the feisty Benn might strike a match worth watching, even if they are unlikely to reach the heights of their fathers over two classics which, for the moment, has the rival dynasties on one knockout win by Eubank and one draw. So how will that score stand after tonight? Benn can train like a maniac, which he has, and fight like a whirling dervish, which he will, but is that enough to overcome Eubank's store of experience, his superior skillset and his advantages in height, reach and natural-born weight? This, one of the oldest mantras of the hardest game, says not: A good big'un always beats a good little'un. Amend that slightly and you have your prediction: An average bigger'un beats an average smaller'un. Whatever happens inside the ring, Hearn and Shalom will be praying the lads have a good night out. The sale of 60,000 tickets in a matter of hours has Fast Eddie and Slick Benny talking already about a rematch, before the first punch is thrown in anger. Maybe there will even be a trilogy which never materialised for their fathers.
Telegraph
25-02-2025
- Sport
- Telegraph
Watch: Chris Eubank Jnr hits Conor Benn in face with egg
Chris Eubank Jnr left his bitter rival Conor Benn with egg on his face as their Manchester face-off descended into bedlam. As the rivals went face to face to promote their grudge match at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in April, the press conference took a bizarre, farcical twist. Benn, who tested positive for the banned substance clomifene in 2022, was cleared by the WBC in 2023 after it said an ' elevated consumption of eggs ' was a 'reasonable explanation' for his adverse finding. That was the source of Eubank Jnr's unique attack at the end of the news conference, which almost prompted a brawl – with both boxers held back by security. Benn, 28, was only recently cleared to fight, and will box Eubank Jnr, 35, on April 26. The Britons will clash more than 30 years after their fathers, Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank Snr, settled their bitter rivalry. Eubank Snr beat Benn in 1990, before they fought to a draw in 1993. IT'S ALL KICKED OFF! ‼️ Chris Eubank Jr. SLAPS Conor Benn during intense face-off 💥 — Sky Sports Boxing (@SkySportsBoxing) February 25, 2025 Even before the egg slap, the press conference was fraught with tension, with barbs flying from both men and their promoters. Eubank Jnr began by suggesting he and Benn should be sat closer together, which the latter refused, saying: 'I don't know who you think you're talking to, silly b****cks.' When Benn's promoter Eddie Hearn tried to intervene, he was shut down by Eubank Jnr, who said: 'Eddie, you know I don't like you, right? So if you know that, what on God's sweet earth makes you think I'm gonna listen to anything you have to say?' After being taken off stage, Benn wrote on X: 'That's the only shot you'll land on me you f****** p****. 2 rounds you are finished @ChrisEubankJr.' Apparently egg contamination was the reason for his two failed drugs tests. So I contaminated him with an egg — Chris Eubank Jr (@ChrisEubankJr) February 25, 2025
