So rife are performance-enhancing drugs in boxing, and indeed top-level sport, these days, there is now seemingly an emphasis on providing proof that one is not doing them. This is only encouraged, of course, by the fact that all boxers have social media platforms on which they can post training updates and let the world know when they have been tested – or for that matter when they have not.
As far as indictments go, this behaviour is as sad as VADA (Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency) electing to use social media to congratulate boxers who have delivered negative drugs tests throughout training camp. After all, in an ideal, cleaner world, there would be no need either to prove that a boxer is being routinely tested during training camp or that they are playing by the rules and have resisted the temptation to cheat. There would certainly be no cause for an agency to say, “Well done, boys/girls. Thanks for not cheating.”
As it is, fans nowadays probably need this reassurance. They presumably like it when VADA posts their congratulations-on-not-cheating commendations on social media, and they presumably like it when a boxer takes a picture of their arm with a needle in it and various test tubes standing upright on a nearby table.
The latest to offer this insight was Chris Eubank Jnr, who, on Tuesday, used the old drug-test selfie to not only update his fans and reassure sceptics, but also as a stick with which to beat Conor Benn, his next opponent.
“I’ve been tested twice in one week by Vada Testing,” Eubank Jnr wrote on X on February 18. “Just in case you guys got confused it’s Conor Benn that’s the drug cheat… not me. Leave me in peace #CleanAthlete.”
There was a hint of exasperation in the tone of Eubank Jnr’s message; a sense he is fed up with being pestered by those tasked with testing him. But, more than that, his two visits in a week represented the perfect chance for him to remind both Benn and those who are quick to forget of the reason why their original fight, scheduled for October 8, 2022, never took place. In doing so Eubank Jnr will have hoped to make it clear to Benn that even though they have now patched things up in a business sense – with the pair set to meet on April 26 in London – there is still no scenario in which Benn sheepishly makes his way through the build-up to this fight without his dirty laundry being aired in public at every turn.
Eubank Jnr will know, too, that Benn is not one to sit back and be embarrassed publicly. Indeed, it was not all that long ago that Benn swore to come off social media altogether, only to just as soon renege on this stance when he realised that withdrawing meant he became a man without audience or microphone. Benn is, for better or worse, an emotional character, and there is, for an emotional character, no better place to both emote and self-destruct than on social media.
It came as no shock therefore when Benn, moments after seeing an image of a needle in Eubank Jnr’s arm, responded with one of his own. “I’ve been tested twice this week too you prick,” Benn, ever the wordsmith, also wrote. “In case you forgot I was completely cleared by both the WBC [World Boxing Council] and the NADP [National Anti-Doping Panel] – shame no one will ever be able to clear you of being a wanker.
“3 rounds you are finished.”
Chances are, the process by which one is cleared of being a “wanker” is likely a simpler and less tiresome one than the one Benn dragged British boxing through for two years before getting the result he wanted – whatever that was. By now, in truth, the “Benn is cleared” narrative is so dull and confusing it is not even worth attempting to investigate or decipher what any of it really meant. All we know now, as of February 21, is that Conor Benn is going to box Chris Eubank Jnr on April 26 and that for this fight he will receive more money than he has received for any other.
Whether, in your opinion, that is the logical next step, or reward, for somebody who failed two performance-enhancing drugs tests before a fight against the same opponent is neither here nor there. The fact is, the fight is happening and for all the twists and turns of the “Benn is cleared” saga, this, the latest, is the only one that comes as no surprise. Instead, it is perhaps the single obvious and understandable plot beat of the whole story.
If allowed, Benn was always going to fight Eubank Jnr and Eubank Jnr was always going to want to fight Benn. All they both needed was permission. Now that they have it, they can stop pretending that they have other options and ambitions and that they once had other opponents in mind. They can stop pretending as well that their respective careers amount to more than just this fight both have essentially been waiting to happen for over two years.
When looking at all that has gone on in that time, there is something rather ironic and poetic about the degree of insight and access we now suddenly have to Benn vs. Eubank Jnr; a world once closed and shrouded in secrecy. Where, you might ask, was this access in 2022, or 2023, or even last year? Why is it only now that we are being given information and visual evidence none of us really need? After all, should either of the two boxers mess up this time around, given everything that happened in the past, there is surely no helping them.
Of common sense we, the audience, require no evidence. Nor do we need to know that Benn and Eubank Jnr are simply behaving and playing by the rules. That kind of energy, the kind displayed by both on social media this week, would have been useful back in 2022, but in 2025 it is almost mocking, cruel. It is, in the end, too little, too late; something true of both these latest images and the fight itself.
Read the full article here
