Chris Eubank Jnr dropped Kamil Szeremeta four times en route to scoring a seventh-round knockout before getting into a brief post-fight shoving match with Conor Benn in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs), in his first outing since stopping Liam Smith in 10 in September 2024, opened strongly, flashing sharp, snappy jabs and suddenly uncorking a straight right over Szeremeta’s low left and into the Pole’s jaw, dropping him to his knees in the opening round. Eubank showed tremendous punch variety early and seemed to be landing with everything, but one brief moment near the end of the round brought a warning sign when Eubank dropped his hands and Szeremeta drilled him with a right hand.
Indeed, Szeremeta (25-3-2, 8 KOs) had his moments throughout, but they were infrequent and packed too little power to dissuade Eubank, fighting for the first time with Johnathon Banks in his corner — and with a SNAC logo on his shorts advertising his relationship with Victor Conte.
Eubank looked the bigger, stronger fighter throughout, but by round four appeared to be falling a little too in love with his power shots and showed a little sloppiness. After the third, Banks urged him to shorten up his punches; Eubank promptly ignored him and spent much of the fourth throwing every punch with bad intentions, and particularly looking to land uppercuts to Szeremeta’s body and his head.
In doing so he left himself a little open to Szeremeta’s right hands in the fifth, but in the sixth Eubank fought with greater intensity. A hook to the body followed by a right hand upstairs dropped Szeremeta again, and the Polish fighter came out for the seventh on the edge of defeat.
In the event, it was a pair of body shots that brought the contest to an end in the seventh — two right hands to the solar plexus dropped Szeremeta to his knees, the second prompting the stoppage at 1.50 of the round.
“I was having fun in there,” said Eubank, like Szeremeta aged35, afterwards. “To be honest, I could have finished it in round one… Szeremeta is a tough guy. This guy kept coming. So I thought, ‘You know what? Body shots are the way to go.’”
One person who professed himself unimpressed was Benn, who jumped into the ring and jawed with his rival, seemingly setting them up to continue their fathers’ rivalry next.
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