Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn may be getting closer to a deal for a 2025 fight.
Chris Eubank Jr has agreed to terms on a purse split for a potential fight in 2025 against Conor Benn, promoter Ben Shalom tells Sky Sports.
Specifically, the 35-year-old Eubank has agreed to a 55/45 split, but Benn, 28, has yet to agree to the same terms. The framing from Shalom is that Eubank (34-3, 25 KO) is making an incredible sacrifice accepting only 55 percent of the split.
“We’ve worked wonders. You ask anyone, they can even see it, this isn’t even close to a 50-50 fight, so the fact he’s managing to compromise on that is hugely generous from him. I’ve done my job, and now it’s time for them to be sensible. The fact they’ve already got us down to that shows how well we’ve done. If the fight doesn’t get made now, then we know what it is.”
Benn (23-0, 14 KO) and his team should be expected to fight tooth and nail to get it to 50/50 or at least closer, though 55/45 could potentially be enough, depending on how badly Benn wants the fight.
The two were slated to meet in the autumn of 2022 before Benn failed a drug test, which began a long and winding and frankly boring series of stories that ultimately ended with Benn returning to the ring for two fights in the United States in Sept. 2023 and Feb. 2024.
Benn, a natural welterweight, fought a bit above that weight for his two most recent bouts, but he’ll have to be heavier against Eubank, who has never fought below 160 lbs as a professional. Eubank agreed to a 157 lb contract weight and a fight morning rehydration clause for the 2022 fight, and to prove a point, comfortably weighed in under the rehydration limit on what would have been the day of the fight.
But the situation is certainly different now, and it would be hard to argue that Eubank needs this fight more than Benn, whose career basically shut down over two years ago. Eubank hasn’t exactly been on fire since, but he’s more or less in the same position now that he was then, while Benn is not.
There would, of course, be significant interest in the fight in the United Kingdom, in part simply because of their last names, and also because the tabloid-adjacent drama of the last two years and change probably doesn’t hurt the marketability of the matchup. The bout has seemed likely to come in 2025 for a while now, but it’s not over the line just yet, and there’s probably a good bit more media posturing to go.
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