Death of a Prizefight: Conor Benn-Chris Eubank Jnr, two years on

On this day (October 8) two years ago Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jnr were supposed to fight each other at The O2 Arena in London. To try to imagine this now, one can’t help but think a venue like that, which holds just shy of 20,000 people, would be a venue too small for a fight so big. Yet that is the power of both time and controversy. Whereas two years ago Benn vs. Eubank Jnr was just a fight predicated on the fame of both fighters’ fathers, now, in 2024, it is considered not only a talking point but a tipping point in British boxing. 

In fact, when you look at the sport in Britain today, there is a clear distinction between what came before Benn-Eubank Jnr and what came after it. In 2022, the pre-Benn-Eubank Jnr era, we could, as fans, cope with a cynical cash-grab fight between a welterweight and a super-middleweight, but what we didn’t like was what we experienced during fight week. What we didn’t like was to be told that one of the boxers, in this case Conor Benn, had failed a performance-enhancing drug test – two of them [for clomiphene] – and yet could still possibly fight. For most people, the idea of that didn’t fly, and even so much as entertaining it hinted at a lawlessness in boxing we each try to convince ourselves doesn’t exist. 

Indeed, who can forget that Wednesday media workout? It was there, just 24 hours after the news was broken by the Daily Mail’s Riath Al-Samarrai, that both Benn and Eubank Jnr, as well as their respective promoters, feigned ignorance and expressed a desire to continue as before, business as usual. It was there, too, that various pundits were tasked with discussing the fight as though it could still happen, with a certain sadness – or death – in their eyes the rest had managed to conceal. Perhaps closing your eyes will enable you to do that. Perhaps opening them is where the pundits went wrong. 

At any rate, the fight at that stage was not Benn vs. Eubank Jnr but more to do with ensuring that it went ahead; a concept as ludicrous now as it appeared back then. Back then, the people involved had to some extent taken the failed drug test personally and now wanted to wield and reaffirm their own power in the situation. An injury is one thing, as far as reasons to cancel, but to be told by another authority figure that there is a problem and that the fight should not happen was, to some, tantamount to disrespect. It is then that pride and ego enters the equation. It is then small print is studied. It is then everybody is liable to lose sight of what really matters: the health of two boxers. 

The health of a boxer is at stake every time they enter a ring, of course, but also at stake here was a lot of money, even a potential franchise. Already they had the posters, the taglines, and the then-and-now montages. Already they were thinking about the rematch, and the trilogy fight, and events in great big stadiums. 

This, you see, was not a one-night thing. It had been years in the making, it had been thoroughly planned out, and even if the ones doing most of the legwork and heavy lifting were Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn, two retired men in their fifties, this had no bearing on the hunger of those involved in this latest iteration to make obscene amounts of money. The promoters wanted it, the managers wanted it, the trainers wanted it, and the fighters wanted it. It was all there in front of them, so close they could smell it, and yet suddenly the shell had cracked and it was rotten inside, the stench unbearable. Worse than that, everyone involved in the clean-up operation soon came to realise how difficult it is to scrub spilled egg yolk from either a counter or a floor, or indeed people’s minds. You need salt, that’s the trick. Salt provides a surface for the gooey egg to stick to, and makes gathering the egg a lot easier.

Here, though, salt was being used for a different purpose. It wasn’t being used to fix but was instead rubbed into the open wound on the knee of British boxing. A little more was then added each time one of the men involved in the fight opened their mouth in an interview and proceeded to tell us things were going to be okay. It was, in those moments, not only being rubbed in an open wound but being thrown at us, our eyes the target. 

The aim, perhaps, was to blind us to the machinations and hope we were so invested in the fight itself that we wouldn’t care how it came about or what dispensations had to be made in order for it to still go ahead. But, of course, this was missing the point entirely. The fight, regardless of its size and its earning potential, simply could not go ahead, regardless of the effort. For it to go ahead the men involved would have to risk far more than just their money and pride. They would have to run the risk of it all going wrong on the night and one of the two boxers getting seriously injured or killed. The answer to that inevitable question is the one answer each of the men involved lacked and no amount of talking, or conferring, could hide this. Similarly, even if the fight did go off without incident, by circumnavigating certain authorities and discarding certain results, the people behind Benn vs. Eubank Jnr would have both set a worrying precedent and undermined the fragile scaffolding that just about keeps everything in British boxing in place. 

Which is why, when Benn vs. Eubank Jnr was finally cancelled, the collective sigh of relief was as loud and profound as the initial groan which greeted news of the failed drug test. It was disappointing, yes, to see British boxing receive another black eye, but the sheer relief of knowing we could continue to see this thing as a sport was greater than any disappointment. If, after all, the fight had gone ahead, it would have been incredibly difficult to view boxing in a post-Benn-Eubank Jnr world the same way we viewed it in a pre-Benn-Eubank Jnr world. 

That said, still it has been different, both for us and for them. In terms of the fighters, Conor Benn has watched his career as an exciting welterweight contender descend into one of Piers Morgan interviews, basic motivational quotes/threats, and call-outs to fighters either retired or, for now, out of his league. He has boxed just twice in the last two years, beating Rodolfo Orozco and Peter Dobson over 10 rounds, but has yet to box in Great Britain. 

Eubank Jnr, meanwhile, has been just as aimless of late. He has split two fights with Liam Smith, losing one and winning one, and this weekend boxes the unheralded Kamil Szeremeta in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Interestingly, too, it was during the promotion for this weekend’s fight that he decided to use a press conference as an opportunity to label various promoters, including those connected with the ill-fated fight with Conor Benn, “scumbags”. He called Benn’s promoter a “scumbag” and he also called his own promoter at the time a “scumbag”. He later retracted these statements, it should be noted, but by that time Conor Benn had taken to social media and written the following: “This is coming from the same tit that tried to blackmail me for a mil to get the fight to go ahead. You’ve had numerous different promoters for one reason and that’s because you are a prize prick and I cannot wait to knock that big satsuma head clean off your neck.”

Alas, with those words we are reminded of not only how deep the bad blood between Benn and Eubank Jnr runs, but also of how dirty and unseemly that aborted fight two years ago turned out to be. As ugly as any fight in recent memory, it was a child conceived between warring partners desperate to feel something and yet its birth fixed absolutely nothing whatsoever. Instead, it contrived to do the opposite. It simply shone a light on everything that was wrong with the sport, creating in turn an even greater desperation to compensate for what had been lost. 

If a baby, it was Rosemary’s, and now, to make it right, we look back at Benn vs. Eubank Jnr two years on as a kind of necessary sacrifice. Meaning that for all the misery and doom-mongering that surrounded it, look at what Benn vs. Eubank Jnr has ultimately brought us all. Look at the big fights being made left, right, and centre. Look at all the new revenue streams. Look at how all the promoters now get along, join hands, and chant the same tune.

“Sweet Caroline, good times never seemed so good… [So good! So good!]”