Neither Chris Eubank Jr nor Conor Benn know how they will be received by the crowd when they fight at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium on Saturday night.
Tens of thousands of people booing your name would be hard enough to take anyway, let alone when you carry one of the most famous surnames in British boxing.
The sons of great rivals Chris Eubank Sr and Nigel Benn fight in a Ring Magazine event, live on Sky Sports Box Office.
They have their own demons to face in the fight, they have their own points to prove against each other and to themselves.
They’ll wonder too how they will be judged.
“This is the first mega-fight in boxing history where you have two bad guys,” Eubank told Sky Sports.
“You have the potential for both fighters in a super-fight being booed into the ring. It’s never happened before. It’s probably going to happen on April 26.
“It doesn’t bother me. I relish it and enjoy it,” he added. “It used to confuse and upset me. Now I dream about it. Now I feed off of that energy, I’ve learned to use it to my benefit. I’ve accepted my fate.”
Yet even hardened prizefighters find it hard to resist a basic human sentiment. They want to be loved too.
“There’s been so many times in my career where I thought I was going to be the good guy; the one that was getting the support and getting cheered. It never happened,” Eubank said.
“Every time I had a big win or overcame adversity, or put on a good show, came back from defeat, the very next time I was back in that ring I was getting booed again. So I gave up on that dream many, many, many years ago.
“My fight with Liam Smith where I beat him in the rematch was my kind of last hope of being accepted as somebody that everybody could get behind. The first fight I got booed into the arena, lost the first fight, booed on the way out.
“Six months on got booed back into that same arena, got in the ring against a guy everybody said I couldn’t beat because I was ‘finished’, ‘didn’t have a chin’ and ‘I didn’t want it anymore’. Dominated the fight, had a career best performance. Beat him, stopped him in 10 rounds, shook everybody’s hands, it was respectful, no trash talk.
“I thought ‘now surely I can get a bit of slack’ and the next time I went out in public, Anthony Joshua versus Dubois, I walk into Wembley stadium, 80,000 people, the cameras are on me as I’m walking in. I look up at the screen and all the screens had my face on them as I’m walking in. And the entire stadium boos me.
“So as I’m walking to my seat, I really understood. I’m not that guy, I’m not the golden boy, the one everyone wants to win, the national treasure – I don’t know what they call these guys that everyone is always supporting – but I’m not that. I can never be that. So I have no expectation or hope that I am going to get cheered into Tottenham stadium.”
Conor Benn doesn’t see himself as a ‘bad guy’. He insists he’s not an angry man.
“I’m not angry. I think that’s what people have mistaken. I’m not angry. I’m intense and I’m passionate. You could say maybe I’m a little bit angry. Not with him, I’m just an intense person come fight week. I think it’s always personal when someone’s trying to take something away from you,” Benn told Sky Sports.
“Have I ever lost my composure? Maybe early doors, not now.”
Benn’s public perception has been shaped by the notoriety. He was originally due to box Eubank in 2022, a bout which was called off after his drug test results emerged.
He protested his suspensions and, after two bouts in the USA in the intervening two years, in November his provisional suspension was lifted and the British Boxing Board of Control and UKAD did not appeal, freeing him to box in Britain.
“I felt like I had vindication when I won the first case, the first hearing,” Benn said. “There’s nothing more I can do. There’s nothing more I can say. Ultimately it’s a big story and people just want a story, people want something to gossip about to talk about, but ultimately it’s done. Done.”
“I was definitely broken,” Benn said. “It’s still healing.
“I’ve gone through the hardest fight that anyone can ever go through and that’s just life in my own head.”
By even giving him this fight, Eubank wondered: “Have I done him a favour? I guess you could say that. Without me in terms of business, he doesn’t have anything.
“Everything was taken from him: his credibility, his respect, his name, all thrown away. I’m the only guy that he can make these crazy amounts of money he’s going to make fighting.”
It’s a contest though that Eubank Jr didn’t resist taking.
“This is a fight that’s got too much public interest. People that have no interest in boxing want this fight to happen. It’s become bigger than Conor Benn, and me. History, the story, the legacy of our fathers made this fight massive and now everything that’s played out between me and Conor has made the fight explode even more,” he said.
“Now it really is mainstream, which is great for boxing. I understand that this is the biggest fight of my career for sure and I’m treating it as such.”
Chris Eubank vs Conor Benn will be live on Saturday April 26 on Sky Sports Box Office. Book now!
