Benn vs Eubank Jr was boxing at its finest

Modern boxing disappoints us more often than not. The ‘big’ fights seldom happen. And when they do, they have a bad habit of being quite boring. But when great bouts do occur, as one unquestionably did on Saturday night between Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn, we see just how intoxicating a spectacle boxing can be at its best.

After 12 rounds, in front of more than 60,000 people at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, it was Eubank Jr who had his hand raised in the centre of the ring. All three judges scored the fight eight rounds to four in his favour, a result that few people have disputed. It was lucky they haven’t: at the time of writing, the fighters are metres away from one another at The Royal London Hospital. They don’t need a reason to extend their stay.

Boxing lead-ups are often characterised by phony insults, but there was nothing manufactured about the enmity between Eubank Jr and Benn. The contempt spans decades, going back to when their fathers – Chris Eubank Sr and Nigel Benn – fought twice at middleweight in the early 1990s. When their sons followed their fathers’ paths into the sport, a fight between the pair was inevitable. Like the Montagues and Capulets, the hatred is inter-generational.

Unsurprisingly, it spilled out from the first bell. Benn, the younger fighter at 28, tried to take his opponent’s head off with the first combination he threw. And the second, and the third. Thirty-five-year-old Eubank Jr tried to keep his volcanic adversary at bay behind a jab and lead left-hook, making the most of a notable reach advantage. But it was Benn, something of an unknown quantity leading up to the fight, who looked most likely to make good on his own prediction that he’d score an early knockout.

Eubank Jr is an elegant fighter but one with a notoriously poor defence. Like all contemporary boxers, he seems determined to leave his jaw exposed by keeping his lead hand low. More than a few former professionals believed this defect, combined with Benn’s swarming, aggressive style, would be kryptonite for the older Eubank Jr. Benn landed multiple clean, right-hand punches to Eubank Jr’s jaw in the early rounds. Eubank Jr looked unsteady on his legs, even tackling Benn to the canvas in an attempt to buy himself time.

But by the middle rounds of the fight, Eubank Jr was out in front. He and his team rightly judged that Benn’s ungovernable aggression would wear him out, and when it did, the fight would be on their terms. By round five, Eubank Jr was hitting Benn with his trademark, eye-catching combinations, including a glorious right uppercut. Eubank Jr started to goad Benn, talking to him in the centre of the ring. By round eight, the younger fighter looked completely out of his depth.

Suddenly, the spectre that had haunted the fight for two-and-a-half years materialised in the final, ‘championship’ rounds. Before the fight, Eubank Jr had drained his weight to an unnatural level. On Friday, he had failed by less than an ounce to make this 160-pound limit, leading to a fine of £375,000. A rehydration clause insisted on by Benn’s team, which prevented Eubank Jr from weighing more than 170 pounds on the morning of the fight, made things more difficult still.

It became apparent by the latter rounds that Eubank Jr was exhausted. He was unable to use his jab, which had lacked its usual speed and accuracy from the outset, to establish any kind of distance between himself and Benn. Benn hurt Eubank Jr with a left-hook and suddenly appeared the fresher fighter with momentum when it mattered.

So Eubank Jr did the one thing he wasn’t supposed to, and the one thing no one predicted: he stood toe-to-toe with Benn, fighting him in boxing’s much-loved metaphorical ‘phone booth’. The final rounds were a street fight, only one that was broadcast to millions of people across the world. ‘Punch first, punch last’ is the golden rule in a street fight, and it was Eubank Jr who punched last. In the closing moments of the fight, Benn was unable to respond or to defend himself. Had it gone on for 30 seconds longer the referee would surely have intervened.

Both fighters were so disfigured by the end of the fight they looked almost unrecognisable. The euphoria of Eubank Jr contrasted with the despair of Benn, who wept in his father’s arms in the ring after the verdict. But he had nothing to be ashamed of. Both fighters reminded the world why boxing was once so loved. The unmatched combination of skill, endurance and courage it demands of competitors was on full display.

Unfortunately, much of the British media seem determined to discredit the efforts of both fighters. Eubank Jr has never been liked, while Benn forfeited his golden-boy status when he failed the drug tests that derailed the original 2022 plans for a fight between the pair. ‘Limited skill dwarfed by considerable courage’ was the view of the Guardian, a theme reiterated across much of the media.

The truth is that Eubank Jr is a world-class fighter, no matter how much the British press seems to dislike him. He was a world champion at super-middleweight and has beaten highly regarded world champions like Liam Smith and James DeGale. His losses, beyond a solitary knock-out at the hands of Smith in their first fight, were competitive, close fights against George Groves and Billy Joe Saunders, with defeat against the latter still a source of dispute.

Benn, too, showed he was far from a pedestrian fighter. But that should have been obvious to anyone who saw his knock-out defeat of former world champion Chris Algieri and his points win over the highly respected Peter Dobson. At 28, there is every reason to expect that he too can become a world champion like his legendary father.

Both did the sport a much-needed service on Saturday night. Real boxing is back.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.