Boxing is a game of bluff. Of move and counter-measure. Feints and fakes, distraction and deception. But beneath all of that, there remains the truth.
Chris Eubank Jr knows that game. He is a poker player and has never been a man who was easy to read. But he is always capable of unveiling a surprise. Ahead of the most important fight of his life, he went all in. He showed his hand.
Eubank’s inner life is closely guarded. Not a man ever prone to small talk, he doesn’t reveal his true feelings until he chooses. This was the time.
A boxing press conference, especially one featuring Eubank, is usually a stage for bombast, a platform for presenting a carefully curated image of oneself.
But Eubank, as he grinds away the final few pounds to make weight on Friday, sheared off the veneer.
In front of this Saturday’s opponent, his personal rival Conor Benn and the son of his father’s great rival Nigel Benn, he spoke disarmingly of his most acute vulnerabilities, the psychological wounds that any fighter would want to shroud in secret privacy, at least until the next contest was done.
Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn’s head-to-head at the final press conference was policed by a huge security presence as words were exchanged.
But, disarmingly, Eubank sat at the final press conference and spoke of grief and confusion and the worst kind of pain.
He spoke of his brother Sebastian, who died in Dubai, and left a young son to grow up without him. He spoke of the rupture in his relationship with his own father, which has come under more scrutiny than ever before with the approach of this particular fight.
Eubank Jr is the son of a boxing superstar. But he has not lived a life of ease. He’s seen his family lose a fortune and gone out to win it back. He’s faced tragedy in his life, and near tragedy in the ring when Nick Blackwell collapsed with a brain injury after their bout.
All these wounds leave their scars.
“Going through the life experiences that I’ve gone through, from a very early age, from 12, 13, 14, dealing with things that are not ordinary, it shapes you,” Eubank told Sky Sports. “It turned me cold.
Sky Sports’ Johnny Nelson explains how a smaller ring may affect the Sky Sports Box Office fight between Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn.
“It shapes your mind and spirit. I guess you could say it killed any type of real emotion that I had.
“I don’t say that as a bad thing because it’s enabled me to do the things I’ve done in boxing. It’s enabled me to get through these things, these very painful and hard situations and it’s also enabled me to be able to be so calm in such hostile and excitable situations.
“My heartbeat doesn’t change, doesn’t move, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in front of me.
“I don’t waste energy, I’m very, very calculated with what I do and how I feel. For better or for worse, that’s made me who I am today.”
Eubank Jr has a cold fury of his own, while Benn is aggressive, in his public pronouncements and his fighting style. That doesn’t leave much impression on Eubank.
“It doesn’t really work outside of the ring, not against guys like me who understand how to control emotions and how to speak,” he said.
Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr showed off their quick hands when hitting the pads at their media workout before their big fight.
“That doesn’t scare guys like me. You can scare normal people with that attitude. But guys who have been hurt so many times, as I have, guys who have been through so many painful situations, in boxing and in life, you can’t scare them, intimidate them with aggression.
“You’re not going to do anything to me that hasn’t been done to me 20 times worse, a hundred times before. But as a young kid, a young undefeated kid, he doesn’t understand it. You just want to be big and bad and tough.”
But Eubank added: “That’s the attitude he really needs to have going into this fight. He needs to have that confidence, that brashness, that disregard for anything and anybody except for what he wants to do, which is have a tear-up. That’s what’s going to make this fight so exciting.”
However Benn, in Eubank’s estimation, hasn’t broken out of his father’s shadow.
“No, he hasn’t. He’s still unproven and I’m not unproven. I’ve had 37 fights, a lifetime of fights. People know what I am, what I’m capable of,” he said. “I am my own man.
Chris Eubank Jr continued his tactics of relentlessly interrupting Eddie Hearn until the promoter decided to exit the press conference stage.
“At the beginning of my career, I was Chris Eubank’s son. Now no one calls me that, I’m never introduced as that because I’ve walked my own path, made my own way in this sport. Something that you can’t do just being the son of someone.
“The fight game is too real,” he continued. “If you’re pretending in any way, shape or form, you’re going to get found out, you’re going to get hurt and you’re going to lose.
“You’re not going to make it if you’re not real. If you’re not true to yourself, who you are as a man, who you are as a fighter, you don’t get to where I’ve got to.
“Conor Benn still has a lot to live up to, a lot to prove. He’s had a great start; he’s undefeated, he’s got the fanbase, he’s got the following. But he still hasn’t been in there with ‘killers’. I have and I am one myself.
“This will be the first time he’s in there with a genuinely dangerous man. How’s he going to deal with it?”
Chris Eubank vs Conor Benn will be live on Saturday April 26 on Sky Sports Box Office. Book now!
