“The noise, it’s been amazing,” said Eddie Hearn, when asked what it was about the build-up to the grudge fight on April 26 between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jnr that made it stand out to him. “I mean, couldn’t have gone better, really, away from the physical egg situation.”
The egg situation Hearn refers to was that now-infamous flashpoint when Eubank Jnr cracked an egg off Benn’s face in the first press conference to announce their contest at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. Eubank Jnr was later hit with a fine of £100,000 (approximately $125,000).
“I always think, in these things, that it’s really a case of one rule for one and one rule for the other,” said Hearn, who has promoted Benn throughout his career. “I mean, I was listening to Simon Jordan [on talkSPORT], who’s like, ‘I don’t see the issue with it. I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s only an egg’. Can you imagine if Conor Benn would have done that? I mean, [Jordan] would have been, ‘The fight should be off’, you know, etc. I understand the world we live in now, where it’s kind of acceptable, but for me, I never feel like you should strike an opponent.
“But it’s made the fight bigger – on another level. And, like, that’s what Eubank does really well. He’s got a way of creating headlines that is just above and beyond the norm. Actually, [striking Benn was] a little bit out of character for him, if I’m honest. I would never expect him to actually lay hands on someone. He’s never really been that kind of guy. I think that’s a mix of a little bit of a personal vendetta and a mix of a showman wanting to make this fight as big as possible.”
It is personal between the fighters. Clips went viral of their appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, a sure-fire sign that this is a big event and one that crosses over into the mainstream. It has not garnered the same attention in the U.S., or worldwide, but it doesn’t need to, as evidenced by the more than 60,000 tickets sold after their two-city press tour to publicize the event.
There was no similar skirmish when they met two days after egg-gate in Manchester, when they came face-to-face at the fight venue.
“Conor was really calm [in London], if I’m honest,” revealed Hearn. “I do feel like Eubank was really good at both pressers. He really wanted to hammer home his points, you know what I mean? I’ve not really seen him like that before. And, also, if you watch back the clip where he hit Conor, it was quite aggressive. It was like there was anger in there.”
This fight, of course, is years in the making. Not only were their fighting fathers bitter rivals – Chris Eubank Snr and Nigel Benn shared two hard fights as they etched their names into British fight history – but their sons were due to fight in 2022.
Then Conor Benn failed two drugs tests, when testing positive for the banned substance clomiphene, battled to clear his name, and now everything is back on – only bigger than it was before.
And while Benn has always been with Hearn, Eubank Jnr has mixed and matched promoters depending on money and opportunity. He has gone out of his way to lambast many a promoter, and on the press tour he set his sights on Hearn.
“I mean, he wouldn’t let me speak,” Hearn went on. “But, when I did, I would say to him, ‘I want to know, do you actually want to win this fight?’ I know, obviously, you want to win but how bad? Because I kind of feel like he’s purely about the money at this stage. Conor is so desperate to win this fight and actually beat him up to a point where he’s probably just got to stay calm because you don’t want to fight off pure emotion.
“I think the perception will be Eubank [came out on top of the press week]. But having seen Conor, I’m not so sure. The only time I saw Conor lose his head was for the 15 minutes where he got whacked. And, that’s justifiable. All he wants to do is get back into training camp.”
Benn is training in Mallorca, with his trainer Tony Sims, and while the animosity between the camps is legitimate and lucrative, Hearn, along with many others, found it captivating.
After Eubank Jnr slammed the egg into Benn, Benn’s father tried to grab Eubank Jnr by the throat. That followed a segment when Conor, flanked by his father, taunted Eubank Jnr for not having his father alongside him in support, publicly questioning the relationship between father and son in the opposite corner.
“So it’s quite personal,” said Hearn. “Eubank did a lot of stuff that was out of character, so there has to be a reason for that.
“He never really gave the perception that he was rattled, but I thought the Nigel Benn stuff was quite wild, where he was saying, ‘Don’t put your hands on me again [to Nigel Benn]…’. Obviously, you tend to respect your elders and also especially ones that have achieved what Nigel has achieved in sport. And [Eubank Jnr] whacked his son. [Nigel Benn] just grabbed him, which, you know, I think is fair cop, fair game.”
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, is on The Ring ratings panel and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
