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JEFF POWELL: How a personality clash sparked the bitter Eubank and Benn family feud spanning more than 30 years

Дата публикации: 23-04-2025 22:17:36

JEFF POWELL: In The Names Of Their Fathers - so the promo goes - Chris Eubank Junior and Conor Benn box on a football pitch on Saturday, just as Chris Senior and Nigel Benn did.

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In The Names Of Their Fathers - so the promo goes - Chris Eubank Junior and Conor Benn box on a football pitch on Saturday night. Just as Chris Senior and Nigel Benn did at Old Trafford more than 30 years ago.

The sons will bag a netful of booty at The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. At £10million for Eubank and £8m for Benn, approximately 25 times more than their dads earned from each of their two fights.

Time to remind the offspring of two great British fighters what will be expected of them by the 60,000 crowd, millions of TV subscribers and the Saudi Arabian paymasters. The clearest optic is through a nostalgic lens on the performances of their dads against each other in the early Nineties.

Benn was born and bred in Ilford then served with the army in Germany and Northern Ireland. Eubank was born in Dulwich, spent his first six years in Jamaica and then endured a scant, bullied education in London’s poorer quarters before learning to box in the Bronx.

Benn exploded on to the boxing scene, battering his first 22 opponents. Eubank opened his professional career with five points victories in Atlantic City before returning to England to begin adding knockouts to his record. Benn was a force of nature, Eubank a quick learner determined to improve himself as a person as well as in the ring.

The nicknames say everything about their differences. Benn - The Dark Destroyer - remains rough around the edges, still, at 59, up for a fight. Eubank - Simply The Best - acquired a lisping, upper-class accent, a taste for wearing jodhpurs, riding boots, bowler hats and a monocle and carrying a silver-handled cane.

Nigel Benn (left) and Chris Eubank (right) had one of boxing's most captivating rivalries

Eubank won the first fight and the second was a less brutal affair, ending in a draw

Pictured with his monocle, Eubank's persona wound up Benn and they were polar opposites

On November 18, 1990 at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham a festering grudge between Eubank Sr and Benn the Elder exploded. Team Benn arranged to sabotage Eubank’s ring-walk accompaniment, Tina Turner’s Simply The Best, as it started playing. 

Eubank infuriated Benn with his trademark vault over the ropes on to the canvas and, not for the first time, each threatened to knock the other out — Benn through teeth gritted, Eubank with his acquired lisp, as he postured in his provocative, theatrical manner.

What followed was an epic battle for Benn’s WBO world middleweight title which the third man in the ring, Richard Steele, described as, ‘the most dramatic fight I’ve refereed’.

Eubank came out at the bell crab-like, sideways and the first of many crisp rights surprised Benn, who set to chasing his sworn enemy around the ring. 

He caught up with him in the fourth, landing a huge, right uppercut which caused Eubank to bite his tongue so severely that he swallowed a flood of blood for the rest of the fight for fear it might be stopped if seen by his corner or Steele.

So urgent was his response that by the end of the fifth one of Benn’s eyes was virtually closed and the other swelling. 

An overhand right dropped Eubank early in the eighth but he recovered to finish the round so strongly that he preened rather than sit on his stool before the ninth provided a monumental climax to an epic fight.

Eubank pranced out only to be put down again, this time by a left hook. Fearing two knock downs might count against him, he went after Benn with a vengeance, staggering him with combinations then pinning him under a barrage of blows so heavy that Steele waved it off with five seconds remaining.

Chris Eubank Jr (left) and Conor Benn (right) do battle just as their fathers did on Saturday

Benn lifts Eubank up in the air during their 1990 clash for the WBO middleweight title 

For three years Britain’s boxing public clamoured for a rematch. And those calls were answered by American promoter Don King hiring Old Trafford for the chill, damp night of October 9, 1993.

That second edition was less brutal, albeit more scientific. It ended in the spirited draw with which Benn retained the WBC world super-middleweight title he had collected in the interim and had heavier impact on the future of both men and UK boxing. Unbelievably, King overlooked putting a rematch clause into the contracts even though he had pledged to sign both winner and loser.

Diagnosed bi-polar after retiring, Benn would go on to have a tormented time. He attempted suicide in 1999 in despair at sex addiction and how that, as well as dabbling with drugs, was damaging his wife and family.

He has found new purpose in Australia, where he works with children’s charities and raises funds for boxing gyms.

Eubank’s anti-war activism led him to be arrested for driving a truck around Parliament Square bearing flags condemning Tony Blair for sending troops to Iraq. Although bankrupted as a result of his extravagance and two divorces, he is an ambassador for gambling charity GamCare.

Despite those disparate personalities their responses to inflicting horrific, life-altering damage to opponents were equally full of compassion.

Eubank was an anti-war activist and condemned Tony Blair for sending troops to Iraq

Benn, pictured on his custom Mercedes in 1992, was united with Eubank by sport but they are not friends

In June 1991 at Tottenham’s White Lane Stadium, Michael Watson, collapsed 29 seconds into the final round of his second fight with Eubank. During 40 days in a coma, Watson underwent six brain operations and it was eight years before he regained his sight, his speech and the ability to walk with sticks. Eubank paid constant attention to his recovery and walked with Watson on his six-day London Marathon.

In February 1995 at the London Arena one of the most feared punchers in the world, Gerald McClellan, came to challenge Benn for his WBC middleweight title. Out on his feet in the 10th round, the referee waved it off in Benn’s favour. Four weeks in a coma and extensive brain surgery later the American went home virtually blind, deaf and confined to a wheelchair. Benn still monitors his recovery and organised a dinner to help pay for McClellan’s health care.

They are united by their sport but are not friends. Privately, they respect each other’s skill and courage, if not their personas.

They are unlikely to be found dining together this fight week. Some family feuds never end.

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