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“I feel like I’m going to go home and cry,” Conor Benn said quietly in the early hours of Sunday morning at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. “I think I’m going to cry here. Oh man, it’s been hard.”
Despite the surprising ease with which he had beaten his nemesis Chris Eubank Jr over 12 one-sided rounds on Saturday night, Benn’s face was bruised. But his mouth almost crumpled because of a different struggle locked deep with himself. In 2022, Benn tested positive for clomifene twice in separate tests held months apart from each other.
He reacted angrily then – protesting his innocence vociferously but never producing in public the evidence he said cleared him categorically of intentionally taking a prohibited substance. Benn was in undoubted turmoil but the infamy did not hurt his bank balance.
Benn made a reputed £7.5m seven months ago when he was finally allowed to return to the ring in Britain – but he lost clearly against Eubank Jr in a brutal bout. That defeat was his first as a professional and it hurt far more because it was doled out by a man he claimed then to detest.
He earned even more on Saturday when he apparently took home £8m to Eubank Jr’s £10m. But he did not look like a man with money on his mind. “You go through things in life but you just have to keep fighting,” the 29-year-old said. “Facing your own demons every single day. That’s your hardest fight. You have to live in your head every single day. Getting in the ring is no problem.”
He said his uncharacteristically composed performance was driven by a resentment towards those who doubt him: “It’s the chip on my shoulder, people saying ‘Oh, you can’t box, you can’t do this or that.’ I woke up with that feeling every morning – people think I can’t outbox him for 12 rounds? Watch me. That fuelled me.”
Benn is highly emotional and complex and he admitted that “it’s hard for me to tone it down … but I felt a lot of pressure from my team to get it right. You can’t get it right for eight weeks and not on fight night. You’d be a mug.”
Benn boxed with such authority that he was entitled to remind us that: “I said earlier in the week there was going to be a systematic beat-down and that’s what I done”. At one stage in his domination of Eubank, Benn revealed, “I said to him: ‘This is easy work. Is that all you got?’”
Benn seems determined to move down from middleweight to his natural home at welterweight – where he needs to shed 13 pounds to make the 147 limit. “It’s going to be hard,” he conceded while stressing that his “dream” is to emulate his father, Nigel, by winning the WBC world title.
Eubank Jr had looked severely diminished in the ring but, to his credit, he came out to face the media first. “I’ve been through hell and back to make it here today,” he said, hinting at unspoken “issues” during his long camp. “I genuinely thought that regardless of the issues that I’ve been dealing with, I would be able to go in and win. But from that first round I realised I was mistaken.”
He held our gaze. “I’m a fighter. This is what I do, regardless of the dangers and the risk. We go to war. I tried my best but Conor put on a hell of a fight. I congratulate him.”
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Asked to explain his problems, Eubank shook his head. “No, this night’s about Conor. He fought a great fight and I’m not here to talk about me. He’s a tough man and a great fighter.”
He sounded like a man who was done with boxing. “No, we’re not talking about that. I’m not in a state of mind to be thinking about next fights. I need to heal. I need to deal with what I’m dealing with.”
Someone asked Eubank if he was OK. “I’m alive. I’m happy. I get to do what I love every day, regardless of the trials and tribulations. I’m still fulfilled. So I’m good. I’m OK.”
Eubank has persisted more than most in still asking questions about Benn’s positive drug tests but, with the fight beaten out of him, he was less belligerent and dogged than usual: “If you share a ring with a man for 12 rounds or 24 rounds you have that respect.”
There was relief, too, in the fact that Benn had also run out of animosity. Asked if his vanquished 36-year-old rival should retire Benn said: “He’s got more important things to worry about – with twin boys [who are due to be born soon]. He’s a dad of two now and that’s always a priority. It’s not down to me to say whether or not he should retire.”
Benn reiterated that his long spat with Eubank Jr was “over”. He said: “I feel like we’re done now. I can breathe. This has been three years of my life – hearing Benn-Eubank, Eubank-Benn every single day. It’s good to sit here and say: ‘Yeah, it’s done and I’ve ended it with a win.’ That’s closed. Let’s move on. Let’s just call it a day.”
