2 hours ago
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Boxing has always been a deeply cynical business. The overwhelming objective for most promoters, and many fighters, is to rake in as much money as quickly as possible without any undue concern about looking crass or desperate.
Anyone who has spent just a little time in the company of boxers will understand that they deserve whatever cash they can make out of such a hard and dangerous activity. But promoters have ransacked the pockets of boxing fans through the decades while peddling anything and everything from Joe Louis’s “Bum of the Month” club to this week’s proposal that Anthony Joshua may make tens of millions of dollars if he steps into the ring to face Jake Paul, the former YouTuber, next month.
Saturday night’s rematch between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr is a little different. They shared the ring in April and that fight, which showcased their bravery and resilience, took chunks out of both men. Eubank Jr spent two nights in hospital recovering from the ravaging weight cut and rehydration clause which limited him to adding just 10lb after the official weigh-in. Benn was also taken to hospital after a gruelling battle but was discharged that same night.
Eubank Jr, however, had won the fight clearly on all three scorecards by the identical margin of 116-112. There really is no need, apart from making more money, for this rematch between two fighters who usually operate in different weight classes. Benn is a welterweight and Eubank Jr, a natural middleweight, has fought often at super-middleweight. This means that they have been separated, at times, by three divisions.
If either of them had a different father even the suggestion of a fight between them would not have been uttered by any promoter. But their iconic British boxing family names, built on the genuine rivalry and superior fighting pedigree of Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank Sr, means that the sons are shoehorned back into another artificial contest.
It makes commercial sense for everyone involved. Neither Benn nor Eubank Jr would make as much money against any other fighter in their own weight category – and they both operate on the more limited margins of world-class boxing.
Eubank Jr is the bigger man and the more accomplished and experienced technician who has faced a higher calibre of opposition. He missed the middleweight limit by 0.05lb and was fined £375,000 before the fight in April, but avoided any hiccups this time. He is, however, diminished by having to adhere to the damaging rehydration clause which he agreed to as a way of squeezing some more money out of the promotion. Also, Eubank Jr is 36 and incapable of fighting three-minute rounds at a relatively brisk tempo. He can just about manage a couple of minutes while needing to rest or coast through at least a third of each round.
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Benn, who recently turned 29, cuts a far-less worn figure in the ring. But even his biggest supporter, his father, lamented the crudity of his wild slugging in the first fight which meant he missed Eubank Jr more often than he caught him. Benn has promised to be much more clinical and disciplined in the rematch but his prospects are still pinned on the hope that Eubank Jr has gone to the well one time too many and ended up a husk of the man who won decisively in April.
That lingering uncertainty is the main point of intrigue now. But using a weight cut and the erosion of time as a key sales pitch in persuading the hapless punter to shell out a £25 pay-per-view fee, on top of a Dazn subscription, feels like another low in boxing’s shameless hucksterism.
