For all the bitterness and rancour that has pockmarked the buildup to their long-awaited collision at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday night, they are not so very different, Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr.
Most obviously, both have famous fathers, without whom they would never have crossed paths in the ring.
Separated by two weight classes, their confected rivalry is based purely on the public appetite for the rekindling of an ancient grudge, for a modern-day rerun of the brutal scrap between Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank Sr in 1990, and the controversial draw that followed when the pair squared off again three years later.
Those battles went a long way to ensuring their offspring benefited from a more privileged upbringing than they enjoyed – and yet, paradoxically, Benn and Eubank Jr have both faced challenges born partly of their fathers’ success.
Both were privately educated. Both betray signs of that background when the brickbats and bravado subside for long enough. Both exhibited problematic behaviour in their youth and spent time abroad. And in both cases, the father-son dynamic has been complex and sometimes tortured.
Neither man would much care for such parallels. Both have shown contempt for the idea that they owe everything to the privilege and wealth into which they were born (and never mind that both have used the family name to their advantage when it suited).
Nigel Benn, left, poses with his son Conor on the pitch at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after the announcement of his showdown with Chris Eubank Jr in February
During a golden era of British boxing, Nigel Benn, left, and Chris Eubank, right, shared one of the sport’s most captivating rivalries
Now their sons, Chris Eubank Jr, left, and Benn, right, are set to rekindle the grudge
‘Obviously our dads are legends in the game, and maybe we both have a chip on our shoulder because we’re called nepo kids, but other than that we have zero in common,’ Benn insisted in a recent interview with the Times.
Yet the evidence would suggest otherwise.
Benn grew up in a gated, eight-bedroom mansion in Mallorca complete with a swimming pool. He had a Jacuzzi in his room and a balcony with a sea view. Designer labels and high-end cars were the norm.
Eubank Jr grew up in a gated £4 million mock Tudor home in Hove, East Sussex. There was no swimming pool – although his father, unable to build one at his main home, did acquire one nearby. There was, however, a huge sunken bathtub and a sea view. And while there no Porsches or Ferraris on the drive, there was Eubank Sr’s huge blue American Peterbilt 379 truck, complete with the number plate ‘1 KO’.
In short, Benn and Eubank Jr were raised in circumstances far removed from the classic prizefighter’s path from rags to renown. Theirs is not a tale of penury and privation overcome; there is no sense here that odds are being defied.
But that is not to say that the lives of both men have not been significantly less idyllic than outward appearances might suggest.
When Nigel Benn moved to Mallorca in November 2002, he did so for a reason. Years of womanising had almost cost him his marriage and driven him to a near-fatal state of despair, but he found God and was determined to put the past behind him. He became part of a local church; Conor became part of a well-to-do school run by that church.
It made for a childhood in which thoughts of heaven and hell, angels and devils, apocalypse and antichrist, weighed heavily. His innate impishness convinced the school he needed ‘deliverance’.
Nigel Benn is pictured sitting on his custom Mercedes in 1992. The former champion moved to Mallorca in November 2002 in a failed attempt to escape his personal demons
Benn is seen with wife Victoria, a radio personality and model, in a snap shared on social media
Eubank Jnr, left, will have to make do without his father in his corner when he faces Benn
‘It was a private, privileged school,’ Benn told the Guardian. ‘It was so difficult and so mad it troubled me for a long time. My dad needed that kind of harshness because he had so many problems. But I was just a kid.’
Worse yet, it was all for nothing. Nigel could not outrun his past and, unbeknown to the family, he had returned to his old ways.
When he confessed to his wife, Carolyne, she threw him out of the house. He would not return for a year; when he did, Benn was almost as furious with his mother as he was with his dad.
Infused with resentment that he should be under the moral lens at school when his parents’ behaviour at home was falling so short of religious precept, he fell in with the wrong crowd. His parents responded by sending him back to Britain for several months. He was 14 at the time.
‘They didn’t want me to come back to Spain, because I was just a problem,’ said Benn.
A rapprochement and a family move to Australia followed but, while the scenery changed, the sense of hurt lingered.
There was an angry sparring session between father and son when the latter was aged 16 – Benn received a chipped tooth for his troubles – but things came to a head when Benn was arrested in Sydney two years later.
The details remain sketchy, but the incident led to a reconciliation with his disciplinarian father, who offered love and support rather than criticism.
Chris Eubank Sr is pictured with an infant Junior. The pair would bond through boxing, but it now represents a source of division between them
Benn’s father Nigel has been by his side every step of the way during his training camp
Benn goaded Eubank Jr at Thursday’s press conference. He made the required weight comfortably on Friday, while his rival came in less than an ounce over the limit
‘I went home and told him what happened,’ said Benn. ‘He just said, ‘”You’re going to be all right, it’s OK, just hug me, I’ve got you.” From that moment, our relationship was instantly on the mend.’
Benn would probably not care to admit it, but there are strong echoes of his own early life in Eubank Jr’s story, for he too was sent abroad as a teenager after keeping questionable company.
By day, Junior was a student at Brighton College, a leading independent school. By night, he was a gang enforcer involved in regular street fights, a fact that came to light when old footage of an underground car park brawl resurfaced last year.
‘I don’t know how it happened, but I was a street kid,’ Eubank Jr told the rapper and boxing enthusiast Castillo in an interview for The Main Event last year. ‘I was a road man that was going home to a million-pound mansion every night.
‘It doesn’t make sense, but that video in the car park, I was doing that every other week, I was in a scrap like that. I was an enforcer in a gang in Brighton. At 15-, 16-years-old everybody’s doing stupid s***. It’s just what you had to deal with or what you are as a kid. You don’t know better.’
It was around then that Eubank Jr’s parents decided to send him to live in the United States with his late brother, Sebastian, who was 16 and a promising footballer.
But the move may not have been purely an attempt by concerned parents to take their son out of harm’s way.
Press reports at the time suggested the Eubanks had allowed their children to be formally adopted by Irene Hutton, a 51-year-old divorcee from Las Vegas whom Eubank Sr first met in a hotel lounge in Paris.
Eubank Jr was a student at Brighton College, one of the UK’s leading independent schools
The Eubanks are seen during a media workout at Cheetahs Gym in Brighton in 2015. Their relationship has since taken a downward turn, with father branding son a ‘disgrace’
Hutton claimed Eubank Sr and his wife, Karron, wanted the boys to grow up Stateside and asked her to keep the arrangement a secret. But that version of events has been disputed by the Eubanks.
Karron later claimed the real intention was to secure American citizenship for the boys and advance their sporting careers, while Eubank Jr has said they were simply staying with Hutton temporarily.
‘It’s not true what the newspapers said that my old man gave me away,’ he told the Telegraph. ‘She wasn’t a stranger, they had been in contact for a while and they carried each other’s trust. They were friends.
‘We lived with her. I graduated from high school and actually got a scholarship to the University of Nevada. I always regret not going to college in the US, but I had to come back to England to box.’
Whatever the reality of the episode, it proved an invaluable stepping stone in Eubank Jr’s rise, enabling him to spar regularly with former world champions like Zab Judah and Chad Dawson, and train with boxing legend Floyd Mayweather.
Unlike Benn, Eubank Jr emerged from his team overseas with his relationship with his father intact.
Yet their bond would prove no more immune to fracture than the Benns’, a fact that has been laid bare in the buildup to this week’s hostilities.
The pair have locked horns about a blurring of the lines between guidance and control, with Conor keen to emerge from his father’s shadow and take control of his own destiny, and Eubank Sr has not appeared in his son’s corner since 2019.
But the major battleground has been the showdown with Benn, which Eubank Sr has vociferously opposed over concerns about weight management and the associated health risks, even branding his son a ‘disgrace’ for taking on a bout that will traverse two different weight classes.
Eubank Jr missed the middleweight limit by half an ounce and will now have to pay a $500,000 fine ahead of Saturday’s fight with Benn
Given Junior’s failure to make the required weight on Friday – at 160.05lb, he was a fraction above the 160lb limit, triggering a $500,000 (£375,000) fine – Eubank Sr may have a point.
It should also be acknowledged that the 58-year-old’s anxiety not to see Eubank Jr hurt has been heightened by the death of his son Sebastian, who drowned after suffering a heart attack while swimming in the sea in Dubai in 2021.
Either way, to Junior’s disappointment, Eubank Sr will not be in his son’s corner come fight night – just as Nigel was absent from Conor’s team before the cancelled bout between the pair in 2022.
It is further evidence that a gilded upbringing can be a mixed blessing; that reflected glory can both help and hinder.
The Ring Magazine’s first-ever boxing card on Saturday, April 26, titled ‘FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves, headlined by Chris Eubank Jr vs Conor Benn, is live worldwide on DAZN. Buy the PPV at: https://www.dazn.com/en-GB/p/boxing #DAZN #RINGMAGAZINE
