{"id":2561,"date":"2025-07-17T10:46:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T10:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/2561\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T10:46:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T10:46:06","slug":"nigel-benn-names-by-far-the-best-fighter-he-faced-and-its-not-chris-eubank-sr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/2561\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigel Benn Names ‘By Far’ The Best Fighter He Faced And It’s Not Chris Eubank Sr"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigel Benn<\/a> has looked back over his career to pick out the best fighter he faced and has overlooked his legendary contests with Chris Eubank<\/a> Sr.<\/p>\n

That pair first fought in 1990 for the WBO middleweight title with Eubank winning by TKO in the 9th round. The rematch was a unification in 1993 for the WBC and WBO super middleweight championship and ended up a draw, with both men retaining their belts. Decades on, their sons Conor and Chris Jr have taken on the family rivalry.<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite those famous battles, when speaking to The Ring Magazine, Benn revealed that one American fighter was the best he ever faced by a long way.<\/p>\n

\u201cGerald McClellan by far. He had an incredible knockout ratio and he was a prolific puncher. There was a mile between him and anyone else. I came out of that fight with a damaged nose, a damaged jaw and I was urinating blood. I was in bed for three days afterwards and I had a shadow on my brain. That shows you how powerful a champion that man was.\u201d<\/p>\n

McClellan was a feared knockout artist who was the betting favourite when he and Benn fought at the London Arena for \u2018The Dark Destroyer\u2019s WBC super middleweight title.<\/p>\n

Within the first round, he knocked Benn clean out of the ring, but Benn recovered. What followed was a savage, high-paced war filled with momentum swings and heavy punishment on both sides and Benn ultimately won via 10th-round stoppage after McClellan took a knee and was unable to continue.<\/p>\n

However, the fight will forever be overshadowed by tragedy as McClellan suffered a severe brain injury and was left permanently disabled<\/a> \u2013 a sever reminder of the dangers of the sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigel Benn has looked back over his career to pick out the best fighter he faced and has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-2561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}