London\u2019s Conor Benn is the latest boxer to see opportunity in beating up an MMA fighter.<\/p>\n
Benn (23-1) is fresh off the first professional loss of his career, an outstanding 12-round war versus Chis Eubank Jr. that continued the family rivalry. The duo are now scheduled to rematch<\/a> on November 15 in what should be another high-profile clash of English boxing stars.<\/p>\n After that, however? Benn has laid the gauntlet down at the feet of Ilia Topuria, challenging the current UFC Lightweight kingpin to a crossover match in boxing or bare knuckle. Benn says he\u2019s tired of UFC fighters disrespecting boxers, even though he also admits he won\u2019t be the one crossing into his opponent\u2019s arena.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoever these UFC fighters want to come over to boxing,\u201d Benn began while hitting the heavy bag. \u201cDangerous game. If you fancy somebody, come and get it \u2026 Sign me up, I\u2019ll fight anybody. Bareknuckle. Anybody that wants to come over from the UFC. Ilia [Topuria], I\u2019ve got these hands brother.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody wants the smoke? Anybody that wants to come over? No problem. Listen, I ain\u2019t stupid enough to go in the cage. I would never go in the cage, you wouldn\u2019t catch me dead in the cage. Do you know why? I\u2019d get my ass handed to me. But for them thinking they can come over and do that to us, that\u2019s a f\u2014king liberty.\u201d<\/p>\n Recent history has provided strong evidence that MMA fighters cannot cross into the boxing ring<\/a> against professionals (or even semi-professionals)<\/a> without paying for their hubris. Isn\u2019t it a little unfair that all these callouts and potential super fights involve the MMA fighter really taking the gamble with the ruleset though? Sadly, there\u2019s no chance the UFC will foot that \u201cten bands\u201d bill, so the ring will remain the arena of any kind of cross sport spectacle.<\/p>\n As for Ilia Topuria, \u201cEl Matador\u201d surely has bigger fish to fry<\/a>. If he does want to continue emulating the career of Conor McGregor, however, an important step in that journey was to cross into the ring for a massive payout<\/a> and elevated stardom. Maybe Benn would be an appropriate dance partner?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London\u2019s Conor Benn is the latest boxer to see opportunity in beating up an MMA fighter. Benn (23-1)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[36109,49,48,641,33601,638,82],"class_list":["post-54948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-boxing-news-results","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54948","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=54948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}