{"id":559652,"date":"2026-03-25T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/559652\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T12:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:00:07","slug":"eddie-hearn-has-an-opponent-in-mind-for-conor-benn-following-split","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/559652\/","title":{"rendered":"Eddie Hearn has an opponent in mind for Conor Benn following split"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite no longer promoting Conor Benn<\/a>, Eddie Hearn has named a former world champion he would like to see \u2018The Destroyer\u2019 lock horns with.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old ended his working relationship with Hearn<\/a> last month, before announcing that he has inked a one-fight deal with Dana White\u2019s Zuffa Boxing.<\/p>\n

This came as an almighty shock, given the loyalty that Hearn and Matchroom Boxing had shown toward Benn following his drugs scandal in 2022.<\/p>\n

Back then, the Ilford man twice tested positive for banned substance clomiphene ahead of his cancelled encounter with Chris Eubank Jr, who he nonetheless fought on two occasions last year.<\/p>\n

Their first middleweight contest saw Eubank claim a unanimous decision victory, only to lose by a much wider margin in their immediate rematch<\/a> last November.<\/p>\n

For both contests, Eubank was restricted by a second-day rehydration limit of 170lbs, while Benn \u2013 the naturally smaller man \u2013 encountered minimal difficulty with the scales.<\/p>\n

For his next outing, the former welterweight contender will face Regis Prograis at a catchweight of 150lbs, featuring on the undercard of Tyson Fury vs Arslanbek Makhmudov on April 11.<\/p>\n

Whether this qualifies as his Zuffa debut, it remains difficult to tell, but Benn\u2019s former promoter has already suggested a possible opponent after Prograis.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Pro Boxing Fans<\/a> and other media members, Hearn named Jaron Ennis as the fighter he would wish to see Benn square off against.<\/p>\n

\u201cConor\u2019s a good fighter \u2013 I\u2019m not going to start slagging him off as a fighter, because his improvements have been incredible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think \u2018Boots\u2019 Ennis is arguably [the] pound-for-pound No.1 fighter, so I think he\u2019d win the fight, but Conor\u2019s a good fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former unified welterweight champion Ennis now looks to claim world honours at 154lb, with his next outing reported to be against WBO and WBA titlist Xander Zayas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite no longer promoting Conor Benn, Eddie Hearn has named a former world champion he would like to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-559652","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\/559652","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=559652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}