Returning to the venue of his two fights with bitter rival Eubank Jr – both contested at middleweight – Benn was met with an emotional reception as he walked to the ring, underlining his status as one of British boxing’s most polarising figures.<\/p>\n
Jeers and cheers echoed around the stadium as ‘The Destroyer’, accompanied by his legendary father Nigel, shadowboxed his way to the ring to a string orchestra.<\/p>\n
Benn’s career was halted for two-and-a-half years after he failed a drug tests in 2022. Although he was later cleared by an anti-doping panel and denies any wrongdoing, questions continue to linger among sections of critics.<\/p>\n
When the action began, Benn rocked Prograis with a right hand in the closing seconds of the first round, briefly buckling the American’s legs.<\/p>\n
Prograis was rumoured to be carrying an injury into the fight and did not appear to move fluidly, his back leg looking somewhat stiff at times.<\/p>\n
He leaned on his vast experience and remained elusive, but struggled to land clean counters as Benn consistently outworked him in the early exchanges.<\/p>\n
A clash of heads in the fourth round caused a small cut above Benn’s right eye. He responded with uppercuts and body shots on the inside, while southpaw Prograis shook his head and replied with a straight left.<\/p>\n
Prograis has spent much of his career campaigning at light-welterweight, 10lb lighter than this contest.<\/p>\n
Another clash of heads in the sixth opened up a cut above Benn’s left eye. Prograis landed a straight left in the seventh, which wobbled Benn momentarily, before the Essex fighter responded with a series of hooks on the inside.<\/p>\n
Benn’s former promoter Eddie Hearn, watching from the front row after their bitter split, looked on as the contest drifted increasingly towards the scorecards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Returning to the venue of his two fights with bitter rival Eubank Jr – both contested at middleweight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":{"0":"post-394108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}