{"id":619759,"date":"2026-09-09T22:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T22:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619759\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T22:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T22:54:09","slug":"garcia-vs-benn-briton-conor-benn-dragged-down-to-pits-of-hell-by-weight-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/619759\/","title":{"rendered":"Garcia vs Benn: Briton Conor Benn &#8216;dragged down to pits of hell&#8217; by weight cut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For all the difficulty presented by the weight cut, there was little outward sign of Benn being weighed down by the occasion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was relaxed and in good spirits as he made time for the travelling British media at the UFC&#8217;s Meta Apex, with father and British boxing great Nigel Benn by his side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former two-weight world champion has been a prominent presence throughout fight week, despite previously suggesting he would take a step back from his son&#8217;s career.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One man Conor Benn is yet to see, however, is his opponent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/boxing\/articles\/c3eqz7qvg42o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Garcia did not appear for a scheduled face-off<\/a> at Mandalay Bay on Tuesday, with Benn told beforehand that the champion would not be attending.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Benn turned up regardless and jokingly squared up to his 62-year-old father instead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He described Garcia as a &#8220;strange geezer&#8221; and said the no-show had done the champion &#8220;no favours&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m not bothered, I&#8217;ve dealt with worse,&#8221; Conor Benn added. &#8220;If he turns up or not, it makes no difference to me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Irrespective of how hard the weight cut is or anything else, we owe it to the public to give the fans what they want. It&#8217;s a lack of discipline and professionalism.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For all the difficulty presented by the weight cut, there was little outward sign of Benn being weighed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-619759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619759","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=619759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}