The forces that compelled Chris Eubank Sr to reunite with his estranged son on the eve of Chris Eubank Jr’s fight against Conor Benn in April naturally lead to a polemic about the seven deadly sins. “Within the human body, there are two entities,” he says with typical flourish. “One is good and one is not. One may be susceptible to pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth. The other half is patient, it is kind, it isn’t rude or self-seeking. That is the virtuous part of a person.
“I have submitted to that side of me. It superseded the ego because I was disgusted with Junior’s behaviour [in the build-up to the fight]. That’s not how I brought him up, but I’ve always asked the good side of me to persevere. That night, it said, ‘Get yourself together and go and support your son.’ ”
Eubank Sr, 59, had little regular contact with Junior (as his father calls him), 36, in the four years before the latter reprised the family rivalry at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. In fact, amid a chaotic build-up in which Junior slapped Benn with an egg in reference to his two positive drugs tests in 2022, Eubank Sr went so far as to publicly label his son a “disgrace” and repeatedly called for the fight to be cancelled.
The feud became a stick for Benn to beat Junior with in the build-up but, late on the Friday night, disguised in a dark robe, Eubank Sr visited his son’s hotel room and told him he would be at his side. The world only found out 24 hours later when Eubank Sr emerged from a Rolls Royce arm in arm with his son and the crowd celebrated like a goal had been scored.
Eubank Sr accompanies his son into the ring for his fight against Benn at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and will be at ringside for Saturday’s rematch
MARK ROBINSON/GETTY IMAGES
“Man makes plans and God laughs,” Eubank says. “There’s no better example I can give than what happened in the last fight. People were crying because I turned up. They know I’m a man of my word. In turning up, it was like he played us, he fooled us, he tricked us. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. No, invert that. Don’t love the player, love the game, this game of life.”
Contrived WWE-esque drama, perhaps, but the distance had been genuine and Junior said his father’s presence helped carry him through the latter stages of a brutal fight that proved far more than the expected gimmick. “He had to go beyond the call of duty and that is a feat very few human people can achieve,” Senior says.
Eubank Jr and Benn contest a rematch on Saturday, but all those heroics only reinforced Senior’s opinion that it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. After boiling down to 160lb and accepting a rehydration clause to balance the scales against the naturally smaller Benn, a severely depleted Junior was rushed to hospital and kept under observation for nearly 48 hours. The terms for the rematch remain unchanged.
“I saw a person, who is my son, between life and death in the back of the ambulance. When he got to the hospital, they were able to give him morphine and stabilise him, but Junior was touch and go because of dehydration,” says Eubank Sr. “The promoter [Eddie Hearn] is openly trying to damage my son and the public watched this and still no one says anything. They are silent.
Eubank Jr tries to block a body shot from Benn during their brutal last meeting
RICHARD PELHAM/GETTY IMAGES
“It’s sad that people are blind to it, and now my son is in the same position again. He is walking into a [trap] and there is nothing I can do to stop him. There’s nothing wrong with learning the hard way, but, in boxing, it may be that you can no longer be rich. Rich has nothing to do with my money. Can you walk? Can you talk? I never wanted him to box. Could this be the reason coming up now?”
“I said to Junior, for however many days until you get back into that ring, I’m going to enjoy that time, that my son can actually be the prince and I am king. He has the hearts of the nation through that performance. There is nothing harder to win and all he has got to do now is stay still. He already has everything, and now you’re going to get back in the ring and put that on the line?”
It is complicated, as ever. There is a long history of fraught father-son relationships in boxing, but few characters are quite so outsized as Eubank Sr. After the triumph and tragedy of his rivalries with Nigel Benn and Michael Watson in the Nineties, he was determined to dissuade Junior from going into boxing, or, as he describes it, “the trap of life, the trap of capitalism, the trap of racketeers, the corrupt”. But that stance only hardened Junior’s resolve to emulate his father, particularly after Senior’s personal and financial issues destabilised a privileged upbringing.
“No one could have had a better childhood than Junior and his siblings,” Senior says. “I wasn’t just a super dad. You can’t make them. If you think of the things I’ve done for the public for all of these years, what do you think I did for my children? I was an extraordinary dad. I’ve always been fun. I’ve always been creative. I’ve always been able to get every single thing that I’ve gone after or that they wanted. But what happens in a divorce is, effectively, your children are weaponised against you … When you stop listening to your father, you’ve been weaponised.”
A seriously cut Eubank Jr is joined by his dad after the last contest with Benn, which he won on the judges’decision. Soon Junior was heading to hospital in an ambulance
BBC
Eubank and his first wife, Karron, separated in 2005 when Junior was 15. Three years later, he moved to Las Vegas with his younger brother, Sebastian, where they lived under the guardianship of Irene Hutton. Junior had 26 fights on the amateur circuit in the US before the siblings abruptly returned to the UK. Hutton claimed they had been “snatched back” by their birth mother. But by the time Junior turned professional in 2011, he and Senior appeared largely inseparable as his father attempted to guide him through “the minefield that is the concrete jungle, the world”.
“If you have a ten-year-old child, would you take it to Soho at 11.30pm and leave him or her on the street? Of course you wouldn’t. But society says, ‘I’m an adult now, I can do what I want.’ I’m your father. I’m going to direct you so you don’t fall into the snare of the foulers,” Senior says.
“At the start of Junior’s career, I was there all the time. What was I doing? I was bringing fortune and attention to his doorstep. All he had to do was follow what we were doing in the gym, and it was the perfect partnership. But then you have ego. ‘Oh, I want to stand by myself now.’ Fine. I understand, but it’s too dangerous. But he went out and he did it by himself, and in doing so, not only did he beat the nemesis, he shone the correct light on the promoters.”
Junior’s desire to forge his own path out of his father’s shadow had put a wedge between them in recent years. That period was also marked by the death of Sebastian, aged 29, in 2021, and then the death of Senior’s older brother, Simon, aged 61, in 2023. Simon fought 27 times as a professional, losing 20 of those bouts, and suffered from frontal lobe dementia in later life. “Do I hold anything against the promoter? No, it’s the game. But if we don’t actually now arrest this game, then we are going further into deluge. We have to turn this around,” Senior says.
The grief of losing a son and a brother was devastating, and many in the boxing industry were concerned about Senior’s mental health. “That’s why I say it’s very important to follow the virtues so that, in times of sudden misfortune, you can handle the situation in such a way where you will look back on how you reacted and be proud of it,” Senior says. That, he adds, has led him to a “state of peace”. “[I feel] extraordinary. It has never been any way different. I submitted to the good. Now I live in heaven on earth. This is a state of mind. This is what wealth is.”
Now, his days are predominantly spent spreading that message, somewhat like a preacher. “I go to hospitals, hospices, infant schools, universities and colleges. I teach. I am a servant. Strike that. I am the servant,” he says. “Boxing is the one sport that will make you a king. It is the king of sports. So where do you go after boxing? You go to the spiritual world.
“I live where I sit, I live where my head lies, where I walk. Following the system that says I live at this PO Box at this number? No, I am free, I live inside me, I’m happy wherever I am.”
• The Eubanks: Like Father, Like Son will be available to watch on BBC iPlayer from 6am on Tuesday 11 November.
• Chris Eubank Jr. vs Conor Benn II will broadcast live and exclusively on Dazn on Saturday November 15.