Conor Benn is on the verge of a challenge for world honours, but big names in the sport continue to question where his level truly lies. Now, British boxing legend \u2018Prince\u2019 Naseem Hamed has offered his thoughts on the 29-year-old\u2019s ability.<\/p>\n
Benn skipped the traditional route to the top and then, after a failed drugs test scuppered his plans, prioritised a lucrative clash with Chris Eubank Jr. over a possible world title shot.<\/p>\n
Now, despite not fighting at welterweight since April 2022, he has been named the WBC mandatory challenger in the 147lbs division and is working on a fight against reigning champion Ryan Garcia later this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Benn triumphed over Regis Prograis with a clear points decision,<\/a> but couldn\u2019t close the show and has been criticised for the performance by the likes of Carl Froch.<\/a> He is seen as the underdog in his proposed scrap with Garcia.<\/p>\n Speaking with TalkSPORT Boxing<\/a>, Hamed claimed that Benn\u2019s victory over Eubank has convinced him that he is a \u2018world-level\u2019 fighter, even after famously telling Eubank that he should retire eight years ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know how anybody can say that he is not world level and I\u2019ll tell you why \u2013 nobody ever said that Chris Eubank Jr. was not world level.<\/p>\n \u201cEubank Jnr, regardless of what I said about him in the past, he proved me wrong, he came back. He [Benn] is world-level, he is world-class.\u201d<\/p>\n Benn seeks to prove Hamed right and his doubters wrong by taking the coveted WBC crown from Garcia, with recent comments from the champion signalling that the fight could be signed soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conor Benn is on the verge of a challenge for world honours, but big names in the sport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-544607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}