{"id":703646,"date":"2026-07-21T16:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T16:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703646\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T16:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T16:26:14","slug":"conor-benn-addresses-weight-concerns-ahead-of-making-147-for-first-time-in-4-years-to-fight-garcia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703646\/","title":{"rendered":"Conor Benn addresses weight concerns ahead of making 147 for first time in 4 years to fight Garcia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conor Benn<\/a> is scheduled to challenge for Ryan Garcia<\/a>\u2019s WBC welterweight belt in September, and, ahead of his maiden world title challenge, he has addressed concerns as to whether he can comfortably make the 147lb weight limit.<\/p>\n

Benn was at welterweight prior to his 2022 failed doping tests, but fought at super-welterweight \u2013 against Rodolfo Orozco and Peter Dobson \u2013 and then twice against Chris Eubank Jr at middleweight<\/a> before announcing his plans to drop back to 147lbs at the beginning of this year.<\/p>\n

The Brit was named as the WBC mandatory challenger and faced Regis Prograis in a 150lb catchweight affair back in April, in his first fight since signing with Zuffa Boxing, to make his way back down.<\/p>\n

Benn was unable to dispatch of Prograis, despite the American former champion entering the ring with a number of injuries, leaving fans concerned as to whether \u2018The Destroyer\u2019 had outgrown welterweight.<\/p>\n

Still, the 29-year-old has now been confirmed for a challenge for Garcia\u2019s belt, but Benn admitted that the weight cut \u2018will not be pleasant\u2019 in an interview with MMA Fighting<\/a>, before explaining that he believes this to be the key reason why Garcia has agreed to the fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weight cut is hard. I\u2019ve already started the weight cut \u2013 it is not pleasant. He [Garcia] is banking on me [struggling].<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have got to remember, he weren\u2019t calling me out before the Eubank fights, he weren\u2019t calling me out after the Eubank fights, then as soon as the Regis fight was done \u2013 \u2018cool, let me call him out, let\u2019s have the fight now,\u2019 it just goes to show who he is at heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe ain\u2019t taking this fight for legacy, he ain\u2019t taking this fight for anything other than trying to pick an easy fight. The WBC made me mandatory for this fight, I\u2019d like to see him go up to middleweight.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Garcia-Benn will take place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday, September 12, with Jai Opetaia set to appear on the undercard<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conor Benn is scheduled to challenge for Ryan Garcia\u2019s WBC welterweight belt in September, and, ahead of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-703646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703646","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=703646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}