It was another busy 12 months in the world of boxing, and Teddy Atlas has been casting his eye over how things went.
There were plenty of highly publicised bouts that transcended the sport, including most famously Anthony Joshua knocking out Jake Paul and breaking his jaw in two places in the process.
Terence Crawford proved his greatness by moving up to super middleweight to beat Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and become undisputed champion in a third division, while Oleksandr Usyk also beat Daniel Dubois for a second time to make himself the first-ever two-time undisputed heavyweight of the four-belt era.
Speaking on his own YouTube channel, former trainer and pundit Atlas picked out the one contest that he thinks was better than all others.
“It’s Chris Eubank Jr versus Conor Benn, their first fight. It was just a combination of reasons.”
The pick from Atlas is a fair one. The fight between generational rivals in April was preceded by a tumultuous build-up with plenty of verbal back and forth, egg slaps, the involvement of both men’s legendary fighting fathers and plenty more.
Fortunately, the fight itself lived up to the hype with aggression and animosity across a 12-round war. Benn did well early on to throw plenty of shots given he was the naturally smaller and much more inexperienced man, but as the rounds went on, it was Eubank who got to grips and came away with the unanimous points win.
They did it all again in November, though this time Benn took the victory over an extremely under par Eubank.
