Conor Benn has opened up on what it was like to fight Chris Eubank Jr. in front of a sold-out crowd at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium last weekend.
Almost two and a half years after they were first scheduled to fight, these generational rivals finally got it on across 12 hard-fought rounds.
It was an attritional fight with both men throwing plenty of big shots from the off. Benn, the smaller man who is most used to fighting down at welterweight, won the early exchanges before Eubank got a foothold later on, though he has admitted he was never really hurt.
Eubank Jr has fought as high as super-middleweight but narrowly failed to make the 160lbs limit the first two times of asking and is now under investigation for using a sauna to help him. At the end of the fight, all three cards were scored 116-112 in his favour.
Speaking to iFL TV, Benn was asked how he felt competing up at this new weight and said he obviously felt outsized.
“I felt good.
Obviously he felt like the bigger man in there but ultimately I prepared for that.
Second half, I could see he started to tire, but he worked smarter. He used his experience to smother me, he fell in and tried to pin me up against the ropes and let his hands go.”
Benn maintains that he felt he won the fight by as little as a round, and has called for a rematch to try and avenge the loss. He could also go back down to welterweight to compete for a legitimate world title against the likes of Mario Barrios or Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis.
