Nigel Benn fought during a golden era for British middle and super-middleweights, but has admitted that one man hit him harder than all of them.
Benn will forever be linked with Chris Eubank, who he shared the ring with twice in the early nineties. The first time they fought, Eubank won by 9th-round TKO to become the WBO middleweight champion, and it wasn’t until 1993 that they got in the ring for the rematch.
That took place up at super-middleweight and ended in a split draw, which meant ‘The Dark Destroyer’ retained his WBO belt and defended it five times against the likes of Henry Wharton and Gerald McClellan, before losing twice in back-to-back contests to Steve Collins in 1996.
Speaking to The Ring, he revealed McClellan was the one fighter bust him up more than all of his other rivals.
“The gap between him and the rest in terms of power was huge. He was in a league of his own, but I had to win that fight because everyone thought I was going to lose.
“He had an incredible knockout ratio and he was a prolific puncher. There was a mile between him and anyone else. I came out of that fight with a damaged nose, a damaged jaw and I was urinating blood. I was in bed for three days afterwards, and I had a shadow on my brain. That shows you how powerful a champion that man was.”
Benn fought a total of 48 times and lost just five contests before retiring in 1996, while McClellan’s fight with Benn in 1995 was his last, as he was knocked down multiple times and eventually collapsed with a bleed on the brain that sadly left him in a coma for several days and with lifelong disabilities.
