'If you win a boring fight, did you really even win?'

Ahead of his must-win rematch with Chris Eubank Jr, Conor Benn speaks to Alex Pattle and Jack Rathborn about faith, 'pure rage', and the things he admires in his bitter rival

- By Alex Pattle and Jack Rathborn

“There wasn’t much thinking,” Conor Benn admits, mentally transporting himself back to 26 April, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and an 18ft x 18ft ring. “It was just pure rage. I just wanted to flatten him.” Benn is, of course, referring to Chris Eubank Jr, a man who was born to be Benn’s rival.

“There wasn’t much thinking,” Conor Benn admits, mentally transporting himself back to 26 April, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and an 18ft x 18ft ring. “It was just pure rage. I just wanted to flatten him.” Benn is, of course, referring to Chris Eubank Jr, a man who was born to be Benn’s rival. One could convincingly argue so, anyway. Given Nigel Benn and Eubank Sr's gripping grudge in the 1990s, their sons' own rivalry really is a blood feud. A blood feud that ultimately birthed a bloody, draining fight, as Eubank Jr continued his family's superiority over the Benns by edging past Conor. It was an exhibition of true sporting melodrama, following slaps with eggs, weigh-in scares, and Eubank Sr's last-gasp arrival. Yet, for Benn, it could have been so different on that spring evening in the English capital.

“It came so close, to where it was like: ‘I just need one more punch,” he tells The Independent in the Matchroom gym in Essex, reflecting on moments when Eubank Jr looked in serious danger of humiliation. “He just used his experience well in there. I didn’t give him enough credit, but he deserves it for his chin, resilience, heart, engine. To deliver that sort of fight for the public, there’s only one man who could have brought that out of me: his name’s Chris.”