‘This is not nice, this is not cordial, this is not friendly’

Ahead of his rematch with Conor Benn, Chris Eubank Jr tells that there is no reason to put bad blood aside

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Chris Eubank Jr drums his fingers against his plastic water bottle, staring past it and at the floor.

After a long silence, filled with thought, he says: “I don’t think I’m gonna answer that one.”

Eubank Jr does not share his rival’s mistrust of the media, but on the cusp of his highly-anticipated rematch with Conor Benn, the 36-year-old is picking and choosing what to share when it comes to his stirring revelation this week: that he will be a father to twin boys. As Eubank Jr and Benn once again prepare to emulate their dads - Chris Sr and Nigel - with a rematch to mirror their fathers’ 30 years ago, it’s insisted there will be no third-generation showdown.

Sitting upstairs in Canary Wharf’s glassy Pelligon building, four days out from Saturday’s rematch, Eubank Jr looks almost unrecognisable from two versions of himself in April: the skeletal figure trying to make weight, and the swollen, hospitalised one after a blood-spattered thriller in Tottenham. Today, his eyes look only slightly sunken, the shape of his skull just subtly pronounced.

“The barbaric side of the weight-cut comes 24-36 hours before the weigh-in,” he tells several publications, including The Independent, gathered in a seated circle. “That’s when the pain kicks in.”