Roy Jones thinks Chris Eubank’s recent upset loss might compel him to become a better listener.
The Hall of Fame fighter and trainer of the polarizing British middleweight suggested in a recent interview that his charge might become a less obstinate student in the wake of his knockout loss to countryman Liam Smith.
Liverpool’s Smith shocked the boxing world in January, when he stopped the normally very durable Eubank in the fourth round of a middleweight bout that took place in Manchester.
Jones, who has trained Eubank for his last several fights, said his charge’s downfall was a failure of proper defense, specifically Eubank's inability to concede body shots in order to preserve the head.
According to Jones, Eubank would rather take a punch to the head than one to the body.
And that kind of thinking, Jones said, was what led to that disastrous result in Manchester.
“First thing I said to [Eubank after the loss to Smith] was, ‘Now you can move forward,’” Jones said on The DAZN Boxing Show. “Because in training him a couple of times, I told Chris, ‘Look, brother, sometimes if you don’t want to get that head shot, you’d better take that body shot over a head shot.
“He told me one day, ‘For me I think it may be vice versa. I’d rather take a head shot.’”
Eubank has insisted that Smith had elbowed him during a climactic moment in the fourth round, when Smith unleashed a fusillade of combinations.
Flagrant foul or not, Jones is optimistic that Eubank will now pursue his training with a measure of humility
“I know he never been hurt or ever been down before, but I felt he got an elbow before he got caught but still the elbow was to the head,” Jones said. “And you never know what happens when you get hit in your head a certain way. And that’s really what I was trying to tell him. Why you gonna give a body shot up as opposed to a head shot? A head shot can cause damage. And you don’t know until after it happens. So if you take the body shot, you don’t take that risk. But he had never been hurt before so he didn’t understand that.
“Now we can proceed. Now you gonna understand when I say something I’m not talking out of the left side of my anus. I’m telling you something that I know.”
Eubank activated his rematch clause with Smith but the two have not finalized a deal. Eubank has also been rumored to be considering a fight with nemesis Conor Benn in a middleweight bout on June 3 in Abu Dhabi. Eubank and Benn were meant to face each other in a 157-pound catchweight bout last year that capitalized on their fathers’ rivalry in the 1990s. But a few days from the fight, Benn was revealed to have failed a performance-enhancing drug test.
