“I think it’s a given,” said Sam Eggington, asked whether his Saturday all-Midlands contest with Conah Walker will be a Fight of the Year contender.
“It’s bound to set alight. It’s bound to. I mean, you revert back to what you know, and we both know what we are. It’s pretty obvious what we both like to do and how we both get our job done. So it’s going to revert back to what we know and it’s going to be a tear-up. What round will that be? It could be Round 1. It could be Round 4. It could be Round 8. It doesn’t matter when, but it will go off.”
Eggington-Walker has been in the offing for a while, though with Eggington a couple of years older, at 32, and having turned pro earlier, it took a while for Walker to appear on his radar.
“We knew of each other,” Eggington said of his crosstown rival.
“If I see him about, I’d ask him how things are going, what’s up next and stuff like that, but it’s just we never got into sparring or anything crazy. I don’t know him super-well, I just know him to say hello sort of thing. With the weight and the trajectory of both our careers, [fighting each other] has never really been on schedule or in our plans.”
The plan for this weekend is war.
Walker arrives in the form of his life, while the veteran Eggington has not fought since a technical decision over Lee Cutler last April in a fight that finished early because of cuts. Still, Eggington has yet to show the signs of decline some anticipate because of the number of hard fights he has amassed in his thrilling back catalogue of brutal slugfests.
Although he has respect for what Walker has done, Eggington believes people are selling him short on what he has done.
“Granted, I don’t watch a lot of boxing,” said the 32-year-old Eggington. “I’ve saw a lot of clips and half a round here and there, and he’s done well. But everything he’s done to win fights in his last two or three, I’ve made a 13-, 14-year career off, so it can only stand to be a good fight. People are saying, ‘Sam’s past it now,’ but we’ll see. We’ll see.”
The prediction that Eggington will grow old overnight has been doing the rounds for years. He grins wryly at that.
“Do you know what it is? People lose a few times and they retire, so when you lose a few times and you don’t retire and you’re still doing well, people just expect you to,” Eggington said of calling it a day. “I was talking to my son the other day, and he was talking about the boxing, and I was like, ‘When you’ve had as many fights as me and you’ve been around as long as me, you don’t get many opportunities. And he was like, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because people retire.’ He went, ‘Well, why do they retire?’ He didn’t say anything crazy, but it made us think – it’s the truth – why do they retire? You don’t have to, just because it’s a done thing because you’ve lost two or three or four and you retire now. If anything, I’ve broken that chain.
“If you’ve lost a few times, you can still come back and do it. I’m not here to earn dough and just walk off. I’m here to win, win well. I need people to know that, because when I get into the ring, like I said, I get more grief [from the boxing establishment] for winning fights than I do losing fights. Because when I win, people are saying, ‘Oh, Sam, he’ll be back again now, he’s had this many [fights].’ But I’m winning, so what do you expect me to do?
“Look, listen, no one knows when you get old overnight – that’s a given. But I always feel great. People are forgetting that I’m only 32. Conah’s 30. It’s only because he’s had less fights than me that people are … He’s literally 18 months younger than me. I just think people jump on the bandwagon, and [if] you’ve lost a few, you should quit, really. And that's why everyone, when they look at my record, they think, ‘Oh, Sam should be quit by now because he's had so many, he’s lost this many.’ Again, who says who should quit? Again, I’m winning. I’m top of the bill again. My last fight was a big win. The fight before that, I only lost a split decision to a kid who went on to win, defend and try and unify the division.”
That fight was against Abass Baraou, who defeated Eggington via split decision in March 2024. Baraou went on to claim the WBA 154lbs title and only lost in a unification fight with Xander Zayas via split decision in January.
“Again, with Conah, he lost against [Lewis] Crocker and he’s had a few good wins since, and people are calling for world title fights. If that’s the case, my last loss was a kid who went on to try and unify. So who’s calling for my world title fight? Do you know what I mean? Same, same. It just depends who’s blowing the smoke, that’s all.”
The Baraou fight was almost two years ago. Eggington has boxed only twice since, and the most recent one was more than a year ago against Cutler.
“It’s been frustrating,” he said of the inactivity.
“But the last two or three years have been like this.”
And although he might not appreciate that now, maybe the time between fights will do him good.
Eggington is 36-9 (20 KOs). He has been in countless Fight of the Year contenders and believes this will be another.
If this weekend is to see another, he can’t afford to “get old overnight,” and he is sure he won’t.
He thinks there are more fireworks to let off in his career.
“It’s a given,” he said.
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
