Chris Eubank Snr walks into a talkSPORT studio.
“Why the long poem?” he is asked.
In total, it lasted two and a half minutes, and neither Jim White, the presenter, nor Simon Jordan, Eubank’s challenger, had the faintest idea what was going on, much less hope of a punchline. There were blank expressions and Fleabag-like looks into the camera. There was boredom, discomfort, annoyance. A poem on talkSPORT? It felt as out of place as boxing in the Middle East. It didn’t seem to belong and it certainly wasn’t appreciated.
But still Eubank went on – and on, and on. “May I express something that is really true to me?” he had said, and so of course he did, stopping only after his truth had been expressed and White had given the throat-slitting gesture for the final time. Even then, however, there was a feeling that he could have happily continued. In fact, Eubank would somehow manage to conclude the 25-minute interview with White and Jordan by going out the same way he came in: with lines of poetry.
In between the two poems recited by Eubank on talkSPORT questions were asked. He was asked, for one, why he had previously criticised the fight between his son, Chris Jnr, and Conor Benn, the son of his old rival, Nigel. White and Jordan also wanted to know why Eubank had once called his son a “disgrace” for hitting Conor Benn with an egg at a press conference. “What would you say to people who would say that Chris Eubank is something of a hypocrite?” he was asked by White to get warm.
“It’s easily explained …” said Eubank Snr in response, seconds before he described the notion of ego and the positive and negative forces at work within a single individual. As with the poem, it wouldn’t take long for those listening to Eubank’s theory to react to it with eye rolls and exasperation. It was not, it seemed, the kind of answer they were hoping for.
Perhaps, in the end, he was in the wrong place, Eubank. Perhaps for all the good it has done in raising the sport’s profile among the masses, a platform like talkSPORT is not ideal for an orator and complicated mind like Chris Eubank. It is hard, after all, to condense a two-and-a-half-minute poem into a seven-word, clickbait-y headline for the YouTube algorithm. Where would one even begin in such an endeavor? Which words would be capitalised to draw the attention of the scrolling elite? ENLIGHTENED WILLED? CONSCIOUSNESS AND JOY INCARNATE? BODILY SHEATH? BLISS IN DISILLUSION? You get the point.
For others, it would have been harder – to get the point, I mean. The point of Chris Eubank Snr on talkSPORT.
He answered everything he was asked, of course, but he did so in a typical Eubank style, often tying himself in knots for fear of betraying the reputation he holds as one of boxing’s few great thinkers. Rather than answer a question in a straightforward manner, for instance, he would instead drown in his own imagination, which would allow White and Jordan, sluggers in the fight against intellectualism, to repeatedly nail him with hard jabs, hooks and knowing winks.
All in all, it led to a stalemate, no victor. In fact, the only thing Chris Eubank’s brief appearance on talkSPORT did was provide a timely reminder of how rare it is nowadays to see someone connected with boxing talk with freedom and intelligence on one of the few remaining platforms the sport is still happy to indulge. Not only that, there is and has always been a great unpredictability with Chris Eubank, of which we were also reminded during that strange segment on talkSPORT last week. For as long as he was on air, the horse in the bar was the one you wanted to hear talk. If out of place, he was out of place not because he read poetry, or said long words, but simply because he was so different from what we have grown accustomed to seeing and hearing in recent years. He has been missed, in other words. Greatly.
On fight night, meanwhile, talkSPORT endured more whiplash. This time, with Benn vs. Eubank Jnr all over, three pundits/commentators made room for British heavyweight Dave Allen, who was, he said, cold and exhausted having worked for talkSPORT all night. Before he could leave, though, Allen first had to summarise what he had seen from Benn and Eubank Jnr in the ring. He then proceeded to do so in his own inimitable way. It began not with a poem but something simpler, sharper and to the point.
“He lost to a faded Eubank [Jnr] and then he just beat a shot-to-bits one,” he said of Benn. “He’s not a 147 [pounds] champion elect on the back of that.”
“But can he win a world title at 147 now?” asked talkSPORT’s Gareth A. Davies in a panic.
“Maybe,” said Allen with a shrug. “But the champions are not A-level champions. [Mario] Barrios, [Lewis] Crocker, they’re very good fighters, but they’re not great fighters. I’m still not sure he’d beat them. I’m not sure Conor Benn is a fantastic boxer. Nigel Benn of 1990 would have flattened Chris Eubank Jnr in one round tonight. That’s the honest truth.”
The more Allen went rogue, the more one could sense that those around him – Davies, Spencer Oliver and Adam Catterall – were growing increasingly uncomfortable with the story being told to the British public. It was, after all, not the story they had all rushed to giddily tell at the top of the hour. Nor was it the story anybody left in the arena – fighters, promoters, TV execs – wanted to be read before bed. This instead was the kind of talk one expects to hear on a tube heading back from north London to Waterloo station. It was the kind of talk one overhears in a pub between two men who have just fled the stadium, their minds racing. In a word, it was real. It was the kind of talk seldom heard in boxing venues today.
“I’m just telling things how I see them,” said Allen in the face of opposition. “There’s no point me standing here and saying it was amazing. It weren’t. What we saw in there tonight weren’t world-class boxing. It weren’t even close.”
It was a different kind of poetry – let’s call it street poetry – but it was poetry all the same. It came from a place of truth and integrity, and it served the same purpose as poetry in times of dishonesty and disillusionment. It made those reading it – or in this case, hearing it – sit up, pay attention and say to themselves, “Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly how I feel. Thank you, Dave Allen.”
