Eddie Hearn is aware that the recently announced British super fight between Chris Eubank Jr. and Hearn’s client Conor Benn resembles a fight Hearn promoted years ago.
Hearn just doesn’t think the similarities hold much water.
Eubank, the longtime middleweight and super middleweight contender, will take on Benn, a career welterweight, at a 156-pound catchweight bout on Oct. 8 at O2 Arena in London on DAZN Pay-Per-View. The fight figures to draw outsize attention not only because of the hard-charging styles of the fighters, but also because of their distinguished lineage. Their fathers— champions Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank Sr.—were sworn blood rivals from their two fights in the early 1990s.
Some critics have pointed out, however, that Eubank-Benn smacks of another fight that Hearn promoted in the past: the 2016 middleweight bout between Gennadiy Golovkin and Kell Brook. Like Benn, Brook was a welterweight who moved up to 160 to challenge Golovkin for his middleweight titles. In what turned out to be a flagrant mismatch, Brook, whom Hearn promoted, was stopped brutally in the fifth round and also sustained a broken orbital bone. Although Benn will meet Eubank at a catchweight at 156, some observers feel that his strengths will be sorely diminished at the higher weight, not to mention the risks the smaller fighter will be taking on by facing a puncher.
While Hearn conceded that there are similarities between the two fights, he believes the comparison falls apart when one considers Eubank’s actual ability.
“I’ve seen a couple of people say, oh this is a mistake, this is like Gennadiy Golovkin against Kell Brook,” Hearn said on The DAZN Boxing Show. “I know the weight is similar, a welterweight jumping up to middleweight, even though this fight isn’t at the middleweight limit, but Chris Eubank Jr., he’s well beatable, well beatable, and he’s well beatable for Conor Benn.
“It’s a tough fight. Eubank has a great chin. He’s very fit, he has a great engine, but this is a tremendous matchup that will catch fire from round one.”
Hearn said that he has confidence in Benn (21-0, 14 KOs) to pull off the win over Eubank (32-2, 23KOs) because of the fact that he routinely spars—and punishes—his middleweight sparring partners in the gym.
“I know sparring's sparring,” Hearn said. “[Benn] ain’t sparring no welterweights in the gym. He’s sparring big middleweights and he’s taking them out. So we look at this fight differently.”