The lad is busy throwing punches and so the dad is telling a story. It’s about old enemies who became unlikely friends and what happened next.
As ever with Nigel Benn, it’s to do with the other guy. As ever with Chris Eubank, it became complicated.
‘We did the speaking tour together, do you remember?’ asks Benn, and it is not the sort of encounter easily forgotten.
Conor Benn (middle) poses with his son and his father, former world champion Nigel Benn
Sportsmail had gone along to meet them back then, almost a year ago to the day. It was at a leisure centre in Hertfordshire, where two men who once punched blood into each other’s urine had melted into a routine of hugs, empathy and warm reminiscence for an hour before going on stage.
That night was the fourth of their 19 stops around the country. Benn had thanked God for Eubank and said he enjoyed his company; Eubank said he loved Benn, a man who in 1990 had hit him so hard with an uppercut he nearly bit his tongue off.
At times during our interview and the show that followed, the affection between two of the fiercest rivals in the history of sport was touching and genuine.
‘You got to the tour too early,’ says Benn. He is shaking his head and laughing. ‘I’ll tell you about it. It was great when it was new. It was fun and we learnt a lot about each other and that was nice.
‘Look, he was a big part of my life and I was in his and who thought we would go from what we did to each other to chatting like this?
Former two-weight world champion Nigel Benn poses with his custom made Mercedes in 1992
‘We’d go on stage, he’d do his thing, and he would let me say a bit. Chris is Chris and you know he will be different because of what kind of guy he is. You saw the thing with the lemons, yeah?’
He’s talking about the moment during our chat when Eubank had unbuttoned his shirt and rubbed lemons on his armpits as an alternative to deodorant.
‘That’s him — he’s not like a lot of us,’ says Benn. ‘But, man, after a while it was just too much and the mood between us changed. We would have people there to hear about us bashing each other up and he would start reading poems. Bloody hell, night after night.
‘It became the Chris show and it would do my head in. Look, I will always respect him. I meant that then and I mean it now. But we are just the opposite as people. A positive and a negative. Oil and water. Always, always.’
Eubank and Benn. Benns and Eubanks. Dads and lads. They never were meant to get on.
The lad has finished his workout at this gym surrounded by warehouses in Romford. When we meet, it is Conor Benn’s 26th birthday and on Saturday night he will come of age in the family business of punching a Eubank.
That he will fight Chris Eubank Jr three decades after their dads had their wars is remarkable. ‘Born rivals’, they call it on the posters, and for once in boxing promotion it has not been over-sold.
But before Conor Benn dives into all that, he is distracted by the smudge of cake on his old man’s chin. A short while earlier, Nigel had handed one over and gave his son a kiss on the cheek.
‘He slammed the cake in my face,’ the dad says. ‘It wasn’t respectful.’
Chris Eubank Jr (left) and Conor Benn are now set to continue their family feud on Saturday
Conor nods: ‘No respect in the gym.’
Nigel looks him in the eye and says: ‘You want to put gloves on then?’
Conor: ‘That is up to you. We can go now if you want.’
Nigel: ‘Lucky it is your birthday.’
Conor: ‘Another cop out.’
They’ve had this sort of patter for years, the iconic champion and the lad he last sparred when the latter was 18. That was the time Conor placed a £300 bet with his dad at home in Australia, saying he could take him down before flying to England to launch his career.
Nigel charged in like a bull, and it ended when he had his headguard punched off by the kid — footage exists but Nigel says he will only share it when Conor has won a world title.
The sons of the two famous rivals are squaring off 30 years since their fathers’ last meeting
‘I knew then the boy could probably do all right in this game — I haven’t wanted to go in a ring with him since because he’d hurt me and he’d wet himself doing it!’ Benn adds.
‘I don’t want to be too emotional about all this but I really am proud of him and all of this, my gosh.
‘Conor versus Chris. Benn versus Eubank again. How is this happening again, man? It’s mad.
‘But you know what? I’m not even nervous about this fight — that is how much confidence I have in my son. I remember when he started he was quite wild and I thought if he got to Southern Area title level, that would be nice. Now I think he is going to the top and this fight is a step towards that.’
It is that and more.
‘You couldn’t make this s*** up,’ says Conor. ‘Son against son. Everything that happened with our dads, now we are going in there to get it on at world level. Fantasy stuff. Think how unlikely it all is.’
Conor Benn stopped Chris van Heerden inside two rounds at the Manchester Arena in April
At this juncture, Sportsmail reminds him of an interview he gave us in 2015, shortly after landing from Australia as a hopeful amateur, in which he said a win over Eubank Jnr, then a 20-1 professional, would mean more than a world title shot.
‘To think that when I was I just a kid — it is just the will of the universe that this had to happen,’ he says. ‘It’s mental.’
No one would argue with that, based on the unique context of what went before.
Those 21 rounds of fury and hatred between the elders are established as a story for the ages, with Eubank winning via a ninth-round stoppage in 1990 and then riding some questionable judging to get a draw in 1993.
To see the next generation going at it in the O2 Arena will be surreal, and not least because the dads are planning on resurrecting the awkwardness of their speaking tour in the same venue just hours earlier to make a few quid of their own. Even by boxing’s standards, it’s all delightfully dysfunctional.
But it is a fascinating fight on merit, pitting the perfect 21-0 record of the 26-year-old Benn, a welterweight who has beaten two former world champions, against the greater size and strength of the 33-year-old Eubank Jnr, a 32-2 middleweight who has challenged for a world title at super-middleweight.
Nigel Benn celebrates with son Conor after winning the WBA Continental Welterweight belt
For this one, they will meet at a catchweight of 157lbs, just below middleweight, and given the two-division jump for Benn, the bookies favour Eubank Jnr.
The latter hasn’t been shy in looking down on his opponent, which is not dissimilar to the approach taken by his father all those years ago. Among the many snippets of Eubank Jnr’s goading, there has been the claim he will retire if he is beaten by a man he considers a lesser fighter, and the associated disclosure that for Benn he will require only two weeks of abstinence from sex rather than the eight he would reserve for a world-class boxer.
‘Weird thing to say,’ adds Conor. ‘Chris, who cares?’
For his part, Conor says he doesn’t hate the Eubank in the other corner, which is one point of difference from what went before, when Nigel would respond with raw loathing to Senior’s ‘indifference’.
‘I don’t hate him,’ Conor says. ‘He is what he is. Arrogance is a hell of a thing. The beginning of wisdom is humility. Where is his?’ Nigel adds: ‘Junior has been disrespectful and he will be in for a shock if he thinks this is a walkover.’
For a moment, Nigel Benn is softening his views on the nemesis of a lifetime, owing to Eubank Snr’s recent call for this fight to be scrapped amid his fears that Junior could be endangered by cutting weight.
Poignantly, Eubank Snr had said that having lost one son to a heart attack in 2021, 29-year-old Sebastian, he could not bear the possibility of losing another. He has so far been conspicuous by his absence from Junior’s camp, and irrespective of what speaking arrangements have been advertised, there is no guarantee he will be ringside.
‘Chris’s son’s team chose the weight,’ says Nigel. ‘But I do think I want Chris (Senior) to know I am there for him. Above all this, I have been through pain and grief — my brother was killed when I was eight.’
There’s a pause, but even in sympathy it would seem old rivalries die hard, because Benn, now 58, is reminded that in recent years there have been detailed negotiations to make a trilogy fight with Senior, aged 56.
Senior says he has little remaining interest, but Benn still fancies it, grim as that might be to some of us, Conor included.
‘This is a young man’s sport, dad,’ he says. ‘Leave it to the sons. I’ll get the win for the family.’
The elder smiles. ‘Mate, I would do it in a drop of a dime,’ he says, and he means it. That is just the way he is. Once a fighter, always a fighter; once a Benn, you always want to slap a Eubank. Old blood and new.
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