I’ll hold my hands up straight away: I called this one wrong. I was on Eubank Jr to outbox Conor Benn again over the distance, with a little saver on Benn by knockout in case the emotion and pressure boiled over. Instead, Benn boxed like the seasoned middleweight and Eubank looked like the smaller, slower man dragged up in weight. The judges had it 119–107, 118–108 and 116–110 for Benn – about as wide a set of cards as you’ll see in a so-called “pick ’em” fight.
The bet was bad. The fight was brilliant – if you were on the right side of it.
Owning A Bad Call
Going in, the market more or less agreed with me. Eubank went off a narrow favourite around 4/5, with Benn in the 11/8–7/5 range and bigger if you chased boosts. On the method lines, Eubank by decision was sitting around 2/1–5/2, while Benn on points was out at 7/2 and even pushed as big as 7/1 in the offers.
On paper, backing the bigger, more experienced man who’d already beaten the same opponent over twelve, at the same stadium, looked like the sensible side. That’s where my money went. I thought Benn’s route was pressure and power, not a measured twelve-round clinic.
What we got instead was Benn taking the script, shredding it and jabbing it repeatedly into Eubank’s face.
From The First Bell, The Script Flipped
You could tell in the first couple of rounds this was not April all over again. Benn took centre ring early and never really gave it back. He was calm, compact and purposeful – a completely different fighter to the one who rushed his work in the first fight.
Eubank did what I expected at first: circling, trying to pot-shot with straight rights and the odd left hook. But the jab that was supposed to be his key started coming back at him. Benn landed stiff jabs and the occasional right hand over the top, and you could see Eubank’s head popping back more than you’d ever want if you’re sat on a favourite’s decision ticket.
By the end of the third, it already felt like Benn was three up. He was first to the punch, his feet looked sharper, and he wasn’t getting dragged into the reckless exchanges that cost him last time. The underdog looked like the man who’d learned more from the first fight.
Round after round, Benn kept taking pieces off him.
Through the middle rounds, the bet just got worse. Benn was doing the simple things better: double jab, quick one-twos, touch to the body, then step off before Eubank could answer.
Every now and then, Eubank would have a little moment – a couple of right hands in the eighth reminded you why the market trusted him. But there was none of the sustained, confident work we saw in April. He looked like a man who had ideas but no legs to carry them out for long enough.
From a punting point of view, this is the point where you accept you’re in trouble. I had Eubank needing something close to a shut-out down the stretch to even sniff a decision. Benn, on the other hand, could just keep doing what he was doing and walk to the cards.
The Twelfth Round
By the time the last round rolled around, Benn was miles ahead. If you squinted and gave Eubank every benefit of the doubt, you might have found him three rounds… at best. The official cards tell their own story.
Then Benn did something that really twisted the knife into anyone on Eubank points – he nearly forced the stoppage. Twice.
The first knockdown in the twelfth came from his right, the second from a flurry of flows, and both times Eubank got up on very shaky legs, wandering just enough to make you think the referee might wave it off. For those of us who’d taken the view that Benn’s only real chance was a mid-fight stoppage, watching him come within a whisker of a late KO after dominating the cards was the full punishment. Every angle except the one I picked.
To his credit, Eubank saw the final bell, but that’s about as far as any positives go for him. He walked out of Tottenham looking slow, old and second best.
What The Result Tells Us – And What I Got Wrong
Benn said afterwards that the Benn-Eubank saga is “done and finished”, and you could see why. This wasn’t a lucky punch or a messy, controversial nod; it was a lad who’d been outboxed in April coming back seven months later and systematically tearing down the man who beat him.
Eubank, for his part, admitted that from the first round he realised he’d misjudged what he had left, and gave Benn full credit for the performance. As punters, that’s a useful reminder: the edges we think we see on paper don’t always survive first contact with reality.
Where did I go wrong?
I overweighted Eubank’s experience at the weight and his success in the first fight, and I underestimated how much Benn could tidy up his work in seven months. I also leaned too heavily on the idea that Benn’s main threat was power rather than discipline. On Saturday night, his engine, composure and shot selection did the damage long before those twelfth-round knockdowns.
Could you have found the Benn-on-points angle pre-fight? Of course. The price was there, and the arguments were there if you trusted his improvements and questioned Eubank’s ability to keep making 160. Plenty of people did exactly that and collected nicely.
For the rest of us, this was one of those nights that comes with the territory. You look at the tape again, you accept that the 8/11 about Eubank was a trap, and you move on a little bit wiser and a few quid lighter.
That’s punting. Sometimes the “value” gets absolutely smashed to bits, and you have to take your medicine – preferably while re-watching a genuinely great performance like the one Conor Benn just put in.
