The important thing when you are going to do something brave is to have someone on hand to witness it. Michael Howard, Military Historian, (1922-2019)
Our relationships with fighters are shaped in the main by the greatness of their deeds. In their power, their skill, their willingness to endure pain that appears beyond our comprehension, behind the ordinary. The depth of the awe in which we hold those champions is influenced by our place in life when they emerge. It is the crucible for the additional sentimentality we all feel toward the heroes of our past. Specifically, those of our formative years when senses are keenest and less dulled by time and the accrued cynicism.
Appreciation of others, of successors, assessment of predecessors, is cured by the wisdom of age but our champions, the one’s we elevate at our most impressionable always stand tallest in our recollection.
On Saturday night, Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn will tap into the emotions of fight fans of my generation, encouraging a voyage through the decades to the seminal rematch between their fathers 29 years ago. It is a fight forged in opportunism, hidden from the masses by the convoluted nature of viewing via an obscure app and with arguably more to lose than there is to gain for both protagonists. And yet such is the lustre of Benn and Eubank Senior’s two fights there will still be an audience in pursuit of access when the first bell rings.
Back on October 9th, 1993, along with sixteen and a half million fellow Brits, I was watching the fight on terrestrial television. For free. Smoke swirling up from the crowd gathered in The Windmill pub, Thorne, Doncaster. The solitary goldfish television set, no more than 20inches across, perched high on a sturdy shelf. An armless bandit glares and flashes into the gloom beneath. Windows run with condensation as Autumn gathers outside. Saturday night bodies press together, necks strain. Pool table falls silent. The jukebox is muted. Pints of Tetleys and Carlsberg, and tomorrow’s regret of vodka and orange slap and spill from glasses.
Every eye ball is on the grainy PYE television. Every viewer jeers the ring walk of Chris Eubank. Once within the familiar roped coliseum Eubank adopts his trademark pose. Statuesque, motionless. Eubank’s skin glistens beneath the ring lights as if carved from an ebony marble and placed on a podium. Jaw jutting forth. Ego close behind. Bright red gloves touch gently together as if to revive a butterfly resting on the rich leather in perfect contrast with the sunshine yellow trunks. Bristling with defiance, power, self belief. Eubank as always the unrepentant villain. Empowered by the vitriol spat toward him in the cool October air. Simply the Best. Tina believes. And so does Keith, nursing a fading half and leaning on the corner of the bar in his own rotund monument to manhood, a cuff dampened from a puddle of lager left unnoticed. His head firmly in the barmaid’s eye-line. “Eubank will beat him again.” he mutters, a lone voice in the melange of pro-Benn supporters, as he nods for a refill.
Benn had arrived to cheers. Prowling, smirking, like a hungry big cat finally about to eat, to get his paws on the man he detested. A nemesis who’s persona he had had to endure in defeat three years earlier and every day since. Benn had his robe removed, flexed his triangulated torso, gave a sneering look toward his would be prey. And strode left and right. Eyes fixed on Eubank. ‘Look at what I’ve built. To destroy you’. No respect, no fear and no doubt. No quarter would be given nor expected. It was gladiatorial. Primitive.
The promise of impending violence, the culmination of a long-harbored and unflinching animosity between the two which ran deepest in the vanquished Benn, drew from the viewers in The Windmill pub a tangible energy too. A heat, a hum of expectation. Curtains were drawn. Opinions voiced. The last reveller scurrying in, girlfriend’s hand grasped tightly to avoid delay, pushes toward space that doesn’t exist.
Benn’s sense of identity, of himself had been punctured by that defeat in the first fight. Revenge and redemption would be his prizes. The belts were merely decorations. Something much, much bigger than titles was at stake. An undefeated, unconquered record. That was Eubank’s most prized possession.
“Gew on Nigel, lay the bastard out!” blurted a few from the midst of the throng, and a dozen variations of the verse following swiftly in its wake. Benn carried on smiling. Eubank’s brow seemed to close over his face, like a formation of Roman shields before a Barbarian attack.
“Touch gloves and come out fighting!”
It is into this pulsating, febrile history that their two proud sons must stride on Saturday. A daunting if lustrous burden. An unreachable summit they will nevertheless seek to climb toward when they meet at centre ring. The moment may yet prove too big for one, or even both. But it is a new chapter in an old story from the history of the British prize-ring that has been impossible to overlook since the two sons began to punch for pay. Like the chorus to a beloved song a concert crowd is desperate to sing, this is a fight that has felt inevitable.
Despite the disparity in experience, size and, as far as resumes can summarise, quality of opposition, for those of my generation who experienced Benn versus Eubank 2 in 1993, the opportunity to witness this boxing curio is, indeed, irresistible.
Eubank should, when all said and done, win this, and he should do so without entrusting the judges to adjudicate. It is hoped Benn’s emerging status as a top-20 Welterweight is not sacrificed on the alter of nostalgia and the enhanced purses it has afforded the new custodians of the family legend.
That would add to the regret the past often bestows on those who visit.
BOXINGWRITER.CO.UK 
Fabulous memory beautifully written.
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