Chris Eubank Jr v Conor Benn: boxing updates and undercard news – live | Boxing

Some fights are for world titles. Some are for pride. And some, like tonight’s encounter between Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn, are fought for something even more intangible: family honor, old grievances and the vague promise of generational closure.

More than 65,000 have filled Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to witness two sons shoulder the unfinished business of their fathers, who once battered each other into British boxing folklore. No belts are at stake. Only legacies, and the looming specter of a two-way rematch clause.

The build-up has been predictably chaotic. The egg incident (don’t ask), the scrapped 2022 fight after Benn’s positive drug tests (later pinned, creatively, on an overzealous diet of eggs), the fines for slapstick misbehaviour, and now a £375,000 penalty after Eubank Jr failed to make weight by half a mouthful of water. In boxing, these things pass for tradition as much as farce.

At 35, Eubank Jr carries the experience, the size and the scars. His final press conference turned unexpectedly raw when he spoke about the death of his brother and his estrangement from Chris Eubank Sr, who has publicly disowned him in recent months. “Pain,” he said, is not a rehydration clause; it’s being asked by your nephew why his father isn’t coming home.

Benn, 28, enters as the lighter, angrier man, keen to shed the baggage of the doping scandal that torpedoed their first meeting. He’s been fighting (and winning) in hotel ballrooms in America while clearing his name, but this is another world entirely: a giant stadium, a global spotlight, and a family name that, for better or worse, guarantees attention.

Neither man has held a major world title. Neither has entirely stepped out of the long shadows cast by Chris Eubank Sr and Nigel Benn. But for all the absurdities of the past few years, there is real peril and real intrigue tonight. Conor Benn fights like a man trying to punch a hole through history. Eubank Jr, sometimes infuriatingly composed, sometimes thrillingly reckless, fights like a man who still wants to prove something – even if it’s only to himself.

The promoters, classically understated as ever, have billed it as a “British Hagler-Hearns”. That remains to be seen. The hope is that, somewhere beneath the lawsuits, late-night weigh-ins and £100,000 eggs, there’s still a proper fight lurking.

Stay with us for live updates, round-by-round coverage and, knowing this lot, probably a few more plot twists before the final bell.