Notebook: Eubank Jr. smashes Benn in face with an egg at presser
No title eliminator for Bakole; 3-time titleholder Greg Haugen dies at 64; The Ring magazine appearance; Quick hits; Show and tell
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Chris Eubank Jr. and Conor Benn were first supposed to meet 2½ years ago in a continuation of the legendary rivalry between their fathers.
Chris Eubank Sr. and Nigel Benn fought twice in classic middleweight and super middleweight world title fights in 1990 and 1993 and more than 30 years later they are still spoken about with reverence in British boxing circles.
The feud between their sons is every bit as intense, if not more so, given the family history. It was on full display on Tuesday at a heated kickoff news conference in Manchester, England, with a second scheduled for Thursday at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, where their 12-round middleweight fight will take place on April 26 (DAZN PPV).
After nearly a half hour of back and forth, including between Eubank promoter Ben Shalom of Boxxer and Benn promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing, during the formal news conference, where Eubank and Benn traded insults, made threats, promises and violent predictions, they had the obligatory face off.
It came as zero surprise that it turned physical with a punch — or at least extremely aggressive slap — being thrown.
During a long staredown while jawing back forth, Eubank slyly reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out an egg and smashed it across Benn’s face with his left hand.
Naturally, chaos ensued — Nigel Benn grabbed Eubank Jr. around the neck at one point — and everybody had to be separated in a boxing press conference cliché at its finest.
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Why an egg? Where have you been?
They were due to fight in a massively hyped fight in a 157-pound catch weight bout on Oct. 8, 2022 at The O2 in London, but the card was notoriously canceled during fight week when Benn had one of his two positive Voluntary Anti-Doping Association drug tests for the performance-enhancing drug Clomiphene come to light.
Benn denied knowingly taking any banned substances and his team theorized that his massive egg consumption caused the failed tests. Regardless, Benn was barred from boxing in the U.K. and a protracted legal battle with U.K. Anti-Doping and the British Boxing Board of Control followed.
Benn (23-0, 14 KOs), 28, was allowed to fight twice in the United States because of a technicality before the case was finally settled and his suspension in the U.K. lifted in November, which paved the way for a new deal, which includes an automatic rematch regardless of the winner, to be struck with Eubank for a fight even bigger now than it was in 2022.
“The presser, quite amusing,” Hearn said afterward. “At the end, bitch move. You've come on the stage with an egg. I thought it was a glass. The way it shattered was like a glass.
“I'm not being funny, but all bets are off. If you bump into (angry) Nigel Benn in the next 10 minutes, watch yourself. With Eubank Jr., everything is pre-meditated, everything. So what they've done is sat there at night and thought, ‘I’m gonna hit him around the face with an egg.’
“The game’s the game, the fight’s the fight. It’s done. All bets are off, anything goes. You’ve gone to that level. Thursday at Spurs, it’s (attack) on site. The world we live in today, it’s going to go viral, people are gonna find it hilarious, but everything has changed now.
“This fight was massive. This has gone to another level.”
Even before the egg smash, Eubank and Benn had plenty to say.
“Chris can say what he wants. The bottom line is, his dad don't even like him. You couldn't even pay that man to sit in his corner," Benn said in a clear reference to Nigel being seated next to him but Chris Sr. not being in attendance.
Benn went on to day, “I’m excited to get in their April 26 end this man’s career. I can’t take him seriously. Just look at his career. Every time he’s stepped up he’s failed. Every time. Yeah, you faced better opposition. Well done, but this is the end of your career. This is the end. This is it for you.
“You chose to fight a welterweight over (Hamzah) Sheeraz, over (unified titleholder) Janibek (Alimkhanuly), over (WBC titlist Carlos) Adames, over anybody with a world title. You are gonna get rendered unconscious by a welterweight. … Once I knock him out, I’ll go back down to 147 and win a world title.”
Eubank shot back, “Oooh shivers, I love that. I’m gonna beat him because I’m a better fighter in every single department. He cannot beat me, that’s for sure.”
Adding to the intensity are the bad feelings that apparently remain over the weight for the latest incarnation of the bout. It is contracted at the middleweight limit of 160 pounds, an advantage for the naturally bigger Eubank against Benn, who has been a career welterweight with his last two bouts at junior middleweight. However, after intense negotiations, Eubank (34-3, 25 KOs), 35, finally agreed to a rehydration clause. They will have to weigh in on the morning of the bout and cannot be heavier than 170 pounds or it will cost the offender $500,000 per pound over.
“I see people saying Benn is gonna knock me out early because he’s too young, too ferocious, too angry, or Eubank wins on points because he’s too big,” Eubank said. “Apparently the only way I can win this fight is because of my size. Where’s the fucking respect — 34 fights, 25 KOs. I’m a better fighter than him in every single respect.”
Later, with emotions still obviously running high, Benn posted to social media, “That’s the only shot you’ll land on me you fucking prick. 2 rounds you are finished, Chris Eubank Jr.”
Eubank also posted to social media. He included a video of the egg incident and added, “Apparently egg contamination was the reason for his two failed drugs tests. So I contaminated him with an egg.”
The Ring appearance
I joined my friends at The Ring magazine to discuss the massive Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol II Riyadh Season card that took place on Saturday. We went over a ton of stuff related to the absolutely loaded card. Check out the video here:
No Bakole eliminator
When heavyweight contender Martin Bakole took a fight with WBO interim titlist Joseph Parker on three days’ notice with no training camp after IBF titlist Daniel Dubois withdrew due to illness, he traveled from his native Congo to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and arrived in the wee hours on the morning of the fight.
Hours later, Parker knocked out Bakole in the second round in the co-feature of the stacked Riyadh Season card headlined by the Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol rematch on Saturday.
Bakole (21-2, 16 KOs), 32, had taken the fight — and the big payday — despite already having an IBF final eliminator against Efe Ajagba (20-1, 14 KOs), 30, a 2016 Nigerian Olympian, for the right to become Dubois’ mandatory challenger scheduled for May 2 on the Ryan Garcia-Rolando Romero undercard. But because Bakole lost he is no longer eligible for the eliminator, according to the IBF.
“Bakole is out of the eliminator,” an IBF spokesperson told Fight Freaks Unite on Tuesday. “We will move on to the next leading available contender.”
It is possible the fight might still take place but it would not an IBF eliminator.
In the IBF heavyweight rankings, Nos. 1 and 2 are vacant and Bakole was No. 3. Next up is No. 4 Frank Sanchez (25-1, 18 KOs), a Cuban contender, who got knocked out by Agit Kabayel in the seventh round last May in Riyadh. Sanchez fought for the first time since on Saturday in Tijuana, Mexico, and scored a third-round knockout of low-level opponent Ramon Echeverria.
Greg Haugen dies at 64
Former three-time world titleholder Greg Haugen died on Saturday at a care facility in the Seattle area after battling renal cancer. He was 64.
Haugen (39-10-1, 19 KOs) boxed professionally from 1982 to 1999. He twice won the IBF lightweight title and later the junior welterweight title of the fledgling WBO.
He faced some of the biggest names of his time, including playing the villain in the fight with the biggest paid attendance in boxing history.
It was during the buildup to his challenge of then-WBC junior welterweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez that Haugen made his most famous comment by denigrating Chavez’s opposition.
Chavez was 84-0 and when Haugen was asked if he was intimidated by Chavez’s superb record, he replied, “He’s fought a bunch of Tijuana cab drivers.”
The Don King-promoted pay-per-view fight on Feb. 20, 1993 drew a record of crowd of 132,247 to Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. Chavez pummeled Haugen and knocked him out in the fifth round, after which Haugen was asked bout his pre-fight comment.
“Those cab drivers were tough,” Haugen joked.
But Haugen was known for more than just the loss to Chavez. In 1986, Haugen won a majority decision over Jimmy Paul to win the IBF lightweight title. He lost in his first defense by decision to recently elected International Boxing Hall of Famer Vinny Paz in 1987 but regained the belt via unanimous decision in a 1988 rematch.
Haugen made two defenses before losing the belt via lopsided decision to Hall of Famer Pernell Whitaker in 1989.
Haugen would later drop a 10-round decision in a rubber match with Paz in 1990 and then handed Hall of Famer Hector Camacho, who was 38-0 at the time, his first loss in a split decision to claim the WBO junior welterweight title in 1991. He lost a split decision and the title to Camacho in an immediate rematch three months later.
In 1992, Haugen knocked out Hall of Fame former WBA lightweight champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, who was coming out of a three-year retirement, in the seventh round to send him into permanent retirement.
Haugen, who was born in Auburn, Washington, and lived in Seattle, is survived by two daughters, two sons and five grandchildren.
Top Rank signs Santana
Dominican featherweight up-and-comer Yan Santana has signed a co-promotional contract with Top Rank, which will work with Miguel Cotto Promotions and H2 Entertainment to guide the 25-year-old, Top Rank announced.
“Yan Santana is a sensational talent who is well on his way to becoming a dominant presence in the featherweight division and beyond,” Top Rank chairman Bob Arum said. “I look forward to working with Miguel Cotto and his team to help guide Yan to the championship level. He has everything it takes to become a Dominican boxing legend.”
Santana (13-0, 12 KOs), who is coming off a fourth-round knockout of former world title challenger Eduardo Baez on a Top Rank card in November, will have the first bout of the new deal in a 10-rounder against an opponent to be named on the ESPN+ portion of preliminary bouts on March 29 on the Mikaela Mayer-Sandy Ryan rematch undercard in Las Vegas.
“I have what it takes to become a world champion,” Santana said. “Soon, everyone will know who ‘Dangerous’ Santana is.”
Cotto’s company has worked with Santana, who turned pro in 2021, since 2022.
Quick hits
The WBA has ordered a flyweight final title eliminator between Yankiel Rivera (7-0, 3 KOs), 27, a 2020 Puerto Rican Olympian, and Angelino Cordova (19-0-1, 12 KOs), 29, of Venezuela. They have until March 22 to make a deal or the WBA will order a purse bid at which the split would be 50-50. If the fight happens, the winner would become the WBA mandatory challenger for the winner of the March 13 unification bout between WBC titleholder Kenshiro Teraji and WBA titlist Seigo Yuri Akui.
Tina Rupprecht (14-1-1, 3 KOs), 32, of Germany, who holds the WBC, WBA and WBO belts at atomweight, boxing’s smallest division for women with a maximum of 102 pounds, and IBF titleholder Sumire Yamanaka (8-0, 3 KOs), 23, a southpaw from Japan, will meet in a four-belt unification for the undisputed title on April 5 at MBS Arena in Potsdam, Germany, SES Boxing announced. Rupprecht has won two fights in a row since a shutout decision loss to Seniesa Estrada in a strawweight unification fight in March 2023.
Show and tell
I was working as a sports reporter at the Press & Sun Bulletin in Binghamton, New York, where I had interned during college at Binghamton University, whose campus’ main entrance was directly across the street from the newspaper office. The paper was part of the Gannett chain, which owns dozens of newspapers and television stations across the country and whose flagship paper is USA Today. At the time, USA Today was the largest circulation paper in the country with a sports section that was second to none. I applied to the company’s USA Today loan program. Every four moths several papers in the chain were required to send one staffer to the mother ship in Northern Virginia for the four-month program designed to identify rising talent as well as to give veterans a chance to re-charge and get a change of scenery.
When it was Binghamton’s turn to send somebody, I was picked. Off I went for four months — the last quarter of 1998 — to live in a long-term hotel in Arlington, Virginia, where USA Today was located at the time, and work in the sports department. It was literally a dream come true. Working at USA Today was something I had aspired to do since high school. I was assigned to the baseball desk and was part of the team that covered the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase that summer. I even wrote the story on Cal Ripken Jr. ending his consecutive games played streak. It was my first story stripped across the top of the front page of the paper. After the baseball season I covered college basketball and football as well as the NFL. But I, along with the other 10 or so people in that quarter’s loan group, who worked in a variety of departments, were told that if there was something we wanted to do besides what we were assigned that we should ask and they’d try to make it happen.
I wanted to write about boxing. The editors were terrific in accommodating me. I wrote a few boxing stories and when I asked about writing about the Naseem Hamed-Wayne McCullough featherweight title fight on Halloween night, they not only said yes, they said go to Atlantic City for the fight. When the program concluded at the end of December, I returned to Binghamton. It was the dead of winter, bitter cold and I was miserable. I wanted to be back at USA Today. While continuing to do my job I was keeping in touch with a couple of the top editors from the USA Today sports department. They had given me great performance reviews during the loan and they knew I wanted to be back there.
To make a long story short, about a year later, and after a few phone calls over a couple of weeks with one of the USA Today assistant managing editors, the big boss managing editor of sports — who knew me from the loan — called and asked if I would come back to USA Today to be the boxing writer. I did not ask about the money, when I would start or where I would have to live. I did not ask anything. I said yes immediately and eventually got answers to those questions. It was literally a dream come true. This was in early/mid February 2000. Since I was technically transferring within Gannett, USA Today and the Binghamton sports editor made a deal that I would stay in Binghamton for another month or so before moving to Virginia. About a week after accepting the offer, I received the official welcome letter from USA Today. It outlined my new salary, which was a huge raise from what I was making in Binghamton, and also included general information packet. Getting the phone call and offer was huge but getting the physical letter as proof was the biggest moment of my professional life and one of the biggest moments of my life period. Here is that letter, which I still have. It is dated Feb. 24, 2000 — 25 years ago on Monday.
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Photos: Eubank-Benn and Bakole: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing
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Excellent coverage and thanks for sharing about USA Today. However, your piece on Greg Haugen really meant a lot. He essentially got me into the sport. I came into it when he defeated Vinny Pazienza in the rematch. From there, I saw him defend his belt and ultimately lose it in a route to Pernell Whitaker. I want to say that it was either KO Magazine or Boxing Scene that picked Haugen to win! However, he would rebound and eventually defeat Hector Camacho, handing him his first loss. Sadly, as you wrote about, his rude comment to Julio Cesar Chavez ended his bout with that great warrior before he started.
1. The IBF is the new WBA. Loathe is the right word.
2. Boxing is weird. Why are they promoting a fight that isn’t happening until April? Make the announcement now and set up the egg throwing for early April.