Former four division world champion Roy Jones Jr. – the former head trainer of Chris Eubank Jr. – gave his take on his former charge’s upcoming rematch with Liam Smith.
Back in January, Jones was in Eubank’s corner when he was knocked out in four rounds by Smith in a big upset.
Eubank exercised an immediate rematch clause, with the second meeting taking place this Saturday night in Manchester.
For Saturday’s fight, Eubank was trained by veteran coach Brian ‘Bomac’ McIntyre, who is best knock for his work with undisputed welterweight champion Terence Crawford.
According to Jones, their relationship began to have issues in camp for the initial Smith encounter.
He feels Eubank lost faith in his abilities as a trainer.
“I think complacency was a factor going into that fight. It affected his training completely because usually he would listen to what I’d tell him to do. But during that training camp there were several times where he’d question me, or if I’d tell him something, he’d beg to differ,” Jones told Sporting Post.
“When they start to question you they either don’t believe you, or they’re second guessing what you’re saying, so if you’re second guessing what I’m saying, you should go with someone you believe, so I’m glad he’s gone with Bomac.
“Bomac is fresh to him and maybe he can develop some faith in Bomac, because one day during training for the Smith fight, a sparring partner threw a headshot and Chris went to protect his body and tried to [dodge] the head shot off. I told him ‘it’s better to protect the head shot than the body shot’ and he told me that he ‘begged to differ.’ I’m the pound for pound greatest fighter of all time saying that, but I said ‘ok’ because I’ve never seen Chris hurt and I’ve never seen him down, so you can’t argue with that. But when you start saying things like that, to me it means you’re losing confidence in what I’m telling you.
“I think he lost faith in me. I don’t why, but when he started questioning me, to me that’s an immediate sign you don’t believe what I’m telling you. All because you’ve not been knocked down before, you’re questioning what I’m saying. I don’t care if you’ve not been knocked down before, a shot to the body isn’t going to leave a cut on your stomach. Nobody will get cut from a body shot, but a head shot can leave you cut, so I was talking from experience, but when you question that, then it puts a little bit of a damper on things.
“But now you’ve been down, you can’t argue with me now. Because now you understand why I said it. Sometimes when you get complacent, people don’t heed advice. I think he thought Smith would be a little bit easier than it turned out to be.”