Eddie Hearn evidently believes the scuttled, star-crossed fight between his embattled charge Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. is still salvageable.
Benn and Eubank were slated to face each other last month in an intriguing 157-pound catchweight bout that had drawn large interest from the British sporting public because their fathers produced the country’s most fearsome boxing rivalry in the 1990s.
But three days out from the fight, the 26-year-old Benn was revealed to have tested positive for the banned substance clomifene, a fertility drug that raises testosterone levels and doubles as a masking agent. The revelations were made by the Daily Mail.
Immediately thereafter the British Boxing Board of Control issued a statement refusing to sanction the fight. Benn’s promoter Eddie Hearn and Eubank’s promoter Kalle Sauerland, however, appeared intent on moving forward with the fight, whether via court injunction or using an outside commission. In the end, the decision was made to cancel the fight. The handlers of the event, particularly Hearn, have come under scrutiny because the positive test results had been known to all relevant parties for nearly two weeks until the publication of the Daily Mail story, leading to the impression that they were trying to keep the tests results under wraps.
Later, adding fuel to the fire, the outlet revealed that Benn had actually tested positive for clomifene on another occasion earlier this summer.
In a recent interview, Hearn indicated that Benn’s hearing with the BBBofC had begun. Hearn has hinted in recent weeks that he believes his charge has a chance to be vindicated by the findings from a fair trial. If Benn does indeed end up serving a ban, Hearn appears to think it may not be such an onerous penalty. Moreover, Hearn expressed confidence that the Eubank fight will still be there to be made. Of course, much of the allure of that fight will depend on whether not Eubank can remain undefeated in the interim, and, one imagines, if the public will still entertain such a star-crossed and ethically tainted match-up.
Eubank himself is gearing up for a potential fight with Liam Smith in December.
“If Eubank Jr. starts to lose fights to the likes of Liam Smith, that obviously impacts that fight, but at the end of the day … if Conor Benn receives a ban, he’s going to be fighting again,” Hearn told iFL TV. “Whether that’s, like I said, three months, six months, a year, whatever that is, and that will be from July. So the latest, really, I see Conor back in the ring is probably next summer, or maybe even sooner.
“And there’s every opportunity I believe looking at the facts that he gets no ban, so we’ll have to see how that plays out in a hearing. But one thing I do know is he’s going to be returning at some point in his life in a big fight and for me that’s still the Eubank Jr. fight. But obviously Eubank is not going to wait around until then, but if he loses that does impact the fight happening.”