Conor Benn is out for blood.
The embattled British welterweight told the Daily Mail that he is preparing to sue the British Boxing Board of Control to the tune of £3.5 million.
Benn has frequently butted heads with the regulatory body that oversees prizefighting in the United Kingdom over the handling of his two failed performance enhancing drug tests from last year and which led to the cancellation of his highly publicized 157-pound catchweight fight with Chris Eubank Jr.
Benn told the tabloid outlet that he believes the Board has an “agenda” and that its conduct toward him has been inconsistent with what he feels has been far more lenient procedures for drug-troubled fighters in the past.
“I’ve always been innocent and the Board have known about this for ages except they chose to call the show off (Eubank fight) two days before [the day of the fight],” Benn said. “There’s been other fighters in the past who have tested positive under UKAD, and the board have done nothing. They’ve still been allowed to fight.”
“It is just baffling to me,” Benn continued. “I don’t know if there’s an agenda there or if they’re out for me because my dad ripped up his British boxing license on TV.”
According to the Daily Mail, Benn’s threat to sue the Board comes out of the reported £7 million purse he was to share with Eubank and subsequently missed out on once their fight was cancelled last October, a couple of days from the night of the fight.
The Board, in conjunction with United Kingdom Anti-Doping, is currently investigating Benn. Their findings could determine whether or not Benn faces a ban in his country.
News of Benn’s plans to ramp up his legal muscle comes as the World Boxing Council closed its own months-long investigation into Benn’s failed drug tests for the banned substance clomifene, a fertility drug that boosts testosterone levels in men. The WBC put out a statement last week that it “found reasonable Benn’s explanation that a “highly-elevated consumption of eggs” led to his testing for clomifene in two separate instances and that it therefore could not conclude that Benn “engaged in intentional or knowing ingestion of clomiphene.” As a result, Benn will be reinstated into the sanctioning body’s welterweight rankings.
The conclusions of the WBC, however, go against a major tenet of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which governs the BBBofC-UKAD, which is that a drug violation occurs regardless of the athlete’s intentions, negligent or otherwise.
The purview of the WBC investigation is limited to determining Benn’s place in their own rankings system; the far more significant BBBofC-UKAD investigation, on the other hand, will see whether or not Benn can legitimately box in his homeland.
Nevertheless, on social media, Benn and his supporters treated the WBC’s results as a victory tantamount to clearing his name.
A seemingly re-inspired Benn lashed out at former opponents Chris Algieri and Chris Van Heerden and also picked a fight with Errol Spence Jr. on Twitter. In an Instagram post, Benn posted a selfie of himself flicking off his critics.
The BBBofC immediately issued a statement after the WBC released its verdict, insisting that their own investigation would not be affected by the sanctioning body’s findings. The BBBofC, moreover, pointed out, once again, that it has not been privy to the same body of evidence that Benn’s lawyers had submitted to the WBC.