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CARVILL’S NOTES: On Fathers and Sons
It seems now to have been inevitable: the announcement this week that there is to be a rematch between Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn.
The pair are set to meet in London later this year at a as-yet-undisclosed venue. Perhaps they will be back at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which hosted their first fight. Perhaps they will attempt to go bigger by trying to fill Wembley Stadium.
If you missed their first fight earlier this year, you missed a solid, competitive bout between two men, both of whom would have inflicted lasting, permanent damage upon the other. It was for two fighters unproven at world level and naturally a few divisions apart an event that overachieved in its public profile.
Much of that was down to the surnames of those involved: Eubank and Benn. Not the fighters in the ring, but the fathers who decades before had faced each other in Birmingham in 1990 and in Manchester in 1993.
That night in London was an evening in which past and present flowed into and around one another, enmeshing indelibly. There was a tremendous nostalgia about the event, so many people who had heard whispers of the legends, bouts that exist now as ghosts on videotape. It was a sensation that punched hard above its weight.
There was also love. When Chris Eubank Sr emerged from the car carrying his son, the crowd erupted. The eruption of the crowd was neither jeers nor boos. The elder Eubank was now treasured – public enmity at his antics turned to respect for his achievements, and possibly even a form of love. The people recognised his honesty and his integrity, and they cherished him for it even if they did not agree with him. Nostalgia has a way of doing that.
And then there was Benn, his back to the camera, stood watching the entrance of his old rival. It all made for perfect cinema.
When I watched the fight on YouTube a few days later, I was struck by a different feeling, one that always comes when I see the children of fighters go into the ring to follow their fathers: sadness.
I understand why many sons follow their fathers into the ring; it is both a way to prove yourself as a man and a challenge to the person who sired you. There are elements of hero worship, too, and possibly inevitability. A father’s trade passes down.
But my father was not a boxer and no child of mine will ever climb into the ring. I am that middle ground: the fragile boy who found manhood in his boxing gloves. And I have seen the costs in doing so, especially in recent years with all my friends who have been damaged in the ring and in the aches in my own bones.
So I view things differently. An aversion to having children box. As an old fighter once said: “I fight so that my children do not have to.”
I was recently rereading part of The Hate Game by Ben Dirs. That book was about the original two fights between the senior Benn and Eubank.
At one point, Dirs spoke to promoter Barry Hearn, who said: “Nigel had the last laugh because he put all his money into sensible things like property and Chris spunked all his on things like giant trucks.”
It would be improper to comment on a man’s fortunes or parenting, but it does not seem right that the son of an elite boxer, one who has seemingly held on to his fortune, should have followed his dad into the ring. Most boxers go into the ring from a lack of opportunity, but these men as children were blessed with a wealth of options.
As David Remnick once wrote in King of the World over 25 years ago, “Boxing has come to represent an utter lack of opportunity, not opportunity itself.”
If I was one of those fathers in that position, my child would not be a boxer. A lawyer, doctor, or accountant would be the path I would push them on. Something better, much better, than being hit in the head for a living.
And on that note:
- Last week, I wrote a brief piece about the largest weight differences in boxing. The inclusion on that list of the fight between Nikolai Valuev and David Haye in 2009 reminded me of a conversation at the time between myself and my friend Anny. Anny and her husband Pete were actors with whom I lodged when I first moved down to London. At the time, she asked me about the fight and, not knowing much about boxing, said of David Haye, “I can’t believe that small man is going to up against someone so big.” She seemed mildly relieved when I pointed out to her that ‘that small man’ was 6’3” and weighed the best part of 16 stone.
- Also last week, I was writing about the first fight between 'Sugar' Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns and went down something of a rabbit hole when it came to Wilfred Benitez. Benitez, at 17, became the youngest world champion in history (a record he still holds) when he outpointed the Colombian Antonio ‘Kid Pambele’ Cervantes at the Hiram Bithorn Stadium in 1976. 48 years on, Benitez’s life has taken a tragic, sobering turn. Now living in Chicago, he requires around-the-clock medical care from his sister as the long-term impacts of his career manifest. This piece in Chicago Magazine, from October 2023, outlines his predicament. It should be read by any parent who looks to have their child start boxing.
- Now that Jake Paul is ranked by the WBA at #14, it seems the ‘Problem Child’ is going to be gunning for a shot at champion Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez. Already, the war of words has seemingly started with Paul throwing the first bomb and saying, “I want tougher fighters – I want to be world champion. Zurdo looked slow as shit. That’d be easy work too.” It is a little hard to track who has said what to whom, and when, but it seems that Paul and Ramirez agreed verbally (rather than through the medium of dance) to face each other, only for the pair of them to seemingly back away from that. Ramirez indicated that he would want to face other titleholders Jai Opetaia and Badou Jack, while Paul said that he is ‘coming to take it all’. How we get there is one thing, but the most-interesting aspect of this is that if Jack, Opetaia, and Paul want to fight Ramirez, this may be the most in-demand that he has been in… well, ever.
The Independent's senior writer/editor Pete Carvill is the author of Death of a Boxer (a Daily Mail and Irish Times ‘Sports Book of the Year’) and A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War. He is also a frequent blow-by-blow commentator on DAZN for boxing from Germany.
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