Son of my father Chris Eubank Jnr goes to war with George Groves
Briton believes title bout with George Groves is crucial step towards creating his own legacy
Lucid and emphatic – chilling at times, Chris Eubank held court in London ahead of his world title challenge against champion George Groves this weekend. The 28-year-old is convinced this will be the moment he steps out from under the shadow of his father Chris Eubank Senior, a two-weight world champion.
With a coffee and a glass of water in front of him, in an opulent Thames-side restaurant, he was impassive, cold, emotionless, yet strangely without a trace of unkindness. The next-generation-man Eubank answered every question with a resounding thud.
The tone was low, the voice was quiet and assured. He barely paused over 45 minutes. He knows what he wants to do. Eubank, with one split-decision points loss to Billy Joe Saunders on his 27-fight resume, will set about Groves like a terror on Saturday night. He described what will unfold: Groves will be “forced to survive” against him for every minute they fight.
Eubank does not see it going 12 rounds. And if it does, Groves will face a relentless, unstoppable force. Like father, like son. Junior has not a chink in his mental armour. And he means business in this fight, an opportunity to begin to create a reputation to match his father’s. “I want parity, and there is the potential for sure, for me to match my father. These are the fights that make me my own entity, they separate me from anyone else, not just my father. It is what I’ve been striving for my whole career. For people to see me as Chris Eubank, not Chris Eubank’s son. The beginning of my legacy.”
The comparisons don’t annoy him. “It’s something I’ve come to terms with, that I accepted. It doesn’t matter if I become the greatest fighter that ever lived, I will always be compared. We have the same name; we are in the same sport. I don’t have a problem with that. He was an amazing fighter. It’s no bad thing to be compared to someone as great as he was.”
He had watched videos of his father’s big fights as a kid. And he loved them. “Any fighter who is serious about boxing wants to be in those big fights, fighting the best fighters, with the whole country watching and talking about it.”
Well, he is here now, and there are no nerves, he said.
“I was nervous my first fight, my heart was pumping at 1,000 beats per second. Now I’m in my element. This is my home.”
Done with talking about his father, Eubank, like an assassin with a surgeon’s knife, sets about Groves. He has heard Groves use the word “retirement”. “Now retirement is very dangerous language for him to be using,” offered Eubank. “Very, very, bad. Great for me, because it tells me a lot about his mentality. A man who is using the word retirement, bringing that word into an interview, shows me something.
“The one thing he’ll be banking on in this fight is he’s had more fights, that he is a bit older than me, and he has had more time in the ring in his big fights. He will be trying to use that, but it’s not going to be enough. I’m too hungry. I’m too committed. I’ve come too far.’
“Groves says I have ‘Insta-fame’ but to me that means I’m on the right track. But am I fighting for fame? No. If you’re fighting for any other reason than wanting to be the best in the sport, then you’re not going to make it. I’m fighting because I want to be the best and I want to beat the best and I want to make a name for myself. I’m not fighting because I want to live comfortably for the rest of my life.
“Maybe George is jealous, because he doesn’t put himself out there like I do. I’m a people person, I’m the People’s Champion. I let people see my journey. I document every training every day with Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram. Groves is the type of fighter who does everything behind closed doors. He doesn’t want people to know what he’s doing. He will never be able to reach the people like I can. So, is he jealous of that?”
Eubank recalled his fight with Nick Blackwell, who never boxed again, after swelling on his skull. Eubank says it has made him mentally stronger, that it has “lit a fire” under him to make him prepare “even more ferociously, and fight even more ferociously”.
“George is a fighter. We are all fighters. I want to win by any means within the rules of boxing. It’s my job to go in there and rip the title away from Groves.”
Eubank has been ridiculed for training himself for this fight. “I’ve always done it this way. Groves uses ‘we’ all the time, but he will place [blame on] someone else when he loses. He will blame Shane Mcguigan, his nutritionist, a bad training camp. If I lose, I lose because I made a mistake. When I win, I win because I did everything right.”
Eubank scoffed at Groves’s theories. “He is filling his mind with things that aren’t going to help him survive, and that’s what this is going to be. It will be George Groves trying not to be knocked out for 12 rounds.”
Groves v Eubank Jnr is on ITV Box Office. Visit itvboxoffice.com