I won’t try to stop my kids boxing like dad did
Eubank Jr on life growing up with an iconic father
HE HAD just been knocked through the ropes on to the dusty concrete floor of a Havana gym by an Olympian superheavyweight who had been employed to teach him a lesson.
Chris Eubank Jr simply brushed himself off, rubbed away the pins and needles in his leg and climbed straight back into the ring.
Only once in his life has the 28-year-old actually been knocked out – by an opposing rugby winger who jumped illegally into a rugby tackle during a school match.
Even then, Eubank came round to the sound of applause. Despite getting a knee to his temple and swelling close to his left eye, his bravery had stopped his opponent from getting to the tryline.
But throw in a gentle right jab of a question on fatherhood and Eubank is floored.
“What sort of dad would I be? I’ve never had that question before,” he says. “I will be a good dad. I will be there for my kids. Nappies? Yeah. I will go through the whole process. I think I will enjoy the whole experience of nurturing another human being.
“Would I support my own kids even though my own father stopped me from boxing until I was 15? Yes. How could I do otherwise? Despite my father trying to stop me, I did it anyway and I have become world champion.
“But it is for the kid to do it themselves. If they don’t love the sport, boxing is not football or cricket. You can get seriously hurt. And nobody wants to see their kid being hit.”
Yet former world champion Chris Eubank Sr will again be right there in the corner at the Manchester Arena next Saturday, when his son fights in the World Boxing Super Series semi-final bout against George Groves, having witnessed most of the hard knocks his son has taken on his path along the same road.
“My father was there with me in Cuba but he could not stop the beating – I would not let him,” says Eubank Jr. “The previous day I had a session that was supposed to be a technical spar day. I did not know that. This kid was there just trying to work me out and I absolutely took him apart.
“The head coach did not like that. So he put me in with Cuba’s Olympics superheavyweight representative. I don’t speak Spanish, but he was probably saying, ‘Beat the hell out of this guy’.
“From round one, I was just being thrown the heaviest, most horrible blows. I fell through the ropes in the middle of the second round and got pins and needles in my knees from hitting the concrete ground.
“Most fighters in their teens would have said, ‘That’s enough’. I got back in that ring and finished that round. Then they kept saying, ‘Tres! Tres! Tres!’ – three rounds. So I did the third round as well.
“That was a moment in my life when I realised how badly I wanted to succeed.”
At first glance, the burning arrogance deep in the eyes of the IBO champion and the unnaturally square aggressive stance is so typical of his father. There is no hint of a lisp but the mannered pattern of his speech is also instantly recognisable.
Quickly, though, the opposites emerge. Senior grew up in the Bronx but yearned to be accepted by the establishment.
Junior was his Brighton College-educated opposite. “I was a rich street kid,” says Eubank. “I would go to private school in the day and at nighttime I was out on the streets. Maybe it was rebellion.”
Similarly, his determination to be a hands-on dad contrasts directly with a father who admitted in 2015 on ‘I’m A Celebrity...’ that “there are so many things I should have done for my children”.
Senior was brash, noisy, but aware of his limitations as a boxer. Junior is quieter, more considered, but says his goal is “to fight the best and beat the best”. Eubank Jr accepts there will always be comparisons and even basks in his own “NextGen” label to celebrate the family legacy. But he believes the Groves fight is a chance finally to be judged on his own merit.
“I understand all the questions, but that phase is done,” he says. “I have stepped out of his shadow and this fight solidifies me in the boxing world as my own man.”
Perhaps it is because he has always faced those comparisons that the 28-year-old was quite so flummoxed, just briefly, by the mention of having children himself.
“Who doesn’t want to have a kid eventually?” he says on final reflection. “It is not in my immediate plans but I have just bought a new house in Brighton and it has four bedrooms. I have to fill them with something!” Will it be called Chris Jr Jr, though? Eubank just smiles. He is right. Two is more than enough. ●Eubank v Groves, Saturday February 17. For details on how to watch the fight, go to ITVBoxoffice.com