Chris Eubank Sr Wants His Junior Son to be Brutal
Chris Eubank Sr Wants His Junior Son to be Brutal
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LONDON - The saddest of circumstances, separated by 25 years, have cemented an alliance between Chris Eubank and his fighting son, Chris Jr, that even they struggle to properly characterise but which they wholeheartedly agree is their joint destiny.
In shared concern for a stricken foe – Michael Watson, who was cut down in 1991, and Nick Blackwell on Saturday night – the Eubanks on Tuesday presented a coherent defence of their calling, couched in terms of heartfelt sympathy for Blackwell, who, at that moment, remained in an induced coma in a London hospital.
Be slow to judge and criticise boxing referees. Hindsight is 20/20 vision
Later, after a welter of interviews, they revealed more of themselves than they probably ever have done. What they both said at times sounded harsh, given the circumstances, but it was as honest as it was occasionally chilling.
When it was put to Eubank Sr that his own hunger for boxing dissipated the night he left Watson helpless on the canvas at White Hart Lane on 21 September 1991 (two years after his son was born), he replied sharply: “No. My finishing instinct had left – but I didn’t know it until I was in the 10th round of my first fight against Steve Collins.”
Four years and 14 fights later; Eubank was felled in the eighth, but failed to close it out after having the Irishman down two rounds later.
“Fortunately,” he added, “I was technically skilled, so I didn’t have to bludgeon people, I didn’t have to batter them. If I didn’t take them out cleanly (with a single punch), then I could beat them on points. Junior is a different animal, because his punches are concussive. If he took them out cleanly, it would be better for them. But the concussive punchers are dangerous.”
Would it be a problem, we asked Junior, to maintain this ferocity now, given he has been through the same experience as his father.
“Not only will it be maintained, it will be intensified,” he says.
“I have now been involved first-hand in a situation where a fighter has been seriously injured. I now know it can happen; it’s not a movie, it’s not something I read in a book. I’ve been involved in it, and I can’t let it happen to me. I’ve got a big career ahead of me, with many achievements I want to fulfil. Now I’m stepping into that ring even more ferociously.”
His father nodded. “It can happen to him, but I haven’t brought him up to be like I was. I was sensitive, I was emotionally intelligent. I don’t want him to be that way, because I want him protected in there. To be unforgiving, as he is, to be brutal, as he is, to be cold, as he is. You’ve got to be cold, calculated, cunning. And you cover it with manners and decorum and class and easement. I need him to be hard, because it is the only way I can protect him.
“This is what I have become. I am obsessed. I am obsessed. We have one mind. One mind means obsession. Obsession is a synonym for magic. Magic is a synonym for genius. It’s a knack. It’s an aptitude.”
They might well be “one mind” but there were moments during an earlier media grilling when the pact between father and son looked like an uneasy marriage of public confidence and private doubt.
At one point, Junior as Chris Sr calls him pauses to search for a word to adequately describe the feelings that swept over him in the closing stages of the last fight of Blackwell’s career, one which it was his duty to end as clinically as good taste would allow. His father leans over and whispers “reservations”, and Junior dutifully repeats “reservations” for the gathered hacks, news representatives outnumbering sport by at least 10 to one. Boxing was back in the dock. The Eubanks were the sport’s chief witnesses for the defence. They had their work cut out.
In shared concern for a stricken foe – Michael Watson, who was cut down in 1991, and Nick Blackwell on Saturday night – the Eubanks on Tuesday presented a coherent defence of their calling, couched in terms of heartfelt sympathy for Blackwell, who, at that moment, remained in an induced coma in a London hospital.
Be slow to judge and criticise boxing referees. Hindsight is 20/20 vision
Later, after a welter of interviews, they revealed more of themselves than they probably ever have done. What they both said at times sounded harsh, given the circumstances, but it was as honest as it was occasionally chilling.
When it was put to Eubank Sr that his own hunger for boxing dissipated the night he left Watson helpless on the canvas at White Hart Lane on 21 September 1991 (two years after his son was born), he replied sharply: “No. My finishing instinct had left – but I didn’t know it until I was in the 10th round of my first fight against Steve Collins.”
Four years and 14 fights later; Eubank was felled in the eighth, but failed to close it out after having the Irishman down two rounds later.
“Fortunately,” he added, “I was technically skilled, so I didn’t have to bludgeon people, I didn’t have to batter them. If I didn’t take them out cleanly (with a single punch), then I could beat them on points. Junior is a different animal, because his punches are concussive. If he took them out cleanly, it would be better for them. But the concussive punchers are dangerous.”
Would it be a problem, we asked Junior, to maintain this ferocity now, given he has been through the same experience as his father.
“Not only will it be maintained, it will be intensified,” he says.
“I have now been involved first-hand in a situation where a fighter has been seriously injured. I now know it can happen; it’s not a movie, it’s not something I read in a book. I’ve been involved in it, and I can’t let it happen to me. I’ve got a big career ahead of me, with many achievements I want to fulfil. Now I’m stepping into that ring even more ferociously.”
His father nodded. “It can happen to him, but I haven’t brought him up to be like I was. I was sensitive, I was emotionally intelligent. I don’t want him to be that way, because I want him protected in there. To be unforgiving, as he is, to be brutal, as he is, to be cold, as he is. You’ve got to be cold, calculated, cunning. And you cover it with manners and decorum and class and easement. I need him to be hard, because it is the only way I can protect him.
“This is what I have become. I am obsessed. I am obsessed. We have one mind. One mind means obsession. Obsession is a synonym for magic. Magic is a synonym for genius. It’s a knack. It’s an aptitude.”
They might well be “one mind” but there were moments during an earlier media grilling when the pact between father and son looked like an uneasy marriage of public confidence and private doubt.
At one point, Junior as Chris Sr calls him pauses to search for a word to adequately describe the feelings that swept over him in the closing stages of the last fight of Blackwell’s career, one which it was his duty to end as clinically as good taste would allow. His father leans over and whispers “reservations”, and Junior dutifully repeats “reservations” for the gathered hacks, news representatives outnumbering sport by at least 10 to one. Boxing was back in the dock. The Eubanks were the sport’s chief witnesses for the defence. They had their work cut out.
(rnz)
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