Chris Eubank Jr has been hit with a £375,000 fine after missing weight for Saturday’s fight with Conor Benn.
On Friday morning, Benn tipped the scales at 156.4lb, comfortably under the 160lb limit, while Eubank Jr was nowhere to be seen in the following hour.
And when he finally took to the scales, he came in at 160.2lb, before a second effort of 160.05lb. While it was a minuscule miss, Eubank Jr will have to pay £375,000 per his contract.
If the 35-year-old exceeds Saturday morning’s final limit of 170lb, he will be struck with a “further penalty”, according to event organisers The Ring.
In the build-up to Saturday’s main event at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Eubank Jr had teased that he might intentionally miss weight and accept a fine – to put his body through less stress, and to give himself an advantage on fight night. However, the miss was so minor that it surely cannot have been intentional.
With Saturday’s fight in London taking place at middleweight, Benn is venturing two divisions above his usual fighting weight of 147lb. He reacted to Eubank Jr’s weight miss in a video on social media, laughing and saying: “Show me the motherf****** money.”
Later, on social media, Eubank Jr wrote, “Pain is temporary, glory is forever,” before Benn hit back: “Christopher who are you trying to fool and get sympathy from, I’m coming UP to your weight, a weight you’ve made your last 3 fights and most of your career! It’s like you’re looking for excuses already? First time you’ve ever missed weight and first time you’ve ever posted a weight cut.”
At the evening’s ceremonial press conference, Benn added, “He should’ve made weight, he’s made this weight his whole career. He’s expecting sympathy but he’s not going to get sympathy from me,” while Eubank Jr had little to say on the matter.
When the pair fight this weekend, the bout will play out two-and-a-half years after they were first due to clash, and more than 30 years after their fathers last fought each other.
In 1990, Eubank Sr stopped Nigel Benn, before the British rivals fought to a draw in 1993. In late 2022, Eubank Jr vs Benn was booked as a unique extension of their fathers’ rivalry, but the contest collapsed on short notice upon the revelation that Benn had returned two adverse drug-test results.
He was then suspended from boxing in Britain until late 2024, though he did compete twice in the US in the meantime. In 2023, the WBC suggested that Benn’s adverse results could have been caused by excessive consumption of eggs. In reference to that suggestion, Eubank Jr slapped Benn in the face with an egg in February – and received a £100,000 fine for doing so.
