Chris Eubank Jr continued his war of words with Liam Williams following the duo’s eagerly-awaited grudge match in Cardiff, insisting he wanted to teach his middleweight rival a lesson.
Eubank Jr produced no fewer than four knockdowns en route to a wide points win on hostile territory at the Motorpoint Arena on Saturday night, withstanding a spirited comeback from Williams to tee up what is expected to be a big challenge later in 2022.
With genuine bad blood between the two fighters, the contest was often aggressive and attritional, with the referee kept busy as tensions continually threatened to boil over.
The showboating Eubank Jr conducted his post-fight interview backstage at the British Boxing Board of Control’s (BBBoC) behest, reported Sky, during which he claimed he deliberately didn’t knock Williams out in order to enact revenge for some of the spiteful things said during the long build-up to a contest that was twice delayed due to injury and the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Happy with the performance, I wanted to teach this man a lesson,” Eubank Jr told Sky Sports. “He said some very menacing things to me leading up to this fight and I wanted to punish him.
“I actually thought about it before I got in the ring. I was like, I don’t even want to knock this guy out in the first round, I want to punish him. I want to teach him a lesson.
“I want to get people like that out of boxing. You saw the fight, headbutts, headlocks, all types of crazy stuff. I’m surprised he didn’t get disqualified.
“But I took it like a man and I punished him like I said I would do. It was a fun night.”
Reflecting further on his performance, Eubank Jr said there was never any danger of a Williams comeback despite the latter’s spirited showing in the middle rounds after recovering from that horror start that left him with a mountain to climb following knockdowns in rounds one, two and four.
“People always tell me I can’t box, apparently all I can do is come forward and I have no jab,” Eubank Jr continued. “So I thought you know what, let me show some of these critics a different side to Eubank Jr, with a little bit of [trainer] Roy Jones Jr sauce added to it. See something different you know, get the fans excited.
“There was no danger. If I’d stepped on the gas at any point in that fight, he would have been gone. But he needed to be taught a lesson. I didn’t want to give him the easy way out.
“I wanted to let him know that there’s levels to this game and don’t go out there being a big mouth to guys you can get hurt against. He thought he was something that he wasn’t.”
