When you look at Conor Benn, as a contorted, aggressive, bombing force, it is clear that particular apple did not fall far from the tree.
Father Nigel was a brilliant warrior, courageous, all heart, known for being at his most dangerous when either hurt or with his back to the ropes.
As a significant underdog this weekend against Ryan Garcia in Las Vegas, Conor’s back is to the wall.
He is not expected to win. Many don’t think he will hear the final bell.
But he has inspiration in his corner in the shape of his father, who has no doubt his boy produces an upset.
Then, he will emerge fully from his Hall of Fame father’s vast shadow. No longer would he be Nigel Benn’s son, but Nigel would become Conor’s father.
Nigel, 62, chuckles at that.
“That’s what people have been saying, ‘You’re Conor Benn’s dad, isn’t you?’ Now I go, ‘Conor Benn’s my son.’ Just bring him down a bit, you know what I mean? Bring him down a bit. But yeah, he’s doing really well, I’m so happy for him, really happy for him.”
The Benns have been in camp in Los Angeles for several weeks before wrapping up preparations in Las Vegas ahead of the fight.
The Benn name is up in lights up and down The Strip, and Nigel could not be prouder. It was the revenge win over Chris Eubank that elevated Benn to the levels he now operates at.
“It’s after the second Eubank fight, he put himself back on the map,” his dad told me. “He won that fight convincingly, then he fought Regis Prograis and done really well. So I’m just happy to see where he’s gone. And you know what, he’s gone out there and he’s done it. He’s worked hard, he’s grafted for the last 10 years to put himself in this position. So I can’t fault him, you know?”
When his son turned over, despite debuting at the O2 Arena, there were not high hopes for where Conor could get to, and Nigel admits that.
“I never thought it’d be like where he is today,” he said. “And it just surpassed what I thought he was going to get. I do think he surpassed himself.”
Benn was a Hall of Famer who notched several huge wins and was a two-weight champion, at middleweight and super middleweight. Is he more satisfied that Conor has made a fortune, or that his son is now challenging for titles?
“Well, I think at the end of the day, one thing is I’m glad that he’s has got financial security, because at the end of the day you can have a guy that fights for titles, he doesn’t go nowhere,” Nigel said. “He then leaves boxing, he’s got to go back to work. So with me, I look at it, it’s like I wanted to win titles, because I know me personally, me winning titles, money’s going to follow automatically because I can put bums on the seats. Some fighters are good but just can’t sell a ticket. And Conor can do both. And he’s proved that he can do it. He can go there, he can go and do 12 hard rounds and he can get the crowd excited. So he’s got everything that he needs. And he’s doing well now. He’s doing really well.”
Back when Nigel was fighting, the internet was an optic-fibre pipedream, social media wasn’t an idea and there were only four TV channels in the UK on British televisions. Newspapers were big business, and if you were in them, frankly, you were famous. Nigel was very famous, but now Conor has a social following that stretches into millions.
How would he compare their different experiences of fame?
“Well, I think because even now it’s so funny, we had the young and the old [people tuning in to watch], when we were fighting Eubank and all that, we had the crowd, we had the British population watching these two guys fight. But now you’ve got social media, which is completely different.
“It’s another level. But would I prefer to be in this time or my time? I would always choose my time over everything because I really enjoyed my time. Because here now, it’s just something different. It’s something I don’t really understand.”
How does he feel his son is coping with the fame, and how did Nigel handle it?
“I don’t know, I didn’t really cope with it well really. I just… you just get caught up in that razzamatazz.
“And I don’t think Conor’s actually done that. I think at the beginning, he was a bit off the rails, but now he’s got his feet firmly on the ground, got a third children, and yeah, he’s just living, he’s absolutely living the dream. We talk about him now and we look at his lovely big mansion that he has and we look at it and think, ‘Mate, look at you, son. Look what you’ve achieved.’ And you’ve got to pinch yourself to know that he’s not just totally secured his kids’ lives, but his great-grandkids’ lives. That’s how much he’s making. Which is good because at the end of the day, that’s all you want your son to do, be successful in everything that he does. And now he has a shot at the WBC. How good is that?”
That is all well and good, but Conor has come this far in 26 fights and he’s now 29. But there is only one thing that Nigel really wants to see his boy get out of boxing.
“Be a world champion,” he said.
“That’s it. Win the green belt like I did. And then at the end of the day, he decides if he’s going to carry on or if he’s going to leave and start a new life… But it’s very hard if you’re a world champion, which I believe he will be. I’ve never seen anybody train like my son, ever. Ever, ever. I ain’t seen nobody train like my son. He’s another level. Since day dot. It’s even more intense now. He’s got his strength and conditioning coach Dan [Lawrence], Pedro [Neymar], Tony [Sims]. He’s got everything. He’s got his chef that cooks him special foods and everything. So he’s got everybody working around him.”
And the Benns have been going to church often in the build-up. Sims is a born-again Christian, Nigel is a man of God and Conor has followed that path, too. And this is something else Nigel has gratitude for.
“I think he had a tough time [with] at religion going to school,” Nigel said of his boy.
“He found it very hard. But now, he knows that he needs faith and he realised everything that he went through [with regards to the doping tests], he thought like, ‘Why did God let him go through things like that?’ And now he’s seeing, we don’t understand why he went through it, we might never know why he went through that but he knows that, without Jesus, he would never have been here. He would have been six-foot under. I believe that he was suffering with depression the day that Jesus got him through all this.”
Conor has spoken about the gloom that descended as he tried to prove his innocence and fought the authorities tooth and nail until he was allowed to fight in British rings again. But it wasn’t just Conor who felt it. Seeing his son through that period took a toll on Nigel, too, and he, of course, remains convinced his son is a clean athlete.
“I was suffering with him because I stayed in England for six months. And so what he was going through, you’re watching your young boy broken,” Nigel recalled. “And yeah, I don’t even drink. I ended up drinking, this is no word of a lie. For six months, I must have drunk a half a bottle of wine at night. I don’t drink. And plus I had bipolar, so everything I was taking was really affecting me. And then when I come back to Australia, I was sitting on the bed and [wife] Carol said, are you alright? And I just burst out crying because I think to myself, ‘I just watched my son go through that.’ But yeah, it affected me as well. And I didn’t realise I just had to get out of that. It went on for a while. But by the grace of God, we both got through it. And now we’re looking at the other side and we’re in a great position. Three beautiful kids, a lovely wife. He’s got everything you could ever dream of. I don’t know if I can say [it was good] God putting him through that and the way he went through that, but he’s come through the other end and he’s in a good place now. He’s in a good headspace. “Very good headspace.
“I think after this fight, when he’s got that belt around his waist, I don’t know where he’s going to go. I don’t know who he’s going to be looking at. But he’s going to have so much opportunities. I know he’s going to win that fight. I’m 100 per cent sure.”
