Middleweight contender Chris Eubank Jr 32-3 (23) is insisting there was nothing definitive about his fourth-round knockout loss to Liam ‘Beefy’ Smith 33-3-1 (20) back in January.
The 33-year-old was down twice in the fourth round before referee Victor Loughlin waved off the fight at the 1:09 mark.
Eubank Jr will get the opportunity to set the record straight when he rematches the 35-year-old former WBO junior middleweight champion at the AO Arena in Manchester, England on Saturday night.
This time around Eubank Jr will have a secret weapon in his corner with American trainer of champion Brian ‘Bomac’ McIntyre coaching him for this bout.
“I’ve heard people say it was a conclusive victory. No it wasn’t. It wasn’t conclusive. ‘He beat Eubank up, he outclassed him.’ No. He got his head boxed off for three rounds and then he caught me slipping in the fourth,” Eubank told Sky Sports.
“There’s nothing conclusive about a man standing up and telling the referee let me continue and the referee waves it off while I’m on my feet ready to go. That’s not conclusive at all and that’s why I’m still a favorite in the bookies, even after a loss. There’s a reason for that.”
Despite Eubank Jr’s protests, he looked clearly in trouble and his legs weren’t under him when he made it back to his feet.
“I know how to get through pain,” Eubank said. “I know how to recover from being buzzed and I feel like that second – I’m not going to call it a knockdown because he didn’t land anything clean – I kind of fell over. Because I’m still trying to get my sense back but I felt like I was just starting to come back.
“I got back up the second time very quickly and I said ‘let me keep going’. At that moment in time I was feeling myself coming back round. So that’s why I say I feel like I was robbed of the opportunity to get through it.
“I’m not a vulnerable guy, I’m not a vulnerable fighter. I’m a grizzled veteran. If I get hurt, let me try and get through it. I don’t need somebody waving it off to save me from myself.
“I’ve trained my whole life for brutality. I’ve trained my whole life to deal with punishment, to absorb punishment, to get through horrible situations.”
Eubank Jr has previously blamed an elbow from Smith for doing the damage that began the sequence of shots that eventually saw him stopped, even going as far as to suggest Smith trained to commit the foul.
The rematch has a lot of bad blood about it and is very much a crossroads bout where the winner can move forward while the loser will have to consider what they want to get out of their career.
