May I have another egg your Eggsellency?
In light of rising egg prices, Chris Eubank Jr was quite content sharing his dozen this past Tuesday.
Ahh the heady days of January 2025. Feels just like yesterday, doesn’t it?
Remember when everyone stateside was arguing about the price of eggs, and that some mythical being in a house that resembles an egg, was going to lower the prices of said eggs?
Seems like such a long time ago now — and we’re only in February.
I think we’re in the clear now, right?
On Tuesday, Chris Eubank Jr, seemingly with plenty of disposable income for eggs, rolled up to the first press conference in the lead up to his clash with Conor Benn.
In a rather scrambled press conference, Chris seemed to be the calmest person on stage.
Outside of Ade Oladipo of course, who much like Ali on Saturday, was now wondering what his life would be after accidentally “leaking” his Eggsellencies digits.
Almost from the get go, the press conference seemed to lose any semblance of your everyday, ordinary boxing presser, which usually seem to go something like this:
“We will see on Saturday night…”
We will see.
It’s hard to know where to start with this one really.
Modern life and reality bled out onto the stage in Manchester. If the visual of the stage wasn’t punching you in the face with the garish red and yellow, the circus of boxing most definitely was.
Metaphorical claret, everywhere.
The presser at points felt like a seance with Michael Buffer’s heartfelt speech about coming to England for 37 years. At other points, it felt like the rage baiting of early-2000’s “talk shows”.
Jeremy Kyle is smiling upon this presser from whichever dimension he now resides in.
It all felt a bit macabre.
That is until, his Eggsellency phoned in live, as if he were watching Saturday morning TV circa 2001. This presser was well an truly alive and kicking …or cooking.
This is all before we got various exchanges between Chris Eubank Jr, Eddie Hearn and occasionally Conor Benn. Various comments about Benn’s now cleared doping charges, various comments about bags made of scum too.
Eubank Jr was quite clearly on a mission. Memories of 2022 still fresh in his mind, he was locked and loaded with a verbal assault on anyone who spoke to him. Including his inter-generational trainer Ronnie Shie… no Dav? Shields, yeah, Davies.
That’s what I said. Davies.
Throughout all of the exchanges though, the spectre of Chris Eubank Sr seemed to be present by the virtue of how much he wasn’t present on the day. One can only imagine what Christopher Livingstone Eubank makes of all of this.
After all the standard fare of shouting over each other, repeating themselves and being questioned on their leggitimacy (that one doesn’t even work does it?), we were due a stare down.
At this point, Mr. Oladipo must have been relieved. Only 56 more press conferences to go until April.
Then it happened.
The moment you’ve all been waiting for.
A last crescendo if you will.
With what can only be described as a left hook straight out of a greasy frying pan, Eubank Jr hit Conor Benn with a dose of what I’m sure many would describe as “reality”. Egg dripping down his face, a rage ensued.
As if there wasn’t enough rage on stage.
It all got me thinking though.
As much as grown men also love a bit of EastEnders, does it need to be like this? I mean, we wonder why younger generations struggle to express themselves in positive ways.
Is this what we want people looking up to?
While combat sports far and wide can never avoid these types of press conferences, it actually made me very appreciative for the weekend just gone.
I alluded to how modern boxing conferences go above, in this very post — we will see.
Personally, in the past week, I really found the respectful approach between Beterbiev and Bivol to be quite refreshing.
The British press do everything in their power to drum up manufactured outrage or rivalry, but the understanding and the respect shown by two modern light heavyweight greats was very much welcome.
Whilst the plot and subtext of all of this hasn’t really been touched upon in this article — I’ll leave that to black and yellow clad radio stations — I am left wondering, can we do better with these press conferences?
Do they really have to be on the level of Misfits?
Now don’t get me wrong. I love a bit of EastEnders on a Tuesday night, but don’t we all grow out of Hollyoaks when we’re in our 30’s?
We all accept that EastEnders is fake. It’s still real to me dammit.
Although the second presser has now come and gone, along with a more subdued one for Crocker vs. Donovan, I can’t help but feel, we are stuck in an endless YouTube or TikTok algorithm.
Reality is now solely, just that and nothing else.
Maybe you’ll say, “hey man, it’s been like this forever”. Maybe so, but to me, it feels like we are watching reality on the back of a 10-7 round with the ref about to call it.
Boxing may be “just a sport”, but too often, it is a reflection of modern life too.
Modern life is far too often, leaving us feeling empty and this event seemed to be a sucker punch to our collective psyche.
Anyway, where was I, back to the banter.
Le Bosh etc.
P.S. just thought I’d throw out there that this is DEFINITELY not written by Gareth A Davies.
The GAD would never.