In the name of their fathers: Eubank v Benn began and ended a heady era of British boxing

Their dads lit a fire that consumed me but Eubank Jr v Conor Benn embodies all that has gone wrong with the Dark Trade

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hirty-five years ago this month, on 18 November 1990, my life changed course when I watched Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn fight each other in Birmingham with a ferocity which left me astonished and breathless. After that savage and surreal contest, I began working on a book about boxing, Dark Trade, which allowed me to become a full-time writer.

Benn and Eubank were so different that my already deep interest in boxing caught fire. I became consumed by the fight game for decades until, earlier this year, I finished writing The Last Bell, my fifth and final book about boxing. I still loved the most interesting fighters and their incredible life stories, but the controversies around the manufactured rivalry between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr left me sick at heart.

That exhilarating first fight in 1990 ushered in a heady new era for British boxing. Soon, even people who cared nothing about boxing could not look away from the TV in roaring pubs when Benn, Eubank, Michael Watson, and later Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed, lit up the screen.