Eddie Hearn officially ‘postponed’ the Chris Eubank Jr versus Conor Benn fight following Benn’s adverse drug test result, but many within the sport are curious as to whether this fight will now ever take place.
The event, set for last Saturday, was sensationally scrapped at the last minute when it was revealed that Benn – who was due to come up in weight by 10lb – was found to have trace amounts of clomifene in his system by the Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency.
When the test findings were made public by The Mail just a few days before the fight, there was outcry that the fight should immediately be cancelled and the results looked into further.
Despite that, the promoter’s action in pulling the fight was certainly not immediate. Rather, the teams behind the scenes appeared to deliberate as to whether or not to proceed with the event.
When asked by IFL TV if there was the option to put the fight on abroad within the near future, Hearn answered:
“I could put it on tomorrow. We could put this fight on tomorrow, next week, the week after, the week after that. We could have put it on at the O2 on Saturday.
But to put this fight on next week we would be in the same position, so that’s not going to happen. What we’ve got to do is move at speed here. We want answers from various different people, but we want a procedural answer from the people who ultimately wouldn’t sanction this fight, to say, ‘okay we get it, we listen to what you say, what now?’
From Conor Benn’s side, the work around the clock that has been going on and now is going on in turbo drive to deal with this situation, which he’ll meet head on by the way, and that’s his process that he’s going to go through now.
And now we need to speed that process up, because I want to make this fight – but I want to make the fight at the right time. Now that right time is… I don’t know, two weeks , a months, 6 months, a year – that will be determined by what comes out in the coming days and weeks, because there has to be a strategy and a plan and he’ll want his case to be heard.”
Many people close to Benn maintain that he is, and always has been, a clean athlete but if he is found guilty following a UKAD investigation, it is reported he could receive a four-year ban from the sport – making any future fight with Eubank Jr highly unlikely.