Chris Eubank Jr has opened up on his relationship with his father and outlined the ‘physical punishment’ Chris Eubank Snr used to inflict on him before reflecting on how his dad’s charlatan comment made him feel.
Eubank Snr played an important role in his son’s boxing career and was frequently seen during his training camps, fights and press conferences. However, their relationship has become somewhat strained in recent years.
Eubank Snr has not appeared in his son’s corner since 2019. The 57-year-old also suggested Eubank Jr was a ‘charlatan’ in a bombshell talkSPORT interview following his knockout defeat to Liam Smith earlier this year.
During the interview, Eubank Snr was asked where his son was a ‘charlatan’ after losing to the likes of Billy Joe Saunders, George Groves and Smith while fighting on the world stage.
Eubank Snr took a moment to think about the question before replying: ‘In the world of honesty, how can I disagree with you? I guess my silence says it all. Truth is truth.’
Chris Eubank Jr has opened up on his relationship with his father and how he was punished
He said his dad used physical punishment during his childhood but claimed it wasn’t abuse
When asked about how his father’s comments made him feel during his appearance on The Overlap with Gary Neville (in partnership with Skybet), Eubank Jr said: ‘I honestly haven’t seen these interviews [of Chris Eubank Sr talking badly about Jr].
‘I did see a clip but that’s the only thing I’ve really seen, being called a charlatan is very mild. From what I saw he didn’t call me that, whoever said it, he let them say it. My father always told me no publicity is bad publicity.
‘He knows what he’s doing, we’re talking about it now. If he had said – ‘my son’s great and he’s going to do well’ – no one would say anything. When someone calls me a charlatan and he say silent, that’s news, wow, what’s going on here?
‘Am I angry about it? I understand emotions and understanding my father as a man, he’s been through a lot over the last two years. The things that have happened in the family has affected him, so I have to take these things into consideration when he’s speaking to the media. It’s tough dealing with a death in the family, everyone deals with it in their own way, some deal with it bad, some deal with it as good as they can.
‘He needs to he needs to just deal with what he’s dealing with, people taking advantage of his mental state right now is poor, these guys don’t care about him, they just want headlines.
‘I can’t stop him from talking to people, but anyone who’s just lost a son and is so clearly devastated by that, it’s irresponsible to be putting them on a platform, but people don’t have morals these days.
‘People are scumbags, people are looking for any way to get a leg up by any means necessary, it doesn’t matter who they hurt or who’s affected. I’m not one of those people, and I give credit to my father and my upbringing, I turned out to be a good person.
‘I’m not a bully, I’m not a scumbag, I don’t take advantage of people, so nobody can say the way he brought me up was wrong because look how It turned out. My brother was an amazing man before he passed, he was a people’s man.
Eubank Snr played an important role in his son’s boxing career and was frequently seen during his training camps, fights (above) and press conferences
However, their relationship has become somewhat strained in recent years and Eubank Snr has not appeared in his son’s corner since 2019
‘He used to travel to Sudan and Africa and all these different places to help people who had nothing, and he had the same upbringing as me, the same punishments as me, and he was a great man.’
Eubank Jr went on to discuss his relationship with his father, claiming the 57-year-old used to punish him physically when he stepped out of line. Despite sounding harsh, Eubank Jr is adamant his dad’s discipline was necessary.
He said: ‘I don’t know if I would say it was unhealthy, [his fear for his dad] he was extremely strict, I got away with nothing. If I messed up in school, didn’t do a chore or got into a fight with my brothers, there was physical punishment whether it was a belt, a cane, whether it was a slap.
‘Back then, in the 90s, that was how you disciplined your kids, so that’s where my fear originated from, having to deal with that. Again, that type of punishment, that type of upbringing and that type of strictness made me who I am today, and it prepared me for the brutality of the sport of boxing.’
When asked whether he felt as though his father had abused him, Eubank Jr said: ‘Absolutely not [on if his dad’s discipline was considered abuse]. In my opinion, abuse is unwarranted, abuse is somebody doing something for no reason.
‘Abuse is a parent coming home drunk and taking their anger out on their kids, that was never the case with me. I got punished when I stepped out of line, when I got into fights, when I messed up at school.
‘He was teaching me that for everything you do there are consequences, good and bad. When I did good things he rewarded me immensely, but when I did something bad, he punished me.
‘These are life lessons and not abuse at all, I was still such a bad kid, I was a terror way, I was in a gang, getting into fights. At 11 years old I spent two hours breaking into a sweetshop with my mates and emptied the place. We left the cash register but filled up bin bags with Cornetto’s and Coke’s and Snickers bars.
Eubank Jr was beaten by Liam Smith in their bout at Manchester Arena on January 21, 2023
The pair will be going toe-to-toe for a second time at Manchester Arena on Saturday night
‘As a kid you’re not thinking about money, you just want your sweets, I’ve got a million stories like that, and I was doing that knowing that if I got caught, when I went home, I was in serious shit. I look at as, imagine if there we’re not consequences for what I did. Imagine I had a parent that was like ‘oh come on son, take a time out’ I would’ve been off the rails.
‘I remember getting into a fight at school and I knew the school was going to call my dad afterwards so I would prepare. I would go into my gym bag, and I would put layers of shorts and pants and socks tucked into my boxers because I knew as soon as got home, I was getting my ass kicked.
‘That worked for a while and I had to pretend it was hurting when really, I couldn’t feel anything which was great, I did that for a little while. One time I’m rolling around [pretending he’s hurt] and a sock falls out of my boxers, my dad found it, and that was a bad day.
‘At the time it’s scary and you hate it, but looking back on it, what would I have been like if I hadn’t had that discipline because I was still in gangs. There are videos of me even now on YouTube in street fights, and I was doing that every week.’