The time will surely come when Chris Eubank Jr can shed the appellation to establish his own identity at the higher levels of boxing, free of his father’s sometimes cloying influence, and only then will we see whether he is the champion fighter he claims to be.
Nearly three years after avoiding the master boxer Gennady Golovkin at middleweight – on the advice of his father – “Junior”, as “Senior” still calls him, finds himself a world champion of sorts one division above at 12 stones for the IBO after shredding the remnants of James DeGale’s once-excellent skills at the O2 Arena in London on Saturday.
He knocked the two-times world champion down twice but was fighting a pale imitation of the boxer who had won Olympic gold and lost only to the very best in a professional career stretched over nine years. Eubank, operating faithfully to the instructions of his new American trainer, Nate Vasquez, could have done little more, although it was an ugly spectacle.
DeGale, whose quirky, disjointed style has frustrated so many opponents, was vulnerable for worryingly long stretches, unsteady on wobbling legs, and his only achievement was to finish upright under a final onslaught in the closing round, surely his last at the end of a tough, garlanded career.
He cannot renege on his pre-fight pledge to walk away if he lost “to someone like Eubank”. He did not just lose: he was schooled – as Eubank had claimed of their sparring in 2012.
DeGale will find it difficult to quit the sport that has been his life, as he revealed in his reluctance in the immediate aftermath to acknowledge that it is all over. But it would be folly to continue, for his pride and his well-being.
As for Eubank, he is in the mix now to contemplate bigger challenges against younger, more dangerous opponents. A logical test would be against the unbeaten Liverpudlian Callum Smith, who holds the more respected WBA version of the super-middleweight title and sent George Groves into retirement.
As ever, boxing politics will interfere with those negotiations; if Eubank’s father could somehow make a mouthwatering challenge against Golovkin impossible in 2016, prospects for a domestic showdown with Smith are probably not much better.
Groves, who was ringside on Saturday, had picked Eubank to beat DeGale (as he had done himself in 2012, as well as getting the better of Eubank last year), and said of his own decision to retire after losing to Smith: “You just know when it’s time to go.”
It echoed the words many years ago of the world featherweight champion Barry McGuigan: “A fighter is always the first to know when to quit, and the last to admit it.”
Eubank’s only current dilemma is how to work his way through the thick jungle of his sport’s labyrinthian complications. If a Smith fight is not immediately a possibility, he could chase down the 34-year-old American Anthony Dirrell, who won the vacant WBC belt by beating Avni Yildirim in Minneapolis on Saturday night in controversial circumstances, awarded the decision on a technicality when leading through 10 rounds after being accidentally cut in a collision with the tough Turk, who lost to Eubank in three rounds two years ago.
Dirrell’s younger, fresher compatriot Caleb Plant, the IBF champion, is another who might figure in discussions. For now, Eubank can be well pleased with the most convincing performance of his career. As Vasquez says, he has work still to do, but his strength, speed and heavy hitting have elevated him to a level where he could prosper. It is up to him, though, not his father – and they both know that.