IN THE 25 months since he secured the finest victory of his career via decision over James DeGale, Chris Eubank Jr has boxed competitively for just three minutes and 34 seconds. Even so, the Brighton man has described the coronavirus pandemic as one big blessing. That is because COVID-19 forced him onto a farm on the Florida panhandle where he forged a relationship with one of his idols which he now hopes will endure for the remainder of his career.
โI wouldnโt have even met Roy or gone to his farm if it wasnโt for COVID,โ Eubank tells Boxing News. โEverything happens for a reason.โ
The Roy of which he speaks is of course Jones Jnr, the legendary multi-weight belt-holder, who he now trains under on his farm in Pensacola. For a man who has operated without a recognised trainer for much of his career, the link-up represented something of a curveball. โAmerica had become where I was calling home when I signed with PBC and Showtime. The plan was to have fights in America but that plan didnโt go as we had hoped,โ said Eubank, who has now penned a deal with Sauerland Promotions.
His solitary fight on the aforementioned deal came in December 2019 when he faced Matvey Korobov in an intriguing clash which ended 34 seconds into round two when a shoulder injury forced the Russian to retire. A few months later, the world changed. โJust before COVID hit, I was in Las Vegas,โ he continues. โI was only supposed to be there for a few weeks. I went to a fight show at Samโs Town and Roy was in the corner for a friend of mine. I was in the changing room when they were getting ready, they had the fight and came back.
โEveryone was chilling out and I got a chance to speak to him for five minutes. He mentioned he had a private gym on his farm in Florida and I was asking him a few questions, as anyone would to someone you looked up to for years and years. He was and is a hero of mine so we spoke, took a picture and then went our separate ways. That was that.
โThen a week or two later, COVID hit. Vegas was about to shut down, everything was about to close, the gyms were about to shut down so I was deciding โ go back to England to be with family and friends or stay in Vegas and see what happens. But I knew I needed to train and Roy said he had his own gym so I wondered if that might stay open.
โI got my dad to contact him and he said โyeah, come on downโ. I was on a flight the very next day and ended up staying there for a year. Itโs pretty crazy how life works out.โ
Eubank will have Jones in his corner for the first time this weekend when he takes on Marcus Morrison over 10 rounds on the pay-per-view show headlined by Joseph Parker against Dereck Chisora in Manchester. For the 31-year-old, it will be his chance to show the world what he has been working on amongst the animals in Pensacola. โFrom the word go, he was on me,โ Eubank says of his new trainer. โHe was on it 24/7, spending hours and hours every single day on the smallest things, working over and over.
โItโs a passion of his, itโs exactly what I needed in a trainer and Iโve never really had a full-time, day-in, day-out trainer. To find that in Roy was pretty amazing and the things he was saying just made sense, clicked, worked.
โWe didnโt even have a conversation like โI am going to train youโ, it was literally the first day I got there, the session ended and I said to myself โthis is the guy who is going to be training me for hopefully the rest of my careerโ.
โI would say 90-95 per cent of the last year and a half has been all about training, all about getting better as a fighter. I didnโt have to do that. I didnโt have to take myself out of the comfort zone of being in Las Vegas, training in Mayweatherโs gym, staying in my nice apartments.
โI didnโt have to move to a farm where I didnโt know anybody and be away from my friends and family. But I did it because I know there is a lot more left for me to do and I want to do it to the best of my ability.
โAt times it was rough, lonely and all the rest of it but I got through it and Iโm a better man for it now.โ
Although much of his career has been spent at the seafront gym in Brighton run by Ronnie Davies, Eubank has also trained a lot in America and also Cuba, where he infamously sparred Erislandy Savon on a particularly painful afternoon for the young Englishman. Even so, Jonesโ 80-acre farm has been an altogether alien existence for Eubank.
โIโve never trained anywhere like it in my life,โ he says. โYouโre literally surrounded by animals.
โYouโve got chickens and turkeys, raccoons, snakes, armadillos, alligators, literally every creature you can think of is on that farm. Then in the middle of all of that is the gym, like in a warehouse just by his house. But all around that youโve got this farm with all the animals.
โThe amount of times Iโve been sparring or working out and you just get a dog or a cockerel jump in the ring during sparring is unbelievable. But youโve got to do what youโve got to do, deal with it because thatโs how Roy likes things. Thatโs how he trained and now thatโs how I train.
โI think it has been a good thing to get away from Brighton. You have to do what you think is best for you and I felt that finding somebody who could spend quality time with me day-in, day-out was the key.
โIf you look at the success Iโve had throughout my career without a trainer itโs hard for me to really see where a full-time trainer would really fit in. I was winning all these fights and I wasnโt being trained fully.
โDonโt get me wrong, Ronnie Davis has always been with me 100 per cent, heโs the man but it wasnโt as a fully training aspect, that was more as a manager and advisor who could set things up, same with my dad. He would teach me things but heโd be there for one week but then gone for a month. It was never anything solid and I needed something solid.
โMy dad is still involved on the management side. Weโre always in contact and weโre very close but he is taking a step back in terms of my career, being there at the beginning it was always me and him but we are at a point now where I have to walk my own path and he understands that.โ
After such inactivity over the last two years, Eubank is adamant his first fight in the UK since February 2019 will signal the start of a busy new chapter. And, despite spending much of the last five years up at super-middleweight, he is now set on campaigning at 160lbs instead.
โIโve got to be active,โ he says. โIโve had too much time out of the ring which is why Iโm fighting a Marcus Morrison in my first fight back.
โIโve got to dust the cobwebs off, get the ring rust off, do the job and move on. I want to fight again in the summer and then a big one at the end of the year. Iโm very excited.
โThe only fight I would do 168lbs for again is Canelo. Outside of him, no, Iโm campaigning fully at middleweight. There are a lot of big names at middleweight, Ryota Murata, [Jermall] Charlo, they are all big fights for big titles and they are all fights that could be made very soon.
โBut I want [Gennady] Golovkin at the end of the year. I missed out on my opportunity a few years back and it has always been a big regret of mine. The fact that I was so close to getting that fight and then it slipped through my fingers hasnโt left my mind.
โBut at the same time everything happens for a reason. I feel like with my new set-up I am ready for anything and it is now up to me to prove it.โ