IF James DeGale loses to Chris Eubank Jr it will be the end of his career. He’s said as much publicly, while Eubank scoffed at the suggestion.
“Now he knows that this is the biggest money fight, this is the biggest opportunity that he’s going to get to try and get himself back on top,” Eubank said. “He’s talking about retirement and whoever loses this has to retire. That thought process is just not in me. I haven’t thought about what happens if I lose. The fact that he is thinking about it and the fact that he’s even coming out and saying it in the press conference is embarrassing. But at the same time it’s encouraging to me to hear that. When I’m at a press conference all I’m focused on, all I want to talk about is what I’m going to do win. Confidence. Positivity. Not retirement if I lose. It just shows you the different mindsets we have.”
Eubank continued, “Would I want to retire him? I want to beat him. He’s saying if he loses then he will retire. I want to beat him and I will beat him so if that’s the knock-on effect then yes, I want to retire James DeGale.”
The Brighton man has made significant changes to his training camp. Nate Vasquez has come in as his trainer and it is unclear what role his father, Chris Eubank Snr will have. Junior hasn’t even discussed it yet with him.
“Nate will be the main guy in the corner but I don’t know [what his father’s role will be]. We haven’t actually discussed that. I don’t have a problem with him being in the corner but he won’t be the front man,” Chris Jnr said.
Eubank’s performance against George Groves last year was lacklustre but he puts it down to how he trained and pointedly not working specifically for his opponent. “I trained myself for all these years and it worked, I had great fights and great wins but I’m not leaving anything to chance now, I’m at the stage where I need everything to be perfect, I need to be 100 per cent for every single fight now so having a trainer, having constant sparring with guys that can replicate the guy I’m fighting is important so we’ve made amends and now you guys are going to be able to see the difference in my performances,” he said. “I’m not finding excuses. At the end of the day, he got the win. I believe it was a great fight and I put a lot of pressure on and I hurt him. But if I’d had specific sparring… My main sparring partner for that fight was a 6ft 4in cruiserweight who fought absolutely nothing like George Groves.
“Looking back at it now I’m like, ‘What were you thinking?’ But that was just my ignorance I guess. Now if I make a mistake I’ll own up to it.”
He brought in not only Vasquez but regular sparring partners in the form of Denis Douglin and Kody Davies. “I think these are fighters who can bring me a similar sort of style to what I’ll be facing with James,” Eubank said. “I’m not sparring someone completely opposite to what James is which is what I was doing for George. Because of that I’m expecting a big difference in my performance.”
