The mind games began before the opening bell, when Catterall sent Conor Benn – who was defeated by Harlem’s cousin, Chris Eubank Jr, in their April grudge match – to inspect Eubank’s hand-wrapping.<\/p>\n
“Didn’t want to miss this,” Benn quipped during the awkward encounter, before returning to Catterall’s dressing room to report, “[Eubank’s] head has gone”, as the pair embraced.<\/p>\n
Inside the ring, Eubank smiled nervously through a tentative opening as Catterall, as expected, edged the early rounds with his superior skill and ring IQ, though without fully imposing himself.<\/p>\n
Eubank, who has gained popularity through his appearances on free-to-air television, began to land single shots, but it was clear he was second best against the more accomplished fighter.<\/p>\n
With career wins over Josh Taylor, Jorge Linares, and Regis Prograis, Catterall’s class was clear.<\/p>\n
But the pair tumbled to the canvas in the third, and again in a messy sixth. Then came the accidental clash, followed by Eubank striking the back of Catterall’s head.<\/p>\n
The home favourite returned to his corner to have the blood wiped away – an action not allowed mid-round.<\/p>\n
Perhaps wisely given the severity of the cut, referee Williams then halted the bout at one second into the seventh, prompting boos from a 5,000 strong crowd. <\/p>\n
Afterwards, promoter Eddie Hearn dismissed talk of a rematch and said Catterall would be maneuvered back into world title contention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mind games began before the opening bell, when Catterall sent Conor Benn – who was defeated by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-241407","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114803504800616084","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}