Boxer Blasted For Pummeling Sparring Partner

Chris Eubank Jr. takes on Nick Blackwell at Wembley next month for Blackwell’s middleweight title, and part of Eubank’s prefight hype cycle has been to release this video of him beating the shit out of, even knocking out, an amateur sparring partner.

That seems unnecessary! And a dick move. And really unhelpful as preparation, honestly.

Today, Blackwell took Eubank to task.

“He put a video up on social media, for the whole world to see, of him knocking out a kid who hasn’t even had a pro fight and it’s disgusting,” said Blackwell. “The amateur kid is building his confidence and trying to learn from a socalled professional, but somehow Eubank Jr. takes pride in exploiting him like that.

“I’ve put more than one world champion down in the gym over the years but I don’t go around bragging about it. And the idea of filming it and putting up a clip on social media is just embarrassing.”

This is kind of Eubank’s thing, I guess. Last year he bragged that it was tough to find sparring partners, claiming they were all scared off by footage of him practicing with titleholder Carl Froch. So I guess he’s just picking random kids at the gym now. Soon he’ll be punching dudes on the street and calling it training.