Barry gave in to all his demands strangely, but it worked. Warren and Duff had told him where to go. Duff would've forced a unification with McCallum for instance for Eubank.
Yeah, casual fans in the pub hoped to see him get his face punched in. But usually, once the bell rang, he just bored them to tears against some no-hoper. I don't know if he sold more dishes. Yeah, he was a character. Most people hated him. He wasn't a great fighter at all, and most fans understood that. But he had his own style, inside and outside the ring. Can't deny that.
After seeing his fights with Benn (1990), Watson (2), Rocky (Germany) and Thompson (1), I struggle to criticise. That was truly great.
Certainly I knew family and friends who subscribed to SKY to see Eubanks ring entrance and posturing, parents and kids. (He had double the average ITV boxing views on ITV.)
As a kid I was fascinated with Eubank ! All my friends and family who were in to boxing really disliked him and were big Benn fans rather the Eubank! I think a lot of people tuned in hopeing he would get flattened . I do remember though being literally the only person who liked Eubank!
Every fighter knows the relationship between themselves and promoter. They're not supposed to be best friends. If you say that most promoters are evil it's also true that most boxers are not the smartest of people. If you're gonna entrust your whole career to a promoter or manager without being involved yourself that's on you. After all if you're only fighting three times a year you have more than enough time to learn the important fine details and prevent yourself getting shafted. "I'll whoever Eddie/Haymon/Arum puts in front of me" - this attitude is the problem with fighters.
I liked Eubank back in the day as a personality. I liked him more because he pissed everyone off. He talked sense when he said boxing's a mug's game unless you good at it but caught a lot of flak for that. I liked Benn too. Nowadays I tend to regard Eubank as a deluded buffoon. He went down in my estimation with the way he and his son have handled junior's career. Just too much BS for my liking. As a fighter, I never regarded Eubank as true world championship class. The WBO titles he held and the vast majority of his challengers were not the premier division of the 160/168 weight classes. Many of them were dreadful and Eubank rarely impressed.
The best didn't fight the best in that division. They were all to blame. They all fought Thornton, Malinga, Barkley, Giminez, Amaral etc but not eachother. Even Toney v Jones was a middleweight coming up, for one version
