Chris Eubank Jnr sought to unnerve Conor Benn in one of the final opportunities he will have to do so before finally confronting him in the boxing ring on Saturday night.

The 35 year old started the promotion of their middleweight contest at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium by hitting him in the face with an egg at the first press conference. At the second, he threatened Benn’s father Nigel, and at Thursday’s final press conference he accused his opponent of “fleeing the pressure” surrounding one of the biggest fights of the year.

Those involved in Saturday’s promotion, at the 62,850-seater stadium in north London, claim that it has sold out. If it is beyond the magnitude of occasion the experienced Eubank Jnr has previously been involved in, it dwarves, by comparison, any of those previously involving Benn.

The calcultated Eubank Jnr, who has consistently labelled Benn a “cheat” as a consequence of the failed drugs tests that forced the cancellation of their date in October 2022, has targeted Benn via social media and at further set-pieces organised to promote Saturday’s grudge match.

His recognition that the 28-year-old Benn is the most emotional of fighters was again transparent when he spoke on Thursday. So, too, was his appreciation of the way his father of the same name so succesfully angered Nigel Benn during their heated and memorable rivalry of their 1990s. If he is a less talented fighter than Chris Eubank Snr he is also more articulate, and he adopted a similarly dismissive-and-condescending tone to address Conor Benn as that Eubank Snr used over 30 years earlier. 

“I know what’s coming,” he calmly said. “I’ve prepared my whole life for these moments. I’ve put the time in; dedicated decades to this sport, and done it all without cheating; without cutting any corners, and I’m proud of that.

“The mentality I have – the experience I have – the fortitude, and the will, is what I will be using on the night to take out my adversary in Conor Benn.

“Conor speaks about pressure and dealing with it, but there’s a reason why he had his training camp in Spain. The kid had to flee his own country to prepare for this fight. He knew that he couldn’t handle the pressure of walking these UK streets and having people shouting out, ‘drug cheat’, and egg jokes. He didn’t want to be involved in any of that. So he took himself away, and now he’s back. 

“He thinks he can use me to get back into good graces. I haven’t fled. I haven’t hidden away from anything. I’ve been on these streets. I’ve been to gyms all over London over the last two months. I’ve been and spoke to kids; done all the media obligations I needed to do around the country. I’ve felt the energy on the streets of the UK over these last two months. It’s real. People are invested in this. Everywhere I go, people are screaming, and most of the time it’s positive, which is a new thing for me. I’m still getting used to that.

“I’m happy with the place I’m at mentally. I don’t think Conor can say the same thing. I think he’s feeling the pressure and the heat. He’s feeling that, and he’s going to feel it a hell of a lot more in a couple of days’ time.”

Eubank Jnr had, by then, again refused to allow the normally vocal, quick-witted and composed Eddie Hearn, Benn’s promoter, to speak. Hearn responded by instructing Frank Smith, the chief executive of Matchroom, to replace him at the top table, and Smith, similarly, struggled to speak over Eubank Jnr’s consistent-and-dismissive interruptions. The middleweight was regardless, by comparison, much more willing to listen to his rival, until seizing on an opportunity to deliver his most dismissive line of all.

“No, no pressure,” Benn responded when asked about Eubank Jnr’s assertions. “I’ve had the fight over 100 times in my head. It’s just focusing on the training; removing myself from my comfort zones; my familiarities; my family, and fully dialling in. I’m not going to lower myself to Chris and do all that back and forth. That PR’s done. 

“I’m excited to get in there and put my hands on him Saturday night, irrelevant of all the rubbish he wants to talk, and names. We’re not at school, and come Saturday night I get to put me hands on him.” 

“You will be at school on Saturday night, my friend,” Eubank Jnr swiftly responded. “I’m taking you right to school. I’m going to be the headmaster, my friend, and you will be in detention.” 

When Benn responded, “Just focus on getting the weight off, fat boy”, Eubank Jnr got the emotional response he perhaps had sought. Hearn has already spoken of the need for Benn to maintain the composure he lost at the first two press conferences; though Hearn was unable to offer it on Thursday, support came from Benn’s father Nigel in the form of him repeating the same stories he told on Wednesday of his son’s dominance in sparring against Denzel Bentley, Bruno Surace and William Scull, in the same prediction that he will win inside four rounds, and from Benn’s long-term trainer Tony Sims.

“Every so-called expert I listen to or watch are all favoring Chris Eubank Jnr to win, because they’re saying that Conor’s at a disadvantage moving up in weight and Chris is going to be too big for him and too skilful,” Sims said. “But Conor Benn carries the power up from welterweight to middleweight. He’s got the speed. And I believe he wants this fight really badly. 

“He’s been through two years of hell [following the failed drugs tests that Benn has maintained his innocence regarding] – over that course of time he’s gone from being a boy to a man, and we’ve seen in this camp, eight weeks in Palma, Mallorca, we really have had a fantastic camp. He really has looked fantastic to me in sparring. I believe he’ll come out victorious. 

“God has a way of looking down – things happen for a reason. He’s been through hell for two years, but sometimes you have to go through these things to come out on top at the end.”

“Everyone’s always talking about this weight thing,” said Eubank Jnr with the same straight face, having agreed to fight Benn at a catchweight of 157lbs in 2022. “The weight is painful. I’m in pain right now. I’ll be in even more pain tonight and tomorrow morning. But the question I ask myself is, ‘What is pain?’ I have a 31-year-old brother [Sebastian] buried in the desert in Dubai. That’s pain. I have his son, Raheem, three years old. He asks, ‘Why can’t I see my daddy? Why doesn’t he talk me to school?’. That’s pain. 

“My own father, a man I idolised for my entire life – he doesn’t speak to me. We haven’t spoken for years, and he thinks I’m a disgrace. These things are what pain is to me. If I can deal with all of these trials and tribulations, then the weight cut, and the rehydration clause – these are all things that are not an issue. They’re not important.

“Now it’s about preparing to get this kid out of boxing. We’re not taking him lightly anymore. He should have taken the chance he had in that first fight, when I was underestimating him. That was his best shot, and now it’s gone. Now I have a duty to boxing, to the fans he’s lied to, to erase these guys from the picture.”

“This is what I do,” Benn also said. “I love this game. This is what I live for. This is every fighter’s dream; to turn professional; to live this life. I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’m more than prepared; more than ready. I wish it was Saturday night.”

By the time Eubank Jnr had finished goading Hearn with a new proposal for a bet on the outcome of Saturday’s contest, it’d become easy to forget about those who spoke before him – his trainer Johnathon Banks included.

“It takes a certain type of mental fortitude to be able to [fight],” Banks said. “No way in the world should that be underestimated. But even with that, what separates what we have going on is [Eubank Jnr’s] mentality. It’s a little bit different. With that mentality, along with that work ethic, it’s going to be the separation between the two.”