The best isn't always the biggest, and the biggest isn't always the best.

“Best,” of course, is subjective. Every field of entertainment, and many other industries – including boxing writing – issues awards. But every business also wants to make money. Film studios, for example, would prefer a blockbuster sensation seen by the masses over a critical darling that fails to make a profit.

Every “Best Picture” Oscar winner has eventually surpassed its production budget, often bolstered by the buzz, first from being nominated and then crowned. (The profit-loss statement can change once other budget lines are included.)

Boxing is another story.

It should have been easy to sell the pay-per-view rematch of one of the best fights (if not the best) of this century, Diego Corrales’ come-from-behind win in his war with Jose Luis Castillo. The sequel didn’t do great numbers. Great fights unfortunately don’t always pull great ratings. One-sided mismatches have drawn in viewers who care only about the person they want to see win, not whomever he wins against.

And a middleweight bout between two fighters who have never won world titles will headline a pay-per-view this weekend in front of at least 60,000 people at a soccer stadium in London.

Conor Benn vs Chris Eubank Jnr is a big deal mostly in the UK, a curiosity for many others on a weekend without anything else of note and something that the remaining boxing fans either just don’t care about or actively dislike.

It is a big fight mainly because of who their fathers were, not because of who the sons are.

Benn, 23-0 (14 KOs), had a limited amateur career, has been fighting professionally for nine years, is undefeated but has never won a world title. He has never challenged for a world title. He has never graduated past being a prospect. He has never beaten an actual contender. 

Benn has fought one opponent who once held a major title: Chris Algieri, who, by then, was far removed from his prime. They fought in December 2021, seven years beyond Algieri’s win over Ruslan Provodnikov and subsequent loss to Manny Pacquiao and more than five years beyond his loss to Errol Spence Jnr. Algieri had spent two years out of the sport and had performed only once in his comeback before taking on Benn. He never boxed again after.

Eubank, 34-3 (25 KOs), also spent only a brief time in the amateurs. He has been a professional boxer for more than 13 years and has gotten much farther than Benn – just never to the top. He has lost three times, once via split decision to Billy Joe Saunders (who went on to win a world title), once via unanimous decision to super middleweight titleholder George Groves and once to former junior middleweight titleholder Liam Smith. 

Eubank stopped Smith in their rematch and also has two other wins against former titleholders. There was Arthur Abraham, a former two-division titleholder who, by 2017, was 15 months removed from his final reign and on his way out of the sport, only boxing one more time after the loss. And there was James DeGale, who was less than a year removed from regaining his super middleweight title in his rematch with Caleb Truax, but who was otherwise done enough by early 2019 that he never fought again after losing to Eubank.

(Eubank also has wins over Avni Yildirim, who twice challenged for super middleweight titles, and Spike O’Sullivan, who fought for a secondary belt.)

But their fathers?

Nigel Benn held the WBO middleweight title in 1990, back before that sanctioning body was widely recognized (the IBF, WBA and WBC were considered the major organizations then and for several years after), and then was the WBC super middleweight titleholder from 1992 until 1996.

Chris Eubank Snr was the WBO’s middleweight titleholder from 1990 to 1991 and held its super middleweight belt from 1991 until 1995.

They first collided in 1990, Eubank seizing the title from Benn via ninth-round technical knockout. When they met again in a unification bout at 168lbs in 1993, there was enough domestic intrigue that their draw was seen on TV by 18 million people and live in a soccer stadium by another 42,000, according to news coverage at the time. (Other reports have put that number at 47,000.)

They were both big stars. Decades later, that has made their sons into attractions.

It’s not unusual for boxing to have big non-title bouts. 

One historic example: Max Schmeling was no longer the heavyweight champion when he first fought Walter Neusel in 1934; a reported 102,000 people came out. More recently, Floyd Mayweather Jnr and Conor McGregor broke records even though nothing was on the line. At least that fight featured one of the best boxers ever – the mainstream luster was still there for Mayweather even though he had been retired for almost two years – against one of the top names in MMA. And as we saw with Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul, huge audiences will show up for huge events. 

It’s much rarer – at least in modern times – for there to be situations like Conor Benn-Chris Eubank Jnr, in which neither fighter has yet won a world title.

Among the more recent examples: Jake Paul vs Tommy Fury reportedly did well on pay-per-view, as did Logan Paul vs KSI. Then there is the closest comparison to this Saturday’s fight: Laila Ali vs Jacqui Frazier Lyde in 2001. It didn’t do a big PPV buy rate by the standards of then or now, but it was considered a commercial success.

Neither woman had yet won a world title. A few of these other examples weren’t titleholders yet but were already drawing significant attention: Lennox Lewis vs Razor Ruddock was a big event in the UK. The first fight between Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) and Henry Cooper brought a large crowd in London and sizable TV audiences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Ali and Lewis were both Olympic gold medalists who would win their first world titles one fight later, Ali stopping Sonny Liston for the championship and Lewis outpointing Tony Tucker for the WBC belt.

Going farther back in history are a few fights for the British heavyweight title – not the true world championship. Reports vary for the 1933 fight in London between Jack Doyle and Jack Petersen, with numbers between 60,000 and 90,000. Len Harvey’s second fight with Petersen reportedly had 90,000 people in attendance in London, as did Harvey’s fourth fight against Jock McAvoy, in 1939.

Side note: the record for highest paid attendance at a boxing match belongs to the title fight between Julio Cesar Chavez Snr and Greg Haugen, with 132,274 in Mexico City. There is one bout whose attendance surpasses it: Free entry brought a reported 135,000 people to watch NBA middleweight champion Tony Zale in a non-title bout against Billy Pryor in Milwaukee in 1941.

We mention this in order to come back to more recent times and the claims about a pair of fights involving Dmitry Chudinov, who got no closer to a world title than his interim WBA middleweight belt. Chudinov had a pair of fights at open-air motorbike shows, according to The Telegraph. Seemingly, those figures are taking credit for everyone at the event but not necessarily watching the boxing match: 100,000 in Crimea for Chudinov against Mehdi Bouadla in 2014, between 170,000 and 200,000 in Volgograd for Chudnov against Jorge Navarro in 2013.

Which brings us full circle to Eubank, who defeated Chudinov in London in 2015 on the undercard of a Tyson Fury fight.

There will be those who argue that Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jnr don’t deserve this level of attention, that this is nepotism, celebrity based on heredity, a fight made because of marketability rather than merit.

Eubank at least was a contender, or perhaps a fringe contender, for a spell. Benn may still someday develop into a contender. Or not.

Not every fight is for everyone. But for the 60,000-plus in attendance and however many order the pay-per-view, it won’t matter what Benn and Eubank aren’t; nor will it matter what they someday might be. What matters is who Benn and Eubank are now: two people they want to see fight, whatever their reasons are.

For everyone else, there are the three big shows coming one week later over the course of Cinco de Mayo weekend. Whether those shows are bringing us quantity or quality? Well, that is another column …

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.