IBF Math: Loss At 160 = Top 5 At 154 For Conor Benn. Genius!

After Conor Benn’s loss to middleweight Chris Eubank Jr. last April, the IBF has placed Benn at #5 in their 154-lb rankings. It’s a strange move given that Benn’s defeat was at 160. He’s expected to fight a rematch with Eubank Jr. in September, and then return to the 147-lb division.

Ranked for Losing?

Fans on social media see this as a joke because Benn shouldn’t be in the junior middleweight rankings after a loss.

Even at 147, it’s questionable whether Conor deserves to be ranked in the top 15 because his best career win at welterweight was against 37-year-old Chris Algieri in 2021. That’s ages ago, and Benn was fighting a light-hitting fossil.

The IBF has Benn (23-1, 14 KOs) ranked over high-quality contenders that would very likely beat him far easier than past his best, Eubank Jr. Five of the contenders in the IBF’s rankings would be a nightmare for Conor Benn if he were to tangle with them, particularly Jorge Perez and Serhii Bohachuk.

5 Conor Benn
7 Jesus Ramos
8 Serhii Bohachuk
9 Jorge Garcia Perez
10 Keith Thurman
15 Charles Conwell

Can you imagine Benn fighting former WBC interim 154-lb champion Bohachuk? That would end badly for Benn because Bohachuk would be punching holes through him once he got warmed up. There’s no chance Conor would make it the distance with Bohachuk or Jorge Perez. The other guys on that list would be too talented for him as well.

Benn looked decent, losing to the 35-year-old Eubank Jr. on April 26th, but he wasn’t fighting one of the cutting-edge middleweights. If that had been Janibek Alimkhnuly, Erislandy Lara, Carlos Adames, or Yoenli Hernandez, he’d have been lucky to make it to the sixth round. Those guys are true world-class, not domestic level like Eubank Jr.

September Showdown

“What we’ve heard is Benn-Eubank Jr. at the end of September at Spurs. That’s what His Excellency [Turki Alalshikh] announced,” said Eddie Hearn to iFL TV about the rematch between Chris Eubank Jr. and Conor Benn. “That’s what we got kind of in our head, what we’re gearing toward, and we’ll see over the next few weeks what materializes.

“When Eubank weighed in on the hydration, he had all his clothes on, and he was a half pound under. So, he would have had two and a half pounds, three pounds to spare on the rehydration. Some people say, ‘That was terrible that happened,’” said about Eubank Jr. having to agree to a 10-lb rehydration clause to give Conor Benn a handicap.

Benn’s ‘Handicap

Eubank Jr. looked half-dead at the weigh-in, and then dealt with the double whammy of the 10-lb rehydration clause on the day of the fight. You take away the handicap for Benn, and Eubank Jr. would have wiped the deck with him. He did anyway, even being drained to bits. Benn was close to being knocked out in rounds 11 and 12. He was a punching bag for Eubank Jr. in those last two rounds.

“We don’t want Conor Benn to be fighting a guy that is 20 lbs to 25 lbs bigger than him in the ring,” said Hearn. “As Conor Benn gets older and he moves up through the divisions, he will 100% fight at 154. I don’t think he’ll fight at 160, but who knows? He’s just had a great fight at 160.”

Notice the excuses from Hearn? I wish he’d just admit that Benn needed special help to give him a chance, because there’s no way he could have had a chance against Eubank Jr. at full strength. He had to be at 60% for Benn to have a shot.

“I think if we don’t do the rematch in September, it may pass us by because I don’t think Eubank will be around that long,” said Hearn.