Chris Eubank Jr has revealed his boxing legend father, Chris Eubank Sr, used to beat him as a child but he insists he isn’t the victim of abuse.
Eubank Jr appeared on The Overlap with Gary Neville to discuss his upcoming rematch with Liam Smith before talk turned to growing up with a former world champion as his dad.
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“I don’t know if I would say unhealthy,” Eubank Jr said on his upbringing.
“I mean, he was extremely strict. I got away with nothing. If I messed up in school, if I didn’t do a chore, if I got into a fight with my brothers, there was physical punishment whether it was a belt, whether it was a cane, whether it was a slap.
“Back then, in the 90s that was how you disciplined your kids. That is where my fear obviously originated from having to deal with that.
“But again, that type of punishment, that upbringing, that strictness, that made me who I am today. It prepared me for the brutality of the sport of boxing.”
The 33-year-old doesn’t believe he was the victim of abuse and insists any beating he received from his father was because he was misbehaving.
“Absolutely not,” Eubank Jr responded when Neville asked if he would call it abuse.
“That’s a good question because some people will hear, ‘he got beat with a belt or a cane and that’s 100 per cent abuse.’ But in my opinion, abuse is unwarranted.
“Abuse is somebody doing something for no reason, abuse is a parent coming home drunk and taking their anger out on their kids. That was never the case with me. I got punished when I stepped out of line, when I got into fights, when I got into trouble at school.
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“He was teaching me for everything you do there are consequences, good and bad. When I did good things he rewarded me immensely, and when I did bad things, he punished me.
Eubank Jr thinks his father kept him from going down the wrong path.
“Life lessons, not abuse at all. I was still such a bad kid. I was a tearaway, I was in a gang, I was getting into fights,” Eubank Jr added.
“At 11 years old I spent two hours breaking into a sweet shop with my mates and emptied the place. I was doing that knowing if I got caught, I’d be in serious s*** when I got home.
“I look at it as, imagine if there were no consequences for what I did. Imagine if I had a parent who said, ‘Come on son, take a time out.’
“I was already a wild man. I would have been off the rails.”