In terms of the many mysteries surrounding Saturday’s middleweight fight between Chris Eubank Jnr and Conor Benn, quite low down on the list was whether it would be a success on pay-per-view.

With it being shown on both DAZN and Sky Sports in the UK, fans had more than one way to purchase the event and its success at the box office was really never in doubt. We wondered about other things instead. We wondered, for instance, whether a rehydration clause would be the downfall of Chris Eubank Jnr and whether we were, on account of it, set to witness something regrettable on the night. We wondered whether Chris Eubank Snr would make an appearance and accompany his son. We wondered which of the two children, Chris Eubank Jnr or Conor Benn, would ultimately prevail at the end of it all.

As for the interest the fight generated, there were no issues on that front. Controversy sells, after all, and the pairing of Benn and Eubank Jnr has been controversial and divisive from the outset. Back in 2022, when the fight was first arranged, the main issue and controversy had to do with the fact that Benn was a welterweight and Eubank Jnr was a middleweight. Yet that would pale into insignificance in light of everything that was to follow. 

Still, with clomiphene – the performance-enhancing drug for which Benn twice tested positive in 2022 – added to the Benn-Eubank lexicon and an egg then smashed across Benn’s face by Eubank Jnr when announcing the rescheduled date, there was never any doubt that the fight would draw rubberneckers and therefore numbers. By the time it arrived, two and a half years later, it had momentum, it had history, and it had eyeballs.

On the night these eyeballs and this growing interest amounted to around 620,000 pay-per-view (PPV) buys (at a price of £19.95), The Ring magazine – the promoter of the April 26 event – announced today. 

Eddie Hearn, Benn’s promoter, had earlier in the week claimed that more than one million had tuned in to the bout on pay-per-view. “Well over a million worldwide,” he told broadcaster Ariel Helwani. “DAZN did extremely well and Sky Sports is obviously another great platform as well. The rematch is on another level.”

Just as it seemed inevitable that fight one was going to be a commercial success, so too is it inevitable that a rematch between Eubank Jnr and Benn will happen later in the year. This was true before the pair had even started throwing punches at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, but now, given how entertaining and competitive Saturday’s fight turned out to be, there is no longer the need to cynically dress it up in order to make more money from it. Now, with fight one good enough and close enough to warrant a repeat, the men behind Eubank Jnr vs. Benn find themselves in the rare and rather privileged position of being able to sell a fight without having to convince the public it is something it is not. They know, too, that they have an audience ready for and expecting more.