It’s sometimes said that yesteryear’s athletes would have to restructure their personalities had they been born into the social media era. You get the sense Chris Eubank Snr would be just fine.

On his YouTube podcast “Call Chris Eubank,” Eubank Snr told all about his surprise appearance at his son’s fight with Conor Benn, his thoughts on the action and Eubank Jnr’s subsequent hospital visit.

The elder Eubank said that he only decided to come to the fight the night before. He called his son to coordinate, disguised himself (really!) to avoid being detected by media, and then the reunion was on.

Of the clips of Eubank Snr – a showman with no lack of ego – cinematically getting out of a car and elevator beside his son, he acknowledged a fortuitous camera angle: “This looks like it’s been orchestrated. … I was directed spiritually. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

Eubank Snr’s vivid character leaps off the screen, even 27 years removed from the end of his in-ring career. He has an extensive vocabulary; speaks as calmly as David Attenborough while describing what it felt like to have his tongue split by a punch; comes across as a pacifist but, as Eubank Jnr tells it, disciplined his son physically; and seems to have more venom for his son slapping Conor Benn with an egg than Benn for his positive drug tests in 2022.

At one point in the episode, Eubank Snr quoted Rudyard Kipling, then apologized: “Sorry about that. The wisdom is the spirit.” To watch him dispense literary citations during a boxing podcast feels vaguely like an inappropriate waste of his skills.

Eubank Snr described his son’s state in the hospital as “touch and go,” and said his hospitalization was due to the dehydration from his weight cut more so than Benn’s punches.

“You know how many times I welled up? You know how many times I trembled?” Eubank Snr asked.

He had kind words for Benn, despite the aforementioned drug tests: “You can’t get a sweeter young man than this.”

The proud father is so far removed from the man calling his son a “disgrace” just days before the fight. In the podcast, he praised Eubank Jnr as a warrior. “I’m so proud of that boy of mine,” he said, fists clenched, trembling slightly. That is the power of a good fight.

Still, the elder Eubank knows what a toll the 12 rounds took on his son and doesn’t want to see it again – which he articulated in characteristically elegant fashion.

“It would be an extraordinary blessing for him if he is wise enough to make the decision to walk off in the sunset,” Eubank Snr said. “Nothing’s cooler than that.”

Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.