Once upon a time you had no choice in the matter. To follow a fight, or just discover what was going on, you would have to suspend your disbelief, use a bit of imagination, and make a picture of it in your mind. You would, with the help of a radio, hang on every word of the person describing the action and believe whatever it was they were telling you simply because they knew things and were able to see things you could not. 

In some respects, one could argue that nothing, in terms of the fan experience, has changed. Even though there are various ways to now follow a fight, still we hang on the word of people who know more than us and still we are forced to suspend our disbelief and use our imagination to feel comfortable watching two human beings fight. 

The only difference now of course is that we actually see everything. We see the fights on fight night, and no longer have to listen to radio commentary to keep track, and we also see everything in the build-up, with every pre-fight event – press conference, weigh-in, media workout, and even bloody “grand arrivals” – streamed live on YouTube for people to watch if that way inclined. 

Sometimes, yes, it can feel too much. With everything on show, it can feel as though some of the mystery of a big fight is taken away and that nothing is left to the imagination. As a result, come fight night we often find ourselves exhausted from having seen the fighters daily and hearing them repeat the same tired lines to try to sell the event. They too are sick of hearing themselves a lot of the time. 

Yet the fight-night experience – that is, the ability to watch what is going on – has never been better. If in doubt, just look around, listen. Everything you see now is shown in high definition and the sound is so crisp you are transported to ringside for the duration of the fight. They can also do clever things these days, like on-screen graphics, cameras in corners, and cameras backstage, all of which add to the fight-night experience and should, in theory, increase the knowledge and understanding of those watching at home. 

Doubtless growing up in the TV era, rather than the radio era, has enhanced my own relationship with the sport. However, it is just as true that the more you see, the harder it is to then be impressed, or moved, or shocked by the next thing you see. Not only that, the more you hear old men wax poetic about the days of gathering around the wireless to listen to the world’s best fighters duke it out, the more you start to wonder what that would have been like and how the experience of listening as opposed to watching would have changed your emotions on fight night.

Chris Eubank Jnr Conor Benn Photo: Mark Robinson / Matchroom Boxing

Thankfully, radio coverage still exists in 2025, particularly for big events, and that means that fans wanting to listen can still do so from the comfort of their kitchen or while driving their car. Even I, a millennial, have occasionally dabbled, though whenever I have it has always been out of necessity rather than choice. 

This was again the case on Saturday when Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jnr fought in front of 60,000 fans at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and I happened to be travelling home from a wedding as the first bell rang. With no option but to listen, soon the car radio had been set to BBC Radio Five Live and I had Ronald McIntosh, no adjective left unused, describing what was going on in the ring between two boxers of whom we had by now seen far too much. By now, in fact, we knew how they both looked, how they posed, and how they fought, and all we needed from McIntosh and his co-commentators, Steve Bunce and Richie Woodhall, was a joining of the dots and a bit of colouring in. 

Given their collective experience and expertise, the picture this trio painted was impressively vivid. Yet it was still somewhat strange to be asked to sit in silence and use your imagination; for so many an atrophied muscle nowadays. Usually, when watching a fight, one’s senses are dulled, with everything turned up, not down. Your imagination, that is not required. Nor do you have to pay attention, concentrate, or even think too much, for all the thinking is done for you by promoters and pundits and commentators, some of whom will have an agenda they want to push. In fact, watching a fight asks very little of the audience at all. You might get a better perspective of what is going on, but this perspective can also be skewed, skewed by distractions, your own dwindling attention span, and all those pointless pundits and their vanilla opinions. It is for this reason I find myself hitting the mute button with increasing regularity on fight night. It is for this reason, too, that I had no problem listening to coverage of Saturday’s fight instead of watching it. 

Because let’s be honest, if ever a fight had a face for radio, it was Benn-Eubank Jnr. After all, not only had we seen far too much of its warts and crooked nose in the two and a half years since it was first made, but we have also learned to use our imagination regarding pretty much every aspect of it. We had to use our imagination when Benn, a welterweight, and Eubank Jnr, a middleweight, were first touted as opponents, and we had to then use our imagination when informed, just days before their original date, that Benn had tested positive for clomiphene, a performance-enhancing drug. Not knowing what this was at the time, or what it meant, or whether Benn intended to cheat, imagination was all we had in October 2022. It was all we had last week, too, when Chris Eubank Jnr struggled to make weight, not once but twice, and we did all we could to convince ourselves that a rehydration clause was perfectly normal and that everything would be alright on the night. Some even imagined what it would be like if Eubank Jnr’s estranged father turned up out of the blue. They imagined dad and son making the ring walk together. They imagined hearing Tina Turner sing that song.

Naturally, because I listened to the first six rounds of the fight on the radio, the surprise of Chris Eubank joining his son was something I only heard about. But that was okay. By then I could picture the scene with little difficulty. By then the thought of missing the image of father and son reuniting was superseded by a much stronger desire to not see all the other unsavoury characters dotted around the ring and maintain some distance from what was, and still is, a rather unsavoury fight. 

Besides, listening to it in a getaway vehicle seemed a fitting way to experience Eubank Jnr vs. Benn, if only because Boxing Scene had on Friday been told that the journalist assigned to report on the fight had not been accredited to attend by The Ring magazine, its promoter. This meant that any coverage produced by the site would have to be done remotely and that there would be distance between reporter and the event regardless of how it was consumed. 

My only concern, then, pertained to whether I could get away with writing a Sunday overview based entirely on what Ronald McIntosh, the radio commentator, told me was happening, or whether I would, at some point, need to watch the first six rounds for clarity and confirmation. Taking notes, and trusting the eyes of Big Ron, I felt initially that Chinese whispers might be the best way to cover a fight of that ilk and that hearsay might be the most appropriate way to conclude two and a half years of just that. But then I got home, watched the final six rounds live, and got a greater sense of what I had missed.