Chris Eubank Sr wants apology from son after victory over James DeGale

Chris Eubank Sr has declared that he expects an apology from his fighting son of the same name.

The 29-year-old surged to the best and most important win of his career on Saturday night when he dropped James DeGale twice en route to an unanimous decision victory.

But within hours of the judges’ verdict being read out at the O2 Arena, his famous father Chris Sr, a former two-weight world champion, made the bizarre claim that his offspring has something to apologise for.

“This is my son,” the father said. “I think a great deal of my son, I love my son.

“The things I do are unthinkable. I do them because he even though he can’t see the pain on my side, I still give and give for what? So he can have a better future.

“I know in six, eight, 10 years he will come back kiss me on the shoulder, hug me and apologise and say, ‘Sorry dad, I didn’t know’.”

When asked exactly what Junior has to apologise for, the 52-year-old said: “What man hasn’t done that with his parents?

“He’s in the thick of his career, he can’t see. That is what the elders are supposed to do, you guide and steer.

“Even when they don’t listen, you still guide and steer them. You protect them.”

The pair’s relationship was brought into sharp focus during the build-up to Saturday’s encounter with Senior spending much of his son’s training camp not in their Hove gym but gorilla trekking and observing giraffes in Rwanda and Kenya.

Junior had also employed little-known coach Nate Vasquez to help him prepare and Eubank Sr told The Independent last week that he was ‘baffled’ by the decision.

He had also curiously questioned his son’s ‘spirituality’ in the light of his two previous career defeats, against Billy Joe Saunders in 2014 and George Groves a year ago this month, and said he was ‘petrified’ that DeGale would make it three.

But Eubank Jr’s victory over ‘Chunky’, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist and former two-time world champion, helped prove he belongs at world level.

However, Eubank Sr, still wearing that police badge, was in no mood to heap praise upon the victor as he held court in a backroom at the O2 Arena in the early hours of Sunday morning.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” he said when asked whether Junior had proven his doubts wrong.

“I was afraid because the prize is huge. It’s not just the ITV platform, it’s not just the IBF super-middleweight championship, it’s the fact we’ve given two and a half years of our lives under considerable pain and pressure, bigotry, cheating and back stabbing.

“It’s a very tough business and we’ve stayed in. I want to be frank, I’ve been the one who has held him and kept away all the poachers with their snares. I’m the one who has held this together with the help of God.

“There were so many times I wanted to quit. It was overwhelming. They came at me through my family. It wasn’t just the platform or the belt, it’s two-and-a-half years of snipers, shooting at me.

“He won. I’m not going to even talk about the breakdown of the fight. I’m too relieved to talk about anything else.”

Asked if victory had proven Junior is of that requisite ‘spirituality’, he added: “I have to reserve comment on that. It is a matter of... no comment on that.”

Eubank Sr is no stranger to winning domestic classics having beaten the likes of Nigel Benn and Michael Watson during his memorable 52-fight career. There were shades of those first Eubank days during the build-up for Saturday’s fight but Senior said: “I’m not going to compare.

“It’s a different era, it’s a different time. It’s not about me. It never is. It’s about me giving him a platform and a shoulder to climb and realise what he wants to be.

“This was it. Do you know what I’ve had to go through to get to this moment? It’s supposed to be hard, otherwise it wouldn’t be fun. That was fun.”