Conor Benn still loves Matchroom, says stablemate Connor Mitchell
Connor Mitchell was barely 10 years old when he was escorted from ringside as his dad tried, in vain, to take the WBC lightweight title from Jorge Linares.
Kevin Mitchell, always unflinchingly courageous, was in deep against the gifted Venezuelan but making a real fight of it.
His son, now 21 and making his own path in the pros, recalled: “I thought he was good [against Linares], but I did leave in the third round. I couldn’t deal with it. I just went out because it was quite a big fight. It must have been the anxiety of it. It’s probably a shock. Obviously, I was young. I was just getting to the point where I knew what fights were big and stuff. So, I just walked out. I said to my nan, ‘Can we go out the back?’ And then we went, sat where the ambulances are, and just sat there.”
Word filtered back that his dad had been floored, and later stopped in the 11th and young Connor was inconsolable.
“I didn’t even speak to him after,” he said. “I was actually quite frustrated. Even though he boxed well, I was quite annoyed, really.”
Mitchell Snr loved a tear up. Sometimes it was to his detriment. He won thrillers against the likes of John Murray and Carl Johanneson, but also got caught out against Michael Katsidis and others.
Sometimes, it was down to ill-discipline away from the ring as much as inside it.
His father’s career is a lesson for Connor. Although he’s a southpaw, unlike his father, he does enjoy a spell in the trenches.
“I think it ain’t smart to fight like that, but fans obviously love it, love a war,” he said. “I think you’ve got to have a mix. I think sometimes you have to fight, come up against opponents where they’re naturally like that. You can’t just keep backing up, backing up, because that’s what they want. So I think you’ve got to have the mix. But I think he was in too many wars.
“And yeah, I don’t want to be like that. I want to be a bit more smart. Because later on in his career, he started learning how to properly box.”
Father trained son until Connor got to about 16 and then moved to his first amateur coach. He is now promoted by Matchroom and boxes on Saturday on the Sheffield bill topped by Josh Padley and Aqib Fiaz.
Mitchell is already selling a lot of tickets. Of course, plenty have followed him since he won the Senior ABAs but, of course, some recognize the surname and are now coming along for the ride. That surname, as we have seen with many famous sons, is both burden and a privilege.
“Obviously, people love my dad,” Mitchell said. “I’m not just a son doing boxing because my dad’s gone big and stuff like that. I won a senior ABA title as an amateur. And I’ve proved it in the amateurs that I can fight. Like, senior ABAs don’t get given to you. So now I’ve just got to prove it in the pro game.”
But the pressure of his father’s identity, he admits, was too much for him when he was younger.
Aged 11, he turned his back on the sport because of the shadow his father cast over his movements, but he restarted at 14.
“But as a kid, I couldn’t deal with that. I just couldn’t understand why people go, ‘Oh, that’s Kevin’s son, he must be good,’ this and that.”
With age has come an understanding of how to handle that kind of expectation and he still wants to do the name proud.
He is enjoying his work, too, and loves the day-to-day life of being a fighter.
And he is still advised by Conor Benn, as well. That name recognition certainly helps to further grow the Mitchell brand, and even though Mitchell is promoted by Matchroom and Benn has since joined Zuffa Boxing, Mitchell has not been affected.
“I was never managed by him, he just advised me,” Mitchell explained. “He’s still there. I was with him two days ago. He’s all good, just training, back training now. At the end of the day, he says to me all the time that he loves Matchroom. He says that to me from himself.
“It’s nothing to do with me, it’s separate to him, what he wants to do with his life and his family and he’s securing his family’s life, do you know what I mean? So, you’ve gotta let him do what he wants to do and he don’t care about all that. He says to me all the time that he loves Matchroom, that’s what he says.”
Mitchell is ready to fight, too. Now 2-0 (1 KOs), he fights Spanish journeyman Jesus Carrasco on Saturday and just wants to keep busy and building on his pro experience.
“Listen, I'm still young, 21, so I’ve got loads of years left, but I mean, I just want to keep building, keep learning. I need that experience because, obviously, once you get chucked in, there’s no going back, I don’t think, and I’d rather learn that now. And when I do step up, I’m ready, and I’ve fought all them styles, and I’ve done that. I’ve done it as an amateur, I’ve fought a lot of different styles, but the pro game is a different game, that’s what I want to do in the next two years, is build, keep learning, fight different styles, and then go for titles in the third year.”
But I dunno if he’ll ever bring up the drugs thing tbh, even though we all know what really happened. Would reflect too badly on him for trying to brush it under the carpet for so long.