Conor Benn has maintained his innocence in an exclusive interview with Piers Morgan.
The welterweight contender has been speaking to Morgan on his Uncensored show on Talk TV and spoke of the dark days he has gone through after it was revealed that two of Benn’s PED tests in the build-up to his anticipated fight with Chris Eubank in late 2022 were positive.
The contest was eventually scrapped but it was a messy affair and Benn told Morgan he had struggled to cope with the fall out.
“It’s hurt me, it’s hurt me this has,” Benn said. “I didn’t think I was going to make it through this period, I didn’t think I was going to make it through.
“I was shamed for something I hadn’t even done, it’s hard because I felt like I was on death row for something I haven’t even done.”
Benn has maintained his innocence and has said that it will be proven, and last week the WBC gave him the green light to return but there has been no statements from UKAD or VADA.
Benn said he felt like there had been a ‘witch hunt’ against him, and that was echoed by his father Nigel, who appeared as a guest on the show via video link from his home in Australia.
Benn claims to have evidence that clears him, but he won’t release it to the British Boxing Board of Control because he is at loggerheads with them and said he is suing them.
Benn said it was down to his “pride” that he would not share the 270-page dossier with the Board, having presented it to the WBC. Benn is also no longer licensed by the Board, having relinquished his license in the aftermath of the Eubank fight falling apart.
Benn, who bristled defiantly under Morgan’s questioning, added that he wants to return soon and at a high level. “I’m 26, I don’t need any warm ups,” he said, and today he’s been posting mock up pictures of a poster of him preparing to fight Filipino legend Manny Pacquiao on social media.
Asked about his lowest ebb, Benn told Morgan he had suicidal thoughts and was in a bad way for at least two months after the second positive – after the first, he felt there had just been a clerical error of sorts, “I felt seven years of hard work and sacrifice and leaving my family and the image I maintain was just ruined at somebody else’s incompetence. It’s been hard for the family. I didn’t think I’d see another day.”
