Nigel Benn begins with a laugh, a sound that seems out of place considering the intense narrative that follows.

Moments later, Benn shares with Daily Mail Sport the harrowing tales of his past: the death of his brother at 17, the childhood trauma that led him to contemplate suicide on Streatham Common, his years of street fighting, and his indifferent feelings towards Gerald McClellan after their fateful match that left McClellan with permanent brain damage.

The laughter, however, is reserved for a different topic: his upcoming induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, the pinnacle of recognition in the sport, set to take place next June in Canastota, New York.

“This year it hit me, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s real,'” Benn remarks, reflecting on the momentous occasion, while acknowledging he had remained silent about it for the past eight years.

Benn’s entry into the International Boxing Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2026, alongside notable figures like Gennadiy Golovkin and Antonio Tarver, marks a long-overdue accolade for one of Britain’s legendary champions. Benn held titles as the WBO middleweight and WBC super-middleweight champion. Notably, his fierce rival, Chris Eubank, was also considered for the same honor but was not selected.

It sounds like a fairy-tale ending. Benn does not tell it that way.

Long before world titles and sold-out arenas, Benn was an eight-year-old boy trying to understand why his big brother was never coming home.

‘When I lost my brother, something suddenly changed in me,’ he says. ‘Something in my heart was severed, I wasn’t the same ever again. My life totally changed. I felt so alone. I was smoking cigarettes and spliffs by the age of 12. I didn’t have any feelings any more.’

Andy Benn had been brought from Barbados to England by their parents to give him opportunity and safety. What he found instead was violence.

‘He was just a little boy. He was pushed through a window, cut his groin, bled to death in a field on his own, brutally murdered. That little boy was taken away from his family.’

Andy was 17 when he passed away. His death was officially ruled an accident. 

For years, Benn admits, he thought about revenge and when the money came from boxing, the option to take it came with it. Paying someone to kill the men responsible crossed his mind.

‘They’re lucky I went the way I did, I could easily have changed and gone the other way. Especially with the money I was earning. I could have taken those people out. No two ways about it. But I didn’t because of my dad. My dad said don’t judge a book by its cover.’

The death hollowed out his home. His parents, overwhelmed by shock, shut down emotionally. There were no conversations about Andy, no shared grief, no explanation offered to a child who could barely understand death, let alone ‘murder’.

‘Everyone thinks everything was great when I was boxing but it wasn’t. I was suffering with childhood trauma. I didn’t even know what childhood trauma was at the time but it took over my life. I tried going to my mum and dad when I was younger but they were broken. They brought their son over from Barbados to give him a better life, to live in England and he ends up dead.’

With no language for grief and no adult help to process it, the emotion found another route out. It became aggression. It became theft. It became a reputation.

‘I had this volcano inside me from a young age that was ready to blow and I couldn’t talk to anyone. I thought I better just suck it up and deal with it but I couldn’t deal with it. My life had changed at eight years old and there was nothing I could do about it.’

By secondary school, Benn was already moving in and out of police stations.

‘I was out shoplifting, stealing crushed velvet coats from M&S and nicking watches off Woolworths. I was only 12 at the time. Then I got done for GBH, threatening behaviour, handling stolen goods, GBH again because I was always fighting on the streets.’

His father intervened, sending him into the Army, believing discipline might contain what grief had created. It worked in one sense. The structure gave Benn control. Boxing followed naturally: violence with rules, chaos with boundaries, pain that made sense.

‘I was masking the trauma a lot during my career. You get caught up in the limelight too. I was taking pills, doing drugs, just stuck in a horrible place. Then came the sex addiction. There was a lot going on.’

When his career ended – after his second defeat by Steve Collins in 1996 – the routine disappeared. The anger stayed. The distractions faded. The man who had been kept upright by training camps and fight dates suddenly had nothing to lean on.

By 1999, the collapse was complete. Benn attempted suicide in his wife Carolyne’s car in Streatham Common, fuelled by a cocktail of alcohol and sleeping tablets.

‘I’ve been there. I’ve had those thoughts. I’ve planned it. I’ve gone to the place where I decided to try to take my life.

‘When you’re in a dark place like that, you’re willing to do these things you never thought would be considered. People don’t understand. People thought it was all happy clappy with me. They’re going, “You’ve got money, you’ve got this, you’ve got that” but I wanted to kill myself.

‘On another day, there could have been no Nigel Benn any more. No father. No husband. That’s the reality.’

Benn came back from Streatham Common numb. Years of grief and anger had taught him to shut things off. Perhaps that’s why, when it comes to McClellan, he feels nothing – a startling reaction, given what happened on that night.

The fight was savage even by the standards of an era that celebrated brutality. Benn was dropped early, recovered, and stopped McClellan in the 10th round. He would never fully regain consciousness, later left blind, brain-damaged and in a wheelchair for life.

Asked what emotions that night brings up now, Benn is blunt.

‘I feel nothing. Absolutely no emotions whatsoever. I don’t even think about it. It doesn’t play on my mind. I was meant to be fighting Michael Nunn. Michael Nunn was a 6ft 2in, slippery southpaw, and Don King said to my manager that they wanted to take £100,000 off for the fight. I said absolutely not and they said if you don’t, we’re going to bring in mini Mike Tyson.

‘He thought I was going to be like “OK, OK”, all worried. I don’t move like that, I’m an ex-squaddie so I said bring it on. I’ll fight anyone. Gerald then comes in and what really annoyed me about Gerald McClellan was when he looked my dad in the face and said, “I’m going to hurt your boy”.

‘He told my dad that he was going to hurt his boy. My dad said, “You gotta do what you gotta do”. But that really, really annoyed me. Don’t talk to my dad like that.’

For most people, the scene after the fight would be unbearable – a man gravely injured, life-altering consequences, and the weight of responsibility pressing in from every direction.

But for Benn, the moment did not linger. The fight, like so many other dark episodes in his life, was compartmentalised and left behind.

‘What happened, happened. After the fight, all I wanted to do was go down Ministry of Sound because I loved music, I loved partying. That was it. I didn’t care about the fight. Didn’t care about everything happening. That was my attitude.

‘But, that was what was wrong with me, that was what my mind was like at the time. It was a really dark patch in my life. I didn’t end up going partying, but what I did do, which was like a Rocky film, was go to his room and kissed his hand, said “I’m sorry” and that’s when he fell into a coma.’

The headlines that followed were another story entirely, one he could not ignore.

‘I remember reading headlines on the News of the World – “We wanted Benn dead, now we want his money”. Those comments came from his family. They weren’t nice people, I’m sorry but they weren’t.

‘At that time (McClellan) had a billionaire promoter, Don King – go see him. Everything I’m doing, I’m doing for my family. It wound me up.

‘I had also come out of that fight with a damaged jaw, urinated blood for days and had a shadow on my brain.’

Twelve years later he helped organise a fundraiser in Mayfair that raised £250,000 for McClellan’s care.

‘Even after all of that, 12 years later, what me and Kevin (Sanders, Benn’s trainer) did, we didn’t have to do. But we did it because of the people we are. We put on a big show at the Grosvenor hotel in Mayfair and raised quarter of a million for him. Where’s your billionaire promoter? Did he dip in his pocket? No? A guy from Ilford, Essex helped put on his show. That’s my character.’

Despite his detachment from that night, the fight has never fully left the public imagination – most recently resurfacing during a press conference between Chris Eubank Jr and Conor Benn. Eubank Jr referenced allegations from McClellan’s corner that Benn had used performance-enhancing drugs.

Stan Johnson, part of McClellan’s team, had alleged that Benn collapsed in the locker room to avoid a post-fight urine test, suggesting he was ‘juiced up on something.’ Eubank Jr invoked the controversy to cast doubt on the Benn name, but Nigel was unmoved.

‘It’s water off a duck’s back. He ain’t done what I have done. He ain’t been in the Guinness Book of Records. He ain’t been inducted into to the Hall of Fame. He ain’t been very the best super-middleweight in history. He ain’t got his face on the WBC belt forever.

‘If he accused me of smoking spliffs and taking pills, then yeah I put my hands up. So what? But, performance enhancing drugs. Never in a million years. You know why? Because I would have been cheating the British public and I love the British public. They backed me and I was never going to let them down like that.’

Yet while the PED claims roll off him, Benn clearly cares far more about the conduct of Chris Eubank Snr ahead of the second Benn-Eubank Jr bout.

‘I will never speak to Chris Eubank Snr again. When he put his arm in my chest (at the press conference), I was a split second away from thumping him. I thought to myself, “Why are you carrying on like that?” He tried to shake my hand in the ring, and I told him to go do one. I said, “I don’t want to talk to you”. I don’t think I will speak to him again, because he’s got this image that he likes to portray, that he’s a gentleman. He’s far from that.

‘I honestly believe in my heart, that he got paid for turning up to the first fight against Conor, and I think it was like a quarter of a million pound. Just look at when he is asked about it. He has to think about it. And, the day before, he was saying to his son, “You’re a disgrace”.’

Eubank Snr has strongly denied that he was paid to attend his son’s fight. 

Beyond the grudges and the headlines, Benn’s focus is firmly on the next chapter for his own family. He wants Conor to take on Ryan Garcia – ‘hopefully after he beats Mario Barrios, then Conor wins a world title, defends it a couple of times, and then retires’. 

He’s adamant his son shouldn’t stay in the game too long, having seen fighters struggle with the long-term toll of boxing: slurred words, impaired coordination, and lives hollowed out by the sport they loved. 

Nigel also confirmed he will no longer be in camp with Conor. ‘I helped him get to the point he is now,’ he says. ‘He needed me then, he doesn’t now. I need to focus on my other children and help them after years of focusing on Conor.’ 

His other son, Levi, is being groomed for greatness too. ‘He’s going to be the next Trent Alexander-Arnold,’ Benn says. Levi has had trials in Paris and will soon have one at Liverpool.

For Benn, the scorecard is simple. Conor beat Eubank Jr, he finally gets his Hall of Fame nod ahead of Snr, and in the family ledger of grudges, glory, and legacy, the Benns are a step ahead.

For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116 123, visit samaritans.org or visit