THERE is sport and then there is the sport of boxing, a distinction never more pronounced than when taking in hand the high drama that occurred both in and out of the ring in the context of Chris Eubank Jr’s rematch against Liam “Beefy” Smith in Manchester last weekend.

Going in as the significant underdog — and justifiably so given the way Smith mercilessly stopped him in the 4th round of their first fight in January — very few among the boxing fraternity gave Eubank Jr much of a chance in the rematch.

Indeed, all the chatter in the build-up centred around not if Smith would defeat Eubank Jr in the rematch but instead in what manner and in what round. Prediction after prediction made had the vast majority of the boxing public believing that they were about to witness the last meaningful fight of Jr’s career, such was the swirl of negativity whipped up when it came to his prospects.

However, per Mark Twain, reports of the death of Chris Eubank Jr’s boxing career were greatly exaggerated. Because not only did he defeat Liam Smith in the rematch last weekend, he did so on the back of a career-best performance that saw him dominate and dictate from the opening bell all the way up to when referee, Kevin Parker, stepped in midway through the tenth to spare the latter further punishment.

The state of Smith’s face afterwards told its own story. So marked up, cut and heavily bruised was it, he looked like he’d just emerged from a car crash on the M6 rather than a boxing ring at the Manchester Arena.

That Smith came in under par is an understatement to rank with any. The revelation that he was a whopping 42lbs over the 160lb middleweight at the start of his eight-week training camp for the fight raises yet again the hoary issue of weight when it comes down to the affairs of the squared circle. Smith cited a severe back injury as the reason for the disruption in his preparations, but ballooning up to such an extent prior to a fight has to be considered unprofessional and also dangerous.

It is long past time for the boxing powers-that-be to intervene and finally end the archaic stance towards weight and the inherent dangers, up to and including the risk of death, of continuing to tolerate the completely unscientific urban myths when it comes to the supposed verities of a fighter boiling him or herself down to a fighting weight that is incompatible with their natural weight.

Smith, immediately after the fight, described his performance as “horrendous” — and that it was, especially relative to the many others that have earned him the status of one of the best middleweights ever to come out of Britain. He rolled the dice, hoping that by some miracle the occasion and adrenalin might trick his body into doing what his brain wanted it to do. No doubt, with the benefit of hindsight, he would have pulled out of the event and tried to reschedule rather than go in so grievously out of sorts.

But then boxing is the one sport in which there are no guarantees, and the chance of losing a significant payday will have weighed heavily on him and his team when it came down to deciding how to proceed. But then, the fans, what about them? What about the money many will have lost in bets placed on the fighter who’d so unceremoniously stopped the same opponent just six months previously in the same arena?

Placing Smith’s travails to one side, Eubank Jr’s sheer force of will in enduring months of sharp criticism from every quarter of the boxing commentariat and community, even up to and including from his own father, and still believing he could and would prevail in the rematch is clearly of the inordinate variety.

Whatever Bomac — renowned trainer of pound-for-pound king Terence Crawford — imparted during the just four-and-a-half weeks he trained Eubank prior to the fight, it was clear that for the first time in his entire career, he actually listened and stuck to a gameplan forged in the laboratory of old school combinations, footwork and lateral movement. The result was him working around Smith like a cloud of wasps, stinging him to the head and body with the aplomb and accuracy of a man who wasn’t just wreaking revenge on a previous opponent but an entire sport that had given up on him.

Proving naysayers wrong has always been one of the sweetest achievements in life, and Eubank Jr did precisely that and more after being booed into the ring in hostile Smith country. Cheering him out after the fight, though, was a crowd whose collective eyes saw a fighter finally blossom under the lights after a protracted period of criticism and ridicule.

As to the aftermath, Greek drama doesn’t come close to describing it. The day after the fight, just when he was entitled to believe that he had the world by the balls, Eubank Jr’s new trainer Brian “Bomac” McIntyre was stopped by the police as he made his way through Manchester airport, seemingly on his way home to Atlanta. One of his suitcases contained a loaded handgun.

The upshot is him being charged with two firearms offences and finding himself placed on remand. What was it Heraclitus said again? “There is nothing permanent in life except change.” Currently languishing in a prison cell at HMP Manchester, the American is being given one hell of an education into and on the vicissitudes of life.