By Charles Brun: Shawn Porter has finally spoken up to react about being called out by welterweight Conor Benn last week. He says he has nothing to gain from fighting the inexperienced five-year professional.
Porter says he doesn’t believe that he’ll be contacted about a fight with Benn, but he wouldn’t be interested if he is called.
Benn passively gained a lot of attention from the boxing world last weekend by calling out Porter, Adrien Broner, and Amir Khan following his first-round destruction over Samuel Vargas at the Copper Box Arena in London, England.
Was Benn serious about calling out Porter?
You can argue that Benn was dead serious about him calling out Broner and Khan, as both of them are faded fighters on their last legs. But in the case of Porter, he’s still fighting at an elite level, and his name didn’t fit into that group.
It’s fair to say that Benn’s goal behind throwing Porter’s name was to give the appearance of him interested in fighting relevant fighters rather than guys living on the accomplishments of their achievements from 3,000+ yesterdays ago.
The former IBF welterweight champion Porter (31-3-1, 17 KOs) points out that he’s been fighting at the world championship level longer than the 24-year-old Benn has been in the pro game.
There’s an imbalance there, which makes it impossible for him to entertain a fight with the younger fighter right now.
Benn doesn’t have enough experience, especially against quality opposition, for him to share the ring with Porter and have a chance of winning.
Fighting lesser opposition like journeyman Vargas and the obscure fringe contender Sebastian Formella isn’t enough for Benn to make a case where he deserves a fight with Porter.
While Porter, 33, was impressed with what he saw from Benn (18-0, 12 KOs) in his first-round stoppage victory over Samuel Vargas on April 10th, he says he can’t expect to do that against him, Errol Spence Jr or Kell Brook.
Conor Benn won’t blow through the top guys
Benn will need to have other tools to fall back on when he fails to score a quick knockout against the top guys, and he’s not being put in the position to develop those tools yet.
In other words, Benn can’t bum Irish the elite fighters and count on scoring first-round knockouts his entire career.
That primitive crude style of fighting only works against subpar-level fighters. Hence, Benn could take out journeyman Vargas in the first round, albeit with a little help from referee Michael Alexander with his premature stoppage last weekend.
“When you’re getting in the ring and you’re blazing through guys, in a round or two, it’s great,” said Porter to Ringside Toe 2 Toe podcast about Conor Benn’s blowout victory over Samuel Vargas.
“It looks phenomenal…but nobody blows through Shawn Porter, nobody blows through Kell Brook, nobody blows through Errol Spence Jr.
“He certainly did not do it as an amateur, like Vergil Ortiz, Jaron Ennis. Those guys have been through the amateur program; they know all about it. It’s only a matter of time before they get to the big time.”
Porter says he has nothing to gain
“I don’t think there’s much to gain for me,” said Porter about a fight with Benn.
“I don’t foresee it happening, but if it were to ring, we would kind of lean with that right there.”
Obviously, there’s no chance of Benn getting a fight with Porter, but it doesn’t appear that he was ever serious about fighting him.
It looks like a textbook example of Benn doing a bit of clout-chasing to gain popularity by lumping his name among a top fighter in Porter, but no real intention of fighting him.
What Charles Brun doesn’t understand is why Benn stopped at calling out Porter. Why didn’t Benn go to the ultra extremes by calling out Errol Spence Jr and Terence Crawford? The reason is simple.
Benn would have come across as being out of touch with reality if he’d used his win over a lower-level fighter like Vargas as a position to call out Spence or Crawford. I mean, it would have been obvious that Benn was just mindlessly name-dropping.