For the longest time Conor Benn was told a fight with Chris Eubank Jr. was as far-fetched as they came.

That the budding welterweight attraction will actually be trading punches with Eubank Jr. is a testament, Benn believes, to years of hard work in the gym.

Benn (21-0, 14 KOs) takes on Eubank Jr. (32-2, 23 KOs), a career 160 and 168-pounder, in an intriguing all-British, 157-pound catchweight bout Oct. 8 at the O2 Arena in London.

In a recent interview, the 25-year-old Benn admitted that beating Eubank, 33, would be more meaningful to him than winning a world title. Sons of Britain’s most storied rivals during the 1990s in Chris Eubank Sr. and Nigel Benn, the two have been mentioned in casual conversations for years. Benn, who took up boxing relatively late, remembers people coming up to him, when he was barely an amateur, and wondering what it would be like for him to take on Eubank Jr., who at that point was making a name for himself at the British title level. Nobody, Benn said, ever imagined the two would get involved in a fight. But in the past couple of years, Benn has emerged as one of the entertaining fighters in his homeland, a knockout puncher with crossover appeal. Good enough, apparently, for a fight with Eubank Jr. to finally become sellable to the public.

“You gotta remember this name has been mentioned to me before the start of my career,” Benn said of Eubank in an interview with iD Boxing. “Before I was even pro. Even when I was an amateur people were going, ‘Imagine if you and Eubank fought. Imagine if this, imagine if that. It was always ‘imagine,’ because it does capture your imagination.

“Is it realistic? Was it realistic? No. I made it realistic because I closed the gap. I worked hard. You look at my trajectory and you look at his — who needs who more? You gotta remember, when he was pro…I wasn’t even a pro fighter when he was fighting for the British title.”