The clip started with an aerial shot of an eagle circling in beautiful blue skies. "Wow," a man says in admiration before things take a chilling turn.

The bird swoops down through the trees and onto ground level where an unsuspecting toddler is sitting in the grass. The eagle, wings outstretched, grabs the infant in its talons before attempting to take off again.

The tot, however, is simply too heavy for the assailant, who has no choice but to drop its prey only a foot or two into its getaway. The internet, as a whole, breathed a sigh of relief as the man filming jogs over to help with the situation while speaking in French to the child’s father.

So stunning was the video that nearly 17 million people viewed it within three days, which was a simply staggering number for the time. It made the front page of Reddit while other websites dedicated thousand-word features to the clip, which was less than a minute long. But by then, the question was being asked: Was it actually real?

More than 13 years ago, the issue of deepfake AI was less prevalent and millions upon millions would consume content without ever questioning its validity. These days, not so much.

As it happened, that eagle video, which at the time of writing has been watched a little more than 47.8 million times, was a complete hoax, made by a group of students at a digital training center in Montreal, Canada, as part of their degree course. None of it was real apart from the park and the later footage of the child crying.

When you look at it through 2026 eyes, it is really quite obvious and the graphics are reasonably rudimentary, but one would assume the students scored very highly for their work, given the impact it made on the digital world. I hope they have all gone on to have successful careers in their chosen field at least.

It was hard for this column not to think of that video late Friday night when the news broke that Conor Benn had signed for Zuffa. “It’s those pesky students at it again,” was the initial response when that image of Benn, Matchroom’s favorite non-heavyweight son, beneath the word SIGNED landed on Zuffa’s social media feed.

Even the short, accompanying video of him shaking the hand of Dana White, Zuffa CEO, for a moment looked like something from a video game, that fell just short of actual real life. 

Almost immediately the phone started buzzing like crazy but these were not just boxing folk discussing the news. This was an announcement that had crossed over into what I like to call my ‘normal friends’, those who are not completely entrenched in boxing, day-in, day-out, like many of the sport's hardcore fans.

All of those "normal friends" were stunned by the news, all of them suspicious that this was the work of a parody account, or perhaps some CGI students in Montreal. Basically anything but real life.

It is not often that news involving British boxers, particularly those not called Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury, makes much of a ripple in the mainstream. But so shocking was Benn’s departure from Matchroom that it became the top sports story of a weekend containing crunch Premier League fixtures and Six Nations rugby in the UK.

Then, once the news was verified as genuine, the conspiracy theories started; Eddie Hearn has to be in on this, this must be some sort of plot to skin White for millions before Benn returns to the open arms of his former promoter.

But then, before bedtime on Friday night, Hearn surfaced in a YouTube interview with his old friends from iFL TV. Hearn intimated that he had considered responding on camera through Matchroom’s official channels but that appearing in an interview with iFL’s co-founder Kugan Cassius instead would allow him to deliver a more "raw" verdict.

And that’s exactly what it was. In a dim hotel room a sombre Hearn detailed the timeline of events, revealed he had previously lent Benn hundreds of thousands of pounds and admitted that he blamed himself. “I forgot it was boxing,” he said in relation to Benn’s perceived lack of loyalty.

It is now nearly 50 years since another British boxing promoter, Mickey Duff, famously said: "if you want loyalty, get a dog" but there were many observers who expected more from Benn, given how much batting his former promoter has done for him since he failed a pair of VADA tests in 2022.

Hearn suggested that he was not even afforded a phone call with Benn to discuss the switch or to receive the opportunity to match Zuffa’s lucrative offer. White rubbished those claims and also offered a different perspective on the situation.

Far be it from Hearn or Matchroom to feel snubbed by Benn, they should actually be happy that one of their most successful projects, who arrived from Australia as a raw novice a decade ago, can now demand a sum of money that will support him, his wife and two young children for the rest of their lives, not to mention for generations to come.

Whichever side of the debate you land on, what cannot be denied is that Benn represents the biggest signing of the Zuffa era and a clear statement of intent for the organization. This time the eagle soared away with its prize, leaving the internet to capitulate in its dust.