He looks around, coffee in hand, at the small gaggle of reporters invited up to Casa Benn, set in the Essex countryside north west of London, for his final media obligations before heading out to America to finish training camp.

The plan is for Benn to complete a strength session under the watchful eye of his head of performance, Dan Lawrence, before a shower, some food and then a handful of set-piece interviews. But the 29-year-old has other ideas.

“Let’s do some of them now,” he tells his manager, Nicole McDermott. “Then some after.”

He slurps his coffee and takes a seat on the outdoor sofa set on the patio that leads to his personal gym, adjusts his cap and asks who is first.

There are very few professional fighters who have the means to host written, YouTube and broadcast media at their house and even fewer who would ever actually do it. But, with a four-week jaunt in the diary, which will include his September 12 challenge for Ryan Garcia’s world welterweight title in Las Vegas, Benn is happy where he is.

“I need to be here,” Benn tells The Ring, gesturing vaguely over his shoulder at the football field-sized lawn behind him, scorched by the August sun.

“Do you know how nice it is to wake up in the morning and watch my son playing football in the garden? I don’t need to deprive myself of that. I left my family in Sydney at 19, do you think I’m going to do all that again and leave my kids?

“I already have to leave them on Friday for four weeks, but the prize is big. I’m leaving my newborn son.”

A fortnight before Benn’s Los Angeles flight, he and his wife Victoria, welcomed their third child (second son), Hart. Because his camp house sits on the same plot of land as the family home, he was able to be present without compromising training work.

“I sit there and know that I will never get these moments back,” he says. “When I look at my son, I will never get that moment back. These moments pass and once they pass they are gone.

“For me, the bigger the sacrifice the bigger the reward. I don’t need to tuck myself into some dungeon to lock in, never have. I always prepare diligently and work hard. They say it’s hard to get out of bed when you’re wearing silk pyjamas, but if anything I work harder now that I have everything.”

As if to labor that point, Benn’s back garden gym comes complete with a unique addition in the form of a yellow Ferrari, which sits behind a glass wall, in the middle. It provides Benn a perpetual reminder of the rewards which come with the work he puts in. 

“I’m blessed,” he nods. “We’re sat here in the middle of nine acres. My kids ride around on their quad bikes. My daughter goes for walks and feeds the alpacas. We've got a menage there for horses. We've got a lake there, there's fish in it, loads of carp. We've got deer. What more could we need?

“As a man it’s my duty to give my family the best life possible. I strongly feel that whatever's best for my family, I will do. My kids have their mum around 24-7, have a stress-free life. Yeah, the load's heavy, but I've got big shoulders.

“I feel like fortune favors the bold. There are decisions I had to make in my career to live the way I want for the rest of my life. That's my legacy.”

When you take a look around at the property that Benn describes, as his children play peacefully in the sun on the other side of the garden, you do get the feeling that he has cracked it.

After two failed VADA tests in 2022 which nearly ended his career and a well-publicized departure from Matchroom, Benn has reached the other side. There’s no doubting he is in the one percent of boxers now.

“I still can’t really process all this,” he adds. “This is my home and I still can’t believe it. I just think back to when I turned pro and never thought I’d get here.

“All I can say is that I’ve done everything I possibly could. I've had days in the office where I've cried, been broken, where I couldn't handle the pressure. I've had days in the office where I was just thinking 'I can't do this no more.'

“That's where most people fail or stop. But the setbacks and doubters, that’s what fueled the fire. Now I’m a happy man because my kids’ kids are blessed, many generations of the Benns are forever blessed from the work ethic I’ve put in and that stems from my dad. It’s just work ethic.”

His dad, the two-weight world champion Nigel, is part of his son’s team these days and a fixture during training camp. Before Benn Jr. emerged over the gravel, 62-year-old Nigel had been in the gym for his first session of the day with a second planned later that evening.

It is not unfair to say the young Benn would never have been given the opportunities he did at the start of his career without his famous surname, but having a successful dad never guarantees success.

In fact, boxing is one of the spheres in which quite the opposite is true.

The “Dark Destroyer” fought to provide his family with a better upbringing than he had and Conor was one of the beneficiaries. But with it, he says, came extreme pressure and not only in the ring.

“There was a pressure to provide for my family in the same way he did,” Benn says of his dad. “I felt that as soon as I had my own kids.

“Everyone always just talks boxing to me, talks about legacy. But the legacy that lives on and surpasses me has nothing to do with boxing really. It’s my kids. That’s my legacy, how am I raising my children? Has my son got the discipline, morals and the foundations to be a good man? Has he got the work ethic to provide for his own family.

“That’s what this whole thing is for.”

With that, he finishes the last of his coffee and completes the short walk into the gym to train alongside a Ferrari.

“It’s been a long road already,” he says. “But this is only the start.”