CELEBRITY SAS star Connor Benn was left in tears when he was forced to withdraw from the series.
The professional boxer suffered a nasty shoulder injury as the gruelling endurance course continued, and on Monday night’s episode it proved too much.
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Following a test where he dealt with a drill that recreated the effect of a recovery mission amid hazardous gas, he admitted to fellow recruit Adam Collard that he “would rather f**k up his shoulder than quit the show”.
However, he also noted that if he was told he was lined-up for a bought within the next three months, it could spell the end of his career.
Being brought into the DS’s for an interrogation, the team expressed their concern about his injury effecting him long-term, prompting him to admit he has a ‘fear in leaving’.
Unfortunately, his worst fear came true, and after being checked by the medical team, he was instructed that he would no longer be able to participate as he’d injured his rotator cuff.
The DS staff announced he would be medically withdrawn from the course – despite his protests and him wanting to carry on.
“It’s a medical withdrawal, you have no control over this. You had a great journey,” Mark Billingham told the heartbroken recruit.
“What if it’s fine?” Connor protested.
“It aint’ fine. It ain’t worth the f***ing damage mate,” he told him.
Defeated, Connor admitted: “I don’t want to go, man.”
DS Jason Fox agreed with Mark, who told him: “Thing is it’s getting to the point now where you’re still in the middle of your career. You’re still destined to pull in the big bucks.
“You’re going out with your head held high, you didn’t give up.”
“You’ve got from this what you need,” added Mark. “You don’t need anything else. You’ve ticked all the boxes we wanted you to tick. You’ve got nothing else to prove to us.”
Resigned to what happened, Conor was seen crying as he hugged the staff and left the course.
Connor’s removal from the show came after he opened up about his radically religious upbringing, revealing he grew up believing he would be ‘going to hell and there were demons inside him’.
“I was a kid, and they made me believe I needed an exorcism,” he told the team, breaking down in tears.
“It makes me angry, because i look at my son and I just don’t understand how anyone can make a kid believe they have demons in them.”
He was urged by the team to “give himself a break” and “no longer carry that anchor” when he admitted that there’s still part of him that questions if they were right.
“I’ve never lost – and I don’t plan losing on this course either,” he said when he first joined the show.
Connor later explained that part of his reason for doing the show was because he was still dealing with the fallout of a two-year ban from boxing after failing a drug test.
He has continued to profess his innocence to UK Anti-Doping (Ukad) and the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC), and maintained it on the show, saying he was “fighting for his name”.
At the time of filming, an outcome hadn’t been reached, but his provisional suspension was finally lifted in 2024.
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