Joe Goossen doesn’t just stand by quietly as he watches Brian Viloria – who faces Edgar Sosa for the vacant WBC 108-pound title this Saturday night at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas – spar at his Van Nuys gym. From his corner outside the ring, a constant stream of instructions are barked out.
“C’mon Brian, work off that jab!!!”
“Get that back, get that back, you got the left-hook inside.”
“Hey, c’mon, don’t just stand there, work and move your hands!!!”
“There you go, atta way to dig inside!”
“Ah, c’mon, dip inside and come across with the hook!!!”
As Viloria comes back to the corner after each round, it’s more of the same – a dash of encouragement mixed in with sharp critiques, but always, constant coaching and instruction.
Goossen isn’t so much training Viloria, but almost riding him like a jockey would a thoroughbred. And it’s clear, while he does some coaxing, in his first camp with ‘the Hawaiian Punch’ he’s goes to the whip much more often.
And it’s exactly what Viloria has craved and needed for some time.
After beginning his career with 20 straight wins, which included his WBC title winning performance against Eric Ortiz in September of 2005 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, his progress has seemingly waned and his record since then is a pedestrian 1-1-1. He would have a much more difficult time than expected against Jose Aguirre in his initial title defense last February. Then he would be upset by Omar Nino, who came in as a huge underdog, last August. In their rematch, he would come away with a controversial draw in a bout many observers had him winning.
In between the two Nino bouts he changed trainers, going from Freddie Roach, who had worked with him since his professional debut in 2001, to Joe Hernandez’s crew of trainers, to now, Goossen. That’s three trainers in three fights. Not exactly the model of stability and continuity but Viloria seems to be thriving in this environment.
“I love it. The first day I got here, Joe and I made a connection and I love being in this atmosphere,” said Viloria, two weeks ago before his afternoon session. “There’s hardly anybody around. It’s just me and the trainer working on things we need to work on. So I’ve been very happy since I got here.”
The move from the Wild Card Boxing Club to Goossen’s gym, which is located on Van Nuys Blvd and Friar St. in the valley, is about ten miles. But in essence, the gyms are worlds apart. The Wild Card is a gym that is not only densely populated with perhaps the most world-class talent of any gym in the country, but it also has a host of celebrities from every realm of the entertainment business that come through its doors. Goossen’s nest is a no-frills gym with just the basic apparatus and very few visitors.
There’s a lot that can distract you at the Wild Card. Also, Roach had developed one of the deepest rosters of any trainer working today. Viloria got lost in the shuffle in Roach’s vast deck of wild cards.
“At this stage of my career I did need that one-on-one attention with my trainer,” he would admit. “I love Freddie, he’d been in my corner from the start of my career. I think he had too many fighters, he was hopping back and forth. I think I was in that stage where I needed somebody to talk strategy and have one-on-one time with. I felt I was just lost in the loop.”
Oftentimes, Viloria would just go through the motions at the Wild Card. Like an employee without a boss to watch over him, he would just punch the clock and put in his time. He admits as much.
“I think it was getting to that. I felt I wasn’t learning a lot of things I needed to be learning. I felt I was just going to the gym and going through the basics and through the motions and calling it a day and just hanging back. There were times he did try to help me out. But I think I was more on my own by that time.”
Viloria seemed to be stuck in a transition phase of his career. Good enough to win a major belt, while he was far from being an amateur, he had still not made the full transformation into being a professional fighter. Instead of having a true ring identity, he would basically float and grab-bag his way through bouts. Known as a puncher during his acclaimed amateur career, he had somehow become a reactive counterpuncher that was oftentimes out-hustled for large portions of fights.
Goossen’s job is to hammer home a style that best meshes with his physical attributes and God-given tools.
“What I observed of Brian in the last couple fights was not the type of style I would employ against this guy (Sosa),” offered up the respected trainer. Goossen does not believe you can effectively train too many fighters at once. “It’s like anything else, when the supervision eyes are off of the person being supervised, it’s only human nature to kind of back down a little bit. I don’t look at the negative side of that. I look at the positive side of what it does when you just stand there and watch your guy when he’s working. Normally, fighters want to impress you and they want to do better.
“I’ve been in the gym sometimes where I just turned away, I see a guy working real hard on the bag, I turn away for ten seconds and I find him looking up at me. So when guys get that attention, they tend to perform to a higher standard because they get someone they need to impress and want to impress.”
Goossen is pushing hard. He has no choice. Viloria, if he wants to stay relevant, needs to win back his title. He makes the sparring hard, so that the fight can be relatively easy. Also, the added focus given to his pupil can lead to him flourishing, Goossen believes.
“I think sometimes when you get a little inspiration, you feel like you get a second lease on life and that you may be implementing new things in the gym, you feel like you’re learning again, sometimes that improves your desire and you have a bigger appetite to perform and reinvent yourself. You reinvigorate yourself and sometimes that’s just the impetus you need, a little change and a little attention. It can just motivate the guy.”
In the past, Viloria had become that plant that wasn’t getting consistently watered and given enough sunlight.
“It got to be that way,” agreed his manager, Gary Gittelsohn. “We all know that Freddie has really risen to a new star stature and we’re all pleased about that. Freddie’s a part of the family. But one of the casualties of that is Brian wasn’t able to get the attention as a world champion and so I had to make an adjustment and I couldn’t be more pleased with the adjustment.”
Gittelsohn has a strong belief that they were jobbed back in November. So with that being said, why the change in the corner?
“I think the Joe Hernandez thing was a good stop-gap measure,” he explained. “I thought that they worked very, very hard, very diligently. But the one thing I missed there was in the corner, Brian, did not seem to take the motivational cue that he was getting in the corner. The instructions in the corner were excellent – Brian didn’t respond. There was no question in my mind that Joe Goossen will get Brian to respond.”
Goossen wasn’t just brought aboard to tweak Viloria’s style, but to overhaul his mindset during a contest.
“I’ve been pushing Brian very hard in sparring because I know what we need to look like, ultimately,” he says. “So if he falls short of that, I crack the whip here and I tell him, ‘Don’t be offended by me cracking the whip on you here. It’s only because I have to impress upon you vehemently how important what we do in the ring to execute our game plan we have to have it looking just like it’s going to look in the fight, in the gym.”
In other words, you play the way you practice.
Viloria is quiet by nature, Goossen a bit more gregarious. But the two seem to be meshing well.
“It’s great,” Viloria says of their relationship. “We’ve been working on a lot of things. Things that I need to work on and he and I, we just met on the same level. We knew what we had to do. I knew what I had to do and Joe’s picked up right on that and he said, ‘Hey, we gotta do this and this,’ and we both agreed on the same tactics we need to use in this next fight. It made me feel very comfortable the first day and it’s been like that ever since.”
Viloria, who will open up the ‘Blaze of Glory’ telecast, needs a resounding win badly after coming up flat in his recent performances.
“I think every fight from now on is a ‘must-win’ situation. Not only to win but also to look good doing so,” says the former 2000 U.S. Olympian. “I think Joe and I have been doing good in the gym, trying to gain back some of the things I used to do early in my career and put pressure on my opponent. Hopefully, this will work out.”
FIGHT OF THE NIGHT?
It may not be the main event of the night, but the best fight of the night (at least on paper) in San Antonio is Jorge Arce’s challenge of WBC super flyweight champion, Cristian Mijares.
OK, but after being on ‘Boxing After Dark’ his last couple of fights, why is this one on a pay-per-view show?
“We thought the Arce-Mijares fight is a terrific fight. In Mexico it’s being billed as a pick’em fight,” said promoter Bob Arum. “Mijares is the champion. But the problem is Mijares has fought in Mexico, in Japan, where he won his title and defended his title. The people at HBO and maybe even Showtime, didn’t follow those matches.
“They didn’t know who Mijares was. They thought he was another bum they got foisted on them from time to time by promoters.”
Like Juan Roque Ler.
ANNOUNCE TEAM
Al Bernstein, Wally Mathews and Genaro Hernandez will make up the broadcast team for ‘Blaze of Glory’, which is being produced and directed by Top Rank.
“Al will handle play-by-play; Al’s very versatile, he’s the type of guy you put him in any situation and he excels in all of them,” says Rick Seara, who produces and directs all the Top Rank telecasts. “Wally will handle interviews in the ring, any type of news or anything that happens. He’ll be on top of that, in addition to his analysis. Genaro will be one of our analysts as well. Genaro, being a former champion, he can lend that expertise as a fighter.”
And Arum has just one directive for this trio.
“We told our announcers to shut up between the fights. We want it real short. They can talk between rounds as much as they want. They can talk during the fights.”
Unlike other televised shows, Arum wants a quick turnaround in-between his bouts.
RINGSIDE
Did anyone see the ‘Ringside’ they did on Ray Leonard last weekend on ESPN Classic? That guy was sheer boxing brilliance.
He did everything that Floyd Mayweather and Roy Jones could do, only much better and against far superior opposition.
MID-WEEK FLURRIES
I hear that Taurus Sykes could be tabbed to face Hasim Rahman on the June 14th telecast on Versus….Kudos to the MSG Network and Don King for broadcasting the Valuev-Chagaev bout this weekend…..Last Friday, as Manny Pacquiao shadowboxed (as only he can), an admiring Arum would say, “I really think this guy is the best fighter in the world.” Funny, but at this time last year, wasn’t he saying that about Mayweather?
