I hate to sound like an old grouch but I feel like Andy Rooney once in a while.
I am not sure if www.boxingconfidential.com poster ?Left Hook 123? is one and the same person as ?Golden Southpaw.?
But that?s unimportant. The poster brings up something I want to answer here and on www.examiner.com concerning boxing trainers in general and Floyd Mayweather Sr. and Coach Freddie Roach in particular.
Sure, the heckling between Ricky Hatton?s main man and Manny Pacquiao?s tutor is good fun and provides hype fuel for any promotion in which the two trainers are in opposite corners.
Mayweather and Roach have become the Hatfields and McCoys among fight trainers.
But feuding aside, our poster makes a salient point. Don?t think that because Pretty Daddy Mayweather often plays the fool that he is one. No way, Don Jose!
In private, I?m sure even if adversary Roach would admit that Floyd Sr. was an accomplished pro boxer and is one of the premier trainers in boxing.
I mean, Uncle Floyd did not get hired by unbeaten world champs such as Bad Chad Dawson and Joan Guzman because of his Slick Rick hairstyle or his snappy poems.
He got hired by those camps, by those fighters, because he has oodles of knowledge to impart, because he can take a ?made? pugilistic product like Dominican Dandy Guzman and refine him, sharpen him up. Ditto with light heavyweight king Dawson, a younger fighter without the professional polish that Guzman brought to the table.
Similarly, Roach was not sought out by British hopeful Amir Khan simply because of the coach?s spectacular success in adding on to Pacman?s unrefined aggression and turning the Pinoy idol into an all-around superstar on both the offensive and defensive sides.
You can be sure that Khan would not schlep all the way from England to Hollywood and Roach?s fistic temple, the Wild Card Gym, if he thought he could get similar expertise at home. I say that not to knock British trainers because there are some good ones. Let?s not forget how far hard-drinking Billy Graham brought Hatton before that relationship soured. I?m not sure if the bottle let ?Preacher? down or if Hatton did.
Sometimes, a trainer becomes trendy, the Flavor of the Month, because he is seen on TV with a winning hand or two. Like poker players, trainers can run hot streaks and then, suddenly, the cards can turn ice cold.
I think that?s what happened to former world champion James ?Buddy? McGirt. The huge headed trainer based in Vero Beach was being hailed as the New Angelo Dundee one minute and then kicked to the curb the next.
Trust me. McGirt is a top-flight trainer and a fountain of boxing knowledge.
I know I?ll miss some obvious and not so obvious names but there are other first class trainers scattered around the country.
You?ve got Ronnie Shields, always underrated, in Houston. I?ve always been partial to LA?s Jesse Reid as a trainer/cornerman. Coach Kenny Adams is still doing his thing at age 68 in Las Vegas.
We don?t have the legion of excellent trainers we used to but, then again, we don?t have as many gyms or pro fighters, either.
The days when an aspiring trainer could to nearly any good pro gym and find a Dundee, a Ray Arcel, a Freddie Brown, a Johnny Dunn, a Georgie Benton or a Whitey Bimstein to learn the trade from are long gone as are most of the forementioned.
Richie Giachetti, a fixture in Larry Holmes corner for so long, was a competent trainer and perfect for the heavyweight champion who ruled for eight years, but he polished his act by looking at and learning from Old Masters Brown and Arcel.
Matching fighters with trainers is not easy. I suppose matching horses and jockeys is not easy, either. It’s not unusual for a talented boxer and a talented trainer not to mesh because of a personality conflict or outside meddling.
That?s where the true genius of Angelo Dundee was, in imparting tricks and technique to awesome natural talent Muhammad Ali and making Ali think all the ideas and concepts were his own.
Angie loves to tell the story about the hot prospect he had who had a troublesome lady friend. A young Dundee told the fighter to steer clear of the woman. The fighter rebeled, stayed with the woman and moved on to a different trainer. When the relationship fizzled, the boxer returned to Dundee and told him he had been right about her.
Valuable lesson learned by Angelo? From then on, he confined his comments and advice to gymnasium matters only.
If Ali was the black key, Dundee was the white one and they made some beautiful music together. You could look it up.
I think Roach has a teacher?s temperament. Papa Mayweather, I?m not so sure about. But, if I was Hatton training understudy Lee Beard or any other trainer wanna be, I?d be following a Coach Roach or Mayweather around the gym with paper and pencil to record their lessons properly.
The recently departed, colorful cutman Chuck Bodak used to blanch when someone referred to him as a trainer.
The Chicago native preferred to be known as a coach ?because you train animals, not boxers.?
Bodak was right. The really great ones are teachers, not trainers, and both Roach and Mayweather are at the top of their game.
More?s the pity we don?t have many like them.
(Michael Marley was trained by Bob Foster/Terry Downes cutman Johnny Donaruma, better known as cigar-chomping Johnny Dunn at Boston?s ramshackle New Garden Gym. Dunn made all students stand in front of the mirror for three months extending the left jab and working on foot positioning. It wasn?t Dunn?s fault that Marley floated like a butterfly but stung like a moth. Dunn may have also been a bookmaker in rugged Chelsea, Mass., where, when business was bad, the bookies usually laid off 12 cops.)
