Within days- if not minutes – after the conclusion of the National Football League regular season last week, coaches like Mike Martz, Mike Tice, Mike Sherman and Jim Haslett were given their pink slips as general managers and owners of various franchises had decided that their teams had gone as far as they could with these men.
As Erik Morales prepares for his return bout with Manny Pacquiao on January 21st, his father Jose Morales – who helped guide him to three major world titles – will not be in his corner. In the wake of his lopsided loss to Zahir Raheem last September, Morales had decided that he and his father – like many other father-son combinations of recent years – had gone far, but as far as they were going to go
Training Morales for the rematch is Jose Luis Lopez Sr., whose own son was a gifted, if undisciplined, fighter in his own right.
“We’ve been talking about it for the last couple of years, about maybe making some changes,” Morales would tell Maxboxing last week through Top Rank publicist and interpreter Ricardo Jimenez. “Unfortunately this change came right after a loss, so everyone’s assuming that that’s why we’re doing it. But we’ve been talking about it with my dad. My dad was not feeling well the last couple of times we went up to the mountains.
“He said that maybe he didn’t want to do this any more, so we decided to make a change now.”
Being a veteran of 51 bouts (a record of 48-3), Morales is who he is. So don’t expect a major overhaul, but some fine tuning.
“We’re not going to make any drastic changes, anything big; we’re not going to do anything huge,” Morales says of the new situation, and he says of Lopez, “He knows boxing, he knows what I’m trying to do and I think it’s just a question of him correcting our mistakes. Maybe he sees something that we should be doing differently, that’s all.”
In the past, one of the tried and true axioms of the sport was that the recipe of fathers training their sons doesn’t mix. But in recent years, it’s been proven that it can indeed by successful – to a point. The Mosleys, the Trinidads and Moraleses all had highly fruitful runs in the past decade, and Fernando Vargas had great success early on with his surrogate father, Eduardo Garcia. But there is a train of thought, in all sports, that coaches can only stay in one destination for so long before their teams and players begin to tune them out.
Freddie Roach, who will be in the opposite corner when Morales faces Pacquiao in a couple of weeks, agrees with this notion.
“It just never seems to work out at the end,” he says of father-son unions in the corner. “But they (the Moraleses) seemed to have a pretty good relationship though, and they had some good fights. But I don’t think he really listened to his dad that much. Like his dad told him in the last round in the first fight, ‘Don’t make any stupid mistakes’ and he went out and fought southpaw, just to prove his father wrong, I believe. You’ll always get that in a father-son relationship; there’s always a fine line there.”
Roach knows about all the complications of father-son duos, having been forced, like all his brothers, to box and be trained as amateurs by their father, Paul. But at the end of their run, he had begun to clash with his life-long trainer, and early on in his professional career, his father made the decision to step aside for the venerable Eddie Futch.
“My dad knew he took me as far as he could,” recalled Roach. “He took me to my first four pro fights and I just needed someone else to help me grow a little bit and Eddie was the perfect guy for that.”
And now Roach is on the opposite end of the equation, as he finds himself now taking over training duties for fighters who had been trained exclusively by their fathers.
“It’s a difficult situation; it’s like with Peter Manfredo, when he comes in the gym now, he comes with his dad, but once he gets in the gym and I’m here, I’m the boss,” says Roach of the former ‘Contender’ participant. But with the father still around, he is still given input.
“He helps out,” Roach says of Peter Manfredo Sr. “We try to make him part of the situation, of course, because you can’t alienate the dad completely because it’s too tight of a relationship. It can be done when there’s a little give-and-take.”
But in most instances, the break is clean, as these relationships inevitably hit the proverbial wall.
“I think what happens a lot of times, the fighter deep down knows it and feels it all along,” says noted trainer and HBO analyst Emmanuel Steward. “But still, out of loyalty to his father, he will still not make any changes. Deep down it’s always in the back of his mind and he defends his father when people bring up it up, but deep down it’s always there.”
What usually crystallizes these situations is a fight where the son falters badly and gets virtually no help from the corner.
“When a fight like this comes up,” says Steward, referring to Morales’ last bout, which he called from ringside, “and he’s very frustrated and the comments I was making about how bad his balance was and all of this and that, he looked so bad in that fight. The fights with Barrera he lost, they were wars and they were still very competitive battles, and the ones with Pacquiao and those fights he won. But this here was when his technical mistakes really came to the surface.”
In the aftermath of losses like these, the onus usually falls on the trainer, whether they are fathers or not.
“Part of it is that they’re looking for somebody to blame,” Steward says. “I hate to say it, but in most cases, the fathers have been able to get them to a certain point. As long as you’re winning they’ll go along; they’ll stay with it. But they really deep down know and feel that they need to make a change.”
There’s been a common theme in the most recent, most successful father-son teams – usually the fathers had rather non-descript boxing careers of their own, but are blessed to have spawned off great natural talents that they decided to train. Riding the crest of their sons’ skills, they find their niche as trainers.
But on the flipside, with their sons’ great success, often comes an unnatural sense of reality.
“When you’re that emotionally close you’re going to be unbalanced one way or another,” says Steward. “First of all, sometimes you think your son is invincible and you overmatch him. What I have experienced and I’ve watched – and I don’t say it when I’m on the air because I have respect for trainers, I wouldn’t want to embarrass them – but when their fighters get in bad shape in those situations and the trainers are not experienced – most of them jumped in successfully with their own sons – they actually go into a psychological shock.”
Case in point: Morales’ corner didn’t seem to have any answers for Raheem, Papa Trinidad seemed dumbfounded as Bernard Hopkins, and most recently, Winky Wright boxed circles around his son. And the most extreme example: a stunned Jack Mosley unable to grasp the situation as he saw his son hurt and damaged for the first time in his life against Vernon Forrest in their initial encounter.
“I saw Jack Mosley, when his son get hurt, which he had never experienced in his life. He just totally went into a psychological shock,” said Steward. “He was helpless, he couldn’t do anything. He was worthless – I hate to say that. His son is hurt, he gets back to the corner, and his dad doesn’t know what to say.”
The indelible image you have that night after the shocking events of the second round is a badly concussed Mosley having to stand near his corner, waiting for what seemed to be eons, for the stool to be placed down so he could begin the recovery process.
Steward has been there.
“What do you think I felt like when I see Thomas Hearns, who I had since he was 10 years old, never saw him hurt or staggered in his life and at the end of the sixth round he comes back against Ray Leonard hurt,” recalled Steward, who had a father-son type relationship with ‘the Hit Man’. But there was a major difference with Steward, as unlike most boxing fathers, Steward had a track record in dealing with adversity with the myriad of other boxers he trained. “Being that I had so many other fighters, with most of the dads their whole career is centered on their son. I had so many other fighters that had been hurt and staggered that I had to learn different tricks to get my fighter together and make quick adjustments, right on the spot.”
But replacing a father brings about certain complications that don’t exist in replacing other cornermen.
“It’s very difficult because there are attachments there; this is the man who brought him into the world, the man who always brought his food, paid his bills, did this and that and these kids respect and fear their dad to some degree and they realize that by breaking up with their dad, it’s not like breaking up with another trainer where you just move on to somebody else. It’s not that easy,” Steward explains, citing that family events, like picnics, can get rather uncomfortable after their fathers are replaced.
But nobody at Top Rank, which promotes Morales, is surprised by the decision of Morales.
“No, the reason why I’m not surprised is because he was very disappointed after the Raheem fight on a number of things and he said, ‘There’s been a lot of situations I didn’t take care of earlier in my career and now it’s time for me to take care of them. I’m not going to let anybody down; I let you guys down, I let myself down and I’m not going to let that happen again'”, said Todd DuBoef, V.P. of Top Rank, who has a close relationship with the fighter. “It’s a mature thing. I think one of the things that happens, in my opinion, is that people get very complacent. Success breeds the lazy. Like Hagler said, ‘It’s difficult to go out and pound the pavement when you wake up with silk pajamas.
“I think to a certain extent when these guys get to a certain level they need someone there to do that. He had a number a number of issues. He’s very happy now and he’s comfortable where he is.”
In the past, trainers like Floyd Mayweather Sr. were brought into camp to give their input, and more recognizable names like Nacho Beristain and Jesus Rivero were considered to replace Morales’ father. In Lopez, he is bringing in a largely unknown commodity.
“The only thing I know about him is that he trained his son; everyone says he had great talent but he wasn’t disciplined. As far as I know he’s the only professional boxer he’s ever taken anywhere. I know he had some guys in the gym. No one at any level did anything,” said Jimenez. ‘Maestrito’ Lopez was a standout welterweight in the late 90’s, who held the WBA crown for a spell and then succumbed to a less stringent way of life before attempting his latest comeback.
“Apparently, ‘Maestrito’ went up to Otomi, where Erik trains; the last couple times Erik was there and the father is always with him,” Jimenez continued. “They were just talking back and forth and apparently Erik liked him, what he was doing with his son, and the way he was talking to him and telling him stuff.”
The change in trainers is not the only change that Morales has made for his upcoming bout, as he has located his training camp in Queratero, due to the inclement weather in the Otomi mountains where he usually trains.
“They have been telling me sensational stuff,” DuBoef says of the reports he has been recieving. “That he is so focused, he feels great, he’s running, all this stuff that he’s feeling terrific and he feels like a new fighter and he’s rededicated to his career. I think he was relatively embarrassed by his performance with Raheem and I think that’s something he wants to erase.”
But Roach expects the same ol’ Morales we’ve seen in the past.
“He’s not going to change, I mean he’s already a ‘made’ fighter. He’s a great fighter, we all know that, and I don’t think it really makes a difference because Erik’s going to do what Erik’s going to do. At this stage of his career you can help him, guide him through and help him along the way, give him a drink of water and some good advice. But it’s not Pacquiao, I’m not going to change him. He’s developed; it’s too late in his career to change somebody. But you’ll try to make little adjustments.”
So will Morales’ father at least be at the fight at the Thomas and Mack Arena in Las Vegas?
“I really don’t know,” admitted Morales. “He hasn’t really said if he’s going to the fight or not.”
NOW WHAT?
It’s good to see that Zab Judah didn’t scapegoat anybody after his stunning loss to Carlos Baldomir, isn’t it?
But seriously, now what happens on April 8th, the date when Judah was supposed to have faced Floyd Mayweather Jr. in Las Vegas?
“The problem is, I would like to keep the April 8th date, but there’s no opponent. Everybody is busy in January or February,” said Arum, who promotes the ‘Pretty Boy’.
Was he as stunned as everyone else over Baldomir’s upset?
“Well, I was hearing all week he hadn’t been training and this stuff so I was surprised but I wasn’t stunned,” answered Arum, who sees a big event go down the toilet. And forget the possibility of WBO champion Antonio Margarito stepping in; he’s got his own pay-per-view outing. “We’re sticking with February 18th. First of all he has an opponent, we have a site, we have commitments and everything.”
So does April 8th become a regular HBO date?
“I don’t even know who there is to fight,” Arum admitted on Sunday afternoon. “I just don’t know; I just can’t figure it out. Al Haymon (Mayweather’s advisor) called me, I was at the football game in New York today. But right now I don’t know. I mean he could fight Baldomir, I suppose.”
PISS STORY
You hear a lot of funny things at the gym. A couple of weeks ago, Freddie Roach was watching his young prospect Vanes Martirosyan work the heavy bag. Martirosyan was restricted to non-contact work as he was coming off a cut that had postponed a scheduled bout.
In-between rounds he would explain to Vanes and a few others how his father had said that if you put urine over your eyes that it would toughen the skin and prevent cuts, which goes in line with the thinking of baseballer Moises Alou, who in lieu of wearing batting gloves puts, well, piss on his hands to toughen his skin.
So did Roach ever take his father’s advice?
“No,” said Roach,” I just decided to bleed.”
FINAL FLURRIES
Joel Julio looked good on Shobox in blowing out Robert Kamya, but I’d like to see him in there with a legitimate puncher soon…. His next bout will be on the untelevised portion of the Fernando Vargas-Shane Mosley undercard on February 25th…. Bantamweight prospect Raul Martinez also shined on that telecast by stopping Andres Ledesma. Martinez underwent plastic surgery for the cut he suffered that night and it will most likely keep him out of action till April….Featherweight prospect Jason Litzau will face
veteran trialhorse Carlos Contreras on the Arturo Gatti-Thomas Daamgard undercard on January 28th in Atlantic City, New Jersey…. Has Roy Jones finally run out of lives with HBO Sports? I guess when you’re pound-for-pound you can act as unprofessionally as you want, but once you slip, the standards change….OK, admit, like myself, many of you gave O’Neil Bell almost no shot against Jean-Marc Mormeck. Again, that’s why you fight the fights…. Was Vince Young’s Rose Bowl performance the best individual performance you’ve ever seen in a big game? I think it may be…….
