Andrew Whitfield of Lewiston is staying humble as he preps to face Marcial in a boxing bout at L.A. Wednesday night
Andrew Whitfield is supposed to be out Christmas shopping. He seldom gets that kind of quality time with his family. He stays plenty busy with his full-time job at the local paper mill, training at Richard Jackson’s boxing gym and traveling the Pacific Northwest and beyond to progress his budding pro boxing career.
The rare opening in his schedule is the perfect time to get into the holiday spirit. But instead, he’s at Jackson’s, acquiescing in the local newspaper’s request for an interview. He doesn’t get many of those, so he and Jackson pull out all the stops, turning the spotlighted boxing ring inside Jackson’s gym into an interview stage, complete with face-to-face barbershop-style stools and Whitfield’s equipment displayed on the canvas.
This might be the only publicity Whitfield will get before the biggest fight of his life. He’s OK with that. This fight could change the trajectory of his career and therefore, every-day life for him, his wife and two sons. But most likely, he’ll be right back here in Lewiston, at Jackson’s gym, and the local paper mill, and finding spare time to Christmas shop with his family.
Far away, in distance and grandeur, is Whitfield’s upcoming opponent, Eumir Felix Marcial of the Philippines. He’s a rising star in his homeland, a gold medal hopeful for the upcoming Olympics, and he’s backed by one of the best boxers in history. He’s got more than 26,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, where dozens of videos have logged more than 1 million views. Heck, most of the Internet’s information on Whitfield comes by way of Marcial and the numerous articles that have been published to hype up his pro boxing debut. Whitfield is even mentioned on Marcial’s Wikipedia page.
Marcial went 67-17 as an amateur and is ranked second in the world among amateur middleweight boxers. He recently signed with MP Promotions — that’s MP for Manny Pacquiao, Marcial’s countryman and former 12-time world champion boxer. Marcial’s trainer is the world-renowned Freddie Roach, who has also trained Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto and other champion fighters. Whitfield, though he’s logged four pro fights and is 3-1 with two knockouts, doesn’t expect anyone to believe he’s the favorite. That’s quite a corner Marcial has.
“I’m a nobody from nowhere,” Whitfield says.
That’ll change for a few moments on Wednesday in Los Angeles, when Whitfield enters the ring against Marcial for their nationally televised six-round middleweight bout.
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Whitfield, 29, wasn’t always a boxer. Even today, he prefers to think of himself as a fighter at the core of the word.
He started wrestling when he was 12 and lived in northern California, near Shasta Lake. He only took up the sport after he got in a fight and was suspended from school, and his great uncle decided he needed an outlet to release pent-up aggression. A couple of years later, Whitfield moved to Lewiston for high school, where he continued to wrestle. He peaked his senior year at Lewiston High, placing sixth at 160 pounds in the Class 5A state tournament. He had also been training in mixed martial arts for two years at that point, and logged around 20 amateur MMA fights before switching to boxing.
“Wrestling got me addicted to the workout, MMA got me addicted to getting punched in the face,” Whitfield says.
Whitfield joined Jackson’s gym when he was 20, but didn’t start working directly with Jackson until recently. For a while, Jackson only knew Whitfield by his nickname, Sunshine, which he acquired when he arrived in Lewiston sporting the cool-guy persona he adopted in Cali — long hair and a corduroy jacket, “looking the whole California look,” Whitfield recalls. Whitfield built up a decent amateur boxing resume, but Jackson helped him enter and climb the professional ranks.
Jackson, 74, has spent most of his life around boxing. His father trained Lewiston’s Jimmy Grow, who went 54-13-3 in 12 years as a pro in the 1950s and ‘60s. Jackson later trained Grow’s son, Mike Grow, who was 23-6-1 during his 12-year career in the ‘80s and ‘90s. If things go right, Jackson will be tied to a third great Lewiston fighter.
Boxing has taken Jackson to multiple continents and helped him gain important connections in that realm throughout his career, allowing Whitfield to get acquainted with the right people.
“He’s so knowledgeable about the sport,” Whitfield says. “The guy’s lived the history books.”
Whitfield made his pro debut in 2016 and has been with Jackson for the last two years or so. Together, they’ve traveled the Northwest for fights and sparring sessions with whomever will take them. Many of the gyms they visit are small and unglamorous, but every once in a while, Whitfield gets some face time with big names in the business.
In August 2019, to cap a 50-round week, Whitfield was watched by Floyd Mayweather Jr. at his gym in Las Vegas. Whitfield was “dog-tired” and had worn out his left shoulder that week, but volunteered for one last sparring session with a fellow fighter, who was Olympic hopeful and potential trainee of Jeff Mayweather, the uncle of Floyd Mayweather Jr.
As Whitfield and Jackson recall, Mayweather Jr. was pounding on the apron during the session, urging Whitfield to fight through his pain and fatigue.
“That was pretty intense,” Whitfield says. “It was pretty motivational.… He was wanting me to work, he loved it. He was getting pumped and it was pumping me up.”
While moments like that will stick with Whitfield forever, they’re likely fleeting for someone like Mayweather Jr., one of the most successful boxers of all-time. It takes more than that to erase the “nobody from nowhere” sheen Whitfield wears.
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Whitfield isn’t making Mayweather money for boxing just yet. He won’t say how much he’s pulling in for the Marcial fight but confirms it’s not in the millions. “That’s my business for now,” he deflects.
So he has to balance his boxing career with a job. Ask him about his daily routine and he somehow isn’t too exhausted to rattle it off: a run in the morning, a 12-hour shift at the mill, three hours of training at Jackson’s, then about five hours of sleep.
“And then my days off, I work out two to three times a day,” he adds for good measure.
His workouts include footwork, bag work, sparring and jump rope, among other things. Some of his runs are up the 10th Street hill near Lewis-Clark State College — “he runs that nine times,” Jackson proclaims — and others take him around Lewiston’s undulant landscape.
“There’s nobody that wants to do that,” Jackson says.
Whitfield and Jackson use that work ethic as a source of pride for the upcoming fight — While Marcial is busy making YouTube videos and appearing on podcasts, Whitfield is training — that sort of sentiment. It’s that drive, Jackson says, that makes Whitfield special.
“He’s got something that I’ve only seen a few times in my life,” Jackson says. “… I can identify somebody that’s got more than talent — you got heart.”
The tale of the tape doesn’t account for that, though, just Whitfield and Marcial’s measurables. Both boxers are listed at 5-foot-8. Marcial, a southpaw, is long and fast, Whitfield says. The various scouting reports on Whitfield say he’s a power puncher, but Whitfield won’t confirm or deny it. There’s not much fight film on him, and he’s not about to give away any secrets.
“I couldn’t tell you,” he says. “I’ve never been hit by myself.”
Whitfield and Marcial are fighting on Tom Brown’s Premier Boxing Champions card at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Brown is the same matchmaker who promoted the recent welterweight world title fight between Errol Spence Jr. and Danny Garcia. Whitfield and Marcial will be featured in the second of five fights as the semi-main event of the night, preceding the main event that pits Eimantas Stanionis (11-0-0) against welterweight challenger Janer Gonzalez (13-0-2). The FS1 telecast and Fox Sports app live stream begin at 6 p.m. PST.
It’s an everything-to-gain, nothing-to-lose situation for Whitfield. Marcial bears the weight of a legend and the potential of being the next great Filipino fighter.
Whitfield’s corner is much tighter than that.
