(Exclusive Interview by Jenna J & Geoffrey Ciani) ? Last week?s 145th edition of On the Ropes Boxing Radio (brought to you by CWH Promotions) featured an exclusive interview with Hall of Fame boxing trainer Emanuel Steward, who recently helped guide middleweight contender Andy Lee (27-1, 19 KOs) to avenge his only career loss with a lopsided unanimous decision victory against Brian Vera (19-6, 12 KOs). In addition to discussing Lee?s victory and his future, Steward also shared his views on a variety of other topics, including Sergio Martinez?s stoppage win against Darren Barker, a potential match-up between Martinez and Floyd Mayweather Junior, Wladimir Klitschko?s upcoming fight with Jean Marc Mormeck, Joe Calzaghe, Miguel Cotto, Bernard Hopkins, and more! Here are some question and answer excerpts from that interview:
JENNA J: Andy really dominated throughout the entire match. In the second round he also dropped Brian Vera. Do you think, after viewing his performance, that he could have done anything better at all?
EMANUEL STEWARD: Well in rating him, I?d rate him about a 7.5 or an 8 in the fight. I thought he did what was necessary to win. It was not a super devastating performance, because in this fight here the main thing was to fight a technical fight, and that was to outbox him and keep him off-balance with the little right jab over the shoulder because Vera has very bad balance. So every time he started to come forward, Andy would hit him with that right cross type jab to make him fall off balance and then he would try to time him and catch him with straight lefts when he was coming in. That was the strategy. I would liked to have seen him open up and maybe knock him out, but it was a big risk because Vera has a good chin and he?s the type of guy that unless you see he?s really hurt, we learned from the first fight you just have to systematically beat him and if you hurt him you could also knock him out but don?t get too excited, because he falls off balance a lot and you may think he?s hurt and that?s because he has terrible balance. In fact, after the fight we were at the airport and we were saying that the biggest thing we took advantage of was his terrible balance. We kept him off balance all night. So it worked good, and next we try to move on to another fight but I was glad that fight went that way and that Andy didn?t get hit a lot like he did in the fight with McEwan.
