Roach vs. Atlas: Saturday’s Fight Viewed through the Prism of their Famous Mentors

Published

9 years ago

April 4, 2016

It’s reasonable to presume that no one paid for tickets to see the New York Yankees in the 1920s so that they could watch future Hall of Famer Miller Huggins manage from the dugout. The big crowds came to see Babe Ruth swing for the fences. Sixty years later, no one paid for tickets to watch Phil Jackson, who would go on to coach his teams to a record 11 NBA championships, strategize on the sideline for the Chicago Bulls. Fans packed arenas to see gravity-defying Michael Jordan make magic on the court in much the same manner that the Bambino once did in the batter’s box.

All of which makes Saturday night’s third meeting of welterweights Manny Pacquiao (57-6-2, 38 KOs) and Timothy Bradley Jr. (33-1-1, 13 KOs) something of an anomaly. Oh, sure, there is some standard intrigue to the HBO Pay Per View clash at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand in that the fighters have split their two previous bouts, making this a “rubber match,” which always hints at some sense of competitive closure. But there is a widespread belief that Pacquiao deserved to get the nod in his first fight with Bradley, who came away with a hotly disputed split-decision victory, before Pacquiao bounced back to clearly win the rematch on points.

Check out The Boxing Channel video “Teddy Atlas Elaborates On His Relation With Timothy Bradley”.

Nor have Pacquiao and Bradley, polite and restrained by nature, gone into the gutter to conduct an inflammatory war of words, although Pacquiao did create a bit of a stir with his politically incorrect comments on same-sex marriage, which he has since said were taken out of context. Even Pacquiao’s pronouncement that he would definitely retire after this bout has become less of a story line as the 37-year-old Filipino superstar, the only man ever to win world titles in eight weight classes, now is dropping hints that he might decide to fight on.

It has been left to the respective trainers, Freddie Roach for Pacquiao and Teddy Atlas for Bradley, to rev up the hype machine by going public with a personal feud that seems genuine and, to some extent, has matched or even superseded public interest in the fighters they represent. To some degree, Pacquiao-Bradley III will serve as a referendum as to which of the two celebrity cornermen is the better now and, just maybe, for posterity.

“I know Teddy personally. I’ve had a couple of altercations with him,” said Roach, 56, winner of a record seven Eddie Futch Trainer of the Year Awards from the Boxing Writers Association of America. “I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me. That’s just how it is.

“It’s the first time we’re facing each other, so it’s a little competitive. But that’s not why I want Manny to win the fight. It has nothing to do with Teddy Atlas, and I really don’t care what Teddy does. So, who is he? An announcer? I won’t give him credit until (Bradley) beats a legit fighter. Let’s face it, you look at the guy (Bradley) beat (Brandon Rios, in his first bout with Atlas) was fat and out of shape. He looked like he wanted to retire even before the fight.”

For his part, Atlas, 59, is just as dismissive of Roach, whose reputation, he said, is inflated by Pacquiao’s success, which Atlas believes could have been achieved with any number of equally qualified trainers.

“I don’t care what (Roach) thinks,” Atlas said on a video posted by HBO. “I’ve been in this business 40 years, longer than him. I’m more than a passenger (with Bradley), more than a guy going along with something that I shouldn’t go along with.”

For all their obvious differences – the unfailingly courteous Roach has been with Pacquiao for 15 years, the excitable, take-no-crap Atlas with Bradley for only the past six months or so – it is their similarities that make the friction between them such a jumble of contradictions. Each is regarded as a brilliant constructor of fight plans, capable of extracting maximum productivity, both physically and emotionally, from their charges. Each is brutally honest, sometimes to their detriment. And, make no mistake, each has a sufficiently large ego that does not allow for the merest possibility that someone else could be more knowledgeable about the intricacies of boxing.

Lastly, and perhaps more important, each is considered the most accomplished pupil of legendary mentors, both of whom have taken their earthly 10-count and are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Roach – who also has been inducted into the IBHOF, in 2012 — learned his craft from the venerable Eddie Futch, who help mold the careers of 22 world champions, including Joe Frazier, Alexis Arguello, Larry Holmes, Michael Spinks, Marlon Starling and Riddick Bowe. For Atlas, that guiding hand was provided by Cus D’Amato, who helped take Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres to world titles, and undertook the process that led to Mike Tyson joining that list.

It might even be inferred that it is the ghosts of those two larger-than-life figures – Futch, who was 90 when he died on Oct. 10, 2001, and D’Amato, who was 77 when he passed away on Nov. 4, 1985 — that are competing for an added layer to their legacies as are Pacquiao and Bradley, or Roach and Atlas. Whoever wins Saturday night not only gives a measure of credence to the elevation of Roach over Atlas, or vice versa, but, in a residual manner, to any lingering vestiges of the Futch-vs.-Cus argument.

There are those who consider Futch, a onetime stablemate of Joe Louis, as the greatest of all trainers, on a pedestal above even those upon which the revered likes of Ray Arcel, Whitey Bimstein, Jack Blackburn, Angelo Dundee, Emanuel Steward, George Benton and Gil Clancy reside. Quiet, polite and dignified, Futch always spoke concise English, never raised his voice and had a fondness for 19^th-century British poets. His disinclination to call attention to himself might explain his slow rise up through the ranks, which obliged him to find employment as a hotel waiter, road laborer, welder, sheet metal worker in an aircraft plant and a distribution clerk in the Los Angeles Post Office in addition to his duties as a trainer.

Roach, who at various times has also worked the corner of such notable fighters as James Toney, Miguel Cotto, Wladimir Klitschko and Bernard Hopkins, is as meticulous in his handling of fighters as was Futch, who also trained Roach.

“He’s absolutely brilliant at breaking things down,” said one of Roach’s former fighters, Irish featherweight Bernard Dunne. “He’ll make time to help you understand, no matter who you are or what your ability. He treats us all the same, whether we’re novices or world champions. You just don’t see that in boxing.”

D’Amato’s approach was markedly different from Futch’s, as is Atlas’ to Roach’s. When Bobby Stewart, who “discovered” a then-12-year-old Tyson at the Tryon Residential Center for Boys and brought him to D’Amato’s training facility in Catskill, N.Y., for further refinement, Cus made him the personal project of Atlas, whom D’Amato referred to as the “young master.”

Although Atlas also had been a troubled youth who came to regard D’Amato as something of a second father, the two eventually disagreed on how to handle Tyson, for whom a separate, far more lenient code of personal conduct was allowed by D’Amato. Atlas has said that the aging D’Amato, who saw Tyson as his last great hope for winning a world championship, made allowances for the teenage phenom’s insolent behavior that he would not have accepted from anyone else.

Flash point came when a 16-year-old Tyson “put his hands” on the 11-year-old niece of Atlas’ wife. A furious Atlas then confronted Tyson, putting a gun to his head and threatening to kill him if he ever again did such a thing. But instead of disciplining Tyson, D’Amato cut ties with Atlas, who had served as Tyson’s lead trainer for four years and was with D’Amato for seven.

“At that moment I hated Cus every bit as much as I hated Tyson,” Atlas said in his autobiography, Atlas. “I had trusted Cus. We were partners. I knew if I allowed this, the next time Tyson would take it further. He would rape her. Or someone else.”

All these years later, Atlas remains ambivalent about his relationship with D’Amato. But one thing has not changed; unlike Roach, the figurative iron fist in the velvet glove who followed Futch’s lead by getting his fighters to do as instructed with patience and reason, Atlas has held firm to a my-way-or-the-highway approach. He has walked away from lucrative training gigs with, among others, Donny Lalonde, Michael Moorer, Shannon Briggs and Alexander Povetkin because they resisted his dictums. While Atlas has retained a high profile in the sport through his 18 years as a color analyst for ESPN2 Friday Night Fights, for NBC for the last four Olympics and, most recently, for Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN, he has resisted any number of offers to train interested fighters – or at lead he did, until Bradley came calling.

“I spent several days thinking about it (accepting Bradley’s request for Atlas to train him),” Atlas said before their first fight together, the ninth-round stoppage of Brandon Rios last Nov. 7 in which Bradley either looked very sharp, Rios very dull, or perhaps some combination thereof. “I went back and forth, going over so many things. It wasn’t an easy decision. It would have been very easy to say no instead of yes. I was hesitant at first, but what I knew about the kid in terms of his character – not only in the ring, but in his personal life – was a factor.”

Trust in boxing, as in anything else, is or should be a two-way street. Pacquiao has been with Roach so long it almost seems as if they are joined at the hip. The relationship between Bradley and Atlas is still in its formative stages and, given Atlas’ history of walking away from fighters who come to chafe at his way of doing things, it is hardly certain that the current mutual lovefest will long endure. In any case, Roach believes that Bradley will lapse into the pre-Atlas version of himself once he finds himself in tough with Pacquaio.

“I don’t think there’s a new and improved Tim Bradley,” Roach said. “Fighters try to improve and change, but when they get hit, they revert to what they normally do best.”

What happens in the ring is always what it is. But figure on more time than usual focused between rounds on the instructions and exhortations given by the trainers to their fighters, more or less equal partners in a quest that will help to define the evolving status of all concerned, including those of a couple of dead men whose reverberations continue to be felt to this day.

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Check out The Boxing Channel video “Paulie Malignaggi Breaks Down Manny Pacquiao vs Timothy Bradley 3”.

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Bernard Fernandez

Steven Navarro is the TSS 2024 Prospect of the Year

Published

2 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Steven-Navarro-is-the-TSS-2024-Prospect-of-the-Year

“I get ‘Bam’ vibes when I watch this kid,” said ESPN ringside commentator Tim Bradley during the opening round of Steven Navarro’s most recent match. Bradley was referencing WBC super flyweight champion Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, a precociously brilliant technician whose name now appears on most pound-for-pound lists.

There are some common threads between Steven Navarro, the latest fighter to adopt the nickname “Kid Dynamite,” and Bam Rodriguez. Both are southpaws currently competing in the junior bantamweight division. But, of course, Bradley was alluding to something more when he made the comparison. And Navarro’s showing bore witness that Bradley was on to something.

It was the fifth pro fight for Navarro who was matched against a Puerto Rican with a 7-1 ledger. He ended the contest in the second frame, scoring three knockdowns, each the result of a different combination of punches, forcing the referee to stop it. It was the fourth win inside the distance for the 20-year-old phenom.

Isaias Estevan “Steven” Navarro turned pro after coming up short in last December’s U.S. Olympic Trials in Lafayette, Louisiana. The #1 seed in the 57 kg (featherweight) division, he was upset in the finals, losing a controversial split decision. Heading in, Navarro had won 13 national tournaments beginning at age 12.

A graduate of LA’s historic Fairfax High School, Steven made his pro debut this past April on a Matchroom Promotions card at the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas and then inked a long-term deal with Top Rank. He comes from a boxing family. His father Refugio had 10 pro fights and three of Refugio’s cousins were boxers, most notably Jose Navarro who represented the USA at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was a four-time world title challenger as a super flyweight. Jose was managed by Oscar De La Hoya for much of his pro career.

Nowadays, the line between a prospect and a rising contender has been blurred. Three years ago, in an effort to make matters less muddled, we operationally defined a prospect thusly: “A boxer with no more than a dozen fights, none yet of the 10-round variety.” To our way of thinking, a prospect by nature is still in the preliminary-bout phase of his career.

We may loosen these parameters in the future. For one thing, it eliminates a lot of talented female boxers who, like their Japanese male counterparts in the smallest weight classes, are often pushed into title fights when, from a historical perspective, they are just getting started.

But for the time being, we will adhere to our operational definition. And within the window that we have created, Steven Navarro stood out. In his first year as a pro, “Kid Dynamite” left us yearning to see more of him.

Honorable mention: Australian heavyweight Teremoana Junior (5-0, 5 KOs)

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The Challenge of Playing Muhammad Ali

Published

11 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Thomas Hauser

There have been countless dramatizations of Muhammad Ali’s life and more will follow in the years ahead. The most heavily marketed of these so far have been the 1977 movie titled The Greatest starring Ali himself and the 2001 biopic Ali starring Will Smith.

The Greatest was fictionalized. Its saving grace apart from Ali’s presence on screen was the song “The Greatest Love of All” which was written for the film and later popularized by Whitney Houston. Beyond that, the movie was mediocre. “Of all our sports heroes,” Frank Deford wrote, “Ali needs least to be sanitized. But The Greatest is just a big vapid valentine. It took a dive.”

The 2001 film was equally bland but without the saving grace of Ali on camera. “I hated that film,” Spike Lee said. “It wasn’t Ali.” Jerry Izenberg was in accord, complaining, “Will Smith playing Ali was an impersonation, not a performance.”

The latest entry in the Ali registry is a play running this week off-Broadway at the AMT Theater (354 West 45th Street) in Manhattan.

The One: The Life of Muhammad Ali was written by David Serero, who has produced and directed the show in addition to playing the role of Angelo Dundee in the three-man drama. Serero, age 43, was born in Paris, is of Moroccan-French-Jewish heritage, and has excelled professionally as an opera singer (baritone) and actor (stage and screen).

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. The play is flawed. There are glaring factual inaccuracies in the script that add nothing to the dramatic arc and detract from its credibility.

On the plus side; Zack Bazile (pictured) is exceptionally good as Ali. And Serero (wearing his director’s hat) brings the most out of him.

Growing up, Bazile (now 28) excelled in multiple sports. In 2018, while attending Ohio State, he won the NCAA Long Jump Championship and was named Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year. He also dabbled in boxing, competed in two amateur fights in 2022, and won both by knockout. He began acting three years ago.

Serero received roughly one thousand resumes when he published notices for a casting call in search of an actor to play Ali. One-hundred-twenty respondents were invited to audition.

“I had people who looked like Ali and were accomplished actors,” Serero recalls. “But when they were in the room, I didn’t feel Ali in front of me. You have to remember; we’re dealing with someone who really existed and there’s video of him, so it’s not like asking someone to play George Washington.”

And Ali was Ali. That’s a hard act to follow.

Bazile is a near-perfect fit. At 6-feet-2-inches tall, 195 pounds, he conveys Ali’s physicality. His body is sculpted in the manner of the young Ali. He moves like an athlete because he is an athlete. His face resembles Ali’s and his expressions are very much on the mark in the way he transmits emotion to the audience. He uses his voice the way Ali did. He moves his eyes the way Ali did. He has THE LOOK.

Zack was born the year that Ali lit the Olympic flame in Atlanta, so he has no first-hand memory of the young Ali who set the world ablaze. “But as an actor,” he says, “I’m representing Ali. That’s a responsibility I take very seriously. Everyone has an essence about them. I had to find the right balance – not too over the top – and capture that.”

Sitting in the audience watching Bazile, I felt at times as though it was Ali onstage in front of me. Zack has the pre-exile Ali down perfectly. The magic dissipates a bit as the stage Ali grows older. Bazile still has to add the weight of aging to his craft. But I couldn’t help but think, “Muhammad would have loved watching Zack play him.”

****

Twenty-four hours after the premiere of The One, David Serero left the stage for a night to shine brightly in a real boxing ring., The occasion was the tenth fight card that Larry Goldberg has promoted at Sony Hall in New York, a run that began with Goldberg’s first pro show ever on October 13, 2022.

Most of the fights on the six-bout card played out as expected. But two were tougher for the favorites than anticipated. Jacob Riley Solis was held to a draw by Daniel Jefferson. And Andy Dominguez was knocked down hard by Angel Meza in round three before rallying to claim a one-point split-decision triumph.

Serero sang the national anthem between the second and third fights and stilled the crowd with a virtuoso performance. Fans at sports events are usually restless during the singing of the anthem. This time, the crowd was captivated. Serero turned a flat ritual into an inspirational moment. People were turning to each other and saying “Wow!”

****

The unexpected happened in Tijuana last Saturday night when 25-to-1 underdog Bruno Surace climbed off the canvas after a second-round knockdown to score a shocking, one-punch, sixth-round stoppage of Jaime Munguia. There has been a lot of commentary since then about what happened that night. The best explanation I’ve heard came from a fan named John who wrote, “The fight was not over in the second round although Munguia thought it was because, if he caught him once, he would naturally catch him again. Plus he looked at this little four KO guy [Surace had scored 4 knockouts in 27 fights] the way all the fans did, like he had no punch. That is what a fan can afford to do. But a fighter should know better. The ref reminds you, ‘Protect yourself at all times.’ Somebody forgot that.”

photo (c) David Serero

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His most recent book – MY MOTHER and me – is a personal memoir available at Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/My-Mother-Me-Thomas-Hauser/dp/1955836191/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5C0TEN4M9ZAH&keywords=thomas+hauser&qid=1707662513&sprefix=thomas+hauser%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1

In 2004, the Boxing Writers Association of America honored Hauser with the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism. In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

Published

2 days ago

December 16, 2024

Arne K. Lang

L.A.’s Rudy Hernandez is the 2024 TSS Trainer of the Year

If asked to name a prominent boxing trainer who operates out of a gym in Los Angeles, the name Freddie Roach would jump immediately to mind. Best known for his work with Manny Pacquaio, Roach has been named the Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America a record seven times.

A mere seven miles from Roach’s iconic Wild Card Gym is the gym that Rudy Hernandez now calls home. Situated in the Little Tokyo neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles, the L.A. Boxing Gym – a relatively new addition to the SoCal boxing landscape — is as nondescript as its name. From the outside, one would not guess that two reigning world champions, Junto Nakatani and Anthony Olascuaga, were forged there.

As Freddie Roach will be forever linked with Manny Pacquiao, so will Rudy Hernandez be linked with Nakatani. The Japanese boxer was only 15 years old when his parents packed him off to the United States to be tutored by Hernandez. With Hernandez in his corner, the lanky southpaw won titles at 112 and 115 and currently holds the WBO bantamweight (118) belt. In his last start, he knocked out his Thai opponent, a 77-fight veteran who had never been stopped, advancing his record to 29-0 (22 KOs).

Nakatani’s name now appears on several pound-for-pound lists. A match with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue is brewing. When that match comes to fruition, it will be the grandest domestic showdown in Japanese boxing history.

“Junto Nakatani is the greatest fighter I’ve ever trained. It’s easy to work with him because even when he came to me at age 15, his focus was only on boxing. It was to be a champion one day and nothing interfered with that dream,” Hernandez told sports journalist Manouk Akopyan writing for Boxing Scene.

Akin to Nakatani, Rudy Hernandez built Anthony Olascuaga from scratch. The LA native was rucked out of obscurity in April of 2023 when Jonathan Gonzalez contracted pneumonia and was forced to withdraw from his date in Tokyo with lineal light flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji. Olascuaga, with only five pro fights under his belt, filled the breach on 10 days’ notice and although he lost (TKO by 9), he earned kudos for his gritty performance against the man recognized as the best fighter in his weight class.

Two fights later, back in Tokyo, Olascuaga copped the WBO world flyweight title with a third-round stoppage of Riku Kano. His first defense came in October, again in Japan, and Olascuaga retained his belt with a first-round stoppage of the aforementioned Gonzalez. (This bout was originally ruled a no-contest as it ended after Gonzalez suffered a cut from an accidental clash of heads. But the referee ruled that Gonzalez was fit to continue before the Puerto Rican said “no mas,” alleging his vision was impaired, and the WBO upheld a protest from the Olascuaga camp and changed the result to a TKO. Regardless, Rudy Hernandez’s fighter would have kept his title.)

Hernandez, 62, is the brother of the late Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez. A two-time world title-holder at 130 pounds who fought the likes of Azumah Nelson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather Jr., Chicanito passed away in 2011, a cancer victim at age 45.

Genaro “Chicanito” Hernandez was one of the most popular fighters in the Hispanic communities of Southern California. Rudy Hernandez, a late bloomer of sorts – at least in terms of public recognition — has kept his brother’s flame alive with own achievements. He is a worthy honoree for the 2024 Trainer of the Year.

Note: This is the first in our series of annual awards. The others will arrive sporadically over the next two weeks.

Photo credit: Steve Kim

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