Eddie Futch Tribute – Trainer Extaordinaire

Published

9 years ago

October 6, 2016

Eddie Futch Tribute – Any “best-of” list is, of course, subjective. Whenever someone offers his or her opinion on such, it almost always makes for lively and sometimes heated debate. Boxing is no different; if you make the case that Sugar Ray Robinson is the greatest fighter of all time, be prepared to argue the point with contrarians who are just as staunch in their belief that Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Henry Armstrong, Willie Pep or Harry Greb deserves to be celebrated as No. 1. More recent devotees to the sweet science will nominate Floyd Mayweather Jr. for the top spot and, if they don’t, Floyd himself will.

It’s no different when the topic shifts slightly to discussion of who should be recognized as the greatest trainer ever. The list of renowned chief seconds without question is impressively deep. Contenders for designation as best of the best include such legendary corner strategists as Ray Arcel, Emanuel Steward, Charlie Goldman, Whitey Bimstein, Gil Clancy, Jack Blackburn, Cus D’Amato, Nacho Beristain, Angelo Dundee and George Benton, just to name a few. All have been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Non-Participant category.

As the winner of an unprecedented seven Trainer of the Year awards from the Boxing Writers Association of America, Freddie Roach certainly deserves to be considered for the mythical status as the GOAT among trainers. But if you ask Roach — who presently is in the Philippines preparing Manny Pacquiao for his Nov. 5 challenge of WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center — as to the identity of the true king of the hill among trainers, he said it’s an open-and-shut case. The late, great Eddie Futch, for whom the BWAA Award is now named, stands alone, according to Roach, and is likely to remain out front until the end of time.

“Eddie was a great trainer, a great teacher, but he was even better as a person,” Roach, himself an inductee into the IBHOF (2012), told me in a 2 a.m. telephone call (my time) from the Philippines. “When I went to work for him after I retired (as an active boxer), that was the best move I ever made in my life. I’m so happy I did.

“He really taught me the ins and outs of boxing. We cut no corners and worked our asses off the whole way. That’s why the fighters we had were great. He made sure their work habits were unbelievable. Here I am getting ready for another title fight with my best fighter, Manny Pacquiao, and he’s looking better than ever because I’m taking him back to my Eddie Futch days.”

Eddie Futch’s days were many, and almost uniformly glorious. He was 90 when he passed away on Oct. 10, 2001, having continued to train fighters until he was 86. Right to the end of his career and even his life, Mr. Futch never seemed to lose anything off his proverbial fastball; his memories of long-ago fights and fighters were richly detailed and he could call them up with WiFi speed. More than a few boxing writers, when asking about his remembrances about some of the fighters he instructed – a Who’s Who compilation that included, at one time or another, such notables as Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Larry Holmes, Michael Spinks, Alexis Arguello, Bob Foster, Riddick Bowe, Holman Williams, Virgil Hill, Mike McCallum, Marlon Starling and his very first champion, Don Jordan – were astounded that he could describe in detail not only particular rounds from decades earlier, but punch sequences during those rounds.

But near-total recall without perspective and foresight is essentially a squandered gift. Where “Mr. Eddie,” as he was reverentially known by his many admirers, excelled was his ability to put his breadth of knowledge into the sort of useful context that enabled his fighters to attain maximum efficiency on fight night.

“I think Eddie’s greatest asset was to build a game plan for a particular fight,” Roach said. “He was the absolute best at getting his guy ready to beat a certain opponent. Everyone remembers how he got Frazier, in what was his best performance, prepared to beat Muhammad Ali in their first fight. He did it with Norton, too. He did it with a lot of fighters.”

What is especially amazing is not only that Futch was such an exquisite strategist, but he could get his message across without ever seeming to raise his voice or to resort to the sort of expletives that are so common in a sport where expletives are as much a part of the terminology as nouns and verbs. Futch was unfailingly courteous and polite, but his genteel manner masked an inner strength his fighters quickly came to understand and respect. When he spoke, his quiet, measured comments were not so much a suggestion as a command, leaving little or no room for dissent. What else would you expect of someone who could quote verbatim from the works of his favorite 19th-century British poets, and whose bearing was as professorial as it was professional?

“Beautiful man, beautiful man,” Benton, who died on Sept. 19, 2011, said of Futch in Corner Men: Great Boxing Trainers, authored by Ronald K. Fried in 1991. “We never had a disagreement about anything because I knew that he was knowledgable about what he was doing. And he knew that I was the type of guy who was knowledgable about what I was doing – but I was still learning all the time, getting that experience with him.

“I would way the biggest thing I picked up from him was psychology. Eddie is a real psychologist when it comes to human beings. He knows what to say to you and how precisely to say it to you. That’s why he gets along with guys. It’s easy to teach when you’re this way, because every human being is not the same. They don’t think the same.”

Futch’s understated way was never more evident than in Ali-Frazier I on March 8, 1971, perhaps the most-anticipated boxing match ever. With Madison Square Garden a madhouse of emotion, Mr. Eddie was the calm eye of the hurricane, telling Smokin’ Joe to fight with fury but under control, and not to stray from the tactically brilliant plan he had outlined beforehand.

It is, of course, true that not every pupil of an outstanding teacher is able to instruct in the same way and with the same results. When it came time for Joe Frazier to train fighters, including his son, heavyweight prospect Marvis Frazier, Smokin’ Joe taught them all to fight exactly as he had, bobbing and weaving constantly forward and firing left hooks, often to their detriment. Frazier was indisputably a greater fighter than Roach and Benton, but some of the lessons Futch tried to pass along to his proteges were grasped more readily by some than by others.

Noting that many trainers scream at their fighters in order to be heard as noise and tension levels in arenas rise, Roach said that Futch was the quintessential embodiment of “grace under pressure,” which is how the celebrated author Ernest Hemingway defined courage.

“Eddie was never loud in the corner because he didn’t need to be,” Roach said. “He understood that a lot of yelling only confuses fighters. What Eddie was able to do in that minute between rounds was so important. That’s when you have to tell your guy what he needs to do in the next round in order to help him win the fight. If you’re overly excited, the fighter gets overly excited and the game plan starts to fall apart. What happens then? You’re lost. Eddie taught me that the quiet way is the best way.”

Born in Hillsboro, Miss., on Aug. 9, 1911, Futch moved to Detroit with his family when he was five. Years later, at the Brewster Recreation Center in the early 1930s, he frequently sparred with Joe Louis, despite giving away 50-plus pounds, because Louis wanted someone smart and swift to help sharpen his reflexes. By all accounts, even the great “Brown Bomber” never was able to consistently catch up with the nimble and observant Futch, who was learning as much from those sessions as Louis was from him.

Futch, a lightweight, was 37-3 as an amateur and won the 1933 Detroit Golden Gloves championship, but a physical examination revealed that he had a heart murmur shortly before he was to turn pro in 1936. He thus was obliged to shift his attention from fighting to the training of fighters, but it was hardly an easy or a seamless transition. There were bills to pay, after all, and Futch made ends meet by holding a variety of jobs unrelated to his passion, boxing. At various times he worked as a hotel waiter, road laborer, welder and distribution clerk for the main branch of the Los Angeles Post Office. It was his speed and accuracy at sorting mail that mirrored his finest traits as a trainer.

In Dave Anderson’s 1991 book, In the Corner: Great Trainers Talk About Their Art, Futch described his proficiency thusly:

“I think Texas had 737 cities and towns then. Big cities like Dallas and Amarillo were the distribution points for all the little towns. But no matter how well you knew where the towns were you had to take a test every year. You had eight minutes to throw 100 cards in the right cubicle. You had to get 95 percent correct. I did it in three minutes and I always got 100 percent.”
But for all that he did well, and without a lot of chest-thumping, Futch was not without his disappointments. Sometimes his fighters didn’t listen as closely as they might have, and sometimes, if things didn’t work out as well as planned, they required a scapegoat. In boxing, the trainer is always the most convenient target for assigning blame. Frazier, Holmes and Arguello were just three of the fighters who at one time or another disappointed Futch by turning away from him, although in more instances than not they regretted any rifts that were caused and apologized to him.

Futch was enough of a realist to understand how the game is played, and he wasn’t the kind to let grudges fester. But forgiving and forgetting are not always one and the same, as he told Fried.
“I’m in (boxing), but I don’t like a lot of things in it,” he said. “I tolerate some things because that’s the way it is. Ingratitude is one of them. The ones I’ve done the most for have been the ones who have been the most ungrateful.”

Eddie Futch would be 106 now, had he lived long enough to hit triple digits. When he was still an active boxer Roach admits to occasionally disregarding his mentor’s sage dictums, acts of impetuosity which continue to nag at him. But Roach is enjoying his own second act, as the foremost preacher of the gospel according to Eddie, and he vows that some of the mistakes he made back in the day will not be repeated in the here and now.

“I’m so fond of my fighter here in the Philippines,” Roach said, referring to Pacquiao. “We’ve been together 15 years now, me and Manny. He’s lost a couple of times here and there. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it wasn’t. But he’s stuck with me for those 15 years. Most marriages don’t last that long these days.

“I’ve got a real loyal guy, and that’s how I was with Eddie. If I didn’t listen to him sometimes, I would end up losing the fight. But he always got me back on track. He’d take the time to explain to me what I did wrong and what I should have done instead. It made perfect sense to me then, and it makes perfect sense to me now.”

Pictured: Eddie Futch with ken Norton and Joe Frazier.

Eddie Futch Tribute / Check out more boxing news and videos at The Boxing Channel.

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Sam Goodman and Eccentric Harry Garside Score Wins on a Wednesday Card in Sydney

Published

2 days ago

May 14, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Sam-Goodman-and-Eccentric-Harry-Garside-Score-Wins-on-a-Wednesday-Card-in-Sydney

Australian junior featherweight Sam Goodman, ranked #1 by the IBF and #2 by the WBO, returned to the ring today in Sydney, NSW, and advanced his record to 20-0 (8) with a unanimous 10-round decision over Mexican import Cesar Vaca (19-2). This was Goodman’s first fight since July of last year. In the interim, he twice lost out on lucrative dates with Japanese superstar Naoya Inoue. Both fell out because of cuts that Goodman suffered in sparring.

Goodman was cut again today and in two places – below his left eye in the eighth and above his right eye in the ninth, the latter the result of an accidental head butt – but by then he had the bout firmly in control, albeit the match wasn’t quite as one-sided as the scores (100-90, 99-91, 99-92) suggested. Vaca, from Guadalajara, was making his first start outside his native country.

Goodman, whose signature win was a split decision over the previously undefeated American fighter Ra’eese Aleem, is handled by the Rose brothers — George, Trent, and Matt — who also handle the Tszyu brothers, Tim and Nikita, and two-time Olympian (and 2021 bronze medalist) Harry Garside who appeared in the semi-wind-up.

Harry Garside

A junior welterweight from a suburb of Melbourne, Garside, 27, is an interesting character. A plumber by trade who has studied ballet, he occasionally shows up at formal gatherings wearing a dress.

Garside improved to 4-0 (3 KOs) as a pro when the referee stopped his contest with countryman Charlie Bell after five frames, deciding that Bell had taken enough punishment. It was a controversial call although Garside — who fought the last four rounds with a cut over his left eye from a clash of heads in the opening frame – was comfortably ahead on the cards.

Heavyweights

In a slobberknocker being hailed as a shoo-in for the Australian domestic Fight of the Year, 34-year-old bruisers Stevan Ivic and Toese Vousiutu took turns battering each other for 10 brutal rounds. It was a miracle that both were still standing at the final bell. A Brisbane firefighter recognized as the heavyweight champion of Australia, Ivic (7-0-1, 2 KOs) prevailed on scores of 96-94 and 96-93 twice. Melbourne’s Vousiuto falls to 8-2.

Tim Tsyzu.

The oddsmakers have installed Tim Tszyu a small favorite (minus-135ish) to avenge his loss to Sebastian Fundora when they tangle on Sunday, July 20, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Their first meeting took place in this same ring on March 30 of last year. Fundora, subbing for Keith Thurman, saddled Tszyu with his first defeat, taking away the Aussie’s WBO 154-pound world title while adding the vacant WBC belt to his dossier. The verdict was split but fair. Tszyu fought the last 11 rounds with a deep cut on his hairline that bled profusely, the result of an errant elbow.

Since that encounter, Tszyu was demolished in three rounds by Bakhram Murtazaliev in Orlando and rebounded with a fourth-round stoppage of Joey Spencer in Newcastle, NSW. Fundora has been to post one time, successfully defending his belts with a dominant fourth-round stoppage of Chordale Booker.

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Thomas Hauser’s Literary Notes: Johnny Greaves Tells a Sad Tale

Published

5 days ago

May 11, 2025

Thomas Hauser

Johnny Greaves was a professional loser. He had one hundred professional fights between 2007 and 2013, lost 96 of them, scored one knockout, and was stopped short of the distance twelve times. There was no subtlety in how his role was explained to him: “Look, Johnny; professional boxing works two ways. You’re either a ticket-seller and make money for the promoter, in which case you get to win fights. If you don’t sell tickets but can look after yourself a bit, you become an opponent and you fight to lose.”

By losing, he could make upwards of one thousand pounds for a night‘s work.

Greaves grew up with an alcoholic father who beat his children and wife. Johnny learned how to survive the beatings, which is what his career as a fighter would become. He was a scared, angry, often violent child who was expelled from school and found solace in alcohol and drugs.

The fighters Greaves lost to in the pros ran the gamut from inept local favorites to future champions Liam Walsh, Anthony Crolla, Lee Selby, Gavin Rees, and Jack Catterall. Alcohol and drugs remained constants in his life. He fought after drinking, smoking weed, and snorting cocaine on the night before – and sometimes on the day of – a fight. On multiple occasions, he came close to committing suicide. His goal in boxing ultimately became to have one hundred professional fights.

On rare occasions, two professional losers – “journeymen,” they’re called in The UK – are matched against each other. That was how Greaves got three of the four wins on his ledger. On September 29, 2013, he fought the one hundredth and final fight of his career against Dan Carr in London’s famed York Hall. Carr had a 2-42-2 ring record and would finish his career with three wins in ninety outings. Greaves-Carr was a fight that Johnny could win. He emerged triumphant on a four-round decision.

The Johnny Greaves Story, told by Greaves with the help of Adam Darke (Pitch Publishing) tells the whole sordid tale. Some of Greaves’s thoughts follow:

* “We all knew why we were there, and it wasn’t to win. The home fighters were the guys who had sold all the tickets and were deemed to have some talent. We were the scum. We knew our role. Give some young prospect a bit of a workout, keep out of the way of any big shots, lose on points but take home a wedge of cash, and fight again next week.”

* “If you fought too hard and won, then you wouldn’t get booked for any more shows. If you swung for the trees and got cut or knocked out, then you couldn’t fight for another 28 days. So what were you supposed to do? The answer was to LOOK like you were trying to win but be clever in the process. Slip and move, feint, throw little shots that were rangefinders, hold on, waste time. There was an art to this game, and I was quickly learning what a cynical business it was.”

* “The unknown for the journeyman was always how good your opponent might be. He could be a future world champion. Or he might be some hyped-up nightclub bouncer with a big following who was making lots of money for the promoter.”

* “No matter how well I fought, I wasn’t going to be getting any decisions. These fights weren’t scored fairly. The referees and judges understood who the paymasters were and they played the game. What was the point of having a go and being the best version of you if nobody was going to recognize or reward it?”

* “When I first stepped into the professional arena, I believed I was tough. believed that nobody could stop me. But fight by fight, those ideas were being challenged and broken down. Once you know that you can be hurt, dropped and knocked out, you’re never quite the same fighter.”

* “I had started off with a dream, an idea of what boxing was and what it would do for me. It was going to be a place where I could prove my toughness. A place that I could escape to and be someone else for a while. For a while, boxing was that place. But it wore me down to the point that I stopped caring. I’d grown sick and tired of it all. I wished that I could feel pride at what I’d achieved. But most of the time, I just felt like a loser.”

* “The fights were getting much more difficult, the damage to my body and my psyche taking longer and longer to repair after each defeat. I was putting myself in more and more danger with each passing fight. I was getting hurt more often and stopped more regularly. Even with the 28-day [suspensions], I didn’t have time to heal. I was staggering from one fight to the next and picking up more injuries along the way.”

* “I was losing my toughness and resilience. When that’s all you’ve ever had, it’s a hard thing to accept. Drink and drugs had always been present in my life. But now they became a regular part of my pre-fight preparation. It helped to shut out the fear and quieted the thoughts and worries that I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”

* “My body was broken. My hands were constantly sore with blisters and cuts. I had early arthritis in my hip and my teeth were a mess. I looked an absolute state and inside I felt worse. But I couldn’t stop fighting yet. Not before the 100.”

* “I had abused myself time after time and stood in front of better men, taking a beating when I could have been sensible and covered up. At the start, I was rarely dropped or stopped. Now it was becoming a regular part of the game. Most of the guys I was facing were a lot better than me. This was mainly about survival.”

* “Was my brain f***ed from taking too many punches? I knew it was, to be honest. I could feel my speech changing and memory going. I was mentally unwell and shouldn’t have been fighting but the promoters didn’t care. Johnny Greaves was still a good booking. Maybe an even better one now that he might get knocked out.”

* “Nobody gave a f*** about me and whether I lived or died. I didn’t care about that much either. But the thought of being humiliated, knocked out in front of all those people; that was worse than the thought of dying. The idea of being exposed for what I was – a nobody.”

* “I was a miserable bastard in real life. A depressive downbeat mouthy little f***er. Everything I’ve done has been to mask the feeling that I’m worthless. That I have no value. The drinks and the drugs just helped me to forget that for a while. I still frighten myself a lot. My thoughts scare me. Do I really want to be here for the next thirty or forty years? I don’t know. If suicide wasn’t so impactful on people around you, I would have taken that leap. I don’t enjoy life and never have.”

So . . . Any questions?

****

Steve Albert was Showtime’s blow-by-blow commentator for two decades. But his reach extended far beyond boxing.

Albert’s sojourn through professional sports began in high school when he was a ball boy for the New York Knicks. Over the years, he was behind the microphone for more than a dozen teams in eleven leagues including four NBA franchises.

Putting the length of that trajectory in perspective . . . As a ballboy, Steve handed bottles of water and towels to a Knicks back-up forward named Phil Jackson. Later, they worked together as commentators for the New Jersey Nets. Then Steve provided the soundtrack for some of Jackson’s triumphs when he won eleven NBA championships as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers.

It’s also a matter of record that Steve’s oldest brother, Marv, was arguably the greatest play-by-play announcer in NBA history. And brother Al enjoyed a successful career behind the microphone after playing professional hockey.

Now Steve has written a memoir titled A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Broadcast Booth. Those who know him know that Steve doesn’t like to say bad things about people. And he doesn’t here. Nor does he delve into the inner workings of sports media or the sports dream machine. The book is largely a collection of lighthearted personal recollections, although there are times when the gravity of boxing forces reflection.

“Fighters were unlike any other professional athletes I had ever encountered,” Albert writes. “Many were products of incomprehensible backgrounds, fiercely tough neighborhoods, ghettos and, in some cases, jungles. Some got into the sport because they were bullied as children. For others, boxing was a means of survival. In many cases, it was an escape from a way of life that most people couldn’t even fathom.”

At one point, Steve recounts a ringside ritual that he followed when he was behind the microphone for Showtime Boxing: “I would precisely line up my trio of beverages – coffee, water, soda – on the far edge of the table closest to the ring apron. Perhaps the best advice I ever received from Ferdie [broadcast partner Ferdie Pacheco] was early on in my blow-by-blow career – ‘Always cover your coffee at ringside with an index card unless you like your coffee with cream, sugar, and blood.’”

Writing about the prelude to the infamous Holyfield-Tyson “bite fight,” Albert recalls, “I remember thinking that Tyson was going to do something unusual that night. I had this sinking feeling in my gut that he was going to pull something exceedingly out of the ordinary. His grousing about Holyfield’s head butts in the first fight added to my concern. [But] nobody could have foreseen what actually happened. Had I opened that broadcast with, ‘Folks, tonight I predict that Mike Tyson will bite off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear,’ some fellas in white coats might have approached me and said, ‘Uh, Steve, could you come with us.'”

And then there’s my favorite line in the book: “I once asked a fighter if he was happily married,” Albert recounts. “He said, ‘Yes, but my wife’s not.'”

“All I ever wanted was to be a sportscaster,” Albert says in closing. “I didn’t always get it right, but I tried to do my job with honesty and integrity. For forty-five years, calling games was my life. I think it all worked out.”

Thomas Hauser’s email address is thomashauserwriter@gmail.com. His next book – The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing – will be published this month and is available for preorder at:

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Honest-Sport-Inside-Boxing/dp/1955836329

In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

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Argentina’s Fernando Martinez Wins His Rematch with Kazuto Ioka

Published

5 days ago

May 11, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Argentina's-Fernando-Martinez-Wins-His-Rematch-with-Kazuto-Ioka

In an excellent fight climaxed by a furious 12^th round, Argentina’s Fernando Daniel Martinez came off the deck to win his rematch with Kazuto Ioka and retain his piece of the world 115-pound title. The match was staged at Ioka’s familiar stomping grounds, the Ota-City General Gymnasium in Tokyo.

In their first meeting on July 7 of last year in Tokyo, Martinez was returned the winner on scores of 117-111, 116-112, and a bizarre 120-108. The rematch was slated for late December, but Martinez took ill a few hours before the weigh-in and the bout was postponed.

The 33-year-old Martinez, who came in sporting a 17-0 (9) record, was a 7-2 favorite to win the sequel, but there were plenty of reasons to favor Ioka, 36, aside from his home field advantage. The first Japanese male fighter to win world titles in four weight classes, Ioka was 3-0 in rematches and his long-time trainer Ismael Salas was on a nice roll. Salas was 2-0 last weekend in Times Square, having handled upset-maker Rolly Romero and Reito Tsutsumi who was making his pro debut.

But the fourth time was not a charm for Ioka (31-4-1) who seemingly pulled the fight out of the fire in round 10 when he pitched the Argentine to the canvas with a pair of left hooks, but then wasn’t able to capitalize on the momentum swing.

Martinez set a fast pace and had Ioka fighting off his back foot for much of the fight. Beginning in round seven, Martinez looked fatigued, but the Argentine was conserving his energy for the championship rounds. In the end, he won the bout on all three cards: 114-113, 116-112, 117-110.

Up next for Fernando Martinez may be a date with fellow unbeaten Jesse “Bam” Rodriguez, the lineal champion at 115. San Antonio’s Rodriguez is a huge favorite to keep his title when he defends against South Africa’s obscure Phumelela Cafu on July 19 in Frisco, Texas.

As for Ioka, had he won today’s rematch, that may have gotten him over the hump in so far as making it into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. True, winning titles in four weight classes is no great shakes when the bookends are only 10 pounds apart, but Ioka is still a worthy candidate.

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