Anatoly Lomachenko, a Genuine Innovator, is TSS’ Trainer of the Year

The most daring ideas of genuine innovators are almost never met with early and widespread acceptance. People might still be traveling by horse-drawn conveyances were it not for Frank Duryea, a 24-year-old inventor who along with his brother Charles in 1869 developed the prototype for something they called the Duryea Motor Wagon, one of the first gasoline-powered vehicles in the United States. The Duryeas’ vision of the future met with much skepticism, but 24 years later it was Frank who drove a semi-operational car 600 yards down the street in Springfield, Mass. Two years after that, on Thanksgiving Day in 1895, Frank won this country’s first automobile race, from Chicago to Evanston, Ill., and back, traveling 50 miles – in a snowstorm! – in a little over 10 hours.

The name of Frank Duryea has mostly been lost in the haze of history, eclipsed by Henry Ford and his mass-produced Model-T that irreversibly changed America’s travel habits in 1908. It remains to be determined whether the foresight of a visionary named Anatoly Lomachenko, now 53, someday will be a footnote in the annals of boxing or a continuing subject of intense scrutiny and fawning imitation. But in the here and now, one thing seems certain: Anatoly Lomachenko, trainer of two of the four or five best pound-for-pound fighters in the world — his son Vasiliy, the WBO and WBA lightweight champion, and undisputed cruiserweight titlist Oleksandr Usyk – is increasingly recognized as a superb coach and true original. The Sweet Science’s 2018 Trainer of the Year, “Papachenko,” as he is known to the few members of his star pupils’ tight inner circle, has imagined into reality a number of unconventional training exercises which Vasiliy and Usyk cite as instrumental to their rise to the top of their profession.

“I don’t think there’s a lot of great trainers in this business, but I happen to think Anatoly is one of the few that are,” said Teddy Atlas, a noted trainer of champions in his own right who on Dec. 8 was the chief second for Oleksandr Gvozdyk as he wrested the WBC light heavyweight title from Adonis Stevenson in an 11^th-round knockout in Quebec City. As was the case with Vasiliy Lomachenko and Usyk, who took gold medals, Gvozdyk, a bronze medalist, was a member of Ukraine’s highly successful boxing team at the 2012 London Olympics which was coached by, natch, the elder Lomachenko.

“I have nothing but respect for that man as a person and as a teacher,” Atlas continued. “He is an example of the proper way that you should conduct yourself professionally and personally. Anatoly is one of the few individuals that I know who is a credit not only to the business of boxing, but any business.”

Anatoly is only slightly more visible and vocal than, say, Al Haymon, the boss man of Premier Boxing Champions who is seldom seen and almost never heard. But Papachenko, who rarely grants interviews and even then does so reluctantly, did not suddenly come by his seemingly radical notions as how to best construct the perfect fighting machine. He placed tiny boxing gloves on the hands of Vasiliy when the infant was only three days old, a clear indication of what was to become his life’s mission. But this would not be another case of a father trying to live his athletic dreams through his son, which often puts too much pressure on the child and eventually results in burnout. That cautionary tale was played out by dad Marv Marinovich and son Todd, who was raised from birth to become a flawless quarterback. Although Todd Marinovich was drafted by the then-Los Angeles Raiders out of the University of Southern California in the first round in 1991, he shriveled under the pressure of attempting to justify the hype and was out of the NFL after two underwhelming seasons.

Although Vasiliy, 30, widely hailed as perhaps the top pound-for-pound fighter on the planet, is pushed to the limit and sometimes beyond by Anatoly’s severe and unorthodox training regimen, he and Usyk, 31, are happily dedicated to the program, in no small part because they can see the benefits that accrue from strict adherence.

“For Vasiliy, his father is like a god,” said Egis Klimas, the Oxnard, Calif.-based fellow Ukrainian who manages the younger Lomachenko and Usyk. “He respects him a lot. He loves him a lot. They have a great relationship.”

How unique are Anatoly’s deviations from standard boxing training? Well, years ago he plotted to have Vasiliy improve his endurance by regularly holding his breath underwater for as long as possible. It is an occupational tool mostly useful to pearl divers, but Vasiliy’s personal record is now up to 4½ minutes and it does appear that he never tires in the later rounds of bouts, no matter how frenetic his punch rate. Vasiliy also intersperses street skating, juggling, handstands and tennis, which Loma often plays solo, sprinting around the net to return his own lobs, into the equation. Vasiliy’s impressive footwork is partly the result of his training in Ukrainian folk dance, and in a nod to modern science, every punch he throws in camp is recorded and calibrated through the computer chips in his hand wraps.

The Papachenko blueprint is somewhat reminiscent of that employed by four-time former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, a persistent tinkerer who was determined to explore a wide variety of seemingly odd methods to help him maximize his abilities. At various times Holyfield worked with a ballet instructor, conditioning specialist, weight trainer and computer analysts, sometimes to the befuddlement of his by-the-book traditionalist of a lead trainer, George Benton.

“You don’t want no damn robot in there,” said Benton, who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame as a trainer in 2001 and was 78 when he passed away in 2011. “A big part of being a good trainer is the ability to listen. The fighter can bring something to the drawing board just as easily as I can. The smart man can learn something new every day. I’m trying to be as smart as I can.”

Klimas said Anatoly’s influence is already being seen elsewhere, with other trainers attempting to incorporate aspects of the program followed by his son and Usyk into the workout schedules of their fighters.

“It is obvious,” Klimas said of the imitators hoping to develop their own strain of that Team Loma magic. “But to copycat a trainer is like copycatting a fighter. Take Muhammad Ali. There was only one. Others tried to be like him, but it could never be the same for them.  It is the same with trainers. There is only one Teddy Atlas, one Freddie Roach. And there is only one Anatoly Lomachenko.”

Atlas wholeheartedly agrees with Klimas’ assessment.  “It’s not going to work,” he said of those who already are trying to steal pages from the Papachenko playbook and others who are sure to follow suit. “You can look at something and think you’re copying it, but the originals understand why it means what it does. The copycats don’t understand the essentials, and never will.”

Bernard Fernandez is the retired boxing writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. He is a five-term former president of the Boxing Writers Association of America, an inductee into the Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Atlantic City Boxing Halls of Fame and the recipient of the Nat Fleischer Award for Excellence in Boxing Journalism and the Barney Nagler Award for Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing.

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