Trey Lippe-Morrison Poised to Rejoin the Ranks of Hot Heavyweight Prospects

Ask a knowledgeable boxing enthusiast to name the top heavyweight prospects and the names of Daniel Dubois, Efe Ajagba, and Filip Hrgovic are likely to fall off his lips. It’s doubtful he would name Trey Lippe-Morrison but Lippe-Morrison was in that conversation before he fell off the radar screen.

The buzz about Lippe-Morrison was initially all about genetics. He bears an uncanny resemblance to his late father, Tommy “The Duke” Morrison. Tommy the Duke, who died in 2013 at age 44, was an exciting fighter with a fearsome left hook who could fight a smart, tactical fight when the situation warranted as he showed in his 1993 match with ageless George Foreman.

Lippe-Morrison is out to prove that he’s something more than a sideshow and he has certainly taken care of business. Last night in San Jose, Costa Rica, carrying 230 pounds on his six-foot-three frame, Trey scored his 16^th knockout in as many tries with a sixth-round stoppage of Venezuela’s Pedro Martinez.

Trey is managed by Tony Holden, the former Director of Boxing at the Buffalo Run Casino and a longtime boxing facilitator in Oklahoma. Holden nurtured Tommy Morrison into a world class fighter and believes that Trey has the potential to be just as good.

“It’s unbelievable how he resembles his father (in the ring),” Holden told a reporter for the Joplin Globe as Trey was preparing for his pro debut. “He cracks like his father, meaning he’s a big puncher. When I first saw him after two months of work, I was blown away.”

In reality, Trey looked very amateurish in his early pro fights. That was understandable as he had no amateur background whatsoever. He did not consider a career in boxing until he had used up his eligibility at Central Arkansas University where he was a member of the football team.

Holden shipped him off to Freddie Roach’s famous Wild Card gym to smooth out the wrinkles. The results were encouraging. Lippe-Morrison was never better than in his fight with Pittsburgh’s previously undefeated (13-0) Ed Latimore who was wacked out in the opening round.

That fight was back in September of 2016 and Trey has had only four fights in the interim. He missed all of 2017 with assorted injuries including a deep gash over his left eye sustained while sparring. He was slated to fight on a Top Rank/ESPN card in Oklahoma City in November of last year but had to pull out with a foot ailment.

Prior to last night’s fight, Lippe-Morrison had answered the bell for only 25 rounds. He was extended into the sixth by Martinez, an unsung 35-year-old fighter with a 10-1 record against no-name opponents who had been a pro for only four years. As the bout wore on, Trey appeared content to wear Martinez down with body punches. When Martinez dropped his gloves after absorbing a hard body shot in the opening minute of round six, the ref waved it off.

Although Lippe-Morrison remains a work in progress, it’s past time for Holden to crank up his level of competition. Writing in July of last year, Tulsa World reporter Bill Halston likened the mass of Trey’s former opponents to the Savannah State football team of 2012 that played Oklahoma State, losing 84-0. But Trey remains an intriguing prospect and if he really can crack like his late father he may well make big waves in boxing’s glamour division.

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The Lippe-Morrison fight was on the undercard of a 4-bout DiBella Entertainment promotion featuring Hannah Gabriels. Perhaps Costa Rica’s most famous sports personality, Gabriels (20-2-1), a three-time, two-division title-holder, successfully defended her WBA female 154-pound title with a 10-round unanimous decision over Argentina’s previously undefeated Abril Vidal, now 8-1. The scores were 96-94 and 97-93 twice.

Also, Houston junior welterweight O’Shaquie Foster improved to 16-2 (11) with an eighth-round stoppage of Peru’s Jesus Bravo (19-2-1). It was the sixth straight win for Foster, the subject of a recent profile in these pages.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams for Top Rank

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