While Gennady Golovkin and David Lemieux battle for Middleweight supremacy on Saturday night in New York, another fighter will quietly be making his return to the ring after 16 months off, as Demetrius Andrade will take on Dario Fabian Pucheta at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut in a 10-round Junior Middleweight contest.
The undefeated 2008 US Olympian and former WBO Junior Middleweight champion encountered promotional issues that sidetracked his career just when it was ready to flourish. FightHype spoke to Andrade about his set back outside the ring and now getting ready to move forward and look to take over his division.
LS: You're going to be back in the ring after 16 months. How excited are you to be back after such a long layoff?
DA: It feels good. I look at it as there are fighters that get hurt in the sport of boxing early on in their career and they never come back. In my case, I just had a little situation where there were promotional problems and misunderstandings. But I'm back already and this is something that I love to do. I'm just happy to get back in the ring.
LS: How are you looking at this fight with your opponent Dario Pucheta? Is it just to take the rust off or do you want to make a statement in this fight and let everyone know that you're back? What's your mindset going into this fight?
DA: I don't know if it's in every fighter, but I don't feel like I'm rusty at all. I've been in the gym. You guys seen me on the level that I was on and displaying my talent. I've been in the gym maintaining the same and focusing on the big picture and knowing that in everything in life or whatever profession or job you have, there's always going to be some type of bullshit. This is just my obstacle that I had to go through. It doesn't mean I'ma give up and stop what I'm doing just because there's a little setback. Sometimes a setback is another door opening for bigger and better things. So that's how I look at it.
LS: You know Demetrius, most people probably haven't seen you and don't know why you've been gone for so long. I mean, I heard kind of what happened and I think the last thing people heard was you and Jermell Charlo were trying to fight last December and it didn't happen. Can you just explain to everybody just what were some of the circumstances that prevented you from being in the ring the last 16 months?
DA: Yeah, I mean, you can read everything on the lawsuit and everything about that is true. I was going to fight Jermell or Jermall, whichever one of them it was, it doesn't matter. I was going to fight one of those guys. I did agree to fight them, but then a situation came up with Roc Nation where I was going to be bought out and for me not to take that fight. I'm looking at it like, I'm talking to the billion dollar man now. I'm talking to a man that his caliber of celebrity and promoting things is everywhere. So me as a person, knowing that I'm here with Jay-Z, the face of Roc Nation, and he's telling me he wants me to be on his squad and his team. And all the opportunities that come with it, like I said, the marketing and exposure and him putting his own cards up, I'm looking at it like, "Yeah, that's a good move. Why not?" He does do shows and has plugs with networks like HBO. He had just done the Kevin Durant special on HBO [The Offseason]. That avenue brings more than just boxing. It brings you the level that's going to make you a superstar.
But I don't know what happened. Things ain't go through. And after that, I went ahead and told Showtime and my promoters, "Let's make that [Charlo] fight happen," and I signed the contract. I showed proof that I signed it in January and he ran off and didn't sign it. So who really pulled out the fight? When people mention pulling out, they know why I refused to take the fight in December, but it wasn't because I didn't want to fight the kid. It was because of the situation at hand and it didn't go well, so I was like, you know what, let's just make the fight happen. He went and fought Vanes Martirosyan, which I thought was a close fight. It probably could've went either way, but I thought Vanes won the fight. My promoters then weren't able to get the Mundine fight I was trying to get. The Liam Smith fight, before he fought John Thompson, that was another option, but that didn't go through. I think there was a story about me moving up to 160 and that wasn't true. So just a lot of bullshit that went on out there that's not true and someone had to take the blame for it, so of course that had to be me. We're just happy to get back in the ring and let them know why I'm the best 154-pounder out there. Why these other guys at 154, so called the best, haven't made an offer or stepped to me and make the fight happen just like they do with everybody else. Like [Erislandy] Lara goes on to go fight Delvin Rodriguez, but he can't fight Demetrius Andrade when I called him out.
LS: I know you lost your title while all this stuff was going on and you were inactive. Is there a lot of regret in that or do you kind of feel like, you know what, I had to go through this and this is a lesson learned?
DA: Yeah, I mean, what regret should I have? That I didn't take the Charlo fight for x amount of money? Like, I'm not 40 years old and my career is about to be done. I'm still young, I'm still hungry. I'm still here, I'm still going to be the man. It's just something that happens in life. I'm not going to sit here and [cry about it] because if it did go well, then how could I regret it? It's just something that was a good opportunity that didn't go through. That's it. It didn't happen, it didn't go through. All I'm asking for is, I could've fought that kid [Charlo] in December, got that money, beat his ass cause clearly I would've whooped his ass hands down but I'm still looking for that fight. But now, the fight is going to be even more money in the long run because him or his brother, one of them got a belt now, so that's another way to go. So now, their marketing and their stock are pushing up at the same time, so now it's going to be an even bigger fight at the end of the day. It's not like that fight is never going to happen in this lifetime. Of course that fight's going to happen. It's a matter of time now.
LS: This fight you have coming up, how much do you really know about your opponent? He's never fought in the United States and has fought almost all his fights in his hometown of Argentina. Have you had a chance to see him or are you just going to deal with whatever inside the ring Saturday night?
DA: I mean, that's up to my trainers to see what this guy looks like. I'm the type that I'm not no dummy. I'm going to watch a few rounds, but I'm not going to watch a bunch of fights because at the end of the day, when you get in there with different people, different things happen. Just because he did one thing with this guy and another guy, doesn't mean he's going to do it with me. Same for me; just because I do what I do. Everything I do is going to work to get the job done. So I'm going in and I'm going to do what I do and that's put them hands together and make the people say "Goddamn, that boy's good!"
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