"I want to offer advice to USA Boxing as a whole; we got some of the greatest professional coaches on the planet here in the United States. There is a reason why fighters come from overseas to the United States to fight. It baffles my mind that the organization of USA Boxing goes outside of the United States to get an international coach that has absolutely no connection with the athletes from the USA to train them to fight," stated world-class trainer Barry Hunter, who had a lot to say regarding USA Boxing's selection of a coach for the 2016 Olympic Boxing Team. Check out what else Hunter had to say!
BARRY HUNTER TO USA BOXING:
First of all, the style that they fight is a totally different style of our style of fighting. It's an international style of boxing. It's mostly set up to deliver the right hand. It's what they do. The jab is a probe and range finder to really throw the right hand. If you look at USA fighters, for the most part, we don't fight like that. And for the most part, when we fight fighters from overseas, we usually destroy them, so why would you go outside to grab a coach or get instructions from the international coaches when you're sitting on the best coaches on the planet? I don't understand that. Not to mention, they went to the pro format, which is the 10 point must system. Who better to go in there with then USA pro boxing trainers? The last Gold Medalist was Andre Ward. Who trained him? Virgil Hunter! How in the hell can you not reach out to Virg?
And then they give these guys from overseas salaries and then want these world renowned coaches from the US to do their job for free. Stay with me, I'm not going to drag this out too much, but think about this, the majority of kids that fight on the National Team or the Golden Glove National Team or the Olympic Team are produced by the same coaches year after year after year. The kids are the same ones that represent the United Sates in the Olympics or in these tournaments, so tell me this, why the hell is it that you won't get the same coaches or a pool of coaches that is getting these kids to this level? It makes no sense to me. So they came up with a rule, if you wasn't a part of the WSB professional circuit, you couldn't coach on the international circuit. In order to coach internationally now, if you're me, if you're Mike [Stafford] or Virgil, you would have to walk away from your professional program for at least 6 months before you can coach an amateur fighter. We are the only sport that does this.
So when you look at all of these things, and you're getting ready to go into battle to represent not just yourself, not just your team, but the whole United States of America, wouldn't you want to send your best? Every other sport does it. And if you go by their rules and you get a coach that hasn't coached in 6 months, okay, that's cool. We can't go in the ring, but that has nothing to do with us having a booth or something, just like the NFL has their offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and your booth coaches. We could do the same damn thing. The ones that's in the ring, we could supply them with certain data and tell them how to defeat the opponents. But again, I don't get it at all.
But my advice to the athletes: don't rush, take your time. Too many times you're putting these young kids in the circuit; they fighting grown men and its different levels to this game. A lot of times, when you think you're ready, you're not ready. A lot of times, when you think you have all of the answers, you don't have all the answers. You just got a lot of questions. And once it happens to you, it's too late to turn back. Anybody can coach and anybody can train, they come a dime a dozen, but there are few teachers out there. And in order to produce a better athlete, we first gotta become better teachers, bottom line. You can't take all the credit when your fighter wins or brings home a championship, but when he loses, it's the fighter's fault; you ain't had nothing to do with it. Come on, man, that makes absolutely no sense. An apple tree is an apple tree all day long because it produces apples. If a peach, pear, plumb or whatever it is grow on that tree other than an apple, you gotta question that apple tree. And that's just real!
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]