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AMIR MANSOUR TRAINER CALVIN DAVIS REFLECTS ON LOSS TO DOMINIC BREAZEALE: "I WAS HEARTBROKEN...STILL AM"

By Percy Crawford | February 04, 2016
AMIR MANSOUR TRAINER CALVIN DAVIS REFLECTS ON LOSS TO DOMINIC BREAZEALE:

"I was heartbroken; heartbroken and I still am. That guy was winning this fight by a landslide, everything was going his way, but I understand the difficulty of not being able to breathe because he had a big laceration on his tongue that occurred in the 2nd round. He complained a little bit about it, but it wasn't nothing that scary," stated Calvin Davis, trainer of heavyweight contender Amir Mansour, who looked back on their disappointing loss to Dominic Breazeale. Check it out!

CALVIN DAVIS ON AMIR MANSOUR'S LOSS TO DOMINIC BREAZEALE:

As the rounds went on, he would spit into the bucket and we noticed that the blood was getting thicker and thicker and he was complaining that he couldn't breathe because he was gagging on the blood because it was a lot thicker. And although he had blood coming out of his ear, the doctor thought it was coming directly out of his ear when realistically it was just some cuts. But you know, in the heat of the battle, sometimes you get misinformation. We were trying to explain to him that everything was fine; I knew that this guy only had another round or two because when I'm in the corner, my focus is on Amir, but I'm also focused on his opponent. His opponent didn't have anything there. He didn't have any legs because I watched him as he walked back to his corner. I saw that with each passing round, he was getting more and more discouraged in between rounds. I just wanted Amir to continue to keep his hands up, work his jab up top, and the overhand left was there all night. Everything that we worked on in camp, the shots that we wanted to land, every last one of them was there.

I talked to Breazeale's handlers after the fight was over and they said, "What did you notice in our fighter for your fighter to be so successful against him when you guys were game planning?" I told him, "I watched tape of your fighter. He's tall, but he doesn't fight tall. He fights short and he engages in action when it's not necessary to engage in action and he leans to his right a lot and he was in textbook position for an overhand left." I also noticed that when he jabs, he drops his hands and he never brings them back. And it's already in slow motion. So I felt that at the time, Amir could have just bullshitted if he wanted to the rest of the fight and still won it because he was up on the scorecards that big. One of the commissioners came in and said, "We love warriors and we love boxing. Amir has won 12 million Latino fans over. That was the greatest 5 rounds that I have personally witnessed from heavyweight fighters. Your guy gave it all he had and he was relentless." I think that tells you the type of fighter Amir is. But this is what we have to be careful with and understand. While we love this gladiator sport, and man do I love it, I eat sleep and drink it, but safety is a big part of this sport and we have to learn to respect that. At the end of the day, Amir has a wife, he has children and a mother, and they want to be able to see their father, husband, and son grow old with them and they want to be able to enjoy him. So you have to be able to make the right decisions for him. Now, do I support that decision at that time? No, I don't, but at that time, I didn't totally understand what he was going through at that time and what was going through his mind when he was gagging on that blood and feeling a little nauseous. I don't believe this guy Breazeale could have went another 2 rounds.

When I said, "just go light," I was basically telling him to coast through the next round to allow your body to recover. What happened out there was that Amir didn't allow me to do the job that I know I'm fully qualified of doing, and giving me just one more, I could have went into the next round like, "Ah man, you look invincible out there. You're looking real good. You probably won that round, now give me one more. Man, we got 6 more minutes left; see how easy that was? Man, you walked through this fight so beautifully." Going light just means get through the round and buying time to get to the next round. That's when the ring generalship comes in at and Amir has the ability to do that to just be able to get through because the guy was missing him with a lot of them shots. So all he had to do was continue to be able to box, recover from that round, and then let me see how you feel for the very next round, and if you didn't feel any better and you weren't able to breathe better, then we will collectively as a unit make that decision.

While he was in the ring going that additional round that I asked of him, I would have talked to the rest of the corner and asked them what they thought and how they felt about what was going on. I could have asked Danny [Davis] if he thought he could have helped stop the bleeding in his mouth somewhat. I just think you go out there one more round and he could have allowed us to collectively make a decision on whether or not to let him continue to go on. He was winning the fight by a landslide and I know the talent that he has and the ability that he has just to be able to just box this guy. You could beat this guy in multiple ways; you can just bully him like Amir was doing him and you can stand outside and box him because he's so slow. The punches that he throws, he doesn't recover with his hands back quick enough. So I just wanted Amir to give me another round, go light, and coast through the round; touch him there, touch him there, touch him there. If he would have given me that one more round, he only had 9 minutes left and I know he can do that. I would have been able to coach him through another one, and then another one after that, and another one after that and we're done. So the only disappointment that I had was I was able to really assist him the way that I know I can assist him by coaching him through.



[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]

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