Gary comes from a family of all fighters. Gary looked the best that I have seen him in his last fight against Patrick Hyland. That right hook was so sharp. He was on target, his speed was there, and it didn't seem like he had been off. That was one of the best performances that I have seen from him. Man wow, he did what he was supposed to do. He shut him out in 2 rounds and made a statement. That was a statement making fight for him. It just shows you that you can't write a guy off after they suffer a loss," stated Hall of Famer Mark "Too Sharp" Johnson, who shared his thoughts on WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr. According to Johnson, despite the lone loss to Vasyl Lomachenko, Russell Jr. is still a force to be reckoned with. Check out what else he had to say!
MARK "TOO SHARP" JOHNSON:
A lot of people wrote Gary off after his loss to Lomachenko. Bernard Hopkins lost his first fight and I lost my second fight. Who cares? Sometimes that gets you more fights because people feel like you're not invincible. But I think since the Lomachenko fight, he's come back with a vengeance and he wants to show people that he's supposed to be there, he's supposed to be in that weight class, he's supposed to beat those guys, and that's what he did. He went back, got his hand back right, and him and his dad and his family analyzed the situation of what they wanted to do and how they was going to do it and hey, he's put on some great performances since the loss.
All of them can fight. Every last one of them can fight. I hate for a burglar to try and break in their house. That would be terrible. Their dad been working with them from day one. The same thing with me; my dad worked with me from day one. The difference between me and a lot of other fighters was that in the evenings, I didn't have to go with my dad. My mom and my dad have been together for over 45 years and they never lived together, so when I cut up with her, I go to his house, and when I cut up with him, I went to her house. So I kind of played them against each other. But those guys are a very close-knit family. The dad is still running things, but he got people there to where he's able to sit back and understand what's going on. Most importantly, and it's what happens between parents and kids, it's constructive criticism. They was able to take constructive criticism from the Lomachenko fight and make everybody that said negative things about him, now they are saying, "Wow!"
I know how it is. When I first went to the LA Forum, it was so crazy, I was the walkout bout. We always laugh about that, but that made me who I was. People wanna hear more from Gary, but what they don't understand is guys like Muhammad Ali, those guys were intelligent. They said things out of their mouth and it made you want to watch and listen to Muhammad Ali. Gary is a guy similar to myself to where we kind of let our hands do the talking in the ring. I still called out Tapia and Carbajal and stuff like that, and Gary is calling out Lomechenko and wanting to unify against Lee Selby and things like that, but it's a changing of the guard and now they want to see good fights. I think right now, we have some of the best matchups we can make in a long time.
I would love to see Gary fight Santa Cruz or Lomachenko; all of them. I think he has the attitude and the identity now that he's going to be a force to be reckoned with and he's here to stay. It doesn't matter who they called out; he didn't call out some 5th tier or B or C class fighter. These people he's calling out is A class fighters. There is nothing wrong with him trying to unify the titles with Lee Selby. He's calling out the right fights. The first time he fought Lomachenko, I know he had weight problems. That played a major role. I think now he's hungry to get over that hurdle because he wanna prove people wrong. He wants to prove that he didn't win the title and run away. He won the title and he wants to fight the best in his weight class.
You don't hear people calling out Terence Crawford or Vasyl Lomachenko or Leo Santa Cruz. You just don't see that. Now, this is what boxing is about. We have been doing it wrong for so long by not making the right fights. Floyd and Pacquiao took 5 or 6 years to make it happen. We always said the best gotta fight the best to be the best. He wants a rematch with Lomachenko and Selby has a title. He wants to fight Selby. When you criticize a fighter for wanting to fight a guy that has a title, what message are we sending? What message are we giving to the fighters and the networks?
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]