"We all knew Errol Spence would be a special pro...With Errol, you can just tell from the way that he carried himself, but what's most impressive about him is his work ethic is just unbelievable. Nobody works harder in the gym than he does, so you just knew he was going to be special...This is a rough game and the biggest mistake that a lot of fighters make is when they try over-thinking it," stated cutman Todd Harlib, who gave his in-depth analysis on the U.S. amateur boxing program and much more. Check it out!
PC: You have literally seen the ups and downs of US amateur boxing. What is your take on the amateur system overall and some of the things they have been implementing recently?
TH: Well, the problem with our amateur system really comes down to coaching. Our coaches are so eager when they find a kid that's got some talent and they want to push them to the pros. There is only going to be a few special talents that come out of the amateurs every 3 to 4 years. There is only going to be one Errol Spence, there's only going to be one Erickson Lubin, and there's only going to be one Andre Ward. But for every one of those guys, there are still guys that are going to have to be kind of matched up the right way and put in the ring with the right styles because if not, they get exposed. Here is the difference between us and a lot of other countries, and I think a lot of these kids are in for a rude awakening next year because I suspect after next year, the Cubans are going to come over. The writing is on the wall and now you're going to see guys like Robeisy Ramirez, Roniel Iglesias, and Julio De La Cruz and Erislandy Savon and these are guys with 300 to 400 amateur fights and multiple world champions. They are going to be like Lomachenko and Rigondeaux where they can walk into a world title fight in two or three fights and win. And the reason why our kids can't do it is because they don't get the seasoning.
And the other problem is the thought process of today's management and promotions is just so backwards. When we had these kids in World Series of Boxing, even though they were only in there for one year, and a lot of these kids turned pro, they started off in 4-round fights and I went to their managers and I said, "What are you guys doing? Why would you take them from 5-round fights with talent that is much harder than they would ever fight here in the United States and then move them back down to 4-round fights against a bum?" It doesn't make any sense; move them to 6 rounds. You get a kid like Stephon Fulton who was 3-1 in World Series of Boxing and his 1 loss was a really close split decision to an Olympic Bronze Medalist. You put him in a 6-round fight and he's going to be successful; a 4-round fight actually made him go backwards. The coaches want to take these kids and push them too fast. My motto has always been, look, if you haven't won a national title, you have no business going professional. It's not in the cards for you yet. It's going to take you so long to develop. And what a lot of people don't realize is the first 15 fights of a guy's career, he's not making any money. He'd make more money bagging groceries than he would fighting every day and putting his body through that.
So that's the first thing, and the second thing is, for all of the good things that we do in the amateurs and save a lot of the kids and offer a lot of scholarship opportunities, we do a lot of dumb things in the amateurs. I'm not a big fan of taking off the head gear. I understand the logic behind it in that you decrease the surface area so you're going to reduce the number of concussions and you're going to force guys to become better defensive fighters. But the cuts are ruining these kids' careers at a very early age. If a kid was to come to me and let's say he was 12 years old and he wanted to box, we're going to start him off at the local level and then I move him up to the regional level and then the national level and then we will see what we've got. If the kid is good enough to compete and win on the national level, then I would probably say let's take 2 years and then go on to the World Series of Boxing. I think it's a good product. I think it's poorly handled here in the United States, but everywhere else, it does great. I think the product itself is good because it gets these kids ready to be real pros. And if we don't go to the Olympics, then let's move them to the pros. We have to make sure that we keep them busy. I see too many kids where the logic is always, "Well, he just has more of a pro style." No, that dog doesn't hunt anymore because the scoring system is very similar now with a few exceptions. I think we need to give our kids more international opportunities and our best kids will stay and we can build up to an Olympic program. Right now we don't have the horses.
I mean, look at the draw for the US Team and this year's Olympics; it was interesting, Charles Conwell, at 165 pounds, drew the guy, if you recall back in the 2012 Olympics, the kid that they said beat Errol, but then they reversed the decision. But that kid, since those Olympics, that kid had 80 fights. That's more than our kids combined. I'm just giving you an idea of the activity of these other countries. I think USA Boxing needs to re-tool itself. Until they get new blood into the leadership of USA Boxing, it's just never going to happen. It's the same conversation that we have every 4 years.
PC: You have been involved directly with the amateur program. Is there anyone who is pro now that when you saw them as an amateur, you knew that they would be a special fighter?
TH: Yeah, I knew Errol Spence; we all knew Errol Spence would be a special pro. We knew Erickson [Lubin] was going to be special. I'll tell you when I knew Erickson was going to be special was when he went down to the Dominican Republic and in the finals, he fought Yasniel Toledo of Cuba, who was an Olympic Bronze Medalist. And they really thought that Toledo was going to walk through Erickson and Erickson just beat him up bad. He had a bloody nose, he was bleeding from the mouth, and Erickson was knocking him all over the ring. At that time, you knew he was going to be special. Here is a guy who medaled in 2 or 3 Olympics, he's medaled in every world championship that he's ever been in, the Pan Am champion, and he just handled him easily. With Errol, you can just tell from the way that he carried himself, but what's most impressive about him is his work ethic is just unbelievable. Nobody works harder in the gym than he does, so you just knew he was going to be special. I think "Jo Jo" Diaz has the potential to be very very good. I don't know if I would call him special, but he definitely has the potential to be very, very good. I haven't really watched Jose Ramirez as a pro. I thought he was a good amateur. I thought he had a really good fight against Lomachenko in the amateurs. And that's just with the American team. I can tell you right now, we knew Lomachenko was going to be special when he came out. Listen, you don't go 396-1 in the amateurs if you're not special. You don't win Olympic Gold Medals like it's nothing and world championships like it's nothing unless you're special.
PC: And I gotta ask you the flip side of the last question now, and you don't have to name names, but who did you see as an amateur and had high expectations of and they are either not boxing anymore or they simply never met the expectations you had for them?
TH: Let me think...yeah, there is one kid who I think could have been a lot better as a pro, and I'm not going to mention his name, but I think the big problem with him is the coaching. I think he's got the wrong team behind him. Actually there are two guys and they are both competing in the same weight class at junior middleweight. And I thought they could be really, really good and they just got the wrong team behind them. They just never got their careers on track. They're doing well, but I thought by now they would be challenging for world titles and one of them fought this year; I don't think the other one has fought this year yet. This is a rough game and the biggest mistake that a lot of fighters make is when they try over-thinking it. One of the things that I like about the guys that I work with, there is not one of them who would turn down a fight. "Chucky" Flores, when they said, "You took your title to Africa and defended it; now you come back and your next fight, you're the mandatory for Rigondeaux." A lot of guys ran from that fight and he's stepping up and he's saying, "I want that fight." I think there are a lot of guys out there that will be defined by the fights that they didn't take versus the fights they won, and you know exactly the fighter that I'm talking about because we've had that conversation.
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