"I was pleased from the first bell to the last. He did so much right. When I went back and watched the fight, I'm thinking about how can we get better or what can we do to get better. And looking back at it, he did everything. The world saw Jermall Charlo and it was a coming out party for him. He said he wanted to make a statement and he made one. His defense looked great, his jab was phenomenal, and he showed some angles," stated world-class trainer Derrick James, who talked about the performance of jr. middleweight champion Jermell Charlo in his knockout victory over Charles Hatley. Check it out!
PC: Congratulations on the win with Jermell Charlo. What did you think of the performance?
DJ: I thought it was great. It was funny because I was home and I'm driving down the street and I busted out laughing; he did everything I asked him to do from the beginning. Every move and every step and every punch. He did everything that I asked him to do and it was great. I'm happy about it.
PC: When you start working with a fighter, you start looking for and expecting more and more with each performance under your guidance. How pleasing was it for you to have a guy in his third fight with you to do everything you asked of him?
DJ: It's amazing. To be honest, I couldn't ask for anything more. He's a guy that wants to do the right thing anyway. He's going to ask a lot of questions about how should he do it. He wants to be better and I think that was the key. His offense and defense was so tight because of the sparring he did with Errol. I knew that that took him to another level. It kept him sharp and it kept him crisp and it was great to see.
PC: You figured Charles Hatley would fight hard, but you've known him for a long time and didn't figure he would change that much. Were there any surprises from Hatley?
DJ: I've known him for basically his whole boxing career. I have seen just about every one of his pro fights. But for this fight, they brought in my trainer and the guy who was my mentor, and he was my everything, especially in boxing. He gave me my foundation where I started from. I have grown and blossomed and matured as a trainer. But they brought him in, so I had to re-adjust my thinking to some of the punches we were throwing and some of the things we were doing, and Paulie Malignaggi called out a couple of things that we did a little different. I knew what he was going to be taught, so we had to make adjustments to that.
PC: Did it make you feel a certain type of way that they brought him in or did you just have to roll with the punches and make those adjustments that you alluded to?
DJ: Initially, when I found out, I knew it was more serious than it was before because what he knew before, I had memorized it. But I wasn't nervous or anything because there was nothing to be nervous about. It was flattering in a sense, but at the same time, I knew I had to do something different. I just knew we had to focus on the way we threw punches and do this and do that differently. It worked out perfect. It was really about me just having to focus more. You let a guy like Hatley get in the fight, he's going to fight the fight that he wants to fight.
PC: I was most impressed with Jermell's punch selection. I know that's something you preach a lot of. Were you pleased with his punch selection?
DJ: Yes, I was. I was definitely pleased with his punch selection and his jab. I was pleased from the first bell to the last. He did so much right. When I went back and watched the fight, I'm thinking about how can we get better or what can we do to get better. And looking back at it, he did everything. The world saw Jermall Charlo and it was a coming out party for him. He said he wanted to make a statement and he made one. His defense looked great, his jab was phenomenal, and he showed some angles.
PC: He hurt Hatley early in the fight. When did you sense he was going to be too much for Charles?
DJ: I didn't know because Charles Hatley is very tough and he's a competitor. He's going to keep coming. But one of the instructions I told him in the locker room, I said, "Listen, go out and work the jab and hurt him every round. If you hurt him every round, when you finally get him, he will not be able to recover." What happens is he comes out in the 1st round and he hurts him, he won't ever be fresh like he was before. His thinking won't be right. So by hurting him every round, he would never be himself. Because he is a good fighter, you have to take him out of the fight mentally and keep him out of the fight physically and when that punch comes, take it.
PC: We spoke a little bit last night about it, a lot of people missed it, but Jermell actually hit him with a left hand that froze him and the right hand was the clean up shot. When he landed it, did you know the fight was over by the way Charles fell?
DJ: I was on the other side of the ring, so I saw it, but I didn't see it until I saw it on the video. We work on power and hitting with your whole body. When we were in the fighter meetings with Showtime, Jermall said, "I don't see my brother train every day, but what I'm seeing is him punching a lot harder and being really effective and throwing very efficient punches." I love that he sees that. The look on his face when he threw that right hand was like Tyson's.
PC: You don't necessarily believe the notion that punchers can't be made, they are born. You don't buy into that.
DJ: With boxing, people hear the same things over and over about how to throw punches and do this and that, but boxing evolves. To me, boxing is like science and physics. People say the sweet science, but they stop at the fact, from a scientific point of view, that you can teach somebody how to punch harder. If you hit with your whole body and adjust it with your strength and you're a 154-pound person, you can knock people out. Or even when you look at Errol at 147 pounds, if you punch and rotate your body from the hip, it works. Boxing evolves, so if you punch correctly, you'll see. Exactly what I am preaching is what he did. He put his whole body behind the shot and that's what happens, so punchers can be taught. That's the reality of it. Boxing is not as fast as people think it is. You see people working on these fast combinations. I don't work combinations. As Charles was throwing shots, he was reading and picking his shots as Charles was opening up. I do not work combinations because, like I said before, at the high level, how many times do you see a fighter land two or three shots at a time? You don't see the three to four punch combinations happening. I teach them to read the body reaction, read how the body reacted to the punch, and that's where you place your next punch at. Like you said, it was his punch selection based on what he saw; not what I saw, but what he saw.
PC: There was a whole lot of drama going on at the weigh-ins and at the hotel. How did you keep Jermell dialed in and not sucked into the drama pre-fight, which could possibly carry over and lead him to fight too emotional post-fight?
DJ: I think Jermell got a little hyped up behind it. None of that mattered though up until the fight. He remained focused and just kept him dialed in to everything we worked on. That build up and all of that, it's crazy, but I was never around any of it. I found out like the whole world did, other than the weigh-in situation. I don't know how I wasn't around it, but I was just never there. We kept focus and just talked to him in the locker room where he was able to just dial in on everything he needed to do. Even before the fight, we had the situation with the IV drip. They hadn't given a ruling on that until we got into the arena. So you gotta go there with it on your mind that you're going to fight. We wasn't looking for no way out. It was good though, he did everything that I asked him to do and I was happy.
PC: Congratulations again. He just made the junior middleweight division that much more interesting and I can't wait to see you guys back in there again, my man.
DJ: I appreciate all of the love we are getting and look for Errol Spence next because we are coming up May 27th because it's going to be a great day for us and a great day for boxing.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]