FightHype.com takes you back in time to revisit all the action of fights gone by. In this unique series, get a firsthand look at what it's like to experience the physical, mental and emotional ups and downs of a professional prizefight. Find out what the fighters were going through before, during and after the fights as they relive some of the highlights of their most memorable bouts. On December 19, 1997, Junior Jones, fresh off of his two victories over Marco Antonio Barrera, ran into a pissed off Kennedy McKinney, who had knockout on his mind. After four furious rounds, McKinney got exactly what he was looking for, and a WBO super bantamweight title along with it. Check out how Kennedy McKinney remembers what turned out to be one of the most definitive moments of his career.
TRAINING CAMP
I trained in Big Bear, California. I trained for all of my fights there. I was trained by a guy named Ronnie Hughes, who was in the military with me and fought with me as an amateur. He was one of Kenny Adams' fighters and Kenny Adams had brought him in because he knew he would do a good job. Kenny couldn't be in camp with me for that fight because, at the time, he was training somebody else. I can't remember who it was. So he had Ronnie Hughes there with me. Junior was coming off of two big wins over Marco Antonio Barrera, but what I did was I went and looked at his knockout losses. He had been knocked out early in his career, and then he got knocked out when he lost his belt at bantamweight, so I wanted to go back and look at the two losses he had at the time. I learned that Junior Jones only goes one way. He only went left. I saw where guys would make him step right or push him right and he didn't know what to do. I also saw in those two fights that he didn't have a chin. He couldn't take a punch. So we went into camp with a step right and throw right plan, and that's what we worked on, taking that step to the right and throwing the right hand.
PRE-FIGHT
He pissed me off because he told me he was going to knock me out and I was like, "Fuck, knock me out?" He had a punch, but he didn't have no chin, so I was like, "How the fuck you gonna...you can't take my punches." I told him he had a cracker chin. You hit his chin and it crumbled like a cracker. That's one of the things I remember about that press conference. He got a chance to speak first at the press conference and he said he was gonna knock me out and I'm thinking, "How the fuck you gonna knock me out with that cracker ass chin you got?" I was known at that time for my right hand. My motherfucking right hand was no joke. I knew he couldn't take my right hand.
THE FIGHT
He came out with a real fast pace trying to knock me out and I saw that he was starting to get tired real early in the fight. I said to myself, "Aw, this motherfucker out of shape." So I saw his game plan; he came out real fast to try to take me out, but he wore himself out. He knocked me down in the 3rd round and I remember going back to my corner and asking Coach Adams, "What side was I on?" He said, "Goddamnit man, you were stepping left. You gotta step right, throw right." That was the plan and what we had worked on, so then the 4th round comes and I came out and I started stepping right. I caught him with a right hand at the beginning of the round. Bam! Then I was like, "Aw, I got his ass now." I can see the look in his face. I just kept stepping right and then setting up the right hand. Then I threw about 4 or 5 straight right hands and every time I threw it, I was getting to him, but he was standing there and I just kept thinking, "I got him. He's going. He's going!" I just kept throwing them and I think he threw a jab at me and I kind of shook that jab and turned over a right hand and caught that motherfucker and down he went.
POST-FIGHT
I won the title from Junior and I didn't fight again for damn near a year. I was supposed to fight Naseem Hamed; a lot of people didn't know that. I had went to England for 6 days to negotiate a deal with Naseem and his people and they didn't want to pay me no money. They offered me $200,000. I said, "Nah, I need at least a half a million." He was getting a million and a half from HBO, so I needed at least a half a million. We went and negotiated and we finally got it to...at the time, Fred Carpenter and Murad Muhammad, we got it up to a half a million and we signed the contract. Well, Hamed was never there. His people were there, so we signed the contract and were good on our end of the deal and then they took him the deal and he wouldn't sign it. I kept waiting and we kept trying to fucking negotiate and get the boy to sign. Well, then the 6 months came up. You have to defend the belt within 6 months or they strip you. The reason I did not defend my belt is because at that particular time, some kid from England was the #1 contender. I wish I would have; I should have done that. They had the right to promote that fight and they wanted to bring me over there to fight in England, but they didn't want to pay me no money. They wanted to pay me $80,000 to fight that kid. I'm like, "$80,000? I just got paid $200,000 for this fucking fight to win the title, and now I'm the champ and ya'll trying to give me less? Fuck that! I'm not fighting this boy and I'm not going to England." So I said fuck them since they wanted to do it like that. So with Murad in charge...I kinda got fucked in the end really, when I look back at it. I should've had more to say about it, but I let a couple of guys handle it for me and they kinda screwed me.
I got stripped of the belt and they gave me another fight against Espinosa and he was just too big. I had been training for awhile to fight Naseem, who was shorter than me. I was gonna kill him with my jab. I was going to really beat him up like Barrera did to him when they fought. We never got the fight, so they gave me Luisito Espinosa and I had been training for this little short motherfucker and then all of a sudden, I gotta fight a guy that is taller than me. The money went from a half a million back to $200,000. I wasn't motivated for the fight. I did train, but in my mind, I wasn't motivated and I thought I got screwed in the end. Not only did I not get that big payday, but I got screwed and I was going through a divorce and shit like that. I didn't really care about that fight.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]