"If he does knock him out, that's good because it's good business for the fight because the fight becomes even bigger between Manny and Floyd. And then, the other side of it is this, what happens if that never happens? I mean the theatre of upsets is in the works. I have never seen so many upsets in boxing in back-to-back-to-back fights like this. It's almost scary; he might not want to get in the ring...You never know what's going to happen in boxing. It's one of those sports, man; it's two guys with gloves on trying to take each others heads off and sometimes, the underdog will land one that ends the night (laughing). I think it's good for boxing. The more upsets, the better," stated world-class trainer Jeff Mayweather as he shared his thoughts on a number of subjects, including the string of recent upsets and, of course, the upcoming clash between Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley. You don't want to miss what he had to say. Check it out!
PC: How has everything been going Jeff?
JM: Just trying to keep busy man.
PC: You have a very talented and young stable of fighters. How are they doing?
JM: Everybody is doing good. I'm just trying to stay focused and stay busy.
PC: Mickey Bey is coming off of his first setback, which was a draw in his last fight. He also injured his hand in the fight. How is his hand doing?
JM: Last time I talked to Mickey, he was in therapy getting his hand right.
PC: Celestino Caballero is another one of your guys coming off of a setback. How is he doing?
JM: Celestino has come back with vengeance. He's been destroying everybody in the gym. Because the fight keeps getting moved back, I gotta slow down his training now. We learned from the last training camp because we went hard the whole time and now we know better. We know we have to cut back, slow down, and be smart. Right now, he's backed off from sparring and he won't be sparring again until next month. He had been sparring and destroying everybody because he has so much to prove; not only to me, but to himself. It's almost like when he first came to me. When he came to me, I didn't know who he really was even though, at the time, he had two belts. I just don't really watch smaller guys and because I don't watch smaller guys, I really didn't even know who this guy was even when I was hired to train him. He knew that I really didn't know who he was, so he came out with a vengeance to prove that he was somebody and that he was a super champion for a reason. I was amazed because I didn't know anything about the guy. I was amazed that he was able to handle guys from 170 pounds all the way down to his weight class. He was destroying them and it showed in his first fight with Yordan. The second time around, we miscalculated. Celestino is the type of guy that just picks right up when he comes to Vegas. He did that before. He came to Vegas and we had nothing planned. We didn't even have a fight and it just so happened that he ended up getting that fight with Yordan and it was perfect. The second time around, he did the exact same thing, but he was actually supposed to fight Matt Remillard, but he pulled out and the fight got cancelled. But Celestino was already here. He was here about 2 months prior to the fight. He was here for 2 months and went back to Panama for a week. That week that he was off, I was hoping he was just going to go ahead and have fun; allow himself to get out of shape or whatever until something came up, but he was so focused on the fact of thinking that there was going to be something come up, because it happened that way the first time, that he continued to train. He came back, he was here for a week, and there is a fight on the table against Jason Litzau and we were forced to train. I didn't know that he didn't allow himself to get hungry again; we went right to work. So he came here off of that training, so we're talking about a 4 1/2 month camp.
PC: He didn't look interested in that fight at all.
JM: Don't get me wrong, he kinda underestimated Litzau too. I will say that. He's never had a problem making the weight and this time around, he's actually moving up and he had a problem making the weight. He had a little disrespect for Litzau. Don't get me wrong, I watched him on YouTube and I seen him get destroyed the way he did; I felt the same exact way. I thought this guy really didn't have a chance against Celestino, but he proved us all wrong. I think that was the most valuable lesson learned for all of us. You just can't overlook a guy and secondly, you gotta not just physically prepare, but you gotta mentally prepare for this guy as well. Celestino hadn't tasted defeat in 7 years before his fight with Litzau. Like I said, he's coming back now and he's back to that old Celestino with a chip on his shoulder with something to prove. Kinda like Victor Ortiz. Ortiz had a chip on his shoulder and a monkey on his back and he had to get over it. When the time came for him to step up for the biggest fight of his life, he did.
PC: We have had a ton of upsets in boxing lately. I want to talk first about the one that hits close to home with Celestino and that's Juan Manuel Lopez's loss to Orlando Salido. Your thoughts?
JM: I kinda seen....to me, he kinda got a little bit full of himself. He was talking as if he was the man in the division. Like when Celestino lost, he said, "Oh, why would I waste my time fighting him? You see what happened to him." Now the shoe is on the other foot. You lost to a guy with 11 losses in your weight class and got stopped. You lost a whole lot worse than Celestino, so now what do you have to say? You can't use that excuse not to fight him. I'm not saying that you have to fight him, because you never have to fight him, but to me, it's just karma and it just goes to show you that mentally, if you don't prepare right or you start to get full of yourself and you start to believe your own hype, that's what happens. You get caught sleeping.
PC: And now to go back to the Victor Ortiz and Andre Berto fight, what are your thoughts on that fight? I think Berto could have boxed more. Not to say he would have won, but he could have had a better showing.
JM: I don't necessarily think he fought the wrong kind of fight. I think it goes back to what I said about the mental mind state because Berto, since he's become champion, hasn't had nothing but easy touches. He had guys that he touch one or two times and it's over with. So I mean, maybe he was feeling a little full of himself as well. Once you start knocking guys out, you start believing your own hype and you think anything you touch is gonna fall. But like I said, going back to Victor Ortiz, here is a guy that had a chip on his shoulder. He had something to prove. Ever since that Maidana fight, half of the people jumped off his damn boat. They were like, "I don't want to be following this dude. He's a damn quitter." He quit on national TV and said, "Hey, I'm not about to die in the ring." I mean, that's the thing, realistically, nobody wants to die in the ring, but that's not what fighters say. What they do...they are not necessarily willing to die, but they're not going to quit. They are going to take that ass whoppin' and chalk it up and say, "I will be back." That's what a real fighter does. Ever since that fight, the one thing about it is this, Golden Boy has either been trying to get rid of him or put him in a position to prove that he's what they thought he once was. They put him in with tough opposition. Don't get me wrong, Antonio Diaz ain't nothing, but Nate Campbell and Lamont Peterson are tough. So he had a chip on his shoulder. He's never gonna quit again and that's what he was trying to prove to the boxing public and to his fans. He's never going to quit again because he knows he caught hell for saying that. Everybody kinda just wrote him off. Everybody was just waiting to see that once he got in another tough fight, was he just going to take an out. They thought he may do the same thing he did the last time, but because he had that chip on his shoulder, he did the exact opposite. He got dropped by Berto in the same exact round that he quit in against Maidana, and in that same exact round, he came back to drop Berto at the end of the round. This time, he had the mindset that I am willing to die for this. He had no more chances after that. You can't quit again. He fought like a guy that had that mindset, "I'm here again. I gotta do something." He got up and he proved it. Like, "I'm not going to quit this time around and if I'm going to get killed, I'm going to get killed in the ring." I don't necessarily know if Berto can make the adjustments to actually defeat him, but he could. But I think Ortiz will move on to bigger and better things. I don't think he's going to fight Berto again. And to be honest, I don't think Berto should turn around and fight him right away.
PC: A lot was being made about your nephew Lil Floyd being at the fight. Peoplw were saying if Berto would have won, that was possibly his next fight. Is there any truth to that or just talk?
JM: I think it was more just talk, but at the same time, don't get me wrong, HBO was trying so hard to find the person that was going to replace Floyd and Manny when they were ready to walk away from the sport. Berto had that distinction until he lost to Ortiz. They were force feeding you Berto. They can't make a guy into a star and that's the one thing about Berto is he was not really an attraction. But on TV, they were trying to turn him into an attraction by putting opposition in front of him that he can destroy. If you destroy enough people, people start to say, "Wait a minute, I gotta watch this guy." That's what HBO's problem was in a sense of force feeding him weak opposition. And like I said, once you go in there and start knocking guys out in the 1st or 2nd round and there was no threat of them even hurting you, you start to get full of yourself a little bit and maybe that's what happened to Berto. Not that he didn't work hard or anything. I just think mentally, when you get to that point of blowing your opposition out, you think you gonna do that to everybody that they put in front of you. Don't get me wrong, I think this could have been the best thing to happen to Andre Berto because I think he is a good young fighter with tremendous talent, but at the same time, he now has the reality of everybody I hit may not go nowhere. He is in one of the toughest divisions and maybe this wakeup call was one of the best things that ever happened to him. Sometimes a loss is the best thing that can ever happen to a fighter, especially a young fighter. I would like to see Berto bounce back. I like Berto as a fighter. He's an exciting young fighter. I don't think he is the predecessor to Floyd or to Manny. He don't present that type of talent to me, but he is an exciting fighter.
PC: James Kirkland also had a major setback in his, I guess you can say, second career. Can he bounce back from the type of loss that he had?
JM: James Kirkland has a lot to prove to himself now; it's one of those types of situations. Now he is questioning every decision that he's ever made. And of course I know he's questioning the fact that he changed trainers. That's one thing about fighters; they don't like to take the blame. They gotta put the blame on somebody. I'm sure right now he's trying to put the blame on Kenny Adams. That's not on Kenny Adams. Kenny Adams wasn't in that ring. Kenny Adams is a proven trainer too. He's trained multiple world champions, so he knows what he's doing. That's what fighters do. They don't accept the fact that they got beat. The first thing they do is look at the reason they got beat and nine times out of ten, they think it's the person that's in their corner. He may feel this ain't the same person that was in his corner before, but you made the change so you had to think something wasn't good enough to stay with the person you had.
PC: And he had scored a couple of wins with Kenny as his trainer.
JM: Yeah! And he was undefeated with Ann Wolfe, so there was no need to make a change unless there was some type of fallout. I don't know what happened with that, but for some reason, he chose Kenny Adams and now I'm sure he's not gonna be with Kenny Adams no more. That's just fighters. They are that way. The second they lose, they start to point the finger at the person in their corner. I don't know, he got some serious soul searching to do because he got blown out by a guy that can't really punch. Maybe he just had an off night. Maybe he isn't as focused as he once was or as hungry as he once was. It seems like he would be hungrier after being locked up and coming back, but you never know. The one thing I always say is that any fighter, I don't care who he is, he is entitled to have an off night. You can have the greatest training camp in the world and everything goes perfect, but that night when you step into the ring, things just don't click. The only thing that helps you excel beyond that is if you're so much more superior than that person who is in front of you that you will beat that person anyway at anytime no matter what. That's what I call great. You can actually go beyond having adversity. I think that's the funny thing about Lopez. They made so many excuses for the guy, it's ridiculous. He was the only one that did man up and say, "No, I didn't have problems in the ring because of my wife." And don't get me wrong, that's what he was supposed to say.
Great fighters rise above adversity. Mike Tyson's whole career was adversity. Even my nephew...adversity. Great fighters rise above that because the ring is their sanctuary. "This is my house right here. Once you step in here, you're in my house. You gotta play by my rules." That's what great fighters do. And then you have other fighters that can't step up. Some of the greatest victories that have ever been accomplished in boxing have been done through adversity. I mean, Buster Douglas' mom died. He didn't give a damn about Mike Tyson. He was dealing with something way bigger than Mike Tyson. He took that in the ring with him and made history. The same thing with Lamon Brewster against Wladimir. This dude was getting killed. He dedicated that fight to his trainer, who had died, and he went through hell. He went through the storm, hell, and everything. He held on long enough to excel and actually win. You gotta take adversity and turn it into positive energy. But there were some people with JuanMa, when I went on a blog and my God, they had so many excuses for this dude. "He weighed 180 pounds. His wife wouldn't let him see his kids," and this and that. one thing you already know is that you signed a piece of paper saying you're going to fight this person on this date, so that's what you prepare for. You can't worry about all of that other stuff. It happens. That's a part of life. All fighters go into the ring injured anyway. That's something that fighters won't say anything about because it's not important because it's almost like you're crying.
PC: Freddie Roach recently said during a conference call that the goal is to be the first to stop Shane Mosley like that other guy couldn't do. We assume he's speaking about your nephew. Do you think Manny can stop Shane or can Shane keep the year of upsets going?
JM: I hope he can keep the upsets going. I don't think Shane is going to get stopped by Manny. Shane is a guy who has went up as high as 160 pounds and fought much bigger guys and much stronger guys than Manny. I mean, of course one punch can change anything, but at the same time, I just don't see it happening to Mosley. He's been durable his entire career and I don't think that he's completely done. He still carries a big punch and decent speed and I think if he catches Manny the way he caught Floyd, we will be looking at another upset. That's what I think. I think he is a live underdog with a puncher's chance. That's what I see in Shane. I'm not a Manny hater or anything like that, but I just don't see Manny knocking Shane out. If he does, more power to him, but at the same time, what does it matter when every time you do something to somebody, Floyd already did it before you. You knocked out Hatton, so what? Floyd beat him first. You knocked out De La Hoya; Floyd beat De La Hoya at his own weight class. So basically, all you are doing is following everyone that Floyd's fighting and Floyd has already done the damage to them to make the fight easier for you. It's one of those situations where if he knocks him out, good for him, but it still doesn't have nothing to do with Floyd because it's not the same damn fighter. Floyd doesn't fight nothing like Shane Mosley. At the end of the day, you still have to fight Floyd. If the fight between you and Floyd doesn't happen, it doesn't matter who you beat or how you beat them because you gotta beat Floyd. Doing it by comparison means nothing. That's how boxing is. Sometimes you will have one guy that can beat a guy and another guy can't beat them. The same thing with Vernon Forrest. Look what he did to Shane. He got rid of Shane twice and he couldn't beat Mayorga neither time and then Shane stops Mayorga. That just shows you how boxing works. If he does knock him out, that's good because it's good business for the fight because the fight becomes even bigger between Manny and Floyd. And then, the other side of it is this, what happens if that never happens? I mean the theatre of upsets is in the works. I have never seen so many upsets in boxing in back-to-back-to-back fights like this. It's almost scary; he might not want to get in the ring (laughing).
PC: Not just in the boxing world, but the NCAA tournament and NBA Playoffs as well (laughing).
JM: Yeah, and it's been on shows like Friday Night Fights. David Lemieux was one of the first upsets and then it just went from there. But that's what boxing is. It's the theatre of upsets and the unknown. You never know what's going to happen in boxing. It's one of those sports, man; it's two guys with gloves on trying to take each others heads off and sometimes, the underdog will land one that ends the night (laughing). I think it's good for boxing. The more upsets, the better. Like you said though, I mean, the Lakers are supposed to be the team, but they are struggling. Spurs and all of these guys are losing. It's not a good time for favorites (laughing).
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]