BOOKS BY THOMAS HAUSER
GENERAL NON-FICTION
Missing
The Trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea
For Our Children
(with Frank Macchiarola)
The Family Legal Companion
Final Warning: The Legacy of Chernobyl
(with Dr. Robert Gale)
Arnold Palmer: A Personal Journey
Confronting America’s Moral Crisis
(with Frank Macchiarola)
Healing: A Journal of Tolerance and Understanding
With This Ring (with Frank Macchiarola)
Thomas Hauser on Sports
Reflections
BOXING NON-FICTION
The Black Lights
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times
Muhammad Ali: Memories
Muhammad Ali: In Perspective
Muhammad Ali & Company
A Beautiful Sickness
A Year at the Fights
Brutal Artistry
The View From Ringside
Chaos, Corruption, Courage, and Glory
I Don’t Believe It, But It’s True
Knockout (with Vikki LaMotta)
The Greatest Sport of All
The Boxing Scene
An Unforgiving Sport
Boxing Is . . .
Box: The Face of Boxing
The Legend of Muhammad Ali
(with Bart Barry)
Winks and Daggers
And the New . . .
Straight Writes and Jabs
Thomas Hauser on Boxing
A Hurting Sport
A Hard World
Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest
There Will Always Be Boxing
Protect Yourself at All Times
FICTION
Ashworth & Palmer
Agatha’s Friends
The Beethoven Conspiracy
Hanneman’s War
The Fantasy
Dear Hannah
The Hawthorne Group
Mark Twain Remembers
Finding the Princess
Waiting for Carver Boyd
The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens
The Baker’s Tale
FOR CHILDREN
Martin Bear & Friends
Protect Yourself at All Times
An Inside Look at Another Year in Boxing
By Thomas Hauser
The University of Arkansas Press
Fayetteville
2018
Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Hauser
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1 68226-074-6
e-ISBN: 978-1-61075-648-8
22 21 20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the AmericanNational Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Hauser, Thomas, author.
Title: Protect yourself at all times : an inside look at another year in boxing / by Thomas Hauser.
Description: Fayetteville : The University of Arkansas Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018002606| ISBN 9781682260746 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781610756488 (e-ISBN)
Subjects: LCSH: Boxing.
Classification: LCC GV1133 .H3444 2018 | DDC 796.83--dc23
LC record available at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lccn.loc.gov_2018002606&d=DwIFAg&c=7ypwAowFJ8v-mw8AB-SdSueVQgSDL4HiiSaLK01W8HA&r=4fo1OqKuv_3krqlYYqNQWNKNaWxXN20G1PCOL-2ERgE&m=DcsnrTqO6VBhSNgvZVZ_uQZUBSQRbsxpXzVdNL4N-s0&s=OCVP0Q2JKCNWuJlJz2W8sxnzEXX7AKmBGPqRG9aIb30&e=
The first time I was in a fighter’s dressing room prior to a fight was when Billy Costello granted me access while I was researching The Black Lights. Since then, numerous fighters—some of them from boxing’s elite, others club fighters—have allowed me to spend the hours before and after a fight in their dressing rooms prior to my writing about them. It’s a privilege that I never take for granted.
I often ask myself what it would have meant to history if someone had been in Joe Louis’s dressing room before he fought Max Schmeling, writing down what happened and what was said. In Sugar Ray Robinson’s dressing room. Or Jack Dempsey’s.
This book is dedicated to the fighters who’ve granted me that access. I’d like to thank them by name: Roy Jones Jr, Evander Holyfield, Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto, Jermain Taylor, Kelly Pavlik, Bernard Hopkins, Gennady Golovkin, Canelo Alvarez, Sergio Martinez, Tim Bradley, Chad Dawson, Paulie Malignaggi, Ricky Hatton, James Toney, John Duddy, Shannon Briggs, Nikolai Valuev, Jarrell Miller, Vinny Maddalone, Samuel Peter, Michael Grant, Anthony Ottah, Seanie Monaghan, Kevin McBride, Hector Beltran, Ernest Johnson, Kevin Burnett, Katie Taylor, and Billy Costello.
Contents
Fighters and Fights
Jermain Taylor vs. Kelly Pavlik: Ten Years Later
Keith Thurman: “If You Can Beat Me, Beat Me”
UFC 208, Holly Holm, and Boxing
Paulie Malignaggi: “No More Coming Back Now”
Golovkin–Jacobs: A Bigger “Drama Show” Than Expected
Anthony Joshua vs. Wladimir Klitschko: The Future is Now
Ranking Boxing’s Greatest Heavyweight Champions
Canelo Alvarez vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr
Errol Spence Has Arrived
Ward–Kovalev II: Andre Ward Makes a Statement
Age, Bad Judging, and Jeff Horn Beat Manny Pacquiao
Mikey Garcia: Too Small, Too Slow, Too Good
Top Rank – ESPN – Lomachenko – Crawford
The Barclays Buzz
Deontay Wilder vs. Bermane Stiverne: No Surprises
“Big Baby” Takes a Baby Step Forward
Rosie Perez on Muhammad Ali
More on the Muhammad Ali Documentary
Miguel Cotto’s Last Fight: A Star Says Goodbye
Fight Notes
Intimate Warfare: The Gatti–Ward Trilogy
Iron Ambition: Mike Tyson and Cus D’Amato
Fighters as Writers
Muhammad Ali: A Life
Jess Willard
Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin: Great Expectations
Mayweather–McGregor: The Dark Underside of the Sting
Curiosities
Tony Middleton: From Fighting to Singing
I Fell on My Face
Fistic Nuggets
Reflections on a Fiftieth Reunion
Issues and Answers
Don King and Bob Arum in Perspective
Angel Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission
Trouble at the Arkansas State Athletic Commission
Congratulations to the WBC and VADA
A Reporter Faces the Issue: To Stand or Kneel
Fistic Notes
The Bittersweet Science
The Leather Pushers
Literary Notes
Keystone Cops at the New York State Athletic Commission
The NYSAC is Still Courting Disaster
Dick Gregory and Muhammad Ali
Author’s Note
Protect Yourself at All Times contains the articles about boxing that I authored in 2017. The articles I wrote about the sweet science prior to that date have been published in Muhammad Ali & Company; A Beautiful Sickness; A Year at the Fights; The View From Ringside; Chaos, Corruption, Courage, and Glory; I Don’t Believe It, But It’s True; The Greatest Sport of All; The Boxing Scene; An Unforgiving Sport; Boxing Is; Winks and Daggers; And the New; Straight Writes and Jabs; Thomas Hauser on Boxing; A Hurting Sport; A Hard World; Muhammad Ali: A Tri
bute to The Greatest; and There Will Always Be Boxing.
Fighters and Fights
Jermain Taylor vs. Kelly Pavlik: Ten Years Later
Cus D’Amato once said, “To see a man beaten, not by a better opponent but by himself, is a tragedy.”
On September 29, 2007, Kelly Pavlik knocked out Jermain Taylor at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City in one of the most dramatic fights I’ve ever seen. It was a particularly emotional experience for me because of a bond I shared with both men.
Jermain Taylor and his team gave me full access during fight week for both of his battles against Bernard Hopkins and also his fights against Winky Wright and Kassim Ouma. Team Pavlik accorded me the same privilege for Pavlik’s two confrontations with Taylor and, later, his fights against Gary Lockett, Bernard Hopkins, and Sergio Martinez.
Taylor and Pavlik were enormously talented, likable young men. I was with them in their greatest moments of triumph and also for heart-breaking losses. I sat with them in hospital emergency rooms when they were being stitched up after victories and defeats.
When things start to fall apart for a fighter, it’s hard to put the pieces back together again. Taylor and Pavlik wound up as roadkill in a brutal sport. Each man had his demons, as most fighters do. Ten years after their historic first encounter, their story is a cautionary tale.
Taylor grew up poor in Little Rock, Arkansas. There was a down-to-earth, wholesome, almost gentle quality about him. His father abandoned the family when Jermain was five, leaving Jermain, his mother, and three younger sisters behind. The children were raised in large part by their maternal grandmother, who was murdered by her own son (Jermain’s uncle).
“He had a bad drug problem,” Taylor told me years ago. “He wanted money and she wouldn’t give it to him, so he cut her throat and killed himself. I was at the Goodwill Games when it happened. They told me about it when I got home. I heard what they were saying, but it wasn’t real. Then I went into her bedroom. There was blood all over the sheets, all over the floor, and I realized that what they were saying was true. I’d won a bronze medal at the games. At the funeral, I put it in her casket.”
Taylor won a bronze medal in the light-middleweight division at the 2000 Olympics and turned pro under the aegis of promoter Lou DiBella. Pat Burns, a former Miami cop with an extensive amateur coaching background, was brought in to train him. Under Burns’s tutelage, Taylor won his first twenty-three pro fights. On July 16, 2005, he challenged Bernard Hopkins for the undisputed middleweight championship of the world.
Hopkins derided Taylor at every turn during the pre-fight promotion.
“As a child, I had a real bad speech problem,” Taylor said when it was his turn to speak at the final pre-fight press conference. “I stuttered a lot. I still do it some, so it’s hard enough for me to talk without trying to talk trash. Bernard Hopkins might out-talk me, but I’m gonna out-fight him.”
“The early rounds belonged to Taylor,” I wrote after the fight:
Jermain advanced behind his jab, while Bernard slowed the pace by retreating and keeping his right hand cocked to discourage forays by the challenger. Taylor was faster. Hopkins minimized the number of encounters by moving around the ring and did his best work while punching out of clinches with sharp punishing blows. Fifty seconds into round five, the fighters clashed heads and an ugly wound pierced Taylor’s scalp just above the hairline to the bone. Blood flowed freely and would for much of the night. In round nine, the challenger seemed to tire and the roles of predator and prey were reversed. The champion began his assault. A right hand hurt Taylor in round ten. More punishing blows followed. Round eleven was the same. Then came a moment that will forever define the career of each fighter. There was a minute left in round eleven. The momentum was all with Hopkins. Taylor was backed against the ropes, in trouble. Hopkins landed a big right hand. And in his darkest moment, Jermain summoned the strength to fire three hard shots with lightning speed into Bernard’s body. Rather than continue the exchange, Hopkins stepped back. No one knew it at the time, but that was when Jermain Taylor established himself as a champion.
Taylor won a razor-thin split decision.
There was a parade in Little Rock to honor Jermain’s accomplishment. Thousands of fans attended a rally at the end of the route. “That was the best feeling I ever had,” Taylor said afterward. “It was amazing that all those people came out just for me.”
Then came a trip to New York for a meeting with fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton. “Anywhere I go,” Jermain said, “restaurants, clubs, wherever; they don’t charge me. Of course, when I was broke and needed it, no one gave me anything for free.”
Hopkins pressed for an immediate rematch. He thought he’d figured Taylor out in the second half of Hopkins-Taylor I and also that Jermain would come in soft after celebrating his win.
Hopkins was wrong. In their December 3 rematch, Taylor prevailed on a unanimous decision.
“Jermain Taylor has charisma,” HBO commentator Larry Merchant proclaimed. “There’s something about his look and bearing that gets your attention.”
“I was impressed,” Showtime Boxing analyst Al Bernstein says, looking back on that time. “I thought Jermain was the new star that boxing had been waiting for, that he might be one of those great middleweight champions who are remembered forever.”
But a corrosive factor was at work.
A Little Rock resident named Ozell Nelson had played a pivotal role in Taylor’s early life. Jermain had grown up without a father, and Nelson had filled the void. He’d even taught Jermain the rudiments of boxing. Now Nelson and Pat Burns weren’t getting along.
After each Taylor-Hopkins fight, there had been sniping that Burns had a “white slavemaster mentality” and wasn’t a top-notch trainer despite his having overseen Jermain’s transformation from a raw amateur to middleweight champion of the world. There was a lot of money to be made off Taylor now that he was a champion, particularly if Burns’s salary were to become available for redistribution.
Taylor owed much of his success as a fighter to Burns. But in his mind, Nelson had saved his life.
Dennis Moore is a Little Rock police detective who has known Taylor since Jermain was in sixth grade. In many ways, he has been like a big brother to Taylor.
“Jermain was in a good place after he beat Hopkins,” Moore says. “Then some people got in his ear and pulled him away from Pat Burns and things changed. I’m not saying Pat was perfect. But Pat is a hands-on guy who runs a tight ship. He ran training camp the way it should have been run in terms who was allowed in, the things Jermain did and didn’t do in his free time, and giving Jermain life advice. Ozell did some wonderful things for Jermain when Jermain was young. But there came a time when the money became a factor and Ozell did some things that hurt Jermain.”
After the second Taylor-Hopkins fight, Burns was replaced by Emanuel Steward and Nelson was given an expanded role in training camp.
Steward was a legendary trainer, and deservedly so. He fit into that small group of men who are able to teach and strategize before a fight and then motivate and counsel adjustments in the heat of battle. One doesn’t have to debate the issue of whether Steward was a better trainer than Burns. It’s enough to say that Burns was a better trainer for Taylor.
Steward brought Taylor to the Kronk Gym in Detroit to train and introduced him to a lifestyle that wasn’t a good fit.
“The people who took over didn’t have Jermain’s best interests at heart,” Moore says. “When those guys got involved, his life took a turn for the worse. Jermain was a never a social drinker. I remember his saying to me once, ‘What’s the point of drinking if you’re not going to get drunk.’ Even when things were going well, Jermain would drink after fights. When he was with his new team, he started drinking more heavily.
“Then they started introducing him to women,” Moore continues. “Jermain wanted to be a good family man. He was family first. But because of his upbringing, he’d never had anyone to teach him ce
rtain things and he was easily influenced. After that, he got into drugs. Jermain is a really good person inside. But when drugs are involved, he’s not. Nobody made Jermain do it. He was an adult. But he was susceptible, and he chose the wrong way. They sucked him dry. And where are they now?”
There’s a time-honored maxim in boxing that holds, “if a fighter isn’t getting better, he’s getting worse.” In the three fights immediately after Burns’s departure, Taylor’s performance declined. On June 17, 2006, he was held to a draw by Winky Wright. Six months later, he was unimpressive in decisioning Kassim Ouma. On May 19, 2007, Taylor was awarded what many thought was an undeserved split decision over Cory Spinks.
That set the scene for Taylor-Pavlik.
Pavlik grew up in Youngstown, Ohio’s blue-collar, beer-drinking bar culture. His father was a steelworker who later worked as an insurance agent. His mother was a cook at Hardee’s.
Kelly started fighting at age nine at the Southside Boxing Club, where Jack Loew, who sealed asphalt driveways for a living, taught children to box. He worked odd jobs in high school to get the money to travel to amateur tournaments. More often than Pavlik cares to remember, he was busing tables when classmates came in for something to eat after a school dance.
Pavlik turned pro at age eighteen. He had a thin, muscular frame, power in both hands, a solid chin, and knew only one way to fight: going forward, punching. After thirty consecutive wins, he was offered a fight on HBO against knockout artist Edison Miranda. Most of his team cautioned against it.
“Make the fucking fight,” Pavlik told his manager, Cameron Dunkin. “If I can’t beat him, I’ll get a job.”
Pavlik knocked Miranda out in the seventh round.
The odds on Taylor-Pavlik were even in the days leading up to the fight. The “smart” money was on Taylor and the Youngstown money was on Pavlik. On fight day, the professional money came in, making Taylor an 8-to-5 favorite.
Each man had a fervent hometown fan base that made its way to Atlantic City for the fight.
Taylor came out aggressively in round one. He was quicker than Pavlik and his hands were faster. Midway through round two, Jermain timed a right hand over a sloppy jab. The blow landed high on Pavlik’s head. Kelly staggered backward, and the champion followed with a fifteen-punch barrage that put the challenger on the canvas.
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