I'm really big on edges. I learned as a kid boxing that the slighest edge can prove a good thing. You must take what you can get, because in most cases there ain't much out there. A pound here, a round there. Most boxers don't fully understand the work that a manager will put into a small detail, when they succeed in a fight they believe it was fate, or the result of their actions only.
I don't remember having any "edges" when I turned pro, which reflects the immaturity of a guy who had the "edge" of starting his career under the guidence of a man who not only called the shots for a number of top ten fighters, but controlled the first true "White Heavyweight" since Marciano. Johnnie Flores in your corner was an edge. I won't mince words with my friends here, Johnnie Flores had balls! You either do or don't. Johnnie did.
Just for the record, this is important to a fighter. It's good that every part of a boxer's corner be "strong". When Frank Baltazar Sr. took Frankie Jr. into the Olympic ring, it wasn't a father/son show, it was the pop with Flores, or the "great" Jackie mcCoy. You can talk the great trainers, the Blackburn's, the Arcel's, the Futch's, Bimstein's, Foster's, Forbes, etc. but none is better than Jackie McCoy. That's what Frank did when his boy's career's were at stake. He put them with the original coach and the best support team in the world. Jackie McCoy and Johnnie Flores were the best in L.A. and that meant the best in the world back in the day of the Baltazar brothers.
And just for the record, Frankie Jr. & Tony Baltazar didn't need plaster in their wraps to win. They just did it naturally, with a little help from Pop & company.
-Rick Farris
Rick...When my boys were ready to turn pro, I knew that I needed people with more experience then what I had at the time to work the corner, I also knew that it was not about me, it was about the boys and what was in their best interest, and their best interest was that we had an experince corner and if I had to stay in the backgound to do so, so be it, the one thing I did without anybody else was to make the fight, accept the purse, I also did most of the training, fite nite came, I hire the best I could fine to work the corner with me.
ReplyDelete