Cunningham: I Leave Glazkov Game Plan Up to Naazim

 by David P. Greisman

Steve Cunningham is familiar with Vyacheslav Glazkov; he was ringside working on commentary when Glazkov topped one of Cunningham’s former rivals, Tomasz Adamek, last year.

Nevertheless, as Cunningham prepares to step into the ring against Glazkov for their March 14 fight, he trusts his trainer, Naazim Richardson, to break down what Glazkov can and can’t do in the ring and how Cunningham should attempt to handle him.

“There’s always going to be something you can see and say, ‘If he does that to me, I’m going to do this.’ Me personally, now that I’ve been with Naazim for some years now and him being such a mad scientist when it comes to figuring guys out, I’m going to let him do his job,” Cunningham said on a Feb. 18 media conference call. “He’s one of the best trainers in the world in history for a reason. He looks at the guy, he looks at the fighter, and he tells me, ‘This is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re going to work on. This is what he does. This is what you do. Boom.’

“I’m still like I’m in the military. I’m taking orders. Whatever Commander Naazim tells me to do, he tells me to go take that hill, I’m going to go take that hill the way he tells me to do it,” Cunningham said. “That’s the faith and the trust I have in my team.”

Richardson is famed for the work he did with future Hall of Famer Bernard Hopkins. Last year, as Hopkins was getting ready to face Beibut Shumenov — who in essence trains himself — Richardson spoke with BoxingScene.com about why a boxer as brilliant as Hopkins still looked to his corner for wisdom.

“Enough intelligence to know. He took a long walk, so he realized that even though there those of us who are smart enough to realize, ‘I’m probably sharper than my parents now, but we still don’t exclude the wisdom that they carry. We still hang around them.’ Mom, Pop, Grandma, Grandpa, they’ll drop a jewel on you, sometimes they’re far and few between, but every once in a while they’ll drop a jewel on you, something real subtle. And you’re like, ‘Hey, OK pops, I got you.’ ”

Glazkov-Cunningham will take place in Montreal on the HBO-televised undercard to Sergey Kovalev vs. Jean Pascal.

Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com