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His views on Tomasz Adamek’s upcoming fight against Vinny Maddalone and whether he views Adamek as a potential future opponent for a Klitschko brother:
“I definitely can see a fight between Adamek and the Klitschkos. I think he’ll beat Maddalone. There’s been some rumors that he may fight a Roy Jones or whatever, which could be a risky fight for him, because Roy’s got some little moves still. Adamek is the closest, and not just the best prospect but he’s proven himself. He did a much better job of proving himself to me than Haye. Haye has done a fantastic job of talking himself into big fights but not really fighting himself into them. Nevertheless, I think after Haye the biggest and the best is still Adamek. He is a little small fellow who I have to take my hat off. I have a lot of respect for him. He wasn’t boxing like this before. He was just a little tough guy with a lot of heart. He picked up a lot of little boxing skills with Roger Bloodworth. He’s boxing and moving in and out. The Arreola fight just totally overwhelmed me. It made a big fan of me a big fan of his when I saw him beat Arreola under those conditions, going to California, giving up all of the weight, fighting where out there where he’s never fought at and all of that. From that point on he’s become a big star. I know that the Klitschkos are speaking to his promoter, Kathy Duva, and there is talk in the works related to that fight, though.”
His views on the type of challenge and risk Chisora poses to Wladimir Klitschko:
“The thing when you have a good technical boxer, a guy with a strong-minded personality and over-aggressiveness and intensity. That’s the problem. That’s why Joe Frazier was always a problem to Ali. Ali had all these great boxing advantages and physical attributes, but Joe Frazier had that mindset that was just a determined hard-nosed type guy that gave Ali problems. No one is going to beat Klitschko with just being a puncher and nobody is going to beat him by just outboxing him, but it’s the guy that has just that hard-nosed young guy aggressive attitude that has no respect, a little bit on the crazy side if you want to call it. That’s the type of guy that I always worry about fighting with technical boxers, because they can control boxers or older fighters, but guys like him are always going to be problems for guys like Wladimir.
Tommy Hearns was one of my best boxers, but what people don’t realize about Tommy Hearns—you can put Tommy Hearns in the ring with any boxer whether it was Benitez, Leonard, Virgil Hill, James Shuler, all of those type guys, or even a Roy Jones if they would have fought. Tommy would have no trouble with them. He would work them to death because he was a master with boxers, believe it or not. But him in with wild crazy guys who are all unorthodox and just kept coming, like fighting with Iran Barkley after the first fight. The second fight I wasn’t even with him because I didn’t even want that fight. Those guys with no skills, but those are the guys who always troubled him. That’s why when Hagler fought him, Marvin was very smart. Marvin came out, but his chin in his chest where he can support his chin the best he could, was willing to take the blows, and he just made it an all-out wild alley fight because that’s what got Tommy unorganized. Afterwards when Marvin and I were together at the Hall of Fame, he was saying, ‘I knew I couldn’t outbox that little Tommy Hearns and I knew I couldn’t punch as good as Tommy Hearns, so I had to just make a gamble to make it an all-out physical fight to get him all off track and be willing to take a few shots’. In the first round, he said, ‘I just about went out the first round’. But Marvin did what he had to do and came in and just made it a physical fight and broke Tommy down and knocked him out.
Sometimes those type fighters are problems for good boxers, not guys who try to box them or just try to move in and punch, but guys who just come out and fight in half crazy styles. Chisora is not that bad a fighter. He boxes left-handed, right-handed, has pretty good boxing skills, but tremendous mental stamina and strength and that’s what we are concerned about. It should be a very interesting fight. I will put it that way. We have a lot of anxiety in our camp for the fight, more than we’ve had in most of them especially when we hear guys are 8:1. That’s what Jason Litszau was going in at least week. I spoke to him after the fight. We had dinner together. He was saying it’s funny how some of these fighters start reading and listening to those odds and they believe in them. If a person is determined, you have to always have a little respect for them, especially if they’re young fighters. A determined person is a dangerous person, and we have that in this fight even though Chisora does not have a big reputation.”
On how he expects the fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Derek Chisora to play out:
“Well I’m hoping that Wladimir can control him with a solid jab, keep him outside, and start landing punches a little differently than normally, because this guy is going to be bobbing and weaving Joe Frazier type. We’re going to have to start shooting punches from underneath, hard left uppercuts and hard right hands from underneath a little bit like Foreman had to do with Joe Frazier. He is going to have to be a little more physical and a little more assertive in this fight. If things go like I would like, in six or seven rounds he will have tired the guy out and worn him out and mentally broken him down, which is one of the most important things we train for with Wladimir. In the meantime, this guy is a very determined guy. We’re going to have to be careful and keep good balance at all times. We can never get off balance with this guy. I would, in a perfect world for me, say a knockout somewhere about midway through the fight for Wladimir.”
His views on how Wladimir Klitschko looked and performed during training camp:
“Wladimir is looking good. You know the frustrating thing about this fight is the more we have studied the opponent, and there is so much ridicule being put on the opponent. We feel it’s totally just the opposite. He is the type of guy that I told Wladimir, and we both agreed, could be his most difficult opponent. No one is going to beat Wladimir by outboxing him. We know that. This guy is a guy that’s got a lot of range, and a lot more intensity and aggressiveness then we have really seem since I’ve been with him. The guys like Hasim Rahman, Brewster, Sam Peter, Calvin Brock, all of these type guys that have been slower or passive-type guys. No one had the intensity and the aggressiveness that this guy has. We looked at him very closely. Forget about the fourteen fights. There is a lot of fire and determination in him. So Wladimir is going to have to be on his best P’s and Q’s for this fight because he’s going to be pressured and he’s going to be challenged consistently, and not at a slow pace, either. So it’s a fight where everyone is saying it’s a mismatch, and it’s funny because this is one we’re more anxious about than any other fight other than the Eddie Chambers fight, which we always knew he had to be on his P’s and Q’s because of Eddie’s great speed and coordination. So we spent a lot of time boxing with Domonique Dolton who is a very gifted junior middleweight to finish up when we were getting ready for that. We expect this to be a tough fight.”
His views on David Haye’s victory over Audley Harrison and whether the final result at all surprised him:
“I didn’t even see the fight. I was at ringside getting ready to do my broadcast on the Pacquiao fight and right behind me Dan Rafael said, ‘The fight with Harrison just ended in the third round’. I was getting ready to leave to go back and see it, and Dan said, ‘No, you didn’t miss anything. Just go ahead and set up for your show’. I didn’t think it was going to be anything because I just think that I knew the relationship between the two fighters and all of that. To me it looked like a fabricated show. I still haven’t seen it. I don’t want to see it, but I think after that performance it put David Haye in a situation where he lost totally support of all the British people who were justifying all of the things he was doing. Now he doesn’t even have the British support, so his next fight will be undoubtedly with a Klitschko. It’s not that he wants to, but he has no choice. It has to be with a Klitschko, Vital or Wladimir, and we cannot have any more of these neighborhood fights. I wouldn’t even call it British. I think it’s just a certain neighborhood, but it’s over with now. He has to fight a real tough challenge.”
On whether he believes David Haye would be more inclined to fight Wladimir Klitschko or Vitali Klitschko:
“Well you know Vitali is the one while we’re in training that is openly challenging him and calling him out. I was told he said he’d rather fight Wladimir, which is kind of strange with Wladimir being the faster and the more dangerous puncher. Maybe he thinks Wladimir is more vulnerable either heart-wise, or chin-wise, or whatever, but the point is he’s going to have to fight one of them. I know that Wladimir, I think after this fight here if he wins and can beat him convincingly and impressively, is going to be up in the running at least and I don’t think we have a stressful mandatory that I know of. I know that Vitali has supposedly a mandatory against the winner of Austin and Solis so that would probably take place in March, but if he gets a unification fight I’m quite sure that the WBC organization would permit him to just bypass the mandatory. So it’s wide open for a fight I think between either one of the brothers with Haye, and I think it will happen sometime in 2011.”
“I definitely can see a fight between Adamek and the Klitschkos. I think he’ll beat Maddalone. There’s been some rumors that he may fight a Roy Jones or whatever, which could be a risky fight for him, because Roy’s got some little moves still. Adamek is the closest, and not just the best prospect but he’s proven himself. He did a much better job of proving himself to me than Haye. Haye has done a fantastic job of talking himself into big fights but not really fighting himself into them. Nevertheless, I think after Haye the biggest and the best is still Adamek. He is a little small fellow who I have to take my hat off. I have a lot of respect for him. He wasn’t boxing like this before. He was just a little tough guy with a lot of heart. He picked up a lot of little boxing skills with Roger Bloodworth. He’s boxing and moving in and out. The Arreola fight just totally overwhelmed me. It made a big fan of me a big fan of his when I saw him beat Arreola under those conditions, going to California, giving up all of the weight, fighting where out there where he’s never fought at and all of that. From that point on he’s become a big star. I know that the Klitschkos are speaking to his promoter, Kathy Duva, and there is talk in the works related to that fight, though.”
His views on the type of challenge and risk Chisora poses to Wladimir Klitschko:
“The thing when you have a good technical boxer, a guy with a strong-minded personality and over-aggressiveness and intensity. That’s the problem. That’s why Joe Frazier was always a problem to Ali. Ali had all these great boxing advantages and physical attributes, but Joe Frazier had that mindset that was just a determined hard-nosed type guy that gave Ali problems. No one is going to beat Klitschko with just being a puncher and nobody is going to beat him by just outboxing him, but it’s the guy that has just that hard-nosed young guy aggressive attitude that has no respect, a little bit on the crazy side if you want to call it. That’s the type of guy that I always worry about fighting with technical boxers, because they can control boxers or older fighters, but guys like him are always going to be problems for guys like Wladimir.
Tommy Hearns was one of my best boxers, but what people don’t realize about Tommy Hearns—you can put Tommy Hearns in the ring with any boxer whether it was Benitez, Leonard, Virgil Hill, James Shuler, all of those type guys, or even a Roy Jones if they would have fought. Tommy would have no trouble with them. He would work them to death because he was a master with boxers, believe it or not. But him in with wild crazy guys who are all unorthodox and just kept coming, like fighting with Iran Barkley after the first fight. The second fight I wasn’t even with him because I didn’t even want that fight. Those guys with no skills, but those are the guys who always troubled him. That’s why when Hagler fought him, Marvin was very smart. Marvin came out, but his chin in his chest where he can support his chin the best he could, was willing to take the blows, and he just made it an all-out wild alley fight because that’s what got Tommy unorganized. Afterwards when Marvin and I were together at the Hall of Fame, he was saying, ‘I knew I couldn’t outbox that little Tommy Hearns and I knew I couldn’t punch as good as Tommy Hearns, so I had to just make a gamble to make it an all-out physical fight to get him all off track and be willing to take a few shots’. In the first round, he said, ‘I just about went out the first round’. But Marvin did what he had to do and came in and just made it a physical fight and broke Tommy down and knocked him out.
Sometimes those type fighters are problems for good boxers, not guys who try to box them or just try to move in and punch, but guys who just come out and fight in half crazy styles. Chisora is not that bad a fighter. He boxes left-handed, right-handed, has pretty good boxing skills, but tremendous mental stamina and strength and that’s what we are concerned about. It should be a very interesting fight. I will put it that way. We have a lot of anxiety in our camp for the fight, more than we’ve had in most of them especially when we hear guys are 8:1. That’s what Jason Litszau was going in at least week. I spoke to him after the fight. We had dinner together. He was saying it’s funny how some of these fighters start reading and listening to those odds and they believe in them. If a person is determined, you have to always have a little respect for them, especially if they’re young fighters. A determined person is a dangerous person, and we have that in this fight even though Chisora does not have a big reputation.”
On how he expects the fight between Wladimir Klitschko and Derek Chisora to play out:
“Well I’m hoping that Wladimir can control him with a solid jab, keep him outside, and start landing punches a little differently than normally, because this guy is going to be bobbing and weaving Joe Frazier type. We’re going to have to start shooting punches from underneath, hard left uppercuts and hard right hands from underneath a little bit like Foreman had to do with Joe Frazier. He is going to have to be a little more physical and a little more assertive in this fight. If things go like I would like, in six or seven rounds he will have tired the guy out and worn him out and mentally broken him down, which is one of the most important things we train for with Wladimir. In the meantime, this guy is a very determined guy. We’re going to have to be careful and keep good balance at all times. We can never get off balance with this guy. I would, in a perfect world for me, say a knockout somewhere about midway through the fight for Wladimir.”
His views on how Wladimir Klitschko looked and performed during training camp:
“Wladimir is looking good. You know the frustrating thing about this fight is the more we have studied the opponent, and there is so much ridicule being put on the opponent. We feel it’s totally just the opposite. He is the type of guy that I told Wladimir, and we both agreed, could be his most difficult opponent. No one is going to beat Wladimir by outboxing him. We know that. This guy is a guy that’s got a lot of range, and a lot more intensity and aggressiveness then we have really seem since I’ve been with him. The guys like Hasim Rahman, Brewster, Sam Peter, Calvin Brock, all of these type guys that have been slower or passive-type guys. No one had the intensity and the aggressiveness that this guy has. We looked at him very closely. Forget about the fourteen fights. There is a lot of fire and determination in him. So Wladimir is going to have to be on his best P’s and Q’s for this fight because he’s going to be pressured and he’s going to be challenged consistently, and not at a slow pace, either. So it’s a fight where everyone is saying it’s a mismatch, and it’s funny because this is one we’re more anxious about than any other fight other than the Eddie Chambers fight, which we always knew he had to be on his P’s and Q’s because of Eddie’s great speed and coordination. So we spent a lot of time boxing with Domonique Dolton who is a very gifted junior middleweight to finish up when we were getting ready for that. We expect this to be a tough fight.”
His views on David Haye’s victory over Audley Harrison and whether the final result at all surprised him:
“I didn’t even see the fight. I was at ringside getting ready to do my broadcast on the Pacquiao fight and right behind me Dan Rafael said, ‘The fight with Harrison just ended in the third round’. I was getting ready to leave to go back and see it, and Dan said, ‘No, you didn’t miss anything. Just go ahead and set up for your show’. I didn’t think it was going to be anything because I just think that I knew the relationship between the two fighters and all of that. To me it looked like a fabricated show. I still haven’t seen it. I don’t want to see it, but I think after that performance it put David Haye in a situation where he lost totally support of all the British people who were justifying all of the things he was doing. Now he doesn’t even have the British support, so his next fight will be undoubtedly with a Klitschko. It’s not that he wants to, but he has no choice. It has to be with a Klitschko, Vital or Wladimir, and we cannot have any more of these neighborhood fights. I wouldn’t even call it British. I think it’s just a certain neighborhood, but it’s over with now. He has to fight a real tough challenge.”
On whether he believes David Haye would be more inclined to fight Wladimir Klitschko or Vitali Klitschko:
“Well you know Vitali is the one while we’re in training that is openly challenging him and calling him out. I was told he said he’d rather fight Wladimir, which is kind of strange with Wladimir being the faster and the more dangerous puncher. Maybe he thinks Wladimir is more vulnerable either heart-wise, or chin-wise, or whatever, but the point is he’s going to have to fight one of them. I know that Wladimir, I think after this fight here if he wins and can beat him convincingly and impressively, is going to be up in the running at least and I don’t think we have a stressful mandatory that I know of. I know that Vitali has supposedly a mandatory against the winner of Austin and Solis so that would probably take place in March, but if he gets a unification fight I’m quite sure that the WBC organization would permit him to just bypass the mandatory. So it’s wide open for a fight I think between either one of the brothers with Haye, and I think it will happen sometime in 2011.”