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Cotto’s Trainer Learned Trade Outside the Ring
By GREG BISHOP
Published: November 13, 2009
LAS VEGAS — Joe Santiago is 32 years old. He has never boxed, not once, never built a champion, never trained a fighter for a bout of the magnitude that awaits him Saturday.
Santiago speaks softly, in Spanish, his baseball cap turned backward, his baby face revealed. He is not a trainer cut from the Rocky cloth. He lacks the facial scars, the advice delivered in gruff tones and colorful language, the ever-present stogie.
Santiago earned two degrees, a bachelor’s in physical education and a master’s in athletic training. But for those who doubt he can help Miguel Cotto defeat Manny Pacquiao in their World Boxing Organization welterweight title fight, Santiago pointed to his most important schooling, 18 years in boxing gyms in Puerto Rico, where he earned an unofficial doctorate in the sport.
“I’ve followed boxing all my life,” he said through a translator.
The gym opened a half-mile from his home in Caguas when Santiago was 14. This was not a gym in the typical sense. It was an old building that fit no more than 30 people. The ring sat in the backyard. Fighters jumped rope on the sidewalk out front.
...(to read the rest of the article)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/sp...4santiago.html
By GREG BISHOP
Published: November 13, 2009
LAS VEGAS — Joe Santiago is 32 years old. He has never boxed, not once, never built a champion, never trained a fighter for a bout of the magnitude that awaits him Saturday.
Santiago speaks softly, in Spanish, his baseball cap turned backward, his baby face revealed. He is not a trainer cut from the Rocky cloth. He lacks the facial scars, the advice delivered in gruff tones and colorful language, the ever-present stogie.
Santiago earned two degrees, a bachelor’s in physical education and a master’s in athletic training. But for those who doubt he can help Miguel Cotto defeat Manny Pacquiao in their World Boxing Organization welterweight title fight, Santiago pointed to his most important schooling, 18 years in boxing gyms in Puerto Rico, where he earned an unofficial doctorate in the sport.
“I’ve followed boxing all my life,” he said through a translator.
The gym opened a half-mile from his home in Caguas when Santiago was 14. This was not a gym in the typical sense. It was an old building that fit no more than 30 people. The ring sat in the backyard. Fighters jumped rope on the sidewalk out front.
...(to read the rest of the article)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/sp...4santiago.html
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