Bautista Was Born To Be a Champion, Says Malcolm
by Ronnie Nathanielsz
Former Australian and World Boxing Foundation welterweight champion and a Aussie Hall-of-Famer, now a sought-after trainer, Jeff “Flash” Malcolm says Rey “Boom Boom” Bautista who is currently recovering from surgery on his left wrist “is born to be a world champion.”
Malcolm who was also Pan Asian Boxing Association, Fedelatin and South Pacific welterweight champion and had a record of 100-27-11 with 36 knockouts trained Indonesia ’s world champion Chris John for his title fight against Derrick Gainer, and recently began working with Bautista as he slowly gets back into condition and continues therapy on his wrist.
Malcolm had a lengthy conversation with BoxingScene.com, insidesports.oh, Standard Today and Viva Sports in Cebu prior to his departure but said he would be back in July to continue preparing Bautista for a possible comeback fight later this year.
Doctors discovered that Bautista who suffered terrible pain whenever he used his left had a bone in his left wrist that was rotten and had to be removed and replaced by a piece of bone removed from his hip.
This accounted for Bautista’s failure to use his left during fights and to depend solely on his right hand. Reportedly, Bautista’s pain threshold was high and he never complained or told anybody until after his disappointing loss to Heriberto Ruiz for which he came under mean criticism from supposed fight fans who had no idea about the injury.
Malcolm said that he watched the Ruiz fight and saw Bautista “hit Ruiz with a left hook and his (Ruiz’) whole body shook and then because of the pain he moved back. Otherwise, with one more punch the fight would have been over.”
Malcolm said Bautista “can knock you out with one punch. He doesn’t have to be a hundred percent. Even at 80-85 percent he will knock an opponent out because he has unbelievable power in both hands.”
The former Australian champion said Bautista is very young (22 years) and he’s just a happy kid and disputed those who claimed Bautista “had an attitude problem.” Malcolm said “ I haven’t seen it. All I’ve seen is someone who can’t wait to get back to fighting.”
Malcolm said he believes Bautista “knows how hard he hits and only has one direction and that’s to punch.”
The man who is likely to train Bautista in the future said he had noticed a couple of flaws which he plans to correct but made it clear “I’m not going to make any drastic changes.”
Despite his first round knockout in a WBO super bantamweight title fight against the menacing Daniel Ponce De Leon and his unanimous decision loss to Ruiz, Malcolm believes that Bautista has “proved himself to be up there. He is a world class fighter and if I can help him make a few, little adjustments he’ll be fine.”
Malcolm likened Bautista to a Sandy Saddler or a Willie Pep saying “Ray is that sort of fighter.”
He said Bautista had recovered mentally from the problem with his wrist and “wants to do it all today. He hasn’t got the patience” pointing out that after being shown the exercises he had to do to strengthen the wrist after surgery, “he wanted to do it all in one day. But I believe that by the end of June he’ll be back, ready to go.”
Malcolm said Bautista “has the hunger back and he shows that when he shadow boxes. Hopefully, this will be the new Rey Bautista.”
