Brand New – O’Brien Begins Career with an Old Pro
By Thomas Gerbasi
When you ask someone how they’re doing, the answers generally run the gamut from ‘good’ to ‘lousy’. Ask Lou Esa the same question, and his response is “I’m brand new.”
In a way, he is.
A former heavyweight prospect of the 70’s who had out of the ring heavyweights Angelo Dundee and Ferdie Pacheco in his corner, the New Jersey native is on the verge of big things in the ring again. This time, it’s as the trainer of 2010 NJ Golden Gloves champion Vinny O’Brien, a charismatic 24-year old welterweight who has garnered some significant buzz in the weeks leading up to his first bout, on the Zab Judah-Kaizer Mabuza undercard at the Prudential Center on March 5th.
“The kid has a huge following already,” said Esa. “I don’t know if it’s that catchy name, Vinny O’Brien, but it’s something that’s got people buzzing. I’m selling tickets like crazy for this fight.”
And for good reason. O’Brien is a local product out of East Hanover, he’s got the red, white, and blue trunks, he’s half Italian half Irish, and he’s the perfect fit for a blue collar fight crowd looking for its next Arturo Gatti. Only time will tell if O’Brien can fill those enormous shoes, but for now, he’s saying all the right things.
“I was in a sales and marketing job before I went for the 2010 Golden Gloves, just trying to make my money and make my way,” he said. “The economy hit the company and I was the lowest guy on the totem pole so they let me go. I went from that being my life to going into boxing and going after my dream, which was winning the Golden Gloves, winning that, and ever since then it’s been surreal. I’ve been falling into opportunity after opportunity and getting all this buzz, getting all these articles, and it’s a crazy feeling, but it’s pretty cool. I definitely want to bring something back to this sport and I want to bring excitement to boxing. I think boxing is an amazing sport and only those who truly love the sport know how great it is. We just have to clean it up a bit and get some good people in here, and I think boxing will be on the rise again.”
Esa, 59, was smack dab in the middle of one of boxing’s golden ages. In the 70’s, the top fighters fought each other, there was boxing on free network TV every week, and the sport filled the back pages of newspapers worldwide. And at 6-foot-6 with a knockout punch, Esa - a former defensive end for St. Peter’s College who had earned a tryout with the Miami Dolphins – was a natural for stardom, especially since his only amateur loss came against Larry Holmes.
But despite compiling an 18-2-1 record, everything crashed for him when he was arrested the night before his October 1977 bout with 1976 Olympian and future heavyweight champ John Tate after being involved in breaking up a brawl in Miami. The charges were later dropped and Esa was freed before the bout, but with his head not in the fight anymore, he was knocked out in three rounds.
Losses in four of his next five fights followed, ending his career in 1981. Esa would again run into trouble with the law, serving time in Federal prison for his role in a narcotics racketeering conspiracy, but upon his release, he put his past behind him and straightened his life out. And while he participated in boxing as a trainer, referee and judge, when he was approached by a family friend about training her son, Vinny O’Brien, for the 2008 NJ Golden Gloves, Esa was reluctant.
“We were introduced at the soccer field and at the time I was buying a home so I told him I just don’t have the time right now,” recalled Esa, whose daughter is best friends with O’Brien’s younger sister. “He was so determined that he said ‘can you put me in the right direction?’ I brought him to a guy who I was told was the real deal. It turns out the guy’s a fluke, he wasn’t the real deal, and I was very embarrassed. But Vinny went to the finals of the Golden Gloves in 2008 and he lost by two points because he went back to the corner and this guy tells him ‘you’re doing great.’ He didn’t tell him ‘you’re losing the fight, you gotta get out there and start punching.’”
Esa sounds disgusted recalling the seemingly winnable fight. O’Brien was devastated.
“What people don’t understand is what fighters truly put out and do and sacrifice,” said O’Brien. “You make it through the quarters, you make it through the semis, you have all this buzz around you and you have this moment in front of you, and then you get in there and the first round I let the moment completely take control of me. I choked up in the moment and the first round I wasn’t even there. I watched the video a few times since then and it almost makes me want to throw up the way I came out. Then I came back at the end of the second round and the third round, but it still wasn’t enough for me to win.”
Determined to get back in the ring and take another shot at the gloves in 2009, O’Brien again cornered Esa at the soccer field during one of his sister’s games and again asked him to take the reins in the corner.
Esa asked how he did in the 2008 finals, knowing full well what happened since he was at the fight.
“I lost by two points,” came the reply.
“Okay,” said Esa, “Let’s take a shot.”
“We start training, we’re getting fit, a month later, he (O’Brien_ was offered a job - 45,000 a year plus a 5,000 bonus every year for the next five years. I told him with the way things are, you can’t turn this down. You can go back to school, help your family.”
O’Brien insisted on boxing. Esa told him to discuss it with his family. O’Brien took the job, but there was still something missing.
“When I talked to Lou, I told him ‘I feel like I can’t move on in my life knowing that I haven’t won,’” he said. “I’m a very competitive person, and I like to fulfill things. I just wanted to have it done. That was a goal of mine and having it not fulfilled was an empty feeling inside me.”
Ten months later, O’Brien was laid off.
“He was so upset,” said Esa, who ran into his fighter a week later.
“Once I got laid off, he saw me a week later and we looked at each other and we just knew that we were gonna train hard and win it this year,” said O’Brien.
Esa gave him an ultimatum.
“I said are you sure? I don’t have time to play around.”
“I’m serious this time and I don’t care what comes up, I want to win the Golden Gloves,” O’Brien answered. “All I dream about is putting those gloves around my neck.”
If it sounds like a Hollywood movie playing out, it gets better, as O’Brien roared through the tournament, defeating Joshua Cook in the 141-pound finals. He had his gloves.
“I came back the second time with a vengeance and it was a surreal feeling, it was amazing,” said O’Brien. That could have been the perfect ending to the story, but he’s not done yet. Now he wants to tackle the pros, and he didn’t think twice about it.
“I knew boxing was my life,” he said. “If I could get a pillow and could sleep in my gym, I’d sleep in the ring. (Laughs) That’s my home and there’s no place where I’ve ever felt more right in my life. It may sound cliché, but this is truly what I was born to do. I know I’ll be wrapped up in boxing for the rest of my life.”
Of course, now the real work begins, and Esa doesn’t mince words when it comes to the difference O’Brien will be facing going from the amateurs to the pros.
“In the amateurs he was a crowd pleaser because his boxing ability wasn’t really there,” said Esa. “It was more that he was in boxing shape. He was fit and the other fighters weren’t. I broke his butt and we worked hard on conditioning, and I told him if you’re in condition, you’re gonna win because the other guy’s gonna gas out. And that’s usually what happens. In the amateurs, guys jump rope for conditioning and that’s not how you get in shape. You really have to work hard.”
Esa’s got him putting in the hours, and while he handles the boxing end of things, he’s also rounded out O’Brien’s training with a holistic trainer, Chu Lin, and a strength and conditioning coach. Back when Esa was fighting, such additions to training would be blasphemous, but the old-school trainer has opened himself up to new-school methods.
“I never liked the strength and conditioning and the stretching, you’re right, but over the years I’ve taken classes at the college and I realized that stretching and strength and conditioning is such a big part of every sport,” he said. “Felix Erazo, who’s our strength and conditioning coach, does some off the wall stuff and it’s really cool. The only thing we butted heads with was that he said ‘you don’t have to run so much.’ I went ‘stop right there. You can strength and condition all you want, but you tell him one more time that he don’t have to run, and I’m gonna kick you where the sun don’t shine.’ (Laughs) He has to run like a rabbit, day in and day out.”
He’s similarly no nonsense when it comes to the style he wants his charge to display when the bell rings.
“As he turns into a pro, there are two kinds of fighters – pitchers and catchers,” said Esa. “I’m not looking for a catcher. I’m looking for a guy who’s going to get in there like a (Floyd) Mayweather. He can give me fights, he wins, and no marks, no nothing. You’re looking for longevity. You don’t want 10 fights, 20 fights, and you quit because you’ve been in wars. Wars are not the way to go. You have to be in and out, get your stuff off and you move. That’s what you do.”
It’s clear that this isn’t a business opportunity for Esa. This one is personal, and you can hear it in his voice. He’s knows how the business is and he’s seen it eat up young, ambitious fighters like O’Brien. Rest assured that he’s going to do everything in his power to make sure his charge doesn’t make the same mistakes he did.
“We all make our own destiny, and I figured that if I’m here, because of all the dumb luck that happened to me, I think I can steer him in the right direction and he can stay away from all the idiots and all the problems that occurred when I was growing up and trying to make it,” said Esa. “Hopefully it will be a good thing for him, and I’m gonna do everything I can. I think we make a really good team together and I’m gonna try my best to make this happen for him.”
“Me and him are really close and we have a special relationship,” adds O’Brien. “I truly feel blessed that me and Lou know each other and that we kinda fell into the path that we’re on. I tell him all the time ‘I think this is what we were meant for Louie.’”
Despite his youthful enthusiasm, O’Brien is no naïve kid jumping into the shark tank. He knows what awaits him, but at the same time he wants to bring back something the fight game has lost to an extent over the years.
“You have to go back to the (John F.) Kennedy quote, ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’ Every time I talk to a boxer, a hundred times over, they always tell me, it’s a business, it’s a business. I understand that, and I have a great business sense. But boxing is giving you that opportunity to make money that most people would never see in their lifetime. I want to live comfortably, I want to be able to help my family and help people that are in need, and obviously money is the key to all that, but boxing needs us right now and you can’t just look at it as a business. I was at some fights the other night and three fighters went up against tomato cans. Yeah, their fans came and saw you, but they want to see a fight. Everybody knows how the building of careers goes, and you don’t have to go up against the number one ranked in the world at the start of your career, but not against guys your grandmother can beat either. Everybody wants to keep that zero, but you can’t be afraid of having a loss in that column. You gotta be able to give fight fans what they truly want because they’re the ones who give you these opportunities.”
Those are the words every fight fan wants to hear and every manager probably cringes at. For the managers, the object is to make the most money for the least risk. For fighters like O’Brien the greater the risk, the greater the glory. So the real fight is who wins the tug of war? Esa’s not looking that far ahead. His job is to get his fighter ready for March 5th, and then the fight after that, the one after, and so on and so on.
“This is like going to school,” said Esa. “You go to school two, three, four years, and when you’re done, you’re gonna have money to live the rest of your life if everything works out. You just gotta put the time in, and if you don’t shame on you.”
“But I really think this kid has a chance of really going somewhere if he keeps going the way he is,” he continues. “His work ethic alone is huge. He comes in the gym and gives it two hundred percent every single day, and there’s not many guys who do that.”
That’s because this isn’t a job for O’Brien; this is his life.
“I wrestled since I was in the sixth grade and I was always an above-500 wrestler, but I partied,” he recalled. “I was the kid that everybody came up to and said ‘hey, what are we doing tonight?’ Now that boxing is my life, Lou saw my focus and my dedication in the Golden Gloves. He knows that there’s not a question in my mind. In the Golden Gloves, I even swore off girls for seven months. (Laughs) As much as they’re great to have by your side, at the end of the day, it’s just a distraction. He knows where I’m at right now as a person and what I want, and he really likes my work ethic and my dedication. He keeps me in check and I know he’ll be the first one to say ‘hey, what the hell are you doing?’ I’m doing nothing but boxing – sleeping, eating, and drinking it.”
Brand new, eh? There’s no feeling like it.