Hi Breadman,
I pray God is blessing and continues to bless you, your family and the fans of your mailbag and their families. Reading your last mailbag and what you had to say about James Toney was interesting to me because I’m curious – have you ever started out hating a fighter as a fan and then become a fan of that fighter? I used to hate James Toney and I was a Roy Jones fanatic. I thought Toney was vastly overrated, based on the Tiberi fight and how he struggled with Reggie Johnson. There was no doubt in my mind that Jones was superior and would beat him when they fought. I just wasn’t impressed by him at all, but that all changed after he fought Iran Barkley and Prince Charles Williams. I thought both of those guys would beat him and he took both of them to school and I’ve fallen in love with the guy’s performances ever since. I watch him and appreciate him more now than when he was an active fighter, and I don’t even think about Roy Jones anymore. Toney’s performances vs Jirov and others have made him one of my all-time favorite fighters. It is weird how your feelings can change for a fighter. Have you experienced that with any particular fighter?
BG from Philly
PS: One fighter who took a dive in my opinion was Bruce Seldon when he fought Mike Tyson. The punch went directly over his head, and he fell out like he had been shot. I don’t think he took a bribe. I think he didn’t want to deal with the trauma of fighting Tyson once he got in the ring with him and was overwhelmed with anxiety and fear.
Bread’s response: I’ve never hated a fighter. But there have been fighters I wasn’t crazy about at first, and then as time went on I started to appreciate their greatness. I would say that Tommy Hearns and Terry Norris were the two that stand out the most. I always knew Hearns was the truth, but because I loved Ray Leonard I felt like I didn’t appreciate Hearns enough early. But after I started training fighters I realized how special Hearns was. I realized that getting KO’d and not showing any remnants of being gun-shy is special. Hearns was KO’d and he would come back like nothing happened. He was also an anywhere, anybody type of fighter. The dude jumped from 154 to 175 to win his third title. That’s considered a big deal today, but he did that in 1987 without modern sports science.
Terry Norris didn’t jump weight but I respected him for not being gun shy either. When I was younger I looked at Norris’s flaws and I thought he was a dirty fighter. But Norris was KO’d brutally by Julian Jackson and Simon Brown, and he remained a killer. Again, that’s not an easy thing to do once you get to the top level. So it wasn’t a lack of appreciation for their skills. It was me evolving with my thought process and understanding how hard it is to comeback and be a killer after being KO’d in big fights.
Brother Bread,
Hope all is good with you and the family these days. I just saw the news about the untimely passing of one Mr Victor Conte of SNAC, and I saw that you paid your respects and mentioned that you guys talked somewhat regularly. What I wanted to know is, with your strong stance on PEDs that you regularly mention, how did you come to be so friendly with somebody who’d been so integral in compromising the integrity of sports? Did he ever talk to you about his regrets about his involvement in PEDs and his desire to make it right? Do you think he was truly reformed? What was he like as a man behind the scenes? And what do you think his legacy will ultimately be in sports?
Bread’s response: In December of 2013 at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, Julian Williams was fighting Orlando Lora. At the weigh-in I was preparing Julian’s rehydration and I heard a raspy voice say ‘Hello’ to me. It was Victor . He then walked over and asked me what I was doing. I told him preparing for my fighter’s rehydration. He seemed to like that. He told me his name was Victor Conte and he was working with Shawn Porter, who was going for his first title versus Devon Alexander. He told me he would like to work with me and Julian, and we exchanged numbers.
A few weeks later we started to correspond. I directly asked him about his past indiscretions and he directly answered me. He told me he was a consultant for several athletes, and when he first entered track and field he was on the up and up. He claimed that after a time period he noticed that all of the top sprinters were cheating. So eventually he went over to the dark side. He even told me the names of the athletes he supplied PEDS to. Again, I was very direct, and so was he.
He went on to tell me that he cheated for two or three years; he got caught and he went to jail. He told me he wanted to do more good than he did bad. He told me he wanted to make amends and he asked me do I believe in second chances? I told him I did believe in second chances.
So I asked him about Nonito Donaire, who was the reigning fighter of the year, and he did it under 365/24/7 VADA observation, under Victor’s consultation. Victor told me that he wanted to be fully transparent, because that’s the only way people will believe in him and give him a second chance. I told him that Donaire was one of my favorite fighters. He liked that too. He explained to me that he advised Donaire to not run long miles, but to only do explosive drills for an extended period, and it would simulate a fight better. He explained to me his modern theory on training fighters.
Then we moved on to our original point of correspondence – Julian Williams. He told me the first thing he does with a fighter is test their blood to see if there are deficiencies. So he got Julian’s blood tested, and he noticed that he was low in his white blood cell counts and zinc. He asked me did Julian get rashes or sick when he was cutting weight? I told him ‘Yes’. And he explained it was because of the lack of zinc and low white blood cell count. So he moved me with his knowledge, because I couldn’t understand why Julian kept catching colds close to fights and why he would get a small rash on his face during the same time period. I knew I was getting good information that would help me as a trainer. I also learned how to read the blood test, which is written in symbols…
But there were two things that impressed me the most. One was I asked him how much money he charged – he told me he doesn’t charge. He just wanted to help. I can’t speak for anyone else but as far as I know Victor never charged anyone. And I know for a fact he never charged me a dime. Not one dime. He paid for every meal I ever ate around him. He paid for every flight we ever took to the Bay Area to train. He paid for every hotel room. And from my experience being born and raised in Philadelphia I know that drug dealers don’t work for free. So that moved me. For the record, from 2013 when I first met him, up until his recent passing, Victor Conte has never once asked me for money.
The second thing that moved me, and the most important, was Victor pushed VADA. As we now know today, VADA is the standard as far as testing in combat sports. USADA was the big company in place before VADA. But VADA cost less, tested for more things, and they caught more fighters. That impressed me because it was obvious fighters were cheating, but no one was getting caught on a regular basis on USADA. When VADA came along that changed… So from my perspective, I felt Victor was making amends. I felt he was doing the right thing. I believed him when he said he was a different person to the guy who cheated in the early 2000s. And I loved that he pushed VADA, because I believe Margaret Goodman is a person of high integrity, and she runs VADA. Even fighters who don’t like Victor will go to VADA if they suspect their opponent is cheating. And on top of that, Victor would give certain fighters the money to pay for VADA if they wanted extra testing, or if they weren’t making crazy money in their fight purse.
I know Victor Conte was not for everybody. I know he had a past. I know he could be pushy. But I don’t want to convince anyone that Victor was a good guy. But at the same time, I don’t want anyone to try to convince me he wasn’t a good guy. He was very good to me. He taught me a lot about sports science. He was very generous to me and my fighters. And I believe him when he told me he was sorry about his past indiscretions. He literally told me he was sorry. I don’t care who believed him or not I believed him. Hopefully he did enough to feel comfortable with himself before he passed. I know he dam sure tried.
In closing, my mom used to tell me that when someone feels they are about to pass away, they make their “rounds”, meaning they start doing things and reaching out to people who meant a lot to them. One day a few months ago, I got a huge box of ZMA. Victor used to send me supplements when a fighter of mine that he sponsored had a fight. But this was different. He sent me about 15 containers of ZMA for no reason. I said to myself “His time is coming and he’s ‘making his rounds’”. I’m honored that he thought of me like that. RIP, Vic, I’m going to miss you calling me at 3am. You tried to make your wrongs right, and that’s all that a man can do at the end of the day.
Zuffa Boxing doesn’t even have a roster of fighters. They do not have a single fighter who’s a crossover star. Here’s my prediction: Zuffa Boxing will platform club-level fighters and use Paramount as a tool to pump misinformation into the world. The poor saps who only watch boxing on Paramount will think Dana White’s “WBS” title is really important. Everyone else will mock it. Dana White will eventually get bored of his club show and end it. Am I wrong to think that Zuffa Boxing will fail? Or do you think Dana White might have some tricks up his sleeve to make it work?
Bread’s response: I can’t say if you’re right or wrong. Zuffa Boxing just started. Why don’t you wait until they do a few shows before you predict failure? I don’t know enough about their company to predict failure. I don’t even know who’s their talent. I don’t know who their matchmakers are. I don’t know their pay scale. Those are very important things to consider before we start to say if the company will prosper or not. Let’s just see how things go…
Hi Mr Edwards,
Thank you for taking your time and responding to the mailbag. I don’t wanna be long but I think people are being to harsh on “Tank”. Tank came to the sport and got promoted by “Money” Mayweather, who was all about getting the bag – other than the legacy to him, if it made financial sense then he fought. Shakur Stevenson is trying to fight the best because he’s being groomed by “Bud” Crawford. Do you think Tank is still following what he learned from Money Mayweather? Gervonta was promoted by Mayweather Promotions when the Vasiliy Lomachenko fight made sense and when the idea of Four Kings was brought up, and Tank never fought any of those guys, while he was still a bigger name. I have another question – one boxer whom you’ve been wrong about is Bivol in the Canelo fight predictions and also in the Beterbiev fight. I wanna ask this – what is it that you see in Bivol that feels like he may have lost? What is the weakness in his boxing style, ‘cause I truly believe as a boxing coach and analyst there is something that you see on tape that you can exploit if you had a boxer fighting him?
Bread’s response: People are going to criticize polarizing figures. Tank is a polarizing figure. I’m assuming Floyd influenced Tank. But it’s not like Tank listens to everything Floyd says. They don’t even work together anymore. So I don’t know if it’s fair to blame Floyd for Tank’s behavior. Or to say if Tank is patterning his behavior after Floyd. At the end of the day Tank is 30 years old, and whatever he does, he’s accountable for.
I do remember some quotes about Loma. In fact, I remember Floyd saying publicly he was going to put Tank in with Loma. I don’t know what his intent was behind it, but the fight never materialized. From my perspective Tank and Floyd seemed very close. And when two people who are very close have a misunderstanding I’ve always been inclined to not take sides or have a strong opinion either way. They may reconcile their relationship someday and if you take a side, you will look foolish when they forgive each other.
I got my Bivol-Canelo prediction wrong. But I was actually correct about Beterbiev- Bivol. I think I underestimated Bivol for a few reasons. One was I never really studied him until Canelo picked him as an opponent. Watching a fighter fight, and studying him, is different. I assumed because Canelo picked him he was a safe pick. The second reason is when I did watch Bivol, I noticed he never really goes for the KO. He let several inferior opponents go the distance. I assumed that was because he wasn’t durable and he doesn’t like to put himself in harm’s way. Allowing inferior fighters to go the distance usually means that. I was wrong. In fact, Bivol is very durable. He took Canelo and Beterbiev’s punches for 36 rounds and was never dropped. I underestimated Bivol, because all around consummate boxers need great fighters in front of them to properly assess them. Bivol is a great boxer; he’s just not a killer. And that’s where I believe I went wrong while assessing him. It won’t happen again…
I didn’t really see any glaring weaknesses in Bivol’s style. I assumed there was weakness in his make up. Again, I was wrong. Bivol is one of them guys. He’s just conservative as far as going for KOs, which is his preference, and it’s actually what makes him great because he minimizes his opponent’s chances to hurt him.
Do you think MVP contradicted themselves by cancelling Jake Paul-Tank Davis because of an allegation when Jake Paul fought Mike Tyson, who has a rape conviction? I know Tank is a scumbag but it seems that everyone in boxing is, so why cancel the fight when Tank only had an allegation when Tyson had an actual conviction? Also, who do you think is a good replacement for Tank?
Bread’s response: I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment on pending legal cases. There is too much that can happen with the outcome. So let’s just let due process play out. As for Mike Tyson, he did his time. I wouldn’t say MVP contradicted themselves, because Tyson’s case was over 30 years ago and many things have changed since then as far as Tyson is concerned. Again, I don’t want to say too much about another sensitive topic. But I have zero issue with MVP promoting a Mike Tyson event.
A good replacement opponent would be Gabe Rosado or Edgar Berlanga. Rosado would be my first pick because he’s just that kind of fighter. He takes heavy smoke as the B side on short notice. Jake Paul says he’s serious about boxing. This fight would prove it. It’s a fair fight. Rosado may be past his prime but he’s still capable. He also won’t go in there and lay down. Edgar Berlanga is a good fight because he’s close to Paul’s size. He’s also marketable and has been on the big stage. With Berlanga being a recent Canelo opponent, it would be a good measuring stick to see where Paul is. I like both fights, and I believe both fights would be competitive both ways.
Hey Bread,
My name is Tearsyn McBride. I am a 15-yea-old boxer. I’m undergoing a problem with my boxing career. I’m trying to fight in the amateurs and become a great in this sport, but I feel like my mom doesn’t understand how important boxing is to me, and she feels like I just do boxing because of my cousin, who is a professional boxer. I’ve tried time and time again to stress to her how important boxing is to me, but I get nowhere. My question to you is how can I convince my mom to let me fight, and what advice do you have for me?
Bread’s response: This is a very unique question. Tell your mom to read this mailbag. First off, you have realize your mom loves you. And it’s unnatural for a parent to see their child get hurt. Parents are protectors by nature. So I understand her stance. But if this is something you really want to do, you’re going to have to prove to her you have a real future in boxing and this is just not some dangerous hobby. I don’t know if you’re the goods or not. But if you are, invite her to watch you spar or fight. And make a deal with her. If you don’t show your stuff, you will give it up. But if you put in work and impress her, then she can allow you to pursue boxing.
As a parent, we just want the best for our kids. We want them to pursue things they have a future in. I recently made my daughter give up basketball because she’s better in track and there are too many injuries in basketball that roll over into the track season. She’s very good in basketball but she’s exceptional in track. If it was the other way around, I would not have made her quit. I say that to say – show your mom you’re the real deal, and I believe it will make her compromise. Good luck, champ.
There has been some big news coming out over the last week or so in boxing. Errol Spence retiring for good; Canelo leaving Eddy Reynoso, and Tank Davis losing out on the Jake Paul fight because of domestic violence. What are your thoughts?
Bread’s response: With so much AI and all types of things surfacing that aren’t real I don’t even pay attention to most things that I see on social media. I didn’t hear or see Errol Spence announce his retirement so it’s hard to say. However, if he does retire, Errol was an excellent fighter. He was a world champion for six years and he unified a tough division. His only lost was to an all-time great in Terence Crawford. I would say there is a strong chance that Errol gets in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
I also don’t know if it’s true that Canelo left Reynoso. But again, if he did, I don’t know who else can train Canelo. After years of being with Reynoso, this won’t be an easy transition. I can’t even think of another trainer that would work for Canelo at this point. I’m curious to see who he goes to – if he did indeed leave Reynoso.
Tank losing out on the fight is real news. I saw a reputable site report that. All I can say is MVP has a right to move on from Tank. And Tank has a right to his due process. It’s really no right or wrong in this situation, because we don’t know the outcome of the lawsuit yet. I also read Jake Paul’s comments about Tank… so it leads me to believe that something else went on behind the scenes, because Tank has had several past indiscretions with the same type of accusations, and yet Paul was still going to fight Tank. So, again, let’s wait and see what happens. Both Tank and Paul are not shy with their words. So I expect them both to say some rough stuff about each other that may give us some clarity.
Bread, they are going to do a job on Lubin in Texas! I can tell by your comments that you know this. With Ryan Garcia showing Golden Boy no loyalty, Vergil Ortiz is their top guy. Unless Lubin can score a brutal KO, he’s not going to leave Texas with a win. My question to you is why did Lubin take this fight? He just won an IBF eliminator and he had a title shot set up. Why take a harder fight, for an interim title, in Ortzi’s hometown? I think this was a bad move. Do you have insight on this?
Bread’s response: There can be many things that went on behind the scenes. Maybe Bakhram Murtazaliev vs Lubin went to purse bids and Lubin didn’t like the number he was set to get. I’m going to guess that Lubin is being paid much more to fight Ortiz than he would have been to fight Bakhram. I’m also going to guess that winning the interim WBC belt gets Lubin back in line to fight Sebastian Fundora, who is the full champion of the WBC and a fighter Lubin wants to get revenge on – because Fundora beat him the first time they fought. I’ve also heard Lubin speak in the past, and he seems to value the WBC belt more than the others.
As far as Ortiz being a tougher fight than Bakhram goes, I don’t know. I think Ortiz is faster and quicker and has a higher work-rate. But Bakhram has better single shot power, and he’s a better counter puncher. So in terms of styles it depends on what your weakness is. If you’re a fighter who runs out of gas, you don’t want to face Ortiz. If you’re a fighter who has an issue taking a punch, you don’t want to face Bakhram.
Personally, the one thing I see is Vergil holds his hands up and in. And although they are similar in height, Lubin has a nice advantage as far as reach goes. With the way Ortiz holds his hands, I can see Lubin having lots of success with his jab. So I can see why, stylistically, Lubin picked Ortiz. But I want to say – this is just on paper. We don’t know how things will look when they line up in front of each other. This won’t be an easy assignment for Lubin. But it’s not an impossible assignment. Lubin can win this fight. But given the circumstances he’s going to have to be better than he ever has been before.
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