Demetrius Andrade Focused: My Time's Gonna Come

By Thomas Gerbasi

Demetrius Andrade may not own the WBO junior middleweight title anymore, but life really hasn’t changed for the Rhode Island native.

“People that know boxing know how it goes,” he said. “People that don’t, they really don’t even know if I lost the belt or not. They’re still like ‘Hey champ, hey champ.’”

He laughs, not willing to let the past two years get him down or deter him from his path. The way he sees it, he’s back now, he’s got a big fight coming up against Willie Nelson on June 11, and with a win, he’ll have a chance to take back a version of the world title that he never lost in the ring.

“The WBO treated me well, the belt was nice,” Andrade said. “I was supposed to get some rings for defending the title, but it seems like that ain’t gonna be the case. WBC, here I come.”

The fight against Nelson in Verona, New York will earn the winner a shot at newly-crowned WBC champion Jermell Charlo, and if the man with his hand raised is Andrade, it will be a new beginning for the 2008 United States Olympian, who was on the fast track to stardom before boxing got in the way.

Unbeaten in 22 pro fights, Andrade defeated Vanes Martirosyan for the vacant WBO 154-pound crown in November of 2013 and successfully defended the belt seven months later with a seventh-round stoppage of Brian Rose. Then everything stalled as Andrade didn’t get the fights he wanted while dealing with promotional issues. It isn’t what he expected life as a world champion to be like.

“I thought that people wanted to fight whoever had the belt,” he said. “In my younger days, that’s what I thought everybody wanted. The belt was what brought you the popularity and the fortune. No disrespect to any of the organizations, but that’s clearly not the case anymore. It definitely sucks that I was calling out Canelo (Alvarez), Charlo, Miguel Cotto, James Kirkland at one point. I called those guys out and I couldn’t get these fights, but everybody else could.”

And as the junior middleweight world turned, Andrade sat and watched it go by, with a mess surrounding a proposed December 2014 bout against Charlo keeping him on the sidelines and eventually costing him his belt due to inactivity. His reaction as the rest of his divisional rivals kept fighting?

“Damn, damn, damn, damn.”

Andrade eventually returned, beltless but unbowed, stopping Dario Fabian Pucheta in two rounds last October. And with his past now in the past, he can look forward to fighting Nelson in a Showtime-televised bout that should showcase the fighter so many had high hopes for.

“I go in there and I fight and I put my best foot forward all the time,” he said. “But some people bring out the tools that you might not use on other opponents. And that’s what really brings the best out of me. Willie Nelson is gonna be a fighter like that. He’s a straight up fighter who likes to come in and let his hands go. It’s definitely going to be an action-packed fight, but only the smartest survives.”

And whether you call him “champ” or “the uncrowned champ,” he has no preference. He’s moved on, knowing that while the belt is nice, it’s not everything these days.

“I tell people that the world title doesn’t actually identify me,” Andrade said. “It’s nice to be the best and also have a title at the same time, but clearly nowadays the title doesn’t really mean anything. You got the title one minute, then you don’t, but eventually they’ll still want to fight you because they know you’re the best, with or without it.”

June 11 restarts Andrade’s quest to be the best. And though the last few years have been trying, he expects that when all is said and done, that adversity will only make the final story better.

“Muhammad Ali almost went to jail and lost three years of his career,” he said. “Sugar Ray Leonard had retina problems. Bernard Hopkins went to jail. Every one of those legends had some type of adversity they had to go through to get to where they are now. And this happens to be my story. This kid went from here to here and ended up sitting for two years and lost everything, and now look where he’s at. It’s about having faith and never giving up. Life is a fight, so I’m not gonna give up. My time’s gonna come, and when it comes, it’s gonna be a happy moment for me.”