Sweden’s Linn Sandstrom has warned Most Valuable Promotions that they made a mistake in giving her so long to prepare for Saturday’s fight with Jasmine Artiga.
She and Artiga are to contest the American’s WBA flyweight title at the Caribe Royale in Orlando, Florida, on the undercard of Yankiel Rivera-Angelino Cordova.
Artiga, 33, represents the first southpaw of Sandstrom’s career on the occasion of her 17th professional fight, but spent weeks travelling and sparring southpaws before starting her typical fight preparations and consequently will enter the ring 16 long weeks after starting the process of getting into shape.
She first travelled to Tokyo, Japan to spar the WBO super flyweight champion Mizuki Hiruta in her home city, then paid for Hiruta to join her in Sandstrom’s home of Sydney, Australia, before training alongside her and sparring her throughout their training camp in LA.
That earlier in August Hiruta successfully defender her title in victory over Mexico’s Naomy Cardenas Gomez perhaps presents Sandstrom and her trainer Tony Del Vecchio with further cause to be confident in her chances of success, even with the knowledge that they have travelled to challenge Artiga so close to the champion’s home of Tampa.
“In the beginning I hated it,” she told BoxingScene. “I was probably the most horrible boxer on the planet against a southpaw – horrible. That was 18 weeks ago. Now I bloody love it. I don’t mind if my next three opponents after this one are southpaws – I love it so much. But sometimes you’ve just got to trust the process.
“Very [disheartening at the start]. But I thought to myself, ‘You know what – their team is doing a big mistake giving us 18 weeks to prepare’. We have a huge team of sponsors behind us who are able to finance everything to get the best resources around us. It was a big mistake on their part – we’re super ready.
“If I’m going to go into a world-title fight and never fought a southpaw before, then I want to be preparing alongside the best.
“It was in stages [when I started to adjust]. But when I started hitting my main sparring partner hard, that was, to me, ‘Okay – I can actually go in and fight like a warrior against a southpaw – I’ve got this’.
“It’s been really gruelling, but we’ve been fighting all around the world, and when I haven’t been fighting I’ve been travelling all around the world for camps as well. It’s definitely the longest [camp I’ve been in] – we’ve sparred over 300 rounds. It’s been a big camp. I’m going into this fight a massive underdog, but we’re here to spoil the party.”
Del Vecchio, also, has been absent from his home in Sydney – a reality that is a reflection of his confidence in Sandstrom’s chances of victory as the underdog – and he explained: “Lynn had never really seen a southpaw before. Unbeknownst to a lot of people we knew about the fight 18 weeks ago. We had a couple of southpaws at home – total, rank amateurs; kids in my gym – but we knew that wouldn’t be the level we’d need. We started with them; Mizuki Hiruta, we went to Tokyo, sparred with her there. It started working really well; we decided to bring Mizuki out to Sydney for two weeks. It’s four weeks; now we’re looking really good; she’s really feeling good with a southpaw. Mizuki had a fight, so we met her in LA and did the whole camp with her in LA, as well as a Mexican girl from LA – there just wasn’t good sparring in Australia.
“The very first jab Lynn looked at me as if to say, ‘What the fuck?’. Two weeks later, 60 rounds in, it was, ‘This is awesome’. It’s been good.”
It was feedback from the great Freddie Roach, and Marvin Somodio – another of the trainers at the Wild Card in LA – that they have both particularly come to relish.
“We’ve been mainly in Knockouts, in Manny Robles’ gym, and then training a little bit at the Wild Card as well,” Sandstrom explained. “Mixing between the gyms a little bit; getting the best sparring and the best training possible.
“[Roach] actually stopped me on the way out and was like, ‘Wow – you’re looking really good, I can see what you and your coach are doing, it looks like you’ve got a good game plan’. We got really good feedback. My biggest critic is Tony. He’d never say a good word. Having someone give credit – yeah, it’s cool.”
“Marvin said, ‘I like what you’re doing – it’s making perfect sense’,” Del Vecchio said. “I’ve known Freddie for a while – this time we were there for a good little while – and he said, ‘Your girl can box, man’. He’d seen her before – three, four, five years ago – and seen her being green. She’s obviously made a lot of improvements since then.When someone of that calibre, and Marvin, and three or four other coaches in there looking Artiga up and coming in and saying, ‘You’re really on track here’, that’s testament to the extra four or five weeks we put in just to get her used to southpaws.”
“I don’t see it as a sacrifice – it’s just something we have to do in order to be at this level,” Sandstrom added. “But you leave your family behind; we’ve been in camp for 16 weeks; I was supposed to go home for summer. You spend a lot of time away and all you did is sleep, box, eat, repeat. But it’s what it takes.
“We arrived a week ago [in Orlando]. It’s a little bit of a time difference from LA – three hours – and the humidity’s more.”
Neither were present, as stipulated by MVP, at the fight-week press conference staged to promote Saturday evening.
“I’m overlooked, that’s for sure,” Sandstrom said. “I’ve never actually gone in being an ‘away’ fighter; I’ve always been the ‘A’ fighter.
“It’s actually kind of nice. Normally fight weeks are so busy; so much media; now I get to focus on the fights and stuff. I don’t really need to worry about the rest of the bullshit. She keeps saying, ‘I’m coming for one thing, blood; they’re not prepared’. I’ve heard a lot of fighters say that and they end up being the one losing. I’ve only got one thing on my mind – she can have all the blood she wants but I’m taking the belt. [But] I actually do think she takes me seriously.
“This is an opportunity for me to show what I’m made of. It’s just me and Tony – I don’t have a promoter guiding me or paying for my fights. When I become a world champion, I can decide whether I want to go with a promoter or not. After this – I’m not overlooking her or anything, but I already know what I want to do. I want to go back to Sweden – I want to fight there.”
“She’s strong,” Del Vecchio added of Artiga. “Her father’s a former weightlifter; she’s a weightlifter; loves CrossFit. But that’s if we allow her to get in a clench with us; to put the pressure on in a way that the strength will matter. I look at the size of her muscles – she’s only gone 10 [rounds] once – and in that 10, around [round] five or six, she fell off.”
