By Mitch Abramson

Gary Russell Jr. moves on after scare in Beijing

Perhaps no other boxer came to epitomize the overall confusion, dysfunction and utter failure of the U.S. Olympic boxing team in Beijing more than Gary Russell Jr.

A favorite to medal at 119 pounds, Russell collapsed the night before a mandatory weigh-in and was declared unable to compete by USA Boxing coach Dan Campbell. The official ruling was that he failed to show up for the weigh-in the next morning.

But Russell’s father and trainer, Gary Sr., scoffed at the notion that he lost the fight on the scales.

On Thursday, Campbell, who led the team to its worse performance in U.S. Olympic boxing history, was asked to step down from his position by Jim Millman, CEO of USA Boxing, and he agreed to retire.

Campbell was roundly criticized for his training methods and autocratic ways, and again in the situation with Gary Jr., who fainted from apparent dehydration, he has come under fire.

An outspoken critic of Campbell, Gary Sr. called the decision to remove Gary Jr. an act of betrayal and incompetence and perhaps even grounds for a lawsuit. Gary Sr. even went so far as to claim that the decision to remove his son may have cost Gary Jr. several endorsement deals with local businesses back home in Capitol Heights, Maryland, and may have an impact at the negotiating table when he turns pro.

Nearly a month after the U.S. boxing team won just a bronze medal and plummeted to depths never seen before by an American contingent, Gary Sr. was still seething over what happened to his son.

“They were saying that he lost on the scale,” Gary Sr. said. “He never touched the scale. So what was a medical decision? They just pulled him out of the tournament. They never even gave him a chance to make the weight. I still don’t understand it. It was like they didn’t care and they wanted to move on.”

In any event, what happened to Gary Jr., 20, in Beijing in early August was disheartening. Gary, whom Sugar Ray Leonard called the closest thing to himself, was expected to medal.

But it never happened.

Attempting to drop a pound the night before the weigh-in, Gary Jr. went jogging with a friend, according to a story in the Washington Post written by Les Carpenter who was in Beijing. Gary Jr. pulled on a “vinyl sauna jacket,” the story said, and began his run, but soon noticed that he wasn’t producing any sweat. He took off his jacket and his friend suggested that he go back to the hotel and rest.

Instead, Russell went to work the mitts with assistant boxing coach Robert Martin. Gary Jr. couldn’t generate any sweat doing that either, so he agreed to go back to his room and rest briefly. When he rose to resume his workout, he blacked out.

The story also said that Russell was probably unconscious for maybe ten minutes and was “thrashing his arms, rolling on his side and demanding food and water,” once the doctors arrived.

He was then given “three bottles of fluids and cookies” and was covered with damp towels and ice to chill his body. Soon thereafter, his weight shot up to 123 pounds and according to Gary Sr., Gary Jr. then began to start throwing up involuntarily.

During our phone interview, Gary Sr. said that his son would have had ample time to recuperate because he wasn’t scheduled to fight until five days after the weigh-in and that he was feeling better just hours after he fainted.

His son should have been given a chance to weigh-in and compete, he said.

“I feel the staff and Dan Campbell had knowledge of what was going on and that they handled the situation terribly,” Gary Sr. said. “I really felt betrayed. I never even received a call letting me know how my son was doing. I was staying in a different section of China. He was sequestered in the Olympic village, and you couldn’t get in. I had no knowledge of what happened to Gary until later.”

Gary Jr. will most likely turn pro in 2009 and put the experience of being an Olympian behind him. Despite being a dazzling talent, the Russells have had discussions with only one promoter and that was Gary Shaw. Gary Sr. says that it’s possible that interest in his son has been tempered because of the incident in Beijing and because promoters and managers simply don’t have his contact information.

It appears that only two U.S. Olympic boxers have signed with a manager or a promoter since the Olympics concluded. One of them, Deontay Wilder is the team’s least experienced fighter who captured the team’s only medal, a bronze in Beijing at heavyweight. He announced on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights last week that he had made a deal with manager Shelly Finkel. Wilder has since signed a deal with Golden Boy Promotions.

“I’ve been around him for the past nine months and I believe that he has tremendous potential,” Finkel said in a phone interview of Wilder. “He’s a little green, but he’s 6-7 and in four years if everything goes ok, he could be knocking on the door to a heavyweight championship.”

It was also reported that U.S. Olympic middleweight Shawn Estrada recently signed with Bravo Boxing Management, a newly-formed boxing management group based in Los Angeles headed by Arnulfo Bravo, who is himself a former U. S. National amateur flyweight champion, and Los Angeles attorney Eric Scholnick.

According to Julie Goldsticker, head of media relations for USA Boxing, most of the deals for the Olympians in 2004 took place in November and December and that the 2008 class may have to be a bit more proactive in making connections with promoters, she told me in a phone interview.

These days, Gary Jr. is back in the gym training. He might have shoulder surgery to repair a lingering injury, and he will probably move up to featherweight and perhaps even heavier as a pro.

Gary Sr. considered suing USA Boxing to recoup on sponsorship deals that were dependent on Gary Jr. winning a medal, but he decided against it. 

He also worries that promoters and managers will use the fainting episode in Beijing against him when it comes to negotiations.

“There were so many businesses that were going to sponsor him and all that stuff is shut down now,” he said. “But I think we’ll get what we’re worth in the end.”

He said that his son has what it takes to be a successful pro, from being “clean cut without a lot of ghosts in his closet,” to being able “to articulate himself.” Then there’s his fighting ability, a tantalizing combination of talent and speed. “He can knock you out a few different ways,” his father said. 

More on U.S. Olympic Coach Dan Campbell stepping down

Even after losing his job as U.S. Olympic team boxing coach on Thursday, Dan Campbell remained defiant.

Campbell, 65, was told that he could either quit or be fired, and he chose to retire.
But not before he fired a few salvos in the direction of the boxers he coached and the beleaguered organization, USA Boxing, which has fallen on hard times and still remains under probation from the United States Olympic Committee for nearly a decade of mismanagement.

“People need to start working together over there,” Campbell said in a phone interview Thursday night. “But it’s not going to happen. There’s too many people with too many ideas and until the organization decides to take one idea and try to build on it, it’s not going to work. You have to build instead of starting all over again every time something doesn’t work, which is the way they do things.”

After leading the same group of boxers to a second place finish in the World Championships, Campbell could muster just a single medal, a bronze. It was the worse performance in U.S. Olympic boxing history, and Campbell knew what was coming.

A longtime national and international coach, Campbell came under fire for his training methods from a number of boxers on the U.S. team, and was criticized for his autocratic, my-way-or-the-highway mentality.

“It was like almost a different team [in the Olympics],” Campbell said when compared to the team in the World Championships. “They were still a very well-conditioned team, but I think that psychologically the 2008 team was out in left field and I knew that going there.”

This U.S. team was made up of mostly teenagers and college age kids, and Campbell clashed with most of them right away, especially over the residency program, which took the boxers away from their home and personal coached and placed them in Colorado Springs for nearly a year. The poor showing in Beijing coupled with divisiveness of the team made Campbell an easy scapegoat.

“That’s what I expected from them,” Campbell said of getting fired. “It’s not like I was blindsided. They didn’t want me in that job to begin with. They had told me that all along that if things weren’t going well, then I was out. The majority of people at USA Boxing didn’t want me there anyway.”

Asked what has to be done to get USA Boxing headed in the right direction, he said:

“Until we deal with the variety of the problems that we have, which includes our kids growing up and acting in a mature fashion, we’re going to continue to have these same problems. But I don’t blame anyone. If there’s one person that you blame, you blame the head coach. It comes down to one person, and that’s the coach. USA Boxing moves forward and one person has to bite the dust, and that’s me.”

Closing Remarks:

…Promoter Bob Arum said in a phone interview that his scouts have identified three boxers that Top Rank is interested in working with from the Olympic Games. None of them are from the United States team and not one captured a medal in Beijing.

“We make a tremendous investment when we take on a kid,” Arum said. “We build his career, we hope to make him one of our stars like we did with Oscar and Floyd and Cotto and now with Vanes Martirosyan. It takes a lot of time and effort and slots, and we didn’t see anybody that would justify that kind of investment. There are three guys who we think are going to be unbelievable.”

…fight manager Shelly Finkel recently signed U.S. heavyweight bronze medalist Deontay Wilder, and he might not stop there. Finkel also named as persons of interest from the Beijing Games: Raynell Williams, Demetrius Andrade and the gold medalist from the Dominican Republic at light welterweight, Feliz Diaz.

…Arum said that Miguel Cotto will be ready to resume his career at the beginning of 2009 in a “stay-busy” type of fight. With Antonio Margarito squaring off against Joshua Clottey Nov. 1 in Las Vegas, Arum envisions a possible rematch of Margarito and Cotto around June, assuming that both win. On what it will take for Cotto to even think about beating Margarito if the two meet for a second time, Arum said that Cotto’s conditioning and strength, as well as an overall line of attack, would have to improve.

“Not having a real strategy, just going back against the ropes where he got hurt,” Arum counted as his blunders. “There are a lot of things that need to be corrected.”

Will Cotto be the same fighter after such a punishing and debilitating loss?

“You never know,” Arum said. “I sort of think that he will be, but you never know. Sometimes a defeat like that ruins a fighter.”

…Also fighting on that Nov. 1 card in Las Vegas is Yuri Foreman, an aspiring rabbi from Brooklyn and undefeated junior middleweight whom Arum also promotes. Arum has had difficulty selling the powers-that-be at HBO on Foreman, who has managed to befuddle all of his opponents by employing a moving, tactically careful style. Foreman is 25-0 with eight knockouts and hasn’t lost too many rounds in his career.

“We’ll keep trying,” Arum said of convincing the networks to buy into Foreman, who just turned 28. “I think he’s a marvelous boxer.”

As an aside, and perhaps as a commentary on how information is dispersed in boxing, Foreman found out that he was fighting on Nov. 1 in Las Vegas from Googling his name and scanning a web site. Foreman often checks out message boards and doesn’t always find the reviews of his fights complimentary.

“I go on the forums and read that people find my fights boring, that I hit like a girl,” he said. “I wish I could find those same people and punch them in the face and they could see if I still hit like a girl. I try not to pay attention to that kind of stuff. There are people who say that kind of stuff and then there are people who like my style. Everyone has an opinion.”

He surmised that the people most critical of his style probably never had a competitive fight and don’t know what it feels like to earn a living in a field where the participants often take their work home with them in the form of bumps and bruises and long-term effects. 

“I usually live day to day and I don’t look too far into the future,” Foreman said. “But sometimes I do look in the future and I don’t want to suffer brain injury or be stuttering from taking too many punches when I’m older. Some people want you to fight like Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti, but my style is for people who like a chess match and their boxing a little more advanced.”

…Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin is scheduled to fight Sept. 17 in New Hampshire in what will most likely be his first time headlining an event, his promoter, Cedric Kushner said. Kushner also mentioned that David Tua might see some action by the end of the year.

… Another lasting image of USA Boxing in the 2008 Olympics is that of Rau’Shee Warren, the team’s senior member, dancing around as time ran out on his quest to medal in Beijing, even though he was trailing on points in his first round match. There were rumors that Warren might stay in the amateurs with the help of funding from USA Boxing, but it appears that Warren, who fought at 112 in the Olympics, will make the jump to the pros, according to his trainer, Mike Stafford. He will most likely campaign at 115 and 118 in the professional ranks.

“Right now he’s trying to see what direction he wants to go in terms of signing with a manager or a promoter,” Stafford said. “We were hoping to get some type of medal heading into the pros being that he’s in a pretty small weight class, but I think we’re going to reconcile a lot of those fears when people see how exciting he is.”

…Talk about a dream deferred: Phillip Jackson-Benson, a two-time Golden Gloves winner was supposed to make his professional debut on Aug. 6 on a Lou DiBella promoted card at B.B. King’s in Manhattan, but the unthinkable happened. The morning of the fight Jackson-Benson, 22, received a call from his manager telling him that his opponent, Robert Harris, failed an eye-exam and wouldn’t make it. The middleweight match was cancelled and his debut, which he said was to be televised, was scuttled.

“I wanted to lie in bed all day and sleep it off and wake up and hope that it was a bad dream,” said Jackson-Benson who lost a hotly contested Golden Gloves final to Danny Jacobs in 2007. “I was so upset. I didn’t want to come out of my house.”

He did and attended the show that night and to his amazement found Robert Harris, the same guy he was supposed to fight, taking in the action.

“There he was watching the fight,” he said. “Meanwhile, he can’t see. It just didn’t add up. I went over to him to ask him what had happened. I kind of played it off but I was really hurt inside. My pro debut was going to be televised in my hometown. How many times does a guy in his pro debut get to fight on television? Never. It doesn’t happen.”
Jackson-Benson may have a chance to even the score on Oct. 22 when he is scheduled to fight at B.B. King’s against…possibly the same Robert Harris from Youngstown, Ohio…Also on that same card is the return of Gary Stark Jr. and the pro debut of heavyweight Tor Hamer.

…Antonio Midyette, a local businessman and entrepreneur from Queens, is promoting the Metropolitan Boxing Championships at the Apollo Theater in Harlem on November 15. Midyette, who aspires to promote professionally and has been dubbed, the “young Don King,” has been trying for years to bring boxing to the Apollo. Midyette, who also works as a chief ring inspector for USA Boxing-Metro, is a portrait of determination, having suffered three different strokes and having had to teach himself how to walk and talk each time.

Mitch Abramson covers boxing for the New York Daily News. Any advice or comments can be directed to mitchaaaa@aol.com .