James Kirkland Prepares For Battle on HBO
By Steve Kim
It's hard to tell if James Kirkland, who faces Eromosele Albert this Saturday night as one of the featured performers on Gary Shaw's HBO-televised 'Night of Rising Stars', is preparing to be on 'American Gladiators', guerrilla warfare or a boxing match.
Unlike most fighters who get in their roadwork in the morning and then head off to the gym in the afternoon before calling it a day, Kirkland goes through a rigorous three-a-day training regimen.
And he's doing more than just running a few miles and then hitting the heavy bag and working the mitts. It's a workout routine that is more Bear Bryant and 'the Junction Boys' than Angelo Dundee or Chappie Blackburn.
"The morning time we do a lot of running, a lot of cardio, abs and sprints and stuff like that," explained Kirkland to Maxboxing. "Then we come back and we work the bags and heavy drills, like the rope and a little bit of sparring or whatever. Then the evening, I'm in sweatsuits and 30-second drills and then working with the kids."
Now this is where things get interesting with Kirkland, who is trained by noted female pugilist Ann Wolfe.
"They'll be in the ring, trying to fight me and I'll be moving around and not throwing back, making me use my feet, basically staying on point, being able to pivot and slip and knowing what to throw when they throw punches. Just stuff like that," explained the bullish jr. middleweight, who sports a mark of 21-0. He also is put through a period where not only does he not throw punches - his hands are not even in front of him. "You keep your hands behind your back and you work with your shoulders as far as blocking punches and sliding off and being able to work on angles. Your hands are behind your back but your shoulders are kinda up where it blocks your chin and stuff like that, being able to turn and keep moving side-to-side. Being able to move and adjust with no hands."
The naturally strong Kirkland says he does not touch weights. But to work on keeping his muscles strong and tight he pounds a sledgehammer on a tire and walks on his hands. And remember that game as a kid where the guy with the football would be tackled by everyone? Well, he has his own version of that.
"Like a lot of people they'll gang up on you, push you, knock you down on the ground and you gotta stay up," he explains. "It's like six, seven people, they try and tackle you and knock you down, hold your legs and your feet and you gotta stay up. Not that they're going to be doing that in the ring but when you get into a position, a person wants to grab, they want to hold you because of the power and the pressure you're putting on them and when it comes to that level, you've already been in the gym with people grabbing, trying to hold you, pull you down. So you push, knock their ass out."
In his last bout, a one round thriller against Allen Conyers, Kirkland would be sent to the canvas and battle back ferociously to stop Conyers at the end of the first round. Well, it turns out he also prepares himself in the art of falling down and getting up, in a drill that is much like 'up, downs' that are done by countless high school football teams across the
country.
'Up, downs' are exactly what they sound like. You fall down, and you get back up as quickly as you can. (It's more strenuous than you think.) He does this in 30 second increments, along with punching a heavy bag as hard as he can for 30 seconds, before resting for a half-minute and then starting again.
And unlike most fighters, he doesn't take Sunday off.
"The majority of the time I don't want to take that time off because anytime you get a break you want to eat, you want to eat something nice. But then if you eat something good, that puts pounds on," he laments. "When you're training, you ask any boxer, anytime you're training, anything you put in your body, you're going to add weight. I don't care what you do, you're going to add weight - even if you're eating the right way. You eat something, you're going to gain weight.
"I like to keep myself active at all times. And when we get closer to the fight, like me, I'm already on weight. So now I can still work on strengthening drills, I can work on a lot of stuff that I couldn't really work on because of my weight. I've been training for this fight since before my birthday, that's March 19th."
For this bout, Kirkland has set up camp in Austin, Texas, after spending some time last year in Southern California. Homesickness has nothing to do with it.
"It's not that," he claimed, "I feel comfortable out here, this is my home. I had to settle training camps out here because I had certain types of training camps and it didn't quite work out."
He was brought in as a sparring partner last summer for Sergio Mora as he prepped for Kassim Ouma. Kirkland even slept at Mora's gym in Montebello. He also spent some time in Oxnard with Robert Garcia and his crew of fighters. But the more traditional ways of training that existed in those gyms simply didn't suit him. It didn't necessarily please his manager, Cameron Dunkin, but when it's all said and done, they are the ones who are taking the punches.
"You have to let them pick their trainer," said Dunkin, who has suggested in the past that Kirkland bring in the help of a more established trainer and work in an area where world-class sparring is readily available. "I mean, changing trainers and forcing a guy to move - they're the ones that have to get in there. So eventually you've got to let them have their way. You can show them things and let them try it and try to talk them into it. But if they're not comfortable with it, they're not going to do it."