NEW YORK – Sitting up in the dressing room at Sony Hall, Kurt Scoby was relaxed and smiling, a sharp contrast from the intensity he exhibited throughout the lead-up to his fight with Alex Martin this past Friday. It was a difficult assignment for Scoby, who was facing a tricky, mobile southpaw from Chicago who had been stopped just once before. To compound the situation, the fight was also being put together on just a week’s notice, meaning Scoby would have very little time to adjust his training.
Normally, this would be a situation where a fighter would feel hesitant, but Scoby, a 30-year-old from Duarte, California, has full confidence in his new trainer, Hector Bermudez.
“I believe in my coach, so if he tells me to go fight, then we fight. It doesn’t matter,” said Scoby, 18-1 (16 KOs), after he scored his fifth straight stoppage – this time against Martin in the eighth and final round – since linking up with the Massachusetts-based Bermudez last year. That same refrain applies to the question of what Scoby wants to do next in his career: “Whatever my coach says. If Turki [Alalshikh] calls, coach is there, too. If we’re here again, we’re here again. Whatever my coach tells me to do, we’re doing it.”
After sustaining his first defeat, an upset sixth-round stoppage against Dakota Linger in April 2024, Scoby partnered with Bermudez in hopes of rounding out his skill set and getting his career back on an upward trajectory. Five consecutive wins later, Scoby has regained his form – though Bermudez notes that everything remains a work in progress.
“Because he's not ranked and there's nothing on the table, I would love for him to come back for another developmental fight,” said Bermudez.
“I think he’s almost there, and needs to polish some things up and commit some things to muscle memory, like cutting off the ring and fighting at the same time, rather than he's either fighting or cutting off the ring. So, little things like that he needs to work on. But they're minor things that he's almost there on, like rotating all his punches rather than falling in.
“I think one or two developmental fights, if ever we could get it, I think that third fight or fourth fight, he could easily be champion of the world.”
Co-manager Daniel Gonzalez told BoxingScene that OTX, which co-promotes Scoby alongside DiBella Entertainment, had been trying to build up a showdown between Scoby and another of its programming staples, Giovanni Marquez, before Marquez was unexpectedly upset by Wesley Ferrer over the weekend.
“We wanted to fight Marquez, but they would not take the fight,” said Gonzalez, who co-manages Scoby with Brandon Stump. “Nevertheless, we wanted to keep Kurt active and keep him getting rounds in and getting reps in with Coach Bermudez. We had numerous different opponents lined up, but for various reasons they all fell through and we had to take on Alex Martin, who you know is no slouch.
“As for what is next, Kurt is ready for a big fight. He seems to be on Turki’s radar, and an opportunity will hopefully soon present itself. At 18-1 with 16 knockouts, he is in the middle of the prospect/contender categories. Clearly, we want to get on the big stage and he will be stepping up moving forward. We need a signature win against a real contender to really be on the map.”
Aside from the attention that Bermudez pays to skill development, Scoby has also benefited from being in the gym with technically sound boxers like Rohan Polanco, Thomas Blumenfeld and Antoine Vanackere, which means that many of Scoby’s hard lessons are being learned at Universal Training Academy, instead of on fight night.
“Being in the gym with these guys is like, you can’t sleep,” Scoby said. “If you have a bad day, then they’re gonna get you. We always say, ‘We see dead people’ – it’s a gym full of killers. You gotta train hard or else they’re gonna get you.”
Polanco, a highly regarded welterweight prospect signed to Top Rank, agrees that Scoby is showing significant improvements. “He’s made progress in the last 3-4 fights that he’s had working with a new coach. He’s leveled up as a fighter,” said Polanco, 17-0 (10 KOs).
As for Scoby bouncing back mentally from that difficult first defeat, Bermudez says confidence is a byproduct of the work he and his fighter are doing.
“Confidence comes from the skill set,” Bermudez said. “So as the skill set develops, the more confidence he'll get, and he'll also have confidence in his conditioning.
“He has a lot of sparring partners where they're giving him hell. And now he's starting to be more composed. Everybody saw that Scoob, before the fight, today and yesterday, he was very, very composed. He wasn't overly nervous. It was just like routine for him. So that only tells me that he's more confident.”
It’s all in a day’s work for Scoby.
“Every day is a learning job for me, so it’s just a day in the life of me,” Scoby said. “Universal Academy, just learning and keep drilling.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.
