by David P. Greisman
Deep down in the pit of his stomach, Peter Manfredo Jr. feels it.
A feeling of urgency.
It eats away at him, a 27-year-old fighter in a contradictory conundrum. He is in the prime of his career, and yet his time in the sport is contingent on a single outcome – winning, beginning Friday with a bout against fellow super-middleweight Donny McCrary.
“I don’t want to be hanging around the sport looking for 50 wins, 60 wins. I want to be a champion,” Manfredo said earlier this week. “I’m a realist. I don’t want to stay around and get punched in the head. I got a family. If I can’t get to it, it’s not meant to be.”
It wasn’t long ago that winning was all “The Pride of Providence” knew. Nearly four years into his professional career he was undefeated, a junior-middleweight prospect picked to compete on the first season of boxing reality series “The Contender.” He was a favorite to win, a favorite to take the $1 million grand prize and, more importantly, to cash in on the publicity promised by winning on network television.
He lost. In the first fight. On the first episode.
Five rounds against the much smaller, less experienced Alfonso Gomez and Manfredo was sent packing with precisely 15 minutes of fame. Opportunity reappears, though, and Manfredo seized it. Another contestant fell ill, and Manfredo was voted back on. His second chance came just 12 days after the Gomez fight. Manfredo’s time on the show was contingent on a single outcome: winning. He did just that, taking three in a row, including a semifinal rematch with Gomez. But one way or another, all good streaks come to an end.
Manfredo would lose in the season finale to Sergio Mora, and he came up short on the judges’ scorecards in their rematch. Once again – and then again and again – Manfredo worked quickly to bounce back from the defeat. Four months after the second Mora loss, he got the first of two straight victories. Then he lost to 168-pound champion Joe Calzaghe. A month later, though, he was back in the ring, reeling off the first of two straight victories. Then he lost to former super-middleweight titlist Jeff Lacy.
Three months later he returned, getting the first of two straight victories. Now Manfredo is seeking to break away from that pattern.
“A lot of people fight their whole career and don’t even get one shot,” Manfredo said. “I only got one shot. If I had beat Lacy, I would’ve got another one right away. I think I blew that fight. I think that would’ve gotten me my second shot.
“I think I’m close, a fight or two away,” he said. “I got this fight Friday against McCrary. It’ll put me in the top five in the world. It’s important to win this fight and look good doing it, and to win the next one.”
***
Deep down in the pit of his stomach, Manfredo feels it.
A sense of priority.
It drives him on the road toward becoming a champion. Four years ago, it steered him toward “The Contender.”
“I just got married before the show came about,” Manfredo said. “My expectations were to make enough money to buy a nice house for me and my wife and my daughter, to try for a world title, to see if I can make it or not. I have higher expectations now because I have three kids. I have a family to support. I got a lot on my plate.”
Manfredo’s stint on the small screen shaped his career in ways good and bad.
“I got a couple defeats on the show, which I probably would not have gotten if I didn’t go on,” Manfredo said. “Making weight was very hard. They didn’t show that side. I had to fight at 157. The weigh-ins were hours before. It wasn’t like the pros. You had to live with these guys. We had no trainers. It was more for TV purposes than boxing. And then fighting five rounds and all that stuff when I was used to fighting 10, 12 rounds. It’s hard to make that adjustment.”
There was an upside, however.
“It was definitely great in terms of publicity, selling tickets, making money faster. It got me the Calzaghe fight, it got me the Lacy fight, probably because of the notoriety.”
Other “Contender” alumni have translated increased recognition into steps up in competition. Mora recently outpointed Vernon Forrest to capture a belt at junior middleweight. Gomez challenged Miguel Cotto for a welterweight title and wound up badly beaten. Manfredo’s trip to Wales to fight Calzaghe in April 2007 ended somewhere in-between – he didn’t win, but with the referee stopping the bout in the middle of a furious Calzaghe flurry that was only striking air, he feels as if he didn’t lose either.
“I never got started,” Manfredo said. “I see people get beat up and the fight goes on. I wasn’t even getting hit. I was starting to make him miss.”
Afterward, though, Manfredo felt the blows’ full force.
“It made me not want to care anymore about the sport,” he said. “The fight messed me up for a year. I didn’t have the right head on my shoulders. I didn’t care about the fights. I fought David Banks. I didn’t look good, but I won.”
And the feeling carried forward into December and the bout with Lacy.
“I was sick before the fight. I had strep throat. That could’ve been the reason I was a little weak and tired. I still could’ve beat him,” Manfredo said. “I didn’t feel my head was in it like it should’ve been. I think that loss kind of woke me up.
“A lot of people can’t come back from losses,” he said. “I lost to Alfonso Gomez, I came back and beat him. I lost to Sergio, I came back and beat him, even though I didn’t get the decision. I improve when I lose. I get better mentally and physically. I’m meaner. I’m angrier. I’m more determined. I learned from the Lacy fight, go in there and give it your all, 110 percent, not the 70 or 80 percent I gave that night.”
***
Deep down in the pit of his stomach, Manfredo feels it.
He’s hungry.
“I’m starving right now,” he said three days before he was scheduled to weigh-in for the McCrary fight. “I like to eat. Everybody’s got their own vice. Food’s very important to me.”
He can taste it. The veal at his grandmother’s after he steps off the scales. An ice-cream shake at a shop in Newport, R.I., about an hour away from the arena in Lincoln. A lobster buffet, possibly in the week following his fight.
The comforts of home.
Manfredo had been training under Freddie Roach, whose Wild Card Boxing Club is thousands of miles away in Los Angeles.
“Freddie’s the man, but he’s too busy,” Manfredo said. “I can’t afford to go out to L.A. anymore. I just can’t afford that. I’m making $10,000, $20,000 a fight. That’d be most of my purse.”
Instead, Manfredo is back with a familiar face in a familiar place, with his father, Peter Manfredo Sr., at the family gym in Pawtucket.
“It’s much easier, man, when you sleep in your own bed,” Manfredo Jr. said. “Your attitude’s a lot more normal. When I go away, I’m always miserable. It’s not good mentally. It’s not good physically. When I was away in Freddie’s gym, I don’t think I had two weeks in a row that were good. I’d have a great week and then an awful week.
“When I’m home, I always feel good no matter who I spar,” he said. “Your friends are here. Your family is here. The food you like is here. You enjoy coming to the gym. The guys in the gym are like my second family. We do sit-ups together. It’s rubbing off on everybody. We help each other out, and it makes it a lot more fun.”
But come Friday, Manfredo says, it’s time for business.
“Donny’s a serious fighter. He’s coming to win,” Manfredo said. “Anyone that’s coming to fight me, they have a shot, if they do beat me, for a big fight. They take it very seriously. Donny, he’s coming in, he can fight. He’s just not on my level. I’m going to prove that.”
Deep down in the pit of his stomach, Manfredo feels it.
A need for victory.
“If I lose a big fight, I don’t see myself being anybody’s opponent,” he said. “I’m going to keep going as long as I can. If that’s another two or three years, fine. If it’s one year, fine. I’ve got to stay focused, keep training very hard. I only got one thing on my mind right now, and that’s to keep winning.”
David P. Greisman’s weekly column, “Fighting Words,” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. He may be reached for questions and comments at fightingwords1@gmail.com