It really doesn’t matter who is in charge.  Both of us are preparing Roy for the fight.  You would have to ask Roy who is the number one guy.  From my standpoint it doesn’t really matter who it is as long as I am part of making him effective for the fight. 

 

It is not a problem at all with me working with Big Roy.  He has things that he does and I have things that I do.  Roy has the privilege of us two.  Big Roy was with Roy prior to me coming along and it is his prerogative if he wants to bring his dad back – to bring him back and that’s what he did.  We have our own things that we do and we give constructive criticism to Roy.  He takes input from both of us and there is no problem at all in the camp. 

 

Its working fine, he just has two corner men in the corner.  If I have some input I give it to Roy and if his dad has some to give to him, he gives it to him. 

 

Who will speak to him between rounds?

 

That’s up to Roy and he has not determined that yet.  He hasn’t said it to me or his dad yet.  That’s a question Roy has to answer. 

 

He’s doing fine.  He’s on track and training very hard.  Physically and mentally prepared – he is really focused on this fight.  The lackadaisical state that he was in before, losing interest in boxing, I think has gone.  I think he’s back and more dedicated than he was the last two or three fights.  So you’ll see that in the fight.  If he was that dedicated for the last three fights things would not have happened the way they did anyway.    

 

How is the hand?

 

His hand is fine and there is no problem at all and he will be ready on the 1st.  He’ll be fine – he’s a big boy.  Whichever hand it is it doesn’t really matter.  He’ll be OK for the fight.  That’s exactly what I am saying.  His dad trained him for thirteen years and I have trained him for twelve and this is no different than the problems he’s had before.  So it won’t be a factor in the fight. 

 

Once you’ve been known for being a great fighter, that’s something that you can’t take away.  Personally, I don’t think Roy has anything that he needs to prove to anybody because he had already proved that before by winning the middleweight, super middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight and that can never be taken away.  I don’t think he is interested in proving anything to society or the boxing world – I think he is concerned with proving something to himself and doing the right thing.  He’s the type of guy – now if he retired after the last fight it would have been all right with me, because he’s already been categorized as a great fighter.  But he says he doesn’t want to go out that way.  He says he’s not going to go out losing like that and he doesn’t have to because he is still capable of being the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.  I think that’s what’s on his mind right now is that ‘I’m different than what you think I am.  I am not a washed up fighter.  I am still the best fighter out there and you’ll see that after the fight on the first of October.’

 

The previous few fights Roy’s performance wasn’t what it should have been.  I think he really got tired of the sport of boxing.  He was bored, all of the criticism about him not fighting anybody.  All of the negative input just made him fed up with boxing.  I don’t care who he fought or who he beat, it wasn’t good enough.  The guy wasn’t physically prepared or this excuse or that excuse preventing people from saying that he is the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.  At that point he was ready to leave boxing and leave it as it stood.  That had a lot to do with his performance. 

 

It’s like taking a test.  If you don’t study for an exam and you take the exam, you’re not going to do very well on the exam.  You might just blow it out and flunk it.  So I can basically say that’s how he felt and he doesn’t feel that way anymore.  He wants to study so he can get a 100% on the test.

 

Looking back, does he think he would have left earlier?

I don’t think he looks back at what he should have done and things like that.  The fact of the matter is, that when you get to the status that Roy is in, and you are considered to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world and you’ve won the heavyweight title, you’ve reached the ultimate goal so what else do you do.  Tyson is a great fighter and I’d like to fight him on my way out, but that falls out.  Now you got to go down and fight somebody at another weight class and knows he is going to catch hell trying to lose that weight.  That can’t be a motivating factor – the first fight with Tarver.  There was weight problem and everybody knows that.  Then you fight him and you win.  Then there is all of the controversy and everybody says it was a real close fight then Johnson fights Tarver after that then Johnson beats Tarver then Roy said, ‘OK, I’ll fight this guy.’  He wasn’t motivated for that fight.  Then he loses that and he comes back and fights Tarver again.  They were fights that he really wasn’t interested in but I think the interest is there now for the simple reason that he has to reclaim his fame.  These guys beat him and he wants revenge.  Now the motivation is back.

 

Tarver is a very solid fighter, he’s a game fighter.  Has good ring generalship and has a big heart.  He’s somebody to be reckoned with.  I personally don’t think he has the boxing qualities that Roy has even though he did beat him.  He’s a good solid fighter and it’s going to be a good match.  The person that’s going to win is going to have his thinking cap on and do the right things in the ring and not make any mistakes.  He’s a great fighter. 

 

The people need to mind their own business and get the facts straight.  It’s not that Roy fought whoever he wanted to fight - it was the fighters that HBO and the governing bodies and society wanted us to fight.  When he wanted to fight somebody, they would always say, well that’s not the right guy.  The guys that people say we didn’t want to fight, for whatever reason the guy’s like Michelshewski, he wanted 50/50.  For parity that wasn’t what he deserved.  Roy never dodged anybody.  He fought whoever they put in front of him they wanted him to fight, he fought and destroyed.  How would I rate Roy, I would rate him with some of the best fighters in the world.  He should go down in history and he has and should remain that after the 1st of October.  But you can’t satisfy and please everybody.  You just have to do what you think is right for yourself and your fighter. 

 

People talk and some of the things people say doesn’t faze me at all.  When you look in the mirror and say that I didn’t do enough or I’m not the best fighter in the world or categorized as one of the best fighters in the world…when you say that to yourself, then you’ve got a problem.  Self-evaluation is very important.  Looking at Roy – he will go down in history as one of the greatest fighters out there.

 

What about the Jones’

 

Let me tell you something about teamwork.  As long as it is a winning team, whatever satisfies the athlete…I cannot fight for Roy.  His dad cannot fight for Roy.  Nobody else can fight for Roy.  All those critics that say its coach Merk’s fault and Coach Merkerson this and Coach Merkerson that…they didn’t say that when he won for 10 years straight.  Consecutively…without losing a fight.  You can do a thousand things right and when 1 thing goes wrong, you have to point the finger.  Which doesn’t bother me that they do that?  Sharing roles doesn’t bother me at all.

 

Roy called me when he and his father had a conflict.  Roy came in and his dad did not confront me about my training for a total of 11 years.  We made history together.  Now its Roy’s prerogative at this point to say well, me and my dad are back together now, and I want to bring him back on board, coach.  That’s no problem.  Whatever you want, Roy.  If you want to bring your dad on.  If you want me to leave, that is your prerogative.  But Roy doesn’t want me to leave.  He wants me here.  It doesn’t bother me.  I’m going to do whatever he wants me to do to help him be the next light heavyweight champion of the world again.  I don’t care who’s in charge, it’s not an important factor to me. 

 

I’ve been training fighters since 1972 at a very high echelon.  On club level, to Army level, to the Olympic teams to the pros and I’ve always had guys that were at the top of their game fighting top level competition for all those years, so I’ve been holding me breath for a long time and not being able to let it out.  When Roy announces that he’s going to retire, I’m going to need a break.  Trainers get stagnated just like boxers do.  I’m a self-motivator but if a kid is not motivated I’m not motivated.  You’ve got to really want it and you’ve got to really put out for me to be there for you.  The individual is going to have to come to me and really want to give it his all and want to be a world champion. 

 

We knew each other.  We were associates.  We communicated with each other more during the ’88 Olympic team in Seoul, Korea.  Walt talked and hung out together quite a bit then.  I saw him on the national scene when I had the Army team with Hank Johnson.  We knew Roy (Jr) because Roy was one of the sharper guys back then.  We didn’t really want to fight him if we didn’t have to.  It’s never been a real close relationship.  It’s not a real close relationship, but people have to understand that in business, I can be the CEO and I really don’t have to like my managers. 

 

He knows his son.  He trained him from the age of 10 to 1993.  That’s a long time.  I worked with Roy for 11 years.  So I know Roy and he knows Roy.  It’s a plus for Roy even having both of us there because there are some things that his dad sees that I don’t see and there‘s some things that I see that his dad doesn’t see. 

 

We have interaction with Roy (but no with each other).  He’s OK.  He’s an associate.  I don’t have any problems with Big Roy at all.  He does his thing and I do mine.  That’s the way business is.  No tension with me whatsoever.  Not at all.

 

That happened in the last fight and patience is the key to virtue.  You have to take time and make things happen instead of rushing into them.  His mindset is probably going to be that way (as in 2nd Griffin fight) but you have to wait for the right time and place to do things.  And I think that’s what is going to happen in this fight.  Emotionally (same as Griffin) yes, definitely so.  I would tend to agree. 

 

I am not going to say that he wasn’t prepared, now you can take this the way you want it.  I think that when you really want to pass a test you are going to study a little harder.  He was coming to the gym and probably didn’t want to be there.  When he came to the gym he would give it his all but it really wasn’t interesting to him.  He really didn’t want to be in the gym.  He was discouraged with boxing and discouraged with coming to the gym and he was doing because he had a date.  You work harder when you really want to be in the gym.  You want to prove something to yourself or prove to somebody else and that’s the way he is right now.  The last two or three fights he was like, “I don’t want to be here.  I’m really tired of it.”  So his attitude has changed for this fight.

 

He wasn’t motivated for the first fight with Tarver, the second fight with Tarver or the fight with Johnson. 

 

I think he won the fight.  It was a close fight.  Anybody that watches boxing and listens to the news knows at the time, Roy was talking to Tyson about fighting him.  He just beat Ruiz.  So he’s got all this weight on him.  So in med-stream, that doesn’t happen.  So he says, well, Tarver’s here.  So we are training and he says he really didn’t want to fight Tarver, he wanted to fight Tyson so you’ve got to come all the way from that heavyweight division and drop down and loses all that weight to fight Tarver and that is real strenuous.  It’s hard to do that so that was an important factor in that fight with Tarver.  And he just wasn’t up for the fight. 

 

What about the 2nd fight?

 

Motivation.  Like I said, for those three fights, Roy wasn’t as motivated as he usually was.  We talked, but not a lot, about it.  You know your athletes, just like your kids.  You know when they are coming in your yard and they are helping you pick up leaves and they are happy to do it and you know they want to do it and you know when they don’t want to do it and just get it out of the way so they can get out of the yard and go play.

 

What happened in the Tarver fight?

 

For ten years Roy beat everything in front of him, he was hot and the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world and doing everything that people want him to do and not doing the things that he wanted to do and then the thing with Tyson falls through and people criticize him and he doesn’t make speaking engagements – he’s always late…just a lot of negative things.    He was tired of the whole boxing scene altogether.  It was really a low for him in his boxing career and personally, not him saying it but just an observation, he was saying, “the hell with boxing.  I don’t want to do this anymore.”  Like after the Olympics, it was the same way – the same state of mind.  But people said ‘you are really good for boxing and you need to come back. Then he came back in ’89 because he was so disgusted by the fight in Korea…I would say he felt the same way after he fought Ruiz after so many things went wrong for him, he felt the same way after the Olympics.  He was just down on boxing.

 

If both fighters are on A game, what happens?

Roy wins.  Like he should have the last fight he had with him.  Roy is going to be ready for this fight.  He’s doing the right things.  He’s focused now.  He’s not in a depressed mood like he was before and maybe because his dad came back on might have been a motivating factor.  He looking at himself in the mirror might have been a motivating factor.  I don’t know exactly what it is but he’s the old Roy that I knew back in the early ‘90’s that I’m seeing now. 

 

How is his hand?

 

Good.  Let me say this.  Roy had hand problems ever since I started training him in 1993.  If you remember he won the middleweight title against Bernard Hopkins with one hand.  He fought Telesco – he didn’t have a jab.  He won that with one hand.  But there’s not going to be any excuses at all.  All the critics that are saying there is a problem with his hand – he doesn’t express that to me, but I don’t see any problem with it because he’s the type of warrior that can bite down.  The fight will take place on the 1st of October and Roy will be at his best – 100%.

 

You have to know when to hold them and when to fold them.  Roy and I had talked about even prior to those fights even taking place.  We were both a little tired of boxing.  You need to leave us along so we can just have some fun.  But Roy came out of that and he’s ready to fight again.  He’s 36 years old and when I say mentally he’s in the state of mind as he was back in the early ‘90’s, I’m not going to change my mind on that.  He trains the way he trained then and he thinks the way he thought then.  We all know how age plays an important factor as we get older.  He may have slowed down a little bit but his ring generalship and his faculties and his ability to knock people out is still there. 

 

Anybody, I don’t care if it’s King Kong – they will go to sleep.

 

Sharpness and condition has a lot to do with the reaction time and how you react to a given situation.  If he was in a little better condition in those two fights – it may not have happened but we can all say that if I had a million dollars back in ’60 I would be a millionaire right now.  But he’s motivated for the fight ad he will be the Roy of the early ‘90s or in the middle 90’s – whatever.

 

Head injury?

 

That concerns me too.  I got knocked out once and it affected me mentally.  Physically it didn’t.  I had the EKGs and the EEGs and all those things and everything checked out, which we’ve all done with Roy.  We had him thoroughly checked out.  Personally, if Roy had retired then it would have made my day.  It would have been great.  But he’s like a son to me, he’s a great boxer.  As long as he checks out OK and the Dr. says it’s Ok, if he wants to give it another run then I’m all behind him.  But in the vent that I see something in the corner that I don’t agree with that I might see something happen – you don’t have to worry about me jumping up on the apron to stop it.  I don’t care who’s there or what happens.  As of right now, all of his medical exams check out fine.  He feels find and we do communicate on that.  I’ll be watching things in the corner just like everybody else that is saying it and if I see anything that would his life in harm’s way, you can believe I’ll be jumping up on the apron doing something. 

 

He had everything done.  Everything you could possibly do he had done and he checked out fine. 

 

Father I corner?

 

Nobody can stop me if I want to stop it.  If somebody climbs up on that apron – the referee wills top the fight.  If they think it would be detrimental, they can take it and shove it up their but.  I’m just as much a part of the corner as anybody else is and Roy might be mad at me but if I see something that may cause him to be hut permanently; he can just be mad at me and talk to me after the fight.  I’m looking out for his best interests and his health.  As far as the reference to his dad – I think his dad feels the same way that I do.  Roy is a grown guy and is very independent, he’s very decisive and there’s one thing about him…if you want to teach your kids about how they want to be when they grow up, when they crawl…but when you put them down they learn how to walk on their own and any man or lady that becomes an adult and they disagree with what you say, they say hey I understand what you are saying but I don’t want to do that.  It’s all going to be a positive note whatever happens. 

 

When you put money into the bank and you go to write a check, you can get money out.  But if you don’t put any in, you can’t get any out.  Roy has made some deposits for this fight.  So when he goes to write a check, the money is going to be there for him.  He’s going to be prepared for anything that comes up.  Some people say I am blowing smoke, but I call them like I see them.  I told Roy and I told other people, we could have done more for those last 2 or 3 fights, but weighing the facts and looking at the overall situation, I don’t know exactly how Roy feels, but I can gather how he feels by the things that were coming to him from all angles in a negative way.  The motivation and the hard work were not there like they should have been.  I am not saying he had a reason to do the things he did and feel the way he felt.  HE DID, but we can’t cry over spilt milk.  But he doesn’t feel that way now, so they’ll see a big difference on this fight on the 1st. 

 

2 knockouts?

 

From a training standpoint, what I feel is that you know for a fact that if you take some shots to the body for a period of time you kind of get used to those shots you can deal with it.  But take a guy on the street that doesn’t know anything about boxing – you don’t have to go to the head; you hit him with one shot in the body and guess what’s going to happen?  He’s going down.  Anybody can get knocked out if they get hit right.  But if you are in good shape and you prepared yourself mentally and physically you can withstand a much better punch than if you are not in good shape.

 

After heavyweight title?

I thought it was going to be an early out for me after Ruiz, we would probably fight Tyson or another smaller heavyweight like Holyfield but the way things went at that time we couldn’t do that.  He was very successful in winning the heavyweight title.  There were a lot of heavyweights that he could fight without fighting a big real heavyweight. 

 

When society is pressuring you and the media is pressuring you saying there are no heavyweights to fight and you need to come back to light heavyweight, they don’t understand the mental and physical strain that is on a person when you can eat all you want and feel comfortable and you can fight the best and all you have to concentrate on is fighting and all the sudden you have to say, well I can’t eat this or I can’t eat that because I’ve go to get this weight off me.  You’re not training to be the best fighter you can be at that time, you are more concerned with getting the weight off.  I don’t think it’s fair to a great fighter to make him have to do that.  I’d rather have a healthier heavy guy than a weak lighter guy.  I don’t want it on my conscience that I took this weight off this guy because I thought he would be better in a lighter weight class.  You can get hurt just as easy by losing all that weight because he is so weak as you would preparing for a fight. 

 

He lost it in a very short period of time.  I don’t want to get into it but it was a very short period of time.  The doctor will tell you and people don’t understand that once you get below 6% body fat – it’s not healthy.  As you get older you get more body fat and carry more weight.  Just because you fought at 154 at the age of 30, you can’t be messing around with the weight like that.  It’s not healthy. 

 

Why do you think Roy’s not talking?

 

I think, personally I don’t know, but Roy as an individual and I’ve been around him a long time, you know how it is when people ask you why are you doing this and you did this before but you are not doing it now, there comes a time when actions speak louder than words.  Constantly telling people what you are going to do like Tarver’s doing and trying to explain to people why you didn’t do what you were supposed to do the last time, that’s not a positive thing.  Any negativity you will have will come about by answering questions like that because it is repetitious as it keeps pounding into you.  You concentrate on trying to explain to people why something didn’t happen than you are preparing for the fight. 

 

He and I think a lot when it comes to that and I’m not down on the media.  I can take you back to Viet Nam when I’m out on the field in a fire fight and you have a reporter coming up to you asking “how’s the fight today?”  You can go to hell and get out of my face because I am fighting.  Personally that’s the way Roy feels, he has a job to do, he’s trying to accomplish that mission and he’s doing all he can do to prepare for it.  And anything negative he’s trying to just push to the side.  That comes to basketball, music, socializing with people.  I think he’s just totally focused on the fight right now. 

 

Tarver comments bother him?

 

No.  Well, it probably is but he’s saying, ‘I’m not going to throw darts back at him and tell him what I’m going to do to him.  I’m just going to show him what I’m going to do to him.”  Tarver does talk a lot and he has the skills and ability to back it up.  I’m not saying he’s not a good fighter.  I’m kind of that way.  I’m not going to tell you I’m going to take this gun out and shoot you.  If you are going to do something to make me mad enough to do that, you’re shot.  If you know you’re pushing me to the limit, I’m going to react.  You’re not going to pull a gun on me and put it away, because you’re not going to be able to pull it again.  That’s the frame of mind he is in right now.

 

He’s tired of talking and he’s tired of listening because people want him to say what they want to hear.  He has a plan on what he wants to do.  You don’t tell everybody how you are going to catch a fish, you just catch the fish. 

 

After the last Tarver fight, I didn’t know Roy could pray so well.  He was saying we did come a long way and we thank God for this and thank God for that and you are telling me to step down because things are not like they used to be.  He does believe in God a lot and he did lay off for practically a whole year and when I wanted to talk about boxing, he would say, let’s go fishing.  He wanted to do anything but boxing.  He just washed his hands of it.  All the sudden, I don’t know what came over him, but he wanted the gym cleaned.  He said, “I think I need to start boxing again. It’s something I think I need to do. I have to do.”  He’ll have to explain to you what he did, but we’re here now in a positive way.  If I thought there would be any problem with him coming back, I’m behind him 100%. 

 

Glen Johnson?

I think personally, yes.  He has to prove it to himself. 

 

Who works on what?

 

We both work.

 

Do you talk about it with him (RJJ)?

 

Yes

 

Do you talk about it with each other?

 

No we doe not.  Look, if you have two coaches on a team and one says, “Look, you’ve got to keep your hands up,” and the other coach says, “Roy, you need to slip to the outside of the jab,” there’s nothing wrong with two guys working with a guy.  It’s not like, “Big Roy you’re wrong, it should be like this.”  Roy takes what he needs from either one of us and he uses it or doesn’t use it.  We just give him constructive criticism and both of us know Roy. 

 

Who’s holding the pads?

Neither one of us. 

 

So you have someone else come in to do that?

That’s exactly right.  I’m getting too old for that.  When I hold the pads my shoulder is killing me. 

 

What about the hand?

No, he’s not setting up an excuse.  Because he’s telling the truth.  Why lie about it?  As a trainer, I’m not going to say it, but he may come up to me and say my hand is bothering me.  All I can say if his hand is hurting him, it’s not hindering what it’s doing in training.  I can say I’ve got a headache but I still train my ass off.  It’s not going to give anyone an edge in the fight and it’s not going to be an excuse.  He just told the honest truth when somebody asked him something.  How’s your hand?  Well my right hand is bothering me a little bit or my left hand is bothering me a little bit. 

 

Believe me, there have never been excuses and there’s not going to be an excuse this time.