Rozier Erupts on Golovkin's Trainer Over Stevens Jabs

By Mitch Abramson

Curtis Stevens isn’t the only one who’s been on the offensive in recent days.
Stevens’ talkative and stylish trainer (he designs Havoc boxing gear after all), Andre Rozier, has been just as aggressive, taking aim at one of the most respective trainers in the sport, Abel Sanchez, for demeaning comments he made toward Stevens. In a recent story for Boxingscene, Sanchez was quoted as calling Stevens “green” and “not ready” for his fighter Gennady Golovkin, who's searching for his next opponent for a bout in November.

In response, Rozier said of Sanchez: “Who is Abel Sanchez? Before Golovkin I never even heard of him. I can’t take criticism from a guy who never developed his own fighter and then takes credit for what he's done with a fighter who was already basically complete when he got him. Who is Sanchez to criticize Curtis?”

Rozier had reason to be upset. According to Sanchez, Stevens would be a much easier assignment for Golovkin than his recent opponent, Mathew Macklin, whom Golovkin blasted out in just three rounds last month.

“As far as fighting Stevens, I feel that Stevens is not ready,” Sanchez told Boxingscene on a story that was posted on Aug. 4. “I think Stevens is a lot easier than [Matthew] Macklin. I think it’s not so much about his chin- he’s still green.”

Sanchez went to say that Stevens is a “plodder” who throws “his punches in an area and hopes they land. It’s like a guy closing his eyes, throwing a shot and hopes it lands and then ‘Boom!’ the guy is out.”

Rozier took the comments as an obvious slight to Stevens but also as a personal assault to his own acumen as a trainer.

“If you insult Curtis then you’re insulting me,” Rozier said of why he was starting a war of words with Sanchez, knowing that he might take some heat for picking a fight with another trainer.

“I’ve been training [Curtis] since day one, so if you’re calling him green then you’re insulting me, too and calling me green,” Rozier explained.

So Rozier phoned a reporter to pen a response, calling Sanchez a “hired gun” and a “trainer for higher” who’s never developed a fighter from scratch, as Rozier has done with his nephew Stevens, starting him in boxing when he was five.

Rozier even took a dig at Sanchez’s recent tryst with Tavoris Cloud, a fighter that Sanchez guided to a surprising loss at the hands of Bernard Hopkins in March.

“First of all, commenting on the statement that Curtis is green,” Rozier began, “Curtis has been boxing as a pro since 2004, so he’s been a fighter for a long enough time where he can’t be green. He might have had his ups and downs, but no way is he green. He’s been boxing since the age of five. He’s definitely a learned fighter and experienced more than many pro fighters who are participating at the moment.”

Rozier next tackled the subject of Stevens not being a true knockouts artist, who in the words of Sanchez, is just fortunate to be knocking his opponents out. Since losing a surprising decision to Jesse Brinkley in 2010, Stevens has won four straight, stopping three of his opponents in the first round. Most recently, he demolished Saul Roman on Saturday on a devastating left hook in the first round. 

“And he also stated that Curtis is catching people with a lucky punch,” Rozier said. “Well, if I can have the kind of odds that Curtis has shown in knocking people out, then I’d be in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Connecticut every week. Curtis has been stopping his opponents since the age of 10 and that’s been well documented and is a God-given ability to render someone unconscious.”

Rozier also took aim at the perception that Sanchez is nothing more than a “hired gun” adept at polishing off a fighter’s hard edges late in their careers after they’ve already matured into a finished product.

(Of course, despite this perception, Sanchez has a resume that any trainer would be proud of. He's been a trainer in boxing for over 30 years and has guided 11 world champions, including Terry Norris and now Golovkin.)

“There’s a difference between a trainer and a trainer who has been with his students from the very beginning,” Rozier said.

“The trainer who has been with his fighter from the very beginning deals with a lot of circumstances together. And if they come up short they have to deal with them together. The trainers that I have the most respect for are the ones who have had their fighters since the early days,” Rozier went on. “And I don’t want to hear about these guys who come along and work with a guy after he is already completed and then take all the credit.”

Rozier singled out trainers such as Barry Hunter and Virgil Hunter and Mike Stafford and Nazim Richardson as men he looks up to because of their long connections to their fighters from the amateurs to the pros.

“All my guys have been with me since the beginning and he can’t say the same with his own fighters,” Rozier said.

"Listen, Gennady came from Russia. He was a seasoned fighter before he even began with Sanchez. I don’t know when Abel started training him but I know it hasn’t been for that long for him to be talking like he’s been training him since the first day that he donned his first pair of boxing gloves. He’s a trainer for a higher- AKA the same results when he started working with Tavoris Cloud. Tavoris is a banger and he was waiting for his shots against Hopkins. [Sanchez] took it all away from him. I know one thing- if I had been training Tavoris, he wouldn’t have fought that way. He would have had more success if I had trained him.”

Mitch Abramson covers boxing for BoxingScene.com and the New York Daily News.