Nazim Richardson: “P4P Floyd is the most talented, P4P Pacquiao is the best fighter

Nazim Richardson: “Pound-for-Pound Floyd is the most talented, but Pound-for-Pound Pacquiao is the best fighter in boxing!” BY GEOFFREY CIANI – APRIL 26, 2012 POSTED IN: INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS by Geoffrey Ciani(Exclusive Interview by Jenna J & Geoffrey Ciani) – This week’s edition of On the Ropes Boxing Radio featured an exclusive interview with world class trainer Brother Nazim Richardson, who is preparing WBC light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (52-5-2, 32 KOs) for his rematch with Chad Dawson (30-1, 17 KOs) this Saturday night. In addition, Nazim is also preparing Sugar Shane Mosley (46-7-1, 39 KOs) for a May 5 clash against WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (39-0-1, 29 KOs). Richardson spoke about the upcoming fights for Hopkins and Mosley, and also shared his views on Andre Ward as well as the upcoming that feature Floyd Mayweather Junior squaring off against Miguel Cotto and Manny Pacquiao taking on Timothy Bradley. Here is what Richardson had to say: Regarding Bernard Hopkins’ training and preparations for his rematch against Chad Dawson: “Bernard’s a veteran, and as I told him not too long, a day or two ago I told him now he is a complete fighter. You hear people say this guy’s a complete fighter, that guy’s a complete fighter. Bernard now is a complete fighter because the one aspect he didn’t have it one time is he never knew when to rest. He never knew when to take a break. Now finally he’ll do that at times. He listens to his body and he’ll know when to take that break. So you know camp is different for us. Guys go into camp and say we have to have a great camp. Bernard lives the lifestyle of a fighter. So it’s not about camp. It’s just about him focusing on the task.” His views on the first fight between Hopkins and Dawson: “Yeah it was a disappointing outcome for all parties involved. You know people read into it and they start speculating, and you know something? That really kind of baffles me! I mean I’d understand that if we were talking about some of the newer kids, if we were talking a Danny Garcia, if we were talking about some of these new guys like Adrien Broner, because we’re still learning about these guys! But with a guy like Bernard, I don’t get it when people fall apart and say, ‘Hey you know, Chad looked strong early!’ And I ask them, ‘How many fights have we been in with Bernard Hopkins where the guy looks strong early?’ The one fight where the guy didn’t look strong early Bernard lost to Calzaghe! That was the one fight that Bernard put him on the canvas in the first round and he wound up losing that fight. You know with the Chad Dawson debacle in the first fight, like you always hear me tell Bernard, it’s nothing we haven’t seen. We’ve been here before. Robert Allen threw us out of the ring. The ankle was messed up. We had the rematch. You know it’s nothing we haven’t seen. You will hear other fighters say it, but with Bernard Hopkins it is actually true. The only thing Bernard Hopkins hasn’t seen is ‘Fan Man’ come down in the middle of his ring!” On why he feels so many observers are being so critical of Bernard after less than two rounds of action in his first fight with Dawson: “Because the odds are with you when you’re dealing with an older fighter. There’s always a good chance you can be right. What most people all do is when they go to fights and see fights they want to be able to tell you, ‘I told you so’. So if you notice some people could be wrong 500 time, then it’s 501 and they say, ‘See, told you so!’ You know what I mean. So guys will improve their odds if they keep saying the old guy is going to lose, the old guy is going to lose, because we feel like eventually the old guy will lose! So if I keep saying it there’s a good chance I can be right. So any inkling of showing you that will make everybody jump on that bandwagon so they can come to the gym Monday morning and say, ‘This was the kid! Didn’t I tell you?’ And they’ll keep searching for him. Think about it! You look at the first two rounds with Chad Dawson, or you look at the first two rounds of Jean Pascal in his first fight with Bernard, and who looked better? In the first couple of rounds with Jean Pascal he had Bernard on the canvas like two times! Keep counting them old dudes out, man. Pacquiao came out and put Marquez down three times in the first round, and that old timer got up and won every round after that.” On whether he believes Bernard’s mindset is different going into the rematch because of what happened in the first fight: “You don’t even include what happened in the first fight, because there was no first fight. It was a couple of rounds. It would be like you went into the mindset of this fight with the first couple of rounds of sparring last week. You can’t emphasize what you did in the first couple of rounds of sparring last week. You have to look at it and encompass it as a whole, and look at the entire situation. Chad Dawson is a big, young, strong kid. Who hasn’t been a big, young, strong kid in front of this old-timer. See if you put some of these veterans in here with Bernard they would be big, young, strong kids compared to what Bernard is now. So we got all that. That pressure is on that young bull. See when we talk about these younger guys and they want to say I’m bigger, I’m younger, I’m stronger, I’m faster. Okay! The minute I hear that come out of your mouth—that you’re bigger, you’re younger, you’re stronger, and you’re faster—the minute that comes out of your mouth then you better do a Mike Tyson, because Mike Tyson proved he was bigger, younger, stronger, and faster, and he ran them old dudes out of this game! He didn’t come in and pitty-pat for twelve rounds, chess match, this, that, and the other thing. There was no crying and complaining because they thought they won that round or any of that. He came out and showed I’m bigger, I’m younger, I’m stronger, and I’m faster. There was no reason for anyone to doubt him! The judges could have stayed in the hotel when Tyson came out, because if you’re bigger, younger, stronger, and faster—we got the only sport that if you are really bigger, younger, and stronger, and that far in front—we got the only sport where, it’s over! See it doesn’t matter how many points that the 76ers go up against the Orlando Magic. They’re going to play all four quarters! We have the only sport where if you’re that much better on that night, we’re stopping it! It’s over!” On whether he believes Bernard learned more about Chad than Dawson learned about Hopkins during the round-plus that they fought: “That was going to happen regardless. The reason why that was going to happen regardless, I took Chad away to the under-19 tournament when he was a kid. When Chad was a kid he used to ask me questions about Bernard Hopkins. When Andre Ward was a kid he used to bug me to death about Bernard Hopkins. So these kids have been watching these guys forever. They grew up on these guys, so of course they knew more about them. Chad didn’t come on Bernard’s radar until pretty much when Bernard went to fight Pascal. Chad didn’t show up on Bernard’s radar until then, so of course he was going to learn more about him in the fight in the few seconds they had been together.” On whether the upcoming fight between Shane Mosley and Saul Alvarez reminds him at all of the atmosphere before Shane’s fight with Antonio Margarito when everyone was counting Mosley out then the way they are now: “And the bottom line, I even see it in Shane in his preparations, and his health, and in his response. I see a lot of similarities to the Margarito fight. You know what I mean, and people don’t remember something I said a long time ago before the Margarito fight. I said, ‘Listen, I don’t know if Shane’s going to respond like this all the time or if he’s just showing off because he’s trying to impress me because it’s my first time working with him. But whatever it is I’m going to take advantage of it’, and that’s the way I felt about it this time, too. I mean if you show me you want it I’m going to jump on top of it and try and help you get it. But Saul Alvarez is a special young athlete. He’s difficult to prepare for because he’s up and coming. So we don’t know if Saul Alvarez has a chin. We don’t know if he can take a great body shot. We don’t know these things because we’ve yet to see him do these against any athlete of extreme quality at this level or veteran experience at this level. Baldomir was an older fighter but he wasn’t a veteran.”