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Ann Wolfe: Raw and uncut
by Steve Kim | May 10, 2015
There were over 31,000 in attendance at Minute Maid Park on Saturday night who witnessed Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s brutal stoppage of James Kirkland, which punctuated three entertaining rounds of action. It was everything last weekend’s bout between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao wasn’t: fast-paced, violent and heartstopping.
But one particularly interested observer was in the midst of the frenzy in Houston.
Ann Wolfe.
The trainer, who had been mysteriously displaced by Kirkland in favor of Rick Morones and Bay Bay McClinton, watched her former pupil get viciously knocked out by an overhand right from Alvarez. As blunt as she is intense, she wasn’t pulling any punches in giving her assessment of the fight and Kirkland’s preparation.
When asked if Kirkland – often his own worst enemy – did this to himself, she answered succinctly, “No comment. Y’all know the answer to that.”
As for her emotions?
“What my emotions was, to see my family hold their faces, to see my son cry, to see James like that. To see his mother upset like that, see everybody upset. It wasn’t ‘I told you so; I’m happy because that happened to you’ – it was f**ked up,” said Wolfe, about 20 minutes after Kirkland was stopped. “I don’t know no other words; it was f**ked up seeing that because it could’ve been prevented. Not saying if I was in the corner, he would’ve won because I can’t take anything away from Canelo. That’s water under the bridge; James made his choice, so Canelo fought a good fight.”
On this particular evening, while Kirkland started off quickly, backing up Alvarez into the ropes, his punches were wide and often inaccurate but Wolfe points out, “James is wide a lot of the time. It’s not like he technically [regressed] or whatever. You can tell he didn’t put his ass through hell. You can tell that they didn’t bring his ass up. He was ripped for the weigh-in but, tonight, he looked as flat as f**k.”
What alarmed Wolfe was she had heard Kirkland was acting a bit too jovial before the fight, not like the snarling beast of the past.
Wolfe explained (as only she can), “They told me that James was laughing and talking and smiling this morning. I have him to the point where he will cuss your ass out before the fight. He’s not laughing and talking and smiling; I seen maybe 10 or 20 seconds of the James Kirkland that I knew throughout the fight. I seen little glimpses of it but I know it would fade because I could tell his body wasn’t ready to go through that. Once Canelo started ****ing the body – and he hurt Canelo a couple times – and then he had him hurt, he couldn’t **** his ass out.”
Wolfe doesn’t train you so much for boxing but for guerrilla warfare. Her methods aren’t just unorthodox; some would say they are downright brutal and sadistic. You get the feeling she would fit right in with the “Game of Thrones” style of combat and torture. But perhaps that type of physical preparation and mental torture made up for the technical flaws of Kirkland, whose style was predicated on pressure and two-fisted brutality.
Call her the Malcolm X of trainers – because she’ll use any means necessary to get a fighter prepared for battle.
“Let me tell you something: If I’ve got to kick him in the nuts a hundred times, I will kick him in the nuts a hundred times and throw him on the ground and beat on him,” said Wolfe with conviction. “If you look at James’ back, he’s got some f**king slave whips on his back because I beat his ass with a jump rope on the back to give him a certain type of pain that he’s not used to.
“I put his ass through HOLY…LIVING…HELL.”
(As she says this, you believe every single word and you understand this lady is not to be messed with.)
“Everybody want to know why I got no fighters; nobody want to go through it,” said Wolfe, admitting that not only is she not for everyone, she may not be for most fighters. And maybe Kirkland, now 31 years old, simply didn’t want to be to trained in such a torturous manner any longer. When he was younger, maybe that’s all he knew. Now he may have simply tired of going through such harsh working conditions.
But it has to be said; the record speaks for itself: Kirkland is 0-2 without Wolfe whipping him – and, according to Wolfe, literally – into fighting form.
Not helping matters is that it was nearly a year-and-a-half since Kirkland was last in the ring (a brutal sixth round stoppage of Glen Tapia in Dec. of 2013, the last time Wolfe trained Kirkland). Perhaps this is vindication for Wolfe, proof that, despite his flaws, Kirkland is a superior fighter with Wolfe in charge.
But please don’t ask her if this was bittersweet in any way.
“No, this isn’t bittersweet – this is f**ked up. What’s sweet about this ****?” she stated incredulously. “You’re talking about 13 years of my life, where I could’ve stood up there in Houston, in front of 30,000 people with James Kirkland and we could’ve won because I would’ve made him take a couple of fights before then.”
So was this a money grab by his handlers?
“I don’t give a damn. Anyone that knows boxing knows James could’ve won that fight with me,” she replied with great intensity, “because what he did, when he did punch, he started standing right in front of the man. He didn’t move side-to-side. Everybody thinks I don’t know how to train. James stood right there and I knew once Canelo started chopping the right hand, James would duck down. [Canelo] chop it again; [Kirkland] ducked down. A good corner – which Canelo has – is going to tell him to come up with an uppercut because James is going to continue to drop down when he throws the right hand, instead of slipping over and move around.
“So when Canelo threw the right hand – Canelo didn’t think this for himself – the corner said, ‘Every single time you throw the right hand, he bends down.’ So what Canelo do? Feint the right hand and he threw the right hand and catch him. If he would’ve threw the left hook with that – James would be going to the hospital.”
It’s clear that Wolfe has great respect for Eddy and Chepo Reynoso, who have handled Alvarez from the very beginning of his career. As for the grade she would give Kirkland’s new training team?
“I’d give them a mother**king F!,” she said simply and emphatically.
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