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Wright looks for double KO on June 17th
www.maxboxing.com
By Teri Berg (May 26, 2006)
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The boxer once called “the international man of misery” no longer has to go abroad to feel like an outsider.
Winky Wright has become a virtual leper in the headlines as well as among promoters recently, following his backroom wheeling and dealing in January and February of this year over negotiations to fight world middleweight champion Jermain Taylor. As a result, Wright may have reconnected with the lone-wolf role he was forced into for the first 13 years of his career, when what little belief promoters had in him ushered him through one small or European venue after another.
Now in the thick of training camp, the No. 1 contender is staying in a rented house in Summerlin, Nevada, a town 20 miles outside of Las Vegas. Maybe on weekends Wright will cruise The Strip and visit the casinos, and he did venture into Sin City for the HBO megafight between Oscar De La Hoya and Ricardo Mayorga. Other than that, according to trainer Dan Birmingham, the former junior middleweight champ has been “on lockdown.”
Wright, said his trainer, is working out at Barry’s Boxing Club on the southwest side of Las Vegas each day from 9 a.m. until noon, and he puts in his road work each night in the mountains.
“He’s looking real good at this point,” said Birmingham, who noted that though Wright still weighs in the low 170s, his fighter carries those extra pounds before every fight – and he should have no problem trimming down to 160 to meet Taylor on June 17 at the FedEx Forum in Memphis.
The St. Petersburg, Fla. native is sparring ten rounds every other day with a bevy of partners, Birmingham said.
“He’s spending a round or two with each sparring partner,” said Birmingham, “and he’s got his punch count up to about 100 punches a round.”
The basic plan to beat Taylor, said Birmingham, who won back-to-back trainer of the year awards in 2004 and 2005, is this: “We’re gonna outwork him.”
“Without giving too much away,” Birmingham said, “what I can say is that Winky is a master of distance and timing – and that will be Taylor’s undoing.
“Taylor’s never been in a fight where he’s getting hit every five seconds – we’re going to make him fight every second.”
Taylor, the 2000 Olympics bronze medalist who’s 25-0, with 17 knockouts, is the underdog going into the fight, which will be aired free on HBO (9:30 p.m. ET). But the Little Rock, Ark. native has never been an outsider in boxing. Taylor’s first pro bout was held in Madison Square Garden; the closest he’s been to Europe for a fight was Foxwoods Casino. And in recent weeks, the heralded Kid from the Country has been the darling of the press, especially since pairing up with trainer extraordinaire Emanuel Steward.
Coming off two razor-thin decisions over former middleweight standard-bearer Bernard Hopkins, the 27-year-old Taylor was seen afterward as an underdeveloped talent in danger of becoming one-dimensional. To better his chances against a boxer of Wright’s caliber, Taylor’s manager, Ozell Nelson, reached out to Steward. The Big Cheese at the famed Kronk’s Gym in Detroit, Steward also works as a boxing analyst for HBO. More important, for the Taylor camp, is that Steward, who has worked over the years with champions the likes of Thomas Hearns, Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield and Oscar De La Hoya, was just coming away from training another fighter to a championship: Wladimir Klitschko, who left for dead former IBF heavyweight titleholder Chris Byrd.
Just as Klitschko faced a slick southpaw in Byrd, Taylor is now preparing for Wright, one of the best defensive lefties in boxing. If anyone can even the odds for the champ, it’s Steward.
But forgotten amidst the Taylor lovefest is Wright’s status atop most pound-for-pound lists. And his back-to-back wins over Shane Mosley. And his round-by-round dismantling of Felix Trinidad just last year. Suddenly, by working with Steward, “Bad Intentions” is being hyped as the next “Hitman,” the next “Sugar” Ray Robinson, a boxer with “Superstar” written all over him.
Birmingham, though, begs to differ. He doesn’t think working with Steward for the duration of one training camp is going to do Taylor all that much good.
“I don’t believe you can change anyone in six weeks,” said Wright’s trainer, who’s also working with light heavyweight Chad Dawson (21-0, 15) for his feature bout with NABF titleholder Eric Harding (23-3-1, 7) on Showtime’s “ShoBox - The Next Generation” on June 2.
As far as Birmingham is concerned, Taylor isn’t as active a fighter as he should be and, for such a talented and strapping young man, has had surprisingly anemic punch counts in his last few bouts.
After working with Steward, the champ’s technique might look more polished at first, said Birmingham, “But once we get into the fight, he’ll go back to his old self.
“What it comes down to is this: I don’t believe Taylor has the skills to match up with the skills and experience Winky has.”
Favored as Wright is for June 17, he faces some long odds – outside the ring. Especially if Taylor scores an upset.
Having finally gained the respect of boxing insiders and the media for his long years of fighting abroad and for working his way to the top with considerable patience and skill, Wright may have damaged that rep earlier this year when he balked at the terms of a possible Taylor-Wright matchup. Gary Shaw Productions, working for Wright, had negotiated a 55-45 split with Taylor’s promoter, Lou DiBella; the champ would earn nearly $4.7 million, the challenger $3.8 million. Wright, however, wanted to split 50/50. He also was looking to launch his own Winky Promotions.
In trying to arrange a better deal for himself, Wright rejected the offer, fired Shaw and went to Golden Boy Promotions and HBO on his own. The 34-year-old fighter rehired Shaw and agreed to the original terms of the contract only after learning that Winky Promotions wasn’t licensed to make a deal.
Vilified in the press as greedy, disloyal, “amateur” and “treacherous,” Wright defended his dealings by saying, “I’ve been telling everyone that I’m doing Winky Promotions since before my last fight (versus Sam Soliman on Dec. 10, 2005).
“I’m taking my business very seriously, and I’m trying to bring something new to the game,” said Wright. “I think it’s going to work out well. But if it doesn’t, the only one who will lose out is me – and that’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
Seriously is not how fighters-turned-promoters are usually taken in the world of boxing.
“When promoters see a fighter who wants to conduct his own business, they see him as a threat,” said Damian Ramirez, who is a senior advisor for Winky Promotions and shares CEO duties with Wright in Round One Endorsements.
But Ramirez, who met Wright 10 years ago and brought him aboard at Round One in 2004, doesn’t see Winky Promotions as the usual one-man show. The difference between strawman promotion companies founded in the past by fighters such as Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed, for example, is that “Winky is not after only himself.
“Wink will eventually retire, and this is what he wants to do when he’s done fighting – he wants to make sure other fighters get the best fights, get paid properly and get the proper exposure,” Ramirez said.
After all the negatives that came out of the Taylor-Wright negotiations debacle, Winky Promotions has made positive headway toward being taken seriously. The fledgling company already has been granted licenses in Connecticut, New York and Florida, where it co-promoted an event on May 19 that was televised on ESPN2. In the fight card’s main event, Winky Promotions’ featured fighter, super middleweight bomber Alejandro Berrio, upset the undefeated Yusaf Mack to move into the IBF’s No. 2 contender spot. Held at a small venue in Pompano Beach, the card nonetheless drew the likes of O.J. Simpson, Kassim Ouma, Daniel Santos, Michael Moorer and Buster Mathis.
“(The event) went great,” said Ramirez, who also attended. (As he was already in training camp, Wright did not attend.) “And it showed Winky is a viable promoter.”
Ramirez said the company is already working with several fighters, and also has applied for and is waiting on a license in Las Vegas.
Winky Promotions, noted Ramirez, “doesn’t have to prove the critics wrong the way Wink had to prove himself over and over as the best pound-for-pound boxer out there.”
Ramirez, whose endorsement company, along with Winky Promotions, is based in New York City, thinks Winky Promotions will follow in the footsteps of Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions.
“We have a solid foundation, a lot of experience in promotions and endorsements, and a plan for success. And we will succeed.”
Like De La Hoya in putting together GBP, Wright has enlisted a slate of experienced people for Winky Promotions, starting with his manager, Chris Lighty. A long-time music industry insider, Lighty is the founder and CEO of Violator, a management company and record label that oversees the careers of hip hop superstars 50 Cent, Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliot. Also aboard as Winky’s marketing and public relations director is James Cruz, the VP of marketing at Violator and former senior staffer at Reebok, Mercury Records and Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment. And just as DLH hired former ring foe Bernard Hopkins to oversee GBP’s East Coast operations, Wright is looking to “Tito” Trinidad to preside over WP’s Hispanic division.
“The Don Kings and the great promoters out there are all up in age,” Lighty told Boxingtalk.com last year. The Bronx-born former DJ said Winky Promotions wants to help develop what the long-time promoters have built by making boxing more youth-oriented and by rebuilding a younger fan-base. “It’s a necessary evolution that’s going to take place in boxing.
“(In) hip hop, when it first started, artists got the shaft and didn’t make a lot of money. Now artists, with their management teams, are making $50 million a year. Why shouldn’t we have boxing doing the same?”
Is Wright worried about the fallout from his actions earlier this year, when headlines screamed “Hey Winky, Don’t Quit Your Day Job” and “When Loyalty is a Four-Letter Word”? Has he been distracted by his current role in the press as persona non grata?
“Wink’s been a professional for 16 years,” said Dan Birmingham. “This guy is tough as nails – he doesn’t get caught up emotionally in the promotional stuff.”
If Birmingham is right, and Wright knows from long experience how to and when to “close the distance,” as he puts it, his boxer might just score a rare double knockout on June 17. One inside the ring, and one outside.
Against Jermain Taylor, Wright has to win. As for those critics Winky made with his poor showing before the fight? He and his new promotions company will have to win them over.
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Originally Posted by miles
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