Richardson Prepping Mosley for Fight of His Life at BetLM

Richardson Prepping Mosley for Fight of His Life

The first les­son a boxer must learn when work­ing in a gym with Naazim Richard­son is to never stop pay­ing attention.

Two of the young fight­ers work­ing with Richard­son at Shane Mosley’s Big Bear, Calif., train­ing com­pound are guilty of vio­lat­ing rule No. 1. Richard­son sees them laugh­ing, talk­ing and gen­er­ally goof­ing off and ambles in their direc­tion. He’s a big, burly bear of a man, but noth­ing hap­pens in a hurry with Richardson.

As he nears the two unsus­pect­ing fight­ers, he grabs the end of a towel that is draped over his right shoul­der and flicks his wrist, snap­ping the towel and unex­pect­edly smack­ing them in the face.

And that brings us to rule No. 2 when trained by Richard­son: Never for­get to duck.

For Richard­son, who for the sec­ond year in a row is train­ing Mosley in what is shap­ing up to be the biggest box­ing event of the year, the key is to keep things simple.

Richard­son was born in a hard­scrab­ble area in North Philadel­phia and was nat­u­rally drawn to the gym. He would lis­ten for hours as great box­ing minds such as George Ben­ton, Al Fen­nell, Bouie Fisher and Milt Bai­ley would dis­sect fight­ers and share their wis­dom on the game he loved.

“There was an old trainer in our gym, Al Fen­nell, and I bugged the hell out of him, try­ing to pick his brain,” said Richard­son, who is prepar­ing Mosley to face world No. 1 Manny Pac­quiao in a wel­ter­weight title bout on May 7 at the MGM Grand Gar­den Arena in Las Vegas. “He had a calm­ness about him. All of those guys did. They took a sub­tle approach and what they would say was so clear, con­cise. It wasn’t real complicated.

“You talk to train­ers now, a lot of them want to com­pli­cate things because they want to make it look like they’re doing rocket sci­ence. Everybody’s jock­ey­ing for jobs now and so, when you talk to some of these train­ers now, they try to sound like a sci­en­tist. If you hear a sci­en­tist talk about why the ocean water is the way it is, you know you can’t just walk up and take his job. And so, a lot of these guys just try to take that approach.”

It is, he believes, a bid to sound impres­sive. What it is not, in Richardson’s view, is teach­ing or prop­erly coach­ing a fighter.

“It makes me laugh when I hear one of these guys say some­thing like, ‘Hey, you have to manip­u­late the cen­ter of the geo­graphic stance,’ ” he says, fail­ing to sup­press a chuckle. “What he might mean is, ‘Get closer to the guy and jab,’ but he tries to say it in a way that makes him sound like some­thing other than a box­ing coach. Man, get out of here with that; you ain’t no sci­en­tist. You’re a box­ing coach and judg­ing by what I’m hear­ing, a pretty sorry one at that.”

Though he doesn’t have any­where near the rep­u­ta­tion of Pacquiao’s trainer Fred­die Roach, who on May 6, the night before Mosley and Pac­quiao meet, will accept the Eddie Futch award as Trainer of the Year from the Box­ing Writ­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica for the fifth time over­all and the fourth time in the last five years, Richard­son is qui­etly emerg­ing as one of the sport’s lead­ing coaches.

He doesn’t have a large sta­ble and he’s not the most rec­og­niz­able per­son­al­ity. But Richard­son has built a ster­ling rep­u­ta­tion with the men who count the most: other boxers.

“Hon­estly, I think he’s the best there is,” said Mosley, who has been trained by a num­ber of the game’s sharpest box­ing minds. “For sure, he’s the best trainer for me. We think about box­ing the same way. He’s into the sport of box­ing and he loves it like I do. We share the same phi­los­o­phy and he’s a great communicator.”

Richard­son has worked the cor­ner of Bernard Hop­kins for years, but it wasn’t until Hop­kins’ rematch with Jer­main Tay­lor in 2005 that Richard­son took over as the lead voice in his corner.

But Hop­kins, who meets Jean Pas­cal on May 21 in Mon­treal in a light heavy­weight title rematch, said Richard­son has long had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on him. Hop­kins is prepar­ing for his fight with Pas­cal in Philadel­phia, while Richard­son is about 3,000 miles away work­ing with Mosley in Big Bear.

Hop­kins, though, trusts Richard­son so thor­oughly that he’s com­fort­able with the arrange­ment. Richard­son loves to break down tape and watch for hours look­ing for a weak­ness his fighter can exploit.

And it is Richardson’s unique abil­ity to devise a game plan and then make adjust­ments dur­ing a fight that appeals to box­ing purists.

“Naazim is a teacher of the sport of box­ing, but in my opin­ion, he’s a strate­gist 1,000 times more than a teacher,” Hop­kins said. “He can take a tape and dis­sect a fight and break it down bet­ter than any­one. He’ll pick up on some­thing and then he’ll show it to me and say, ‘Hey ‘Ex,’ you see this? He does this every time when the guy throws this punch, so you have to do this.’ He just comes up with these plans and time and time again, he comes up with the right way.”

Richard­son, like his men­tors, is exceed­ingly calm in the cor­ner and rarely raises his voice. He has only a few sec­onds to deliver a mes­sage or make a cor­rec­tion and he rarely, if ever, wastes it with histrionics.

He gets to the point quickly and deliv­ers his mes­sage in a clear, con­cise manner.

“I trust him, because I know he knows what he’s talk­ing about,” Hop­kins said. “For instance, I stand tall some­times, because I’m look­ing at my work. We call it in box­ing admir­ing your work. You throw a good punch, but you get hit with a wild punch because you did what? You stood tall and admired your punch and looked to see if the guy was going to fall. Naazim stays on me to this day about that. The last time, I got hit with a cou­ple of those shots I never should have been hit with. I should have been under those shots. When Naazim tells me that, I react. I don’t go, ‘What the hell are you try­ing to tell me? Do you know who I am? I’m Bernard Hopkins.’

“No. I trust him because I know he’s giv­ing me the right info. He has a track record and cred­i­bil­ity with me. If you don’t lis­ten to him, you know what? You’re going to pay the price some­where down the road.”

Very few, though, have the dis­ci­pline that Mosley and Hop­kins have. And few can with­stand Richardson’s demand­ing ways. He is the boss and there is never any ques­tion about it.

He hasn’t expanded his empire like many train­ers do after they have some suc­cess, because his demeanor scares some fight­ers off.

J. Rus­sell Peltz, a Hall of Famer who has pro­moted fights in Philadel­phia for more than 40 years, never got to know Richard­son par­tic­u­larly well.

Sev­eral times, Peltz attempted to hire Richard­son to train a fighter he pro­moted, but it never worked out.

“He raised his sons like he was a Marine drill sergeant and he was always very strict with every­thing he did,” Peltz said. “I thought he could help some of my fight­ers out, but there was always oppo­si­tion from the camps, because they’d say he was too strict.”

Richard­son is strict because, he says, you never know when you’re going to wind up in the ring against some­one like Pac­quiao. Richard­son trained Mosley last year when Mosley was trounced by Floyd May­weather Jr. and knows he’s fac­ing an equally dan­ger­ous oppo­nent on May 7.

May­weather was hurt badly in the sec­ond round, but it was Mosley’s only suc­cess in the fight. Richard­son calls May­weather “the most tal­ented ath­lete of this era,” but said it is Pac­quiao who is it’s best fighter.

“May­weather talks like Pac­quiao fights,” Richard­son said. “Believe me, we under­stand that Pac­quiao is a prob­lem. He’s got a crazy amount of energy. You know, I could tell you all these things that Pac­quiao has and praise him to the sky, but it’s eas­ier if I tell you this: The only attribute in box­ing Manny Pac­quiao doesn’t have is height and range. Every­thing else, man, he’s got it all.

“He’s got great ring gen­er­al­ship. He’s got move­ment, speed, power, one-punch power, com­bi­na­tion punch­ing. He has every­thing except height and range.”

If it sounds like Richard­son is about to con­cede, how­ever, guess again. He’s up into the mid­dle of the night break­ing down Pacquiao’s tapes and he’s con­vinced that Mosley will be able to exploit his weak­nesses and shock the world.

It all sounds great, except that Richard­son doesn’t like the idea of shock­ing the world.

“It’s no shock when a man with the pedi­gree, the abil­ity, the ded­i­ca­tion and the intel­li­gence of a Shane Mosley beats any­one,” Richard­son said. “I agree that Pac­quiao is a prob­lem. He’s a spe­cial guy. We respect him tremen­dously. But you know what? We’re going to show up and we believe we can do it.”

Rule No. 3 with Richard­son: Never give up hope because, if there is a way, he’ll find it.

“Shane Mosley is a live dog in this fight,” Hop­kins said. “Pac­quiao is great and he’s at the top of his game, but there isn’t a guy out there with­out flaws. And if he has one, Naazim will find it and fig­ure out a way for Shane to take advan­tage of it. Putting Naazim and Shane together, man, that makes a very dan­ger­ous pairing.”

Related Posts:

• Why Mosley Is a Good Match for Pacman
• Pac­quiao in Minor Car Acci­dent Before Mosley Fight
• Mosley Under­stands His Role Against Pacquiao
• May­weather Isn’t Gaga About Pac­quiao Fight
• Denmark’s Kessler Set to Fight Bouadla of France

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•