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Home / Sport / Boxing

Midweek fixture: Joseph Parker-Andy Ruiz A fight of biblical proportions

Herald online
7 Dec, 2016 03:16 AM4 mins to read

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Trainers Abel Sanchez, left, and Kevin Barry with the WBO belt. Photo / photosport.nz

Trainers Abel Sanchez, left, and Kevin Barry with the WBO belt. Photo / photosport.nz

If Kevin Barry is going to be what Cain was to Abel, then he's first going to lure him close with a lot of brotherly love.

Trainer Abel Sanchez has arrived in Auckland to oversee the final preparations of his heavyweight Andy Ruiz Jr, who fights Joseph Parker for the WBO crown at Vector Arena on Saturday.

The 61-year-old trainer, who built his own 1200sq m gym at altitude in Big Bear Lake, California, has become the darling of the boxing cognoscenti.

This year he was named trainer of the year by the esteemed Boxing Writers Association of America, largely based on the work he has done with Kazakhstani Gennady Golovkin, known as Triple G, the undisputed middleweight champion of the world.

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He has a small kennel of boxers at Big Bear, including rising cruiserweight Murat Gassiev, the Russian who won the world IBF title in Moscow on the weekend.

"Abel's on a hot streak at the moment which concerns me a little bit coming into the fight on Saturday," Barry said.

"Abel is one of the elite trainers in world boxing and a man I have enormous respect for. When Andy went to train with Abel... he gave himself every chance he could to win this fight. It's the smartest thing Andy could do.

"I've never heard a negative or bad word said about this man in all my time in boxing."

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Boxing is a game of posturing and manufactured hate but behind the curtain there lies a genuine respect between those who prepare athletes to inflict and absorb pain.

"I am on a winning streak at the moment but that's in Russia, not in New Zealand," said a magnanimous Sanchez.

He pointed to the advantage Barry had of being able to devote all his energies to Parker, while he had to split his among eight athletes across various weight classes.

Having said that, Sanchez is known as a systems trainer: the weight class of his fighter is irrelevant. Sanchez has a programme based around old-school values of hard work and dedication and all his fighters are expected to adhere to it.

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Sanchez has only a stripped-back caucus. He has no need, he reckons, for nutritionists, strength-and-conditioning coaches and other specialists. He has no need for psychologists and, he says, he's surprised Parker does.

This was the contrived controversy section of the production, where Sanchez was asked to explain his apparently dismissive attitude to the news Barry had Parker engage the services of a sports psyche.

Correction: "It's not something I would have expected Kevin to allow him to do," clarifies Sanchez. "Tiger Woods the greatest golfer on earth has a psychologist. Every fighter is different... but if they require a psychologist then maybe I'm not the right coach for them."

As a counterpoint, Barry was asked why he found it surprising the Ruiz camp arrived just a week before the fight?

Correction: "What I actually said was if that decision was mine and I was making it on behalf of Joseph, I would bring him down two weeks before," clarifies Barry. "Abel has been up in Big Bear for a long time training a number of world champions... he's had people fight in all different continents around the world so I'm sure he knows exactly the amount of time required."

Well I'm glad we straightened that out.

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All artificial angst aside, the two trainers know that even if they make a nice back story, it is not them that will be harvesting eyeballs on Saturday. That's the job of the fighters and their pugilistic skills.

"We have two guys who are finally going to show us what heavyweight boxing is actually about. We've been watching wrestling for the last 10 years," Sanchez says.

Here, both mentors say, is a fight to get excited about between two young punchers.
Trainers and spruikers alike hope it will be of biblical proportions.

--

A colleague asked what the Black Caps' coaches had added to the bowlers since the 2015 World Cup. Pretty straightforward question, even easier answer: runs per over.

--

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The, "Is England better than the All Blacks?" debate might be hypothetical and already a bit tiresome, but it also might be nuanced. If I was forced to answer, I'd venture that at this time of year, the Red Rose might be slightly ahead, in June, say, the All Blacks are comfortably in front.

THE WEEK IN MEDIA ...

A fascinating look into how the NFL, after years of bad press, has tried to market itself to kids and mums. From the Huffington Post.

More terrible, but terribly important, stories from the Guardian on the abuse of children in football. The scandal is reaching mind-bending proportions.

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