Emanuel Steward: “I Could Train No Man To Beat Him.”

June 18th, 2009

Former cruiserweight title challenger Jonathon Banks told me a few years ago how the world’s Heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko is improving more and more, each training camp he becomes noticeably better, with new moves added to his arsenal. It wasn’t just the words being spoken, it was the convincing way they were spoken. There was no doubting Banks, he sounded that certain.

Curious to hear more, I asked Klitschko trainer Emanuel Steward about this. He had some fascinating comments:

“Wladimir’s becoming a complete fighter,” said Steward two years ago. “For the first time I’ve ever had a heavyweight that I could always see weaknesses when I would train a guy to beat if I was ever in the other corner. Wladimir is gonna be the one I don’t think I could train no man to beat the way he is. I’m serious. I’ve never had a fighter – I went from Holyfield and all the guys I’ve worked with, never, Lennox – (Wladimir) is a very, very committed, very difficult to beat fighter. Because he won’t let you fight him. He makes you fight what he wants you to fight. But the biggest thing which I think people are not looking at is his speed for a big man. Tremendous speed.”

If you ever saw Klitschko working out in a ring during training camp, you would be astounded by how incredibly light on his feet he is for a 240-pound man. Dare I say somewhat vaguely comparable to Cassius Clay or Larry Holmes?

“Yeah, he moves, that’s what I mean. Foot speed. He can move in, explode, move out, move back in, explode, and I’ve never saw anyone that could move in and explode and move in and out and be in perfect balance. Even when he’s going back he can stop right on a dime and then shoot a missile straight through.”

But all some idiotic critics can say about Wladimir is, Well, he’s just a good heavyweight in a weak era. Or…Ah duh, all you gotta do is touch that chin and down he goes.

Clearly Klitschko has more than proven his ability to take a hard punch, even Lennox Lewis has said, “His chin only let him down in the one fight (Corrie Sanders).”

You wonder why critics continue to drone on about Klitschko worst performances, after he has put on so may consecutive dominations. Were Ali’s critics still diminishing him eight years later after the unimpressive efforts against Doug Jones, Sonny Banks and Henry Cooper? No, he learned and improved from those educational fights. As has Klitschko from his low points against Sanders and Lamon Brewster.

So enjoy this weekends big Heavyweight unification match between Klitschko and Ruslan Chagaev. As, according to the highly-respected Emanuel Steward, we might be witnessing one of the all-time greatest heavyweight champions – and perhaps an unbeatable one the way he is now – in his absolute ultimate prime at 33.

Scoop Malinowski’s first book “Heavyweight Armageddon: The Tyson-Lewis Championship Battle” was called “A smashing success,” by Emanuel Steward, “One of the two best boxing books I’ve ever read.”