“It’s not that America isn’t producing Tyson-Hagler-Leonard-Holmes dominant quality champions any more, I believe fighters such as the names you mentioned were born champions and they all were placed in the care of teachers not trainers/cheerleaders. America isn’t producing Cus D’Amato or Eddie Futch, great teachers of the squared circle anymore. The last of the teachers is Freddie Roach and his student Manny Pacquiao is about to graduate and once that happens I believe the school of greatness will be closed until the hype men man up and start to study from the book of greatness and not the book of cheerleading. If Tyson-Hagler-Leonard or Holmes would have been trained by any of the hype men that’s working corners for 10% of nothing today they still might have grabbed the belts but they would have never tasted greatness. Scoop just think about it – Left hook Lacy, Roy, Hopkins all took a loss from a man that was trained by a jazz musician. That’s like Trey Songz beating me up (laughs). The reason we don’t have great match-ups is because the hype men/trainers do not have confidence in themselves, so just like anybody who is all talk they just want to compete against the people that’s weaker or has no way of winning.”
Richard Pierson is a middleweight boxer who was called a future world champion by Kelly Pavlik for his work preparing Pavlik for this first Jermain Taylor fight. Pierson writes regularly for this site.
