Cork’s Cuban trio can break mould thanks to Morgan
You can’t just put them in the ring with just that raw talent
COLIN MORGAN knows what it takes to avoid boxing’s scrapheap. That alone marks him out as the perfect trainer for the famous trio of Cuban boxers fighting out of the unlikely surrounds of the Team Thomas Gym in Watergrasshill, Co Cork. He understands their dilemma, how they’re following in the footsteps of so many hard luck stories.
Since they left home, the young men who fight under two flags have travelled an unconventional path. I covered ‘The Rebel’ Mike Perez’s debut fight in Neptune Stadium in early 2008. He was on the undercard of a Billy ‘Boy’ Walsh fight.
As if a harbinger of his struggles to find a willing opponent these days, Perez’s scheduled opponent had pulled out with a couple of days to go and a Latvian lamb to the slaughter, Jevgenjis Stamburskis, was wheeled in to replace him. The 95-second mauling that ensued that Saturday night shocked everyone in the arena.
That was almost four years ago. The shy fighter who back then spoke little or no English has now blossomed into an outgoing man of 26, his potential contender status for a world championship belt finally backed up by May’s International Prizefighter victory in London.
Boxing woke up to the exotic possibilities of that all too rare quality in a Cuban defector: replicating amateur dominance on the professional stage. Around Cork though, his novelty factor and that of his fighting compatriots, Alexei Collado (flyweight) and Luis Garcia (light heavyweight), has been taken for granted, somewhat. They still get stopped in the street but they’ve settled into a dedicated life of professionalism.
And although Leeside and the east Cork hinterland is a world away from the anarchic hustle and bustle of Havana and Matanzas (the hometowns of Collado and Garcia), they have retained the drive and the dream that caused them to separate themselves from family and familiarity.
Having finally been provided with a sense of normalcy after a widely publicised management dispute, this is a settled camp now, due in no small part to Morgan.
The 50-year-old Guyana native, a former professional boxer who was prematurely forced into corner man duties due to injury in the early 1980s, arrived in Cork just over a year ago and was tasked with the unenviable mission of harnessing the undoubted raw talents of the Cubans before it was too late. More than anyone he appreciates the delicate balance that defines their careers.
A resident of Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan, Morgan had spent the better part of a decade preparing fighters for the Don King stable before this unique opportunity presented itself.
These are challenging times for the Sweet Science but Morgan digs all the magic back up. He keeps his intense energy concealed. He seems laid-back but he makes his point with a steely precision, staring off into the distance as he assembles his thoughts, his lower jaw jutting out slightly, up on his toes, moving side-to-side. And there’s always the threat that he’ll have you on your feet too, raising your guard so he can demonstrate the subtle techniques he has instilled in his fighters down the years.
Perez had shown me, when I visited them while home in Cork recently, how Morgan raised his southpaw stance by about an inch. It’s made a world of difference. Garcia couldn’t touch his toes when Morgan arrived. That’s all changed. Only recently did Collado go the distance — every other opponent had been blown away. All because of Morgan. Some of the world champions who have passed through his clutches include the cruiserweights Guillermo Jones and Wayne Braithwaite and featherweight Elio Rojas. And then there was the heavyweight Larry Donald who, in 2004, proved to be a nail in the coffin of Evander Holyfield’s ill-advised comeback.
Now Morgan is trying to reverse the old adage that Cubans can never make it on the biggest stage, doomed to be discarded when impatient promoters move on to the next big thing.
“What I have been trying to do this last year is teach these guys how to be professional boxers. If you’re a boxer, you already know what the fight is about. If you become professional, you have to learn the ins-and-outs. How to be clever. When to hold, when not to hold, when to apply pressure, how to pace yourself, how to breathe, how to stay in shape, how to speak to the media.
“You’ve got to learn this whole new business. You can’t just put them in the ring with just that raw talent. That’s what my coaches did with me.”
lLuis Garcia and Mike Perez are due to fight on December 30 in the Morongo Casino Resort in Cabazon, California on the undercard of Jermain Taylor’s fight against Andre Dirrell. Opponents TBA.
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