The Daily Bread Mailbag returns with Stephen “Breadman” Edwards giving his thoughts on various topics such as the future of Boots Ennis, Ennis joining Matchroom and a possible Crawford fight, giving Tim Witherspoon his props, Hitchins-Lemos and the Canelo-Benavidez quandary.
I’ve been a boxing fan and writer since 1975 and started my Boston-based combat sports PR agency, Full Court PRESS 25 years ago. One of the dozen or so world champs I’ve worked for is Zurdo Ramirez.
I read your answer to a question about Zurdo in today’s BoxingScene mailbag with great interest. I greatly respect your boxing knowledge and was thrilled to read that you believe Zurdo can be a world heavyweight champion.
I am contacting you in regard to what you wrote about Malik Scott.
He is not Zurdo’s head trainer but is a valued assistant who works out of Brickhouse Boxing Club in North Hollywood. I started doing work with Zurdo after he was released by Top Rank about the same time that Julian [Chua] became his head trainer.
I’ve watched his work and I believe he’s one of the hottest young trainers in boxing.
In addition to Zurdo, Julian is also the head trainer for Scrappy Ramirez, the undefeated super flyweight who will be fighting on this month’s Haney-Garcia bill.
I just wanted you to know that Julian is Zurdo’s head trainer not Malik, who works the corners for Zurdo and Scrappy.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Bob Trieger
Bread’s Response: I apologize to Julian. Attribution in this sport is very important and it was NOT my intent to slight him. I don’t pay much attention to the digital world of boxing but in the times that I rarely do, I saw Malik Scott working with Zurdo, so I WRONGLY assumed he was the head trainer. Again, my apologies, I definitely wouldn’t want anyone to slight me, so therefore I would never purposely slight another fellow trainer.
Zurdo looks good at cruiserweight and under the right conditions he can get a title at heavyweight or at least fight for the belt which is always an honor.
Hi
Just following on from your Holmes/Holyfield mail from last week. Witherspoon was my favourite heavyweight growing up as a teenager, for some reason I took to him when he was about to fight Holmes and along with Hagler he was the fighter I cared most about.
I think what people fail to remember about the Holmes fight is he had very few fights, was coming of a long break due to an injury and had less than twenty fights in total as an amateur. His talent level was unreal but his motivation was slowly sucked out of him due to all of the nonsense with King. In a parallel universe he’s an ATG. Even with his under-performing career, he had some very impressive wins. Keep up the great work with the mailbag and your training. Regards, Dave
Bread’s Response: Tim Witherspoon is as close to being a GREAT fighter as one can be without being recognized as one. He was tremendous. He had a good chin, big punch, smooth defense, IQ and a big heart. As you stated the politics of boxing and Don King were the cause of him not being at a higher level historically. What a shame.
For context this is how good Witherspoon is. I thought he beat Larry Holmes when he was only 15-0. I thought Witherspoon and Mike Tyson would be a 50/50 fight, best day for best day in the mid 80s. And Witherspoon would have had a very good chance to beat the smaller and older Michael Spinks in my opinion who beat Holmes in 1985. I bring them up because they all competed and won belts in the SAME era. All are HOFs. And Witherspoon would have had a great chance to beat them ALL. Again, I thought he beat the great Larry Holmes. Watch that fight round for found and tell me Tim didn’t win 8 or 9 rounds out of the 15.
In his last fight, Ryad Merhy beat Tony Yoka. He wasn’t supposed to beat Yoka. He did as well against Yoka as Carlos Takam and Martin Bakole did. Takam is a former world title challenger and Bakole is currently the WBA’s No. 1 ranked contender. I know the transitive property doesn’t apply to boxing but I have to ask: does Merhy have a shot to beat Jared Anderson? Anderson has had recent legal trouble and seems very distracted by it.
