This is the most truthful comment in this thread. There's a guy that is enjoying a great deal of success now but, for probably 20-25 years, he was the guy putting together the fight plan, teaching it to the fighter in the gym, and to the guy that would be in the ring and take credit for it. My partner in the boxing game has trained amateur national champions, a Pan Am games champion, an Olympian, 3 professional world champions, and several guys he started as amateurs won world titles professionally with other people. If I mentioned his name not one of you would have a clue who he is.
I know what you mean, I've seen that too. I believe a lot of trainers would bring in assistants to help out and this is where this may come in to play as well as their level of involvement. I know Jesse Reid was brought in by McCoy to help out Rodolfo Gonzalez' training for the Chango Carmona fight and he too refers to Gonzalez as his first champion even though - according to Gonzalez - his only involvement was getting him up early in the morning for roadwork. More of a motivator than anything else and it was only for the one fight. Yet, again, he calls Gonzalez his first champion. In 1958 when Jordan won the title I don't know the level of involvement McCoy would have allowed Futch. I don't know how well known he was but he was west coast by then so McCoy obviously trusted him to assist. I really never heard of Futch until the early '70s when he was training Ken Norton and that's when he really took off. But I'm sure he had his hand in a lot of west coast fighters by then.
You probably should have included this part in your thread title. Otherwise, people just name the trainers who've worked with the most champions or their favorite fighters, etc. I'd be really interested in reading some more examples of trainers ranking or praising others trainers.
I agree with your post. I think a lot of trainers are good marketers of themselves. I was watching a video a few days ago that was posted on this board of someone interviewing a trainer about Majidov. The trainer was talking about what he was "teaching" Majidov and how he wanted to take his time and continue to teach him before fighting the top people. Listening to the interview one would think the trainer had a new fighter that he had to "make." In reality, Majidov is in his 30s, has been fighting at the top of the amateurs for many years, what he is going to do in the ring is probably set by now, a trainer just needs to watch him and point out/correct any bad habits that he has picked up, teaching him a new style is not necessary and probably isn't going to work anyway. If Majidov had been fighting Joshua or Ruiz last week, it'd be his second pro fight and IMO, he'd have had a good chance of winning. Trainers get too much credit and too much criticism. The fighter has to do the fighting. You can put Freddie Roach in Eric Molina's corner and my grandmother in Hrgovic's corner and the result isn't going to change by much. The fighter does the fighting.
I saw an interesting take awhile back about James Toney's opinion on Emmanuel Steward and Freddie Roach. This is came from a guy who was in the Wild Card gym for awhile. In a nutshell, Steward had a good supporting cast at the Kronk, making him partly responsible for the results. Roach was and is still just a one man show with a bunch of yes-men around him, meaning most real progress is because of his teaching. I will say that there's a reason Futch chose Roach and that what Freddie helped do with Pacquiao was phenomenal.
There's a guy that gets left off the list too often. Good call. I dare anyone to name two better champions than Manny Seamon worked with. Joe Louis and Benny Leonard