Emanuel Steward: Andy didn’t get hit a lot like he did in the fight with McEwan

JENNA J: Andy really dominated throughout the entire match. In the second round he also dropped Brian Vera. Do you think, after viewing his performance, that he could have done anything better at all?

EMANUEL STEWARD: Well in rating him, I’d rate him about a 7.5 or an 8 in the fight. I thought he did what was necessary to win. It was not a super devastating performance, because in this fight here the main thing was to fight a technical fight, and that was to outbox him and keep him off-balance with the little right jab over the shoulder because Vera has very bad balance. So every time he started to come forward, Andy would hit him with that right cross type jab to make him fall off balance and then he would try to time him and catch him with straight lefts when he was coming in. That was the strategy. I would liked to have seen him open up and maybe knock him out, but it was a big risk because Vera has a good chin and he’s the type of guy that unless you see he’s really hurt, we learned from the first fight you just have to systematically beat him and if you hurt him you could also knock him out but don’t get too excited, because he falls off balance a lot and you may think he’s hurt and that’s because he has terrible balance. In fact, after the fight we were at the airport and we were saying that the biggest thing we took advantage of was his terrible balance. We kept him off balance all night. So it worked good, and next we try to move on to another fight, but I was glad that fight went that way and that Andy didn’t get hit a lot like he did in the fight with McEwan.

JENNA: Emanuel something that you’re very good at as a trainer is when your fighter has a revenge bout, or a rematch with someone that beat them, they usually always win under you. So what’s that like for you?

STEWARD: Well it’s always pleasant to me. (laughs) I was a very, very competitive guy and to lose is painful, but as Lennox used to say the worst thing in life is when you make the same mistake twice. I usually analyze the fights and after I look at them I can pretty much see what were the strong points and weak points of both fighters. That’s a gift that I have and it’s not something that I think everybody could learn. In the fight with Vera I saw that Vera was physically a pretty strong guy, and even though he may have lost a lot of fights he takes a good punch. Also he’s the type of guy if you get involved in exchanges with him, when he punches he lunges and pushes his weight forward when he’s slugging with you so he really gets a lot of force. So the main thing is to keep him off-balance and not worry about combinations. Just throw one single punch at a time, because if you hit him with punches and you stay there throwing two or three, you’ll get caught with a shot maybe around the side of the head or somewhere where you never even saw it coming. But for this fight Andy kept his left hand in a good position where he was able to catch the roundhouse rights as well as the straight rights. The other fights I had, like Holyfield and Bowe when I worked with Holyfield for the second fight with Riddick Bowe, I realized that Bowe was bigger, had better physical strength, and better boxing ability believe it or not, and better inside fighting, and youth, and size! But the thing that he was weak in was his footwork was not as good as Evander’s. So we had Evander work on winning the fight by moving, changing directions, punching in spots, moving, changing, and so it worked in after twelve rounds we were fortunate and had the championship again. Every fight is different and you have to be very detailed, because when you’re on the top level in boxing every little small detail can make a major difference.

JENNA: Okay Emanuel, well besides working as a trainer last Saturday night you pulled double duty and you were also an announcer for HBO. You called the Sergio Martinez versus Darren Barker fight. Now that you’ve had a little bit of time to reflect on it, what did you think?

STEWARD: Well Sergio is a champion. He knows how to win fights. I was very impressed with the fact that he was having difficulty in the fight, and you could see it in his face because the style of Barker was very hard to fight. You’re throwing a million punches. He doesn’t throw that many punches. So you tire much faster than him because you’re punching so much. Then he keeps his hands up and when you least expect it his little hands come out with little short punches. It’s not like he’s punching often where you can prepare and get into a rhythm of slipping punches and punching back. Sergio just outworked him. Then the last punch that he knocked him down with, I personally didn’t see it as being that hard. You know, you can’t tell what damage another person is experiencing. It could have been an accumulation of anything, but in my mind I had a real problem accepting that it was that kind of powerful punch that he would go down like that. It seemed like a lot of the guys from Europe, they come here and they have a participate type attitude. He did good, and so and so, and the crowd was loving it and giving him a lot of praise. But it’s just the mental makeup sometimes with these guys. I think that if he had fought over here before he might have been more comfortable. A lot of these aren’t that comfortable with the situation when they’ve never been here and fought in America. But I thought Barker did show the weaknesses of Martinez more than anyone, maybe. That was mainly to get close to him and throw little short straight punches, which was effective because of the low hand position of Martinez and Martinez is always waiting for you to punch where he can make his little counter move. But Martinez did what he had to do. When he saw that he was having problems he just outworked his opponent, and he was able to score a knockout from a right cross type jab.

JENNA: Alright Emanuel, now with both Andy Lee and Sergio Martinez coming through their fights a lot of people suggested that those two should meet in the ring. Andy is considered the number one middleweight contender out there. In your opinion, do you think that fight should be next for your fighter?

STEWARD: Well I feel very good about it. He’s had nearly 30 fights, and I think it’s a fight he should get but if he doesn’t I don’t worry about it too much, because he is probably the number one premiere challenge. What I know realistically is the promoter for Martinez and Andy is Lou DiBella, and Lou is really trying to get a big money fight for Martinez and I think that’s something that he deserves still. He’s been battling here for quite a few years and has fought a lot of good fights, and I myself would like to see him get a big fight first before he fights Andy or any of those type guys. I don’t know, Mayweather or someone. But it seems like he’s not willing, which I understand, to move up to super middleweight. Really he’s nothing but a junior middleweight still right now. So he’s caught in a real bad position. Andy and him will I think eventually fight if they both keep on the course where they are, but if he doesn’t him next it doesn’t bother me too much because Andy can still have two or three fights in between if he wanted to. He’s still learning and developing, but he is a better fighter than he showed in that fight but that was a fight that he had to fight very technical.

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