How do you rate the trainer Don Turner?

This is exactly right. The boxing world hold both Turner and Steward as great trainers. A lock.

If A small faction on a forum siding with one over the other then leads a couple of renegade posters deciding the one they don’t agree with is fraudulent then it leaves quite a bad taste. It’s unsporting. And un-gentlemanly.

 

Yes, why was it that you didn’t take that time? Turner gave a plausible response.

 

I wonder if this was the beginning of the Steward-Turner bickering.

Lennox Lewis: a champion with doubters

By Associated Press

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- Don Turner, the trainer for Evander Holyfield, was not impressed.

He watched Lennox Lewis escape early trouble to knock down Shannon Briggs three times before stopping him at 1:45 of the fifth round Saturday night.

When asked how Lewis would fare against Holyfield, Turner said: "He gets knocked out, probably. Yeah, he's easier than I thought."

[...]

Briggs, booed lustily after winning a disputed 12-round majority decision over George Foreman last November, quickly won over many in the crowd of 9,173 in Convention Hall.

He had Lewis in serious trouble in the first round after landing a left hook to the head and following with a barrage of punches. He hurt the champion again with a leaping left hook in the second round.

"Sometime you have got to get warmed up," Lewis said of his slow start. "Certain trials in a fight make you smarten up quick."

Briggs, who weighed 228 pounds, 15 pounds less than Lewis, backed off in the third round, enabling the champion to take charge with left jabs and short rights to the head.

"My plan was to be a little more steady," Briggs said. "I went into a frenzy after I hurt him."

Turner thought Briggs should have stayed in a frenzy.

"All Shannon Briggs had to do was fight like a crazy man," Turner said.

 

Of course he did. From what I can tell, Rule #1 in Don Turner's rulebook seems to be that it's never, ever Don Turner's fault.

 

Sound great. I look forward to reading all of the glowing quotes about Don Turner's value and greatness from his former fighters and rival trainers.

 

The topic of the thread is "How do you rate the trainer Don Turner?"

 

Depends which way it is read.

 

What you don't like and never have is anyone who doesn't swallow whole your own narrative,strange really you would have thought you would be used to it!

 

That isn't the quote I was looking for, I posted it as additional info.It seems the only ones posting information here are the ones you disagree with!lol

 

No ," how great ,"implies a level of greatness to be determined. "How you rate," implies no such thing.

 

Why was it that you didn't answer the questions I politely posed you?

 

Interesting profile on Turner from 20 years ago. Based on this and other things I've read, it seems like he's mostly praised for being "old-school," "no-nonsense," and a "straight-shooter." Seems like the kind of guy who pushes boxers to work hard and focus on the basics (though Michael Grant apparently lost to Lewis because Turner wasn't able to get him to work hard...go figure).

Can't find anything substantive about his actual boxing mind, and I haven't seen any sophisticated strategic advice or fight analyses from him (in interviews or during his corner-work during the few fights of his I've seen).

If the story is right, it seems like Holyfield had no idea who he was when he hired him, other than that he had worked with Holmes.


TRAINER GETS DUE FOR PAYING HIS DUES
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, June 24, 1997, 12:00 AM

LAS VEGAS He fought 11 years and usually won, but the best money Don Turner ever made inside a ring was the $750 they handed him for boxing a middleweight named Roger Rouse in Missoula, Mont. Roger Rouse was from Missoula, Mont. Turner spent eight rounds with Tom Brown in Springfield, Mass. His check was $80. Turner came to Atlantic City to fight Ike White, the semifinal bout on the Dick Tiger-Joey Giradello title card. His purse was $200 and that wasn't the worst of it. They brought him in the day of the fight and didn't have a hotel room for him. "There was a theater across the street from the arena," Turner said. "Elvis Presley in 'Viva Las Vegas.

' I watched it four times. That was my hotel room. Then I went out and fought Ike White.

" Turner put the gloves away in 1969 and began training. Most of his fighters were the kind they don't bother to find hotel rooms for. At 58, after a life in boxing, Turner is having his best time. Saturday night, when Evander Holyfield steps into the ring, Turner will be right behind him. The man who took a bus from Cincinnati to New York in 1969, $861 in his pocket, is now training the heavyweight champion. His first Manhattan address was the Harlem YMCA. Between fights he drove a cab, squeezed cars into a parking lot, "hustled on the streets, ran illegal card games," he said. "But I knew if I worked hard I would accomplish something.

" Turner stayed close to the master trainers, Charley Goldman, Whitey Bimstein, Freddy Brown, "and I stole from all of them," he says. "You had to learn something from them.

" He knew his craft, but he wouldn't be the kind of trainer who says, "Yes, champ, beautiful, champ, take the day off, champ.

" Not Turner. "I made it my way," he lets you know. "I didn't kiss anybody's behind. I didn't shmooze up anybody.

" He's an old-school guy, says Gary Bell, the young heavyweight who spars with Holyfield. Turner doesn't understand fighters who take cellular phones into the gym, or shop at malls, or spar to the sound of thundering music. "He'll say Sugar Ray Robinson didn't need music," Bell says, "and we tell him, 'Like, Don, times change.

' " Turner doesn't want to believe that. The first time he walked into Holyfield's Atlanta gym, "the first 15 seconds," he said, incredulously, "I saw a fighter eating sweet potato pie with a spoon, another fighter on the phone wearing gloves, and another's girlfriend was walking out of the locker room. One guy spent 15 minutes with the radio trying to find a station he wanted. Does that sound like a guy who wants to fight?

" The trainer grew up in the projects in the west end of Cincinnati, "the tough part of town. I didn't know nothing but welfare until I was 16 and started taking care of myself. But we had our three meals a day: missed meal, no meal, and oatmeal.

" Ezzard Charles, the heavyweight champion, lived four blocks away and Turner was 12 when he began sneaking into the gym to watch him. He dropped out of school after the ninth grade and, when he was 17, crossed the state line into Kentucky to get married. He was an A&P stock clerk. The marriage didn't last. Not long after he came to New York, he saw a woman "coming out of the employment office at Eighth Ave. and 54th St. I walked straight up to her and started talking. You know us black guys, we don't buy flowers. I said, 'Yo, baby, what's up?

' We talked, we talked, we talked, I took her to the gym, and we been together ever since, 35 years this August.

" Her name is Minnie and she'll be here Saturday for her husband's most important evening. He's here because he trained the 40-something Larry Holmes for his fight with Holyfield five years ago. Holmes didn't win but he went all 12 rounds and was a pain in the neck. Two years later, Holyfield was looking for a new trainer, and was handed a short list of names. None of them meant a thing to him. Who'd he train, Holyfield said, pointing at Turner's name. Holmes, he was told, and that was good enough for Holyfield. Their first fight together, against Michael Moorer, Holyfield lost his titles. Nineteen months later Holyfield was stopped by Riddick Bowe. Holyfield caught the punches, and the critics were almost as hard on Turner. LAST NOVEMBER, before Holyfield won the fight against Mike Tyson he wasn't supposed to win, the trainer told his heavyweight, "You're stronger. You can push him around.

" That's just what happened. "He made Tyson look like a rag doll," Turner said. After a life in boxing, a hard life, a life he wouldn't have lived any other way, Don Turner was a success. How did he feel? "Relieved," he said. Big smile.