Lou Duva

George Benton said he was a racist.

 

The more i find out...
He's an utter ****

 

Hindsight.

They knew Chavez probably had an edge with the judges and might get the decision. Taking a chance on giving away the last round and losing a "Vegas" decision when not knowing he was ahead on two of three scorecards (note: not all three, which shows there was reason for concern) would have been silly.

We now know Meldrick got stopped. We now know he was ahead on two cards and would have won a split decision if he got through the round. We did not know that then -- the right corner advice would have been to keep doing what has been working, NOT "you're way ahead ... give him the round ... run, run, run!!!"

 

Tbh I think Lou Duva gets some massively unfair stick on here bigtime, people make out as though he was sending a lamb to slaughter in the final round against Chavez. The fight was damn close and losing the last round would be disastrous.

 

Think you'll find that wasn't Lou Duva in the corner for Golota against Tyson, you still have a lot to learn sunshine....

 

He was a presence in a corner, a grandstanding loud mouth.

 

they had too many top fighters and too little time so he did rush a lot of his prospects, some did well and others failed but Duva was there for his guys and concerned

 

If you rewatch the final moments of that 12th round, the man hardly looked as though he was in a position to press any sort of an attack. At one point he even slipped to the canvas out of pure exhaustion and his face looked like he had gone through a windshield. As for hindsight, well on HBO's legendary nights they compared film footage of Duva's advice in the corner and contrasted it to an interview with Lou 20 years later.. What Lou "claimed" he told Meldrick on that dreadful night differed from what was "actually" said.

Lou in March of 1990 - " You need this round, go out and take it"

Lou 20 years later - " I told him to dance and stay the hell away from him"

 

Dan and Kathy Duva were savvy business people, and were quick to rack up the hottest talent it was coming out of the amateurs. Lou might not have been a great trainer but he was a good motivator and good at organizing a camp and getting some of the better trainers and corner man to come aboard. Some of the advice he gave fighters in between rounds though makes me think that he should have left that task to the people he hired.

 

true but I have seen worse. Remember the Rory Holloway and Co. days of Tyson's corner a real joke

 

Yeah Snowel, Bright and Halloway were quite the trio. Trying to reduce swelling with a condom filled with water was truly epic and in hindsight comical to say the least.

 

What else would you use if you didn't have an endswell?

 

That's just the point. They were supposed to be high end professionals training a world class athlete in a multi million dollar event. You'd think that they'd come prepared with everything they needed. Weeks later I saw an HBO interview with Angelo Dundee and Gil Clancy and they expressed how appalled they were at the corner work on that evening.

 

Fair enough but it could have been a honest mistake on the night, they'd have been better off bringing a shotgun instead because no endswell was going to change the result.

 

Which of them was supposed to have been a chef before coming into the Tyson camp to train him? I recall Teddy Atlas joking on camera, "When it's time to do pad work, what does he hold up? Oven mitts?" Laughed my **** off.