Once a year I go back to NY, where I got my MBA, to meet old friends, do an alumni event etc. So I ended up watching the big fight at my friends place, and he had a bunch of friends over. There was one guy there, who he mentioned trained him and a couple of other guys in the mornings in boxing. I could tell he knew his stuff, and they mentioned he was a former world champ. So I went over and chatted to him. Turned out it was Lonnie Bradley, who was WBO Middleweight champ in the 90s. I spend an hour chatting to him. He had great stories. From how he believed he was robbed of a chance at the olympics when he was beaten in the trials by Raul Marquez, who had already been tapped up by Top Rank. His implication was that the Top Rank guy had to make it to the olympics, to how he roomed with John Ruiz in the amateurs, to how he almost fought Steve Collins(of course I had to ask about the one! ) He had a bunch of other stories about past fighters he trained with and knew etc. Have to say, he was an absolute gentleman. Only downside, is that a Northern Irish guy who was there aswell, kept butting in trying to talk about Frampton, who was clearly the only boxer he had ever heard of!
I remember him he was a good fighter and he seemed like a really cool guy. I only saw a couple of his fights but I remember reading a few features on him in boxing magazines and watching a few interviews. He had a serious problem with one of his eyes. The fight of his I remember the most was his upset loss to David Lopez. Lopez was 21-11 at the time but his record was very deceiving. His form was poor when he started out (he was stopped in 8 of his 11 loses), but he'd clearly improved considerably by the time he fought Bradley. He went on a 21-1 tear between 2003-2011 and he beat some pretty decent fighters along the way, Bradley being one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Bradley took one look at his record and thought it was going to be a fairly easy night's work. [YT]tg3nCkqP-CY[/YT]
haha, I was thinking about doing that, but we were just chatting, and having a couple of beers...just didn't seem right!
He mentioned that when he came back from his break (He took about 2-3 years out with a retina injury), that he never really had the same hunger or fire he used to have. And when he lost, he said it was time to call it quits.
Yeah I remember he was out for a while because of that eye injury. Shame about that as it basically put an end to a promising career.
