The importance of good sparring partners

Hey AF, im sure your father must have known Peter Lavery from over here. He sparred with Winstone for his 3 fights with Saldivar

 

When I met Jake LaMotta last year he absolutely swore by Sparring - he didn't see any reason in doing any other type of training really - am paraphrasing a little bit here but not much - these were pretty much his words

"If you're training for a fight what better than to just fight over and over?? If I was training for a long run then yeah I might wanna do loads of running!! But if I preparing to fight then the best thing to do is just fight."

 

He probably did, that name sounds familiar to me.
:?

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wB_8JNE3dA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wB_8JNE3dA[/ame]
1:45 onwards. hill seems to not use few if not no sparring.

 

Just looked up Peter Lavery on boxrec and him and me dad boxed on the same bill at least once. Peter boxed Frankie Taylor, my dad's stablemate. Frankie was the golden boy at the time and people were saying that he could be a real threat to Winstone. Frankie had won the gold at the 61 european championships as an amateur, no mean feat and really on a par with winning olympic gold. in fact he was the last English winner in the Europeans until recently. His career was going great until he ran into an unheard of at the time future lightweight champ in Carlos Teo Cruz, he was never the same after that.
Anyway, that leads to my sparring story that I thought was funny. Dad and Frank had known each other as amateurs, dad was even a member of that England team at the Europeans. They used to spar regular then and Frank talked me dad into signing pro terms with Bobby Neill and joining him in London. Me dad said it was the best sparring he ever had, they used to have a war every day. Sometimes he'd get the better of it and sometimes Frank would. Now me dad had this broken nose from when he was a kid and Frankie said it was terrible, it was that bad he said that you couldn't tell if he was talking to you or trying to look out the window. One day they were sparring when Frankie caught dad with a cracking uppercut which broke his nose again. Me dad's initial reaction was to turn away and then he said to Frankie "you ****ing *******". A few days later when the swelling had gone down he walked into the gym and said thanks Frank you've sorted my nose out. His nose though still flat had been knocked straight again from that shot. All's well that ends well.

 

Monzon was probably too busy sparring with his wife.