“‘RING TALK” GOES DEEP WITH LAMON BREWSTER
Lamon Brewster
Ring Talk (RT)- Right now we’re honorably joined by a former heavyweight titleholder. He was favored to win the heavyweight Gold at the 1992 Olympics, but he fell in love with the R & B singer known as Brandy, and his trip to Barcelona never happened. Folks, I’m talking about the great Lamon Brewster. Long time Lamon long time, how are you man?
Lamon Brewster (LB) – Hey man, how you doing, thanks for having me on again. You found me!
RT– Long time, I remember you and me sitting in the dressing room down at the LA Forum when Thomas Hearns fought Ed Dalton. I recall just you and me sitting back in the dressing room just rapping, I did television that night. We talked about your future and you were just a very young buck and I believe that was 1997. So how’s life treating you in 2011?
LB– Life is good, just working on something that I think is going to be revolutionary or should I say evolutionary as far as all full contact sports is concerned. Sort of a one stop shop for all the fighting world.
Cause man I had a lot of trouble when I was getting ready for fights to find sparring partners and gym locations while on vacation with my wife. So I came up with this automated system where if you’re looking for specifics, if you’re looking for a guy who’s 6’1, 220 lbs, that’s right handed that is a boxer, you can just press enter and it would bring up everybody around the world. You could see a video of them sparring and if you like them you select them. I think its the best way to get through a lot of frustrations. I actually got sparring partners bring sparring partners to camp to find out if I hit them or hurt them and then they wouldn’t give me 100 % and I couldn’t go all out. They were not what I was looking for and I needed to get rid of them or I would have to take it easy on guys. So I just solved the problem. I hope that the rest of the world will come out to support this together for all contact sports from Boxing, MMA, Kickboxing, Muay Thai. It’ll probably be online in eight weeks away and it’s called Fightingconnection.com.
RT– The site is Fightingconnection.com, and we’re talking with Lamon Brewster folks, a man who once beat Wladimir Klitschko, we’ll talk about that a little bit later. Tell me about MMA are you surprised that MMA has passed boxing in popularity? According to the statistics, it passed boxing up five years ago circa 2006. Since then boxing been like in the rear view mirror of MMA, why is that Lamon? Why is that the ‘sweet science,’ one of the oldest sports the world, the original sports when it comes to fighting back in the day, I’m talking about John L. Sullivan in bare knuckle days and things like that, of course the Joe Louis era, Jack Johnson , Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier , George Foreman’s, the Larry Holmes era, I could go on on, why is it why has boxing taken a back seat to MMA Do think that a lot of those bad decisions on TV created ran off the fan base?
LB– Well I’m glad you ask me that question because I really feel in my heart I have an answer for you. First thing I want to say is when a guy signs a contract in boxing that’s a guarantee, he knows win, lose, or draw he will get “X” amount of dollars, perfect example and I don’t mean no disrespect cause he’s a brother to me and I have so much love for him. Shane Mosley when he fought Manny Pacquiao, he was fighting great for the first one or two rounds, but when he got hit and knocked down, he realized he couldn’t win so his body went into survival mode. He got a guarantee and thought let me just box this guy cause if I stand in there with him I will be knocked out. So with that being said he did just enough to try to make it by entertaining without getting knocked out. Well in MMA, it’s not like that fighters don’t make a whole lot money for one, you know what I’m saying, so that guarantee goes towards their success upon winning. Which makes all the difference in the world cause if you’re telling me I’m only gonna make $20,000, but if I lose that twenty gets knocked down to ten, well I’m still not making no money so I better let it all hang out and win. The second thing in boxing is let’s look at the ladies in the 1940′s to use your imagination. Those ladies all wore dresses to their ankles and that’s boxing. In MMA, the ladies are wearing skirts that come up to their thighs you know what I’m saying. They’re a breath of fresh air, in boxing they’re not like that, it hasn’t changed, we still got the red, white, and blue ring. What I’m trying to get at is there’s nothing entertaining about boxing except the fights themselves. Every time you go to a fight you see that same thing and the guys have a guarantee and their guarantee is I’m gonna get paid by the end of the day win, lose or draw no matter what. Boxing hasn’t changed as the world has. It’s like we’re not getting up anymore to go turn the knobs on a television we got remote controls. You know we’re not cooking in the oven anymore since we got a microwave. Well Boxing hasn’t changed at all since the John L. Sullivan or Jack Johnson days. We need change, people with new ideas to make it better. You look at MMA, it’s fresh, new and exciting, you know history repeats itself. Boxing to me is the sport of sports and all MMA fighters compete in boxing to be better MMA fighters. It’s just a matter of us going from A to B, we’ve been stuck at B and need to get to C. And get rid of all this corruption and promoters taking money from their fighters, you here about all the horror stories that people a lot of people and athletes away. And the third thing I want to say is today there are so many other sports offering more money without the politics and corruption. Where athletes that could’ve been great fighters choose other sports that pay for their education that we didn’t have in the 80′s and 70′s. But that’s my conclusion what do you think.
RT– Well I think boxing hasn’t woken up yet, when you go to a UFC event it’s like a rock concert from start to the end and there’s always something happening live on the big screen or fights in the ring. Lamon, you and I know this, you go to a boxing match you are find yourself sitting around for 45 minutes on your hands in between fights waiting for the main event to begin because of the TV schedule or something else. Put it this way, the UFC blueprint is a combination of what the WWE did as far entertaining people are concerned and what boxing doesn’t do. I think everything Dana White does is the opposite of what boxing does and he’s making billions and billions doing it. And yet you got boxing promoter Bob Arum calling the UFC homosexual sex.
LB– It’s not fair for any man to judge how another man eats. That’s just my opinion, I love Bob Arum, but how we feed our families, as long as we don’t break the law, I’m all for it. Me being a boxer by nature that’s who am and I won’t knock any other sport cause if that what works for you and keeps you off the streets, and away from breaking into my house well then good for you.
RT– The UFC does give a lot of bonuses guys get $40,000, $50,000, $100,000, they give out huge bonuses for great fights, fight of the night and such. You know Dana White and Lorenzo Fertitta, people think they’re frugal with purses, but hey at first they lost $33 million, you think Bob Arum ever lost a dime of his own money, or Don King for that matter? I remember what Don King once told me, the key to his success is using other people’s money.
LB– Yes sir, that’s the businessman mentality and I don’t mean it in a negative way. But that’s why I’m glad that we’re going out with the old in with the new because Don King and Bob Arum are on the last part of their careers as far as being promoters.
RT– Okay last question, Oscar De La Hoya was supposed to be a breath of fresh air, but he’s turned out to be just like Don King and Bob Arum, he’s playing the same fiddle.
LB– You gotta understand one thing, if you haven’t thought about it already, all he really did was allowed them to use his name. He didn’t say hands on this is how I want it to be. For example when he fought Floyd Mayweather he got $30 million for the fight but his company made three times as much. That’s 130 million and all he did was move his wrists scribbling ink. He doesn’t want to take boxing to the next level, from what I’ve seen it’s all about money for him. For instance they had a card at the Chumash Casino I think and gave them I believe like $300,000 and the fight was terrible but guess what they got paid anyway. Close to $2 million. They didn’t have to do any advertising, just because his name is Oscar De La Hoya. They go for the cream of the crop, the don’t look at the dirt, they don’t look at the diamond that could be underneath. They look at the one that already shines. They’re in it for the financial gain.
RT– Okay 35-6 with 30 KOs, what’s the name of this new gym, this new website you putting up pretty soon?
Lb – My website is called fightingconnection.com, it’s for fans, ring card girls, managers, trainers to physical trainers, boxers, judges and all types of full contact fighting genres and it’s just something that I think that we deserve. No longer do we have to look around asking somebody hey do you know someone with this style or other. I’m providing a map to get around the fight world.
Radio interview transcribed by Edwin “Ace Ayala
Interview conducted by Pedro Fernandez, host of “Ring Talk Worldwide,” the longest running fight show in history, 26+ years. Ring Talk airs Saturday’s at 11 AM PT on the Sports Byline Broadcast Network with audio at sportsbyline.com or catch the LIVE video at Facebook.com/RingTalk on Saturday and just hit the Uverse Live TV button in the left margin of the page. “Ring Talk” is also on ITunes.
Pedro Fernandez