So You Want to Be a Fighter by Chris Algieri

Author:Chris Algieri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DK Publishing

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After a few false starts at office jobs, Buddy decided training was all he wanted to do and decided to go at it “full blast, 200%.” By 2002, he was named Trainer of the Year by the Boxing Writers Association of America.

He’d trained amateurs in between professional fights in the late 1980s, but now he knew he wanted to train fighters full time. “Don King hired me as a trainer the night Pernell [Whitaker] fought [Felix] Trinidad. I got my first world champion with Don: Byron Mitchel. We trained for a week before the title fight,” he says. Buddy would go on to run Don King’s training camp in Florida.

By 2001, Buddy was the head trainer for the late Arturo Gatti when he fought his three historic fights against “Irish” Micky Ward. Each fight was a modern classic with nonstop action and tons of drama. Two of the fights were named Fight of the Year by The Ring magazine in 2002 and 2003. HBO named Gatti–Ward I and Gatti–Ward III in its Ten Best Fights of the Decade list.

The ninth round of their first battle will forever be known as one of the most violent and memorable fights in history—so much so that it’s known as “Round 9” in direct reference to this fight in most boxing circles. Gatti took a terrific beating and referees were on the verge of stopping the fight.

Good fighters know how important it is to have an experienced coach in the corner to guide them during a fight. Buddy could see Gatti might be in trouble and needed to use his legs in the 10th and final round. He wanted to ensure that Gatti not only had the legs to do it but also the presence of mind to concentrate on the fight. He asked Gatti to stand in the corner and bounce to show him that he still had the legs to do it. Gatti did and went on to box beautifully in the final round, Buddy recalls. Gatti ultimately lost that evening but went on to win the next two fights against Micky Ward. Buddy was the trainer behind the series and behind Gatti’s wins.

I ask Buddy what it’s like as a coach being so close to a fight of that magnitude and with that intensity. “You can’t explain it, man. It’s like asking what it’s like when you win a title and they put that belt around your waist.”

He describes the chaos of the famous ninth round. The doctor was Italian, the referee was Italian, and Gatti was Italian. They were all talking Italian in the corner, he says. “They thought I was stopping the fight, but I was just asking what the hell is going on because I couldn’t understand Italian.” All three fights have gone down in boxing history as some of the best in the sport, solidifying Buddy’s career as a trainer to the sports elite.

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