Southern California Notebook By Doug Fischer (Sep 11, 2008) Send this page to friend Give us your feedback Sergio Mora grunted with every body shot he slammed into the elongated torso of Kingsley Ikeke, charging forward and backing the gangly super middleweight into the ropes where their furious exchanges showered ringside observers with sweat. It was 1 p.m., this past Saturday, during the fifth round of a scheduled 12-round session – the last such workout of Mora’s abbreviated camp for his rematch with Vernon Forrest – at his Montebello-based gym. A thought hit me about the same time Ikeke’s sweat splashed across my glasses: “This is the Sergio Mora that few know.” Most who know of or have heard of Mora know the well-read winner of the first season of The Contender. Or they know the unorthodox boxer who wins fights with his style more than his substance. They haven’t seen the fighter – yet. They might see the fighter this Saturday when Mora attempts to defend his WBC 154-pound title against the man he won it from just four months ago in the co-featured bout of an HBO-distributed Pay-Per-View show from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. I’ve seen “Mora the fighter” a few times in the past, at his gym and at the South El Monte Boxing Club, when he was butting heads with the brutal likes of Antonio Margarito, James Kirkland, and Alfred Angulo. I saw the fighter last Saturday, when Mora gutted out 11 quality rounds – some of which were heated and grueling – with three sparring partners: the first three with former junior middleweight contender JC Candelo, the next six with 6-foot-4 Ikeke, and the final two with welterweight novice Artemio Reyes Jr. For four rounds, Mora the fighter wasn’t needed. The unorthodox boxer with four solid weeks of training under his belt was more than enough to handle the rangy veterans in front of him. Candelo popped a crisp jab during the first three rounds of work, but Mora consistently timed lead rights to his head and hooks to his body in-between those jabs. Candelo’s style is similar to Forrest’s but without the hard straight right. The former title challenger had cagey moves but Mora’s speed and athleticism allowed him to take over the tempo of the sparring session whenever he chose to. In the second and third rounds, Mora lured the stalking Colombian to the ropes where he was able to block most of the incoming punches and then bounce back into action with quick body-head combinations at unexpected moments. By the third round, Candelo was letting his hands go with considerable power out of frustration but he continued to eat well-timed two- and three-punch combinations to his midsection and face after each missed punch. In the fourth round, Ikeke, who appeared to weigh around 175 pounds (although it’s hard to tell because he’s so freakishly tall and rangy), stepped inside the floor-level ring. Ikeke and his trainer, Eric Brown, know Mora from previous sparring sessions. They like Mora and his small, tight-knit team. They are happy for his success. They respect Mora and will continue to respect him as long as he earns it in the gym. Ikeke had a shot at the middleweight title and fell short. With his style, stature, and lack of connections, he knows he will likely never be as well known as Mora is now. He may never win a belt or ever be in line for a major-money bout but that doesn’t mean he lacks pride. On the contrary, Ikeke and Brown are both extremely proud men. After Mora continually timed Ikeke’s long jab with left hooks and then feint-jabbed his way inside where he muscled the lean Nigerian to the ropes in the fourth, Brown got serious with his fighter in-between rounds. He reminded Ikeke who he was and what he knows and commanded him to use his savvy in the next round. The Freddie Roach-understudy aimed to show Mora’s trainer, Dean Campos, a thing or two about strategy in the following rounds. “Go to work,” Brown calmly told Ikeke before the start of the fifth. In the seconds before the sound of the bell Ikeke’s eyes found mine sitting next to the ring apron. He winked just as the bell sounded and then attacked Mora before the junior welterweight titlist had a chance to react. Doubling and tripling up his right in the form of crosses, uppercuts and overhands, Ikeke knocked Mora back on his heels. Mora instinctively ducked his head and shoved his left shoulder forward, landing a lead right before clinching in an attempt to halt Ikeke’s momentum. Brown wasn’t going to let his fighter allow Mora get away with that tactic. “Turn him around! Work! Work!” Brown yelled form his corner. “Come on! Up and down! Straight shots! “Use your jab!” Ikeke obeyed, creating some distance between the two and then shot his jab in Mora’s face. Mora backed to the ropes where he blocked Ikeke’s right-hand follow ups. Campos wasn’t happy with his fighter merely avoiding the damaging blows. He wanted Mora to retaliate. “Body shots!” Campos hollered. “Don’t neglect the body! Show it to him!” Mora immediately dug a right to Ikeke’s ribcage that produced grunts from both men. In the fifth round of Mora’s final camp workout last Saturday the sparring session ended and the hard work began. Mora started the sixth round by splitting Ikeke’s high guard with a side-fist jab. Ikeke bulled his way in close and backed Mora up, but could not land a solid punch. “Don’t rush yourself,” Brown said. “Angles! Everything off that left hand! “Use your legs. Slide! Keep sliding. Slide-shoot, slide-shoot! Get off and get around, get off and get around!” Once Campos saw that Ikeke was executing Brown’s instructions he barked his own coded commands. “Go to blue! Go to blue!” Mora blasted Ikeke’s body with both hands. As the exchanges between Mora and Ikeke heated up the intensity of their trainers’ words increased. The faces of Campos and Brown were just as engaged and focused as their fighters, who acted out their coaches’ strategies like living chess pieces. “Punch, punch, hook, circle!” Campos implored. “Slide-shoot, move your feet!” Brown barked. Once more, Mora was able to feint his way in close and counter Ikeke’s jab with his hook midway through the seventh round. “There you go, get your shots,” Campos said. Mora got his shots, but so did Ikeke, and the L.A.-based African’s greater size and weight was beginning to tell. “Body and head, bend your knees,” Brown ordered as Ikeke momentarily pressed Mora to the ropes. “Back to that slide! Establish your stick.” As Mora slipped and moved back to the center of the ring Ikeke hollered “Come on!” while in fast pursuit. He cornered Mora on the other side of the ring and advanced with the confidence that he had gained the upper hand. However, Mora exploded off the ropes with a right cross-left hook combination that sparked hard, angry exchanges for the final 30 seconds of the round. In-between rounds, Campos pulled off Mora’s sweat-soaked tee-shirt. The hard work had just escalated into a gym war. Ikeke’s hands moved non-stop but Mora remained hard to reach with more than one punch at a time. “Don’t pose, don’t pose!” Brown yelled. “Let’s go, King. Stay sharp! Don’t let him rest. Let’s work! Bend your knees.” Ikeke poured on the punches with his pressure. Mora picked his spots but did so with power. “Use your right hand, use your right hand!” Campos shouted. “There you go! Come on, Champ. Let’s go, baby. Let’s go, Snake? Where’s the blue?” I have no idea what the “blue” is, but Mora reacted to Campos’ words. “Alright mother f__ker, let’s go!” Mora yelled through his mouthpiece as he smacked his gloves together. Both men got off with hard, vicious shots. “That’s what I’m talking about!” an elated Brown said in response to the effort shown by both fighters. “Work, Goddamnit!” Ikeke, a gym rat if there ever was one, was in a trance-like state as he let both hands go. He’s used to going toe-to-toe with much bigger fighters. Mora, who is used to fighting in spurts, was obviously dog tired, but continued to dig deep in order to keep the giant at bay. “Come on, Snake!” Brown shouted. “More, more, let’s go! That’s Vernon in front of you!” The small group of onlookers applauded at the sound of the bell. In the ninth (and final round with Ikeke), the larger man continued to stay on top of Mora, working him over along the ropes whenever he could. “There you go, turn your shoulder,” Brown encouraged and instructed. But Mora never simply covered up when his back was to the ropes. He blocked and picked shots off while touching Ikeke with uppercuts in close before moving along the ropes to create enough space to land quick, hard right hands. “Where’s that body?” Campos asked. “Where’s that body, Serge?” Sensing the end of the round, Mora matched Ikeke’s output and pressed forward, backing the vet into a neutral corner and pummeling him with body shots and power punches. There was more applause at the bell and Brown joined in this time. “Good s__t! Good s__t!” he said. “Good work,” he told Ikeke. Mora finished up the sparring session with two “cool-down” rounds with young Reyes Jr., a tall and rugged young welterweight from Moreno Valley. Mora took the 10th round off, blocking, leaning and twisting away from punches along the ropes. In the 11th, he landed solid left hooks in-between Reyes’s quick one-two combinations. Reyes looked small in comparison to Candelo and Ikeke and the pace was considerably slower and less intense than Mora’s previous rounds, but these final two rounds were not easy. Mora was completely spent from the hard six rounds he went with Ikeke. It must have been an effort just to move much less get off with combinations, but he forced his hands to fly in the final 30 seconds of the 11th, punching with more pride than power. Brown, who brought in junior middleweight prospect Rashad Holloway to work with Mora during this camp, likes what he has seen from the 154-pound title holder. Brown saw what I saw, a fighter, a man willing to push himself past his pain, his fatigue, and past any would-be doubts about his own talents, toughness and worth as a professional boxer. “That was hard, hard work,” Brown said. “That’s what [Mora] needs. “Vernon is going try and come get Sergio; he’s going to try to redeem himself from the last fight. “It’s up to Sergio to let him know that he can’t.” If Mora the boxer isn’t up to the task this time around, I think Mora the fighter will be. MORE MORA Last Saturday, he was the fighter. But the day before, Mora was his usual thoughtful but down-to-earth self as he hosted a small group of local boxing press at his gym for a media workout. After Mora went through his stretch and warm up routine (while talking about upcoming high-profile boxing matches with the writers and photographers) I sat down with him for an on-camera interview. One of the first questions I asked Mora was if he doubted himself prior to the first fight with Forrest, who was a 5-to-1 favorite to beat him. “My doubts were in myself,” he said. “I knew everything that Vernon had to offer. He’s a hall of famer, he’s the Viper. I know everything about him and I admire him. So all the doubts were on myself – whether I can do the 12 rounds, how I’m going to look, how strong I’m going to feel, how I’m going to take his punches, how I’m going to react to everything – everything was on me.” Mora said going 12 rounds with Forrest answered all of the questions he had about himself. “I’m a lot more confident now,” he said. “Not only because I beat him the first time, but because I know what I can do in the ring for 12 rounds. Once a fighter goes 12 rounds – especially in a world championship caliber fight like that one – there’s no way he doesn’t get more confidence as a person and more mature as a man.” However, while the 12 rounds Mora went with Forrest may have given him more confidence their time in the ring may have better prepared the two-division champ for Saturday’s rematch. “Physically, I don’t think he can do much different, because he was well-prepared for that fight,” Mora said. “The difference will be in his mind. “I give fighters problems with my ‘herky-jerky’ style like they were saying on Showtime. They don’t find out until they fight me or spar me. Everybody has trouble with me, no matter how much they study me, no matter how much they prepare for me, they’re not going to be prepared for me until they experience missing so much when they fight me. “Vernon has experienced that, so he’s more mentally prepared this time and that’s why I’m just as prepared going into this fight and not overconfident. Being such a great fighter he knows how to adjust and he knows how to adapt. He’s gonna want to spank this kid.” Going into Saturday’s rematch, Forrest has refrained from the vulgar trash talk he spewed before the first fight but the veteran still seems to deny Mora much credit for his win, instead blaming the loss on a flat performance due to over-training. Mora doesn’t view this excuse as disrespect. “No, I just think he’s a proud fighter,” he said. “He’s just that damn good and that proud and I hurt his ego. “He knows I’m a good fighter and he knows how hard it is to fight me. He admitted it briefly in the [post-fight] interview. But little by little the mind has to rationalize what happened. And [Forrest] had to say to himself ‘You know what? No, it was an off-night, I was overweight, it was this or that; I can beat this kid!’ And that’s what’s going to convince him that things will be different this time. “But it’s going to be the same outcome only it will be a better fight with a lot more punches landed on both sides. He’s gonna land more punches ‘cause he’s got my timing and I’m gonna land more punches because I’m a lot more confident.” The full video interview is currently available on MaxTV to MaxBoxing subscribers. FEMALE FIGHTERS Before Mora got in the ring last Saturday, two former female amateur standouts exhibited good boxing fundamentals and pro-level skills in a sparring session. One of the young women was 20-year-old Kaliesha West, a world-ranked bantamweight who fights out of Moreno Valley (she’s trained by Artemio Reyes Jr.’s father) and boasts a 10-0 (2 ) record. According to Reyes’ manager (and conditioner), Arnold DeWitt, West might be on the undercard of the Sept. 26th Telefutura-televised card headlined by the Vicente Escobedo-Dominic Salcido lightweight bout at the Morongo Casino. Reyes, a 21-year-old with a 1-1 (1) record (the loss was a competitive fight with then-3-0 Mike Dallas Jr.), is already scheduled to be on that card. The other female fighter was 25-year-old Jennifer Barber (AKA “the Razor”), a world-ranked featherweight out of Northridge who has a 7-0 (4) record. Barber, who is trained by Stan Ward, is scheduled to fight Brooke Dierdorff for the NABF title at the Mile High Event Center in Commerce City Colorado on Sept. 20th. Barber is trained by Stan Ward. I didn’t ask because I was on my way out and late getting back home to assume my fatherly duties, but I think Ward is a former professional heavyweight who fought some of the game’s better big men in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The next time I see him, I’ll have to remember to ask if he’s the same Stan Ward who beat Mike Weaver at the Inglewood Forum to win the California State Heavyweight title 20 years ago. For Questions or Comments E-Mail Doug Fischer at dougie@maxboxing.com Discuss this Topic - Go to the forums