 Jesse Brinkley – A ‘Contender’ in Waiting
 By Thomas Gerbasi (May 6, 2005)
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As a rising prospect on the verge of entering the world rankings, Jesse Brinkley felt that he hit the lottery when he got the call telling him that he was going to be transported into the nation’s living rooms every Sunday night as a member of the cast of NBC’s ‘The Contender’.
“I felt that I won the million dollars,” said Yerington, Nevada’s Brinkley. “I had told my friends, ‘take some loans out, I’ll pay them off when I get back. I’ll have a million dollars.’”
You can excuse Brinkley’s bravado, especially if he took a look at the group of fighters selected for boxing’s first reality show, Fox’s “The Next Great Champ”. On that show, the fighters were, shall we say, less than world-class level, but when Brinkley stepped into the house that would become his home for the duration of ‘The Contender’, he got a bit of a rude awakening.
“I looked at everybody and I said to myself ‘wow, there are no bums here; no slouches, nobody that can’t fight,’” he recalled of his 15 housemates. “Everybody here can fight.”
Those loans would have to wait.
“But they confiscate your phone when you get there so you can’t call anybody and say ‘hold off on those loans – we’re gonna have to work for this,’” he laughs. “I never got a chance to tell everybody to hold up.”
Entering this Sunday’s episode, Brinkley’s dreams of becoming a millionaire are still alive, as he is one of five fighters left on the show. The two finalists will fight at Caesars Palace on May 24, and while it’s already been decided who those two finalists are (the show is taped, but the finale is live), don’t expect to hear a peep out of Brinkley about what’s going to happen this week and beyond. That’s got to be hard for a gregarious young man, right?
“Not hard at all,” he deadpans. “When they said you’ll get a five million dollar lawsuit (for revealing episode spoilers), I can knock everybody out, win the million dollars and still be four million in debt.”
Even Brinkley’s family has been shut out of the action, forced to tune in each week to see what happened to the 28-year-old middleweight.
“My mom, my brother, a lot of these people all want to know what’s going on,” he said. “I just won’t tell them. I say ‘stay tuned next week.’”
It’s something Brinkley probably didn’t expect he’d have to deal with when he first laced up the mitts in the pro ranks almost eight years ago. Then again, neither did any of his fellow competitors. Strangely enough though, the one fighter in the house that you would expect to take to the added attention the best is also the least affected by this sudden dose of stardom.
“I never really had to adjust to anything because I never changed who I was,” said Brinkley. “I stayed the same and I’m who I was in the beginning to now. I never really got caught up in the moment – I never thought I was too good for anybody because I was on ‘The Contender’ reality TV show. I’ve been in big fights, in main events, where you walk through and people respect you – not like you, but they’re respectful. I think this is kind of the same concept of what’s going on now. People respect the work that you went and did.”
‘The Contender’, for all the criticism it has engendered, has at least done one thing that is undeniable. It has put professional boxers in the homes of people they never would have reached otherwise. There are more than a few mothers out there who don’t care about boxing but who have been taken in by the stories of a Brinkley, or a Joey Gilbert, or an Alfonso Gomez. That’s a good thing, and it’s something Brinkley can use to help market himself once the show is done, because even though he can fight, if not for this exposure, he probably would have been running in circles, fighting in small shows and looking for a break.
He’s got the break now.
24-1 with 16 KOs, Brinkley didn’t have much of an amateur career, and after turning pro in 1997 and winning his first four fights, he got welcomed to the real world by 1-4 Concepcion Gutierrez, who stopped him in the second round.
“With that loss, it’s simple,” he says, “I never got a chance to test my heart out. Vic Drakulich – a great referee, I can’t say enough good things about him – stopped it prematurely. As a young kid growing up you always wanted to get hurt and see if you could come back from it and make the heroic ending. The Rocky story, Arturo Gatti – those people are loved and remembered for their great heart. I got knocked down. I stood up, I got a hit couple of times, I was wobbled, and they stopped the fight. In the second round I was dominating the guy easily and I thought, ‘if he had never stopped it, there would be a chance that I’d still be undefeated.’”
You can hear it in his voice that he’d still like to have that “0” back.
“My cherry got popped and I haven’t been the same since,” he laughs. “I was de-virginized that night. I almost quit boxing. I almost stopped because I wanted to be a nun in the sport. I wanted to be a prude. I didn’t want to accept losses. If you fight a guy that can accept a loss, I’ll fight him every night of the week. Losing has humbled me. I believe anybody can get stopped, I believe everybody’s beatable.”
It’s this no nonsense attitude that has made him a favorite on ‘The Contender’, and which also allowed the Miguel Diaz-trained fighter to get past his only defeat to run off 20 consecutive wins since then, including victories over Cleveland Corder (twice) and Danny Perez.
But here comes the hard part - parlaying his television success into success in the ring once the television gets turned off. Being out of the ring for nearly a year doesn’t help either.
“I’ve been down here in the Top Rank gym for the last nine weeks, so I got back into camp, training and sparring,” said Brinkley. “But we’ve had almost a year layoff, so I don’t think anybody’s going to be as sharp as they were on the show. Even if you’ve been training this whole time, I really don’t believe it. We’ll all be in good shape, but we won’t be as sharp as we were when we were there, because they’ve iced us for so long.”
And you thought being a TV star was all glamour.
“As a professional fighter you want to be active, you want to stay busy because the busier you are the better you are,” he admits. “You don’t want to be overworked, but you want to be busy. And when you’re not, you kinda forget the things that you did right and built up to get to that area. When you’re not using them, it kinda slips away.”
Brinkley admits that it will probably take him two fights to get sharp again, but once those fights are under his belt, he’s aiming for the big names.
“Caesars Palace is a big place, and NBC is huge, but my goal, ever since I was a young kid, has always been HBO,” he said. “I want to fight on HBO against the likes of Fernando Vargas – a mega stardom fighter that brings excitement, brings all the energy, brings everything that we need for a big buildup. And Fernando Vargas would be perfect for me – his style, my style, the white guy vs the Mexican, the HBO ‘the best in the business work the night shift’, all that. To me, that’s it.”
And unlike most fighters, who aim for world titles and glory and all that fun stuff, Brinkley’s ambitions are a little more selfish – he wants to be the one who spoils a high-profile fighter’s party.
“I’m not an Olympian, I don’t have a huge amateur career, I’ve never been promoted by a Top Rank or a Don King or a Goossen, so it’s always been, when you go to fight in someone’s hometown, here’s the guy with the good record - Is he built up? Is he overrated? How long until he actually gets beat? And then they say, ‘I told you so.’ It hasn’t happened yet. So am I an underdog against the greats – Shane Mosley, Oscar De La Hoya, Fernando Vargas, Felix Trinidad? Absolutely. But if I’m such a heavy underdog, why won’t somebody put me in there with one of them? It hasn’t happened yet, and I really want to fight one of those guys on HBO. Beat me.”
But you really can’t sneak up on anyone anymore after being on national TV every weekend, can you?
He laughs.
“Now the only problem is that you’ve got to be careful what you wish for – you just might get it.”
Jesse Brinkley doesn’t have an army of assistants, an entourage, or a foot long waiting list to gain an audience with him. He’s the same young man who grew up in Yerington, Nevada, and who would consider buying a ranch in Montana and riding a horse in the morning to be the perfect way to live out his days after boxing. So don’t expect the bright lights to change him too much – boxing is just what he does.
“What people do for movies and shows and things like that, that’s overwhelming for a lot of people,” he said. “To me, it’s just that you went out there and did what every other person does – whether you get up and cut a field or you get up and make a movie – you all worked. I don’t think you have to kiss ass on somebody who does a great movie, because what about somebody who does something equally as great to get a paycheck five times as little, every week? What about the people who are successful in welding everyday? So I’m not really overwhelmed by anybody’s success because I know people who are equally successful in the things they do, it’s just that it’s not all over everybody’s living room.”
And speaking of the living room, care to reveal any hints about what happens on the show this week?
“I’ll see you Sunday.”
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E-Mail Thomas Gerbasi at tgerbasi@mindspring.com
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