The Commission vs. the Cornermen? An Inside Look at the CSAC - Part III By Steve Kim (April 23, 2008) Send this page to friend Give us your feedback As the fights were taking place inside the ring all over California, it turns out that in the very beginning of Armando Garcia's run as the executive officer of the California State Athletic Commission that things were getting quite heated between the state inspectors and veteran trainers and cornermen inside the dressing rooms as they prepped their fighters for battle. There were numerous stories circulating about loud and inflamed arguments that took place between those who were there to enforce the rules of the CSAC and those working the boxer’s corner. More than a few exasperated veterans of the sport, sick of being questioned over the way they wrap hands, would sometimes resort to giving their tape and gauze over to the inspectors and asking them to do it themselves (only to be told they themselves had no clue on how to wrap a fighter’s hands properly). Others objected to having used medicine being tossed aside. Some felt like school children as they were instructed to take out the chewing gum in their mouths. It was frustrating to be dictated to by a group of inexperienced boxing hands whose manner left much to be desired. An acrimonious atmosphere existed in many locker rooms between the commission and their licensees. "We absolutely had those issues," admitted Garcia, when asked specifically about the issue. “Especially when we started the inspector program. Number one, it's because we were enforcing regulation that had basically never been enforced and the people that were enforcing it hadn't been trained sufficiently and didn’t have the experience to be able to do it. And it takes not only that but it takes a certain personality to be able to tell someone about something. So we obviously had those issues, particularly on the hand wraps. “But people here, they were skinning gloves, stacking, they were wetting the hand wraps and obviously, not everyone was doing it. But the inspector doesn't know who's the good guy, who's the bad guy. And then when we incorporated MMA, my God, I'm telling you, they do everything and everything and its really difficult to police. By now though, most of my guys know everybody and you have your top guys, who are people who literally complained to me about it - Freddie Roach, Joe Chavez, Tony Rivera, a bunch of other people that come to me and said, 'Hey, man, what is this?' Now, these things are pretty much either smoothed out or being smoothed out. "Do we still have some issues? Yes, we will have issues when you have so many different personnel involved in that. But if we don't do it, we literally had a table after every show where it was a 'show and tell' of the stuff people brought in the dressing room. I mean some of that was suspendable stuff." Roach was one of the trainers who had problems with the new regime from the get go. "A lot of controversy over hand-wraps, of course, and I've wrapped hands for a long time and all of a sudden they told me to wrap a certain way," he recalled. "And I just said, 'I'm just protecting my fighter’s hands. I don't do anything illegal.' We had a big blow up about that and I told the commission off pretty good and I told them all to f**k themselves. They were a little pissed at me but since that time though, they've come around. They've changed the rules. I think things are beginning to settle in a little bit." What bothered Roach just as much as the regulations on just how much tape and gauze could be used (which has since been amended) was the demeanor of the commission and it's inspectors. “The thing is, I thought it was too much of a dictatorship at first. Because when he was there, everyone went by his rules. But when he wasn't there, people were going by their own rules and by the old rules and what they used to be. So it was inconsistent and that's what I hate, the inconsistency. As long as the rules are the same for everybody, I can live with it." But Roach says that this current administration has brought conformity in how boxers hands can be wrapped. And he believes it had leveled the playing field in many respects. "Before the new commission came in, people in California were taping on the skin, taping over the knuckles, then putting gauze on and hiding it. Hiding the tape and then going over that," he explained. "And I really, really had a tough time with that because I didn't want to do that myself but my opponent’s doing that, so am I giving them an advantage? Should I do it myself? I just couldn't bring myself to do that and I feel that's breaking the rules. I don't like to do that." Chavez, a respected boxing figure who has literally wrapped hundreds of thousands of hands in his years of boxing, was someone who was greatly frustrated by what was taking place the past few years. But he says that recently, "They slacked down. Things have gotten better." Miguel Diaz, who had a severe disagreement with the California inspectors in early January at a show held at the Alameda Swap Meet, had promised to never work again in the state. However, after relaying his concerns to Garcia, he said he had no problems working the rubbermatch between Israel Vazquez and Rafael Marquez on March 1st at the Home Depot Center. But others, like Joe Goossen, believe that nothing has changed. "No, to tell you the truth I liked how the style of the commission was run before," he says bluntly. "Not that I have anything against anybody, but I have to tell you, from the time I got into this game, which was three decades ago, when I took my first test for my corner’s license with Joey Olmos in downtown LA, from that time on - that was in the early 70's - till just maybe a couple of years ago, when Dean Lohuis reigned, it pretty much ran the same way without change. "I'm just trying to figure out, not so much about the change, but why the change? Why? What was so wrong about it? I still have not heard one good reason why that 30 year run had to change. So it's not left a good taste in my mouth because it was a much more personable relationship between the commission, the trainers and the fighters. Everyone kinda knew what they had to do. I never saw any mischief in the locker rooms or some of the things that were pointed out as the rationale for this big change. I never saw where there were any riots in the corners or fistfights in the middle of the ring where all the scrutiny of the corners had to be looked at so closely." With the increase of inspectors that are utilized by Garcia, what Goossen and others resent is the ‘Big Brother' aura that exists. "I mean, you're followed everywhere you go, basically. What I'm saying is that you didn't have anybody to tell you, 'Hey, don't chew bubble gum in the locker room.' You know why you didn't need anybody to tell you that? Because there's nothing wrong with it. But there is now. If something as simple as that is being scrutinized, you know that a lot of people are not going to be happy, because it's just overbearing." It has bothered many corner men that they have been banned from giving their boxers a banana (which is great in potassium) in the locker room. "We recently changed that to allow produce and vegetables," Garcia would point out. "So you can take fruits, you can take vegetables. What we tried to get away from, which was initially, was that they tried to bring in supplements, they bring in milkshakes, they bring in pills in containers that the pills don't belong in. It was a huge, huge problem for us. So we initially had to just bite the bullet and say, 'OK, we're not going to accept any of this. Then we're going to monitor this,' and now we've relaxed it." One thing that still bothers Roach is that as they enter a dressing room they are searched as if they are going through airport security. "They're treating us a little bit like criminals," he states. "The first thing they want to do is check our bags. I said, 'What do you want to check my bags for? I'm a criminal right off the bat? Do you have a search warrant? Y'know he (Garcia) was a police officer." Trainers like Roach and Goossen are at more liberty to discuss their true feelings than others. They command respect. Many other lower profile trainers believe they have no other choice but to grin and bear it. They also believe, that much like the small promoters, they are treated differently than their big-name counterparts by the commission. Our unidentified source at the CSAC, who has seen first-hand what takes place in the dressing room during fight cards, says, "It's an adversarial-type relationship. These guys that don't have the boxing experience, they've been taught at a clinic, allegedly by Armando or whoever, really don't understand what the purpose of the wrappings is for and are telling guys who have been wrapping for 20, 30 years how to wrap and it gets into verbal altercations all the time. Plus, you'll see people with a Diet Coke get it taken away from them in the dressing room." Goossen says he has no problems with inexperienced guys learning on the job; what he resents is the lack of respect shown to them by certain inspectors. “It’s crushed all goodwill in the locker room, it really has," he insists. "I think he's got all the greatest of intentions but there's too much of whatever it is he's trying to institute and it's not needed. It's superfluous. You don't need people watching our backs. It would be just the same as someone following Joe Torre out to the mound, a commissioner from baseball, to see what he had to say to the pitcher. Or if he was handing him anything illegal." For Questions or Comments E-Mail Steve Kim at k9kim@maxboxing.com Today's Boxing Press Discuss this Topic - Go to the forums