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June 2001
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
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JORRIN, OH LUCKY MAN? California's Willie Jorrin has won and defended the WBC super bantamweight title in fights that many believed he lost. GRAHAM HOUSTON finds a fighter who is looking to make amends in his postponed rematch with Manchester's Michael Brodie |
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JORRIN: Oh lucky man?
- Get Big Pic Unfinished business will have to wait for a while, now that
Manchester’s Michael Brodie has suffered an arm injury that caused the
postponement of his world championship rematch with American Willie Jorrin. The fight had
been scheduled for Jorrin’s hometown of Sacramento, in northern California, on
1 June, with live TV coverage in Britain and the U.S. It was a
fight that many in the fraternity were keenly anticipating, a contest with a
storyline: a British boxer, whom many believed was robbed on home ground,
seeking revenge in the U.S. on his opponent’s home turf. Certainly,
the judges from Italy, Belgium and Mexico seem to have been in the minority in
their opinion that Jorrin had outpointed Brodie in their fight for the vacant
World Boxing Council super bantam title in Manchester last September. (Well, the
Belgian judge had it a draw). But Jorrin
does not believe there was anything controversial about it. Speaking from his home in West Sacramento, he told me: “I
thought I pulled it out. It was a pretty even match up to when I got the
knockdown in the 10th round. Michael Brodie was a durable fighter like they
said. Second time around, it’s going to be a lot better. I think this time I
can overwhelm with a unanimous decision.” There has
been discord in the Jorrin camp over the postponement. His veteran promoter, Don
Chargin, who won the purse bid for the WBC-mandated rematch, wanted Jorrin to
take another fight on 1 June, against the Mexican, Israel Vazquez, rather than
simply wait for the new date against Brodie. Chargin said
that Jorrin would have received the same purse against Vazquez as for the Brodie
fight: $135,000. Although Vazquez is a strong fighter, Chargin felt the Mexican
would have been made to order for the slicker-boxing Jorrin. But Jorrin
told me: “I really want to fight Brodie. I want to get Brodie out of the way
and then take Vazquez after that. “When they
say that controversial thing [over the decision in Manchester], I have a lot to
prove, you know.” However, an
Internet story by Pedro Fernandez (RingTalk.com) implied that Jorrin had not
been training diligently and had been slapped around by a sparring partner. Fernandez
always stands by his sources, but Jorrin told me: “I’m a world champion, I
train like a champion — it’s my job. I’ll never be not ready for any
fight. I’ll stay ready, nothing’s going to change. I have a training camp
outside Sacramento, at Auburn, at 2,000 feet, and this guy I was sparring, I had
to go light on him because he was a bantamweight. But it’s sparring. It’s
easy work. It gets me ready. The hard sparring was actually coming this week
[the week of the postponement announcement].” Controversy
seems to be dogging Jorrin’s heels. There was the Brodie fight, a disputed
decision over Mexican Oscar Larios in January in a voluntary title defence at
Sacramento, and now the Internet story casting doubt on his dedication. As he himself
says, he has a lot to prove. His trainer,
Freddie Roach, has been quoted as saying that Jorrin will have to improve on his
showing against Larios if he is to beat Brodie again. But Jorrin
says he respected Brodie before the first fight and still does. Looking back
at last September’s fight, he said: “We always heard that Michael was a very
durable fighter. We watched a few fights of his with my trainer Freddie Roach
and we looked for a hard 12-round fight, and that’s exactly what we got out of
it. “He was
more or less a straight-up fighter and he threw a lot of punches. We knew he was
a busy fighter. Our gameplan was beating him to the punch and outboxing him, and
the plan worked well. I know I got cut in the second round [on the scalp] and I
got worried, but my corner stopped the cut and the night went as planned. When I
put him down I know he was hurt, but he’s a smart fighter and spit out the
mouthpiece. That’s exactly what I would have done. “It saved
him, but I knew I had him going at that moment. But it’s hard to knock out a
fighter like Michael Brodie. He’s in tip-top shape. “I never
like to predict knockouts. Michael’s an excellent fighter and I do not
underestimate him at all, but if I do get him hurt, if I should again, I’m
planning on trying to take him out of there as soon as possible.” Talking about
the fight with Oscar Larios, he said: “I had the flu the week of the fight.
Everyone in the gym was getting it, and it didn’t catch me until the last week
of the fight. I took a lot of vitamin shots, but it brought me down and I tell
you, after that fight I was in bed for three weeks. I’ve never been that sick
in my life. “But I did
what I had to do as a champion. I knew it was close. Freddie Roach told me:
‘You’ve got to pick it up, son,’ so I picked up the pace as much as I
could put out.” He has been
trained by ex-boxer Roach for five fights. “He took me up to the next
level,” Jorrin said. “It seemed like everything just clicked.” Jorrin
is 31, and although not one of the better-known champions he has paid his dues.
He estimates he has sparred 500 rounds — starting in 1990, before he turned
professional — with Sacramento’s best-known fighter, the colourful former
world champ Tony “The Tiger” Lopez. “I would get
him ready for the big fights like Brian Mitchell and those wars,” Jorrin said.
“I would get the best of Tony, and Tony would get so mad. Even his mother
would get mad at me. But just to work with a champion like that, it gave me so
much confidence that I believed I would be a world champion myself some day, and
Tony would tell me the same thing. “He’d
tell me: ‘You have the talent. Keep up the hard work and your day will
come.’ And it did. “Tony would
let ’em go, but one thing I always had was great defence — my parents
wouldn’t let me box unless I had great defence. And it seemed to work out
excellently against Tony. I’d make him miss so many and I’d counter him so
fast it used to frustrate him. When I got him frustrated I knew I had him. I
gave him the fast stuff before the big guys came in. But we had some tough times
in there, body shots and everything, but I would suck it up and put out. “I was
training at the same gym as Loreto Garza [Sacramento’s former world junior
welter champion], and I worked some rounds with him. So it built up my
confidence as a teenager, that I was boxing with professional fighters and
hanging in there.” As an
amateur, he said, he was 1984 and ’85 Junior Olympics champion and the Western
Olympic trials gold medallist in 1992. He lost in the Olympic trials to Julian
Wheeler at featherweight. “That was
the first year the computer scoring came out,” he said. “I thought I won and
so did a lot of people. I figured after that I definitely had to turn
professional. I had more of a professional style than I did an amateur style. “I went to
Canada and fought in Scotland, Sweden, Poland. I beat Wayne McCullough in
Ireland but he beat me in Oregon. I remember in Dublin, the whole room was
smoked out with cigar smoke and I was like the 11th fight — it was weird
because we were in the lighter classes but they put us next to the heavyweights.
It was awesome. It was my first international competition and I was ready to go.
Wayne was a little faster then, very busy, and his stamina was excellent. “I left
[the amateurs] at 158-18. My losses were to top contenders. My first open fight
was with Michael Carbajal and I lost a 3-2 split decision. His brother [Danny,
who also trained Carbajal] thought I won the fight. I had just turned 16,
Michael was 19. It was in the nationals [U.S. amateur championships]. I’d just
come out of the Junior Olympics and I didn’t know who Michael Carbajal was. My
coaches said: ‘This guy can fight’ and I said: ‘Well, I can fight,
also.’ We went to war, but I was getting the advantage, using lots of pivots
that frustrated Michael. He’d follow me, and every time he’d walk into a
couple more.” He is a
family man: wife Victoria, son Willie (Guillermo) Jr., 10, and daughter Alysia,
who is eight years old. His father, Alfonso, is from Mexico City, but his
mother, Virginia, was born in Texas. He has seven brothers and two sisters —
“I was No. 7.” “Where I
was born, at one point, before it got cleaned up, it was like a tough part of
town,” he said. “You had to know how to fight. A lot of my friends are
behind bars now for doing stupid things and I’m thankful to God that somebody
put that gym there, because all I wanted to do was box, and it kept me off the
street. It was open for six years, and they closed it. But there are a lot of
good fighters in my part of town. “You’d
see the kids, when they have to settle something, they’d go to the park and
box it out, bare fist. So I put a gym back in my community in West Sacramento,
my own little boxing programme. I have everything, all the equipment, so any
little kid or any adult who wants to go in, they’re more than welcome. I
always promised that when I became world champion I’d put back into the
community. It’s called Champ’s Boxing Club and it’s been going for three
years now.” If Jorrin can
get past Brodie there could be major fights for him in the competitive super
bantam and featherweight divisions. An obvious
match would be against the winner of the World Boxing Association super bantam
title fight between Bones Adams and Paulie Ayala. Then there is the
International Boxing Federation champion, South Africa’s Lehlohonolo Ledwaba,
who had an impressive Home Box Office TV debut on the Rahman-Lewis show. But the fight
he would really like would be against the winner of the Marco Antonio Barrera-Naseem
Hamed rematch. “I’m game for all this. I’m in it to win it. I won’t shy
away from anybody. I think I’d be a lot stronger at 126 [pounds].” But he said:
“I never look past a fight. I always feel I have to get in 110% shape and
never take nobody lightly — especially Michael Brodie. I know the hard work
that Michael puts in. I can just tell, the way we fought, the way I hit him with
body shots — most guys would just fold, and grunt, but he sucked it up and
took them well. So I know I’ve got to do the same thing but be 110%, maybe
115%, go out there and perform.” A criticism
of Jorrin is that although he is an excellent boxer he tends to try to make
every punch count at the expense of, as the Americans say, letting his hands go.
Thus there is the danger that he can be outworked, as many thought happened in
the Brodie and Larios fights. “Yes,” he
said, “I’ve kinda got into the habit of going on the power shots instead of
throwing the fours and fives. Now we’ve picked up the pace very much to make
this [the Brodie rematch] more of a punch-stat fight, many more combinations. “What
I have to work on is my combinations. I plan on putting out 150% of combinations
and the most potent jabs I can put out there. I don’t want to slack off on
anything on this fight. I have a lot to prove and I’m defending my world
title, and it’s going to be a great fight.” Of course, he
feels that boxing in Sacramento is an advantage to him. “I want to get the
fans really pumped up,” he said, “but the entrance is all that matters,
because during the fight I can’t hear a thing. I’m so focused. But the
beginning — the entrance — that’s a pumper-upper. You know, it’s funny.
When I fought for the title in Michael’s hometown, the support the fans were
putting out for him actually fired me up.” |
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