A TOUCH OF SLEEP

Talking to DaVarryl Williamson, the 35-year-old heavyweight whose punching power is celebrated by his “Touch of Sleep” nickname, one gets the strong impression that here is a man with a winner’s mentality.
Williamson faces a major test on 27 September when he meets the undefeated Joe Mesi in front of his opponent’s hometown crowd at Buffalo in upstate New York. 

There will likely be at the very least 10,000 in the building and they will not give him a friendly reception. But, talking over the phone from his hometown of Aurora, Colorado, Williamson seems to relish the challenge.
He makes it clear that he has no animosity towards Mesi, whom he has known since their amateur days — in fact they sparred together when both were reserves on the 1996 U.S. Olympic team.

“I think he’s a beautiful man in and outside the ring,” Williamson said. “I want to compliment Joe Mesi and his handlers, because he’s a brave man by accepting this fight. “I know we’re going to be in Buffalo, in Joe Mesi’s backyard, but I really feel in my heart that this is my show. This is my showcase.” 

If he can land his big right hand, it could be a spectacular showcase. Because Williamson most definitely can punch. He has stopped 16 opponents in winning 18 of his 19 professional bouts. But he doesn’t rely solely on power. He has mastered the basics, training in Denver, Colorado, under the ex-trainer (George Durbin) of the former two-time lightweight champion Stevie Johnston.

Williamson’s sole loss came in his fourth fight, when he was hit by a wild right-hander and unexpectedly stopped by trial horse Willie Chapman in the last round of a four-rounder. Looking back at the setback to Chapman, he said: “He was losing every minute of every round and it was just a desperate punch, an overhand right — it caught me right on the whiskers and I went down. 

I got up and the referee waved the fight off. I was OK and I thought the referee could have given me a chance, seeing I was winning the fight, to see if I could hold on and use my ring savvy to survive that fight. But it didn’t go that way.” It was a shocking setback, but Williamson has never looked back. Now he is on the threshold of major things, because a win over Mesi will put him at the forefront of the heavyweight new wave.

Of course, at 35 he is a bit old to be called a prospect, but he said: “You have to see me to believe me. I feel very, very fresh because I don’t have the party lifestyle and I’ve always taken care of myself. I have the wisdom of a 35-year-old but the body of a 25-year-old and I think that’s a pretty neat package.”
In terms of being a young 35, it helps that Williamson didn’t start boxing till late, at the age 25, after an extensive background in sports at high school and college where he was oustanding in American football, basketball and athletics (or track as the Americans call it).

He feels that his background in other sports has been of benefit to him as a boxer. As he explained it: “What helps is that I was a football quarterback in high school and college — and even a small stay with the pros — so maybe throwing the football, with the natural rotation of my arm, just works out really well for me to throw the right hand. It’s a natural motion.”

Why did he leave it so late to take up boxing? “My football career, my dream of being an NFL quarterback, never materialised,” he said, “and I still had a lot of energy left in me and I wanted to try something different, and with boxing I just found my knack. Boxing has always been a passion of mine.” He proved to be naturally gifted, with much success in his amateur career, although he lost to Nate Jones, the Chicago heavyweight, in the box-offs for a place on the 1996 U.S. Olympic team. (Jones won a bronze medal but his pro career seems to have fizzled out.)

“It’s been hard work,” Williamson said of the transition to boxing, “but it was more of a lateral movement from football, basketball and track, rather than a vertical move starting from the bottom. 

“I just took the same discipline, the work ethic, the movement — the centre of gravity and rotation of the body — and transferred that into boxing, and the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fit right in place.

“I won the U.S. championship three years in a row, the Golden Gloves two times, the Police Athletic League three times, the Olympic Festival, international tournaments. I had a whale of a time in my amateur career.”
With little more than a year’s experience he boxed in the 1995 world championships in Berlin where Turkey’s Sinan Samil Sam beat him in the heavyweight second round. 

Now Williamson boxes in the main event at Buffalo, on the HBO TV network, while Samil Sam faces Cuba’s Juan Carlos Gomez in a supporting bout. We think of Samil Sam as a big, beefy, plodder type but Williamson doesn’t remember him that way. “At the time he was a guy who outboxed me on points,” he said. “I didn’t see him as a big, strong guy. I guess he gained so much weight.”

He has no complaints and no regrets about going to such a big amateur event with so little experience.
“I was brand-new to the game and I was just honoured to be representing the United States in such a prestigious position, a year and a half into my amateur career.” he said. “It’s something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.” Three years later he reached the final of the Goodwill Games at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, where he was stopped in 55 seconds by Cuban great Felix Savon.

“It started out pretty good,” Williamson said of that brief encounter. “He was retreating, but he was able to land a good right hand. I felt whoever landed the right hand first would win the fight. “With Savon, I believed because he was such a popular guy in the amateur sport and the AIBA [international amateur association] committee loved him so much, and he was like an ambassador for Cuba, I didn’t want to get into a points match with him. I figured if he was still standing he would get the decision.”

So he took a chance in going for the knockout, but, as he ruefully admits: “It kinda backfired.” The “Touch of Sleep” nickname was given to him, he said, by Lawrence Clay-Bey, the U.S. Olympic representative who boxed on the amateur circuit with Williamson and often sparred with him. “Him and I had countless days of sparring,” Williamson said. “He said: ‘Hey, DaVarryl, you call yourself ‘Dangerous DaVarryl’, you ought to call yourself ‘Touch of Sleep’. I liked the name so much, I kept it.”

He was born in the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C., the product of a broken home. “I had a very, very tough childhood,” he said, “but in spite of that I still finished school and did very well in high school and went off to college and excelled there with my master’s degree and my bachelor’s degree. I guess it was just a real force within me, my heart and my soul, to want to do something with my life.” 

His childhood included a spell in a foster home. “My mom [Constance] was involved in the drug scene, and my father was incarcerated at the time. So the social services awarded my sister [Demetria, who is one year older than Williamson] and I to go to foster care, and we really didn’t resume a relationship with my mom till I was like nine or 10 years old. I was still calling my foster mother ‘mom’ and calling my biological mother by her first name.”

Now married with children himself (his wife is named Shalifa and he has a son aged five, Dantel, and a four-year-old daughter, Alayana) he said: “I really go above and beyond being a good husband and a wonderful father. I live vicariously through my kids.” His own father, Willie, died of cancer last October. He said his father was “the best thing that ever happened to me” for taking him in at a time when his mother, having recovered from her drug problems, felt she couldn’t cope with both DaVarryl, who by then was 11 years old, and his sister.

He bears no ill will towards his mother. “I was a bad little boy who didn’t listen to her and didn’t follow the rules,” he said, “so she had pretty much washed her hands of me and was going to turn me back to the social services. “My father though was like a knight in shining armour, he embraced me and allowed me to come and live with him. He had at the time a lady friend and her son. I appreciated him bringing me into his life. That was everything to me. Eventually the lady and her son moved on and my father kept me around. I think it was because of me my father lost his girlfriend. I have always appreciated him.”

Although he stands 6ft 4ins he is not a big heavyweight, often weighing little more than 210lbs (15st) but he sees this as a positive thing. “I’m twice as fast as they are and hit just as hard as they do,” he said of today’s super-sized heavyweights, “but I’m not as big as they are so it doesn’t feel like I’m carrying a safe on my back throughout the fight, and that is my advantage.”

For instance, in his most important and dramatic victory, he gave away a staggering 102lbs and blasted the huge, 313lbs Corey “T Rex” Sanders in the fifth round in July of last year, after having been hurt and given an eight count in the third when only the ropes kept Williamson up. “Sanders and I ironically attended the same high school in Washington,” he said. 

“It was a tough fight. Corey was a very competitive big man, but I didn’t think he was fundamentally sound enough to beat me because I had all the good amateur background. “I was technically the superior fighter and that’s how I beat him, just off of fundamentals. I made him expend energy when he didn’t want to. When he caught me with the left hook [to cause the eight count in the third], it was a punch that caught me when he wasn’t even aiming for my face — I kind of put my face where his fist was, and it knocked me down where I had to grab the ropes. 

“But I felt good because I still had my faculties enough to grab the ropes. And also it was at the end of the round, so I was immediately brought back to life by the water and the ice. I tightened up my defence and went right back to work, and because of the knockdown he was a little excited. 

He was trying too hard, where I really wasn’t hurt, and he expended so much energy I could hear him huffing and puffing on my shoulder when we were in close. I took it to another level and he couldn’t keep up.
“Sometimes when you’re in the ring with a guy, you know if you hurt this guy because you can see a certain look in his eyes and his facial expression will indicate you hit him hard enough to get his attention. 

Sometimes when you hit a guy and they start laughing and smiling, they might not be out on their feet but you know that punch hurt.” Not unusually for a fighter who is accustomed to knocking people out, he has a placid disposition outside the ring.

“I’m really a boring guy,” he said. “People think because you’re a professional fighter and you’re on television you do this and that, but I’m really just a laid-back homebody. I really enjoy pick-up games of basketball, I really enjoy spending time with my wife and kids. 

“Once again, as I mentioned earlier, I really live through my kids because I didn’t have that kind of childhood, so I really overdo it — I didn’t really have anything to model after because my mother and father were never together so I’m taking bits and pieces from people that I know, older couples, and trying to be the best husband that I can be. “I guess I’d say I’m really living the life. I’m in Disneyland. I’m a lucky guy.”