Talk about making a statement. Allan Green, the unbeaten 26-year-old from Oklahoma, had been getting criticism for a safety-first style and not meeting tough opponents. But when matched with another undefeated boxer, the highly touted Jaidon Codrington, in what looked on paper like being his sternest test, Green blew out his opponent in 18 seconds and might have ended the New Yorker’s career.
Green showed in that electrifying display that he might be a real threat in the super middleweight division.
I must confess I was among those who had doubts about Green. He is a classy boxer for sure, but in an ESPN TV main event against the game but frankly limited Ted Muller, he seemed almost passive, as if he didn’t really want to hurt the other man. Muller was fighting virtually one-eyed from the third when his left eye started to swell and close from below, but Green was content to move, jab, look stylish and almost tap his way to a decision.
Then he comes out and looks like a monster against Codrington. So what was going on?
The personable Green explained over the phone from his home in Tulsa that he had boxed according to plan against Muller. To wit, he wanted to get the feel of boxing 10 rounds.
“That was the plan that me and my trainer [Scott Burnett] had talked about,” he said. “All of my previous fights on ESPN was knockouts. The only problem was, I was knocking these guys out so quick I wasn’t learning anything. So we wanted to go the 10-round distance, because the 10-round distance for newcomers is like the unknown.”
Yes, he knew Ted Muller was ready to go but said: “We didn’t want to knock him out. I was just kinda cruising, I wanted to see how we felt on our toes. If you noticed I moved almost the whole 10 rounds — moving and dancing. Actually I was somewhat sick for that fight, also.
“Once you go the 10-round distance you get more relaxed in there and you feel more in your comfort zone. Once I got the rounds in, everyone got to see the real Allan Green.”
That would be last November against Codrington, who had stopped nine consecutive opponents but was stepping far up in class against Green, who had won 17 in a row with 11 opponents halted.
The two had each won a national Golden Gloves title in 2002, Green at 178lbs, Codrington at 165lbs, and most people thought their meeting, on the ShoBox TV series, would be highly competitive. But Green knew differently. He said so from the start and he backed up his words when he stepped into the ring.
“I’d seen Jaidon fight and I knew he didn’t belong in the same ring as Allan Green,” he said, using the third person as boxers do these days. “I knew the fight wouldn’t go past the first round. When the fight was first brought to my attention I turned the fight down because I wasn’t sure what was going on. I was thinking: ‘Why in hell are they letting him fight me?’ Was it a prime case of his people trying to get rid of him or trying to throw him in a fight to cash in on some money? I didn’t know, so I said ‘No’. But when I heard that he really wanted to fight me I said ‘OK’ and took the fight, and I told everybody that him fighting me, I would ruin his career, he was in over his head.”
Codrington did a lot of what we now call trash talking in the lead-up to the fight, and Green got right into the war of words. “That’s me, that’s what Allan Green does,” he said. “Allan talks a lot. When I seen that Codrington was saying a lot of things, I mean, that took the fight to a whole other level. I said: ‘OK, he’s really talking a lot, he really wants this fight,’ and in my mind I was thinking: ‘I’m going to really, really hurt him. I’m going to hurt him really bad.’ And I told everybody I would. And that’s what happened.
“The thing is, when I was in the ring with him, when I looked across the ring, I looked at a little boy who really didn’t understand what this fight was about. He really didn’t understand anything. He really didn’t understand what was going on and he didn’t know why he was in there. When I looked across the ring and saw that, I was reassured that the fight would be over quickly. That’s why I jumped on him.”
Harsh things were said about Green because he cheerfully gave a plug over the microphone to a car dealership while Codrington was on the floor receiving medical attention and looking in a very bad way indeed, but he said: “Let me start from the beginning. A guy [the owner of the car dealership] gave me a brand-new 2005 Cadillac Escalade, he’s a sponsor of mine, and he gave me some [advertisement] patches to have sewn on my trunks, but the seamstress who was supposed to be there at the fight did not show up, so I told this gentleman if I got a chance to speak ‘I will say something about your car lot.’ That’s a contractual obligation, something I had to do. So, when I got on the mike I said ‘I hope Jaidon’s all right, I hope the young man’s all right’ — keep in mind I already heard that he was all right — because I love all fighters and I respect all fighters.’ Then I said: “Buy your cars from Charlie Cheek’s auto mall in Miami, Oklahoma.’ And I got ripped for that.
“Here’s the way I look at it. Had it been me, the other way around, and he [Codrington] brought all these rappers in the ring with him, had it been me [who got knocked out] he’d have been giving shout-outs to all of them and nobody would have said anything. But I got criticised.”
Also, Green said he didn’t realise Codrington was in such a bad state until long after the fight was over, when he watched the tape.
“The people who saw him down like that, they were so engulfed in the situation, I think their emotions took over, and they all felt guilt,” he said.
“There were a lot of things that went down that people really couldn’t see,” he added — such as one of the Codrington entourage trying to grab a policeman’s gun before being wrestled down.
“The same one who tried to grab the gun went up to where my mother and my grandmother, where my children were sitting [before the fight], yelling out profanities, saying that I was gonna get knocked the F out and things like that. My father, who was in my corner, they did it to him — and it just went on and on and on.
“What it all boils down to, everybody who was involved knew they’d made a mistake about the fight. Everybody involved with Jaidon Codrington felt guilty and I got the backlash from it.
“I was just being a fighter, doing what I was supposed to do and doing what I said what I was going to do.”
He certainly did. And as polished as Green looks in the ring, it’s a surprise to learn that he considers himself essentially a self-taught boxer.
“My whole amateur career, I didn’t have a trainer really,” he said. “The six years I fought amateur I maybe had a trainer one year, and I probably had sparring one year out of that whole six years. So what a lot of people are looking at was a guy who won the national Golden Gloves pretty much on his own.”
He learned, he said, by sparring, plus what he had picked up from going to the gym from an early age with his father, a former kick boxer who also dabbled in boxing.
“When I was like 14 I started training,” he said. “I didn’t fight till I was 16 — it was a gym full of professionals and I cleaned the whole gym out. I’ve never got the Philadelphia or Los Angeles type of schooling, I’ve pretty much had to learn on the job.
As an underdog from Tulsa he won the respect of boxers from the “traditional” boxing cities when competing in tournaments, saying: “Guys from Philly would say: ‘Hey man, you fight like you from Philly’ and guys from New York would say: ‘You fight like you from New York.’”
There were those who thought Green might not take a punch too well because he was dropped by New Yorker Curtis Stevens in the Golden Gloves final but he explained: “Curtis Stevens put me on the floor once, in the second round, but keep in mind that I gave him a fierce beating. Even in that fight I hadn’t sparred in about a year and a half, so I really hadn’t been hit — so when I got hit it was somewhat of a shock. My fights before that [in the tournament] were knockouts, I only had to go the distance one time [before the final].”
One of those wins was a six-second wipeout over a boxer called Tommy Krupe, the fastest finish in Golden Gloves history, bettering an eight-second blowout registered by one Mike Tyson. “I remember, I put out a feint, he threw like a lazy jab at me and I threw a one-two straight down the pike,” Green said. “Boom! The right hand was so fast you couldn’t even see it. He went down, got up — but as soon as he got up the ref said ‘That’s it.’”
He had 61 amateur bouts, not an awful lot as he says, and he feels somewhat aggrieved that the ESPN TV analyst Teddy Atlas rapped the quality — or lack of it — of his early opposition. “I had to listen to Teddy Atlas, in my fourth or fifth fight, sixth maybe, and Teddy was ripping me about fighting better opponents. He said a lot of things about me that was just uncalled for,” Green said.
“A lot of people try to say I haven’t fought anybody — a lot of people are biased. I beat a guy by the name of Ola Afolabe, who just beat Orlin Norris and also beat Michael Simms, who was the original choice for the Olympics [2000] — he’s a very good fighter. And I shut him down.
“That was a point in my career where I hadn’t had any sparring, and he’d been sparring with James Toney for the past two years. I just won that fight on raw talent and using my mind. That’s when I realised: ‘I have to start sparring.’
“I’ve fought a lot of undefeated fighters — Conal MacPhee [a Canadian who had won nine in a row], Ola [Afolabe], a heavyweight named Johnny Turlington and now Jaidon. I’ve been put in a situation, since I’ve been in a pro, in ‘Let’s see what happens’ fights. You know — put two undefeated fighters together and ‘Let’s see what happens.’ I don’t think many other fighters can say that they’ve been in with that many undefeated fighters this early in their career.
“I’m a boxer-puncher, but there’s a thing a lot of people haven’t seen — I’m a devastating body puncher. And I’m a great inside fighter — they have yet to see that. In my next TV fight they’ll see Allan Green fight on the inside and throw some body shots. Actually, one of my professional knockouts, a guy named Berry Basler, I broke two of his ribs with a body shot. I’m the best body puncher you’ll see — but you might think different, you might think Ricky Hatton is.”
Green is a single father of three and he has custody of his six-year-old daughter and four-year-old son (“They’re my buddies”) while a one-year-old daughter lives with her mother. “My children and boxing come first,” he said. “My daughter’s the one who answered the phone — she’s the woman of the house.”
Yet as grounded as Green seems to be I wondered if he might not be pushing things a bit with a ring entrance in which a member of his camp holds up a mirror and the boxer poses in front of it in a preening manner. Is he not concerned that this might turn off a lot of fans, especially those of, say, the older generation?
“That’s part of who Allan Green is,” he said. “It’s a gimmick if you will, but in this day and age of boxing I’m trying to restore the lustre and the essence of boxing, how it used to be, getting all the fans to enjoy it and watch it, like Ray Leonard did in his day, like Ali did in his day, I’m trying to restore that and bring that back. I don’t want to be just another guy with fast hands that can move real good, I want to be something more than that and I want to be something more to the fans.”
He didn’t bring the mirror into the ring with him for the Codrington fight because of concerns about broken glass. “But now we’re getting a different mirror that won’t break,” he said.
Green is confident that any negative reactions to his showmanship will change once the fans realise that the last thing he means to do is to disrespect boxing’s traditions.
As Green put it: “I represent old-school fighters, the Ray Robinsons, that’s where I’m coming from. Once they understood that about me — that I don’t care about the bling-bling, that I just care about fighting — I think they will grow to love me and respect what I do.”
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