Back To The Future

By Nat Gottlieb Courtesy HBO.com

Long the premier "hired gun" for top veteran fighters, Emanuel Steward has decided to return to his roots and train young fighters from cradle to championship. He's taken down the "For Hire" sign on his door and replaced it with a simple one: "It All Starts Here"

Sometimes, no matter how much success a man has had in life, he gets a yearning to turn back the clock and relive the excitement of his youth. Emanuel Steward, one of the greatest trainers of all time, has made just such a decision, and he has not looked back since.

Last month Steward was on a plane from Detroit to New York when his cell phone rang. It was my request for an interview to discuss his quiet, unannounced decision to stop taking on established boxers and switch to young guns he could mold from the get-go.

Ironically, sitting on the plane next to him was a man named Tommy Hearns, who as an 18-year-old Detroit kid in 1976 walked into Steward's fledgling Kronk gym and helped launch one of the greatest assembly lines for young champions this sport has ever seen.

"Coming here (New York) from Detroit, Tommy and me talked about the fun we used to have back then, as compared to me traveling all over the world," Steward said.

Steward was just 34 when he left his job at the Detroit Edison Company to become a full-time trainer and operator of a gritty basement gym in the heart of the city. The Hall of Fame trainer is now 64, and while still at the top of his game, acknowledges that the frequent flyer miles he racks up are beginning to wear on him.

"There is nothing wrong with the fighters, mind you, it's the traveling for so many years," said Steward, who currently trains out of the Kronk two highly-touted young fighters in 23-year-old Andy Lee of Ireland, and 25-year-old Johnathan Banks.

While turning away "feelers" to train other top boxers, Steward has kept working with his two champion fighters, Wladimir Klitschko and Kermit Cintron. In Klitschko's case, the heavyweight lives in the Ukraine, so Steward will not yet be free of those long journeys over the pond. Since joining Klitschko's corner in 2004, Steward has had to travel to Germany four times for fights, and to training camps in Austria and Spain.

When you factor in that Steward crisscrosses the country and goes overseas frequently as an HBO commentator, it is understandable that he says, "I don't like to travel to Europe as much as I used to at my age."

Another reason Steward has been turning down offers is the lack of input he sometimes feels he has had in the decision-making process for veteran fighters, most of whom have a management team in place - and in Klitschko's case, a promotional company.

"You don't have control of the situation going in like that (as a hired gun). It was very good to work with top fighters, but the people who are in control sometimes don't always make the best decisions, and that can be frustrating," Steward said.

Not having control of a fighter's destiny is something Steward missed from his early days when he developed a multitude of young world champions out of the Kronk, beginning with Hilmer Kenty in 1980. The drift away from young boxers was gradual, and along the way he has trained for periods of time some of the greatest champions in boxing history. Among the over two dozen champions Steward has worked with are Sugar Ray Leonard, Julio Cesar Chavez, Oscar De La Hoya, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and Aaron Pryor.

Steward, a master of fundamentals, has also grown tired of having to teach basics to veteran fighters. "When you get a veteran, you have to start off teaching him your basics," Steward said. "It's a lot easier working with a young fighter than trying to convert what already is there in a veteran. A lot of them had bad habits, and they find it hard to give them up."

Some didn't require extreme makeovers, such as Lewis, an Olympic gold medalist and the dominant heavyweight of his era; and Klitschko, another gold medal winner. Steward laughs when he remembers his initial encounter with Klitschko.

"The first time I worked with Wladimir, I started to teach him some basics and he looked at me and said, 'Why are you trying to teach me things I already learned when I was 14?' All the fighters who come from the former Soviet Union system have learned fundamentals," Steward said.

Steward said he will continue to train the 32-year-old Klitschko until the boxer retires, and plans to hold on to welterweight Cintron, who will defend his title on April 12 against the only man ever to beat him, Antonio Margarito.

"One reason I am going to keep Kermit is I feel comfortable with the situation because I am also his manager," said Steward, who has won four straight fights since taking over the training of Cintron in 2006 - three of which were title events.

In turning back to young, undeveloped fighters, Steward is not only throwing open the doors of the Kronk to them, but he has taken them into his five-bedroom home in northwest Detroit. Both Lee and Banks currently live with him, and Cintron spent over a year as a resident of House of Steward.

Lee, a 2004 Olympic silver medalist, was 15-0 and one of the most highly-touted prospects in boxing when he took a misstep last month and suffered a stunning, TKO loss to unheralded former Contender fighter Brian Vera. A rematch is reportedly in the works, and Steward hopes to correct mistakes his young boxer made and to get him back on track to a middleweight championship.

Banks, who is 19-0 with 14 knockouts, has quietly flown under the radar as far as feature stories and hype. Ring magazine, however, has noticed and ranks him 10th in the highly competitive cruiserweight division.

The experience of living with young boxers has been a rewarding one for Steward, who recently said, "I would probably say that Andy and Johnathan Banks are two of my best friends. We do lots of things together. Even when I'm making business decisions, I usually discuss it with Johnathan and Andy. They have a tremendous input on a lot of things that I do myself personally. They're more like my sons."

Last August, when Steward went to Dublin with Lee for a fight in front of his fans back home, Steward told a Belfast newspaper about his first experience with the young Irishman.

"I picked him up at the airport, and we headed straight for the gym (Kronk). I asked him if he wanted to spar, and he said why not, so I put him in with somebody his own size and unbeaten, and Andy kicked his butt," Steward said.

Lee is the proverbial gym rat. Short of sleeping on a cot at the Kronk, the next best thing for him is living at Steward's house, which he has called a "boxing museum." The walls of Steward's home are lined with pictures of fighters, and the trainer has a huge library of fight DVDs which Lee watches every chance he gets.

Not only have Cintron, who is 28, and Banks and Lee lived in Steward's house, they have traveled with him when the trainer has worked the corner of his veteran fighters. That meant trips to the South when Steward was still training Jermain Taylor; and to Europe for Klitschko's fights and training camps. As a result, all three young fighters have benefited from constant, high quality sparring by working out against each other. They have also sparred with Klitschko, who is 6'6 1/2 " and fights at 240-plus pounds.

Steward had a double-edged reason for putting his younger, smaller fighters in the ring with Klitschko. First was to help Klitschko gain more hand speed trying to keep up with the quicker, lower-weight fighters. He also wanted to give his youngsters a chance to gain confidence by facing a heavyweight champion in his prime.

At 6'2" and possessing a 77-inch reach - just four less than the long-armed Klitschko - the big-framed Lee will eventually be able to move up to higher weight divisions. As for the 6'3" Banks, Steward already has him in position as the mandatory challenger for David Haye, who holds one of the cruiserweight belts.

With Haye having announced his intentions to move up to heavyweight, the title would become vacant and presumably Banks would fight for it with another high-ranked opponent of that sanctioning body. Steward's long range plans are to move Banks up into the more glamorous heavyweight division.

One thing Steward says unequivocally is that he has no regrets about the years he stopped training young fighters and became a hired gun.

"I have had the good fortune to work with some great fighters," Steward said. "Oscar was a wonderful experience for me. He's a beautiful man. Most of the situations I have been in have been good. The few that weren't I walked away. Working with Chavez helped me become a more balanced trainer because I had to learn Spanish to train him in Mexico. I have learned so much from all the fighters I have been with."

One of Steward's most cherished earlier memories was helping develop six gold medal winners for the 1984 Olympics.

"Back in the 80s, I had six kids working for the Olympics. In 1983-84, we went all over the world together for tournaments. We got to travel and also be friends," Steward said. He was referring to Pernell Whitaker, Mark Breland, Frank Tate, Tyrell Biggs, Jerry Page and Steve McCrory, the first three of whom went on to become professional world champions.

In Lee, Banks and other young men sure to follow, Steward hopes once again to get the old Kronk assembly line cranking again.