Fernando Vargas Conference Call Interview
By Presser (Aug 19, 2005)
 
Photo © HoganPhotos.com
FERNANDO VARGAS CONFERENCE CALL TRANSCRIPT
August 16, 2005, Chicago , IL
Co-managers Shelly Finkel and Rolando Arellano
Trainer Danny Smith
Nutritionist and Strength coach Robert Ferguson
Main Events Carl Moretti

Will this fight be an eliminator?

Fernando:
To be honest, the only person I think about is the person I am fighting right now. I never think about any fighter other than the one I have ahead of me. I will fight anybody, anytime, anywhere. Everybody knows that and my fans know that. The only person on my mind right now is Javier Castillejo and that’s who we got in front of us.

Rolando Arellano: Mayorga shouldn’t be making comments. He should be concentrating on his performances. Everyone has seen his performance and that’s all we have to say about that. As respect to the WBC, no we will not be accepting that as an elimination fight.

Vargas: I am ready for whatever Castillejo has to offer. I’ve worked hard along with my trainer Danny Smith and Robert Ferguson and I look forward to putting on a great show.

Javier is going to come to win but I feel that everything that I’ve learned from Danny Smith. I have been bringing in sparring partners that have been here before and they are saying that I’m not the same fighter. My offense and defense are out of this world and that is because of Danny Smith and my strength and conditioning. I’m excited about putting on a great show. Now that I’ve been with coach, everything feels like second nature. One day we will be sparring and coach will say why didn’t you do a little bit of this or that – nothing drastic, because we are doing everything so great. “Do this or do a little bit of that,” but that’s it. I am very happy to have reached that level so quickly. To do what I am going to do on Saturday, I am excited about.

Physically I am doing great and that goes to my team. Of course I put in my work. I put in 110%, almost to the point of overtraining but I want to be ready.

I didn’t get to watch Mayorga, but my team went over there. I heard he looked horrible but I have not seen it myself. I cannot say for myself that he looked horrible but my coach, Danny Smith and Roland and said he looked horrible.

Rolando: I think it is a disgrace that he has the privilege, if you want to call it a privilege, to wear that green belt.

Who would Fernando rather face?

Fernando:
I would love to have the opportunity to fight Oscar. I am very thankful that he may give me the chance and if he does I will return the same respect and grant him a rematch.

Rolando: There is always a possibility that we will fight Mayorga, but it must be made perfectly clear that we will not fight under the terms of the WBC and we will not fight under the terms imposed by Don King. We will fight only under fair circumstances. Fernando has the HBO contract. Fernando is the pay-per-view draw and he is the one that continuously puts 12,000 into seats. We will make a determination who we will fight, when we fight and how much we will fight for. Under those circumstances, it is viable. He’s not getting 50%, he’s not even getting 40%. If Mayorga has a value, Shelly Finkel, who is one of the best minds, will find out what it is. And it is not a 75-25 split under no circumstances.

He wouldn’t get 50%. That is absurd. He doesn’t bring in 50% of the people. He brings in 2,000 and Fernando brings in the other 12,000. He’ll bring in 10,000 viewers and Fernando brings in the other 250,000 or 300,000 viewers. So how can we, while protecting the best interests of Fernando Vargas, say he can get 50%.

Shelly Finkel: If you find out what Saturday night did, and I don’t think it did that much. Rolando didn’t even pay, he went live, so whatever it did, maybe 50,000 buys and you’ve got to believe that Rahman-Barrett did a lot of that. SO if you subtract that from it, how much did Mayorga mean?

Rolando: Exactly, and that’s how you figure out the true value fo what the fighter is worth of a potential $12M purse.

Moretti: He’s not the “B” side, he is the “C” side – he’s a step below B.

Fernando: Even though Garcia doesn’t rain me, he will always be in my corner. Just because I am the man that I am, he will always get his just due. I don’t have a contract with Garcia, just my word. And I don’t break that with nobody. I appreciate everything he’s done for me and how far he’s been able to take me. But now I’m a totally different fighter and what I’ve learned from Danny, it makes me happy that he tells people that nobody has picked it up as quick as Fernando. We’ve had to work hard and think about it, in the past my other trainers it was quantity instead of quality. Now it is quality instead of quantity. I have this great team and there have been days where I have been very tired, where we may need a day off, or we say we’ll just do this or do that. We work in conjunction with each other. No one single person is running the show and the two of them talk daily about what is in or out. I’m going to be at 154 again because of Robert Ferguson and I’m excited about Saturday.

Robert Ferguson: In short, we definitely do a wide variety of training. The great part is that Fernando is extremely diligent which means he says what he does and does what he says, which makes my job way easier. We do a lot of weight training and like no other athlete I have worked with before, when he drops weight he gets stronger and more explosive. It is almost unfair that he is able to fight at 154 lbs.

Fernando: It’s not unfair to me.

Ferguson: It’s definitely unfair to the others but not unfair to the Ferocious One.

Fernando: I took off a year and a half because of my back and in my last fight against a guy that was in great condition and threw hundreds of punches. He was a big guy – he fought at 175. I made the weight without killing myself. I was eating. I would have egg whites before I go to bed and sleep all night. I knew nothing about nutrition and Robert Ferguson knows everything about nutrition. Me and Danny talk all the time and I’m happy that he’s happy and I’m happy that my team’s happy.

I am ready to go the distance, but I don’t think it will go the full distance.

What about the lawsuit:

Rolando:
What you have is an organization - the WBC – trying to dictate where Fernando should fight and for how much money Fernando should fight for. By doing so with their tactics, they went against their regulatory laws and in addition to that, they violated United States, which has resulted in damages and ultimately has hurt us monetarily or has caused us to lose money. We need to address the situation and we will do so in court.

They wanted Castillejo to fight Mayorga because it was more convenient for them.

Moretti:
When we made the deal with Castillejo he was the champion and there was not talk of Mayorga being his mandatory or we would have never approached it. How can you make Mayorga a mandatory. Let me give you some fact. He has lost two out of his last three fights, the last one by knockout. Then he becomes the number one contender. Oh, then they strip Castillejo and come back to tell him, “We’ll make your fight a mandatory.”

Moretti: Forget that, they didn’t even give him a chance to go to purse bid.

Rolando:
So those are some of the facts. They violated their own body. It’s all about this…they wanted Mayorga to be the champion so we have to adhere to their rules and go into a 75-25 split. That will never happen, not with Fernando Vargas bringing all of the revenue in.

What about Winky Wright?

Fernando:
The talks like I need him. I don’t need him. I would get paid more money fighting someone else than I would fighting him. He says, “I’m not going to give him the opportunity…” Who is he? If there is anyone that I want to fight, and I’m grateful that he would fight me, is Oscar De La Hoya. He can he say he’s not sure if he wants to give me an opportunity. I mean, is he a draw? Does anyone want to go see Winky Wright?

Rolando: I think that if anybody has any negotiating leverage is Oscar de la Hoya.

Fernando: I’ll fight anybody, you know that. But if you pull that stuff…

Rolando: Let me put something out there: Vargas vs. de la Hoya; Vargas vs. Mayorga; Vargas vs. Wright. If there is someone that makes business sense, not only for us but for them, it is Oscar de la Hoya.

Moretti: You’ll see, from a boxing point of view, that Fernando will have no problem making 154.

Fernando: Don’t think that I don’t work hard to get down to 154, because I do. I only had one trainer in my whole career until Danny Smith now. I learned from them, they were right and they publicly said that I was their toughest fight, and that means a lot to me. At 21 years old fighting Trinidad? I feel I am happy where I am at right now because I had two losses, but what I like about what is going on right now is that I feel I will get better with every fight and what I’ve learned from Danny Smith, it’s like Pay Station, where I see if he does this, I am going to do that. I can’t wait and I hope he comes in and throws some good body shots because I am going to do this…

Danny says, you know what’s great about you Feroz? Some fighters start out great and then fade a bit. But you had only two set backs. And now you are going to go out when you want to go out. They see my sparring, and I want to thank Peter Manfredo, Angel Hernandez, for helping me get ready for this fight. Roland, what did they say?

Rolando: They said, I can’t see this guy, I can’t hit this guys and he’s not the same fighter he was before.

Fernando: To me, that is awesome. I used to just go in and throw punches and they land wherever they land. Now it is quality and not quantity. I am grateful to God for him putting someone like Danny Smith with me. People say that he’s not a normal trainer. But I went to the underground. He’s a real trainer and like they say in boxing, you make them and we take them. There are Hall of Fame trainers that don’t even know how to hold pads. Coach will slap the paste out of you with those pads if you’re not quick enough. Man, when he used to fight, he was a bad man.

What about the belts?

Fernando:
It is the organizations that get it wrong. No, we make those organizations. Not the organization making the champion. That’s how I feel.

Rolando: Put the WBC belt in the ring and see how many people watch it on their own. See how may tickets it sells. When we come across another belt, we’ll see what happens. If I feel that I’m getting my just, and I will. But it’s not something I need right now.

Did the break help you?

Fernando:
Definitely. Before it would get stiff on me and I couldn’t train. Now it is stronger. I have a new mattress, a posturepedic mattress and I take one wherever I go. It’s one side that a friend gave to me and that’s what I take with me. I needed time to rest. I fought back-to-back-to-back without time to rest. I don’t even like doing that. Now I maybe will fight twice a year and I’m grateful I was able to take a year and a half off. I have great people around me and I’m excited to be back.

I just know and there has never been a question that I have asked Danny Smith where he didn’t say, “Oh, you can do this…” and I would be thinking about some other move and I would say, “Wow.”

I know that Oscar spoke publicly to the media regarding fighting me again.

Rolando: We have had preliminary discussions with Richard (from Golden Boy). He has told me that Oscar is planning on fighting two times in 2006 and that Fernando is one of the considerations.

Fernando: I am very happy with the way everything has gone in my career and I love being here in Chicago. Without my fans I am nothing. We had a public workout and there were thousands of people waiting there to see me do some pads. I honestly feel that there are no other fans like my fans. They are crazy, they are mean and they feel my energy. I thank them and I’m excited for Saturday.

Do greenback mean more to you than green belts?

Fernando:
Definitely. I thank God for everything that I have. Every day in camp we start off with Morning Prayer to help me get through training. The family that prays together stays together. I am humbled by the way people love me and I love them back the same way and without them I am nothing.

What about Castillejo?

Fernando:
Any fighter that puts on gloves is a threat. I train hard to make it look easy. He’s a durable champion and a durable fighter. He likes to throw a lot of punches and you saw that against Oscar and I’m going to throw a lot of punches and that’s great. And I get to work on my defense. I can’t wait for the fight and we are going to be ready for the best Castillejo.

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