If boxing in 2011 had a name,
it would be “The Year of the Upset.” It seemed every time you turned around, an
upset special was exploding on someone’s jaw, sending him unexpectedly into
Loss Land. One victim of that trend was middleweight prospect Fernando
Guerrero. Everything seemed aligned for him to enter into contention. Guerrero started
out the year training at The Rock, a gym in Carson, CA and in February, fought
on the first 3D fight card ever broadcast. He easily defeated Derrick Findley
and everything seemed on track. Then Guerrero met veteran Grady Brewer in
another televised fight in June. Sure enough, disaster struck.
At 40 years old, Brewer was not
supposed to win. He was supposed to maybe give Guerrero some rounds and not
much else. Instead, he stopped Guerrero in the fourth round and gave him much
more than just a bit of work and an easy knockout loss, peeling back Guerrero’s
layers and showing his character. In defeat, he was all class. In his
post-fight interview, he praised Brewer and declared himself a real fighter now
that he had lost. Rather than mope around, Guerrero went right back to the gym
to learn.
“Right away. Right away,”
Guerrero told me recently at the Ten Goose Gym in Van Nuys, CA where he now
trains under the tutelage of trainer Ricky Funez. “Then once I got in the ring
and sparred, I was like, ‘I am not going to be too eager because I have a lot
of questions to ask. I've got to get my mind right. I've got to rethink
everything. I've got to start all over again.’ It's a brand new year and we're
taking a different stage because we are coming in defeated and I have never
been defeated before. So we're working on all of that just like I am working on
getting better every time. But the thing is you never say you have heart. You
show heart. That’s what I like doing in the ring.”
Guerrero questioned everything
after the loss. From dropping down a weight class to junior middleweight for no
good reason to how long he had to prepare, the bout just hadn’t felt right going
in. On the other side of the loss, he now understands that he has to take full
control of his career. Guerrero changed gyms, trainers and brought his father
to live with him in Los Angeles. That said, Guerrero is not making excuses but
recognizing the reasons things happen.
“It's just everything,” he
said. “And you know, I want to thank Grady Brewer, man. For just opening my
eyes to never underestimate anybody. Because even though I never underestimate
anybody, I still had that swag. And then, just a lot of things in the camp.
Sparring all left-handers. No right-handers. I never even got a clip of him.
Telling my people, ‘No, I am not feeling right.’ We weren't even supposed to
fight. The weight. For the first time ever…I hadn't fought at 154 since I was
17 years old. I'm 25. So then, I didn't make 154. I made 152, under the weight
that I had never been [as a pro]. So it was a lot of things that you know, I
just had to get my father involved.
As Guerrero said this, he
gestured to his father, Pedro, who happened to be standing right there watching,
intently listening to the interview. Pedro smiled and said hello. I got the
sense that everything Guerrero was telling me was not the complaints of a
fighter looking to blame everyone but himself. Rather, this was a man who received
the rudest wake-up call you can imagine and was now wide awake.
“I think I have changed as a
person,” Guerrero answered when I asked if he had changed as a fighter through
this process. “As the person changes, the fighter changes. Smarter, stronger,
more mindful of my defense. We're always more mindful of our jab or speed.
We’re never going to stop learning. I am a growing fighter. Even if I become a
champion right now, I still have got a lot to learn. There are a lot of
fighters that reach their peak. [James] Kirkland is not going to learn more
skills than he does. Let's face it. He is not that skilled of a guy but
Fernando Guerrero has a lot more to give and learn. That's what I am looking
for: improvement of my life and improvement inside the ring.”
Guerrero has begun the
rebuilding process. In December, he returned successfully against opponent
Robert Kliewer and stopped him in five.
“I felt like any other fighter
would feel,” Guerrero said of his return. “One time, you feel undefeated, unharmed,
untouched. Then when it happens to you, you question yourself a lot of times.
So when you get back to a fight, even though you are strong and everything, it’s
still questionable. So I felt questionable for one or two rounds and then in the
fifth round, it was, ‘OK. I know who I am and, boom, I knocked him out; you
know? So it got answered. And I still got some more answers. And you never end
getting answers. You are always going to get that one person that questions you
and when you get that answer and finish them, that's a real champion.”
So now Guerrero has a new
support team around him, the team at the Ten Goose as well as his father. All
of which is an effort to take care of the details he had previously missed.
“I told [my father], ‘If we're
going down, let it not be from little mistakes as in amateur mistakes. Let it
be because a guy is better than me. Let it be because he was just better than
me,” Guerrero explained. “Other than that, I never want to be in that position
again. So the thing is, now we are getting in the position that we are
controlling our own career. I am 25 years old. I have been in this career
longer than some of the trainers I had. Like my last fight, I wrapped my own
hands. Every time someone else wraps my hands, it hurts. So I am going to do
it. I did fight rounds with it, never hurt. Not one bit. If someone did it for
me, even if I knocked him out in one round, my hand was swelling.”
In Funez, Guerrero has the man
who apprenticed under Joe Goossen since he was 12 years old. Now the soon-to-be
owner of the Ten Goose, Funez has seen fighters like Diego Corrales, Joel Casamayor
and the Ruelas brothers come through the famed gym over the years. He has
watched, learned and now, is running the show. All of which, with a fighter
like Guerrero, is exciting and a little scary.
“Everything I know, Joe still
comes in and gives me advice but is letting me take flight,” Funez explained of
his taking over the gym. “Thankfully, I have my first really good fighter in
Fernando Guerrero. It’s kind of nervous but at the same time, I have worked
with a lot of world champions alongside Joe [Goossen]. I was working with
Fernando for two weeks and the same exact things I was teaching him and
correcting in him, Joe mentioned.”
In Guerrero, Funez has a
southpaw fighter with natural ability. He is fast, strong, not the biggest puncher
but what he lacks in one-punch power, he makes up for in intelligence and work
ethic. Guerrero has a thirst for boxing knowledge.
“Fernando is real talented. If
I tell him to do something, he executes it,” said Funez. “He is a very smart
fighter. Once in a while, he gets stubborn. He tests me to see if I can be in
charge. He is dedicated. He wakes up with my nephews at five or six in the
morning. He comes to the gym on time and works hard. But what I like about him
is he likes to pick my brain. And when he does, hopefully, I say the right
thing. It’s good. I am learning.”
Together, the two men have
traveled to Mexico for a stay-busy fight this weekend against 18-15-1 (11) Jason
Naugler. Guerrero was supposed to be on the undercard of Victor Ortiz vs. Andre
Berto II but an injury to Berto postponed the bout. So now he takes the tune-up
in Mexico against a fighter with an eight-fight losing streak. Not the biggest
test for sure but right now, Guerrero just wants to keep fighting. Sadly, the
local Mexican commission could not be reached about the licensing of Naugler.
For Guerrero, the future is
now. He understands why he lost and is working on correcting it all. The loss
seemed to make him understand how fleeting success is and a career can be.
“It is just little things that
they tell you, ‘You can't do this.’ Us fighters, we have to be smarter,” said
Guerrero, “like watching our money. You see all the fighters in the streets,
this and that. My father brought me to America not to be a fighter but to be an
intelligent person, be in school. And so I am not one of those boxers that was
in streets, not in school, doesn’t know how to read, doesn’t know how to invest
his money or is going to go off with the “bling-bling” or whatever. You know
what I mean? I am going to do it this way and hopefully, with the grace of God,
I am going to make it. And hopefully, I will be able to help out other fighters
to do it this way.”