ICE: Well, to be honest, I actually got the sense of it from my end more than from his. Even if we were to win the fight with Ward there were several things that came about during the last camp that gave me the idea that I wasn't going to stay on for another camp. Some of the reasons are personal and I prefer not to go into them here but I can tell you that when I trained him in 2004 and 2005 and then when I trained him for the two Hopkins fights recently everything was great. We clicked very well. But something changed heading into camp for the Ward fight. It was just different. He was different. "Uncomfortable" is probably the best way to describe it all. I could give very specific examples but, let's just say it was different and it certainly wasn't fun anymore and leave it at that. 

JJR: You've been training George Foreman's son Monk. How is that going?  Does Monk fight like his famous father?

 

ICE: Monk is a good guy, a work in progress. He didn't have any amateur experience so, like Chavez Jr., he's kind of learning on the job. He actually resembles his dad, yeah, with some of his movements and in the ring mannerisms. It's very clear watching him box that he spent a lot of time around and picked up a lot of things from his dad, definitely.

JJR: Are there any other fighters you're working with that have the potential to go places?

 

ICE: Ihave a group of different levels of amateurs I'm working with every day at the The Lions Den Training Center in Middletown, Connecticut and also a few pros, too. I'm working with a very solid up and coming welterweight prospect originally from Puerto Rico named Javier "Chino" Flores who is 8-0 with seven knockouts. At this moment he is scheduled to box on a show on January 25th at the Chumash Casino in California. Gary Shaw signed him before his last fight so he's aligned with a high profile promoter who apparently has plans to keep him very busy. I also just started training a 4-0 junior welter named Jonathon Perez from Puerto Rico who looks pretty solid, too. Hoping to have him in his first fight under me within a couple months and get the ball rolling with him. I'm also supposed to begin working with a 7-2 middleweight from my area named Lee Ortega who, at age 35, is looking to make one last run at a professional career and he asked me to help him out so that's what I plan to do.

JJR: Who do you think is the best pound for pound fighter right now?

 

ICE: I can't see anyone other than Floyd Mayweather in that top spot right now. Andre Ward is making a really strong case but at this moment I can't move Floyd out of my top spot just yet. Andre keeps it up, though, and he'll be hard to deny. 

JJR: How much do you miss actually lacing up the gloves and fighting? (Scully was a top-ranked light-heavyweight in the 1990s)

 

ICE: I can honestly say that I really don't allow myself to miss it for two very good reasons. One is that from the day of my last fight in 2001 I've been in the gym ever since, training boxers, sparring, getting ready for fights, putting on shows. I won my last fight and had planned to continue my career so I spent until the summer of 2003 trying to capitalize on that victory but when so many fights fell out in a row one after another I just kind of let it all expire. I've maintained a very solid sparring schedule all these years, though, that gives me all the action I care to see so I'm very satisfied. As an active professional boxer I hated making weights for fights and the strict diet and stress that came with that and I also hated those last few days before a fight where all the pressure would come to a head on you. Now I can spar anytime I want to but without all that stress that fighters know so well. I enjoy boxing a lot more now because I've taken all that pressure off of myself and I can just box purely for the fun of it, the same way I started out doing when I was 12 years old.

JJR: Any regrets from your professional career?

 

ICE: Many, many regrets if I am going to be honest with out. Hindsight is always 20/20 and it's very true when people say if they knew then what they know now. I have so many regrets but at the same time I remember them and the situations that caused them well enough to help fighters I work with now to avoid them. Understanding my mistakes from back then have helped me in guiding boxers I'm working with now, definitely.

 

ICE: I cannot say enough about Muhammad Ali and his influence on me! As a matter of fact, in the book that I am writing on my boxing career entitled "The Iceman Diaries," I have a chapter called "The Influence of Muhammad Ali" that basically explains how this man helped shape me as a boxer and as a person. I pretty much have one single example to give you that not only will blow your mind but that will also explain to your readers exactly what I mean. When I was twelve years old I read his autobiography entitled "The Greatest" and in it there was a part where he says that he never did drugs or alcohol in his entire life, that he didn't need it. Well, I read that and it was all she wrote. It was a done deal. I was set in my ways from that day forth. If the greatest boxer in the world, the most copied and followed and idolized athlete, didn't need drugs or alcohol then I didn't either. I took it to heart from the moment I read it. And here I stand thirty-three years later assuring you that I have never ingested an illegal drug or swallowed even one drop of alcohol in my entire life. Never, not even once. And that's because Muhammad Ali told me I didn't need to do so in order to be a someone in this world or to have fun or to make people like you.

 

I mean, who had more fun than Muhammad Ali, right?