By Boxing Reporter and Writer, Chris Cercola
Part V is here. The Ivan Robinson chronicles continue. The “Mighty” one elaborates upon his prodigious career as he touches on his incredible work ethic, his hight with Israel Cardona, and his proposed fight with Shane Mosley that never materialized. Enjoy!
I’m always at work an hour, two hours early. If my training session started at four, I was in the gym at 3:15 or 3:30, so I never was late, I was always on time, boxing was my passion, so I knew that’s what I wanted to do, so in order for me to be the best, I just had to be there. I was there when no one else was there, I’d beat my sparring partners to the gym, I’m sitting there like, “Yo, I’m paying you guys, you guys are supposed to be here.” They like, “Yo, we not supposed to be here til 4 o`clock.” “Just because it say 4 o`clock doesn’t mean to show up at 4 o` clock, I want y’all suited up ready to go at four!” But you know, that’s just how it was.
My career was great, I really don’t have too much to squabble, but that Holiday fight happened in ‘96, I didn’t watch it since like ‘97 and a half, it was like a lost memory, after that I didn’t watch it again, I had to move on. I was very disappointed by the loss. I was disappointed, because I lost and I was disappointed, because I didn’t have my dad. I had this guy in my corner telling me stuff…Tommy Brooks, He’s supposed to be the hottest trainer in boxing and that’s the reason why I got him, and I was a hot prospect coming up too. It was all supposed to be gravy, I’d probably had another fight after that, and I definitely would have fought Shane Mosley, but it didn’t come about.
Israel Cardona was another contender, and I don’t turn away from opponents. At the time, the money was good, actually, I didn’t think about the money, I just wanted to fight, but I was still devastating from the loss. I think I put on like 15 pounds, and I wasn’t training. I think I started training maybe a month before the fight, but I wasn’t really training that hard until the second or third week and the fight was fast approaching, so we still decided to take it. My manager knew I did everything I had to do to get ready for a fight, but for some reason, we couldn’t get rid of the six or seven pounds, but we still took the fight.
The day before the Cardona fight, I think I was four pounds over; I went and tried to sweat it off. People was even telling me that you lose weight in your sleep, ok, we got two and a half pounds to go now, we gonna knock it off when we sleep. I got up that morning, still overweight, jumped on the scale and they told me I had two hours to lose it, so I went and lost it, but the thing is for two or three days before the fight, took it all out of me, and I knew it like a half hour before the fight, because I would always warm up in the dressing room before I went out, I couldn’t break a sweat, it was killing me, and the walk to the ring was not good, and my manager was like, “Ivan, you need to pull out.”, and I was like, “No Eddie, I`m gonna fight.”, so they announced him, then they announced me, then I remember I just got this groggy feeling. I thought I’d overcome it. I went out there, boxing superbly. I was trying to stay away from him but, then I started moving to the outside so easily, and I guess I was just drained from weight and things of that nature, and I think he just caught me with a good left hook.
That was the first time I ever been down, and when he hit me and knocked me down, I went down right there in the corner, I think it was his corner, and when I went down, my head was under the rope on the outside of the canvas, and I remember lifting my head up and them pushing me back in the ring. I think I got up at the count of eight, wiped the gloves off, and I guess he was just too strong, he wasn’t a big, big strong guy, but I was so weak, I couldn’t do nothing, and you know, he just finished me, and that’s the first time I ever been stopped, so it was good, I understood what it was. I had a great team, they knew how hard I worked, they knew I was weak but they knew I wasn’t gonna give up that easy. But the one thing I can remember, Eddie was mad ‘cause he said that fight could of killed me and I could of died, ‘cause you know, I was actually so weak. I had no bearings or nothing, that loss was bad and I’ll never forget it. My daughter was just born, and I didn’t want her to see her dad like that, she probably don’t remember ‘cause she was young but I know her mom took it real hard and I took it real hard, so I took some time off. I really needed some time off from there ‘because I was still hurting from the situation with my dad.
I think I took close to a year off; it was just crazy how the Gatti fight came about. I told you what a good dude Eddie was, and he knew me just as good as my dad and my mom, and he knew what I needed, and what I didn’t need, and one thing he knew about me, being a great fighter. I couldn’t stay out of the ring no three or four months and try to fight, I couldn’t do that. So like I said, my manager Eddie was a master at doing things, and what he did is, he used to put on fights at the Armory in Philly, so now at that time, even with the two losses I had, I was still kind of hot.
So Eddie put me on the card, and the kid I fought, can’t remember his name, but the kid was tough, we knew that, and people were wanting to know why was I fighting such a tough fight after losing then coming back with two wins and after me being knocked out, but hey, It’s what I do, It’s where I needed to be, It’s where I was gonna go to get to be, but on top of that I was looking for a marquee fighter with a name, so we took this kid. I beat him pretty well, but I got cut in the fight.
Word got out that Shane Mosley was coming into town to look for a fight, well alright, well It’s crazy, like I said, Philly loves you, then they hate you, and I’m sitting there wondering why Philly wants to bring a kid from California into they town, and fight another kid from out of town. So we made the statement that if Shane was coming into Philly, which is still my city, then he was gonna fight me, or he wasn’t gonna have no fight. I’ll never forget it, my managers must have went back and forth with this guy for two nights straight, my manager kept calling me saying, “Ivan, you sure you want this fight?”, “Ivan you want this fight, I wanna make this fight happen!” I’m like, “Make this fight happen”.
I’ll never forget, the fight was for 40,000. Well, alright fuck it. Let’s fight, and we fighting for the world title, I knew Shane was gonna get the money, so it was gonna happen ‘cause I knew it was supposed to happen ‘cause I was never supposed to lose to Holiday. Alright well let it happen, and it’s happening in my back yard! I got cut, I don’t care about that, I’m thinking about this fight and I’m gonna beat this guy, so, my dad, I had him pretty much back on my team, but he wasn’t quite all the way in yet, he goes out and buys this mask for me. It’s supposed to cover the cut, protect the cut from re-opening. This is my second cut, but it wasn’t as bad as the Ceballos fight. So my cutman, he put butterflies on it, but when I was sparring with this mask on, the butterflies come off of it, the cuts open, so I’m like, “Man, I still wanna fight this guy, let’s go.” So my manager’s like, “No man, those cuts gonna re-open, and you really gonna be out the fight, you not gonna be able to fight for a couple, months or whatever.” The place is just about sold out, and man, when they announced the fight was off and I couldn’t fight, man, 75 percent of them tickets were taken back, and nobody came to the fightMan, I think that would have probably been a fight.
Stay tuned for part VI as Ivan continues to elaborate on his novelty career. The fights with Arturo “Thunder” Gatti are coming. You don’t want to miss it.
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