Part VI of this incredible interview with “Mighty” Ivan Robinson continues.
By Boxing Reporter and Writer Chris Cercola
We were back in a tough situation again, who were we gonna fight? We needed to fight a name, and we need to fight a champion or somebody good, and somebody they gonna look at and figure that they can beat me; alright Gatti just fought Angel Manfredy. Now, I thought that Gatti was coming back in the Manfredy fight. I think he was starting to put the pressure on Manfredy, and I think he was starting to slow Manfredy down with the body shots, but the fight was only a 10 round fight.
I remember thinking if it was twelve, Gatti had a chance to win it, but Gatti lost, so Gatti was in the same boat as I was in, now Main Events promotes me and Gatti, now the promotional situation, I don’t know nothing about it, but I’m figuring why is Main Events gonna promote me and Gatti, and fight both of us, I mean, if either of us win, where they going with it, if the other one lose, he’s out the door? I’m like, “Let’s take the fight”.
I think the whole time we was in training, everybody kept telling my manager he was crazy, he was gonna get me killed, my career was gonna be done, so I isolated myself from the whole city, I just took my trainer, my manager, and I took my right hand man, Ray Carter, and we went and got us a little apartment and we stayed there, it was in Philly, but it was way out in the boondocks.
My manager would come get me up at five every morning, drive me about an hour from Philly to Jersey, run me at Cooper River, and take me all the way back. We did that for about a month, month and a half.
I’ll never forget it, about two weeks before the fight was the press conference, we get to the press conference and a lot of people are really excited about the fight ‘cause they saying Gatti gonna kill me, so I ain’t saying nothing, I’m just in there ready to take it.
They asking me questions, I’m talking to them, but what happened, what got me really upset, what really made me dislike Gatti at that time, and who knew that I’d fall in love with him, and we’d become the best of friends, but I’ll never forget, they interviewed him and he talked at the podium…I’ll never forget, he said to me, in my face, he said “Ivan, what makes you think you can bring a knife to a gun fight?” I looked at him and said, “Huh?”, he said, “What makes you think you can bring a knife to a gun fight?” so I had to think about it for a minute, and it stayed on my mind the whole time back from New York to Philly, I’m sitting there thinking, “Why this guy talking about a gun and a knife?”, so when we got back, my right hand man Ray Carter, I love him to death, he used to be a fighter, but he wasn’t as good as me, but that’s my man, about boxing, he knows his thing, so all the way home I’m asking, “Why is this guy talking about a gun and knives in a fight, we gonna have gloves on?”
We go back home, we put on some Gatti tapes, and we put on some Ivan Robinson fights, but I don’t look at my fights, I look at the Gatti fights, so we go to sleep. Like 3 o’ clock in the morning, me and him got a two bedroom apartment that we staying in, he comes running out his room, banging on my door, yelling “IVAN, IVAN, IVAN, I GOT IT !!!”, so I’m like, “What’s wrong, what’s wrong what’s wrong?”, he like, “I know what he was talking about…I know what Gatti was talking about!!!” He said, “You know when he said guns and knives…What he meant was you hit like a punk, and he got bombs!!!” I said, “Oh, so he said I can’t knock him out?”… I’m already mad at him, I’m not pissed, I’m just mad at him ‘cause the comments he made, so I just said to myself, through the whole time we was finishing up training, I just kept telling my team, ‘cause all we did was just box, box, box, and we was working with Mikey Stewart at the time in the gym, ‘cause Mikey Stewart punched and kept the pressure on like Gatti, then I worked with Anthony Thompson and Mike Melvin, so the whole time in training I kept saying, “I’m gonna box this kid…Everyone gonna see what Ivan Robinson can do…I’m gonna box him.”
I kept that whole fuckin’ agenda from the whole time to the fight, I get to the dressing room, gets dressed, I’m all excited, walking down the Boardwalk, everybody keeps saying, “OH, It’s gonna be a great fight, but you not gonna win, you gonna get knocked out!”.
I get to the dressing room, start hitting the mitts, and I love music, and one of my theme songs is Larry Holmes’s theme song, and I love these guys to death, McFadden & Whitehead,’Ain’t no stopping me now’, and I warmed up to that the whole time. As soon as I get to the walk way, I gotta go to the ring, they stop me, you know how TV always stops you before you go out to go to the ring? I turn around to my trainers, I turn to my whole team and I said, “You know what, I’m not boxing this kid, me and this kid gonna slug.”
I’ll never forget it, my whole team said, “Yo, we ain’t gonna win!” I said, “Why you say that?” They said, “You can’t punch with this kid!” I said, “Well guess what, the game plan is changing. I’m going in there and fighting this kid. He’s gonna have to kill me in order to win this fight. He gonna have to kill me!” and that’s what I did.
I guess it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but in the back of my mind, I still had a game plan ‘because my game plan was, I still had the quicker hands than Gatti. I didn’t punch as strong as him, but I had the quicker hands, he was flat footed, I box, I’ll just give him angles, that’s all I had to do was hit and turn, hit and turn, and I guess it worked. That was the biggest win of my career right there…The biggest win!
Through the whole eight weeks of the camp, we didn’t do nothing but box and box and box, and I think it was the fifth round, that big explosive fifth round I had, I go back to the corner, and I’ll never forget it, my trainer goes to me and say, “What the hell are you doing, you did enough, but you’re doing too much, you’re standing there fighting with this kid, we don’t need that!” I’m sitting there looking at these guys like, “What, you guys acting like you looking at the Meldrick Taylor-Chavez fight, I’m beating this kid at every punch, I’m turning him, I’m killing him, and y’all telling me I’m not doing enough, I need to do more, I mean what the hell y’all looking at?” You know what, it turned out to be good.
I mean Gatti…He’s a warrior man, what can you say about the dude? Even if you wanted to say something bad about him you can’t. I mean the guy was just phenomenal. Like I said earlier, the way he used to visit the emergency rooms, he fought in Atlantic City, they probably made a whole room for just him, and you know it just crazy.
I think it was in the third round, Gatti hit me in the ear, and I had such a ding in my ear, you know how you hear a scream when you blow air through something with a hole in it, when you hear the long echo, that’s how it was with men in the fourth round. He caught me with a good left hook and he just had me like, “Wow!”…I had just looked the night before, at his fight with Gabriel Ruelas, ‘cause you know he fought Gabriel Ruelas before he fought me, and I’ll never forget it, the quote was that Gabriel Ruelas said that Gatti had hit him so hard, that he broke his rib!
I’ll never forget it ‘cause I was in the gym with Mikey Stewart, and he could punch, he always could punch, and this was a young Mikey Stewart, and I was actually saying to myself, and Mikey Stewart was a great body puncher, and I was sitting there saying to myself, “Gatti actually hit this dude and broke his rib…Whew!” Then when he hit me with that hook in the fourth round, I was sitting there like, “Yo, I’m actually in this fight with this guy! I don’t need to be in this fight!” I’m going back to the corner like, “Yo man, cut these gloves off me man, I should not be here!” Then when he caught me in that tenth round…OH MY GOD!!! The whole week before that fight, I was running on the Boardwalk, and the night before that, my daughter had come down, and I had her out there on the Boardwalk with me, and my daughter couldn’t be more than a year, so I had her out there on the Boardwalk with me, walking with her, talking to her and stuff, but when he hit me that night, in the tenth round, and I rolled back, I swear, I thought I was on the Boardwalk!!!…I didn’t even know I was in no fight, I didn’t know I was in the fight! All I know is, I was in such good shape, as you could see, when he hit me, from that one punch, all I kept doing was bobbing and weaving, ‘cause that’s the only thing I can do is just duck, roll, do something, and he just spent so much energy trying to kill me with every shot he through, he wore himself out, so it was a good thing, and I got him for that.
Stay tuned for part VII. Ivan goes into the 2nd Gatti fight. You don’t want to miss it!
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