“Mighty” Ivan Robinson – Part III
By Boxing Reporter and Writer, Chris Cercola
The Ivan Robinson chroniclescontinue with part 3 of his tremendous interview. Ivan continues to give the boxing fans a wealth of information as he discusses his pro debut, fighting at the legendary “Blue Horizon,” the surgery that he underwent after he fought Demetrio Ceballos, the three fighters that he feels he only lost to, and touching upon how Arturo “Thunder” Gatti cuts.
I turned pro October 20, 1992 in Atlantic City against a guy named Pedro Cotto, I knocked him out in, I dunno, thirty-something seconds in the first round. I caught him with a good left hook, right hand over the top and he was gone. Philiadelphia back then was hot, and back then it was definitely hot, because of Tuesday Night Fights. You had the Blue Horizon, that was a hot venue, and you had my man Sean O`Grady and Al Albert, and they was just doing they thing. When I got the call, my manager, Eddie Woods, and he`s just a great dude, and Tuesday Night Fights, man, I always had fun at the pre-fight examinations before the fight. We always used to talk and laugh, and Sean O`Grady never had a bad thing to say about me, I never had a bad thing to say about him, honestly, I wonder if he ever thought about critiquing me, everything that came out of his mouth was great, and I guess that’s why Tuesday Night Fights kept me going.
The first big Tuesday Night Fights we did, I had a photographer named Webster. I don’t know, he just loved snapping pictures, that’s why I had him, and he took a picture of Arturo Gatti, and it`s just crazy, but Arturo was on the same card as I was but he fought on the undercard on that fight! I got pictures with him and my dad, I didn’t take any with him but he and my dad took some. We fought a guy named Juan Negron, and he was like 6`2 and he was like 22-1 with like 17 or 18 knockouts or something like that. I kept saying to myself like “Wow!” But you know, I`m from Philly and I`ll fight your pop if you want me to! We went in that fight and man, I`ll never forget it, it was in New Jersey, it was our first fight on big TV, and we turned that place out, and you know when you’re about to do something, and you know when your calling`s coming! I think I was just born for TV and I know that when I got that calling, I took advantage of it and it did me well too.
For the first time, I got taken to deep waters was by Demetrio Ceballos. We knew he was a pressure fighter. I think for the first time, people were supposed to actually see how good my foot work was and to see what a great boxer I was. I was fighting in my back yard, in front of people who knew me since I was called “Mighty Mouse.” It was just a different atmosphere, because I think around the fifth round, the fight changed. I can’t say my gas tank got low, because I didn’t get tired; it was just that the kid pressured me so much!
Every time I turned around, he was right there in my chest, but of course, I thought, I was scoring the cleaner shots, although he did get in a lot of times, he kept me on the ropes, and that’s how I got cut. I think I got cut in the sixth round. That’s the first time I ever had my blood running down my face, it was crazy, and actually nobody knew this. I thought I was gonna die, he just kept putting the pressure on, but we won the fight. I don’t think that was the big hurdle, the big hurdle was when we had to go to the hospital. I went with my manager Eddie Woods, and man, I love him to death. I think I was like 19- 0, no, matter of fact, I was 20-0! ‘Cause I remember I fought Emanuel Augustus after that fight, but back to the Ceballos fight, man, I`ll never forget it. The Dr. came to me, I`ll never forget her, her name was Miss Santiago, I`ll never forget her cause she’s the one that started the surgery.
I remember them asking my manager Eddie Woods, “How you wanna get this done, you want butterflies or you want the surgery?”, so I`m sitting there listening thinking, “What are you guys talking about?” I heard Eddie say surgery, I`m sitting there saying, “Surgery, you guys gotta actually pay for this?”, so Eddie was like, “Yea, don’t worry about it”. Next thing I know, this lady comes in with this big needle talking about, “Come here, I gotta put this in your eye!”, I got cut right over my eyebrow, and I don’t like needles, so I’m like “Huh, what is you talking about?”, and I`ll never forget it, Eddie and them had to hold me down! She stuck that needle in my head, man, it was crazy! And when she came back, she had these scissors, I`ll never forget it, my face blew up so fast, I guess from the codeine that she had to put in my cut so I didn’t feel it, but when she cut my face, oh my God, I could just hear the scissors cutting it. It just sounded so nasty, but I didn’t move and she had to sew, I think eight stitches on the inside, and ten on the outside, and it was just crazy, but I got it done. I didn’t train for like a week or two, and I looked at my face and the cut turned out pretty good, matter of fact, you can’t really tell unless you right there in my face, and I never got cut again over that eye. I got cut over the other eye later in my career, but I only had two cuts in my life, thank God, God was in my corner, you know, it turned out to be a great experience for me.
I couldn’t understand how my man Gatti, God rests his soul, I never could understand how my man Gatti did it, you know, Gatti cut easy. I believe Gatti had like forty-something fights, I don’t think he had as many as I had, but probably in like 80 percent of his fights, he got cut, so I wonder what the heck happened. How many plastic surgeries they have to do on him?
And I think, I mean besides the cut in the Ceballos fight, I think the only bad swelling or puffy eye that I had, came later in my career, in the Vivian Harris fight, and that came from a thumb, I think he caught me in, I think, the second round, and then I dropped him in the fifth, but the whole fight I had to fight with just one eye and it was closing, and by the eighth round I couldn’t really see, so he was a big right hand artist, he knocked people out with that right hand, and God forbid, but I got through that too. I didn’t like the decision, it was a draw but the scoring system was crazy. I honestly say, that out of all the decisions that I lost, all the losses I got on my record, Vivian Harris, I lost, Jesse James Leija, I lost, and Angel Manfredy are the ONLY three losses in my whole career I can actually say I lost. The Manfredy fight, I think he had a game plan, he stuck with it.
And I think, I mean besides the cut in the Ceballos fight, I think the only bad swelling or puffy eye that I had, came later in my career, in the Vivian Harris fight, and that came from a thumb, I think he caught me in, I think, the second round, and then I dropped him in the fifth, but the whole fight I had to fight with just one eye and it was closing, and by the eighth round I couldn’t really see, so he was a big right hand artist, he knocked people out with that right hand, and God forbid, but I got through that too. I didn’t like the decision, it was a draw but the scoring system was crazy. I honestly say, that out of all the decisions that I lost, all the losses I got on my record, Vivian Harris, I lost, Jesse James Leija, I lost, and Angel Manfredy are the ONLY three losses in my whole career I can actually say I lost. The Manfredy fight, I think he had a game plan, he stuck with it.
I think my camp was run the way a camp was supposed to be run. Every trainer should know what their fighter is capable of doing, and Eddie Woods was a local treasure here in Philadelphia, he had a lot of local businesses and he dealt with a lot of money and plus he did a little professional fighting. His record was 15 and 3. He got out early ‘cause he cut a lot. So to make a long story short, managers today, pretty much don’t care about fighters, they just see a talent and they wanna use it.They feel they can make a lot of money off him, and they wanna use it. Eddie Woods wasn’t that type of dude.
Eddie Woods is the only guy I know that actually sits down and takes his time and does his homework about a fighter before he signs him. Eddie has a lot of fighters now and he can tell you about every fighter. Eddie came around me when I was 13 years old, he stuck with me, he came to all my amateur fights, and he even flew to a couple of my amateur fights when I was in the Nationals and stuff. Eddie knew a lot about me, so Eddie never put me in a fight that he didn’t think I could win, and I still say to this day that Carl Moretti is one of the best matchmakers in the world because there was not a fight that Carl Moretti put me in that I couldn’t win, I just did some crazy stuff and didn’t win `em.
To go back to Augustus fight, I knew Eddie knew about him and I knew Carl knew about him, I didn’t know if my trainers knew about him, but they knew we was fighting him, and I guess I had such great talent, that these guys felt that anybody I’m gonna be in there with, I’m gonna be good, but this guy man, he gave me such crazy problems. I hit this kid with everything and this kid was just laughing at me in the ring, dancing, splitting and still fighting, man, it was just crazy, I mean I was so mad, this guy was doing so much to me in this fight, that when I went back to my corner, my dad was cussing me out. I was sitting there thinking to myself, “I know I can`t knock this kid out, I`m not a big puncher, but I’m beating this kid, so why am I getting cussed out when I come back to my corner?” But we went on to beat him, but like I said…Mark ‘Too Sharp’ Johnson, I fought Sharmba Mitchell in the amateurs, he beat me the first year, and after he beat me the first year, I told him I`d come back to knock him out, and that’s exactly what I did. So I had a little hometown base in Baltimore, D.C, and we went down there and we beat Emanuel, and it was on to the next step and the next step was getting a shot at the title.
Stay tuned for part IV as Ivan talks about his father in his professional career, Junior Jones, Robbie Peden, and a lot about trainer Tommy Brooks.
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