By Scott Gilfoid: If you saw last night’s heavyweight WBC eliminator bout between #3 WBC Mike Perez (20-1-1, 12 KOs) and Bryant Jennings (19-0, 10 KO’s) on the undercard of the Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Geale fight at Madison Square Garden in New York, you’ll have no doubt noticed how limited and lost Perez’s trainer Adam Booth was when it came to giving him any functional advise in the corner.
I’m not even talking about the fact that Perez came into the fight at a career-high of 242 pounds and appeared to be a good 25 pounds overweight, what I noticed was how repetitive Booth’s instructions were in between rounds. Perez needed some clear instructions in order to help him get past what proved to be difficult opponent for him in Jennings.
Former world title challenger Eddie Chambers, who is no stranger to looking kind of chubby, said this about Perez on twitter: “Mike Perez should have no excuses. No way u should be 6ft 1inches weighing 242 pounds boxing! #lazy.”
Instead of giving a lot of instructions, Booth kept repeating the words “aggressive” and “rapido.” These were basically the things that Booth was saying in between every round of the fight, and I find it hard to believe that he didn’t have more things to say than this.
With Perez being so badly out shape, he needed Booth to give him some concrete things to work on, such as ‘staying on the outside, using his jab, and not letting Jennings get near to him.’ The things that Booth was asking the out of shape Perez to do were things that he couldn’t do given how overweight that he was for the fight. Perez was a slim fighter during his amateur days in Cuba, but he lives in Ireland now and his weight has gotten out of control. At his best in Cuba, Perez fought as a light heavyweight, which is really the frame that he has. He’s not really a heavyweight, but more of a cruiserweight now with 40+ pounds of excess weight on him. That’s the division he should be fighting in if he were to take off all the weight that he’s put on.
Booth should have been working on Perez’s diet and weight during training camp, because the guy has no business fighting in the 240s. Perez would be at his best in the 215-220 range. He obviously can’t go lower than that now given all the weight that he’s packed on, but Booth should have made sure that he got Perez down to at least 220 for this fight. Had Perez weighed 220, he would have beaten Jennings last night. As it is, he came close to defeating him if he hadn’t gassed out from all that extra weight he’s carrying.
If Booth is going to continue to train Perez, then he needs to get a strength and conditioning coach like Alex Ariza, who can work separately with Perez on his diet and conditioning to get the weight off and to build up his cardiovascular system. There’s no way that Perez should be coming into his fights at 240 and gassing out after 6 rounds like we saw last night.
I put that on Booth for not putting into place the proper scientific training regimen that he needs for a guy like Perez to be successful. He’s a got a diamond in the rough, but he’s not doing things the right way for him. This isn’t David Haye, who has very little body fat on him, and who watches what he eats. Perez needs a nutritionist, a strength coach, and major work on his cardiovascular system. That extra 20-25 pounds of flab on his frame needs to go.
Perez lost the fight to Jennings by a 12 round split decision by the scores 115-112, 114-113 for Jennings and 114-113 for Perez.
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