By Adam Baskin: Errol Spence Jr gave an update on his new gym-mate Ryan Garcia, saying that trainer Derrick James is working with him to fix the flaws that his previous coaches should have already fixed but didn’t.
Spence says Derrick is working with the recently knocked out former lightweight Ryan (23-1, 19 KOs) on not standing straight up, which he’s done his entire seven-year professional and amateur career.
Errol points out that Derrick is a “no-nonsense” coach, which has to be construed as a warning that Ryan isn’t going to be able to do whatever he pleases during camp, bring in his little brother to work mitts and come in and go as he wishes.
Derrick could soon be regretting his decision to start training Ryan Garcia, and he’ll be thinking, ‘What did I get myself into? This guy is a pure waste. How do I get rid of him?’
If Ryan is stubborn & hard-heated about being told what to do by Derrick, this new coaching relationship could be short, just like Kingry’s last two trainers Joe Goosen & Eddy Reynoso.
Goosen told the media that you don’t coach Ryan in the traditional sense. You “collaborate” with him, which sounds like someone resistant to being trained.
We’ve seen an unwillingness to adapt from Ryan as he’s swapped out trainers, always looking for the flavor of the week before moving on.
“Derrick is going to help him a lot by making him more fundamentally sound, not standing up straight and throwing his punches correctly, and keeping his chin down,” said Errol Spence Jr to Fighthype about how trainer Derrick James will help Ryan Garcia.
“He’s definitely going to work with him a lot. He’ll listen to Derrick because Derrick is a no-nonsense type of guy. Of course, you can tell Derrick what you feel is right and what you want to do.
When Ryan recently moved on from Goosen, that took a lot of boxing fans by surprise because this is a coach that has a ton of experience with great fighters. Booting Reynoso was forgivable because he was blessed with Canelo Alvarez, and that’s a self-taught guy, learning from watching other fighters and adding what they do to his game.
Canelo is like a computer, learning from observation and constantly re-tooling his game. Reynoso isn’t the reason Canelo is so great.
It might prove impossible for Derrick James to keep Ryan from standing straight up like a wetlands bird because he might not have the leg strength to widen his stance.
“He’ll talk to you about it and see if it makes sense, and you’ ‘ll see if what he says makes sense and then go from there. I feel like Derrick will make him a better boxer than he is now.
“There was a lot of stuff that he was doing that shouldn’t have been done, and his coaches should have corrected him, but I don’t know if it was him or his coaches,” said Spence about the flaws in Ryan Garcia’s game that his two previous we’ll known famous trainers Joe Goosen & Eddy Reynoso failed to address.
Fighters with pencil-thin legs often have to stand straight up. We saw that last Friday night with super middleweight contender Diego Pacheco in his fight against Manuel Gallegos.
Pacheco stood straight up the entire fight, and not surprisingly, he got hit a lot. It was just fortunate for Pacheco that Gallegos wasn’t a big puncher.
