Porter prepped for Garcia with one hand
Congrats on Shawn's victory over Danny Garcia. Can you give us some thoughts on your son's performance? I'm the type of person that likes to go back and look at things and give a more educated opinion, but from a standpoint of the strategy that we used, he implemented it pretty good, but what people don't know are the things we dealt with in preparation for this fight, so I'm going to give him an A+. This entire camp Shawn had a cast on his hand from a surgery that he had and he just got cleared from a doctor to use his hand two weeks prior to the fight, so we were unable to use our left hand during the whole camp. I'm going to give him an A+ and I'm going to give myself an A+ because it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do preparing a guy that I knew could only use one hand. The sparring that we were doing early on was either with one hand or southpaw. Even in southpaw we stood with one hand because we weren't using the backfist. This is all documented. We had a surgery done by the Lakers doctor and when we hurt our hand against Granados it just kept bothering him and bothering him, so when we started this camp and we were having problems with his hand again, he literally had two separate procedures done on his hand before this fight.
GL: Was the fight ever in doubt? Is this why the date got moved?
Kenny Porter: (laughs) "Yes it did, yes it did. I don't like to name drop, but the guy who was behind us backed us 1000% and he told us if we believe we could get it done, I believe in you. He did and we got it done by the grace of God. After this fight, no injuries. We had his hand checked out and he's fine now."
GL: That's great news. Early in the fight Shawn was doing a lot of bouncing. I was concerned that he might not be able to go the twelve round distance throwing away energy with all that bouncing, was that part of the game plan?
KP: "We really wanted to give Danny different looks and make him show us the big punches he wanted to throw. People tend to believe that Shawn is a brawler and a guy who is going to back you up and just throw punches at you, and that's fine. But as Barry Hunter said the other day, Shawn would have never beaten all of the guys he beat in the amateurs if he didn't know how to box. When we were in the amateurs they used computer scoring and if he didn't land clean punches he couldn't beat Danny Jacobs, Oleksandr Usyk, Demetrius Andrade, Jesse Hart, Edwin Rodriguez and Shawn Estrada, he would have never beaten those guys if he couldn't box. We had a situation coming into this fight where we just got cleared to use the hand again three weeks before the fight, I have all the paperwork. And you're in the game so you know that three weeks before the fight is really two weeks to train with both hands because...
GL: (cutting in) "Fight week is nothing."
KP: "It's nothing that's correct. We cheated along the way by using extra padding and big huge gloves during camp, and instead of using pads I had him hitting the bosu ball."
GL: Angel Garcia has been quite vociferous since the decision was announced, calling the judges three blind mice. How do you feel about his comments?
KP: "Vociferous huh, that's a word I'm going to have to give one of the Mayweather's a call to find out what that means."
GL: That's a Don King word, he's used it many times while talking to me.
KP: "It sure is, but in all seriousness, I told Danny after the fight and his dad didn't want to hear it, but I was telling him as well, they both did a great job. I would not be saying what he was if they got the decision. I told them that and I looked Danny in the eyes and told him I thought the fight could have gone either way and he's truly a great fighter. I would not have jumped up and down and screamed and hollered that we got a victory because we got robbed or the judges were blind. I'm sure there's some people who felt that Danny's gotten some decisions that shouldn't have gone his way. Angel is going to be the vocal guy that he is and I've got no problem with that. I just want to express to Danny after the fight that I think he's a great fighter."
GL: I think it's great for boxing that elite welterweights like Shawn, Danny and Keith could all fight each other be within a point or two of each other in very close fights that could go either way.
KP: "That's right. Depending on what you're looking at we could have a decision over Keith Thurman and so could Danny. When we fought Keith he got all the cheers coming into the ring and we got booed, but when they announced the decision they nearly booed him out of the ring. We didn't get that decision, but we moved on and got Danny and now it's time for us to move on to the next big fight."
GL: I'm sure you guys want to make the biggest fight possible, but Ugas won his fight on the undercard and he is now Shawn's mandatory challenger. Will you look to seek unification bouts in order to put that mandatory on hold for the time being?
KP: "We want to unify the titles and fight Errol Spence. That's our goal and that's something we decided before we fought Garcia. We knew we had to focus on Garcia and get past him first, but this is already something we've decided before we got the fight with Garcia. This was a two fight deal for us, we wanted to fight Garcia and Errol Spence. I think this is the best thing. Nobody wants to see us fight Ugas, they want to see us fight Errol Spence. It's the best thing for boxing and it's the best thing for us."
GL: How do you think a fight between Errol and Shawn plays out?
KP: "It's going to be a very competitive fight and we're going to do some things that people are not going to see Errol in the same light they've always seen him. There's no way in hell that Errol is going to be able to do the things he's done to other fighters leading up to this against Shawn Porter. It ain't going to happen with Errol and Danny, Keith or Bud. He's not going to have that fight with the upper echelon elite fighters in his class because those guys have the ability to do things he could do and they also have the ability to defend. They've also gone up against each other and we bring a lot more intangibles than everyone he's fought that's gone to the ropes and basically said I'm here to get to stopped. There's level to this and it's a cliche people often say, but it's the truth. When you get to the highest level these guys are going to bring things to the table that you're not expecting. I've seen some guys give him trouble that are lower level guys. I've seen him shook up by a guy that made his whole body quiver off of a punch. We want the fight now, the sooner we could make it happen the better."
B
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