Perspective: Trainer Joe Goossen’s dedication to boxing continues to define both his and his family’s lives | Boxing News

By Declan Warrington

IF THE Gervonta Davis-Ryan Garcia fight week proved the peak of a lengthy period of hype, the well-groomed figure of Joe Goossen consistently flanked Garcia like he was immune to the near-hysteria that was enveloping so many of his colleagues.

It was close to inevitable that the then-24-year-old Garcia would react to Davis’ menace, but where Leonard Ellerbe and those around the fighter they referred to as “Tank” attempted transparent mind games built on suggestions of “spies” in Goossen’s gym and bragged of being the “A-side” of the promotion as though the battle was already close to won, Goossen, wearing his wealth of experience, remained entirely unmoved.

More than any other he appeared to recognise at all times the certainties that a competitive match-up existed to create a winner and a loser, that the winner would soon need to prove himself again, that the loser could be rebuilt, that a week later Las Vegas would barely show a trace of what had unfolded, and ultimately that life would go on.

One of 10 children born to a homicide detective committed to fighting the crimes of the Los Angeles mafia, Goossen’s grounding was vastly different to not only many of those whose paths he had already repeatedly crossed, but those whose profiles owe to their association with Floyd Mayweather – an individual not only often short on substance but who perhaps more than any other fighter defines the era of hype.

When Goossen was in June inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame he joined not only – and unmistakably most importantly to him – his late brother Dan there, but among his former fighters, Shane Mosley and Riddick Bowe. Far more than for his work with Mosley and Bowe, however, he is recognised for his contributions towards one of the finest fights in history – the likes of which give someone the type of perspective that typifies the professionalism not necessarily common in his profession, and which complemented a grounding that guaranteed that Goossen would forever be unlike his peers.

“Most of the criminal activity happened later on in the night,” he starts, reflecting on the influence of his father Al’s occupation on their family of 12. “He’d have to leave at late hours to go to the scene of the crime. When I grew up in the 50s and 60s it was a different world – obviously. Where I grew up [in the San Fernando Valley] was a sleepy town – it’s anything but that now. Doors were unlocked.

“I was the only one I knew [related to] someone in law enforcement. People knew who he was. The expectations from my parents were a little different to my friends whose parents didn’t deal with the underbelly of the world like my dad did. He worked over the hill at Los Angeles, where a lot of the mafia strongholds were – Hollywood, and Sunset Boulevard. Everything he saw was on the other side of the universe to us – we just stayed in our community.

“We were under much stricter rules than almost all of our friends. My dad was a lot more cautious with what we did; who we associated with. I remember he came home and [aged seven] I saw his hands, and noticed his knuckles were all scraped up. I had a lot of siblings – there was a lot of conversation in that house. I was absorbing everything I saw. ‘I guess things are kinda rough out there.’

“We knew about getting banged up – my brother Pat was a professional fighter. [Our parents] were totally, totally dedicated to us. They [also] sacrificed, and they put us all through private catholic schools – I went to a public school for high school. He [father Al] built a pool. He wanted us there – at home.

“There were strict rules. If you ever cursed in the house you were in trouble; how to comport yourself in public. It was a very cohesive family unit – he and my mother kept it together. Family was foremost.

“My dad was raised in Boyle Heights. Boyle Heights had a big Russian community – his parents were from Belarus. There were garage [boxing] gyms on every street, so it was kind of a right of passage that you’d put the gloves on. That was carried over into our house. We had baseball equipment, [American] football equipment, basketball equipment and boxing equipment. A heavy bag hung out in the backyard.

“It was September of 1970 – I’d probably just turned 17. My brother had come home from the gym – which was Frankie Goodman’s gym in Van Nuys, about a block from where my gym is today – and told me about this young phenom, who was 15. He ended the whole rave review by telling me, ‘This kid would tear you apart in a fight’. I didn’t like that very much.

“I was [American] football and baseball [older brother Greg played Major League Baseball] all the way – that’s all I cared about, even though I was interested in my brother’s [boxing] career. To make a long story short I sought out this kid – it had really irritated me that my brother had that little faith in my abilities – and I challenged him to a boxing match. He had a gym in his backyard. He was a top amateur, by the way – two or three years away from being the last American to beat ‘Sugar’ Ray Leonard in the amateurs. Randy Shields. His father was a professional fighter. We went in there, went some rounds, and became best friends. I will never divulge what happened, but if anything bad had happened I probably wouldn’t have wanted to go back to the gym. I had a blast. I never really left the gym after that.

“I stayed with him from 1970 ‘till he retired, basically, in ’81. I worked almost all of his [51] fights. I sparred him a little bit and trained him a lot with his father Sonny, who was really my mentor.”

The birth of his son Nick meant Goossen was absent the night in August 1978 Shields was stopped by the great Wilfred Benitez. Just two months later and with Goossen back by his side Shields then fought the 14-0 “Sugar” Ray Leonard in Baltimore; the following year he was matched with Pipino Cuevas – “I thought Randy won, but you gotta remember Cuevas was basically already matched up with Tommy Hearns” – and in 1981 he challenged Tommy Hearns.

Aged 20 when he first worked Shields’ corner on the occasion of a professional contest, Goossen turned 70 in September, therefore reaching 50 years observing some of the very finest fighters there have been. In those 50 years his late brother Dan, brother-in-law Tom Brown and most recently niece Brittany joined him in boxing; there was also Joel Casamayor, Diego Corrales-Jose Luis Castillo, and the opening of LA’s Ten Goose Boxing Gym.

“You can’t be a civilian and be a fighter – and I was too much of a civilian,” Goossen continues, to Boxing News. “So I was better suited on the outside of the ropes. I had a pretty good eye for what I was looking at.

“Dan was the ultimate PR salesman. He had an incredible mathematical brain. He was great with numbers. I’d listen to him talk to [Bob] Arum and other big shots; they’d be talking contracts and they’d just leave me in the dust.

“By the time we started our own business – remember, it was a very small club in the boxing circles; [Dan] was able to crack the glass ceiling – from where we started to where we ended up it couldn’t have happened without Dan. I always said Dan was the brain; I was the brawn. I liked to do the heavy lifting in the gym and he liked to be behind the desk manning the phones. Dan was the impetus.

“Serendipity plays a big part in everything in my life. The whole thing – had my brother not come home and insulted me I wouldn’t be in the business. I have a diamond dealer – Barry Kagasoff. I always tell Barry, ‘Had you not come up to me and asked me what I was doing there and pointed out that kid [Shields], I wouldn’t have been in this business’. I’d already said to myself, ‘If I don’t find him today that’s it’ – I’d already looked for him a couple of days.

“Dan and Tom Brown were running the Fox Sports One shows back then [in the late nineties]. I was going over to Florida, and we were fighting a lot of the guys Luis DeCubas Snr, a great character, had on his roster – a lot of the Cubans. I won three in a row against his three top guys. Ron Tutor [later of Goossen Tutor Promotions] happened to have his yacht parked in St Petersburg [Florida], so we hung out on the boat that night and we decided to form a partnership. One of the moves he made was to bring [Joel] Casamayor over to my gym. Serendipitous – just having to beat DeCubas’ guys.

“What I did for Casamayor was bring a whole new concept of how to fight. When you’ve 200 or 300 fights and come up under the brilliant Cuban amateur system it doesn’t always translate well into the pros. It just changed his whole demeanour. It was one of the reasons we were able to beat [in 2003, Diego] Corrales in the first fight – the number of years’ preparation we had for guys that just keep coming at you.”

Goossen was in Casamayor’s corner the night in Las Vegas – “At that juncture there was no more threatening fighter on the planet than Diego Corrales” – and in Corrales’ in Mashantucket for their rematch in March 2004 five months later, when Corrales then secured revenge.

“Casamayor had made some business arrangements – we disagreed, and we parted ways after the Corrales fight,” he explains. “No hard feelings.

“They had ordered an immediate rematch. Again, through serendipitous events, I get a call that Corrales had left his trainer; we made an agreement, and Diego came out to my gym. As his new trainer, I’m in the opposite corner against my fighter of seven, eight years.

“It was not a good feeling. You’re happy for the outcome for your new fighter – Diego and I got along famously – [but] the old term bittersweet comes into play.

“That led to the fight everyone remembers. The Corrales-Castillo fight.”

If indeed it was serendipity that delivered Goossen to that point, it was his expertise that defined the late Corrales’ gameplan.

“You saw what we needed to do, and that was to go right at him and submarine him,” he says of one of the most dramatic fights of the modern era. “I told Diego, ‘We gotta soften him up early, because this guy is really good down the stretch’. If we had boxed and moved and not done early damage to him, maybe we don’t get that knockout in the 10th. Castillo, after those two knockdowns in the 10th, I’m sure when he saw Diego get up the second time he thought, ‘What the hell?’ He’d used up all of his bag of tricks, and Diego was able to take over at the end of that 10th round and stop him in one of the great comebacks.”

Joe Goossen (Sye Williams/Getty Images)

It was perhaps his contribution to that that above all else secured Goossen’s induction into the Hall of Fame in Canastota. The second Goossen rewarded with the most sought-after honour, one of the most respected of all trainers, and for reasons greater than recognition – Dan died of liver cancer in 2014 – has come to value that latest chapter most of all.

“Dan had a gift,” says Goossen. “He loved the sport – he really loved it. He was built for it. What I came to learn was, ‘Listen to Dan – he’s usually right’. Dan used to do something throughout the years that I repeat once in a while. Let’s say there was a negotiation going on for a certain fighter I was working with and it was off and on. Dan would go, ‘I don’t know, Joe; I’m still working on it; I’m not sure’. ‘Dan, this is what you always say – you’re gonna make it happen’, and I’m telling you, he did. He somehow always got what we needed. He got it done. It wasn’t a trainer-promoter relationship – it was a brother-brother relationship. He was very fair, and very honest with the fighters. He had a high standard that he stuck to throughout his career.

“[His illness] was the weirdest thing ever. It was just, ‘Huh? What? Where the hell did that come from?’ Dan, like a lot of guys who were raised in the 50s and 60s, kept it to himself not to burden anybody. I had no idea. Dan was in the office at 5.30am, 6am at the latest; there ‘till the sun went down. Never missed a day of work – ever. There was a couple of days he wasn’t in the office and I was like, ‘What?’, but I still didn’t think it until he broke the news to us, and by that time it was late in the game and, blink of an eye, it was over. It was very traumatic for me; very traumatic for everybody involved. It’s something I think about practically every day. ‘I’m still here, Dan – why aren’t you here? We started this together.’ I’m 70 now; he died at 64. It came out of the blue.

“It’s the most meaningful thing to me [to join him in the hall of fame]. I’m bummed that Dan wasn’t alive to accept his award, which he richly deserved. ‘I’m going to be your stand-in.’ This is more for him than it is for me, in my mind – it really is.

“In the years to come, when the next generation of people go through that hall of fame – they see my name next to Dan’s – they’ll probably figure out that those were the two brothers who made a lot of headway in the game and ended up in the HOF. That is what really puts a smile on my face – knowing that I’ll be with Dan there, for as long as that hall stands.

“Hands down, the greatest talent I ever had in the palm of my hands, that I was able to mould and develop, while Dan was doing the business, was Michael Nunn. There’s no doubt about it. Randy Shields told me years ago, about Michael Nunn, ‘Joe, you better teach him how to fight on the inside, because one day somebody’s gonna make him fight there whether he likes it or not’. That really turned the light on for me about Nunn and preparing him. Overall – defensively; offensively; athletically – he was really hard to top. My brother always said, ‘Frank Tate got the gold medal [ahead of Nunn at the 1984 Olympics] and we got the gold nugget’.”