Interview with Eddie Futch, 8/13/2001
INTERVIEW WITH EDDIE FUTCH – 8/13/00, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Eddie Futch moved to Los Angeles from Detroit in 1949. He originally intended to find work on the Alaska pipeline, but stopped en route in Los Angeles to stay with a former fighter he trained. His fighter convinced him to remain in Los Angeles to work as a trainer with the local fight scene there. Eddie remained a fixture in Los Angeles until late-1973, when he moved to Philadelphia to become Joe Frazier’s trainer and manager.
CASSIUS CLAY V/S CHARLIE POWELL
While in Los Angeles, Futch took notice of a young Cassius Clay, who fought three bouts there in 1962 against George Logan, Alejandro Lavorante and Archie Moore – all early-round knockouts. Futch, who was training former NFL football player Charlie Powell, matched his fighter against Cassius Clay in Pittsburgh in March 1963.
Powell was an all-around athlete, who was an all-pro defensive end with the San Francisco 49ers. He had also played basketball in college. Powell was well-built and stood about 6-3, slightly taller than Clay.
“Clay was young at that time and very confident, kind of a show-off. In fact, he was a show-off. I told Charlie Powell, ‘Clay will do certain things because he thinks you’re just another guy and he won’t pay attention to you. He’ll make certain mistakes.’”
Futch told Powell: “When you jab at him, he’ll pull back and leave his right hand to the side of his face. Move to him, pull back and make him miss, then hit him with the right-hand right down the middle.”
“In the first round, Powell followed my instructions. Powell hit him with the right-hand. And in the first round, he shook him up. In the second round, I told him to go to the body, then throw a right-hand to the head.”
“Before the second round, I told him: ‘When you jab, slip to the left. When he starts to counter-punch, then throw a straight right to the body. Clay’s right-hand will go over your shoulder.’ I told Powell to go to the body. He hit Clay with a good shot. The punch forced Clay to hold on. In the Pittsburgh newspaper the next day, they ran a cartoon of Powell’s right-hand going through Clay’s body.
“In the third round, Powell got cocky because he had hurt Clay. He didn’t follow my instructions and decided to go his own way. I told Powell not to get into a corner, when Clay couldn’t move. Powell moved Clay into a corner for an exchange of punches, but Clay punched too fast and too hard. Powell got hurt pretty badly. Clay hit with about 10 counter-punches, hard lefts and rights. The fight was stopped.
“[Ali] was a kid then, but I knew he had a lot of ability. I knew if he could be kept from doing stupid things, he’d be a hard man to beat. He had the speed of a middleweight and could punch in combinations of counter-punches.
“Charlie Powell was a good fighter. He was 6-foot-3, well-built. He was a pretty good football and basketball player. He played for the 49ers for a couple of years, then boxed, then went back to football until they wouldn’t let him go back and forth. He was a good athlete. If he had a little less self-confidence, there may not have been a Muhammad Ali.”
YANCEY “YANK” DURHAM & JOE FRAZIER
“I didn’t know Yank until he came out west in the mid-1960s. I was out here, but I’d been working with fighters and working Detroit, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and other cities on the East Coast, mostly working with young fighters.
“Yank had taken Joe Frazier to the Olympic heavyweight championship in Tokyo in 1964. Yank had turned him pro. Yank called me when he because a realist, when knew he couldn’t take Joe Frazier to the heavyweight championship of the world. But Yank was smart. He asked around for people who could help him. He heard about my name. People told him that he needed Eddie Futch. He’d never seen me.
“He called me on the telephone and told me about his fighter. I didn’t jump at the job. I was busy training my fighters in Los Angeles. I was also working full-time in the post office and they didn’t take kindly to moonlighting. I told Yank I wanted to know more about his fighter. He had his publicist send me some information about Joe, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to see him. So, Yank flew Joe and a sparring partner out to work with me in LA. I met them at the airport and took Joe to my gym and had him spar.
“After a few days, I wanted to see Joe work out with a good heavyweight, some one about the same size and level of experience. There was another young fighter in the gym, a white heavyweight, Jerry Quarry. They were about the same age, almost the same weight, about 205 pounds at the time. They had about the same reach and were about the same height, with Jerry being a half-inch taller than Joe. Both needed sparring. Both were aggressive fighters.
“Their first session was a real tough workout, a war. The second session, the same thing. In the third session, we had to stop them when Joe split Quarry’s lip under the bottom clear through to the mouthpiece.
“Chuck Leslie was Joe’s first fight in LA. I made the fight. Everyone told Yank that I was putting Joe in a bad fight, that Leslie would run and make him look bad. I told Yank, ‘Sure, Chuck Leslie is going to run when he finds out Joe can hit. Sure, he’ll run. But he doesn’t know how to run, he can’t run. And when he can’t run, he’s gonna get knocked out. It will take three rounds.’ When they fought, it went exactly as I said. Joe knocked him out in the third round.
“His second fight in LA was against “Memphis” Al Jones. He’d fought on the undercard of Joe’s fight, but we hadn’t seen him. He lost a ten-round decision. When I asked about the fight, I heard that he’d been knocked down in the first round. I told Yank that if he lasted 10 rounds, he must be tall and slim because he was probably leaning away from the punches. Sure enough, at the weigh-in, Jones was tall and slim. Joe knocked him out in the next fight.
“Then I matched Joe with George “Scrap Iron” Johnson, a tough customer. I told Joe to box him the first few rounds, then to fight his fight. I told Joe, “Scrap Iron is a tough guy. You’ll hit him a lot, but he’s not going anywhere. You’re not going to knock him out. At the end of 10 rounds, he’ll be there.’ Joe got the decision. I later hired Scrap Iron as one of Joe’s sparring partners for the Ali fight.”
The fourth and final California fight was with Eddie Machen, a crafty fighter and former top contender, whom Floyd Patterson had ducked when he was champion. Although Machen was on the downside of his career, he was still a good fighter. In fact, Machen was the first fighter to defeat Jerry Quarry, winning a 10-round decision and giving the young heavyweight a boxing lesson. Futch was familiar with Machen and knew his trainers.
“I made the match. I wanted Joe to be in with someone cute, someone who could box and punch a little bit. This was part of his education.”
Joe stormed out and decked Machen down in the first round, knocking him partially through the ropes at the Olympic Auditorium. But Machen got up, then fought tenaciously, punching with Frazier with his back pinned to the ropes. Although Frazier was winning most of the rounds, it was a tough fight, with Machen’s punches managing to raise a coffee-cup sized swelling above Frazier’s left eye.
“He hurt Joe in the 8th or 9th round,” said Futch of Machen, “but Joe stayed in to get the job done.” Frazier won finally stopped Machen in the 10th.
Why match Frazier with such a crafty veteran early in his career?
“I knew Eddie Machen’s manager. I remember when he went over to Sweden to fight Ingemar Johannson. Johannson knocked Machen out in the first round. I talked with Eddie Machen’s manager when they came back over [to the States]. [Machen] was never the same after that. Eddie Machen was a good fighter.”
After the Machen fight in 1967, Cloverlay wanted Frazier to fight Jerry Quarry. In fact, Futch said a contract had already been prepared and Yank was being pressured to sign. Futch said he opposed the fight because he felt Frazier had no more than a 50-percent chance of winning.
“I made Joe wait to fight Quarry for two years. They were two fighters, same height, same weight, same experience. Nobody knew Joe Frazier yet. Nobody knew who Jerry Quarry was yet. The only thing they knew was you see these two fighters in the ring and you see a war.
“I told Yank, ‘It’s a hard fight and no money.’ I convinced Yank not to fight Quarry, but he told me that Cloverlay was pressuring him. So, I had Yank fly me to Philadelphia and I met with 10 people from Cloverlay and I gave them exactly the same reasons I had given to Yank not to take the Quarry fight. I told them, ‘This fight is coming, it can’t be avoided.’ There was no fight until I thought it was time. And if you saw the fight, it was a war from the first round.”
After the first Bonavena fight, in which Frazier was floored twice in the second round, Futch suggested that Durham modify Joe’s fighting style.
“I told Yank not to change [Frazier’s] style. I never wanted to change a fighter’s style. Fighters develop their own style. I just wanted them to develop things they do naturally. At that time, Joe was a young man, walking straight in against taller fighters. I told Yank that Joe must learn to punch out of a bob-and-weave. When he learned to do that, he was more effective offensively and was hit less defensively.”
Futch said it was his decision, not Yank’s, to pull Frazier out of the WBA heavyweight elimination tournament after Ali’s title was stripped.
“I took Joe out of the WBA tournament. There were eight heavyweights in there, not two. I said, let them fight it out. When they’re finished, they’ll be two fighters left and Frazier will be one of them. Why fight through a crowded field when you can wait for the winner? I’m not looking for the amateur championship of the world. And in boxing, sometimes the best fighter doesn’t always get the shot.”
Futch dismissed Joe’s allegations that he fought the last few years virtually blind in one eye.
“Joe wasn’t blind. We had good doctors. We had him checked periodically. We had one fighter [Gypsy Joe Harris] who had gotten away with it by memorizing the eye chart. He got caught and had to retire. If [Joe] had been blind, I would have retired him. Joe was working in a packing house and had five or six children. I wouldn’t want any fighter to risk his life because of a physical abnormality.”
Futch knew Dayton heavyweight Sam Baroudi before his fateful fight against Ezzard Charles in 1948 in Chicago. Baroudi asked Futch to come to the fight, but Eddie couldn’t make it. Baroudi was killed in the fight. Futch regrets that he was not there to give Baroudi moral support. He was on the scene for seven ring deaths, beginning with Irish Jimmy Doyle against Sugar Ray Robinson in 1947 in Cleveland.
“I was with Davey Moore in 1963 [in his fateful title fight against Ultiminio “Sugar” Ramos at Dodger Stadium]. I had a training camp in Los Angeles about half a mile from where Davey Moore was training. After he finished training, he used to come by and we’d sit and talk for hours. I thought Davey Moore was winning the fight, then he got hit with one shot. It didn’t look like a hard shot, but when he went down, his neck hit the bottom of the rope and snapped back. They jumped in the ring to get him to take him to the hospital, but it was too late.”
Futch also remembers an obscure Detroit fighter named Talmadge Bussey in the late 1940s, although no record of him appears in The Ring record book.
“He fought Luther Rawlings in 1949 on an undercard for a Johnny Bratton fight. Rawlings was a good fighter, a very good puncher. In the seventh round, Rawlings caught Bussey with a good punch. Bussey was out, but it was at the end of the round and the bell saved him. They dragged him back to his corner and tried to work on him. The referee came over and suggested that they not let him come out for the eighth round. That was his mistake. He should have stopped the fight, but he couldn’t do it. Only the corner could do it between rounds. Bussey was handled by two twin brothers. While he was in the corner, one brother tried to keep him on the stool, the other tried to bring him out. The ref told them on the way back to the neutral corner to stop the fight, but they didn’t. They sent him out. The bell rang, Bussey got hit and he never woke up.
“I have no regrets over not letting Frazier come out for the fifteenth round in Manila. I thought he was ahead. He had given Ali quite a whipping for the first 10 rounds. His family told me they hated me for stopping the fight. Then, two years ago, Joe’s daughter, Jackie, was interviewing me for a television program and she told me, ‘We hated you. But now, we know why you did it. We love you for doing it.’ He’s a great father. I wanted his children to grow up knowing their father and enjoying him. He was getting hit with too many shots by Ali. It only takes one. I’ve seen fighters hit with power and die in the ring – Davey Moore, Talmadge Bussey, Irish Jimmy Doyle. I’ve seen seven of ‘em [deaths].
Futch said he saw Irish Jimmy Doyle fight against hard-punching 40s middleweight Artie Levine. Levine knocked Doyle out cold in the old Cleveland Arena. Futch remembers Doyle being brought out of the ring on a stretcher. Futch said he looked at Doyle directly in the eyes and knew something was not right. After that
fight, Doyle underwent a battery of medical tests in Cleveland and New York and was declared fit. He was then matched with Sugar Ray Robinson a few months later in Cleveland. Futch was at that fight.
“I talked to Irish Jimmy Doyle at the weigh-in. He was young and handsome. He used Jack Johnson’s defense, which was a very complex defense. I saw Jack Johnson demonstrate his defensive style in gyms several times. Doyle fought in that style. But at the weigh-in, I could tell that he wasn’t all there.
“The fight was in the Cleveland Arena, which was built so that the fighters had to walk down into the ring. I was sitting about half-way up, in the same row where I had been when Doyle fought Artie Levine. I saw him being brought up again in the stretcher after he was knocked out by Robinson. He looked me right in the eye. I could tell me wasn’t right. After the fight, I drove back to Detroit. After about 60 miles, I pulled over and called a newspaper reporter friend of mine in Cleveland and asked him, ‘How’s that Doyle kid?’ My friend said, ‘He hasn’t got a chance.’ It’s about 180 miles between Detroit and Cleveland. When I got back to Detroit, Doyle was dead.”
FUTCH RELATIONSHIP WITH JOE FRAZIER
“I liked Joe Frazier the most of any of the fighters I trained. When I came to Philadelphia to work for Joe Frazier, we got an apartment, a suite, that had two beds and two telephones. I always knew where he was. I didn’t always approve – but I knew where he was.”
Futch said that he was strongly opposed to having Frazier fight George Foreman in Jamaica. If it had been up to him, he’d have signed Joe to fight Ali a second time, and then have him retire. Ali was the No.1 challenger, but the WBA accommodated Frazier by suddenly naming Foreman the No.1 contender and a mandatory defense. The bout was set for January 22, 1973 – Foreman’s 24th birthday.
“Yank made the match. Yank brought me in because he realized he couldn’t do everything. I was 3,000 miles away [in Los Angeles]. Yank and I stayed together at the hotel in Kingston, we stayed in the same suite. I had it so that when I moved to Philadelphia to be with Joe, I would have had Yank work Joe in the gym a week before I’d come out.
“Foreman was at every one of our fights, Foreman had ringside seats. He was young, he was strong, big and aggressive. When I got down to Jamaica, I was disappointed. Yank came up to me after the first day and said what do you think? I said, ‘Yank, do you know what you’ve got here? You’ve got one big party. You’ve got all these big rollers coming in from New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Miami and everywhere.’ They were all there. They all came down to Jamaica to take their vacations. The atmosphere was all wrong. If it were up to me, I’d have changed everything. Whatever it took, even it if meant we were to pack up and leave the hotel, that’s what I would have done. But it was too late and it was Yank’s decision.”
Futch was worried about Frazier’s focus for the first Foreman bout.
“I remember one day, Joe was sitting near the swimming pool in an expensive suit. There were some people in the pool and they were telling Joe to come in and join them, but he had no swimming suit. Instead of sending some one to get him some trunks, Joe asked for a pair of scissors. He cut off the legs of these expensive suit pants and got into the pool.
“I brought Ken Norton in to spar with Frazier. I had sent Norton to work with Frazier about three years before, when Norton was still young and inexperienced. Ken was perfect to work with Joe, he had the size and the speed. I told Yank that if Ken wasn’t able to hold his own against Joe to send him back. After the first two days, I called Yank and asked him how Norton had done. I heard what Yank had to say. Then, I told Norton to call me, so that I could hear two sides to the same story. When he told me essentially the same thing, I allowed him to stay in Philadelphia and work with Joe.
“In Jamaica, I put Ken into spar with Joe and I was surprised at what I saw. It was very even. On the second day, I had him spar with Joe. Again, the same thing. By the third day, I see the same thing. I called Ken aside and said, ‘There’s something going on in the ring that I can’t fathom. What is going on?’ Norton told me, ‘He seems to have lost his drive.’ I gave Norton the rest of the time off.
“A few days before the fight, both camps were called to a press conference. It really wasn’t a press conference, but it was a gathering for the fight promotion. Both camps arrived at the same time and were walking up the steps when I saw something that I have never seen before or since. Joe started in on George Foreman verbally, telling him that he was a punk and who did he think he was to think he could take away his title. It was the only time I ever saw Joe Frazier attack someone in this way. George just glared at Joe. I’ve never seen more anger in a man’s eyes than I saw then from Foreman. When he came out in the first round, that anger exploded.
“I wasn’t surprised at what happened in the fight. Joe Frazier was half-prepared. When he was prepared, I could tell him what to do in the ring and he’d do it. George wouldn’t let him do anything.
“The closer the fight got, the harder I was on Joe. Joe was party-hopping. A few nights before the fight, Joe asked me if he could go out and check a party. He told me he’d be back in 10 minutes. I said alright. Well, after 15 minutes, he wasn’t back. I drove over to the club where Joe said he would be. When I went to check on him, there was Joe on stage, singing with his group, The Knockouts. Joe stained his sport shirt with sweat. I was so angry that I went up on stage, grabbed the microphone and hit him on the head with it. I got him out of there.”
ALI/FRAZIER
Eddie said he knew nothing of negotiations for a proposed Ali-Frazier fight in 1967 in Tokyo. He said he would have been against it because he was still modifying Joe’s style, incorporating the bob-and-weave.
“I didn’t like the style of the fight, a smaller guy walking in to a bigger guy and a younger guy. It would have been different. For one, if they had fought in Japan, they would have been surrounded by a majority of the people who didn’t speak or understand English. Ali couldn’t have embarrassed Joe as he had. This would have affected Joe’s intensity.
“The intensity would have come from Frazier. Ali knew that he wasn’t going to knock him out with a shot or a combination. Ali acknowledged this. He said, ‘I made Joe Frazier and Joe Frazier made me.’ Ali has this knowledge.”
ALI/FRAZIER I
Futch said the game plan for Frazier against Ali was the same as it was for all of Joe’s fights: cut the ring off, force the opponent to the ropes, go to the body and take away the legs. He said Frazier followed this plan perfectly.
“He followed the plan. When he could do what I wanted him to do, he did it.”
FRAZIER’S ABORTED COMEBACK IN 1977-78
“I didn’t support it. He told me he was gonna make a comeback. I was going to be with him to protect him. I could have left Philadelphia. I could have worked for Kirk Kerkorian in Las Vegas. He had asked me to work for him, to take care of some business that I knew how to handle. But I wasn’t going to leave Joe Frazier alone after 10 years of his life and 10 years of my life. I could have dropped Joe, but I didn’t do it. I got more time with Joe Frazier.
“I didn’t want to have to face the fact that I left him for more money. We were so close. When I moved out to my new house in Las Vegas, Joe flew the entire family out for my house-warming. When he retired in 1976, I wouldn’t leave him. When Joe was starting the comeback, he got hepatitis. The doctors said it might be month or a year-and-a-half to clear. Joe was disappointed. We’d check back after another month and the readings were the same.
“He wanted to fight so badly then. He knew he wasn’t going to get a fourth fight with Ali. For there to be a fight, there has to be a demand, and there was no public demand for another fight. He wasn’t going to fight Foreman. He never said he wasn’t going to make a comeback. He was still sparring in the gym. He was still able to handle fighters, but he did not spar with Leon Spinks or Bobick. Whoever told you that told you a lie. But he could still fight. I waited with him until he got the idea that he wasn’t going to fight again. He never told me he wouldn’t fight, but his attitude changed. I stayed with him two years until he gave up the comeback.”
ALI’S DECISION TO COMEBACK TO FIGHT HOLMES IN ‘80
“I was quite saddened by the fact that he went back to take the unnecessary amount of shots that I knew couldn’t have done him any good. It’s very apparent physically when someone starts to come down with Alzheimer’s. When Ali was coming back, Larry detected it. During the fight, he eased up on the punishment. Larry had been his sparring partner for many years. He knew Ali intimately, he knew what he did. I went to work with Holmes shortly after the fight. He talked about it quite a bit and it troubled him. He was very sad about it. He hated to see it done. He said went ahead with [the fight] because they could sell it on Ali’s name.”
CHANGING JOE’S STYLE
Machen fight was the first fight after the Bonavena fight in New York, when Joe was floored twice.
“The Bonavena fight was the main reason why we modified his style. Going into the fight, Joe was standing up walking toward his opponent. Joe wasn’t known for his ability to jab. When he was trying to set someone up, he couldn’t avoid a lot of punches because he was standing up straight. Joe was known for slipping and parrying, so for him, bobbing and weaving was natural. He had never done that before [Machen]. When I saw him getting hit standing up straight, I said we had to change this.”
