"I understand that winning this fight changes Julian's life, it changes my life, I understand all of that, but you know what Perc, I'm still going to be a man if it don't turn out our way...He's going to bite down, fight back, and try to rip 'Mall' head off. We don't fight to quit or make no excuses because we were off for a little while. That's the hand that we got dealt and we playing that hand...Julian Williams ain't quitting on Saturday night. That's something that I can speak on because I have an influence on that. We coming to get it and we ain't quitting no matter how hard things get," stated world-class trainer Stephen "Breadman" Edwards, who spoke passionately about Julian Williams' upcoming title clash with champion Jermall Charlo. Check it out!
PC: I can hear it in your voice that this camp has taken its toll on you, but it's fight time now. Are you pleased with what you saw during camp for Julian?
SE: I feel good. And despite what people may think, camp is never really perfect. You're always going to butt heads on different things. It's just testosterone, we're men, and it's a go. It just works that way. He's been great in camp. The one thing that I had to start getting him to do is be mindful of his diet and supplements and things like that, and for this camp, he's been compliant in taking everything and doing everything on time with the weight, supplements and vitamins; everything has been good. His focus level has been really, really high. He's had some good sparring partners; young, snappy kids. They really pushed him because they had something to prove and he had a variety of them all between 5'11" and 6'1", a lot of undefeated kids, and he was always on time at the track for his conditioning workouts and putting the extra miles in. He's ready to rock and roll. There's no more to be said from him; he's ready to fight now.
PC: Do you compare camps or do you treat every camp as its own individual camp?
SE: I write down everything that he does just to make sure that he don't overdue it or under do it. Like I said, camp is never perfect. When two men are around each other every day, you're always going to have some kind of friction, but it's a good friction. It's a good thing. It's not a counter productive or negative energy; that's just the way it is. He'll say, "I wanna try this shot," and I'll say, "Nah man, Jermall is open for this shot! We'll try it this way." It's been a great camp. I don't know if it's been the best. I'll have to read my book and see, but I can tell you one thing, his conditioning is better than it has ever been. His times and his miles and his sprints and different runs...he's set records in this camp down the line. I don't really want to get into what his times are, but they dropped down drastically. His 400 [meter] time, his mile time, and his sprints have all been better than they ever have been over the last 6 years. They all improved in this camp and I didn't know if he could continue to improve because eventually, everybody hits the ceiling. He knocked off 5 seconds of his best 400 and maybe 20 off of his best mile. He's ready to go.
PC: Has it hit you yet that you're heading into a world title fight with your star pupil? Has that feeling sunk in yet?
SE: You know what, Perc, I expect success. I've been a winner my whole life. I don't expect to fail at anything. It's not even a matter of hitting me because I'm not going to turn it into nothing bigger than it really is. It's still 10 oz. gloves, it's still 3-minute rounds, still got Julian in the ring going against another man with 10 oz. gloves on and that man has to weigh 154 pounds. When you turn it into something bigger than what it is, sometimes you don't get the best out of the kid. Obviously it's a big fight. Obviously he has to be at a certain degree of focus, but I'm a realist. I understand that winning this fight changes Julian's life, it changes my life, I understand all of that, but you know what Perc, I'm still going to be a man if it don't turn out our way. I'm still going to be good. I haven't turned it into anything more than what it is. It's a fight and we've been around fighting our whole life. We grew up around fighting, Julian grew up around fighting; this is just a fight. He got 87 amateur fights and 20 -something pro fights; it's just a fight. That's how we going to look at it. It's hit me we are going to win a world title. That's how I feel about it. I'm not walking around all excited and I'm not walking around sad or mad. It's just a fight. He got a job to do and that's just that.
PC: I have seen this a little bit on social media so I'll run it by you. Wwhat do you say to the people that say this fight is too soon; that they should have waited and made this bigger and these guys shouldn't face each other at this age?
SE: Here is the thing, people have been saying that ever since this fight was being talked about. "They are taking money out of each other's mouths; don't fight so soon." Here is the thing they don't understand though Perc, 'Mall' has made more money than Julian. 'Mall' is the champion, Julian not the champion, so it's easy for people to want Julian to wait when he's not the one making money or he's not the one that has prestige. If Julian was the champion and they were building up to a big unification, then maybe we could wait. Jermall is making way more money than Julian has for the last year and a half, and you know why? Because he's got a belt around his waist. Something comes with that belt and in this fight, he's going to make more money than Julian, so why should we have to wait? He's 26 years old. It's the dynamic of this era. Everybody wants to wait; everybody! And then you wind up missing big fights. And what people don't know is a lot of these kids hit their primes a lot earlier than people realize. A lot of times, a big fight will get made and a dude's ring IQ will be up and his name will be known and everybody will know him, but his physical prime will have passed him by then.
I want Julian to take these big fights while he's in his physical prime. How old was Roy Jones and James Toney when they fought? How old was Buddy McGirt and Meldrick Taylor when they fought? How old was Sugar Ray Leonard and Tommy Hearns when they fought? Every super fight that we see don't have to be guys 29 or 30, 31 or 32. It don't have to be like that. I'm not saying this is a super fight; I consider this fight a great matchup and maybe they could've waited a little longer to turn it into a super fight, but who knows. We thought the same thing with Juan Manuel Lopez and Gamboa and they never fought. So things can happen. Hey man, when God wants things to happen, that's what it's going to be. You can control your destiny, but you can't control your faith. Your faith is what is is and we want a title shot. For everybody that says that to me, that this fight shouldn't be happening now, what are we supposed to do? Be a challenger and let Julian be 40-0 before he gets a title shot? What are we supposed to do? We are the mandatory. What are we supposed to do, tell the IBF, "No, thank you! We don't want to fight for the world title." So for the people that say that, I always want them to give me another alternative on who Julian is supposed to fight for a world title because we couldn't get ranked by the other organizations.
PC: We spoke about the layoff before. Was the best way to not think about or deal with the layoff to just not talk about it?
SE: He's been through it before two times in his career. He was off for 7 months and this is when he was just an 8-round fighter and it really affects you then. Those fighters at that stage, you're still growing and you need to stay sharp. He's been through it before. We don't talk about it. He's always come out of it before and he performed well. I don't believe in making any excuses, Percy; I don't. A layoff is not ideal for a fighter, but if you make the time work for you...I don't believe in any excuses. Nicholas Walters, all he did was talk about his layoff and instead of using it as fuel, he let it hinder him. And as soon as things got tough, he quit because in the back of his mind, he made it seem like everybody was against him and he wasn't sharp because he had a layoff. In reality, when you talk about negative things, you speak negative things into existence. We haven't even talked about Julian being off in camp. We just kept our butts in the gym, we had a couple of lil' mini-camps, and we all know why he had to wait so long, but guess what, Jermall only fought one time this year too. We not making no excuses. We literally never talk about it. We never complained about it and we're not going to. It's life and that's how things are. When he becomes the champion, then he can call the shots and fight as often as he wants. But I'm not even getting into that type of nonsense because that's what it is. When a fighter starts making excuses and talking about negative things, as soon as push comes to shove, he falls back on that negativity. I'm not going to have that because 'Mall' going to push back. He's going to punch Julian in the mouth in this fight. And Jermall going to fight his ass off. Jermall can fight. Julian ain't quitting; he ain't, "Man, y'all wanted me out the ring for this amount of time," and making bullshit excuses. What Julian is going to do is he's going to bite down and fight back, Perc. That's what he's going to do. He's going to bite down, fight back, and try to rip 'Mall' head off. We don't fight to quit or make no excuses because we were off for a little while. That's the hand that we got dealt and we playing that hand.
PC: I'm glad you brought up the Lomachenko-Walters fight because before I let you go, I wanted to get your take on fighters quitting. Where do you stand on fighters quitting?
SE: Well, I'm not one of those people that say a quit is a quit because there are different circumstances and different things that you go through and you don't know it until you go through that. I remember Evander Holyfield once saying, "Under the right circumstances, any man could quit." Muhammad Ali talked about how he was thinking about quitting after the 14th round in the fight with Joe Frazier and you're talking about the Mount Rushmore of heart, Holyfield and Ali. So I try to be fair and I try to be objective. Every circumstance is different and you can't just clump everything together. That's like you saying a crime is a crime; no, it's not. You telling me that murder is the same thing as stealing a pack of gum? No, it's not. Sometimes you got a guy that's a conman and every 6 months, he's on TV and he quit every time the going gets rough. I don't like to see that. You got guys that talk shit and they fake injuries, I don't like to see that. And then you got a situation like Nicholas Walters. There was a lot of things against Nicholas Walters. I understand it kind of sucks to be off for over a year and then have to fight a guy like Lomachenko when your reflexes and things have to be on, but you gotta make the best of your time. You gotta keep your ass in the gym. I'm not going to slam Nicholas Walters because I personally think the young man had a lot going on as far as holding him out the ring and things like that that's not conducive to a sharp performance. And I think that he made a mistake and I don't think he realized he was doing it while he was doing it.
Personally, I never like to see a fighter quit. Obviously I'm not his trainer, so he didn't disappoint me. I don't know him personally and I'm not his trainer, but if I go through 8 weeks with a kid and he quits on me, sure, my feelings is going to be hurt and I'm going to be disappointed. But he didn't disappoint me. I just think he made a mistake, I think he got frustrated, and I think that it's a lesson learned that he kept too much negativity around him by talking about the layoff and it came back to bite him once things got rough in there. And I think you gotta give Lomachenko some credit because he destroyed Walters mentally. He didn't give Walters any success. Walters has been hit harder. That left hook that Nonito Donaire hit him with was harder than anything Lomachenko hit him with, but Lomachenko killed him with science. He didn't let him have any success and that's much worse than beating somebody up when you can't hit them back. You see guys in wars all the time and it's tit for tat and they take enormous amounts of punishment, but they have hope because they're landing their punches. But you'll see a guy like Walters quit when he's not getting beat up physically that bad, but mentally he has no hope. And having no hope and discouraging a guy sometimes is worse than beating them up physically. But I don't have an exact remedy for quitting and I don't have an exact take or philosophy on it because every situation is different.
People try to compare what Walters did to Roberto Duran, but the difference between Roberto Duran and Walters is, when Roberto Duran quit against Ray Leonard, he was 71-1 and already the best lightweight to ever live and he had already beat Ray Leonard in the first fight, which is arguably the greatest single fight victory in the history of boxing. He was already a top 10 pound-for-pound fighter to ever live. So when your legacy is of Roberto Duran's, it's not excusable to quit, but you can't compare Nicholas Walters to Roberto Duran because Walters is still trying to build his legacy. They are different people, but I do think they both quit out of frustration. It's a lot of things that goes on in that ring and, like I said, I'm not condoning it. There are fighters, and I'm not going to name any names because I'm respectful to all fighters and I don't like to put any fighters down, but there are some fighters who are absolute conmen. They'll act like they are injured, they'll act like a punch hurt them worse than what it was, they'll act like a punch was low; they're actors. I don't like that. But a guy like Walters, it's just a tough break for the kid. Again, not excusing it, but I just think he made a mistake, he was frustrated, and he did not realize how serious it was and he had nobody to reel him in. He didn't understand the severity of what he was doing because he may have ruined his career. HBO may not ever want him back. Where does he go? He didn't understand what he did when he did it, but that credit goes to Lomachenko, man. He's part of the reason why he quit. If he would have been punching Lomachenko in the mouth, he wouldn't have quit (laughing). I tell you one thing, Julian Williams ain't quitting on Saturday night. That's something that I can speak on because I have an influence on that. We coming to get it and we ain't quitting no matter how hard things get. We ain't waking up at 5 in the morning in 30 degree weather to quit.
PC: I always appreciate the time, best of luck on Saturday night, and I really can't wait for this one. Is there anything else you want to add, Bread?
SE: I always appreciate the platform that FightHype gives me and my fighters. I really, really appreciate you guys over there and you're doing a great job. Thanks a lot and hopefully we bring it back on Saturday night.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]