Some fighters shake things up just as much following retirement as they did during their boxing careers. Terri "The Boss" Moss falls into this category.
During her five-year professional boxing career, Moss fought for five world titles in three weight divisions. Most remarkably, she began boxing at 34 years of age, and when she defeated Stephanie Dobbs in her final bout-for the Women's IBF minimumweight world title-Terri was 41 years old.
Now, Moss is promoting and training both amateur and professional fighters out of Atlanta, Georgia. On July 1, her first professional boxing event, Underground Showdown, takes place at Buckhead Fight Club with a full card and celebrity boxing guests. The former world champion took a few minutes to speak with us about the exciting event.
"For our kick-off we have a lot of debuts-Georgia right now is full of amateur debuts," Terri said regarding the Underground Showdown event. "They've had a really strong amateur team now for about 5 years, and these guys are just ready to go pro. Nationally-ranked. All these guys are either turning pro or just turned pro-it's like a promoter's market here right now, with very good amateurs. So we want to build some of these guys who are already doing really well, and just build up a following for these guys."
When asked what it is about her event that stands out from other boxing productions, Terri articulately described what fans can expect on July 1. "We have the fighters and we have the production element. There are some promoters here [in Atlanta], and they understand how to promote an event, but they don't know how to produce an event. The difference is we know how to produce an entertaining event. We'll have entertainment, we have characters in there running around, a certain type of lingo for our script for our announcers and color commentators, and we just look to have some of the elements of a Las Vegas-style show."
Moss became genuinely excited and animated while discussing the fighters on the Underground Showdown card. It's also clear that, as a former fighter herself, she takes a keen interest in all the fighters as people-she knows what their backgrounds are, who trains them, and as a promoter she is great at pinpointing what it is about each fighter that makes him or her stand out. "Our main event is a guy named Joe Creer who does MMA and boxing. He's undefeated in both, and when you're undefeated in MMA that's saying something. He owns his own gym about 2 hours from Atlanta and he has a huge following.
"Our co-main is the [pro] debut for a stand-out Georgia amateur. His name is Ray Barlow--he was an outstanding amateur and has a huge following. He's such a valuable fighter, we are really amped about having him because he's got a giant following. Building him will be great. He's extremely hungry and talented so we're expecting a really good fight from him. Barlow is trained by Zahir Raheem (35-3, 21 KOs). Zahir took the WBC title from Erik Morales.
"We have another guy, Eric Moon, who was a standout nationally-ranked amateur as well. He's 4-0 at this point. We also have Ariel de la Trinidad-he's had probably around 100 amateur fights. We're expecting good things from him. This is his pro debut. His trainer is Greg Elder, and Greg is Ebo Elder's father. Ebo was on The Contender [TV] show. This is the only fighter Greg trains so he's really taken him under his wing.
"Deontay Brown is a really slick southpaw. I train him. We just took him up to Robert Easter's camp about a week ago, and he got to spar with Tyler McCreary. Deontay was fantastic with him-Tyler had big respect. He's making his pro debut and he's [sparring] somebody ranked #13 by the WBA. And they were like toe-to-toe, respect to respect. So I'm feeling really proud of him right now.
"Deontay has been kind of in the shadows, he's really quiet, but they know who he is now. We're moving in that direction. He's had about 40 amateur fights, he's only 21 years old, and he wants to go on into the pro ranks. I think he's talented enough to get in there and work. Not only that but he's got excellent footwork, his defense is slick, he's a southpaw, he's extremely talented.
"And then our amateurs-I have Taversha Norwood. She was in the Olympic trials in 2012-she's a standout southpaw. She's gonna be making her pro debut on our next card, but she's fighting on this one as an amateur. And then we have a standout amateur who's nationally ranked. His name is Elijah Shabazz. He's incredible. He's gonna no doubt shoot up to the top pretty quick."
As far as the boxing celebrity element, Moss also has that covered. "We have Kelly Pavlik coming to color commentate with Fred Tooks. His brother is Xavier Tolliver and he's managing some fighters on our show-Xavier and Fred were both fighters. Fred spent the majority of his career as a sparring partner, and he's a southpaw. So anybody who fought Manny Pacquiao, Zab Judah, any of those guys-he sparred them. He spent years in camp with everybody from De La Hoya to Mayweather to Kostya Tszyu to Arturo Gatti. If you use the term 'professional sparring partner' people look down on it, but quite frankly, it's not the sort of thing you'd look down on if you knew his pedigree.
"Christy Martin's gonna be there on Saturday. The celebrities we'll have in the house I'm really happy with-Zahir Raheem, Christy Martin, and Kelly Pavlik. It's pretty great for our first show."
When Terri was active, her style was that of a fluid boxer. She threw a lot of punches, typical for her weight class, but her footwork was particularly noteworthy. When asked about that aspect of her style, particularly in light of the fact that she began boxing at a much later age than most fighters, Moss responded enthusiastically and also spoke about how her style now impacts the way she trains her stable of fighters.
"It's nice of you to mention footwork-it's my baby, that's my pride and joy. I can openly say I know few trainers and few fighters that understand footwork and timing, and understand how to teach that to a fighter as well as I do. It was one of my biggest problems when I was fighting, so I spent tireless hours and hours. Footwork to me is almost like dancing-it's rhythmic and it's beautiful. That's why I'm so in love with Lomachenko-it's like, finally somebody comes to prove my point! That changes the whole game.
"But no matter what style [my fighters] have, as versatile as they may be-some are bangers, some are boxers, some are timid, some are rough-no matter what kind of style they have, the footwork is something that all of them need. It doesn't matter. You hear me saying move, telling you to do angles, it doesn't matter what style it is, that's something you need to do anyway.
"That's gonna create all the openings you need. You know, you stand in front of somebody, you're gonna get hit, so defense and angles and footwork and movement, those are my top priorities with my fighters. And, of course, you've gotta have some offense-it's not like we're defensive fighters at all. What we're doing is creating openings with the footwork and the angles that will give you that shot that you won't have if you're just standing there in front of them. If there's a mark of a Terri Moss fighter, it's gonna be somebody who can move."
More to come with Terri Moss in part 2 of this interview.
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