When 29-year-old Jamal “Shango” James was preparing to fight veteran Diego Chaves on December 15 of last year, it was made clear to James and his team that he was not expected to be victorious. “We were even told ‘you guys are underdogs,’” Jamal said. “That stuff doesn’t bother me. To me, every fight you’re an underdog. Even if you’re supposed to win the fight, if a guy sees he hurt you, that he could beat you, he’s gonna jump on you and try to beat you. Whether you’re supposed to win or not, every guy’s gonna go in there with the intention of beating you.”
James (22-1, 10 KOs) explained his mindset heading into the bout. “We were really prepared for that fight. We knew he was a strong dude. He’s only lost to world champions. We just trained real hard. You win or lose your fights in the gym.”
Up until he faced James, Chaves had only lost to WBA and WBC welterweight world champion Keith Thurman via 10th round TKO back in 2013, in a hard-fought contest. The following year, Chaves lost by disqualification versus Brandon Rios. When the Argentinian contender fought Jamal James, Jamal kept his jab out there and effectively utilized his 6.5” height advantage and 3.5” in superior reach to keep Chaves at range. Most impressively, the few times Chaves did work his way inside Jamal’s lengthy reach, James showed impressive defense and pivoted out to establish his preferred distance again.
Jamal and his team had studied Chaves and his style well. “Most guys in the weight class are shorter than me. So a lot of guys have to fight me the same. They can use different rhythm or different styles to do it, but they’ve gotta get close in order to get their punches in. So we’ve always worked on keeping our defense very tight, especially when they get in close. [Chaves] is pretty quick, but he throws a lot of his punches kinda wide. A lot of hooks, overhand rights, but he doesn’t throw too many straight punches. So we knew in order for him to throw those punches, he has to get in close. He has to jump in.
“And right after the first round, I seen him just kinda jumping in, and I seen spots where I’d be able to catch him jumping in. So I was just keeping the jab on him. Obviously in the first couple rounds, any fighter’s gonna be really good. They’re gonna have that energy, that adrenaline pumping, that’s one of the moments where they’re gonna be the strongest. So my whole thing was jab, keep him off of me, catch him with some body shots early to slow him down a little bit, and then start picking it up in the later rounds. But I caught him with a couple body shots early, and when he did get on the inside, he was trying to reach around and catch me behind my elbows and stuff, trying to reach around and catch me on the side of the head.
But he was leaving his body open, so I actually—it’s very hard to see, and it almost looks like he blocked it if you watch the fight again, but I caught him with a real short right uppercut in the solar plexus and knocked the wind out of him. He backed up and tried to play it off, but when you’re in a fight you can see those things clear.
He hadn’t been backing up the whole fight, so I knew if he was backing up after he was already inside, I was like, Okay, he felt that! So when I seen that, I was just like, I’ve gotta jump on him. We’ve been practicing on finishing fighters anyway, because there’ve been some times where I thought I should’ve just jumped on a guy and get the fight stopped and knock him out. So we’ve been working a lot on finishing, so that’s when I just jumped on him and started laying on him with the right hands.
We’d been working on that shot behind the elbow, too. Usually a guy doesn’t fight tall, rangy guys like me. So they don’t think I can reach that far around. He was moving away, and I was kind of in front of his left hand. But I reached around and caught him--he kind of moved into it and it caught him right behind his elbow, in that liver spot.”
Jamal’s excitement still comes through as he details the moments leading up to the stoppage. “He went down, and I was thinking, you know, he’s gonna get back up. I go to the corner and looked back at him, and seen he kept rolling around, and I was like, Oh man, this cat might not get back up! Those body shots...You land a shot in the right spot, those suckers ain’t no joke.”
Jamal humbly summed up his successful venture and what it means for his future. “We put that work in in the gym. I just felt extremely confident, went in there, felt him out, and the punches just seemed to place themselves correctly.
“It was definitely a confidence booster for me,” he said. “I’m back training. We definitely are ready to see how much further we can take this.”
Stay tuned for more from Jamal coming soon.
[ Follow Caryn A. Tate on Twitter @carynatate ]