"The one thing I want to stress is that athletes, fighters especially, won't just rock any kind of clothes. They want to rep who they are and what they are; Roy Jones sports King of Kings, Mayweather has Filthy Rich clothing. It's all about who they are. They want to wear that on their chest. People that are not competitive and don't have that drive don't care what they put on. A fighter is very selective of what they wear. They support their character. We want you to be able to wear our apparel in the club, in the street and into the ring or cage," stated Get'em Boy chairman Lou Ramos as he talked about the philosophy of the Get'em Boy Limited Company, their apparel and much more. Check it out!
PC: What's good Lou? How is everything going?
LR: You know Percy, putting in hard work. To me, every situation presents an opportunity. Right now, with the economy being stagnant a little bit the way it is, a lot of fly-by-night type of people who don't have a real plan, but move according to their adrenaline, those are the type of people that once they don't get over one hurdle, they're off doing something else. I think the slow down in the economy is actually a blessing in disguise because we have a lot of people in the industry that we're in, whether it's clothing for MMA, regular clothing or street apparel, that just fell off. They are the fake people. They are the ones that go with the market and stuff and I think the way the economy is right now, it just helps filter out the fakes. It presents a good opportunity for the people that are in it for the long haul and that's what we're here to do. I think a lot of businesses, especially minority businesses, have a great opportunity with this new administration.
PC: I know you were a fighter at one point. Give us a little background on yourself?
LR: I was based out of Pennsylvania and I wrestled collegiately. I injured my knee and wanted to do something to rehab my knee so I went to a boxing gym. I worked out and sparred a couple of times and the coach wanted to see how I would do against a more experienced amateur. He was schooling me technically, but I was a competitive dude that had been in wrestling and karate my entire life so I wasn't going to let that happen. I hit him a couple of times and I knew I had dazed him. We were coming out for the 2nd round and he told the coach he didn't want to spar anymore. After a couple more sparring sessions, my coach sat me down and let me know that he knew I was a wrestler, but he felt like if I put time and effort into boxing that I could win a couple of Golden Gloves, possibly Nationals, and hopefully one day go to the Olympics. So I agreed.
In my first year in boxing, I made it all the way to the Pennsylvania Golden Gloves State finals. I fought a guy out of Pittsburg who had done very well in the Nationals and I lost a 3-2 split decision. I had only had 3 fights before I went into the open class because nobody in my weight class wanted to fight. I vowed after I lost that fight that I would win every Golden Glove title after that. I won 4 straight Golden Glove titles, 3 straight Mid-Atlantic titles and then went out to the Olympic Training Center with about 5 fights under my belt. You had to have 10 fights to even qualify, but we faked a couple fights in there in order for me to qualify. By the time I left, I earned "Most Outstanding Amateur" in the ranks. I also won 2 Pennsylvania Keystone titles in the process. I did very well. In 1995, David Reid entered into the Pennsylvania Golden Glove title too and we had a great team. Paul Spadafora had a brother on the team. Paul had missed it because of an injury. I ended up getting hurt. I had a deviated septum. They wanted to do surgery to correct it before the Olympic Trials came because I would get tired and couldn't breathe sometimes. Unfortunately, I didn't know that I was allergic to certain drugs. I had a bad reaction to the anesthesia they had given me and was basically told not to fight anymore because I had a bad heart. That sidelined me for 2 years and I couldn't go to the '96 Trials. I was pretty disappointed with that, but I came back as a pro and fought on some Don King cards under Christy Martin. I had some success with it and I miss it. It was a great deal because Christy Martin was being promoted by Don King and it was a good deal because she wanted to put me on all of her undercards without me having to sign anything with them. It worked out well for a while until we started making a little splash. Then Don wanted a contract and we disagreed on the terms.
PC: How did the Get'em Boy clothing line get started?
LR: DMX, Jay-Z and all of them guys were having the Hardknock Life tour and they were coming to Tampa and I was out there. It's funny because I was selling Pitbulls and having a lot of success with my line. A girl wanted to show her brother our dogs and she asked me to bring a picture and I did. As faith would have it, she took the picture with her in her girlfriend's car and DMX and a couple of more artists jumped in her car after the show to go to an afterparty. DMX jumped in the front seat and it's a funny story because she said when she took off, the pictures fell in his lap. He got to see pictures of the bulldogs and was very impressed. He asked about the bloodline and told her to give me his number and have me call him. I called him and we didn't really hook up to almost a year later. I had forgotten all about it. Ruff Ryder's give me a call and they want me to meet them in Miami. I sit down with Darrin Dean, who was the CEO of the Ruff Ryder's. We started exchanging ideas and what I could do to help and how we would structure certain things if I got down with them. We threw around some ideas and the rest is history. I was with the Ruff Ryder's for about 8 years. We talked about taking Get'em Boy to the Ruff Ryder's and DMX shouted us out on a couple of his CD's. A couple of things went down within the company and we really couldn't get it popping so I decided to take the Get'em Boy idea and make it my own. I figured I should do this myself and the rest is historyÂ…Get'em Boy was born.
PC: You have the boxing background and I understand you are a growing fan of MMA. Are you guys currently sponsoring fighters?
LR: Yeah man, I am definitely a big fan of boxing and I'm a growing fan of MMA. I'm learning a lot. I was bias to boxing because in the beginning, I felt the older MMA fighters were not efficient fighters. The Gracie's kind of changed all of that. They weren't jacked up bodybuilders trying to be fighters. The more some of the fighters like that took the forefront, the more you started seeing the weight classes come in. Now the fights are all of that. These guys are going for it. I'm a big fan of MMA. We have a couple fighters that are talking with us right now. We have a possible situation with Bisping and may be able to put some of our apparel on Quinton Jackson. There is another guy in the MMA world named Shannon Ritch that expressed a lot of interest. We get emails all of the time man. A lot of fighters in Europe asking about Get'em Boy and who we are so we will be sponsoring some of the fighters. We have a lot of boxers as well. I don't want to say any names right now, but we have some boxing outlets as well wanting us to sponsor their fighters. Get'em Boy is looking to do some big things here real soon.
PC: If you need to get at Get'em Boy, you can check them out on the front page of FightHype.com. Click on the banner or simply go to www.getemboyltd.com and purchase shirts, hats, vests, the whole 9. We're looking to do big things with you guys. Give me some closing thoughts.
LR: Anybody in the athletic field, we're going to be coming out with a lot of fight gear; the sweats and all of that good stuff. We will also have street apparel, fitted hats and jerseys of all sorts. We've even been approached about doing sneakers, but I don't feel we're there yet. The sky is the limit because Get'em Boy is not advocating dog fighting or anything like that. Get'em Boy is for anybody that has a positive attitude, whether you're in the business world, sporting arena or if you're just out there trying to get your grind on or whatever. That's who we represent, the people that just want to be #1 in life. We don't go into anything to lose. That's what true athletes are all about and that's what's so great about this country. You wear what you are. The one thing I want to stress is that athletes, fighters especially, won't just rock any kind of clothes. They want to rep who they are and what they are; Roy Jones sports King of Kings, Mayweather has Filthy Rich clothing. It's all about who they are. They want to wear that on their chest. People that are not competitive and don't have that drive don't care what they put on. A fighter is very selective of what they wear. They support their character. We want you to be able to wear our apparel in the club, in the street and into the ring or cage. Our motto is, "It's not just a lifestyle, it's an attitude."
Anybody needing to contact Lou Ramos for business purposes can reach him at 954.464.4345
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]