FanHouse spoke to Philadelphia-based trainer Rob Murray on Nov. 24 -- his 65th birthday -- two days after 25-year-old Franciso Rodriguez (pictured, right) died as a result of injuries suffered in his Nov. 20 loss to Teon Kennedy at Philadelphia's Legendary Blue Horizon venue.Although Murray was not in attendance for the Rodriguez fight, he is a mainstay at the Blue Horizon. Friday night, Murray will take 24-year-old junior welterweight (140 pounds) Steven Upsher-Chambers (20-1-1, 10 knockouts) into The Horizon for an eight-rounder against 36-year-old Doel Carrasquillo (12-12-1, 10 KOs).
Murray was a 21-year-old when he was ring side at a Philadelphia arena in May of 1965, when heavyweight Leotis Martin's ninth-round knockout resulted in Sonny Banks' death.
Martin himself would be forced to retire after suffering a detached retina against former world champion Sonny Liston in his last fight in December of 1969, even as Martin flattened and stopped Liston with a vicious right hand in the ninth round.
A former co-manager of the legendary middleweight king Bernard Hopkins, the outspoken Murray had some strong words regarding steps that should be taken to deal with boxing's brutal, and sometimes fatal, nature during this Q&A after the jump.
FanHouse: Can you talk about your experience at the Leotis Martin-Sonny Banks fight?
Rob Murray: I was a young kid, but it's so clear in my mind, even though that was almost 50 years ago. I was at that fight in Philadelphia. That was the closest I had been to something like that.
I mean, I was sitting at ringside when I saw him fall, and he didn't move. And I said to a guy that was with me, 'This guy [Banks] is in serious trouble.' It was incredible. That's the only time that has happened with me -- that I left the fight knowing that somebody had died.
FH: How long have you known Teon Kennedy?
Murray: I've known him forever. I knew his father when his father used to box. I talk to Teon when I see him, but I haven't seen or spoken to him since the fight. He's a good kid.
FH: Switching to Franciso Rodriguez's death, what is the climate now in Philadelphia when something like this happens?
Murray: It's not great, because they put it on the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News. My thing on this is that it's never good, but it's something that can be prevented.
A lot of times, however, people won't take the preventative measures to make sure that it's prevented.
FH: What are some measures that you believe should have been taken?
Murray: The kid had been out of the ring for about 11 months, I believe. Teon doesn't have bricks in his hands. He's a kid who is just a comer. He has to fight a style of fighter that keeps on coming.
I think that if you checked into this, that you would find that whatever happened to [Rodriguez,] that it didn't totally happen in the Teon Kennedy fight. It's usually an accumulation of things.
It's like, if you don't get prostate exams or colon exams and you wind up with cancer. You realize what I'm saying? You have to be able to prevent an injury. I don't think the the athletic commissions always do that.
They do a good job with the EMT's and provide a guy at ringside with respirators and all of that stuff.
But you can't tell me that they're going to track a guy who has just been knocked out in a six-round fight, and they tell him, 'You're suspended for thirty days, or you're suspended for 90 days.'
If a guy is suspended from participating, who is to say that he's not sparring in the gym if he gets a call to make $100, or $150 for working out with someone? Is that fighter's trainer a doctor? No. Is his cut man a doctor? No. Is his manager a doctor? No.
FH: A post-fight suspension is a commission's mandatory implemented absence imposed on a fighter following competition, correct?
Murray: Right. You get your license suspended for a DUI, then you have the whole police force monitoring that you shouldn't be out there driving. But there are no computer systems set up in the gym, or whatever.
FH: So what are some scenarios that you believe can happen with a fighter during that time between competitions?
Murray: Well, they [commissions] can forget about him. So, after one week, say the guy needs some money, so he goes back into the gym and gets some sparring money. Gets some rounds with this guy, or gets some rounds with that guy.
And then it's like, 'Well, I'm feeling fine, so let me get back in there.' You need more of the proper supervision of the fighter between fights when he has sustained an injury by knockout.
You need to be able to track a fighter and to say to him, once again, 'Stay out of the gym, and I mean, stay out -- I don't want you in that gym.' If he knows that you ain't coming to track him, then it's too easy for him to get back in there.
FH: So you believe that there are, in many cases, red flags concerning a fighter's health and ring history that can be used to determine pre-fight risk?
Murray: Oh, yes. With most guys who die with these injuries, there is a lot of pre-existing stuff that should be taken into account. And that's even going back to Benny 'Kid' Paret, who died 10 days after his fight with Emile Griffith [in March of 1962.]
Paret, three months before that, had been knocked down three times by Gene Fulmer when he was stopped in the 10th round. To take that kind of beating at 160 pounds, and then to drop down and fight Griffith at 145 pounds -- that's a very crucial sequence there.
There is not enough being done to supervise the fighters after their fights, between fights, and, also, when the fighter is not fighting. Some of these commissions, you tell them stuff, they don't want to hear it.
FH: Can you clarify the analogy you're making between Benny 'Kid' Paret and the circumstances relating to Francisco Rodriguez?
Murray: When you come into this [Pennsylvania's] athletic commission, it's very, very strict when it comes to regulating medicals and stuff.
[Executive director] Greg Serb and I don't agree on everything, but I must give him his credit for making sure that you have your stuff straight when you come into his commission.
From what I had heard, Rodriguez hadn't fought in close to a year. I would want to know what he was doing within that year, why he had the one-year layoff, what was he doing leading up to this fight, and what were his medicals looking like when he came back in to take this fight.
It's on the [Illinois] commission, which licensed him, to basically do their homework to find out if he's prepared to come back after a nearly one year layoff. I would want to know why a fighter would lay off for that long.
They were fighting in a 12-round fight -- not a six-rounder or an eight-rounder -- against an undefeated kid and he [Rodriguez] hadn't fought in a year. I would have brought him back in maybe a six-, or eight-round fight to see what he had and how he looked.
From what I can tell, he had never been in a 12-round fight, and now he's in one after a nearly year layoff against an undefeated kid.
I would want to know what that fighter had been doing up until this time? No one knows what he could have been doing up until this time.
FH: Should there be unannounced visits to gyms to check up on fighters?
Murray: Absolutely. The first thing that you'll hear is that they don't have the budget to do that. Well find the budget. What do you do with the money that you get from boxing promotions?
FH: What do you believe that it says that Nazim Richardson had to be the one to discover the illegal hand wraps of both Felix Trinidad and Antonio Margarito, before their respective losses to Bernard Hopkins and Shane Mosley in New York and Los Angeles?
Murray: To answer that question, that's not really Nazim Richardson's job. He did the commission's job. The commission should have been there seeing what Nazim Richardson saw.
You've got to remember, Nazim came in there against Margarito, and they had already wrapped one hand, and that hand had had a commission's seal on it.
Nazim came in and told them to remove that wrap so that he could see exactly what they were doing. But if the commission had a sharp eye, and had been trained properly, they wouldn't have needed Nazim to do that.
What Nazim did was something that saved his fighter from what could have been a disaster.
FH: Have you ever had any similar experiences?
Murray: I remember when I had Tony Martin fighting Julio Cesar Chavez [March 1997, Las Vegas.] I went in, and I looked at the wrap, and Chavez was wrapping all around his thumb, and he was wrapping everywhere.
So I told them, 'You have to remove that.' And, they said that he didn't understand English. So I said, 'You need to find someone to translate who does understand English, because this fight is not going to take place if that wrap is on his hands like that.'
I said, 'You have to take the wrap off and wrap it correctly,' and the commissioner was standing right there looking at him.
FH: Why do you believe this happens?
Murray: A lot of these guys [officials] are glorified fans, and I think that sometimes, they get caught up in the moment of being there. But you've got to remember one thing, 'You're there to protect the fighter. That's your job.'
We need to protect the fighter when the fighter can't protect himself. That is the thing that is wrong with boxing today.
FH: Where does the trainer come in?
Murray: Well, this reverts back to the same thing where it's too easy to become a trainer in this sport. It's too easy to become a cut man in this sport. It's too easy to become a manager in this sport. It's too easy to become a professional fighter.
There is no criteria. You can break out of an insane asylum, a criminal institution, a penitentiary and become any of those things that I just told you about.
If you say that you want to be a cutman, they ask how many cuts you're worked, or what your experience is, or whether or not you were an EMT. Nah, it's, 'Do you have $40 dollars? You're a cut man.'
You want to be a manager, they don't say, 'Well who did you manage?' It's, 'Do you have $60, you're a manager.' If you want to be a trainer, it's, 'You got $40, you're a trainer.'
You've got $20, you can be a second in the corner. We, in boxing, have basically hurt ourselves.
