Matthew Macklin interview - the redux version by Terry Dooley Dec 20th 2007

Boxing is all about timing. A punch thrown in the first round may lack the impact and drama of a similarly clean punch landing late on in a gruelling battle. Look at Prince Charles Williams, he took a huge amount of shots in his fight with James Toney but was felled by a single straight right late in the fight. With this thought, the nature of timing, at the forefront of my mind this past week I thought it apt to dust-off a series of interviews I had conducted with Matthew Macklin and Billy Graham in the year, and bouts, since Macklin lost against Jamie Moore for the British light-middleweight title. The interviews have been made pertinent by the wave of speculation that has washed over Billy Graham after Ricky Hatton lost to Floyd Mayweather by KO last weekend. If, and this writer does not buy into the theory, Hatton is looking for a new trainer, and by extension someone to blame for his loss, the words of Graham and Macklin in the following could be food for thought. The first post-Moore conversations were between trainer Billy Graham and I. Billy had been frustrated, not with the loss per se but more the fact that Macklin had not used the tactics that they had worked on prior to the fight.  One particularly in-depth conversation ended with Graham taking leave so he could phone Matthew and offer him words of encouragement. This showed real commitment to his fighter on the part of Graham, and the trainer himself never had any doubts as to Matthew's ability to bounce back after the Moore loss, speaking back then he told me: BG: “(Matthew) is really strong mentally. He is real pro and really ambitious so I don't see the loss (to Jamie) being a problem. There will always be some doubt there after a defeat like that so we just have to get (back) in there, get a win, and get a move on.” Interesting the Macklin fight bears a reverse parallel to the Hatton's loss. Hatton, according to Graham, loses a lot of his impact at the welterweight limit. Macklin, at light-middleweight, was felt to be too big for the weight. A subsequent step-up in weight for Macklin was the only logical step: BG: “I think Matthew will be better as a middleweight than a light-middleweight to be honest with you…I think his best win was at middle when he fought Alexy Cherkov and knocked him out in the first round. I always thought (that) his future lay at middleweight.” Initially the main post-fight question was how a fighter like Matthew would respond after suffering a devastating KO loss: BG: “You can never tell how they will come back but I can make an educated guess and say he will come back fine. I think his stock went up after that last fight and he came up smelling of roses a little bit so trust me he will get back on track. I don't want him to take any backward steps because he is improving all the time. He is more than ready for a European title-belt at middleweight. “I'm not hanging around just because Macklin lost a fight. He didn't go down in my estimation as a fighter, he went up in my eyes, so what is the point fucking around with him? We want to go for something.” One thing Graham was adamant about was, especially given the nature of a KO loss, that he wanted Matthew to make a relatively quick ring return followed by a busy period: BG: “There are no physical effects from the fight itself. People do tend to become a bit gun-shy after something like that…that is why we had to get him back into the ring…any faults and rust will be shed in the next fight (after a loss). I didn't think he'll be gun-shy but I just want to get him in there and get it over with. We don't need any mountains to climb we just need a good nights work.” After the shock and awe of a loss, exacerbated by post-fight speculation, the reality settles in as we realise that, over longer careers, trainers see fighters lose and are used to guiding fighters back from defeats. To that end getting shot of an experienced trainer is akin to throwing the baby out with the bath water. Instead of leaving Matt damaged, as some slightly hysterical people thought would be the case, the defeat left him raring to come back and mend what went wrong: Matthew Macklin: “No doubts at all were left in my mind after the (Moore) fight. I wish I could have boxed the week after the loss. Defeat just increased my desire. They say when people get knocked out that they are never the same but that is a just a confidence thing.  “If you get knocked-out once in your life it does not physically affect you, it mentally affects you, and the reason is that it reduces your belief in your chin. I took some big shots when I got tired and was just walking through them so my chin is fine.” There was also a significant amount of blame attached to trainer Graham for Matthew's defeat, calls for a switch in trainer were voiced but on this occasion the fighter decided to forget that one bad night and remember all the good nights with Graham: MM: “You see a lot of fighters move trainer when they lose a fight…then move again when they lose the next one…always looking to shift the blame. When you lose a fight – especially one you were confident of winning – you have to analyse and realise that something went wrong. I was asking myself why I lost that fight and how I'd win that fight if I had it again and I made the necessary steps to address the problems.” Macklin was also aware that defeat is a two-way process. In Macklin's case he came up against a fighter, in Moore, who fought a brilliant fight. Again it was a case of not looking for someone to fire but, rather, thinking of what the other guy did to your game plan: MM: “You also have to ask what the other guy did right to beat you and you have to realise that losing is a two-way street. I've looked at my mistakes. One being that I'm not a light-middleweight…that is the easiest thing in the world to rectify…I just moved up in weight. I've been a middleweight for years really. “Another thing is that I like to think I'm passionate about boxing and (that) it is something I really love. I think I show that in my fighting style and my aggression. It is an attribute to be proud of and on the night I let my passion get in the way. I was too honest. Not cute and crafty enough. Passion and desire are great and necessary but I let them control me against Jamie. “I like to think I am intelligent and (in) analysing (the fight) I try not to kid myself over what went wrong.” Matthew feels that his confidence, if not outright mistaken, had been misguided somewhat prior to the fight: MM: “I was really confident for the fight and it really was the lions den for me. It was an electric atmosphere and I think I felt very defiant on the way to the ring and put out a bit more energy than I'd have liked to early  “I wanted to impose myself in the first round and show it was my night…then the plan was to settle-down and pick my shots but I felt exhausted by the second round…everything went out of the window and Jamie knew that (I was tiring). He was clever there.  “There was a real sense of desperation in my boxing because I was so tired and when I did land a good shot on the ropes I would throw more and more…I was so tired and was wasting an awful lot of energy and getting very little back.  “His boxing was thoughtful and precise and I was boxing in desperation to be honest. I learned that when it is a hectic situation you have to maintain your composure and tuck-up (and conserve). You learn to learn and I'd never been in that sort of situation before. I'd been super-fit in the gym and could not understand why I felt so tired.” Old-fashioned kidology from Moore also crept into the fight: MM: “He asked me if I was tired a few times and I was telling him I wasn't. He was old-manning me and looking for me to throw more shots to try and prove something…and I fell for it. “It was hard from the second and third round onwards. I felt very tired in the second round. You feel tired in the gym sometimes but by the end of third I thought ‘I've never been this tired before'. After that it became a bit like a drunken night out where all the rounds rolled into one memory. It was hectic.” As the confused pace quickened Macklin, as he pointed out, did not try and crank the pace back but instead opted to try and set a higher pace, despite the pace being crazy from round one, this lead him into trouble.  Macklin felt that his subsequent recognition of the possibility of being gun-shy would act as a deterrent to the reoccurrence of the problems he faced in the Moore fight. Macklin also felt that, in recognising that being gun-shy could be a problem, he had already overcome this problem: MM: “I didn't think I'd be gun-shy but then again being a little bit gun-shy might put me in the right place! “Most people go gun-shy when they lose confidence in their chin but I was not KO'd in the first round. I took harder shots than the KO one (in the early rounds). I think the shots I took in the eighth and ninth rounds were a testament to my chin so I am not worried about being gun-shy in the future.” As for his reasoning over the loss itself, and how to iron out these kinks in his return bouts, Matthew had taken the painful step of criticising, and therefore taking responsibility, for his own performance: MM: “I think there was a sense of desperation in my boxing from the start. When I got a bit of success I lost control of my boxing…even though I knew I couldn't keep that pace going I would get a little bit of success and go for it.  “I tried to back-off and do different things later-on but I was too far gone and didn't have the sharpness in my punches to box like that. I was getting hit with shots that I could see coming and I was ragged because I was tired. I thought ‘I have to go to war here' and wanted to prevail better than he did. “In boxing you can be written off after one fight and then turn it around after one fight. Jamie Moore beat me fair and square…(but) a weight-drained version of me nearly beat Jamie and I think he is one of the best light-middleweights in Europe. So what does that say about how well I did? I think I can be one of the best middleweights in Europe. I don't think I'm that far away.” Macklin also knows how to respond after a defeat; he lost to the slippery Andrew Facey early in his career and feels that particular loss enhanced him as a fighter: MM: “When I lost to Facey people thought it was the end of Frank Warrens golden boy. I went to weigh-ins where people would knock past me – your pundits and journalists – to interview Martin Conception because he had knocked two people out. They brushed past me like yesterdays news and at the time it hurts but it forms character and inner-strength. “A lot of people lose fights and don't want to look at what they did wrong. I lost to Facey and realised I was not good at closing the distance and could not cope when fighters did not come to me (so) I came here and changed. “A loss made me a better fighter before and I am not changing my training because I lost one fight. “I know the weight now and know that in a war I need to be cuter and pace myself better for the tenth, eleventh and twelfth rounds. I think I became a better fighter after my first loss and I'll become a better fighter after the second loss.” In his first fight after the Moore loss Macklin destroyed Anatoliy Udalov in a single round. On the one hand the win did not tell us much about the post-Moore Macklin but, in the dressing room before the fight, Billy Graham and his charge had talked about using the stiff left jab more often in order to create space for the right hands. A strategy Macklin ditched some 30-seconds into the Moore bout. The poetics of the changing room space also forced Macklin and Graham to warm-up in the stairwell for this bout. As Graham held the pads Macklin purposefully worked on his 1-2, one right hand almost sent Graham tumbling down a flight of stairs but the trainer barely noticed, he was distracted by the satisfaction that his charge had learned his lessons. In the fight itself the combination of shots worked on backstage brought about the front-of-house finish. A few months later BBN again joined the Macklin dressing room as he prepared for his second post-Moore fight. This time it was against Darren Rhodes in Dublin, once again pre-fight talk was about preserving strength, trying to go a few crucial rounds whilst sticking to a gameplan.  In this bout Macklin, again, showed that he had taken the lessons from his defeat to Moore on board, as well as showing that the post-Moore dialogue with his trainer had worked. His most recent bout, again in Ireland, against Alession Furlan, BBN was unable to make that one, was an example of Macklin at his best as he broke down and dissected his man with educated pressure. Prior to the fight his trainer had told him that as long as he kept his discipline the result would serve notice that a fighter, and a trainer for that matter, can absorb lessons and comeback from a defeat perceived as disastrous.

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