{"id":757647,"date":"2026-06-24T18:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T18:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757647\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T18:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T18:11:09","slug":"larry-holmes-says-boxing-no-longer-has-great-trainers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/757647\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Holmes Says Boxing No Longer Has Great Trainers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\"Add<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n


\n \"Follow
\n <\/a> <\/p>\n

And to succeed in the 1970s heavyweight division, a fighter needed natural ability and a great trainer and teacher. Holmes had both.<\/p>\n

But Holmes, a man who always tells it like it is, and was often criticised for his forthrightness, especially back in the 1980s, sure was forthright when he spoke with me a while back. Asking Holmes how great his long-time trainer Richie Giachetti was and how he helped him along during his career, Holmes shot back that Giachetti was no great trainer.<\/p>\n

Holmes sure gave me some fascinating quotes during our all too short talk a while back, this taking place before Foreman\u2019s passing (I could have spoken with Holmes, an all-time great, and for many the heavyweight with THE finest jab in the sport\u2019s history, all day!)<\/p>\n

On who taught him how to jab so well:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only person who can teach a jab like that is me! You don\u2019t see a jab like that anymore,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cAll the great trainers are gone; there are no good trainers today. So no one is being taught how to fight, or how to jab. Freddie Roach, they say he\u2019s a great trainer, but he\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

On who are the great boxing trainers:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a list for you: Ray Arcel, Eddie Futch, Freddie Brown.\u201d<\/p>\n

On why he didn\u2019t learn anything from Giachetti:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I ever had to learn anything, I learnt it myself. I already knew how to fight before I ever met Giachetti. He was okay, a good cornerman when it came to shouting things like, \u2018Be tough!\u2019 and \u2018Be brave!\u2019 He was okay at giving me courage. The thing is, I didn\u2019t want to hurt anyone\u2019s feelings, and they [Futch, Arcel, Brown, and Giachetti] were all in my corner [at different stages of my career]. They all wanted to be stars. I didn\u2019t wanna say no to anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

On being ranked as one of the true greats:<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me straighten you out on that real quick! I don\u2019t give a s**t about history. If people want to put me in the history books one day, good, if not, I don\u2019t care. All I care about is making money. I wanted to be able to feed my kids and that\u2019s all. Who cares if you\u2019re the heavyweight champ of the world but you\u2019re broke? It\u2019s great to be champion but you have to make money. Don King once hollered at me for talking this way before the press. But I was telling the truth. In boxing, you can get into trouble for talking too much, and that\u2019s why a lot of people didn\u2019t like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his infamous \u201cRocky couldn\u2019t carry my jockstrap\u201d quote about Marciano:<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t get into boxing to break Rocky Marciano\u2019s [49-0] record (which Holmes almost tied in 1985, but was edged on points by Michael Spinks, some say in a robbery). I regret hurting some people with some of the things I said. The Rocky Marciano thing about the jockstrap, that was taken all out of context. And then it hurt me when the press said I hurt a lot of people. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never liked knocking anybody out in a fight. I know I hurt Muhammad Ali, I saw the punches he took, and not just from me but from all those other guys he fought. I wanted to get out of the game with my money and not being crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holmes sure did that, and he always did, as he says himself, tell it like it is!<\/p>\n

Holmes fought, quite amazingly, from 1973 to 2002! Larry\u2019s final record reads 69-6(44). Holmes ruled the world from June of 1978 to September of 1985. Long may Holmes stay with us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And to succeed in the 1970s heavyweight division, a fighter needed natural ability and a great trainer and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-757647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}