Virgil Hunter will eye teaching moments as CBS boxing analyst
Virgil Hunter is one of the most in-demand trainers in boxing. His success building 2004 Olympic gold medalist Andre Ward into one of the best fighters in the world garnered him a lot of attention.
Fighters now frequently seek him out and he has an ever-growing stable that now also includes welterweight Amir Khan in addition to Ward.
But it's not only just boxers who are interested in Hunter's services. He's been hired as an analyst by CBS for the Premier Boxing Champions series and will debut Saturday when he's ringside in Quebec City to call the card headlined by the light heavyweight title fight between WBC champion Adonis Stevenson and Sakio Bika.
Kevin Harlan, a veteran NFL play-by-play broadcaster, will do the blow-by-blow. He'll be joined by Hunter and rising star announcer Paulie Malignaggi as analysts, with Brent Stover serving as the host.
Hunter told Yahoo Sports he has a simple wish for his new job.
"My goal is to educate the CBS viewer and make them some of the most knowledgeable boxing fans in the world," Hunter said.
Hunter loves a great slugfest, if it's a technically proficient one. But he cringes at the kinds of slugfests that are common in boxing today in which there is little technique and the fighters are just brawling.
The "Thrilla in Manila," the epic third fight between legendary heavyweight champions Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, will be remembered as one of the greatest bouts in history. But it was the great skills of the fighters that made it so compelling to fight fans like Hunter.
He said he's upset by what slugfests like the three in the memorable Arturo Gatti-Micky Ward trilogy do to the fighters.
"We used to embrace and acknowledge and respect all the various styles and the regions where they came from," Hunter said. "Mexico, there was that particular style that was unique to a lot of the fighters coming out of that country. There's the East Coast style, West Coast, mid-America, all these different styles which make the sport so fascinating. But they got pushed away for two people standing toe-to-toe, really with no imagination and no thought behind it. The fan never sees the end result of that.
"The saddest story in boxing to me to this day is Gatti and Ward. It's so sad. Gatti was made out to be this reckless guy who went to the well every time no matter who or what he was up against. Blood and guts, I think that's what they called him. That's nothing I would want to call any of my fighters, but once you embrace that, it becomes you. When you can't do it any more ... there is a price they pay for that. He's gone at a young age. Micky Ward admits he can't remember things. That's so sad to me."
So he wants to teach fans to recognize and appreciate the technical skills of the fighters.
He talked about the strategies of a mongoose vs. a cobra and how a fighter needs to think and set his opponent up for punches.
Hunter has admiration for the work Al Haymon is doing in putting the PBC together. Haymon has deals for fights to be shown on CBS as well as NBC, ABC, ESPN and Spike. He hopes it can lead to a greater appreciate for the skill required to be a top-level boxer and to eventually help improve the results of the men's Olympic boxing program in the U.S.
The U.S. has only won one gold medal in the 2000s in men's boxing and only three since the 1992 Games in Barcelona. Oscar De La Hoya won gold in 1992 in Barcelona. David Reid was a gold medalist at the Atlanta Games in 1996, and Ward won gold in Athens in 2004.
Claressa Shields won the Americans' only women's gold in 2012 in London.
"With the emergence of the Russians, the Europeans, the Asians, great fighters coming from all over the world, I think it's crucial now that we build boxing back in this country to the point where the U.S. can once again dominate the world," Hunter said. "To me, that's the whole point, but at the same time, we'll be able to enjoy all these great fighters coming from these different countries. We can help boxing overall by making our team competitive in the amateur system and then helping those guys all the way through as they go on to have professional success."
