BoxingTalk.com’s Mike Campbell sat down with Dwight Pratchett, trainer of Heavyweight Travis Walker to discuss his progress over their most recent fights.


BT: Dwight, congratulations, big win for you guys on Saturday versus George Garcia.  Grade Travis’s performance.

DP: I think I give him about a C.  We’d worked on a couple of things that he wasn’t able to implement out there like using his jab and keeping his hands up.  So that’s a little disappointing but hey, it’s in the win column and that’s what matters.


BT: In the last two fights, versus Estrada and Garcia, Travis faced awkward guys who took him out of his style of fighting and made him fight their style.  Yet both times Travis persevered and won.

DP: He showed heart and guts.  He’s got the determination and desire to do it.  I know he wants to be champion, and we’re going to do it.  Travis has got all the physical attributes to do it.  We’ve already come a long way, now just to work on a few things, those last few kinks to work out and we’ll get there.


BT: Travis played football while most of his rivals were learning boxing in the amateurs.  He’s a very young fighter in boxing years.  So he’s still learning.

DP: Yes, he’s still in the learning process right now.  I need another year with him, and I think we’ll be ready.


BT: What about that jab?  Travis has got a great one when he uses it, but in both fights he got away from it when taken out of his game plan.

DP: He started out on the jab okay.  He worked it, he knows how to use it.  He just won’t use it consistently.  We’ll work on it in the gym and stress it, I think I need to be harder on him, not letting him drop his hands while training.


BT: Travis is a really nice guy, do you think he’s being too laid back in letting guys influence the type of fight?  Is it just a mental thing?

DP: Yeah, it is mental I think, and I think he’s just a little too passive, too laid back.  We need to be more aggressive, meaner.


BT: Talk about that beautiful body shot.

DP: It was a nice shot.  It was one of the things we’d really worked on in the gym.  We wanted to hit this guy’s body, because he’s so short and stays downstairs.  And it worked out well, but we didn’t get credit for it really.  This guy was down for about 15 seconds so he should have been counted out actually.  He was down for such a long time.


BT: You kept pleading to Travis to go back to the body.  But he had trouble getting underneath Garcia.

DP: Right, he was saying he felt like was hitting him low whenever he tried to hit the body.  Garcia was being really dramatic though, acting out every time we hit his body, like it was a low blow.  A few were maybe borderline, but not low.  His belt was really very high, and the referee should have seen that.


BT: How far are you from being ready for a title shot?

DP: I give it about a year, depending on how well he listens and learns.  We’re eight months to a year away.


BT: Can you comment on your stable mate, Rafael Butler’s fight versus Art Binkowski?

DP: Rafael, I feel like, he might of just been nerved up.  With it being in front of his hometown crowd, and being the opening bout on Showtime, it got to him and he ran out of gas.  He’s a young kid, and I think it’ll be a learning experience for him.


BT: Dwight thanks for the time and we look forward to watching Travis’s progress.