In 2007, some considered Kelly Pavlik to be the “Fighter of the Year”, although Floyd Mayweather received the official BWAA honors. Pavlik shook up the boxing world with a knockout of middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, which was Pavlik’s third consecutive knockout that year, as he had already dispatched of Jose Luis Zertuche and Edison Miranda in dramatic fashion. And it should be noted that Taylor and Miranda were undefeated and Zertuche had never been stopped inside the distance before facing “The Pride Of Youngstown”. Jack Loew has been the trainer of Kelly Pavlik since Pavlik was nine years old, and the two have been together through the ups and downs of the former middleweight champion’s career. In Part One of this two-part interview, Loew discusses his background in boxing, the city of Youngstown, Ohio, Pavlik’s early years as an amateur and a professional, and Pavlik’s 2007 fight against Edision Miranda.
DL: What is your background in boxing and what lead to you becoming a trainer?
JL: In the amateurs, I boxed for a while in the novice division and I fought one year in the open division. That’s when I was in high school playing football, so it was kind of a part time thing for me. And coming from the streets of Youngstown, I always used to like to fight. And unfortunately, it wasn’t always inside the ring. So I did a lot of fighting. And I started helping one of our older trainers Eddie Sullivan train some fighters. That’s who I had my amateur fights with. Ed trained Ray Mancini amongst others. So I started working with Eddie. And Eddie was getting older and older and eventually he closed his gym. And I wanted to keep going, so I opened up an old storefront building back in ’88 and that’s when it started.
DL: How would you describe Youngstown, Ohio? Is it a rough city?
JL: It’s a blue collar city, but the crime rate is big. We’ve been fourth in the country in murders. And it’s a suppressed area, because the work has diminished because of all the steal mills. So it’s definitely a rough city. And it’s also a big boxing city. Boxing was very big back in the 60’s and 70’s and early 80’s. At the Golden Gloves, you would see four or five or six thousand people at every event. And pro boxing was always big, too. But it kind of died a little bit after Ray Mancini stepped down. Ray was the last big thing around here. And that’s right around when I started to train fighters and start things up. I kind of picked it up again and we started doing the right thing with the Golden Gloves. And then of course, the pros started following. And right now, boxing is extremely large here. Even our little club shows draw three or four thousand people.
DL: Before you started training Kelly Pavlik, how much time did you devote to training fighters and what ambitions did you have as far as your career was concerned?
JL: I was a Teamster and I worked at a Teamster warehouse. I was a union rep. I worked there for seventeen, eighteen years and I opened up a gym because I love boxing. I love working with kids and teaching them things. I used to coach football, too. So for me, it was just a hobby. But once Kelly turned sixteen, seventeen years old, he started getting national attention and I realized that there could be a future here. But I couldn’t have envisioned what would eventually happen and how far we would go. It’s always a dream when your first fighter is signed by a promotional company like Top Rank. That’s when we knew we were on our way. In the amateur days, I would need to take time off from work so I could take Kelly to the tournaments and I used to tell my boss, “We’ve got a world champion here.” I really believed that this kid was something special and he was.
DL: Tell me a little about the early years when you were training Kelly and how things progressed.
JL: He was nine years old when he first came to the gym. Gangly white kid. More heart and balls than talent. He wanted to spar everyday he came in. He used to leave the gym with a lot of bloody noses, but he didn’t give a shit. He was always coming back and ready to go the next day. He loved the contact. He used to do karate. But he quit karate and came to boxing. Because in karate, they wouldn’t let him have that kind of contact. They made him pull his punches. His first fight was in a tournament. I was taking these kids up there and Kelly begged me so hard to take him along. I wasn’t even going to take him, but he wanted to do it. All the kids on the team had uniforms, so I threw him a red shirt and said, “Come on, you can come with us.” We went to Steeleville, Ohio and I put him against a kid who had twenty-four fights. This kid had just won the Ohio State Fair and Kelly just kicked the shit out of him. That was his first amateur fight and he didn’t even have that much training at the time. He was just a tough kid.
And he was a hell of a baseball player, too. They had him in one of the toughest positions as a catcher. In football, he was a running back and a linebacker. So he was always on the aggressive side of it. I encouraged him to play all the sports he could. I never held him back from baseball and football. He was always playing sports, always playing competitively, and always playing on the upper level. If he was twelve years old, they would put him on the thirteen or fourteen year old baseball team. If he was ninety-five pounds in football, they had him play at one-fifteen. But I remember when he was sixteen years old, he would spar with one of my pros who used to handle him easy. But one day, Kelly turned the corner and put an ass-whipping on him. And that was the difference in Kelly’s whole career. That one day. That’s when boxing really took over. Around this time, he started developing that right hand and he was stopping people in tournaments. And finally I said to him, “Hey, it’s time to make a decision about what you want to do. Boxing, baseball, or football. What’s it going to be?” And fortunately, he chose boxing.
DL: Tell me a little about the first few years of Kelly’s professional career.
JL: His manager Cameron Duncan had an eye for talent and he liked what he was doing in the amateurs. And they got him on TV in his first fight and he knocked the guy out. They were all knockouts on the way up. He went 14-0 with fourteen knockouts. And he was knocking them out early. And that’s what everybody likes to see. People love the brutality of boxing. They’ll pay to watch someone like Mike Tyson for thirty seconds. And Kelly brought that kind of excitement.
DL: During this time, you were working as a Teamster and devoted whatever free time you had to grooming a future world champion. How did you manage the two responsibilities at once?
JL: I was one of the original guys at the company I was working for. It grew from 120 people to almost 1,400 people overnight. And since I was one of the original guys, I got a lot of vacation time. And instead of spending it with my family, I geared all my vacations toward Kelly and boxing. And on the weekends, I was sealing driveways. I bought into a company that was selling their business. So I bought some new equipment and started with that as a way to make a few extra dollars. But in 2002, the company I worked for closed. They came in at break time one day and said, “Okay, we’re out. We’re done.” So I started devoting more time to the asphalt business and working with Kelly and focusing on that world title we were after.
DL: Kelly’s fight with Edison Miranda was an eliminator with the winner to fight for Jermain Taylor’s title. And going into the fight, Miranda was viewed by many as the future of the middleweight division, but Kelly won via seventh round TKO. What stands out in your mind about that fight?
JL: Coming from the neighborhoods where we came from, there was always the bully around the block. There was always the bully on the playground. Those are the types of kids where when you’re playing kickball, they like to throw the ball hard at all the little kids. But guys like myself never worried about bullies. And when they would throw the ball at me, I threw the ball right back at them. And then you look at the expression on their face. Those are the type of kids I love to fight. And Miranda fit the bill perfect. He was the bully. Everybody told Kelly to box and move and be careful. And I told Kelly to back this fucking kid up and bully the bully. After the weigh-ins, we were at the press conference and Miranda made a move towards Kelly and tried to intimidate him like a jerk. And all Kelly did was wink his eye and blow him a kiss. And you should have seen the look on Miranda’s face. He was like, “Holy shit! I can’t get under this kid’s skin!” And from that point on, he would not look at us. We went to the middle of the ring to hear the referee’s instructions and he wouldn’t make eye contact. And before the bell rang, he was standing in his corner looking at the canvas. He just wouldn’t look at us. Now, before all that happened at the podium, he was continuously trying to get in Kelly’s face. And I think that little wink from Kelly took the heart right out of him. And I think we laid the blueprint on how to beat Edison Miranda. Because everybody started beating him after that. But before Kelly beat him, everybody was running from him.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In Part Two of “Jack Loew: Grooming The Pride Of Youngstown”, Loew talks about Kelly Pavlik vs Jermain Taylor I, life after winning the middleweight championship, and Pavlik’s struggles with alcoholism.
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