Part 1 of 2

Joe Souza is a legendary cutman who has worked with the likes of Arturo Gatti, Andrew Golota, Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko, Vernon Forrest, Pernell Whitaker, and many other top fighters of recent times.  This past month, I did a little research on Souza, found a few articles about him online, and contacted one of the authors in hopes of getting his contact information.  Matt Stolow, a fellow boxing writer, generously responded to an e-mail I sent him with Souza’s home number.  Souza has been retired from the game for a couple of years now.  Based on everything I read, I feared he was is in poor health and might not be up to conducting an interview.  But when I called the Souza household and Joe was handed the phone, happily, he was full of energy and enthusiasm and we had a conversation that lasted almost two hours.  In Part One of this two-part interview, Souza discusses his background in boxing, his work in the Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko fight, and probably his most needy client, the late Arturo Gatti.
 
DL: What is your background in boxing and what lead you to become a cutman?
 
JS: As a kid, I fought as an amateur.  And then I went into the military.  I did twenty years in the Air Force and that’s when I gained quite a bit of experience, fighting all over the world.  Mostly in Europe.  But once I was transferred to San Antonio and my career in the military was ending, me and my wife decided to stay here.  And I got involved in boxing and became very successful, up until a couple years ago when I took sick.  I’ve had to retire.  But it was a total accident that I became a cutman.  There were a couple of kids fighting and they needed a cutman.  I didn’t know much about it, so I started reading.  And Whitey Bimstein wrote several books about it and that’s how I first learned how to do it.  Bimstein could stop a cut when nobody else would.  And the thing that Bimstein said that very few people know about is that the trick is pressure.  You clean the cut and you put pressure on it.  Just plain pressure.  And you use whatever you’re allowed to use, which of course is a bunch of bologna.  We used whatever we mixed.  And one day I got a hold of the book and Christ, after about a page and a half, it says to do this and to do that and I said, “Oh, shit…  I think I can do this.” 
 
And did you know that some fighters have an operation to sometimes keep from getting cut?  I don’t know anybody that’s actually done it.  But from what I’ve known, they’ll go in there, and it’s just a small operation.  They’ll open up the eyebrow and the doctor goes in there and files it down.  Do me a favor.  Take your finger and go above your eye and feel that bone there.  And press hard and go across it.  You feel it?  That’s what they file down.  What it depends on is the fighter himself and his background and his nationality.  Some fighters and some nationalities don’t have problems with cuts and some of them do.  You’ve seen it.  So the doctor goes in there and he takes care of it.  There’s no guarantee that it works.  But as a rule, it’s been successful.  
 
But you talk about cutmen…  Whitey Bimstein and Freddie Brown were the oldest boxing cutmen of the game.  And they were the best.  They were the BEST!  Ask anybody in the boxing business.  Anybody who knows anything about boxing will remember them two.  Freddie Brown was a partner of Bimstein.  And one thing I read from Bimstein is that you, yourself, as a cutman, have to control the cut and the fighter.  And once the fighter was cut, I would say, “I’ll take care of the cut, you listen to the corner.  We got no problems.  Listen to the damn corner.”  Once I knew that the fighter was relaxed, I went to work.  There was no problem.  It’s just common sense.  I don’t know that I became outstanding, but I know I was good at what I done.
 
DL: I would say outstanding, particularly because of the night Vitali Klitschko faced Lennox Lewis.  In the third round of their fight, Klitschko suffered one of the worst cuts I’ve ever seen but thanks to you, Vitali was allowed to continue for three more rounds.

JS: The thing with Klitschko, he didn’t do what he was told.  Klitschko was almost an animal.  All he did was depend on his punching power.  If he set down and boxed, I think he could have won that fight.  But once he got cut, he went bananas.  And I had to use my experience to keep the cut in check and try to control it.  That’s all you can do with a cut like that.  Just slow it down and control it.  I kept him in the fight and kept the cut controlled as best I could.  But I’ll tell you one thing, I can almost count the few fights I worked that got stopped on me.  I didn’t have too many fights stopped, even with the bad cuts.  As a matter of fact, after one fight, the referee came up to me and said, “I didn’t stop the fight because I knew you were in the corner.”  That’s a hell of a compliment. 
 
DL: You also worked with the late Arturo Gatti, who was a notorious bleeder. Tell me a little about your experiences as Gatti’s cutman.
 
JS: Ohhh.... one time, I got busy with some preliminary fights.  In fact, I worked the whole damn card.  Seven fights.  And he’s in his dressing room and I open the door and walk in and he’s saying, “Where the hell is Joe Souza?!  Where the hell is Joe Souza?!”  And I said, “I’m right here.  Sit down.  We’ll take care of everything.”  Most of the time, he won his fights.  But I’ll tell you, he gave Lou Duva more gray hairs than anything else.  But Lou loved him.  Lou had a lot of fighters, but he sure as hell loved Arturo.  Arturo was one hell of a fighter and he would never try to let anybody down.  He was a great fight person.  Wouldn’t you agree?
 
DL: Yes, I would.  He’s one of everyone’s favorites.  And I’m sure you had your hands full every time you worked his fights.
 
JS: Ehhhh…  What can I tell you?  It was easy, because he would listen.  Once he got cut, I would get up in the ring and I would say, “Settle down, listen to the corner, and I’ll take care of the rest.”  That’s it.  You just have to keep the fighter in check and then you work.
 
DL: What stands out in your mind about the Gatti-Ward fights?  That was one of the best three-fight series in boxing history.
 
JS: It was just a job.  The bell rings and you’re up there.  That’s it.  I believe I was very successful because before every fight, I would get things ready.  I would put this in my pocket, I would keep this away from the referee…  Come on!  We mixed stuff and we knew what we had to hide.  You know for a fact that if we followed the rules, none of us would have been successful.  Wouldn’t you agree?  So what I would do is find out who the hell the referee was.  He’d come up to us and say, “Keep it clean.”  And I said, “Oh, shit.”  But before I left the house, I always made sure that I had all my equipment in my bag.  And once I had my bag, you couldn’t get nowhere near it.
 
DL: And what was in the bag?
 
JS: What are you talking about what was in the bag?  What the hell you think was in the bag?  Bandages, tape, gauze…  That and whatever the hell else I put in it!  But that’s another thing...  I always made sure I had plenty of gauze and tape.  Because some of these so-called managers were supposed to bring the gauze and the tape.  And we get there and they say, “Uhhh…  Where is it?”  So I always made sure I had that.  And one time the guy didn’t want to pay me for the gauze and the tape.  And I said, “That’s bullshit!  He’s your fighter!  You’re supposed to bring the gauze and the tape!”  It’s common sense.
 
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In Part Two of “Joe Souza: The Cutman”, the legendary cutman talks about Andrew Golota, Vernon Forrest, Pernell Whitaker, his friendship with trainer Ronnie Shields, a boxing museum that he has built in his garage, and his best boxing memories.

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