On August 8th, boxing legend James Toney (76-10-3, 46 KOs) stepped into a St. Louis boxing  ring after almost two years off. He was looking to get back in the heavyweight mix and prove that he was still a relevant fighter.  Toney was looking for a soft touch – someone the 46 year-old former three-division champion would not only beat but also look good against.  But Toney picked the wrong guy. Born and raised in Wichita, KS, heavyweight Charles Ellis (10-3-1, 8 KOs) was a big James Toney fan.  But when he got the call to face Toney, he trained like he hadn’t trained in years, determined to pull off the upset.  At St. Louis' Chase Park Plaza Hotel, Ellis’s preparations paid off.  The 40 year-old Ellis defeated Toney via ten-round unanimous decision.  In this interview, Ellis discusses his background in boxing, the fight with Toney, and his plans for the future.
 
DL: When did you first put on the gloves?  How old were you and what were the circumstances?
 
CE: When I first put on the gloves, I was twenty-five years old.  I was doing a lot of street fighting.  My mom told me, “You need to quit fighting in these streets.  If you’re going to fight, and if you’ve got the talent, that’s good.  You need to do it the right way.  If I find you a trainer, will you box?”  I said, “Sure, I’ll box.”  So, she found me a trainer.  I had never done boxing before or been inside a ring.  This trainer saw me work and I could tell he was excited.  That night, I went to his house and he moved the coffee table out of the way and rearranged the furniture in his living room and he started showing me stuff.  He couldn’t get enough of teaching me stuff and I couldn’t get enough of learning.  The Golden Gloves champions were right around the corner.  The heavyweight and the super heavyweight (champions).  I sparred both of them and I beat them.  It was my first time sparring and I beat them both.  That’s when I kind of knew that I had something and it made me want to learn even more. 
 
I fought amateur.  To go to the nationals, you had to have at least five fights, so I falsified my book.  I made it to the finals and I kept getting beat by Devin Vargas from Ohio.  He went on to the Olympics.  In my third year going to the nationals, I knocked him out.  It’s weird, because when I first started fighting amateur, all these guys had been boxing since they were eight years old.  I just started and I was actually learning right there in the fight.  I always had a hard time finding sparring, because I’m in Wichita.  A lack of sparring has always been a problem of mine.  That made it harder to get better.  Fighting would be like sparring, because that’s where I learned. I looked at my fight with James Toney like sparring.  I’m not discrediting him, but I had to actually work on things and learn in that fight.  I started boxing late and that has a lot to do with my longevity.  I haven’t been in a lot of wars and battles.  But I take everything that I do seriously and I break it down to a science.
 
DL: When was the fight with James Toney first put before you and what were your thoughts?
 
CE: I came into the gym one day.  My coach jokes a lot and he says, “How would you like to fight James Toney?”  I didn’t know if he was serious, but I said, “I would love to fight James Toney.”  He said, “All right, I’m going to tell them it’s official.”  I was like, “Wow!”  I was surprised that I got the offer.  I was excited for the opportunity and I was a little nervous.  I felt like they were looking at my record and the guys I fought.  I felt like they were looking at my age and that they didn’t know much about me.  When I looked on YouTube, I saw James say, “I don’t know anything about this guy.  I’m just going to knock him out.”  I was excited and that’s why I trained hard.  The only other time I trained this hard was for the nationals.
 
DL: Were you a James Toney fan before this fight?
 
CE: (laughs) Definitely!  That’s what I thought a hundred times when I was in there.  I thought, “I’m in the ring with James Toney!”  Whenever I played “Knockout Kings” with my boys, we always fought over who got to be James Toney.  I never imagined that I would ever fight him or that I would be able to do anything with him.  But shortly after I accepted an offer, I heard a message from Floyd Mayweather.  He tells his fighters, “When you’re in that ring, image that the food is either going to be on his table or yours.”  That’s what was in my mind and I felt like there was no way I would lose the fight.
 
DL: Did you talk to Toney at all before the fight?
 
CE: I did not, but I was ready for that.  I know he has disrespected his opponents before his fights, so I was ready.  At the weigh-in, I kind of had my chest out a little bit, because I was waiting for him to say something.  When I got off the scale, we faced each other and he said, “How’re you doing?”  I said, “I’m fine.”  They said, “Face the cameras.”  We faced the cameras and he whispered to me, “You feeling okay?  You feeling good?”  I said, “I’m fine.”  I sat down after and I said to my coach, “That was weird!”  I don’t know if it was psychology or what.
 
DL: Did you talk to him after the fight?
 
CE: We didn’t, but we talked all through the fight.  We talked DURING the fight!  Every time I did something, he called me a name or said it didn’t hurt.  I just kept my distance and kept popping my jab.  I saw the blood dripping.  I saw him dipping his head to the side and I knew what he was doing.  He was trying to catch me with a right hand.  I said to him, “What you ought to do is try to sign me.  We could make money together and it would be a win for both of us.”  I could tell he was kind of reacting to it.  I was talking to him and punching him at that same time.
 
DL: This was all in the ring?
 
CE: This was all in the ring!  I know he has a couple of fighters under him, so I was telling him to sign me.  He said to me, “You’re soft.”  That’s when I lost my cool.  That’s what we weren’t going to do.  He wants you to be over-aggressive.  Everybody was telling me before the fight, “Don’t rush James Toney.  Don’t go in on him.  Stay long.”  That was my game plan, but I was like, I’m a man and he’s a man.  There’s no way I’m going to tell myself that I can’t go somewhere.  On the outside, I threw a little feint and then I went inside on him.  He caught me with a couple of shots.  I realized what he was catching me with and I fixed that.  Now, he has nothing he can catch me with.  It’s all me and my offense.  All I was catching him with was a little temple shot.  I said, “This isn’t enough”, so I went down to his body and that’s when he started backing up.  I could see in his eyes that he was kind of giving up.  He was like, this guy has me on the outside because he’s long.  And now he’s beating me on the inside, so there’s really nothing I can do.  I’ve seen his fights on YouTube and I noticed that he really hasn’t fought a lot of long guys like me.  And I knew that with his style, with his shell, he wouldn’t be able to hide from my punches.  At the beginning, I was just throwing a lot of jabs.  He was trying to catch my right hand with his shoulder, but it was catching him on the head and knocking him off balance.
 
DL: Did James Toney take you up on your suggestion to sign you?
 
CE: After the fight, he sent Lamon Brewster over and Lamon said, “We definitely liked what we saw.”  He said, “First of all, we like your class.  We saw you could have knocked him out.”  Everybody was telling me, “You would have been the first guy to knock out James Toney!”  But that wouldn’t have felt good to me.  First of all, I needed the rounds.  Second of all, this is a legend and I respected him.  But it was an entertaining fight and I was checking to make sure the fans were enjoying it.  It’s all about the fans.  The fans pay the bills and that’s who I work for.  Lamon said to me, “I noticed you react off of your fighter.  Don’t do that.  Stay focused on what you’re doing.”  He said, “Every time you go to the gym, make sure you’re working on something.  Never go to the gym just repetitively.  Always learn something.  Next time I see you, I want you to look better than you looked this time.  Then I know that you’re going.  But I definitely want to see you again.” 
 
DL: What’s next for you?
 
The promoter of the fight said, “Stay ready.  We want to do something with you.  So, stay ready.”  I hurt my shoulder in the fight.  I’m waiting for what the doctor says, but it won’t be too long.  I’m still running and doing everything else.  God willing, I’ll get a bigger fight.  Whoever they offer, I’ll fight.
 
DL: You’ve been a pro for over ten years.  Why have you had fourteen fights?
 
CE: I did a prison stint.  And then when I went to California to fight for the California title, I flew my mother out there.  She was acting kind of funny because I wasn’t giving her much attention.  She ended up going back home.  After the fight was over, I went back home and she sat me down and told me she had cancer and that she had six weeks to live.  God willing, she lived for two more years.  I stayed right there by her side.  After it was over with, I just didn’t have the heart to fight anymore.  Eventually, the drive came back.  When I got back in the ring, I didn’t miss a beat.  I called my friend Allan Green (former Super Six World Boxing Classic participant) and sparred with him to see if I still had it.  I felt like I was better than I was just by being away from it.  I had so much going on in my life – tied in with the gang life, tied in with losing my children...  I was thinking in my head that maybe if I had started when I was eight years old, I would be heavyweight champion of the world.  But God works in mysterious ways and if I had made it to the top ten, maybe I wouldn’t have the testimony that I have now.
 
DL: You say you lost your children?
 
CE: Yes.  I whipped my son, and me being a boxer, it was a felony and I did prison time.
 
DL: Do you have a relationship with your children now?
 
CE: I sure do.  I sure do.  My oldest turned eighteen.  He’s right in the living room right now, as a matter of fact.  Now, I’m in the right place.  The right things are happening and I feel that it’s just starting.
 
DL: Is there anything you want to say in closing?
 
CE: Yes, there is something.  The Lord was definitely with me all through training and got me through it.  Like every fighter knows, it’s not really the fight you’re worried about.  The training is the hard part.  After the fight, the first thing I did was to try to figure out what I could have done better.  What I enjoyed the most is how hard I trained.  They say the harder you train the easier the fight.  I was in tremendous shape and I wasn’t going nowhere.
 
 

 

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