Burchfield in the center with New Haven pugilists Ayala, Crespo, and Williams.
Undefeated New Haven fighter Jimmy “Quiet Storm” Williams had not even stepped into the ring. The junior middleweight bout was four days away. But a huge amount of heart was already on display.
That heart belonged to Williams’s coach, Brian Clark, who was by his side not two hours after checking himself out of Yale-New Haven Hospital after open heart surgery.
“I’ve got my guys here, and I’m going to be there at the ring,” said Clark, the longtime owner and trainer at Ring One, the boxing gym on Congress Avenue in the Hill.
Clark, along with 50 family members and friends — many wearing jackets brightly emblazoned with Team Williams or Team Crespo — were on hand at the Russian Lady on Temple Street Tuesday night to promote a trio of New Haven-based fighters: Williams, Josh Crespo, and Elvan Ayala.
Clark and Williams.
“Thank God for Percocet,” said Clark, as he hugged the fighters he has trained, Williams for the past six months and bantamweight Josh Crespo since he was 11 years old.
Clark was still wearing a surgical drainage device beneath his sweatshirt and moved gingerly because of the pain from the recently closed long incision down his chest. It was the second open heart surgery of his life.
Crespo is looking to win the New England super bantamweight title. Ayala, with ties to the Boxing In Faith gym on Grand Avenue, is hoping to win his fourth professional match as a super middleweight, and Williams, a junior middleweight, to win his eighth bout and remain undefeated.
All that unfolds starting at 7 p.m. on Jan. 17 at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville.
Boxing is alive and well in New Haven, said Jimmy Burchfield, the president and CEO of Classic Entertainment & Sports (CES), the marketing group promoting the event. It has eight professional and six amateur bouts lined up for that Jan. 17 evening.
“The nucleus of the card is New Haven and we want to give some love to the great city,” Burchfield declared as he got the hoopla going.
“I’m Throwing The Punches But She’s There In The Ring”
When Burchfield introduced Jimmy Williams to the crowd and asked him to speak, Williams told another story of great heart — and the love of an inspiring parent.
The Plainfield, NJ-born 28-year-old saw his dad go off to jail when he was a little kid. He began to shadowbox around the house and pick up a little of the sport on his own to deal with a lot of bad things in his life, he said.
When Williams was 21 and a star cornerback at Southern Connecticut State University, he received a call that his mother had been killed in street violence in Plainfield. The crime has not been solved.
Then, in tryouts with the Oakland Raiders, injuries sidelined Williams before he got a chance to make the team. He took up boxing again because that sport was the one his mom always encouraged him to pursue. He started his boxing career on Jan. 19, 2013, and has been moving up ever since, even becoming the subject of a Wesleyan University thesis film last fall.
Williams said he would not have returned to boxing without his mother’s urging and as a way to make sense of what happened to her. “That’s the way I deal with it,” he said. “I’m throwing the punches but she’s there in the ring.”
Williams and Crespo (pictured with Clark) also acknowledged Clark’s invaluable contributions as coach. He’s been working with Williams on his “fluidity” as a fighter. Or, as Clark put it, “you can’t think too much or your body will tighten and your timing gets off and you lose the punch that might have come naturally.”
“I’m just going to let it flow,” said Williams as he sat next to Clark.
Clark’s work with Crespo, a lithe Fair Havener, has been on concentration. “Josh has phenomenal hand speed,” Clark said. “He needs to concentrate three minutes at a time. Two seconds of non-concentration gets him hit five times.” Clark reprised the lesson for Crespo, who called Clark an important father figure throughout his life and “family.”
Last Monday, to prepare for Saturday’s bout, Clark took Williams and Crespo into Brooklyn to spar at the Starret City Boxing Club with tough and far more experienced Ukrainian fighters. They did well, and Clark filmed it.
The next day he checked himself into the hospital for the planned operation.
A week later Crespo was at the hospital door with a smile, lasagna, and brownies. He helped his coach check out and come to the Russian Lady.
“I don’t want people coming down here saying that we’re vulnerable,” Clark said.
