One of the favorite stories from my travels with the Canadian Olympic Boxing Team includes Brian Viloria.... Here is the picture that started the conversation. Please read below for the complete story that we published on my facebook page
It
has been confirmed that my hunch that the kid in the picture is World
Boxing champion Brian Viloria by non other than Brian himself via a
Twitter message.
So here is the story…
In 1991, the Canadian
Boxing team held their training camp for the world championships to take
place in Sydney Australia in beautiful Waikiki, Hawaii. Our Boxing
team were special guests at one of the local club shows and Chuck Williams (the official in the picture) introduced me to a local kid who they were saying “will be a Champ” Someday.
That is something you here everyday from a proud coach or parent. The
kid asked to get his picture with me and this is the photo.
Now the rest of the story…
Going through my old photos for no particular reason, I came across
this one and paused saying … what the hell was I thinking with the fanny
pack!! Then said to myself that kid looks familiar…so I checked with
some of my boxing friends from the USA and they all figure it is. Fast
forward 9 years…
The kid grows up to a full fledge light flyweight
(106 lbs or 48 kgs) and wins the USA National title, wins the 1999
World Championships then goes on to the Olympic qualification tournament
in Tijuana, Mexico and defeats ME!!! For the right to go to the 2000
summer Olympic games in Sydney, Australia!!!!
Brian “the Hawain Punch” Viloria then went on to win the World professional Boxing Championships a multiple of times.
Years later actually today September 29th 2015 we got to be part of Brian's first Periscope experience. Click the link below to see highlights of it.
Brian's (36-4, 22 KOs) next fight is October 17th at Madison Square Garden in New York City,against triple world champion Roman "Chocolatito" Gonzalez (43-0, 37 KOs) who will defend his flyweight (112 pounds) championship of the World Boxing Council (WBC).
The fight will be the HBO Pay-Per-View co-featured attraction to the Gennady Golovkin vs. David Lemieux middleweight unification.
Check out Brian's awesome skipping ability in the video below
Brian was another one of the "BAD BOY" fighters trained by Al Mitchell at the United States Olympic Education Center in Marquette Michigan.
Al Mitchell had a brief, three-year amateur boxing career starting in 1960. Before he retired, he was 43-1 in the bantamweight class. He trained at the same gym with boxers, such as Joe Frazier, Al Massey, and Gypsy Joe Harris in North Philadelphia, Pa. At age 17, Mitchell dropped his gloves and pulled up a stool to start coaching at both the amateur and professional levels.
In 1989, Mitchell took the head coaching position at the U.S. Olympic Education Center. During Mitchell's years at the USOEC, he has trained nine Olympians, over 200 National Champions and has led numerous boxers into a professional boxing career.
Mitchell served as the 1996 Olympic Team’s head coach and the 2004 Olympic Team’s technical adviser. Olympians he's trained at the USOEC include 1996 gold medalist and world professional boxer David Reid, five-time world professional champion Vernon Forrest, Brian Viloria, and Jermain Taylor.