By Lem Satterfield, FanHouse
Ask trainer Naazim Richardson how he's doing, and he's likely to respond, in his deep, rumbling, gravel-throated voice, "You know, man, I'm holdin' on with both hands."
But after suffering from a mild stroke a little more than three years go, Richardson found himself being close to literally holding on for his normalcy of life.
"I've always felt that I was left in the arms of Allah, so I was always comfortable in that capacity," said Richardson, a native of North Philadelphia who would only reveal his age as "in my early 40s. That was just a chapter of my life, man, where I felt that, over and above everything else, that God gave me the idea that he was going to use me as an example for certain things."
Richardson, who goes by the name, "Brother Naazim," spoke on Tuesday with FanHouse from the mountains of Big Bear Calif., where he is training 38-year-old WBA welterweight (147 pounds) champion, Shane Mosley (46-5, 39 knockouts), for his May 1 clash with 33-year-old Floyd Mayweather (40-0, 25 KOs) that is slated for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Along with sparring partners, Karl Dargan, and, Rock Allen, Richardson's nephew, and, son, respectively, the duo is diligently working on a game plan to defeat the spectacular Mayweather in a bout that will be televised on HBO pay per view.
Mosley said "It's like a family up here" in training, with Richardson being the unyielding, yet, understanding taskmaster.
"Brother Naazim is hard on me. He makes sure that I'm prepared physically and mentally and spiritually --- all of the different ways that you need to be prepared entering the fight. I think that that's the difference. It's being prepared, and Brother Naazim is 100 percent into the game," said Mosley.
"And wen it comes to May 1, I know that, with Brother Naazim, I've done all the right training for this fight," said Mosley. "I've developed the different strategies that need to know, and that I have to do is go out there and execute."
Mosley's first fight with Richardson was a January, 2009, ninth-round knockout that dethroned Antonio Margarito as WBA champ.
"When I'm in the ring, I'm fighting and he's fighting as well. He's not fighting with his hands or his fists, but with his mind, which is a good thing. I'm not sure that he's doing anything differently as far as my training, but I think that he's taking me back to all of the movements, and keeping me sharp mentally," said Mosley.
"I'm sharp and I'm ready to go. He's a great trainer. One of the best. I think that he's the best trainer right now that's out there," said Mosley. "I'm pleased with everything that's going on in this camp, and I couldn't ask for a better person, a better friend, and a better trainer in my camp right now."
But Richardson's character is tempered by his experience of more than three years ago.
"That stroke was a major point in my life, you know what I mean? It's just that after that, with my children and them watching me, you know when you're always telling your kids things about life? Well, now, they got to see it," said Richardson, who devoutly practices the Muslim faith.
"Watching it, they could see, 'Well, here's this guy that's always telling us about prayer,' and 'We're always watching him pray, and sometimes he got on our nerves about it,'" said Richardson. "But now, they see that it was through my prayer and my faith that I was saved from such a potentially devastating affliction."
Ironically, it was when Richardson was praying, on the night of March 25, 2007, that he said one of his relatives first noticed that he was in trouble.
"I had finished working out with some of my athletes. I was training some guys, and I went home that night and I tried to pray. My son saw me trying to pray, and he saw me stumbling and falling," said Richardson. "What happened was that somehow I had lost the capacity to move on my left side. So he called out to my older son, and they called the hospital."
Richardson was rushed to the hospital by ambulance, and received some even worse news.
"The doctors had me frightened to death because they started talking to me about having to operate on my brain," said Richardson. "They said that, as a result, I might never talk again and that I might never walk again and all of this and different things. But from the time that I could speak, I kept telling them, 'You know, it's not your decision, it's Allah's.'"
So Richardson refused to be operated on, instead, relying on the love of his faith, friends and relatives to help pull him through.
"My family surrounded me, man, and the hospital personel had to be repremand me because I had so many people in my room all of the time. It was some of my family, and the people from the gym. My cousins were there. Everybody was there, everybody came in. Everybody came through. Everybody was showing up," said Richardson.
"I was hospitalized for over a month. But there were always people there excercising my legs while I was sitting in bed and everything. I'd wake up, and they're pulling and pushing my legs back and forth," said Richardson. "I went into the hospital on, like, March 25, and when they let me, it was on the night that Oscar de la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather fought. [May 5.]"
Richardson slowly regained movement on his partially-paralyzed left side to the point where, three months later, he was back doing what he loved to do best.
Rock Allen was fighting on the undercard of July, 2007 bout between Bernard Hopkins and Winky Wright, "and I worked as an assistant in the Winky Wright corner against Bernard," said Richardson, a longtime assistant to Hopkins' former trainer, Bouie Fisher. "I also came back and I worked as an assistant [to Freddie Roach] when Bernard fought Joe Calzaghe" in April of 2008.
But the marquee return for Richardson was on October 18, 2008, when he replaced Fisher as the lead trainer for Hopkins' upset of then-WBC and WBO middleweight (160 pounds) king, Kelly Pavlik, in an over-the-weight-limit bout that was contested at 170 pounds.
Richardson was an assistant to Fisher in September of 2001, when Hopkins knocked out Felix Trinidad to record the 15th defense of his middleweight crown on the way to a division record 20.
About an hour before the Hopkins-Trinidad matchup, Richardson discovered that Trinidad's hands had been illegally wrapped, forcing Trinidad's trainers to re-wrap his fists.
Richardson made a similar discovery of a hand-wrap issue against Margarito prior to his loss to Mosley, proved that his mind was just as sharp, and his eyes, just as keen as they were all those years ago against Trinidad.
"You're definitely going to have more confidence whenever you step into the ring with Brother Naazim there. I think that he's a good trainer. I think that he's one of the best trainers that I've ever worked with. We've gotten along perfectly. From Day One, it was a great match," said Mosley.
"I think that he gives his honest opinion on what he thinks and on what he believes. It's the truth. I can't just say, well, 'Can you sugar coat it a little bit for me?'" said Mosley. "I know that he's telling me the truth when I get into the fight or from sparring, whatever it is. He's going to give me his honest opinion, and I'm happy with that."
So whose side will God be on when Mosley meets Mayweather?
"God's is on all sides. God don't straddle the fence. God is here for everybody from my understanding of him," said Richardson. "It's not about him loving us, it's about us putting our foolishness aside and seeing what he's done for us already."
But who is going to win on May 1?
"I can say that we've got 12 rounds to try to get Floyd, and I'm firmly convinced that the guy that I've got is going to try to get him all 12 rounds," said Richardson. "I'm confident that Shane Mosley's coming out victorious, but I'm no prophet."
Maybe not, but you can believe that Richardson is likely to pray for success -- and he'll likely do so with both hands.
Source: boxing.fanhouse.com
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