Lamon Brewster: The True Believer

By Patrick Kehoe: No, WBO heavyweight champion Lamon Brewster doesn't believe he's gotten the kind of credit he's due. Where most of the heavyweight kingpins are lumbering around and generally waltzing to the beat of mediocrity, Brewster, 33-2 (29), has been knocking out his opposition. But for all of his demolition work in defending his WBO championship against the likes of Wladimir Klitschko, Andrew Golota, Luan Krasniqi, Brewster still gets bundled in with the other heavyweights of the uncertain moment as in Chris Byrd, James Toney and Hasim Rahman. Brewster has a simple fight plan each and every fight: dominate and destroy. To hear him talk he sounds more like a New Age minister than the most explosive of the heavyweights with the designation of world heavyweight champion; we refer you to the above three letter designation.

"I've got the Marvin Hagler syndrome... I am like also like Lennox Lewis even after he knocked out Mike he still wasn't loved by the people." You get the idea that Brewster is tired of his anonymity but he's not totally frustrated. What he is irritated concerning his lack of top guard opposition or at least a clear game plan detailing his final assent to the top of the heavyweight division. But Brewster knows that you do not do your self or your career any favours by embarrassing Mr. King, Don King his promoter, publicly. And yet the sense of time passing and opportunities not explored is getting to be a refrain he doesn't much care to hear repeated endlessly, for it certainly is becoming part of the defense he has to come up with when reporters press him on where it is his career is going.

Case and point is his next title defense; the next intended victim is Belarusian Sergei Liakhovich (also spelt Lyakhovich) not exactly a name Brewster would put on a short list of his dream fights, were he ever asked to do so. "But I have nothing to say about who I fight... I don't make those kinds of decisions," the WBO champ is quick to point out. No, Brewster is not taking the 6'4" "White Wolf" for granted nor as a stand in token; new trainer Buddy McGirt is helping Brewster stay on point and not take anything at all for granted.

"I have the utmost confidence heading into a fight because for the first time in a long time I have total confidence in my corner." Out is trainer Jesse Reid and in comes McGirt, who put the capital 'B' for boxer back into the career make-ups of fighters ranging from Arturo Gatti to Antonio Tarver over the last 3 years. What Brewster wanted was to reinvent the future. Though power and will was winning him a title and taking him from one money making outing to another the question for Brewster was how long could that be sustained? Where Reid transfixes and motivates, McGirt retools and sustains technical capacity for the longer term.

"I didn't have any problems with Jesse... Jesse's a great motivator and that's what I thought I needed at the time... in my heart and desire I needed more than just a great motivator... I needed a great technician... they say you need steel to sharpen steel."

McGirt thinks that Brewster is "a lot more talented than he realizes" and this burgeoning project has been a productive one so far, ease and amiability having defined their instantaneous personal chemistry. "I love working with Buddy," Brewster admiringly intones. McGirt almost speaks as if proving a theorem, "He's going to go out there and use those skills that he's not used in a while."

Ever the evangelical freed spirit, Brewster puts it in terms religious, "My spirit has called me to seek out Buddy... all things work together for good and I am happy that Buddy accepted me." If destiny is the fate of conviction realized, Brewster is sounding like a man who's come home to the embrace of a fellow believer. McGirt seems to genuinely believe in the upside of his newest charge. As projects go, McGirt has in Brewster a pliable and yet resilient piece of clay which to mold in ways not always obvious upon first or even second inspection. For what ever remains of the Brewster timeline at the top of the heavyweight division, for he turns 33 this June, we are bound to see McGirt try and make Brewster more predatory than reckless in attack, lethally selective in his hitting patterning replacing the haste of his former frantic assertions. But will he be as effective? That question only the fights will answer for us.

Some in the media are sensing some unexpected danger from Liakhovich and his well conditioned nothing-to-lose challenge. Brewster and McGirt assure us that the champion of the WBO has put in his time at Vero Beach and will be fit and ready to buck what ever opposition might come his way from Liakhovich. Then again what else would they say? But be it Liakhovich or Rahman or Toney or even distant cousin Chris Byrd, Brewster intends to keep up his winning ways and remake the heavyweight division in his own image. "I ain't gotta talk... I really do let my fists do the talking... just put a man in front of me that you think can beat me and ring the bell and we will see."

With all of this assuredness and proven tendency to flatten contenders, what exactly is King going to do about the fact that Brewster may be the most exciting heavyweight around and yet the perception persists that DKP is doing considerably less than their utmost to showcase their only current heavyweight with a title belt. The likeable Alan Hopper, PR man for Don King, assures anyone who inquires that Brewster remains a vital priority at DKP and they fully intend to see Brewster successfully defend against the dangerous Liakhovich with major fights coming soon for "Relentless" Lamon. Of course, they would say that.

You get the idea there's a lot of talking around important issues such as identifying just exactly how they intend to make Lamon Brewster the world's preeminent heavyweight, thee universal champion. True, Liakhovich only has one defeat on his record and he's trained by former Holyfield corner man Kenny Weldon. Those elements alone make Brewster's next defense 'a real fight' but there's a serious lack of star power in Brewster's recent past and announced future. Maybe they are keeping us all, including the champ, in suspense, building up the intrigue. If that's the object of Brewster's promotion house, then they are right on schedule.

Brewster doesn't care about the man in front of him, in one sense. "I don't look at them as European or white... or whatever... I just do what I have to do in the ring to win... sometimes its heart... outside of cheating, if I can't win with skill then we will take it to the street." But he'd like to get the chance to prove he's the best heavyweight around, technique welded to immutable determination. Certainly, he saw nothing to dissuade him from that ambition after watch James Toney and Hasim Rahman duke out a draw at The Boardwalk in Atlantic City.

"All my fights have been more exciting then those fights (Rahman-Toney and Byrd's defenses)... I respect everyone's opinion... I thought that Rahman won the fight... I think they should ring the bell and pay the check... just put one of them in there and watch... I have been born again instead of just relying on my power... I have scared myself... that's how much I have improved, how much I have in me."

For a guy that couldn't so much as skip rope or run due to a blown ACL knee during the Clifford Etienne fight in May 2000, until the Wladimir Klitschko fight signaled the rebirth of his all or nothing execution, the guy sure didn't pull a James Toney. Perhaps, we should start to talk about how it almost seems that the rest of the top heavyweights would just as soon avoid the idea of Lamon Brewster, let alone do anything so foolish as to fight him. Is that what it's coming down too?

Names do mean a lot, for this is the entertainment business, this sport of boxing. Lamon Brewster's name still registers with only peripheral import. Then again, that's where all the knockouts should come in, and upon which his promoter only need pontificate, in a manner already an institution. The presumption of status and the ability to project the commoditization of ones talent as athletic value depends on ones history, what's already been established as lubricating fact or transmittable fiction. Well, then Lamon will just have to keep laying them low. Hard to imagine a guy with all of this heat and delivery hasn't caught on. Isn't that what boxing and sports fans have been saying they want in a 'real heavyweight champion'?

Just to stir the pot we might reflect briefly on the topic of the other top heavies pulling - what amounts to - a prevent defense concerning Lamon Brewster; they certainly aren't anxious to bring up his name. Funny how none of them are saying, "then I am going to take down that Brewster cat." Fill in your own version of the proper vernacular, if you so need. Is there fear and loathing at the prospect of taking on such a fight, taking on Brewster? Well, for now he's got a fight. He's got his role to play in keeping alive the idea of growing credibility.

The only thing that Lamon Brewster is really worried about is improving and fulfilling his calling as a champion and that means taking care of his family obligations to the sustainability of his health and wealth for the future; to do that he's willing to brave all. We can see for ourselves where Buddy McGirt will come in handy. For here is a man ready and excited to set himself against the best of his generation, no matter the man or the vicissitudes of the moment. If God really does have a plan for him, and Brewster believes with all his being He does, it's already ordained in the might of one man's desire.

Maybe it's time for Mr. King to get some religion too?