THe Lou Duva Factor 1986 onwards

[Bricks]

Lou Duva crowned his first world champ Joey Giardello as far back as the early 60s. Prior to that he had been in and around the game as a fighter, trainer, friend of Marciano etc for several decades.

His son Dan the attorney helped out Leon Spinks and with the $500,000 earnings set up MAIN EVENTS.

They bought a venue called Iceworld and in conjunction with ESPN did shows in the new York area with up and coming fighters like czyz, livingstone bramble, Alex Ramos, Johhny Bumphus, Tony Ayala jnr and Mitch Green


After getting the 1984 Olympians old man Lou Duva, Dan the attorney, Kathy and the rest had become a huge promotional outfit...and seemed to be growing by the day.

They had a lot of top class fighters......Meldrick, Pernell, Evander, Tyrell, Mike Mccallum, Vinnie Pazienza, 19 world champions in all.Most from that period of the 1980s...

Yet by the mid to late 80s.......a lot of duva fighters were imploding self destructing in their mid 20s and seemingly at their peak physically.

At the same time other fighters who weren't .......Lou would encourage to retire after 1 loss, or tell them he couldn't train them anymore.

Pazienza and Mccallum, Mark Breland,Tyrell Biggs, Holyfield were victims of this 1 loss and your out or I think u should retire or I cant train you anymore policy.......

Duva told a 26 year old Pazienza to retire in 1990 at the dining table. Angelo Pazienza didn't even look up from his bowl of spaghetti when Duva said these things

Tyrell Biggs was rushed through to meet Tyson.........and abandoned after to the dogs and suffered kayo loss after loss and ended up a trial horse.

Holyfield lost to Bowe and was told to retire.

Mike Mccallum lost to Kalambay and was told to retire and parted ways with Lou.

Johhny Bumphus seemed on top of the world 26 years old a former world champ with only 1 loss coming off beating Marlon Starling .Six months later he looks a drug addict and Lou has to walk him into the ring where he gets massacred by honeyghan and syonara!!!

Obviously a sign of the times crack coaine was involved with bumphus, and biggs......but that wasn't the case with paz, mccallum, or holyfield....

Meldrick Taylor too.....was told to retire and abandoned quite early.


Do you agree Lou Duva retired/abandoned/gave up on fighters too soon? Some of the fighters who he "left" went on to win multi world titles back when it meant something (Mccallum/Holyfield) others went downwards (Biggs/Green/Taylor)

Do you think it was out of care or arrogance.......I know Lou offered Pazienza a job. He helped Holyfield with investments....

Still it is my contention Lou inteffered with fighters too much on the one hand.....on the other a lot of his fighters ended up drug addicts despite this father figure in their life.....im playing devils advocate with the last remark......obviously Lou couldn't control someones life......but hell he tried to with his fighters.....so what went wrong?..........

[Ambling Alp II]

Hard to say. Did he really tell all of these guys to give it up so early? You never know what all is true. Can't believe he would have said that to Holyfield. Some guys like Bumphus and Taylor were never the same after their first loss. Obviously some of the rest bounced back pretty well. after their first loss.

Biggs was never going to be great but I agree he could have had a better career. At what point did Duva stop training him?

Duva did keep with Golota when it looked like he was a lost cause. He stayed with Breland after his first loss and it started to become apparent that he was not as good originally thought.
Never knew quite what to make of Duva.

[Bricks]

Yeah it was well documented in the magazines of the time with Taylor, pazienza, mccallum, and holyfield....Lou gave an extensive interview about it