Maurice Hooker on Jose Ramirez Fight: “It Will be a Good Night for Me”

[thenonpareil]

The sparring session transpired nearly ten years ago, behind closed doors, in a sun-kissed gym situated along a light-rail overpass outside of downtown Dallas. Arnie Verbeek remembers it like it was yesterday—as he should. He founded the Maple Avenue Boxing Gym, after all, and the simulated dust-up in question involved two of his young blue-chip fighters. He still manages one of them to this day: Maurice Hooker, the gangly, Dallas-born junior-welterweight who currently owns a piece of the 140-pound crown. The other was Alex Saucedo, a Mexican who grew up in Oklahoma and would soon split ways with Verbeek. Watching the action that day were a slew of interested observers surrounding the ring draping.

“All the Top Rank brass were in my gym,” Verbeek, who is from the Netherlands, recalled, referring to the esteemed promotional company headed by Bob Arum, “and they know Maurice and they know boxing, and that day, Maurice was hitting [Alex] with the right hand at will.”

But Top Rank came away that afternoon convinced that the kid from Oklahoma would be their next signee. In time, they would come to tout Saucedo as their version of Arturo Gatti. He was also Mexican, and that trait never hurt the box office. Play their cards right, and Saucedo could end up becoming a solid regional draw, maybe even more. So in 2011, Saucedo began his first professional fight under auspicious circumstances in Houston, on the undercard of an HBO main event featuring Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.; he knocked his man out in the first round. At around the same time, Hooker, promoterless, got his start on a nondescript card somewhere in the boondocks of Missouri; he eked out a split draw.

https://hannibalboxing.com/maurice-hook ... ht-for-me/