Trainer’s expertise does all the talking
AS Katie Taylor bobbed and weaved on the canvas for the world’s media on Wednesday, Ross Enamait cut a typically brooding presence on the ring apron as he kept a close eye on his fighter, ignoring the Jake Paul circus a few yards away.
The New England native, who considers Patriots coach Bill Belichick his hero and inspiration, has had one of the most significant roles in Taylor’s journey through the professional ranks.
But in a team that includes the loquacious Eddie Hearn and Taylor’s manager, the equally chatty Brian Peters, Enamait is the quiet one.
Occasionally, he might intercede at press conferences with a cutting rejoinder or observation if he feels a foolish question has been asked, straight from the Belichick handbook, but he’s usually happy to let others do the talking.
Taylor reached out to Enamait a few weeks after her shock defeat at the Rio Olympics. Having studied his training manuals during her amateur career, she asked if she could come over for a three-week camp in his Connecticut base. She is still there more than five years later.
‘That was how it started,’ Enamait told Sportsmail in a rare interview back in December 2019.
‘Katie had read some of my books and that was the reason she contacted me. We linked up a few weeks after the Olympics and she said she wanted to come over for a training camp.
‘I thought if someone was willing to fly over from Ireland to train with me, they must be pretty serious.’
Within a couple of days, he realised just how serious.
Enamait admits that he hadn’t seen her box until that point – and has readily conceded he didn’t know much about women’s boxing.
That was all to change. It didn’t take the trainer long to acknowledge that there was a special talent with an extraordinary work ethic in his gym.
Hearn has been essential in carefully guiding Taylor’s pro career to the point where she is Madison Square Garden but Enamait has been equally important.
His no-frills, no-nonsense approach suits Taylor as does the fact that his gym is in the middle of nowhere, a world removed from the bright lights of this fight week.
Vernon, the small New England town Taylor now calls home, is such an unassuming place that she is listed on its Wikipedia page as a notable resident, along with legendary crooner Gene Pitney.
It’s quiet and out of the way. Ideal for both fighter and trainer. And their personalities.
Enamait, who is 45, fell in love with boxing watching Roy Jones junior at the Seoul Olympics.
A natural athlete, he was talented baseball player but also boxed out of the San Juan Center in Hartford, Connecticut, although injuries put pay to any Olympic dreams.
Having graduated with an economics degree from the University of Connecticut, he was working as an investment banker on Wall Street when 9/11 happened. The attack on the Twin Towers had a profound effect on everyone in New York and Enamait made a life-changing decision in its aftermath.
‘I thought you only live once. I’ve only got one chance here. I resigned from my job a couple of weeks later,’ he recalled. The epiphany came to him while sitting ringside at Bernard Hopkins’
world middleweight title bout with Felix Trinidad in Madison Square Garden a couple of weeks after the attacks.
He went into the business of training and mentoring boxers, while also writing books with coaching and training tips. Originally based in Atlantic City, he soon moved the operation back to his native Connecticut, where Taylor landed in September 2016.
OVER five and a half years, Enamait has worked closely with Taylor, altering her style so it was more suited to the professional ranks.
But as he told Sportsmail back in 2019, he doesn’t want to change too much as he wanted the fighter to do what she does best — and that’s box.
Taylor’s team have pulled out all the stops ahead of this with Irish champion Amy Broadhurst, a southpaw similar in style to Serrano, brought over for sparring for a number of weeks.
And in the raucous atmosphere of the Garden tomorrow night, Enamait will be the most important member of that team.
He needs to be the calmest and most composed person in what will be a wild night in New York, reading Taylor’s opponent and the fight correctly.