ISMAEL SALAS
David Haye’s esteemed new trainer is primed and ready for the task at hand
‘PEOPLE SAY I’M CRAZY, BUT I AM NOT WASTING MY TIME WITH HAYE’
ISMAEL SALAS, the nomadic figure who established himself with the finest amateurs in Cuba before defecting and excelling with professionals in both Thailand and Japan, had returned west and was ready to settle in Las Vegas, where his career was thriving. That was until he was tempted to London by the challenge presented by a fighter apparently left with little more than a household name.
If the once-great David Haye’s career is not to reach its endgame in Saturday’s rematch with Tony Bellew, he will need to not only be in his finest condition for six years – he last excelled when defeating Dereck Chisora in July 2012 – but to rediscover at least some of the speed, timing and reflexes that have also long appeared absent.
That further ring rust has likely gathered on what was so obviously there before the 37-year-old ruptured his Achilles en route to that dramatic defeat last March, and that he also then suffered a biceps injury for a fight first scheduled for December, means that Salas may not only need to truly embrace his latest challenge but to effectively conquer the effects of age.
Working with Haye – and Ringstar prospects Joe Joyce and Willy Hutchinson – has also meant the trainer sacrificing his role with Jorge Linares, who a week later in New York faces Vasyl Lomachenko in a fight the boxing community is considerably more willing to embrace.
Yet, having once proven himself despite the Cuban government’s attempts to undermine him from afar, and before then
in the great Cuban amateur setup against the wishes of his parents, there is little reason for the one-time trainer of Savon, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Linares to believe that he will not succeed.
The son of a middle-class Cubanamerican engineer and Cuban mother was one of six siblings born and bred in the southern city of Guantanamo, and his talents gradually took him from there to Havana, then on to Asia and Australia, before in the US, as a another successful Cuban export, in inspiring Linares to finally fulfil his potential he caught the attention of Haye.
“What happened in Cuba at that time was so beautiful,” Salas told Boxing News of his first steps into a career he has so individually pursued. “It’s normal to come back home with bruises, like a medal of war. We’ve been growing that mentality – ‘If you go to the streets, don’t come back crying’. It’s why Cuba has so many fighters. [My parents] were very tough and very strict. My father, at 7pm, everyone had to sit at the dinner table; not 7.05pm. It’s a discipline I bring with me.
“I grew up in the neighbourhood; Cuban society then was playing a lot in the street,
fighting in the street, surviving daily. The only boxing gym there was two blocks from my house. One day at eight or nine years old, I started to watch the fights there; every Tuesday and Saturday they had cards. I started to love it – I didn’t know why, the adrenaline was pumping – and I said to myself ‘This is my choice’. “Boxing, in that time, was only for the lower classes. My parents wanted me to be an engineer like my brother, father, grandfather; they were hoping one day I can be a worker at the American base, but I took a different way. “My mother could not understand [why] I loved boxing. Still I kept fighting, and hiding [it]; my mother started to beat me. But one time she said ‘If that’s what you like to do, there’s one condition – if you stay in school I’ll allow you to do what you love’. “I graduated from school [in Santiago de Cuba] at 20, and my coach there saw my potential as a trainer. I’d been lucky to train [as a fighter] around the best trainers in southern Cuba, where the real quality is. Jose Maria Chivas, a legendary trainer in Cuba, is the one who really saw my potential. “I went to university and did my ➤
masters degree [in sport and science], but at the same time was asked to work with the team in Guantanamo, working already with Olympic gold medallists. I started to train them. I worked with Felix Savon, Joel Casamayor, and so many more. Everything got serious from then.
“I was [soon] giving boxing seminars all around the world. The Cuban government used this as a kind of propaganda in the 1980s. After the 1984 Olympics in LA, because Cuba did not go – they killed many dreams, it was the cold war and it was bad for Cuban fighters – Cuba tried to sell their system, by sending us.
“I started going to Mexico, to Venezuela, and then in 1986 to North Korea. We spent 18 months in North Korea working with the national team [in Pyongchang] – it was very difficult. The system; what I learnt in that time, the Cubans complain, but I realised we were living free. North Korea was crazy, and I suppose it’s not changed. I could not refuse; no way. But it was a challenge for me; I’ve loved challenge, all my life.”
Following Salas’ return to Cuba, he was re-deployed to Pakistan, where from 1989 he spent three years in Islamabad and Karachi preparing the national team for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, after which he unexpectedly and finally began to work with pros and truly became his own man.
“Working with Pakistan I went to Thailand many times, and I met my Thai [ex] wife there, in Bangkok,” explains Salas, fluent in English, Thai, Japanese and Cubano and who soon turns 61. “After that, the Thai government requested my services, but the Cuban government said ‘No’.
“I defected to Thailand, from Barcelona to Bangkok. I was offered a job in a boxing gym; I’d been very honest about defecting, and told them I’d never seen a professional fighter in my life. They gave me a house and I started to work like crazy.
“I suffered a lot. I’d been without a passport, and was in Thailand illegally. When my fighters had to fight in Japan or the US, I could never go. The Thai government [having later been recruited to work with the Thai national team] asked Cuba for help with different sports, not boxing. They said ‘If you have Salas, we will not help you’, so I lost my job. I had three kids in Thailand [Salas also has four children living in the US and another in Cuba], and had no job.
“My case went to the UN human rights [council] – I didn’t go back to Cuba until six days last year – and they pushed the Cuban government to give me a passport, because at that time I was not Cuban, not American, not Thai, nothing.”
Opportunities gradually arose in first Japan, where while living in both Tokyo and Osaka Salas met his present wife Kotomi, and then later in Sydney and Perth with
Danny Green before – almost inevitably – he gradually worked his way further west and began to train not only some of his compatriots, but in Odlanier Solis, one who as an amateur had defeated Haye.
“In 2008 I went to Hamburg in Germany, when I was asked to work with Gamboa, Solis and [Yan] Barthelemy, and split my time between Australia, Bangkok, and Hamburg,” the trainer explained. “Then in 2009 I went to Miami, and worked with Gamboa, [Erislandy] Lara and Solis, after with Rigondeaux, and then split time between Miami and Germany.
“After this, I decided to stay in the US and not move any more. I was very successful in Asia but if someone wants to succeed as a boxer or trainer you have to get recognition in the US. I’d analyse many coaches – Freddie Roach, Robert Garcia, Virgil Hunter, Manny Steward, Buddy Mcgirt, ‘I can kick their ass’. It’s a mentality, no? I’m very competitive.
“Then [the late] Rafael Garcia, a friend of mine for many, many years, it was his advice. ‘Salas, come to Vegas; I can introduce you to many people’. At that time it was no good for me economically, but I went to Vegas, and then many fighters started to come. I live from boxing, it’s the only thing I do.”
Of the finest he has worked with, he recalls: “When [Rigondeaux] hit me with the first punch, ‘Oh, amazing’. When we’d start camp, he doesn’t like to spar. ‘Are you f**king crazy? You go for a title without sparring? You have to spar’. He’d do his sparring, and in the fight, from rounds one-to-five he didn’t want to do anything. He likes to play a game; he’s a great, great fighter, but [could have been a lot more]. “I hated the guys around Gamboa – hated it, the egos. I like to always be in the back seat. Gamboa was an amazing fighter. Amazing. Unfortunately, great fighter, great, great fighter – and we had such a good connection – but I cannot control your personal life. They make their own decisions. “Savon is no human. He’s like a machine – it’s like Joe Joyce, he’s so powerful, so big, and so many things at the same time. If Cuba had gone to the ‘88 Olympics, he’d have got a fourth [gold medal]. The first punch he threw in his life was with me. I was the one who made Savon.” If the Savon blueprint is used on Joyce, with Haye it will be that of Venezuela’s Linares, once brought to Salas with a view to becoming a trainer in the belief that his days as a fighter had passed, and who chose to remain in Vegas to prepare for Lomachenko when Salas’ commitments meant he was bound to the UK.
“Cuban and Venezuelan [fighters] have very similar styles; Linares was lucky to find me, and I was lucky to find him, because he’s a really talented guy,” said Salas, who has trained 19 professional world champions. “Because he started very early as a professional at 17, 18, he just matured late, so people didn’t see his real potential.
“More than disappointed, I feel sorry, because this is the fight of his life. The winner will be the pound-for-pound [number one]. Linares is a very good fighter; Lomachenko is a great fighter as well, but the one who brings the better game plan will be the winner. Linares is the bigger guy, experienced, has very good ringcraft, more power. How he uses those attributes during the fight is the question. It’s a shame we cannot be together for this fight but I wish him the best from the bottom of my heart.
“We need to get a good win on May 5. It’s no secret David’s a very, very talented fighter; he is a cruiserweight fighting at heavyweight; he’s had injuries because he’s fighting with somebody heavier than him. But we’ve been very careful, had very, very good quality sparring, and we will get a good win. If he wins, then you’re talking about the biggest fights [against Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury]. In Joyce, I saw the potential to be a world champion.
“Many people say ‘Haye cannot succeed’; so many; ‘You’re f**king crazy; you’re nuts’. But I didn’t come here to waste my time. We need to beat Bellew, and then whatever comes his way. Before his injury last time he was very good, he was ready; beautiful; amazing; because of that I said ‘I can make it [work]’.”
‘I FEEL SORRY THAT I’M NOT THERE FOR LINARES WHEN HE FIGHTS LOMA, THIS IS THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE’