George aims to show big win was no fluke
Unbeaten Worthing grad takes shot at stopping prospect Escudero again
Plenty of fans watch sports from the couch and boast to their friends that they could do what they’re watching on the living room TV.
Joe George actually did it. As a basketball player at Houston’s Worthing High School and briefly at Temple College, George, who will defend his perfect record in a light heavyweight rematch against Marcos Escudero on Saturday night on Showtime, watched all of Floyd Mayweather’s fights. When he became frustrated with the lack of progress in his basketball career, George walked into a Central Texas boxing gym near his school, laced up a pair of gloves and tried to imitate everything he’d seen Mayweather do throughout his illustrious career.
George’s Mayweather impersonation was good enough for others in the gym to ask the newcomer how many pro fights he’d had.
“I guess I was doing pretty good,” George said. “Really, I was just looking for something different and looking for a way to possibly make some money. As soon as I walked into the gym, it felt like it might work out.”
This isn’t an overnight success story, though.
George stepped into that gym as a 20-year-old and fought in the amateurs for five years.
It’s also not the story of some neophyte with a horseshoe sticking out of his back pocket, lucking his way into a few professional fights.
George put in the work and turned himself into a polished boxer. He was good enough to win the National Golden Gloves in 2015, which opened the door to a pro career and begin to make some of that money he was seeking when he wandered into that gym in 2010.
Now, after years of fighting in places like Houston’s Arabian Shrine Center off Harwin or the gym that usually hosts Booker T’s pro wrestling shows in Texas City, George finds himself at Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun Arena ready to fight on his second straight Showtime card.
“To me, I’m just fighting, man,” said George, who turns 31 Friday. “I’m honored to be on Showtime again. That’s a blessing. As far as the big stage, it really doesn’t make a difference to me. I’ll fight anywhere.
We’re just two guys fighting. We both have a head, two hands, two feet. We bleed the same. We’re just two guys who are going to give it our best and that’s it.”
George (10-0, 6 KOs) and Escudero (10-1, 9 KOs) put on an action-packed fight in their previous meeting in November, which was featured on Showtime’s lesserknown ShoBox series.
Escudero, who was thought to be a rising prospect out of Argentina, was the way busier fighter, averaging 91 punches per round. The average output for a light heavyweight is 52 punches, which is on par with what George did in the fight.
However, Escudero landed just 19 percent of those shots, according to Compubox, while George connected at a 30-percent clip. George also appeared to have Escudero hurt badly in the ninth round with Escudero suddenly stopping his seemingly never-ending assault to hold on to George in order to regain his wits.
Escudero, and even Showtime’s ringside announcers, were shocked at the judges’ decision, which had George winning seven of the fight’s 10 rounds on two scorecards and narrowly losing on the third.
“We know deep down inside who won the fight,” Escudero said Wednesday. “He knows he lost the fight. I know I did enough work to get the victory. He knows I beat him, but it’s boxing. It’s a game, and we’ll show (who’s the better fighter) Saturday.”
George laughs off anyone questioning the legitimacy of the biggest win of his career.
“I know the people who don’t know a lot about the science of boxing, maybe they thought that I lost or that the fight could have gone either way, but I think it was obvious that I did enough to win the fight,” said George, who is managed by seven-time Pro Bowl offensive lineman Trent Williams and trains at Williams’ O Athletik gym in Houston. “He threw a thousand punches, but they weren’t effective. Nineteen percent landed out of a thousand punches? That’s not good. The punches he did land, didn’t hurt me. I hurt him. I feel like I could do exactly what I did last fight and still get the win, but I’ll show even more this time.”
After George had his armed raised in victory over Escudero, he immediately jumped on the ropes and shouted at a stunned Iowa crowd, “What’s my name?” The global pandemic ensures there won’t be any crowd for George to exhort Saturday night, but he hopes to make an impression on people watching on TV like other pros did for him when he was just a kid with hoop dreams.
“Oh yeah, I expect to put on a show,” George said. “I’ll be taking it round-by-round, trying to win every round as they come, but I think the percentages of me scoring a knockout are pretty high.”