Sometimes the simplest advice is the best advice.
Though Naazim Richardson is remembered by the boxing public for his creative phrasing, his dynamic analogies, his aphorisms that, like a perfect pop song, can sound instantly familiar even though you’re hearing them for the first time, fellow Philadelphia trainer Stephen “Breadman” Edwards singles out something “Brother Naazim” used to say that was as basic as it gets.
“The best piece of advice I would hear him give young fighters – it’s gonna sound really simple and common,” Edwards recalled this week. “But when a young fighter would walk up to him and ask him something, Naazim’s response always would be, ‘Listen to your coach.’ He always said that. ‘Listen to your coach, young man. Always listen to your coach.’
“It was a constant thing. And it got to a point where all the other trainers in the gym would start to say the same thing: ‘Listen to your coach,’” Edwards continued, referring specifically to the James Shuler Memorial Boxing Gym in West Philadelphia where he and Richardson both worked.
“And I always respected him for saying that, because he was such a popular guy, he had such a high status by being on HBO and Showtime and being a part of big fights – it would have been real easy for him to take another trainer’s fighter. But he never did that. This was a guy that could have stolen a lot of guys’ fighters, but he never did. Naazim did the opposite. He would always tell the young fighters, ‘You need to listen to your coach.’”
Five years ago today, Richardson died at the end of a long, unspecified illness. He was, according to the memorial notice posted by his family at the time, just 54 years old. Other sources reported that he was 55 or 56.
Whatever the exact number, he was gone far too soon. This was one coach whom a lot of fighters would have benefited from listening to for many more years.
Richardson’s greatest success as a trainer came with the finest Philly fighter of the era, Bernard Hopkins. The two men – who were, according to that memorial notice, born in the same year, even though you could be forgiven for guessing B-Hop was a decade younger when you saw them together – met back in the 1980s at Graterford Prison.
Richardson was an assistant trainer in Hopkins’ corner under Bouie Fisher and became head trainer after Hopkins and Fisher had a falling out in 2001. Brother Naazim rose to fame in the boxing world guiding “The Executioner” to wins over Oscar De La Hoya, Antonio Tarver, Kelly Pavlik and Jean Pascal – some of them fights that Hopkins was not expected to win.
But if there’s a single fight Richardson is best known for, it’s one featuring one of his few notable clients who wasn’t from Philly. Naazim was the man in Shane Mosley’s corner who spotted Antonio Margarito’s loaded hand wraps prior to their 2009 fight.
And that wasn’t a one-off fluke; eight years earlier, under Richardson’s watchful eye, Felix Trinidad was forced to re-wrap his hands before his loss to Hopkins because Brother Naazim pointed out to the commission that the wraps did not comply with New York’s standards.
Richardson also trained cruiserweight belt holder Steve Cunningham and assisted in Stephen Fulton’s corner, plus he trained his own twin sons, Tiger and Rock Allen, and his nephew Karl “Dynamite” Dargan.
“I would say he’s one of the best trainers in Philly history overall, and he’s certainly one of the best recent trainers in Philly,” Edwards opined. “Naazim was a terrific amateur trainer as well as a pro trainer. His two sons and Karl Dargan, they had outstanding amateur careers. And in the pros, he was on the big stage several times, and win, lose or draw, his fighters always gave a good account of themselves.”
At the very least, they received memorable advice in the corner.
Richardson’s most spectacular riff was surely the one he laid on Mosley after Round 4 of the Margarito fight. It’s almost as beautiful on the printed page as it was airing live on HBO:
“See, this guy ain’t used to getting it back at the body. Fake that jab, keep popping him up, stab him in his heart, rip around them sides. We gonna show him how he got slowed down. When he hit the pedal, ain’t gonna be no gas in the car at the end of this. Alright? Your combinations, Shane, nobody in this division’s hands as fast as y’all’s. Run them combinations, knock the grease off this dude, and then swim without getting wet. Slide, to your stick. Slide, to your angle.”
Then there was this one, delivered during the 48-year-old Hopkins’ win over Tavoris Cloud:
“When you touch the body, he freezes. I need that short Joe Louis, wipe his nose with the hook. Tip your hat, pop the chain, short Joe Louis, wipe his nose with the hook, short Joe Louis. It’s that simple.”
Swim without getting wet. Short Joe Louis. Wipe his nose with the hook.
These were all instant classics. But Richardson was just as capable of delivering gems to the media.
“You don’t throw a Cadillac away ‘cause it got a dent in it,” Richardson once said in an interview.
“When you were young, you could just go to your machine guns. As you get older, you gotta start planting some land mines,” he philosophized another time.
Then there was the time he remarked that he thought in the moment that spotting the hardened inserts in Margarito’s wraps would backfire:
“I thought Margarito was going to the joint,” he said. “I thought I blew the whole fight.”
Breadman Edwards first met Richardson in 2010 – when the latter was a household name in boxing and the former was just starting out as a trainer.
Edwards notes that Richardson didn’t teach him how to train boxers, but he did teach him how to talk to them and was somewhere between a mentor and a big brother to Breadman.
“He was the only trainer in the gym that was cordial with me when I first started training,” Edwards recalled. “You know, trainers are very territorial, and a lot of the trainers, they just were kind of standoffish to me – didn’t say much to me and would gossip, like, ‘Where did this guy come from?’ And Naazim was always cool with me. He always talked to me. He got my number. He would call me periodically. And, you know, I would like to think we became good friends.
“It’s funny, because he would talk to me so much in the gym it could be a problem. It would be times where, I’ll be trying to work, and he loved to talk so much, and I’d have to kind of get away from him until the workout was over. He could really hold the conversation with you. Like, right in the middle of the work, he’d just start holding the conversation with you.”
That comports with the words of John DiSanto of “Philly Boxing History” – the chairman of the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame, which inducted Richardson in 2014 – who wrote shortly after his death, “Conversations with Richardson were always two-way, but when it came to talking, he had more stamina than anyone and always got in the last word.”
He also got in the first word on two memorable occasions in Edwards’ career. Breadman’s most heralded trainer-fighter relationship is with Julian “J-Rock” Williams, who was knocked out by Jermall Charlo in his first title try in 2016 but who upset Jarrett Hurd in a 2019 thriller in his second attempt at a major belt.
“Naazim was the first person in the locker room when Julian lost to Charlo, and he said, ‘Everything’s gonna be OK, man. You guys will get this back,’” Edwards remembered. “And then, two-and-a-half years later, he was the first person in the locker room when Julian beat Jarrett Hurd.
“And it was one of the last times I saw him, because right after the Hurd fight, he got a little sick, and then the next year he passed away.”
Richardson actually suffered a stroke way back in 2007, when he was still in his early 40s, but he recovered and went on to some of his greatest successes as a trainer. By 2019, though, when Edwards saw him after Williams-Hurd, Breadman could tell Richardson’s motor skills were slowing down.
On July 24, 2020, Richardson’s illness got the best of him. But in the minds of boxing fans, on the pages of YouTube and inside the walls of Shuler’s Gym, his words live on.
And those words span a wide range, from the literal to the figurative.
It is impossible for an aspiring boxer to actually swim without getting wet.
But it shouldn’t be hard at all for a young fighter to listen to his coach.
Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with nearly 30 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.
