It was bound to happen eventually.
For Joe Goossen, it’s been 44 years since he opened the Ten Goose Boxing gym in Van Nuys, California; 38 years since the first time one of his fighters became a world champion; and 21 years since he uttered boxing’s most iconic trainer-to-fighter F-bomb while coaching Diego Corrales to victory in quite possibly the greatest fight ever.
Goossen is 72 years old and a 2023 inductee of the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He’s a genuine boxing lifer.
So you had to figure it was only a matter of time.
At some point, somebody somewhere in this crazy sport was bound to find a negative word to say about him.
That moment arrived last month, at the official press conference in Los Angeles for the Mario Barrios-Ryan Garcia fight, when Garcia took aim at his former trainer – who is now Barrios’ chief second.
By all accounts, it was Garcia who terminated his professional relationship with Goossen, and not the other way around. Nevertheless, “KingRy” had T-shirts printed up for the presser labeling Goossen a “traitor” for accepting a job with Barrios and insisted, “You broke my heart, Joe.”
It was awkward. It was uncomfortable. And it was alarming because – well, it’s hard to remember a time before this when anyone talked crap to Goossen or attempted to portray him as the bad guy.
That’s not to say Goossen is a perfect person (he, of course, is not) or that he has never wronged anyone (assuredly he has).
But, after a lifetime working in a sport themed around combativeness and aggression, a sport where there are hardly any rules of decorum, a sport where capitalism prevails and most people will say or do anything to make an extra buck, Joe Goossen still has about as close to a 100% approval rating as anyone.
And he was as caught off guard by Garcia’s stated disdain for him as the rest of us.
“Look, I mean, the split with Ryan was very amicable,” Goossen insisted when we spoke on Friday night, as he rode back to his Vegas Strip hotel from a post-training-session dinner. “Ryan wanted to go in another direction, and there were no harsh words. Since then we’ve engaged many, many times on very friendly terms.
“Ryan did a couple of his internet spots with his buddies at my gym just a few months ago before this, before I got hired by Mario, so it wasn’t like we had any adversarial terms. I took him and some of his buddies out to dinner that night when he filmed in my gym. Whenever I ran into him when I was doing broadcasting work on the Amazon or Fox shows and he was in the crowd, we’d always find each other and we’d hug and talk, and it was all friendly.
“But, where we’re at now is Ryan made it very clear that he’s not happy that I’m training Mario Barrios. But, I mean, it’s been a number of years since I trained Ryan, and I gotta work, you know.
“All I can say is, I think I made it very clear I hold no animosity towards him or his family, or anybody else, for that matter. I don’t have any enemies in this game. They might consider me one, but I don’t have any enemies in this game.”
Is it possible, I asked Goossen, that Garcia was just putting on a show, creating an antagonistic subplot to help attract attention and sell pay-per-views ahead of this Saturday’s fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas?
“No, I don’t think so,” Goossen replied. “Would it be accurate to say that Ryan’s a showman, and he’s good at being one? Yeah, I believe so. But, Ryan, he’s got emotions. I think there’s probably a lot of truth to how he says he feels. But beyond that … I can’t get into some of these deepest, darkest depths of his life and his mind and tell you exactly what he’s thinking.”
Rather than spend too much time playing amateur psychologist, Goossen’s primary focus at the moment is on playing professional pugilistic strategist.
Goossen has experience facing his former fighters. He led Joel Casamayor to a win over Corrales in 2003, then was in the Corrales corner when “Chico” won the 2004 rematch. But he finds himself downplaying the advantages Barrios will enjoy as a direct result of Goossen’s time spent with Garcia (three professional fights in 2022-23, plus a relationship dating back to Garcia’s teenage amateur years).
“I don’t think we have to be intimately involved with somebody’s training camp to know how they fight and what their weaknesses and strengths are. I think you can know that stuff just by being observant,” Goossen said. “My dad used to say, ‘You don't have to jump off a bridge to know it’s gonna hurt.’ So, I don't really have to train him to know what he does.
“Do I have a little bit more of an insight than your average Joe? Yes, I do. Whether it’s going to be helpful or not, though, I don't know, because the reality is, it’s quite obvious what Ryan does. He’s not a multifaceted offensive guy. He does what he does, and he does it well. He’s very fast, and I can tell you he hits very hard, and he’s very athletic. He’s been doing this his whole life. This is not something he just picked up recently. He’s been doing this since he was a little kid. He’s going to be a formidable opponent.”
When we close our eyes and picture Garcia throwing punches, surely his left hook is the first thing we see – particularly if our mind’s eye envisions his 2024 fight with Devin Haney.
So the outsider’s instinct might be to say that priority number one in the Barrios-Goossen corner is to protect against the left hook.
Goossen, however, views such thinking as something of a trap.
“Ryan’s got two arms and two legs, and I don’t discount one hand for the other,” Goossen said. “Does he like using the left hook more than his right hand? Yeah, because that’s the hand that’s closest to you. And he likes to have you walk into that thing if possible. But I do know Ryan's right hand is good, too. Believe me, he’s got strength in both hands. I think his left hook is probably his go-to punch, but I haven’t neglected to work on defending against the right hand as well.
“And if you’re in a boxing stance, and your hands are spread apart to protect against hooks and crosses, well, we’ve got to close that gap up. A guy can come up the middle with a right uppercut or a left uppercut. You have to address defensively every punch that could be thrown at you. If you haven’t practiced closing the middle up, you’re really not doing yourself a favor.
“So when I’m working with somebody in the gym, I’m not just going, ‘Hey, watch out for the left hand.’ You’ve got to keep the left hand up for the right hand coming. You’ve got to keep your elbows in there because you don’t want to get hit right on the liver. You’ve got to be able to put your arms together to close up the middle. You’ve got to cover all your bases, as best as you can.”
Even though this is Goossen and Barrios’ first fight together – Barrios was previously with Bob Santos, his chief second for the welterweight beltholder’s back-to-back draws in ’24 and ’25 against Abel Ramos and Manny Pacquiao – they’ve had plenty of time to get in sync and develop a rapport.
By fight night, they will have been training for Garcia for one week shy of three months. The fight wasn’t made official until January, but all parties knew it was coming well before that. And whereas a big-fight training camp these days typically lasts about eight weeks, Barrios hired Goossen and relocated to SoCal at the start of December, where they spent the whole month getting to know each other prior to the formal start of camp.
Goossen sees that extra month as a huge difference-maker. He got Barrios acclimated to his gym and how all the different stations on the floor there work. They worked on “tightening the screws on offense and defense,” according to Goossen. They worked on technique, in part with the intent of bringing out a little more of Barrios’ power (he’s gone the 12-round distance in each of his last four fights).
Then came January, and blending that floor work with sparring. Barrios sparred up to six days a week. “El Azteca” got in six rounds of sparring last Friday, the day Goossen spoke to BoxingScene. The plan was for this Monday to be his last day of sparring – “we’ll just take a little light batting practice,” Goossen said – before tapering down training and getting Barrios properly rested for fight night.
“It’s a camp that I don’t look back on going, ‘Damn, I wish we had more time,’” Goossen said. “I think we had an extraordinary amount of time. I was able to take my time and introduce concepts and different techniques.”
With camp winding down, Goossen marvels at two physical aspects of his fighter: his stamina and his size.
“His gas tank is unbelievable,” Goossen said. “I put fighters through their paces. If you can keep up with my routine, it says something. And it kind of amazed me, Mario wasn’t huffing and puffing, even when I was pushing him just a couple weeks into the training camp. He has a very controlled breathing pattern, where I never saw him huff and puff.
“And then the other thing is Mario is a big dude,” Goossen continued. The trainer noted that his first champ, Michael Nunn, who held belts from 160 to 175lbs and stands about 6-foot-2, visited Ten Goose at one point in the camp. “Mike came in the gym, stood next to Mario and goes, ‘Joe, he looks bigger than most of the middleweights I fought.’ And he does. He’s a big welterweight.”
Barrios is listed at six feet – three inches taller than Garcia – but he appears to have no problem making welterweight. At the weight check 14 days out from the fight, the Texan scaled 153lbs, and seven days out, he submitted a video showing that he was at 150.6.
“He’s a total pro,” Goossen gushed. “And we’re just on the same wavelength. I like working with people who think like me, and Mario is that kind of person.”
Trainer-fighter relationships come and go in boxing, and right now Goossen has a thriving one with Barrios and a decidedly strained one with Garcia.
But one thing that never seems to change, even in his fifth decade of doing this at the world-class level, is Goossen’s passion for this work.
“I go to the gym every day,” Goossen said. “I don’t like sitting at home. My best friends go, ‘Hey, let’s go golfing. I say, ‘Nah, I gotta go to the gym.’ I feel at home when I’m at the gym. I love being there. I love being with the guys. They keep me feeling young. They keep me in shape. It’s camaraderie.
“I’ve played sports my whole life, I had brothers who were pro athletes. And I always dreaded having to go to a job. Well, I’ve got my dream job. I get to play sports every day.
“And no matter how many times I’ve done it, no matter how many big fight nights like this I’ve been a part of, it’s still exciting to me. Maybe I’ve changed a little, in terms of I’m experienced enough that I’m able to channel all the youthful butterflies better. But I still get those butterflies. I still love the competition.
“I love the life. I love doing this. I’ll never get tired of it.”
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.
