Boxing’s 10 Greatest Trainers

Eddie Futch was a former amateur with a 37-3 record. He frequently sparred with Joe Louis despite being a much smaller man. When he decided to turn professional, doctors refused him a license due to a heart murmur, so Futch instead delved into the training world, where he left a legendary impact on so many greats.

After a few decades as a trainer, Futch produced his first World Champion, Don Jordan, in 1958. His most famous student was Joe Frazier. Futch is responsible for the legendary bob and weave style Frazier relentlessly fought with, using his size disadvantage to favour him. This style helped Frazier to defeat Ali in the ‘Fight of the Century’.

Futch would go on to become Ali’s kryptonite, training Ken Norton and masterminding the game plan to defeat Ali once more. He also trained Riddick Bowe all the way from his debut to the heavyweight crown.

Futch worked with so many great fighters. His students also include: Alexis Arguello, Bob Foster, Marlon Starling, Virgil Hill, Wayne McCullough, Trevor Berbick, Freddie Roach, Mike McCallum, Bobby Chacon, Mike Spinks, Larry Holmes and many others.

Futch’s impact on boxing training is so strong that the Trainer of the Year award is named after him. A true genius of the sport, Futch also tutored fellow top 10 all-time trainers like Freddie Roach and George Benton.

From the 1920s to the 1980s, Ray Arcel trained and was involved in the training of so many all-time greats. He has directly worked with four of my top 10 greatest of all time. His resume is ridiculous.

Arcel was the trainer of boxing’s two greatest lightweights in history, taking charge of a prime Duran throughout his lightweight reign and win over Ray Leonard, as well as training the legendary Benny Leonard.

He was also the trainer of another fellow top 10 all-time great Ezzard Charles, cornering Charles when he defeated the great Joe Louis and worked with Henry Armstrong in the 1930s.

But these are just his biggest names: Arcel’s first world champion, Frankie Genaro, defeated the Manny Pacquiao of his time, Filipino legend Pancho Villa (Villa defeated Jimmy Wilde). He would also train bantamweight champion Abe Goldstein as well as working with all time greats, Barney Ross, Tony Zale, Jackie Kid Berg, Ceferino Garcia, Kid Gavilán and many others.

The last boxer he worked with was none other than a prime Larry Holmes for the huge Gerry Cooney fight. Arcel was extremely well respected and considered a very likeable man, even spending years out of boxing due to the mob control in the sport. He died at 94 years old in 1994. Robert De Niro portrayed Arcel in the Duran Biopic ‘Hands of Stone’.

Emanuel Steward is boxing royalty. He never boxed professionally but supposedly had just under 100 amateur fights, winning most. He was an excellent commentator; his work on the Gatti-Ward fight never fails to send shivers down my spine, and his ‘Oh My God’ in the Ortiz-Berto fight is a personal favourite.

But it was his work as a trainer that solidified him as a true legend. His Kronk gym became legendary, with their first global superstar being Tommy Hearns, who was an amateur with very few KOs before Steward turned him into a formidable KO machine.

Steward not only stabilised the careers of Wladimir Klitschko and Lennox Lewis but also made them extremely dominant champions. Many a legend donned the iconic Yellow Kronk shorts. In total, Steward trained a staggering 41 world champions.

Steward was a father figure and a master technician who, despite usually being dwarfed by his giant heavyweights, still always worked the mitts with his fighters. He was by all accounts a fantastic, generous human being and sadly passed away too soon at the age of 68.

Here are a few of the many great fighters Steward trained: Wladimir Klitschko, Lennox Lewis, Tommy Hearns, Julio Cesar Chavez, Michael Moorer, Adonis Stevenson, Jermain Taylor, Mike McCallum, Evander Holyfield, Mark Breland, Oscar De La Hoya, James Toney, Andy Lee, Gerald McClellan, Gaby Canizales, John David Jackson, Johnathon Banks, Milton McCrory and so many others.

Cus D’Amato had just three fighters throughout his tenure. All three would become world champions and Hall of Famers.

Cus was a true philosopher who knew perfectly how to engage his pupils psychologically and get the best out of them. His quotes on fear and how to overcome it and use it are amongst his most legendary. He was an extremely clever man who understood human psychology like very few others.

D’Amato is one of the few coaches in history to design and implement his own unique boxing style, the Peekaboo style, that would go on to be adopted by millions. He would also nurture two great trainers, Teddy Atlas and Kevin Rooney.

He has the unique achievement of training not just one but the two youngest heavyweight champions of the world simultaneously: Floyd Patterson (21) and Mike Tyson (20). His work with Tyson is extraordinary, turning an overweight, troubled child into the most menacing man in boxing. 

Under D’Amato, Tyson studied fighters from every era and even conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan & Napoleon Bonaparte to condition his psyche to dominate.

D’Amato’s third student, alongside Patterson and Tyson was one of boxing’s finest light-heavyweights, the hall of Famer Jose Torres.

Once Cus died, Tyson’s career soon fell into turmoil, furthermore showing the gigantic presence he had on his fighters.

Angelo Dundee was the man behind boxing’s most iconic & greatest heavyweight champion ever, Muhammad Ali. Dundee never liked to mould his fighters to a particular style; instead, he tried to enhance what they were naturally good at.

His first champion was the legendary brawler Carmen Basilio, cornering him in his title win over De Marco and victory over Sugar Ray Robinson.

He guided Muhammad Ali at Miami’s iconic 5th Street gym from very early on in his career up to the very end, saving Ali from trouble in vital moments, most notably tearing the glove when Henry Cooper heavily dropped a young Ali (then Clay) at the end of the round, providing Ali vital seconds of recovery.

After Ali’s retirement, Dundee cornered Sugar Ray Leonard in huge fights against Wilfred Benitez and the other Four Kings. He will always be remembered for his legendary quote, ‘You’re blowing it, son’ to Leonard, who was down on the cards to Tommy Hearns in the 13th round. Ray came out and blasted Hearns away with blistering combinations.

He was also in the corner with former Ali foe, the great George Foreman, guiding George to become the oldest heavyweight champion in history.

Dundee also worked with Wilfredo Gomez, Jimmy Ellis, Jose Napoles, Luis Rodríguez, Willie Pastrano and many others. He passed away at 90, with a tremendous reputation as a legendary trainer and a good man.

Nacho Beristain is a genius. His most well-known boxers, who he moulded into a particularly beautiful and elite technical style, are Juan Manuel Marquez and Ricardo Lopez. Marquez and Lopez have extremely similar styles in the way they deliver their blows in a loopy-like way, generally boxing and moving from a wide stance with a high guard. 

He also trained Juan Manuel’s brother, the extremely tough champion Rafael Marquez, Humberto Gonzalez and Gilberto Roman. Moulding each fighter into a World Level Boxer.

His first World Champion was the Hall of Famer Daniel Zaragoza. Across his career, Beristain trained 20 World Champions, his most notable students being Juan Manuel Marquez, Ricardo Lopez, Oscar De La Hoya, Rafael Marquez, Jorge Arce, Daniel Zaragoza, Humberto Gonzalez, Johnny Gonzalez, Abner Mares, Jorge Paez, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, Rey Vargas and many others. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2006.

In the early 2010s, Freddie Roach was the hottest trainer in the boxing world. His now-famous Wildcard Gym was littered with elite-level talent and became one of the most successful gyms in the world.

Roach was a brawling fighter in his own career, holding a 40-13 (15 KOs) record. He was trained by the legendary Eddie Futch and, like many others on this list, learned his trade in the coaching world under Futch’s tutelage.

His greatest achievement is guiding a strong, relatively unknown Filipino called Manny Pacquiao from a predominantly one-handed slugger into an eight-division world champion and one of the greatest boxers of all time.

He also had a very successful run with Amir Khan, winning two titles under Roach’s watch and revitalised Miguel Cotto’s career, opting to revert to Cotto’s more body punching style, winning the middleweight crown. He guided Ruslan Provodnikov to a title. In total, Freddie has trained over 25 World Champions.

He encourages an aggressive style of fighting and has improved many boxers into world-level fighters.

Freddie’s most notable boxers have been: Manny Pacquiao, Amir Khan, Ruslan Provodnikov, Steve Collins, Virgil Hill, Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, Jorge Linares, Viktor Postol, James Toney, Israel Vazquez, Johnny Tapia, Scott Quigg, Michael Moorer, Wayne McCullough, Guillermo Rigondeaux and over 10 other champions.

As a fighter in the early 1900s, Jack Blackburn fought some of the greatest fighters of all time. He battled Sam Langford six times, Harry Greb, Joe Gans and many others.

But as a trainer, he was known for being the brains behind Joe Louis’s record-breaking reign as heavyweight champion, moulding Joe into a technically perfect, patient, aggressive KO machine.

Blackburn also worked with World Champions Jersey Joe Walcott, Sammy Mendell, Bud Taylor and John Henry Lewis.

A true legend between the ropes and in the corner. He both fought against and guided boxing’s greatest-ever fighters.

As a professional fighter, George Benton was pure poetry. The pioneer of the now legendary and extremely popular ‘Philly Shell’, all of the younger generation who I see adopting Floyd’s shoulder roll have to pay George Benton a lot of credit for making that style so successful.

In a 20-year career from the 50s to the 70s, Benton beat numerous World Champions, winning 61 out of 75 fights. But he really cemented himself as a true boxing Hall of Famer when he became a coach. Benton favoured the sweet science of hitting and not getting hit back.

He was in Joe Frazier’s corner alongside Eddie Futch in the Thirlla in Manilla vs Muhammad Ali and it was the legendary Eddie Futch who Benton studied the art of coaching under. He was also in Leon Spinks’s corner when Spinks defeated Muhammad Ali.

In his own training career, he worked alongside the legendary Pernell Whitaker, Evander Holyfield, Meldrick Taylor, Oliver McCall and Mike McCallum.

Benton, from his own fighting experience, was able to give intriguing insight that others may have missed. In Meldrick Taylor’s excellent showing against Julio Cesar Chavez, you can notice Benton foreseeing that Chavez’s work is beginning to wear Taylor down and warning Taylor of this in the corner. Chavez would eventually come back and win via KO with three seconds left on the clock in the final round.

Lou Duva lived for boxing, he was a former amateur fighter, a great promoter with ‘Main Events’ and a manager of the year winner – but most notably, an excellent coach.

Across his career, he trained an array of dominant champions, most notably cornering Evander Holyfield during his transition from Cruiserweight Champion to Heavyweight Champion and Pernell Whitaker, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In total, he was responsible for preparing 19 different World Champions for their bouts. I always remember his reaction to Richard Steele’s extremely controversial stoppage in the Taylor vs Chavez fight.

Most of Duva’s fighters fought with an aggressive, exciting style under his tutelage. In total, Duva trained 19 World Champions, the most notable names being: Evander Holyfield, Pernell Whitaker, Michael Moorer, Arturo Gatti, Meldrick Taylor, Mark Breland, Lennox Lewis, Joey Giardello, Rocky Lockridge, Bobby Czyz, Hector Camacho, Andrew Golota, David Tua, Vinny Paz, Mike McCallum and Tony Tucker.