By Elliot Worsell
WHEN heavyweight Vladimir Virchis turned up in Northern Cyprus in the middle of the afternoon, he could see no better way of spending the remainder of his day than by the pool; azure blue, glistening, waiting. It was punishingly hot, you see, somewhere in the mid-thirties, and Virchis had soon discovered that around this pool were numerous sun loungers, each seemingly anticipating his arrival, stopping just short of calling his name.
With nobody to answer to, the Ukrainian did what most would do in that moment. He dropped off his stuff, stripped down to his shorts, and would remain on one of these sun loungers for the rest of the afternoon. To then ease the guilt of doing nothing, or his own lassitude, he reminded himself that he had only just arrived from Germany and that the important thing now was to relax and rejuvenate his weary limbs. More than that, he reminded himself that this was essentially a day off and that it was imperative he was fresh and ready to go the next day, which is when sparring duties – the very reason for his arrival – would begin.
With this in mind, he did what he felt needed to be done. He got horizontal, he closed his eyes, and he started to relax. He then became so relaxed it wasn’t long before he was asleep, fated to outlast all the others around the pool who had once had a similar idea to him but, unlike Virchis, had places to go and people to see.
Alas, when the giant finally woke up, he did so feeling anything but a man who had endured a deep and relaxing post-flight sleep. Instead, his enormous body, Ukrainian pale and exposed all afternoon, appeared to be on fire. His face, too.
If the extreme physical pain Virchis was now experiencing wasn’t enough, what made the’ situation all the more uncomfortable was that he knew he would soon suffer the added pain – or indignity – of having to explain himself to his employers. Mere hours after landing, in fact, he would find himself standing before his employers and telling them both what had happened – that he had fallen asleep by the pool and suffered severe sunburn – and that the prospect of being punched the following day by a heavyweight was analogous to torture.
He would try to imagine it, and even try to pretend it could still happen, but one attempt to put on his groin guard had Virchis wincing back to the airport less than 24 hour after touching down. He took with him both the groin guard he could no longer wear and the rounds he was supposed to give David Haye in his ramshackle Cyprus gym. Gone, too, was the thousand euros a week Virchis was due to be paid for his services.
Certainly, of all the training camp and sparring stories I have witnessed firsthand, the one about the late Vladimir Virchis and his all-over sunburn was the hardest one to comprehend. He did, after all, have just one job to do and in that job he had failed, rather dramatically. Only he had failed not by any traditional measure or reason. He had failed, simply, because he saw his duty as sparring partner also as a holiday; an opportunity to soak up the sun he was clearly not getting at home in Germany.
Wladimir Klitschko during a sparring session (Alex Menendez/Getty Images)
As for the other reasons boxers get sent home from sparring, these tend to be more conventional, predictable, and easily understood. The most common one, which I have also witnessed, is a consequence of a boxer either (a) being badly hurt or knocked out in sparring or (b) being unable to offer the required amount of threat when the time comes.
This is a call usually made by the trainer who arranged the sparring for his boxer and will be one they make having measured the money they are paying the sparring partner in question against the quality of work they are bringing to the ring. Sometimes, a sparring partner will be sent home because they are not as fit as they claimed to be when accepting the task, while at other times they will be sent home because they are overwhelmed by the task itself and incapable of testing the trainer’s boxer the way the trainer hoped they would be tested. It is in that scenario you will hear of sparring partners being offered money – a bonus of sorts – to successfully score a knockdown, or, as I witnessed in one sparring session, a boxer “too nice for his own good” cajoled with money just to keep throwing his right hand at someone he didn’t want to hurt. (A tenner for each right thrown appeared to be the deal.)
In booking sparring partners, which for a brief time is something I did, you have to be conscious of a boxer’s recent form, the degree of wear and tear, their inactivity, and also their greed, for invariably boxers will between fights look to accept sparring gigs just to be paid sizeable chunks of money while waiting for their next proper payday. If they can also cross seas to collect this money, many will consider the gig a holiday, with some known to ask whether they can bring their own trainer, a friend, or even their partner along with them to quote-unquote keep them company.
Ultimately, it’s the people booking the sparring partners who will have the final say; the final say, that is, not only on money and travel and accommodation, but also the kind of sparring they want from this arrangement. For instance, if they want them to spar a particular way in order for them to mimic an opponent, that is precisely what is being bought, regardless of how the sparring partner would normally fight. They are, in that sense, no more than mimics, sparring partners.
This is something the good ones understand, which is why they will usually be brought back again and again. It is also something the bad ones can never fully grasp and why sometimes even good fighters – very good ones – don’t make good sparring partners. Mimicry, after all, requires a dismantling of the ego and not all boxers are able to humbly play second fiddle in that way when it comes to sparring. Some will simply be too ambitious to pretend to be anything other than themselves. Others, meanwhile, will see “helping out” as a weakness and will therefore try to instead prove something, especially if sparring a boxer deemed to be further along in their professional career.
Jai Opetaia (Getty Images)
This morning (January 22) news broke that Jai Opetaia, the cruiserweight champion from Australia, had been “sent home” after sparring just five rounds with Tyson Fury, the heavyweight champion, in Saudi Arabia. No news at all really, it nevertheless led to countless people “reporting” on it, all desperate to be first with the “story” and as a result offer no more than speculation and hearsay, as is customary these days. Within just an hour, in fact, there was talk of Opetaia “dropping” Fury in sparring and being been sent home on that account – essentially, disobedience – and talk, also, of Opetaia not giving Fury the kind of work, stylistically, he required ahead of his fight next month against Oleksandr Usyk.
Yet, the truth is, nobody other than those involved will know why Opetaia went home. Most likely, with his own fight apparently just four weeks away, the IBF cruiserweight champion simply chose to focus on his own sparring, and his own camp, and his own career. In other words, while no doubt he appreciated that to be in service of Tyson Fury represents a priceless opportunity, it was also something Jai Opetaia was willing to do only for a short period of time.
“Jai Opetaia has recently returned from Saudi Arabia where he sparred and trained with Tyson Fury,” confirmed his co-promoters Tasman Fighters. “They were fantastic, competitive rounds and an incredible experience for Jai. However, any talk of an elite boxer being dropped is not true. Jai is now back in Australia finalising his preparation to defend his world title and cannot wait to do so in Saudi Arabia.”
