CLEARLY Jeff Horn’s team-mate have their own methods. They came to fruition when he shocked Manny Pacquiao to win the WBO welterweight title last year. His reign came to an end beneath the merciless fists of Terence Crawford earlier this month.
But his trainer, Glenn Rushton pointed to a particular problem that undermined him. Bringing one pair of shoes and getting blisters. Bad blisters.
“It sounds like excuses, but unfortunately he got really bad blisters over here,” Rushton told RSN radio on Tuesday. “He made a mistake and he only packed one pair of shoes so he was a pair short. He forgot his training shoes so his dad went out and bought him a new pair of Nikes here but they just gave him horrendous blisters.
“Two days before the fight I was up squeezing huge amounts of liquid out of these blisters on his feet just so he could move because he could hardly move for the last four or five days out here. Just intense pain so it was very frustrating, but it’s one of those things.
“A mistake on Jeff’s part not to bring that second pair of shoes across.”
Promoter Bob Arum did not find the explanation particularly convincing. Providing a dose of scepticism, or reality, he told the Talkbox podcast, “The Australian fighters conduct themselves different from our guys. Our guys would never — even if that were the case — they would never make an excuse like that. Because with Federal Express, it would take a day to get the shoes sent over. And Horn was here for 10 days. And what, is he waking up and suddenly getting blisters the night of the fight? He was training for 10 days here and there weren’t any blisters?”
