Johnathon Banks, Wladimir Klitschko’s trainer, answers our questions. For the full feature don’t miss this week’s magazine.
Last time you spoke to Boxing News, you said you planned on fighting again one day. Is that still the case?
“I can’t say that: I didn’t move on, I didn’t give up. But I can’t answer 100 per cent if I’ll fight again. The desire’s there, and training people has opened my mind up to so many things, I see so many things me and myself was doing wrong, and I’ve even seen a lot of things Emanuel [Steward] was telling me to correct, and I didn’t correct: now I see it even more. I see a whole other thing, so we’ll see what the future holds. But right now I’m not focused on me, I have to focus on what’s in front of me. If you focus too far ahead, you lose something. If I’ve got an armful of groceries, am trying to reach around for the keys, I’m going to drop something. A lot of times, you’ve got to take things one step at a time.
“I believe [I’d be a better fighter now than I was]. After teaching, and you work your butt off, and finally gain the respect that somebody will listen, it makes you more humble, and it’s almost like it teaches you, ‘That’s all I had to do? If I would have just listened I would have been here, would have been here’. It’s different, man: I feel like I’m a 50-year-old man kicking myself: ‘I should have done it when I was younger’. And I’m not an old man, so I can do this.”
Don’t miss this week’s issue of Boxing News magazine for in depth insight into the Klitschko camp
