โWE watched the stoppage nine times.โ It is the morning after Carl Froch has struck down George Groves with a single straight right hand in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium. Paddy Fitzpatrick has been Grovesโ trainer for only two fights, both of them losses to Froch. โI went to see him the very next day,โ Paddy continued. โHe said heโd already watched the stoppage twice. I just kept replaying it and I didnโt plan to do that before I got there. As he was watching it I was trying to be aware of the energy that he was giving off as I was watching it. It wasnโt one of somebody that wanted to turn away or wasnโt ready to face it. He studied it with me. So then I thought, โOkay, let me play it again and play it again.โ I wanted to play it enough times so that it would bring up some emotion.โ
DEAL WITH YOUR EMOTIONS
Fitzpatrickโs style was to address the emotional aspect of defeat first. โWhen a man takes part in an event like he did, the emotions attached to it will come up in you,โ the trainer explained. โTo address it youโve got to think about it. Youโve got to relive it. If youโre reliving it, and youโve got any passion about what youโre doing, thereโll be an emotion attached to it. But us ordinary men implode or fold when that emotion comes up and people such as George donโt. My reason for doing the things I did was to try and bring those emotions up sooner rather than later, because they would come up at some stage. I would prefer they come up early so he has time to think and adjust.โ
BACK IN THE DEEP END
Fitzpatrick took Groves to the Big Bear training camp in America to spar with middleweight Gennady Golovkin, one of the worldโs elite boxers and one of the biggest punchers in the sport. โThat was about trying to bring up the emotions. I wanted him to know, and not wait till fight time to find out, I wanted him to know: โIโm George Groves, this is my level, this is where Iโm at.โ I didnโt tell George thatโs why I was bringing him,โ Paddy continued. โBut I didnโt need to tell George, did I? I wanted George to go out and approach that as he would any sparring and see how he would perform and he performed excellently because he was in with such a high-calibre man as Golovkin and because everything was different, four-minute rounds, 30 secondsโ rest, 100-degree heat.โ
ANALYSE YOUR MISTAKES
The fight with Froch had been close up to the moment Carl delivered the decisive blow. But it would have done Groves no good to dismiss the finish as a fluke. โIt wasnโt a lucky punch,โ Fitzpatrick declared. โThereโs no such thing as a lucky punch. You get in the ring knowing the other manโs trying to hit you in the head. So how is it lucky? Whenever you get hit in boxing, itโs because you made a mistake. But we only watch boxing because guys get hit. So we watch the sport of boxing to watch two of the best guys in the world constantly make mistakes. The art of a great fighter is that he can constantly make adjustments, but some things you donโt have the chance to adjust to.
โIf I, as a coach, allow myself to even believe it was a lucky punch, well then Iโm ignoring something that needs fixing.โWe have to analyse it, without emotion, and make it just a technical thing in order to deal with it. Because it is real, it is technical and it canbe fixed. Whereas something lucky, what can you do with that? You canโt practise to be lucky and you canโt practise to be unlucky. โYou want to take control of it.โ
BECOMING COMPLETE
Fitzpatrick revealed Grovesโ routine during his camp: โIn a typical training day he spends three hours in the gym on his boxing. We get to the gym at 10 in the morning, weโre there till roughly 1, 1.30pm and then he goes and does his runs and that with [conditioning coach Barry OโConnell] and then he will do heavy strength sessions twice a week.
โHe has a rest day from the gym on a Thursday and a Sunday. โHe runs in some form five days of a weekโฆ Some of them are 11-mile runs, some of them are sprint sessions, some of them are five and six-mile hard, hard runs.
โHe will do his sparring, his technique, his mitts, everything that we do [in their morning session]. Every day is slightly different. We do work technique every day but some days are purely technique and some days are a little bit of technique and then hard graft. โOne day might be for working inside, the next day might be weโre working outside, the next day we might punch hardly anything because itโs all about footwork. In order to become a complete fighter youโve got to break it down.โI donโt plan too hard because every day something that he does in the gym will bring upsomething new. โWe have a completion date that we have to be ready by and then how much time we have before that date and then break down the camp into the sections that we need him to take care of.โ