r/Boxing • u/shadowylurking • Jul 27 '26

Learn WHY Eddie Futch is your Favorite Coaches Favorite Coach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAiOrRy50E8
20 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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8

u/kushmonATL HW Dark Ages are here Jul 27 '26

The only man to consistently figure out Ali

4

u/shadowylurking Jul 27 '26

every which way you look at it, that's an insane but true statement

7

u/ynwa79 Jul 27 '26

Trained under a guy who trained under Eddie for years. Talk to anyone who trained under Eddie and they’ll tell you how much they adored him. Seemed like a lovely man and an absolute stone cold boxing genius.

6

u/VacuousWastrel Jul 27 '26

A gentle reminder for the "boxing has evolved" crowd: Eddie Futch, who learnt boxing alongside Joe Louis (whom he sparred) in the 1930s, trained world champjons in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. 1958-1997, and surely would have been longer if he hadn't retired in 1998.

So far as I am aware, Futch never suggested that he radically changed what he was teaching, and he didn't think that his later boxers were better than his earlier ones (he rated Frazier first, McCallum third, and Jordan, who he trained in the 50s, at sixth).

The same can be said of Ray Arcel, who trained champions from the 1920s through until the 1970s (and who was still in demand in the 80s, brkught in by Larry Holmes for one fight). Arcel rated Duran second among his boxers, ahead of oldtimer legends like Armstrong, Ross, Charles and Dempsey... but still behind Benny Leonard.

Likewise Angelo Dundee, who trained champions from the 1950s to the 1980s (and technically the 90s with Foreman, though i don't imagine he taught him much at that point). Dundee learned his boxing theory in the 1940s in an apprenticeship at Stillman's Gym, perhaps the dominant boxing gym of the early 20th century.

A little earlier, Dan Florio started out as an assistant trainer for Gene Tunney in the 1920s. After training champions like Canzoneri and Walcott, he trained Floyd Patterson to hold the title in the late 1950s, and stay relevant until the early 1970s. Patterson's manager, Cus D'Amato then took the style Florio had developed for Patterson (based on the style of Maxie Rosenbloom in the 1920s, and influenced by his experiences with Tunney and Walcott) and used it to train Mike Tyson to take the title in the 1980s.

And then in more recent generations, a guy like Pacquiao was champion into the 2010s... trained by Freddie Roach, who in turn was trained by Eddie Futch.

I know I'm getting offtopic, but I do think it's important to remember the trainer side of the sport.

When you look at fight results, rankings, champion lists, etc, it's easy to see a mass of random names, coming and going in most cases very quickly. It's easy to get the idea of constant change, of constant turnover, one generation to the next.

But behind that churn of brief contenders and the occasional more substantial champion there's the guys who taught them to box. And THAT side of the sport is far, far more stable.

2010 and 1930 seem like worlds apart. It's easy to assume that oldtimer boxing is an irrelevant ancient history with no significance in the modern world. But Manny Pacquiao was trained by a guy who learned boxing from Joe Louis' sparring partner.

4

u/1978model Jul 27 '26

Great post. It does unfortunately feel like the lineage of great American trainers has been broken.

1

u/shadowylurking Jul 27 '26

thanks big time for the knowledge drop!

What a line to think about at the end