Hit Man - Brian Hughes [87]
During this period of exile from his Kronk kingdom, he also mused about the possibility of pursuing a future outside the ropes. He said that he would like to try his hand at the unlikely possibility of being a comedian. He also suggested that he would perform and record the rap song his jailed brother Henry had written, titled “DJs Make Me Dance.” He said, “As soon as the exhibition fight is over with, I’m going straight to the studio and see how I actually sound on track. All I need is a strong beat behind me. If I get that strong beat, then I think I will be successful.” He did not want to limit himself to just one career. “I might get a leading role in a movie someday, and I’ll bloom after that. I like entertaining people. I like making people happy.”
BUT BOXING REMAINED his priority. And when he decided on the man to assume Emanuel Steward’s mantle, he sprang another surprise by selecting Alex Sherer, an unknown thirty-four-year-old former member of Steward’s Kronk team, as his trainer. Sherer, a communications graduate from Ohio, had been working for the State of California as a public information officer when he met Steward in 1979. As a self-confessed boxing junkie who had fought as an amateur, Sherer was then coaching a Police Athletic League boxing team in Sacramento. He kept in frequent contact with Steward, and in 1983, the esteemed trainer offered him a job as assistant coach at the Kronk, where he would first encounter Thomas Hearns. Sherer acted as a scout for Steward, looking for talented young boxers around the amateur circuit and checking out prospective opponents for upcoming Kronk tournaments. Although he occasionally coached the Kronk’s amateur boxers, he had little experience working in the corner of the professional ranks, and much less working in the rarefied atmosphere of world championship fights.
In 1989, he and Steward parted company in acrimonious circumstances and Sherer moved to Washington where he began researching the history of boxing and more specifically, the life of Ezzard Charles, his boyhood hero. He also applied to return to education and enrolled at law school. When he heard that Hearns had parted company with his long-time mentor, he telephoned the fighter to wish him luck. Ten days later, he professed himself “shocked” when Hearns approached him with the offer to replace Steward.
Hearns was attracted to the bookish Sherer for a number of reasons. Since Sherer was not obligated to any other fighter, Hearns believed that he had the time to devote his full attention to training him alone, a focus he felt had been sorely missing. Sherer did not disappoint and spent hours watching footage of prospective opponents and also watching Hearns’s daily workouts, telling the fighter, “I’m always looking for an edge. A professor changes his teaching plans from day to day and I try to do the same thing.” He even reviewed sessions when Hearns would only shadow box so he could “check his balance, his movement and rhythm and make sure that his hands come back in the proper position.” There was also a financial motive for Hearns’s decision. Sherer told reporters, “I don’t think fighters need to pay their trainers or managers thirty to fifty per cent to simply pick up a telephone. I am being compensated fairly.”
ON 11 FEBRUARY 1991, Hearns stepped into the ring for his first professional bout without Manny Steward in his corner. Alex Sherer had been instrumental in arranging two routine contests, against Ohio’s Kemper Morton, a twenty-fight veteran, in Inglewood, California, and against Tennessee’s Ken Atkins, in the more exotic location of the Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii. Hearns routinely dismantled the hapless Morton with a beautiful left hook in round two, sending him into retirement before a good crowd of 8,134 – including rock stars Eddie Van Halen and Sammy Hagar – at the Great Western Forum. Afterwards, he took the ring microphone to present a generous $50,000 cheque to the USO