On the co-feature of the Arthur Abraham/Edison Miranda fight down in Miami last month, undefeated Dominican middleweight Giovanni Lorenzo took on popular veteran Raul Marquez for the right to fight for the IBF middleweight crown (currently held by Abraham). After Lorenzo got off to an early lead on points, Marquez scratched his way back into the fight with guile and tenacity, eking out a very close but unanimous decision, winning the bout 114-113 on all three scorecards. (In the photo below, taken by Bob Wallace, co-manager Rich Ryan, trainer Pastor Ralph Farrait, Giovanni and co-manager Kurt Emhoff await the decision in the Marquez fight).

It was a classic tale of the boxing universe , the undefeated but largely untested prospect meets up with the crafty but past his prime veteran. In this particular version of the story, the veteran prevailed, leaving the prospect, with his precious ’0” up and gone, to contend with the next phase of his career, a phase where he’s no longer ‘up-and-coming” but rather a fighter with a loss on his record and a battle ahead to maintain his relevance in the cutthroat promotional universe of the sport.

This is the angle of Lorenzo’s loss that interested me and the question that immediately leapt to my mind after the fight: What does this classic type of boxing loss , a tough step-up fight where your ’0” just had to go , what does that look like from the business side of the equation? How did the fighter get to that point in his career where all the stars were aligned for him, and where does he go after he’s got that first L on his record?

Luckily for us, Giovanni Lorenzo’s co-manager is a true friend of No Mas, Kurt Emhoff, a highly knowledgeable and articulate boxing fan who also, through his experience in managing fighters, possesses that rare insight into the nether realms of the business end of the sweet science that so fascinate all of us diehard fight fans. You’ve probably seen Kurt’s comments here at the site before, or read my previous interview with Kurt from earlier in the year when we talked about another one of his fighters, Dmitriy Salita, when Dmitriy was in the running for a potential bout with Oscar De La Hoya in the spring.

This time around, Kurt was gracious enough to have a long, interesting talk with me about a painful topic, a very difficult loss for one of his fighters in a hugely important fight. So enjoy our conversation below, No Masians, the story of Giovanni Lorenzo’s professional boxing journey as told to me by our man Kurt.

Large: First of all, Kurt, we’ve talked about this before, but tell our readers how you came to be involved in Giovanni’s career.

Kurt: It’s a great story actually. I was writing for MaxBoxing at the time and I went to a press conference that Lou DiBella was having for Olympians that he’d just signed. One of the Olympians was Jerson Ravelo, who was on the Dominican Olympic team in 2000.

Large: He’s the guy who just fought Andre Ward.

Kurt: Yeah. And lost.

Large: Yeah.

Kurt: So anyway, Olympians were really hot at the time and my good friend Rich Ryan (Giovanni’s co-manager with Kurt) was managing this Dominican fighter Justo Sencion. So I said to Jerson Ravelo, ‘is there anyone on the Dominican Olympic team that maybe no one’s heard of but who can really fight?” And he said, ‘yeah , Gio Lorenzo.” I told Richie and we both thought maybe it was worth a trip. So we ended up going over there a couple times. Richie went over first and got to see Giovanni fight and he was impressed. Eventually I came over and negotiated an agreement. Then we brought Gary Shaw over and signed Giovanni with Main Events. (Pic above right – Gio and Kurt down in the D.R.)

Large: Where was Giovanni located down in the Dominican?

Kurt: He’s from a part called Jeringa. He comes from abject poverty. I mean his house is literally cobbled together from things found on the side of the road. It’s really something to see. And he’s got three brothers who also fight. But Giovanni was the one who had been a really good amateur , he fought in the Pan Am Games, fought in the Olympics. He was heralded and there were some people over there who wanted to manage him themselves. We had to finesse that a little bit. But eventually he wanted to sign with us and come and fight in the US. (Photo below – Giovanni, his father and Rich Ryan standing in front of Giovanni’s house in Jeringa.)

Large: This was in 2000?

Kurt: Right. Fall of 2000, right after the Sydney Olympics. We got a deal done in early 2001, but because of the problems getting him a visa he didn’t fight here until 2002.

Large: I’m curious to know exactly what you were looking for when you went down to see him in the Dominican. Was it just about his fighting skills or was it more than that, you know, from a potential promotional angle?

Kurt: Before we even went, we looked at his track record and saw how he did against quality competition. We saw how he did against the Cubans, basically, which is the real test. He was about 50-50, won a few, lost a few. So we knew he was competitive with some of the top amateurs in the world. In the amateur tournament we saw him in down there, he just blew everyone away. But you know, it’s a little tough to gauge because he doesn’t get the sparring down there that he would get in the U.S. He was very raw. That’s why we brought him along slow. The thing that really struck us the most was his build. He was just built like a bull. We couldn’t believe he made 147 pounds. He looked like a middleweight.

Large: To me he looked big at 160 against Marquez.

Kurt: Exactly. Imagine him at 147. So yeah, we knew he had the build and the strength and the punching power to be a really good pro. He’d proven himself as an amateur. He lost by I think one point in the second round in Sydney. Plus he had that… meanness, you know?

Large: Was there anything as far as star potential that struck you about him?

Kurt: Well, with Giovanni, on that front, we knew we’d have some obstacles. He didn’t speak English, he wasn’t particularly educated. He wasn’t going to be Oscar De La Hoya, basically. So we knew he was going to have to do it on his ability alone. But what Richie had done with Sencion is really hit the Dominican community hard here in the States. Washington Heights, you know. He got them behind Justo so that when he fought in New York there was a huge turnout. The idea was to embolden the Dominican community and really get them behind Giovanni in the same way, make it like a Cotto situation, or at the time Trinidad because Cotto was just coming out of the Olympics himself back then. That was the idea, just get the whole island behind him and have him represent the country. The D.R. doesn’t have a really rich history with boxing so it felt like we could really create something with Giovanni. That’s the big picture kind of stuff we were thinking about at the time.

Large: Tell me about how you brought him along early in his career. You said he was very raw at the start. How did that influence your decisions back then?

Kurt: You really have to take it fight by fight. You can draw something up, but if you see there are things he’s lacking or not doing right, you’re not going to fix it in the ring. You have to do it in the gym. He bounced around with a couple of trainers, and early in his career, strong as he is, he wasn’t knocking a lot of people out. We could see that he was really wide with his shots, he telegraphed, he was impatient. We knew he just needed to take a couple years to really learn the craft. Eventually we got him hooked up with his trainer, Pastor Ralph Farrait, and that’s when we could really see a difference. Pastor Ralph said to us, look this kid is who he is. He’s not going to be Sugar Ray Leonard doing everything textbook and pretty. But we’ll take what he’s got and refine it. He’s awkward and he’ll always be awkward and we have to use that to his advantage. That kind of eased our minds a little bit and then pretty soon after he got with Pastor Ralph he just started knocking people out left and right. That was when we started to step on the gas with him. But those first couple years he was very raw and we protected him. We were a little over-protective maybe. We knew the potential was there but we also knew we were going to have to take some time and have him learn on the job a little bit. So that’s what we did. (Pic below – Pastor Ralph, Giovanni, Rich Ryan and Kurt.)

Large: Does one fight stick out in your mind as the one where you knew he was ready to step up in competition?

Kurt: In 2005 when he drilled Dennis Sharp in one round and Dennis Sharp was 17-0 at the time, we really wanted to step things up and take on a different caliber of fighter. But at that point we were in this situation in the business where we could either get a really tough fight where we’re the B-side, you know, where we’re the underdog. We weren’t going to be able pay for a really good journeyman guy where we got to be the A-side of the equation.

Large: Is that a familiar problem, that situation? You know, where your guy is in this nether realm where you either have to step him to a very tough opponent too fast or keep fighting scrubs?

Kurt: That’s it, yeah. Look. I’m a guy who likes to do things by the book. I want to do the right thing for the fighter. But there are a lot of mitigating circumstances. Okay, great, if you want to put him in there against a certain specific guy, fine. But to get in there and fight an undefeated prospect, that guy’s going to want money, so it’s going to have to be a TV fight. So then it’s… ESPN? HBO? Are they interested in seeing Giovanni Lorenzo fight Yory Boy Campas? It gets very tough. At that point we were pretty much stuck fighting on Main Events undercards or making fights on our own dime down in the Dominican just to keep him busy.

Large: Okay, so here’s a piece of the puzzle I don’t know. Giovanni was widely known to be a consideration for the Pavlik fight that ended up being Gary Lockett. How did you get him from that purgatorial place you’re talking about to being in line to fight one of the biggest stars in the biz?

Kurt: Well, we stayed busy and moved him up in the ratings by attrition to the point where we’d been mentioned for a few HBO fights. HBO wanted us to fight Miranda in Miami and we turned that down. Then Jermain Taylor was going to fight us with the belts on the line but the licensing fee wasn’t big enough for Jermain , so that fell through. (Pic above right – Giovanni putting some hurt on Bruce Rumbolz last June in A.C.)

Large: When was the potential Miranda deal?

Kurt: It was for the date when Miranda fought Willie Gibbs.

Large: Which was… December of ’06.

Kurt: Yeah. Main Events had the date with HBO, and we wanted to fight Willie Gibbs but HBO didn’t want that fight. So we listed a number of guys as potential opponents, including Jose Luis Zertuche, who they eventually put in there against Kelly Pavlik in a main event. But HBO turned it all down. They wanted us to fight Miranda. They said you’re not an A-side, you’re a B-side. And I said no we’re not. We’re nobody’s B-side, you know? That was my attitude. That was my decision. We’re not going to be a B-side. So I turned down the Miranda fight.

Large: Was your thinking at that point that it just wasn’t worth the risk?

Kurt: Yeah. I mean, we were going to be fighting Miranda down in Miami and Giovanni had just moved up from 154 pounds. I just thought at the time that was a little too tough. I don’t mind a 50-50 fight, but to me that seemed like 60-40 Miranda. I just wasn’t willing to take that chance. And so.. well, they didn’t even put us on the undercard for that. We ended up taking up something in the DR. Then we fought on a Duddy undercard to try and make a Duddy fight. Then Duddy didn’t want to fight us.

Large: Did you feel like you moved into that territory where you were almost too good but without any traction? Where nobody wanted to take a chance on fighting Giovanni because it wasn’t worth it?

Kurt: Absolutely. It was basically like we had to take on the biggest monster out there, which was Miranda, or nobody. None of the other guys wanted to fight us. Duddy turned us down. Hell Kelly Pavlik didn’t want to fight us. He turned us down.

Large: Yeah yeah, so you and I have been over this before, but tell our readers about the Pavlik situation.

Kurt: Well, like you said, it was for what ended up being the Gary Lockett fight. Basically John Duddy had that fight locked up beforehand and then he got roughed up by whatever that guy’s name was.

Large: Walid Smichet. Great name. I was at that fight. It was on the Klitschko/Ibragimov undercard. What a disaster. (Pic below – Duddy getting a lovetap from the unheralded Smichet.)

Kurt: Yeah. So, well, even before that fight, Bob Arum (Pavlik’s promoter) was pissed off because he thought Duddy was asking for too much money to fight Kelly. Then after Duddy had that disaster fight, Arum was like, Duddy’s gone, forget it. That was when they made us an offer. So we’re weighing the offer, making our counter-offer, and suddenly we start hearing that Top Rank is willing to do the fight, but Pavlik doesn’t want to do the fight. Now look, I don’t know if that came from Kelly Pavlik the fighter or his management, but somebody didn’t want to do the fight even though we were the top contender and they would have gotten a mandatory out of the way. That kind of threw us back to where we had been, you know. We were running out of options.

Large: Right around that time, I remember talking to you and you thought that you might have a fight with Arthur Abraham. What happened there?

Kurt: We ended up being named the IBF mandatory, and I was willing to go to Germany for that fight with Abraham. But then this opportunity came up that Abraham was going to fight Miranda, and so it came down to us that we would get to fight in the co-feature on that card because we were getting passed over as the mandatory. So we got to fight, like, a voluntary mandatory. That’s what ended up happening against Raul Marquez, and it completely backfired obviously.

Large: But at the time, were you at least somewhat happy about the Marquez fight? I mean, at the level that you were getting some TV exposure on a fairly big card?

Kurt: Well, I’m a more risk averse type person so I wanted to go straight to the Abraham fight, but eventually it was decided that we would take the Marquez fight. It was like okay, this is a good-step-up fight, Marquez is a veteran, former world champion, he’s only lost three times and all to future world champions.

Large: What did you think of Giovanni’s chances going in?

Kurt: I knew Marquez had some juice left. I watched his last fight with Bronco McKart and I could see that he’s not just in this for a payday. He looked really good to me in the McKart fight, fought like a real pro, walked Bronco down and really worked him. I knew Giovanni had his work cut out for him. Marquez is a guy that you don’t blow out of there, no one’s ever blown him out. It was gonna be a distance fight, it was gonna be a rough tough fight. It’s just one of those things where you go in and you’re thinking that we’ve built our guy to this point, he’s a professional fighter, he’s in his prime, so let’s go for it. (Pic above right – Marquez tagging Giovanni.)

Large: So you weren’t looking past Marquez at all?

Kurt: No, definitely not. I mean, I can’t tell you what Giovanni was thinking. Maybe he was looking past Marquez to Abraham. That’s always a possibility. But he trained hard, I know that.

Large: Is Giovanni a cocky kid?

Kurt: He is. He’s a very cocky kid.

Large: He seemed cocky early in the Marquez fight to me.

Kurt: Yeah, he’s very confident, very sure of himself. But in a way that’s great, because he doesn’t like to lose, he’s very tough, and so you like that in a fighter. Marquez obviously brought that out in him.

Large: Well, so that’s a good lead-in to my next question, which is to ask you for your breakdown of the fight. How did you see it?

Kurt: Honestly, I think Gio knew he was in for a tough fight. He’d only been in there with one lefty as a pro, first of all, so he was in there feeling him out early. But the first couple rounds I thought were going very well.

Large: I had him winning the first three rounds.

Kurt: Yeah, I thought he won the first three rounds too and then Marquez really picked it up in the fourth round. After that Giovanni just got a little too relaxed and a little too predictable, falling into the ropes and throwing counters. I think Raul figured out what he was doing , in fact Raul told me after the fight he knew he didn’t want to throw that straight left hand cause he knew the right hand was coming right back from Gio. So it just came down to experience really. Raul is an extremely knowledgeable fighter. He’s been fighting forever and he knew what he had to do to win.

Large: What was Giovanni’s feeling after the fight? Did he feel like he’d been robbed?

Kurt: After the fight he was really inconsolable, very upset that he’d lost. He didn’t say two words really, so I don’t know if he thought he was robbed. I know watching it live that I thought Raul tipped it, and I know that in the corner Paster Ralph told Gio that he’d lost. But watching the replay, I thought that fight could have gone either way. In all honesty Giovanni fought better than I thought he did. He definitely learned a lot from this fight.

Large: A lot of us here in No Mas Land were surprised at how biased the Showtime broadcasters were in calling this fight. They seemed heavily in Marquez’s corner, made it seem like he was blowing Giovanni out of the ring when that was anything but the case as the scorecards reflected in the end. What do you make of that?

Kurt: Well, I think there was probably a little bias going in against Giovanni because people thought that he was this overprotected fighter who might get exposed in there. And Marquez, he is a very nice guy, very popular with the media, and he was the underdog. So it was like the announcers were going to go with one of two storylines, and sometimes announcers can be a little rigid with that. You know, they don’t like to leave things up in the air. Because if you go back and look at the replay you’ll see that in the first three rounds they were all about Giovanni.

Large: It’s true, it’s true, I forgot about that actually.

Kurt: Then as soon as Marquez started to turn the momentum, you know.

Large: Yeah. Then it’s ‘look at the old craftsman plying his trade!”

Kurt: Exactly.

Large: All right Kurt, look, I don’t want to rake you over the coals too much on this one, but just give me a sense of what this loss cost you career-wise with Giovanni.

Kurt: Well, money-wise, it cost us at least a 200 grand payday from what I was hearing. 200 grand and a title shot. We go from that to ESPN, ShoBox level fights for 15 grand. That’s what it cost us. So, yeah, it’s devastating. (Pic below – Marquez celebrates after the decision is read.)

Large: So does that mean that Marquez is actually going to get that fight with Abraham? There’s so much buzz about a potential Pavlik/Abraham fight.

Kurt: Right after the fight, I spoke to Raul in the locker room and I told him the date that they were proposing for him to fight Abraham and he told me, ‘no way.” He was looking at the cuts he had on his face and just saying there’s no chance he could fight in October. He’s singing a different tune now. I think it really boils down to Abraham in the end. If he wants to make the Pavlik fight, that fight will get made. But if he wants to go ahead and fight Marquez and get his mandatory out of the way, then I think Pavlik… well, I don’t really think Pavlik cares about the middleweight titles at this point. He’s going to move up to 168 pretty soon. But I know the one fight he really wants at 160 is Abraham. So if Abraham fights Marquez, Kelly is going to have to find another dance partner for the fall at 160. Most likely that’s going to be Duddy.

Large: Duddy’s back in the mix for Pavlik? Wow.

Kurt: Well, they talked about Sergio Mora, but I know the attorney for Gary Shaw and he said that Vernon Forrest has definitely exercised his rematch clause with Mora. So unless they’re going to pay Forrest to get out of the way, it looks like Duddy for Pavlik.

Large: And what’s your forecast for Giovanni? What do you do now?

Kurt: Well, we’ll see what happens in the new rankings. Marian Muhammad, she’s the president of the IBF, and she spoke to Main Events after the fight and said that she thought Giovanni won the Marquez fight. So according to her, he’s not going to fall far in the ratings. And look, the goal for us is to get a title shot. Pavlik and Abraham are eventually going to fight and unify the titles, but then they’re going to move up to 168.

Large: Both of them?

Kurt: Yeah. I mean, Abraham looked dynamite at 168. He knocked Miranda out. And even Miranda was saying after the fight that this guy is just too strong, and this coming from a guy who looks like the Incredible Hulk in there. So I think both Pavlik and Abraham will move up to 168, and even if they don’t, let’s say that Pavlik beats Abraham. He’s definitely moving up to 168. So the belts are all going to be vacant at that point. Then, Giovanni is a kid with only one loss, a very close loss at that, so I think he’ll definitely be in the mix. Hopefully if the titles come loose, and I think they will, then we’ll be in position to fight for one of them. What that means for us is a little bit of rest, a little bit of mental and physical recoup, and then come right back with an ESPN/ShoBox level fight to stay visible. Basically, he’s in the big time now and we want to keep him in the big time.