Abel Sanchez Interview Post Gassiev-Dorticos
We caught up with Abel Sanchez following the post-fight press conference of Gassiev-Dorticos and asked him a couple questions
Gleb Kuzin:
The punch that put Dorticos on the canvas, the punch Murat had the most success with is a left hook. Golovkin, Gassiev, they both have a great left hook — what’s the secret behind your signature punch?
Abel Sanchez:
We practice that punch a lot, but that punch has to be set up with other punches. He’s [Murat] throwing a nice uppercut, he’s throwing a nice bodyshot, he’s throwing a nice right hand on top but yeah — I’m a Mexican! We throw the left hook a lot because that’s what we learned from the great Mexican fighers. We watch alot of great fighters in Mexico as coaches and we learn from that.
GK:
Your fighters throw it in an unusual way. A little bit of a leaping hook, both Golovkin and Murat kind walk in with it, push off a front leg.
AS:
I teach them to throw it a lot of different ways. I’m a big fan of Alexis Arguello, Alexis Arguello had a great left hook, he would use it in alot of different ways: up, inside, outside. So I work on all those different ways of throwing it so that there’s always different opportunities.
GK:
Alexis Arguello also had a great uppercut — Murat has it as well!
AS:
Of course. As I said I’m a big fan of Alexis Arguello, I watched him as a kid and I watch a lot of videos of him because I think we can learn from those great fighters.
GK:
There are many great fighters, great amateurs coming from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and American trainers tend to struggle with them. You on the other hand managed to really build the champions out of them, what’s your secret?
AS:
It’s not my secret, it’s the secret here in Russia: their work ethic, their determination, their discipline; they come from hard times here. Unfortunately for us Americans, and for people on the other side of the pond they for some reason become soft, they don’t work as hard. These kids they come to my camp and they give me everything that I ask for so it’s easy to work with somebody that’s willing to work harder than you do.
GK:
Can you update us on Denis Shafikov? What’s he’s going to do next. He had suffered a tough loss in his last outing and though he proved that he can bounce back from lossess, this time looks harder.
AS:
Well you know what? They’re all tough lossess, nobody likes to lose but if you don’t have it that particular night you go on to the next one. He’s gonna be back in camp, I think they just told me he was here yesterday. In a couple weeks he’ll be back in camp and we’ll get a fight for him some time in may.
