![]() If there was a constant between there and the Kronk gym – the small, atmospheric community centre surrounded by burnt-out houses in an area struggling with both gang warfare and social deprivation – it came from Steward himself. To listen to Banks describe bonding with Steward is to recall descriptions of the man who loved the solitude of training camps in the Poconos mountains of Pennsylvania, USA, where he would enjoy seeing deer in the wild, where Lennox Lewis – who under Steward preceded Klitschko as the world’s preeminent heavyweight – benefited from his counselling and where Steward, aware that the benefits of a positive morale can surpass the need for physical discipline, would cook barbecued food for his fighters as often as he’d challenge them at chess. “I’m grateful that I was able to have those one-on-ones with him, and that just further let me know the value of having a teacher, instead of just a regular trainer, in your corner. Sometimes just talking about life, sometimes talking about other fighters that he dealt with, that he happy he ain’t dealing with no more, that he can’t deal with this person no more… “He always would call me, and we would just talk, for at least an hour-and-a-half, two hours. A lot of people that he could consider friends, but not ones he could open up and talk to. “Yeah, I was sleeping, but I’m not gonna let him know that, he just wanted to talk and he have a lot of things always going on, and Emanuel had extremely, extremely, little friends. ‘You sleeping?’ I said ‘No, no, Emanuel what’s up? What’s going on?’ “Late at night, even when I moved out the house, he’d call me at 2 o’clock in the morning. He said I’m like a son and a best friend to him. He just wanna talk, he don’t have many people he could openly talk to. ![]() “One-on-one conversations with him: he’d knock on my door at 11.30pm at night. He’s the one who put me in the mirror and taught me how to shave. “I’m forever grateful for Emanuel Steward for teaching me, and for letting me be around him since I was a young boy, until I became a grown man,” Banks told Boxing News. He has instead been consumed by attempting to replace his mentor, one he describes as a “father figure, a teacher”, who he lived with for 15 years and whose teachings went beyond those needed to succeed in a boxing ring, also parenting both children, and his fighters, and conditioning them for life. Since then – and understandably, regardless of his two subsequent fights ending in defeat – Banks has barely been active. Not only did that victory make him a potential challenger to the WBO, IBF and WBA Super champion: with no previous experience he had been given the intimidating task of replacing a trainer widely considered the very best. He was just 10 days away from the finest win of his career – a second-round stoppage of the once-promising Seth Mitchell at heavyweight – and, aged 30, was six years Klitschko’s junior. In Banks there is another who represents so many – if not all – of the values Steward encouraged and which so many hold dear.įrom the outside the American was a surprise choice, in the aftermath of Steward’s October 2012 death, to succeed him as both Klitschko’s trainer and, perhaps more relevantly given the reach of Steward’s influence, as the figurehead of the Kronk gym. ![]() It may often be thought that Thomas Hearns was his greatest success, but also with Wladimir Klitschko he rescued and rebuilt the career of a fighter considered in decline and in Detroit’s iconic Kronk gym he provided the ideal environment in which to nurture raw, promising talent. IF Manny Steward left a legacy in boxing it is felt more through the existence of Johnathon Banks than any of the famous fighters he once trained. ![]()
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