Old School: The New Eddie Chambers

“Fast” Eddie Chambers is fast.

His punches are quick and crisp, gloves flashing even when he’s not being flashy. The shortest (and fastest) distance between two points is a straight line and Chambers knows his basic geometry, the mark of a well-schooled fighter.

His rise in the heavyweight division increased exponentially after he passed his first major test against tough guy Robert Hawkins in late 2005. Since then he’s fought twelve fights, won eleven, against top-ranked opponents like Dominic Guinn, Calvin Brock and perhaps the heaviest-handed heavyweight, Sam Peter. His only loss was a decision to still-undefeated Alexander Povetkin. Chambers’ quick rise peaked on July 4th, when “Fast” Eddie earned his independence, handily beating Ukrainian Alexander Dimitrenko, a 6’7’’, 254-pounder who walked into his “hometown” Hamburg ring an undefeated contender and walked out a tarnished man with his first loss. The convincing victory marked Chambers as the mandatory challenger for the WBO heavyweight title held by another Ukrainian giant, Wladimir Klitschko.

But it’s often with his mind, quick-witted and crafty, that Eddie Chambers seems fastest. If you look closely at Chambers’ face during a fight, there comes a moment, usually early in the bout, when he smiles. It’s not a kind smile. It’s the smile of a man who knows something, something that has to do with the man in front of him, the other man, the man Chambers is being paid to beat. The smile is really a smirk, full of confidence and cruelty. Boxing is a hurting business and so smirks should be the smile of choice for prizefighters.

On paper, Chambers should not be a contender. He doesn’t have any Olympic pedigree. He’s not a media darling like heavyweight up-and-comers Chris Arreola or Kevin Johnson or the young Olympian Deontay Wilder. Chambers is a small man in a division that increasingly features big men. For his last fight, under the careful eye of his manager and now trainer Rob Murray, Chambers trained hard, harder than he’d ever trained. Chambers usually comes in at between 215-220 and looks soft around the middle. Against Dimitrenko he was a fit 208, a more suitable and flattering weight. While the boxing adage goes, A good big man will beat a good little man, Chambers counters this too-easy assumption on a couple of levels. Men are bigger these days, that’s part of nature’s evolution, but heavyweights have not necessarily grown better. Impressive physiques without techniques do not heavyweight champions make. Chambers may be small, but he knows how to throw every punch in the book and he knows how to gauge his opponents, to find their weaknesses, to parry their punches, to keep the perfect distance where they can’t do serious damage. So Chambers, a very good “little” man, who with every fight becomes better and better, is going to beat big men who are simply good.

And 208 pounds is certainly big enough to fight big men. Chambers will never be a one-punch knockout artist, his art is about speed and savvy, but he can hit (and hit often when pressed) and he can do damage. If we remember that Jack Dempsey fought at around 190 and Joe Louis fought at around 200 at their primes, that even Ali was at his best at around 210, then 208, even in the modern heavyweight era, is a respectable weight. Don Elbaum, who made most of Chambers’ fights at the Blue Horizon and skillfully moved the Philadelphia fighter’s career forward, doesn’t see the weight differential as a problem in any weight division, let alone the heavyweight division. “In today’s boxing scene there are so many new faces and I can’t believe how many talk about weight. When I hear so-called boxing experts say that weight matters, it’s ridiculous. They don’t know the game. No one is going to lose a fight because a fighter is five or ten pounds bigger. If a lighter guy is better, he’s going to win the fight. Rob Murray always agreed with me. All I ever think of is the right opponent. The weight becomes secondary.” Elbaum continues, “When I was a kid, and my Dad knew I was serious about boxing, he took me to Pittsburgh to see Johnny Ray, Billy Conn’s trainer. When Ray talked of Conn fighting Louis, he said they put Conn’s weight at 175, but his weight was 168 for that fight. And Conn should have won. Johnny Ray is the one who told me the biggest mistake anyone can make is to put on weight to get closer to his opponent. It hurts speed. It doesn’t help power. It does nothing but take away.”

The first time I took great notice of Eddie Chambers was outside of Philadelphia, as if seeing him away from his local setting clarified his unique qualities and magnified his skills. The bout was against then-undefeated Derric Rossy and took place in Long Island, at Suffolk Community College’s gymnasium, a venue as hokey as Vegas venues are state-of-the-boxing-art. ESPN was covering the event and the gym was packed with Rossy’s New York fans. (Whether it’s in the city of Hamburg or small-town Selden, New York, Chambers is happy to be a road warrior.) In street clothes, Derric Rossy looked like a real heavyweight, tall and strong and ready. Chambers looked like a guy who’d come to see the fight, not fight the fight. But when the two men faced off in the ring, physical appearances shifted.

The shift, which happens in so many fights when the guy who looks the part is not good enough to play the part, reminded me of a fight I saw when I was in fifth grade, the first real street-fight I’d ever seen, if you can call it that. I grew up in a small town, a university town that was as far from the mean streets of, say, Philadelphia, as Dorothy’s Kansas is from Travis Bickle’s New York. But our school was having problems, especially during lunch hour, and the school’s principal hired guys from the U. Mass football team to be lunch monitors. Basically, we had beefy-armed bouncers watching us while we ate Sloppy Joes and apple crisp and flipped pats of butter at the ceiling. That year, a few stray fifth-grade classes were housed in the junior high, including my class. One afternoon, the usual chaos went from food fight to fist fight. Right before lunch ended, one of the bouncers said something to one of the seventh-graders that the seventh-grader didn’t like. The bouncer may have been college-age, his arms may have looked good flexed in a too-tight T-shirt, but the seventh-grader knew how to punch. And that’s what he did. He landed ten unanswered blows to the big man’s head. While the big man didn’t go down, his face turned red, red from fists hitting skin and red from embarrassment. He’d just had his ass kicked by a kid. If the principal had hired a couple of Pre-law students to serve as judges in our cafeteria, the tough seventh-grader would have won a unanimous decision, hand raised in victory.

I mention this childhood story because that’s pretty much what happened in that Long Island ring when Eddie Chambers fought Derric Rossy, when a chubby-looking 6’1”, 215-pounder fought a muscular 6’3”, 250-pounder. Chambers punched Rossy’s face red. Chambers beat Rossy around the ring. Chambers broke Rossy’s eardrum. Chambers bloodied Rossy’s face. And by Round 7, Arthur Mercante Jr. had seen enough. It was a memorable fight. Most fights where the smaller man beats the bigger man are memorable, the joy of watching an apparent underdog’s victory. But most memorable was Chambers’ smile. He knew early on that Rossy didn’t have the skills to truly compete. The lumbering dog was slow and the crafty cat bared his teeth and snarled with delight. Chambers displayed the kind of technical, systematic, un-relenting cruelty a professional fighter should display. He hit and he smiled. He worked on making Rossy a deaf and blind man, a stumbling fool. It was a pitiful beating doled out by a man who showed no pity. And that’s what we want, deep down, from our fighters. We want them to be kind and sportsmanlike and gentlemanly outside the ring, which Chambers always is. But inside the ring, when fighters are fighting, we want them to be ruthless. Any fight fan who denies this is a liar.

From there, from the Rossy fight on, Chambers beat his way to the top and the smile remains. And on July 4th, when his hand was lifted, Eddie Chambers had a lot to smile about. He’d beaten Dimitrenko, easily, despite the corrupt scoring of one judge who had the fight a draw. He’d secured himself a fight against the WBO champion. And, more important, he’d proved himself to be a fighter who can stay focused, who can stay mentally tough for all twelve rounds. My one criticism of Eddie Chambers had always been his inability to sustain a pressured attack. And Eddie Chambers, self-aware of his one glaring flaw, consistently spoke about his inconsistencies in the ring during post-fight interviews. He’d take rounds off. He’d give away points. He’d lose focus. And he admitted to all of this, but until he fought Dimitrenko, Chambers couldn’t change his ways.

Much of Eddie Chambers’ progress, physical and mental, can be attributed to Rob Murray’s careful attention. Managing Chambers since Chambers was nineteen, and now training him for his last five fights, Murray created Chambers anew by bringing him back to the old. When he was a kid, Murray’s father owned a barbershop near a Philadelphia gym and, between haircuts, Murray would question the likes of Willie Reddish who trained Sonny Liston, Yank Durham who trained Joe Frazier, Sam Solomon who trained Ernie Terrell. “These guys talked to me,” Murray says, and Murray obviously listened. He made sure Eddie Chambers lost weight. He made sure he ran hills. (They trained for weeks in the Pocono Mountains before the Dimitrenko fight.) He taught Chambers how to stay on the outside and use his jab. And he taught and continues to teach Chambers how to work on the inside (where Chambers will have to work if he fights Klitschko). To land uppercuts. To turn. To not pull out.

“A lot of these old school trainers are not around today. They’re gone. You have to mentor your fighter. When I tell Eddie to do something, he does it. I became his father, his mother, his uncle, his cabinet maker, his cleaner.” Add to this list his trainer, who puts in the hours honing his fighter’s skills and tells his fighter the truth instead of filling him with pipe-dreams. Early on, Murray recognized Chambers’ lack of focus and he called him on it. “One night, during training camp, Eddie woke me up at one in the morning,” Murray says. “Eddie said, ‘You’ll never have to worry about me not being focused again.’” This was no idle promise. Eddie Chambers was talking to the man who’s been with him for eight years. And Chambers lived up to his promise when he beat Dimitrenko. “Eddie is a great student,” Murray says. “He’s probably a better student than I am a teacher. We have a strong relationship. And relationships can carry you to more places than money.” Those words, honest in Rob Murray’s mouth, are old school in the best way.

At 208 pounds, Eddie Chambers felt more fluid, felt faster and felt stronger. His foot speed was quicker and his head movement more agile. “It gave me flexibility,” he says. “It made me almost invisible.” Chambers promises to stay at this ideal weight for all future fights. But he must also maintain his mental toughness. “People underestimate focus in professional athletes, especially boxers. They have to know what they need to do, know their objective. Your life is on the line when you get hit. Against Dimitrenko I wasn’t afraid to lose. I wasn’t afraid to make mistakes. I read a book Rob gave me and it said Act now. I put myself out there. I put my full effort into it. I gave my best effort and ninety-nine percent of the time I’m going to win.” Focused, no longer content to wait around, understanding that a fighter must seize every moment of every round, Chambers sounds like a new man.

So what’s next for Eddie Chambers? His promoter Dan Goossen can’t make any promises until after the Klitschko/ Povetkin fight shakes out. There’s a possible all-American showdown against Chris Arreola way down the line. Arreola is a good big man and a heavyweight also promoted by Goossen, but Areola is waiting around for the other Klitschko brother and a shot at the WBC belt. Chambers is in line for the WBO title and he’s very clear about the man he wants to fight next. “Everyone knows I lost to Povetkin, but people know I was in control. I want Klitschko. With Klitschko it will be a massacre.” Rob Murray agrees with this assessment. When I ask Murray if he learned anything from Klitschko’s bout with Ruslan Chagaev, he pulls no punches. “I didn’t learn anything from Chagaev. I don’t mean to dog him, but I didn’t learn anything. When he (Chambers) gets there and gets out, in and out, in and out, Klitschko is going to be huffing and puffing by the 8th or 9th round. Both Klitschkos are very methodical, but they don’t understand the speed of my man.” Dan Goossen adds, “Eddie found out first hand he’s a lot more dangerous when he’s throwing punches and not waiting. He can step it up even further. He can step on the pedal even more and improve with each fight.” Wladimir Klitschko has dispatched with all of the smaller men he’s faced (his three losses came against big punchers Ross Puritty, Corrie Sanders and Lamon Brewster), but Eddie Chambers is not a typical smaller man. Speed is power, yes. But if Chambers stays focused, he will be mentally stronger than Klitschko, who has mentally self-destructed during his losses and also during certain moments in fights he’s won. Once Chambers gets inside Klitschko’s pole-axe jab, once he establishes his ground and shows the Ukrainian champion that he can stay inside and that he’s not afraid, interesting things could happen. The squared circle reveals many truths. If Chambers’ mind stays fast and strong and true, “Fast” Eddie Chambers could bring the belt back to America.

Character is fate. And it’s very hard to change character. The cynic will say that when things get hard for Eddie Chambers, when he’s forced to swim in those proverbial deep waters, he may revert to the fighter he always was, the pre-Dimitrenko Chambers—a boxer with a ton of potential, who lacks the focus to fulfill his potential. But sometimes, fighters are miraculously forged into something new. In many ways that’s the essence of a trained boxer. A man is asked to accept punishment when his instinct tells him to avoid punishment. The forging process begins with this turning away from nature. And a great trainer who forces his fighter to put in the hours of disciplined training helps flame the fire to turn a kid into a man, to turn a street fighter into a professional pugilist, to turn a boxer with lapses of concentration into a focused wrecking machine. It pleases me that Eddie Chambers speaks of massacres when he speaks of fighting Wladimir Klitschko. It pleases me that Eddie Chambers understands the importance of staying mentally tough for twelve hard rounds. It pleases me that Eddie Chambers, when he has his man figured out, smiles that cruelest of smiles. Rob Murray will continue to push his charge to the place he needs to be. If “Fast” Eddie Chambers can live up to his name and his potential, a new heavyweight champion may soon rise from the old school.