Johnny Eames and the TKO Gym Interview
Since becoming a professional boxing coach nearly 12 years ago, following 18 years as an amateur trainer, Johnny Eames (right, with Leon Williams) has produced two world champions, three British champions, one Commonwealth champion, an English champion and four Southern Area champions. Johnny's name is synonymous with the TKO Boxing Gym which, for the last four years, has been located in Canning Town and is now sponsored by Ultrachem. BoxRec News correspondent David Simpson paid him a visit to get the lowdown on the gym and what it takes to run such a successful facility.
Tell us a bit about the history of the TKO gym.
Well, I've been a pro trainer now for the best part of 12 years. I was originally an amateur trainer for 18 years and 14 years of that was spent at West Ham boxing club. Along with Micky May and Terry Abbott, we had something like 100 National champions at Schoolboy level. They then promoted me to be a Senior trainer where I had three ABA finalists but never actually achieved an ABA champion, my last of which was Kevin Lear who, when he turned pro, I turned pro with him. He actually in his 13th fight beat Michael Gomez for the World title [WBU super-featherweight title] and in his 14th fight beat Kirkor Kirkorov who then was a decent fighter, but he sustained a shoulder injury and had to retire after having 14 fights. He was my first world champion. (Sorry, Johnny, WBU doesn't count - Ed.)
As regards the gym, when I turned pro I went back to where I used to box for - Broadstreet in Stepney - and opened the first TKO gym. The name TKO came from when I had a boxing suppliers business, I used to buy shorts, headguards, gloves and everything else and I used to get my stuff off Title before BBE bought Title out. When Title went bankrupt and sold out and BBE took them over, I was in partnership with a guy named Dave Armstrong who was Southern Area middleweight champion back in the 70s and we came up with the name TKO and so when I opened my first gym it just seemed right to carry that name into it.
There were a few problems with my first gym so I moved out of there and went back to West Ham and used it in the day time. Back then it wasn't tolerable for amateurs and pros to use the same gym so we had complications with the committee and stuff like that but Tony Brinton from Ultrachem, which is a printing suppliers, who at the time were sponsoring Ross Minter who I'd just took over training, came to me and we just formed a good bond and we're still very good friends now, and he got me this gym. We've been here now, this is our fifth year and it's just getting bigger and better. I'm really really lucky to have a man like Tony Brinton behind me because no way on God's earth could I afford anything like this. Now this Credit Crunch has come in we have to pay half of what he pays, which is quite a substantial amount each week to run. So I've had to put my foot down with gym fees and all that - the boys are feeling the Johnny Crunch!
What was the transition like from amateur to pro coaching, was it a big difference?
I was fortunate that my two great mentors in boxing were a guy named Jimmy Skivington who died and Micky May whose a trainer at West Ham. Both very professional in their outlook on training and I learnt a hell of a lot from those two guys. When I was at West Ham boxing club, the last few years I was there, the computer scoring system had only just come in, but prior to that all our boys were taught to fight like professionals. So the transition wasn't that hard for me and because I had a friendship with Jimmy Tibbs, that helped as well. I'm never, even now, afraid of asking other trainers for advice. I think the problem in this game is there's too many egotistical trainers out there who think they know it all and aren't willing to ask anybody for help in case they're embarrassing themselves but fortunately I'm not one of those guys. I'm always willing to ask, I even let the fighters have an input - we sit down and we talk - and I think it's what makes a successful stable. You can't rule by an iron fist, and although you have to have discipline in a gym, everybody's got to have their input too.
I see now they're allowing amateur trainers to train pros and pro trainers to train amateurs - I don't think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing letting the two sports mix, it helps out in sparring and so on, but I think they're two different sports and there's a danger that if you're an amateur trainer training professionals, you're going to train them in an amateur way and if you're a professional trainer training amateurs you're going to train them in a professional way. If you're an amateur training in a professional gym you're never going to win anything, you're not being taught for the computer etc, I think it's ruining the sport personally.
There's a great atmosphere in here and it's usually the same in most gyms, but how often, if ever, do you get guys falling out or getting out of line?
Yeah, we've had a couple of instances up here, I'm not going to mention any names, but we've had one trainer having a fight with one of the fighters and two fighters getting at it afterwards and I'll deal with that the way it has to be dealt with. The bottom line is, it is my gym, I am in charge, but it is quite a relaxed regime, everyone gets on well and if you were one of those guys who came in here and didn't get on well, I wouldn't care how good you are, you wouldn't be in here it's as simple as that. I'm quite a sarcastic person and do give a lot of verbal out but it does help to keep a happy gym. It keeps the gym upbeat. I'm very passionate for my fighters and I'd fall out with the Queen for them.
Other than the training side of things, what goes into running the gym on a day to day basis?
The bottom line of it is the buck always stops with me, I'm the one who's in charge, but I'm easy to get on with. Rio [Di Caro - Publicity & Promotion] has been here with me since April, and he says I'm too soft and he's helping me pull the gym together in running it properly. In the four years I've been here I've played at running it, I've let people get away with too much. It's got to stop, it's got to change and it is changing. We're now being run a little bit more professional, Riou's doing a lot of work promoting the gym, getting more fighters in here. Not just for me but for other managers, for other trainers.
The day to day running of the gym is a headache, I mean we're here from nine in the morning till nine in the evening. It's a long day for little reward, at the moment, but I see a big change this year from how it was, from the previous three years. There's a lot more fighters in here. Maybe not quite as good as the team I had a few years ago but there's a lot of good new blood that's come into the gym. It's not just training them though, it's getting them fights, making sure they're the right fights, making sure their medicals are all in order, making sure that their Mum's well, their Dad's well, it goes a lot deeper than just being a trainer. All my fighters no matter what colour or creed become my sons and they also become my wife's sons - my wife knows as much about boxing as I do, she's at every show, she knows all the boys personally and I think she throws more punches than them when they're fighting!
There's a computer room in the one corner, what's that there for?
Our sponsor put that in, we do a lot of work for the 'naughty kids' as I like to call them. They're the kids who get excluded from school and have to go to these schools where they've only got four or five kids in a class so they can get more one on one personal training and they don't call the teachers 'Sir' they call them Peter or Fred or whatever. We've set up a few schemes with the local school authorities and we've got an onsite teacher, who's also a sports therapist, and she comes in two days a week and we give the kids a couple of hours in the classroom and a couple of hours boxing training. We've got a sports scientist who works here with me and the kids do one day a week for a couple of terms and they get a certificate or a diploma in sports science and sports psychology. So, we're just trying to help out the kids who don't really get helped. Again, it was my sponsor's idea - he's a great man - and hopefully one day I'll have that classroom running five days a week. It helps pay the gym fees obviously, we charge the schools for it, we don't do it for nothing - we aren't that good - but we help out where we can.
What are the big differences between an amateur gym and a professional gym - do they differ a lot?
Well, when I was renting amateur gyms as a pro trainer I found that the amateur committees are very petty. The committees of amateur gyms do it as a hobby and I was getting things like 'oh your boys have left tape on the floor' and 'you're supposed to be out of here by four - it's five past' and things like that, a lot of pettiness. I also find that amateur trainers who've been amateur trainers for a long time and haven't tried the pros can feel a little bit, they feel they've missed out. Although they'd say they never want to go professional, a part of them inside feels they did want to go professional and they make it difficult for yourself to operate inside their gym. So, for me, when Tony Brinton got me this gym it was like having your throat cut and waking up in heaven. It was over Christmas, at dinner, he said what would be top of your wish list for next year and I said 'I'd love to have my own gym' and within two weeks he'd sent me round a pile of papers and said 'go look at them'. This place was probably the fifth or sixth one I came and looked at and when I came here this was a working print factory. I said to Tony 'this isn't the place' and he came the next the day and said 'I've done the deal' and I thought 'what have you done' and he said 'leave it to me, this is why I'm a businessman and you're a boxing trainer' and this is what he came up with and I was just astounded, as everybody is who walks in through the door for the first time. Three rings, ten bags, six wall bags, it's unbelievable.
The sponsorship has made a huge difference for you then. How did it come about?
Well, like I said, he sponsored Ross Minter and how he ended up with him was he sponsored Alan Minter and Barry McGuigan, he paid for them to go to Vegas, to go into the Hall of Fame. Alan then asked him to sponsor Ross, which he did, and Ross was training with a friend of mine, Trevor Cattouse. Ross then packed up work and Trevor couldn't so Ross asked me to train him during the daytime, so I said speak to Trevor first, get him to ring me and let me know it's ok - I would never consider taking on another trainer's fighter unless I'd spoken to the trainer first and understood the reasons why - Trevor explained he had to work, so Ross came on board with me and Tony Brinton came to the gym watching Ross train and we formed a friendship and the rest is history. It was one of those times for me, the one time in my life, that I was in the right place at the right time!
How difficult is it for you to manage all the different fighters you look after?
It was easier when I was managing only two or three, but at the moment I think I'm managing about eighteen. And none of them, for the first time in my whole career, are with any big managers. It's not a good time for a kid who's been a decent amateur to be turning pro at the moment because there's a lot of amateurs who didn't make the Commonwealth Games squad who now realise they're not going to make the Olympic squad but they're in the International bracket and they're starting to turn pro. So, the big promoters have their pick of them which means things are difficult for the kids who are just below that category. Yet those are the kids who I believe have a better chance of turning into good pros - my theory is if you box too long on the International stage it's difficult to make the transition, whereas if you're just below that International stage you've got a better chance - that's my opinion.
I've got a lot of good young kids in the gym, the problem is they all want to sign with the big promoters and it's hard for me, although they want to turn pro now, it's hard for me to make them understand it isn't going to happen yet. They need to box around on the smaller shows, earn themselves a bit of a reputation, a bit of a following and then we can go to the promoters and say 'look, he's had ten, won ten, he sells 300 tickets', and then they're interested. It's just making these young kids understand that. They all turn professional and they can't all be James DeGale earning a fortune. ABA titles don't really mean a lot to promoters now, it's the International Championships that they look at. Years ago, if you turned professional as an ABA champion you got signing on money and all that but there isn't the money in boxing that there was years ago. Kids are fighting now for a thousand pounds or 800 quid and things like that - people don't see that end of boxing. And when you consider they can only box every 8-12, 10-14 weeks, that isn't a lot of money. Then when you look at the trainers end of it, they get 10% of that, they're getting 100 quid for 12 weeks work - that's a tenner a week! People outside don't see that.
