One of my lasting memories of Emanuel Steward was up in the Poconos when he was training heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis for a title fight against Frans Botha in London.
Lewis loved the solitude of training in the Poconos. It was like a retreat for him. He often talked about running in the morning and seeing deer and playing chess in the evenings with other camp members. Steward was the camp cook, serving up his famous barbecue.
But it was in the ring where Steward was the real master chef. And on this particular day he was brewing up a punch combination that if Lewis delivered it correctly, it was certain to fry Botha.
Over and over, Steward showed Lewis the combination and he practiced it with him.
“If he sees his opening and he throws that combination, he’s going to knock him out,” Steward said later after the workout.
On fight night Lewis saw the opening and delivered the exact combination that Steward had drilled him on and knocked out Botha in the second round.
That was the genius of Emanuel Steward. He could teach a strategy and then make his boxers believe it in. And if they strayed from it, he could talk them back to the right page of the script.
Steward, 68, died on Thursday after a short battle with stomach cancer. There was an outpouring of regards from throughout the boxing world. Most expressed the sentiment that he was a generous man, who gave his time and insight to anyone who asked. For those who knew him best, Steward will be dearly missed for that.
His death left yet another void in boxing that won’t soon be filled. Steward was one of the last teachers in boxing. If you don’t believe that, just listen to some of the conversations going on in the corners between rounds of some of the televised matches.
“For many boxing is an art and not a science, even though A.J. Liebling called it the sweet science,” said Seth Abraham, the former president of HBO Sports. “For Manny it was a science. He could break down and explain the geometry of boxing and he could explain it to a fighter just like it was a science.”
Abraham met Steward in the most serendipitous manner.
“It was early in 1978 and I was flying from Los Angeles to New York and there was a woman sitting next to me on the plane and in the conversation she was telling me that she was a PR person for a man who ran a boxing gym in Detroit,” Abraham said. “It was Jackie Kallen and she was talking about Emanuel Steward and the Kronk Gym.”
Kallen invited Abraham to Detroit to meet Steward and some of his boxers. They met at the Booth-Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit. Abraham was bowled over by Steward.
“He told me at that meeting that he thought HBO could be the next big thing coming in boxing,” Abraham said. “This was before HBO was in the fight game in a big way. He saw what no one else did at the time.”
When it came to boxing, Steward always saw what no one else could foresee. With his boxers he just asked them to trust his vision and when they did they succeeded.
Steward demonstrated his versatility as a trainer when he worked the corner of Oliver McCall in his upset of Lennox Lewis. Then he switched corners and helped Lewis become the most dominant heavyweight of his era later in his career.
Lewis compiled a record of 16-1-1 under Steward, including victories over Evander Holyfield (whom Steward also once trained), Mike Tyson and Vitali Klitschko.
Steward joined the corner of Wladimir Klitschko in 2004. It was rocky in the beginning as the first fight that Klitschko had with Steward he lost by KO to Lamon Brewster. Steward slowly rebuilt Klitschko’s confidence and turned him into a dominant heavyweight champion. The one thing that Steward wanted Klitschko to utilize, which they had been working on in the gym, was the right uppercut. Steward thought it would make Klitschko one of the most dangerous punchers in heavyweight history.
Abraham called Steward an ambassador for boxing. But for me he was more than that. Steward was a rich resource in a sport where that is a dwindling asset. With Steward having trained nearly 50 boxers over the last 40 years, I will miss being able to call him up and just talk about life, about history, about boxing and the future of the sport.
Funeral services for Steward will be held on Nov. 13 at the Greater Grace Temple Church, 23500 W. Seven Mile in Detroit .
