What is your first memory of boxing?
Richard Pierson: “My very first memory of boxing is being ten-years-old and my uncle Daniel Lewis brought two pairs of boxing gloves in my house and took the top mattress off me and my brother’s bunkbed set and made us get inside the frame of it using the bottom bed as a canvas and the frame acting as a ring with ropes. By the way, my brother won, leaving me with a bloody nose and hot tears coming out my eyes.”
Do you ever have dreams in your sleep involving boxing?
Richard Pierson: “[Laughs] any true fighter has dreams of fighting, that’s why I don’t share a bed with nobody, I woke up punching the night before I fought Jimmy Campbell. I woke up becuase I punched the headboard in my hotel room!”
Who was the best fighter you ever shared a ring with?
Richard Pierson: “The best skilled fighter I ever faced – it was Jamal (The Truth) Davis, hands down, that is the only fight I can say I was worried in. He was a small, smart, strong, skillful Philly boy. If I didn’t adjust to his pressure and boxing ability and end up cutting and stopping him it would have maybe been a draw because he beat me in the first and third rounds – or he might have won that fight. On undercards I shared the ring with Cotto, Margarito or Pavlik, etc. who were the main events. I would have to say I never shared the ring with the best.”
Did you ever cry because of boxing?
Richard Pierson: “Yeah, I cried a few times, boxing is my life. I married boxing with a square ring so that makes boxing my wife but when you love something as much as I love my boxing and you’re sacrificing, giving it your all, trying to be a great man, full of hard work and dedication and it treats you like a wife, full of infidelity, wouldn’t you cry too?”
What was the most excited you ever got from boxing?
Richard Pierson: “The most excited I ever got from boxing was winning the New Jersey Golden Gloves.”
What was the most excited you ever got from watching a fight?
Richard Pierson: “Wow. I had many excited moments, from every round of Oscar vs. Shane Mosely, Tyson eating on Holyfield. But Pavlik coming back to knock out Taylor is number one because I helped him prepare for the battle.”
Which fighter today do you have the most respect for?
Richard Pierson: “The fighter I have the most respect for is the Big Lil Man – Manny the Pac Man. He is a real man, he don’t talk trash, he is true to his religion and family, he fights who the public ask him to fight. He never makes them demand a fight. He is the pound-for-pound best and I can’t wait for my name to be mentioned along with his name.”
Richard Pierson is a talented middleweight boxer based in New Jersey, who was praised as a future world champion by Team Kelly Pavlik. His Boxing Blog appears regularly at www.BoxingInsider.com