You are one of the best and most exciting fighters in the sport today, your achievement as Middleweight champion of the world and record of 35-1 with 31 KO’s are phenomenal. Your loyal fan base which travels hundred of miles to support you is something even Floyd Mayweather, Bernard Hopkins, Roy Jones never got to experience in their illustrious careers.
Recently, you said you have a lot more you want to accomplish in boxing. And that you’re not content being the Middleweight champion – you want to be the best man pound for pound in the game. Most of the experts would agree that these goals are possible for you, if you keep improving and stay dedicated to your sport.
But I believe there is a vitally important detail about being a dominant long-term world champion in professional sports which you might be overlooking. It’s no secret you seem to get colds, flus and or other various infections which, as we know, affected your performance in the Bernard Hopkins fight and also canceled the Mora and now Williams fight.
No doubt, your training regimen is brutal and physically exhausting. Which not only breaks your body down but weakens your immune system’s ability to fight off invading germs and illnesses. Bernard Hopkins eats near perfect nutritionally whether he has a fight scheduled or not. He has never been observed by anyone I know in boxing to be drinking a single beer. I sat at the same dinner table in the press room in Madison Square Garden the night Trinidad beat Joppy and he wouldn’t touch the lasagna or salad, or even have a soda. While us journalists all enjoyed the food and soft drinks, Hopkins sat at our table and talked, not eating a single bite. And Bernard did not even have a fight scheduled. Hopkins treats his body like a shrine, he rarely if ever eats greasy bad foods like chicken wings or fried foods. I did some research and do know that he eats whey protein, baked fish and chicken, oatmeal and many other very nutritious foods. From the day I first started covering him in the mid-90’s he’s always been in top physical condition. “I’m always ready,” is a Hopkins mantra. You are what you eat. Eat to win.
I don’t know what else exactly he eats but a professional nutritionist gave me a list of some of the best foods to eat for top professional athlete. Egg whites and oatmeal, whole grain cereals, breads, baked chicken, salmon, other fish, brown rice and beans. Sweet potatoes are said to be the most nutritionally potent vegetable on earth. It’s most important to eat live, raw foods, where the live enzymes are positive for your system, as opposed to eating dead, artificial and processed foods. Live and raw fruits and vegetables. Eat a huge colorful salad every night – romaine lettuce, spinach, onions, red peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, cauliflower, carrots, purple cabbage – the more different colors of vegetable, the better. Add any kind of seeds – the live potent power of seeds to grow are hugely beneficial to your body. Live seeds and nuts like walnuts, almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, every day will be a massive energy boost for you. Also important are the live enzymes of fruits, with the most powerful being from berries like blue, raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, also oranges, banana, apple, peaches, any fruits. Those Vitamin C powders to help your immune system are good and they do help, but nothing works better than real natural vitamins found naturally and alive in fruits and vegetables.
You describe your training as brutal and grueling and unlike other top boxers. We have no doubt it must be superhuman. You need to better take care of your body to allow it to recover better and quicker. Each fight, each camp takes a Herculean effort of training from you. Your body may have handled it before but something went wrong before the Hopkins fight. And this bizarre staph infection has taken an abnormally long time to heal (it’s so true that a smart healthy diet of hot soups and hot green teas, for examples, can help your body recover from illness faster too.)
If something goes wrong again and you have to cancel a third fight, your career may be in jeopardy. Heck, it may be in jeopardy now, as no one knows for sure if you will ever regain 100% of your total strength.
You have the skills, the toughness, the will, the intelligence, you have it all. You should also know that several top world champions from today hire nutritional experts for their camps, these educated experts cook and prepare all the meals according to a plan to give the athlete the most strength and energy that is possible. Chicken wings and Red Bulls are not going to get the job done.
It’s a shame that several top boxers shortened or wasted their careers because they did not take care of their bodies, or made poor lifestyle choices. We don’t have to name any names. To be a top champion, to stay on top of the mountain requires an extraordinary commitment and sacrifice. You can’t eat and live normally, like the Every day Joe. You are a thoroughbred racehorse among a field of grazers. The ring is too dangerous a place for a man to fight when he’s not 100% of what he can be.
We wish you the best in your next boxing match and your career.
Cordially yours,
A Concerned Follower