[New post] Ismael Salas left Cuba, worked in North Korea and now wants to make Joe Joyce a champion after trying with David Haye
Damian Mannion posted: " When David Haye separated from Shane McGuigan and sought the new trainer he believed he required to not only revive his career but to lead that of Joe Joyce, it was Ismael Salas, the Cuban credited with the development of the great Felix Savon, h" talkSPORT
When David Haye separated from Shane McGuigan and sought the new trainer he believed he required to not only revive his career but to lead that of Joe Joyce, it was Ismael Salas, the Cuban credited with the development of the great Felix Savon, he ultimately turned to.
Throughout the course of the by-then injury-prone Haye's preparations for his rematch with Tony Bellew the respected Salas proved unable to conquer the effects of age; Haye was stopped by Bellew and left with little choice but to announce his retirement; in the years since, however, Salas and the improving Joyce have known only acclaim.
Salas could not stop Haye losing to BellewBut Salas and Joyce have enjoyed a very successful partnership
The nomadic trainer had previously established himself with the finest amateurs in his home country before defecting and excelling with professionals in both Thailand and Japan. Having rebuilt the career of the graceful Jorge Linares, Salas returned west and was ready to settle in Las Vegas, before then being tempted to London by a fighter apparently left with little more than a household name.
Working with Haye had meant Salas sacrificing his role with Linares when he was preparing for Vasyl Lomachenko, then widely recognised as the world's finest fighter. Yet having once proven himself despite the Cuban government's attempts to undermine him from afar and before then in the great Cuban amateur setup against the wishes of his parents, the one-time trainer of the effortlessly classy Savon, Guillermo Rigondeaux and Yuriorkis Gamboa had little reason not to do so with conviction.
The son of a middle-class Cuban-American engineer and Cuban mother was one of six siblings born and bred in the southern city of Guantanamo, and his talents gradually took him from there to Havana, then on to Asia and Australia, before in the US, as another successful Cuban export, in inspiring Linares to finally fulfill his potential he caught the attention of Haye.
"I graduated from school [in Santiago de Cuba] at 20, and my coach there saw my potential as a trainer," Salas once explained. "I'd been lucky to train [as a fighter] around the best trainers in southern Cuba, where the real quality is. Jose Maria Chivas, a legendary trainer in Cuba, is the one who really saw my potential.
"I went to university and did my masters degree [in sport and science], but at the same time was asked to work with the team in Guantanamo, working already with Olympic gold medallists. I started to train them. I worked with Felix Savon, Joel Casamayor, and so many more. Everything got serious from then.
"I was [soon] giving boxing seminars all around the world. The Cuban government used this as a kind of propaganda in the 1980s. After the 1984 Olympics in LA, because Cuba did not go – they killed many dreams, it was the cold war and it was bad for Cuban fighters – Cuba tried to sell their system, by sending us.
Salas has worked with a number of Cuba's best fighters including former welterweight world champion, Yordenis Ugas
"I started going to Mexico, to Venezuela, and then in 1986 to North Korea. We spent 18 months in North Korea working with the national team [in Pyongchang]. The system; what I learnt in that time, the Cubans complain, but I realised we were living free. North Korea was crazy, and I suppose it's not changed. I could not refuse; no way."
Following Salas' return to Cuba, he was re-deployed to Pakistan, where from 1989 he spent three years preparing the national team for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. It was after that that he unexpectedly and finally began to work with professionals, became an independent trainer, and built his own name.
"That was one of the perks of going with David Haye and Richard Schaefer, because Salas was on board," the 37-year-old Joyce told talkSPORT. "Then I went to Abel Sanchez and then Adam Booth and then back to Salas.
"I only left Salas because his arm was injured and he couldn't hold pads anymore so he was going to retire. But he recovered from his injuries and now he's got a gym, a base, and it's going well.
Joyce and Salas briefly stopped working together due to the Cuban suffering an arm injuryBut, now they are back and better than ever as Joyce looks to take on Zhilei Zhang next on April 15
"I've always had that Cuban connection, from the early days in the amateurs. I first had a mentor, Juan Hernandez Pinada. When I decided to do boxing, Juan was saying, 'Go and train with my brother in Cuba', and I went there for three weeks and then I came back and won the ABAs.
"I had a taste of it – every day I was training three times a day in Cuba, with a Cuban coach, who was teaching me. It was very similar to how you train for martial arts. You practise techniques, and drills, not even with actually hitting anything. It was great to see that; to learn and experience that."
Haye had once recommended the respected Jorge Rubio, one of Salas' compatriots, to Amir Khan when they were both younger professionals, but it was Salas he ultimately trusted for his final fight. The relationship between Rubio and Khan proved fleeting, but that between Joyce and Salas has endured, and Salas, speaking in the early days of his association with the athletically gifted Joyce, saw something in him that he also saw in the three-time Olympic champion Savon.
"Savon is no human," he said. "He's like a machine – it's like Joe Joyce, he's so powerful, so big, and so many things at the same time. If Cuba had gone to the '88 Olympics, he'd have got a fourth [gold medal]. The first punch he threw in his life was with me. I was the one who made Savon."
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