Young fighter's quest for a lasting legacy

By Steve Janoski

In the back of what looks like a typical general fitness gym in Whippany sits an Olympic size boxing ring and a long row of heavy bags that sway and flutter like the ocean breakers over the rippled hardwood floor.


It’s here, among the smell of sweat and old hand wraps, that athletes are put through sweltering torture to the snapping rhythms of punches hitting leather meant to forge them into fighters.

One man here has risen a bit faster than the rest, though, and when Final Round Boxing’s pride and joy gets in the ring and goes to work, the whole gym stops and takes notice.

At 24 years old, he’s a relative newcomer to a sport where most champions train from their first steps, but as soon as he steps through the ring ropes, it becomes undeniable that the kid’s got a natural aptitude for violence; as he shadowboxes, his body hurls around like a gyroscope in a brutal ballet designed to devastate the hardiest of men.

Vinny O’Brien, lean and chiseled with slicked-back black hair, started boxing around three years ago and immediately showed his aptitude in the squared circle: a finalist in the 2008 NJ Golden Gloves tournament, he won the 141 pound title in the same tournament in 2010.

This Friday night, the East Hanover native will return to the Prudential Center in Newark for his third professional fight in the hopes of staying undefeated as he tries to turn a fledgling pro career into something bigger — much bigger.

A bell signals the end of the round, and his trainer, Lou Esa, steps between the ropes himself to work the focus mitts for the young welterweight nicknamed “The Lion.”

In another life, the mammoth 6 foot 6 inch Esa, 59, was a professional heavyweight who fought on Muhammad Ali’s undercards. With blonde hair and a huge smile, he talks with the swaggering confidence of one who’s knocked out 16 men.

He trains O’Brien every day, and calls him a “work in progress” whose maniacal attitude towards training is proving to be his finest asset.

“He’s only had eight amateur fights and two pro fights…but he works every day like it’s his last and I love that about him,” said Esa.

With every session he improves, the trainer says: increased movement, more powerful punches, the development of a left hook that can shake a building.

Pop, pop….pop, pop, bang goes the sweet cadence as combination after combination tear into the pads. Esa shouts encouragement as O’Brien throws a right hand to his chest.

“Yea, you stopped his heart with that one!” he yells.

A step to the side, and another right hand spits out from the furious dynamo, another yell, and I have no envy for his opponent.

“You hit somebody with that and its goodnight Irene!” Esa yells through his goatee.

O’Brien’s style is electrifying— he’s got no problem taking a punch to land one, and when he takes one on the chin, it’s like pulling the cord on a 5 foot 9 inch chainsaw.

He’s also white, which in boxing is nothing but a blessing; if you’re a good fighter, you can be transformed into the next “Great White Hope” overnight. If you happen to be a great fighter, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is— the money is out there.

“You’re in boxing, you could get lucky and make millions…I mean, you could set your kids up for life if you worked hard,” Esa tells me later.

He says that his fighter has a style that will fashion an iron bond between he and his fans reminiscent of the late Arturo Gatti, anotherNew Jerseynative andAtlantic Cityfavorite known for his die-hard following.

Friday’s fight will be broadcast nationally on ESPN’s “Friday Night Fights,” so if there’s any time to create that bond, it’s now.

O’Brien wants it just the same, because if it doesn’t work out in boxing….well, in his words, “It’s gotta work out.”

“There’s no backup plan. This is Plan A, Plan B, Plan C…this is everything,” he says.

It’s not an easy road to choose—littered with empty promises, shattered careers, and the corpses of good men, it’s known as a meat grinder that will use up the weak and lay low the strong.

But Esa knows the siren song of the villainous swine, and says he laid it bare to O’Brien from the first meeting.

“I was there, I been there, I done that,” he says. “I told him, ‘Look, they’re gonna’ offer you the world, and you gotta’ make the decision: it’s either you do it the right way, or we don’t do it,’ and he says, ‘No Lou, I promise I’ll listen.’”

Esa shakes his head as he relates stories about fighters from his generation who are so punch drunk that they can barely talk, or who lost everything on their journey down the rocky road.

“I won’t let that happen to (Vinny),” Esa says, shaking his head.“No matter what.”

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

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Judah claims narrow victory over Mattysse

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Originally posted on Eastsideboxing.com

If there’s one thing that Zab Judah (40-6, 27 KO’s) proved on Saturday night, it’s that he’s still got the heart and the skill to hang in during the toughest of fights.

The former undisputed welterweight champion defeated Argentinean Lucas Matthysse (27-1, 25 KO’s) in a controversial split decision on Saturday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, earning him the NABO belt  and a #2 ranking by the IBF.

It was Judah’s first fight at 140 lbs. since 2003.

The night started slowly, with Matthysse reluctant to come inside and Judah willing to sit back and counterpunch as the two felt each other out.

In the early rounds, Judah exhibited good movement and a consistent jab, although hard shots were few and far between. Judah clearly respected Matthysse’s power— even after landing solid punches, he refused to jump on his foe.



Judah landed a solid uppercut in the second, but Matthysse simply tapped his chin as if to say that he could take Judah’s best.

The lack of action had the crowd booing early, and it wasn’t until the sixth that Matthysse began to close the distance and open up with his hands.

It was later revealed in the post-fight press conference that this was part of his team’s strategy— stay away from Judah early on when he tends to be more dangerous, and then come hard when Judah starts to fade as the fight progresses.

“My team told me to be careful in the first three, four, five rounds, and that’s what I did,” he told the media after the fight.

But Matthysse was careful for too long, and by the time he decided it was time to fight, he had dug himself a hole on the scorecards that would prove difficult to overcome.

The Argentinean came on strong in the tenth, however, and began landing hard left hooks to the body and straight rights to the head, one of which floored the former champ.

A badly hurt Judah appeared to go into survival mode, clinching often and attempting to dodge Matthysse’s onslaught. Judah did manage to come back with a few of his own hard shots that backed Matthysse off, but it was clear that Zab was in trouble.

“When I went down, I had a deep conversation with the Lord,” Judah said with a laugh after the fight. “It was fast to y’all, but it was long to me.”

Matthysse continued to bring the fight to Judah in the eleventh, outworking and outpunching the older fighter throughout the round.

Judah was looking to land a big left to even the round but could not connect, and Matthysse, looking as fresh as he had in the first round, continued to walk him down and pound away.

With blood streaming down the side of his face as a result of a cut sustained earlier on, Judah attempted to use his footwork and angles to avoid Matthysse’s heavy punches.

Several times Matthysse, looking to end the fight, would catch Judah on the ropes, only to have the southpaw escape and slip away.

In the eyes of the judges, the performance was enough to give Judah a narrow victory.

Judge Waleska Poldan scored the fight 114-113 for Matthysse, while judges Hilton Whitaker and Joseph Pasquale scored the fight 114-113 for Judah.

This observer also scored the fight 114-113 for Judah.

During the post-fight press conference, Matthysse was convinced that he was robbed.

“In Argentina, definitely I would have won the fight,” he said through an interpreter. “I’d love to have a rematch and be sure that he beats me and not the judges…I was in his hometown and he got the home decision.”

Judah later appeared in a suit and sunglasses to address reporters, and commended Matthysse on his performance.



“In the future, you’ll see a lot of Lucas…but tonight was my night,” he said. “You can’t win four or five rounds of a fight and then say you won the whole fight.”

Judah later admitted that if the fight had been in Argentina, the scorecards might have read the other way.

“We probably would have got a different outcome,” he said.

He expressed little interest in a rematch with the hard-punching Matthysse, whom he called “the strongest fighter I’ve ever fought.”

“Nah…they got a couple gorillas at the Brooklyn Zoo he can go tangle with,” he quipped. “We’re going to move on, and see what’s out there next for us.”

Undoubtedly, at 33 years of age, Judah will be looking for fights with bigger names and bigger paydays, and might consider a rematch with the relatively unknown Matthysse a waste of time.

Although it was a good test for Judah, who did not tire in the late rounds as he has customarily done,  it was far from the exciting, explosive battle that would leave the boxing world clamoring to watch him fight any of the top junior welterweights.

The division, undoubtedly one of the deepest and most talent-rich in boxing, features such names as Devon Alexander, Timothy Bradley, Amir Khan, Marcos Maidana, and Victor Ortiz; any one of these competitors would probably be too much for him at this stage of his career.

Judah, of course, sees it otherwise.

“(Matthysse) is probably the toughest, hardest hitter in the weight division…I think I got past the toughest guy already and the rest of the weight division will be piece of cake,” he said.

Those are big words indeed. Whether they can be backed up remains to be seen.

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