TORONTO — It’s a Saturday afternoon in mid-May at Toronto’s West End Athletic Club and a murderer’s row of Michael Jackson hits is blasting over the gym’s speaker system.
The distinctive bass line of Thriller bounces back off the space’s distinctive exposed brick walls, upon which hang posters from some of history’s greatest fights: Ali-Frazier, Holyfield-Tyson, Leonard-Hearns, Gatti-Ward.
In the near-regulation-sized boxing ring at the centre of the space, Tommy Howat, armoured up in over-sized protective gear, is taking body shots from his pupil, Steve Rolls — as killer as the playlist he has running.
“Ayyy!” Howat screams flexing his abs as hard as possible to protect himself from a nasty left hook to his side.
“Ayyy! Ayyy! Ayyy!” This time a three-punch combination comes to the mid-section: a double left hook to his side followed by a straight right to the belly.
“Ayyyyyyyyyyy!” Howat lets out one last, long yell as Rolls delivers a final right hook to his left side.
The 43-year-old trainer, red in the face from exhaustion, unhooks the cumbersome body protector that’s now been thoroughly battered, lets it drop to the canvas where he shoves it aside with his foot, exits the ring and flashes a tired smile.
This was supposedly a light day during training camp for Team Rolls as they prepare for the fight of their lives. This Saturday, Rolls, a 35-year-old, undefeated middleweight from Chatham, Ont., goes toe-to-toe with modern boxing icon Gennady “GGG” Golovkin at Madison Square Garden.
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“This opportunity is everything I ever dreamed of when I first started boxing,” said Rolls who, despite sporting a strong 19-0 professional record, is a massive underdog in this fight with Golovkin, coming in as a -7,000 favourite, according to OddsShark.
Rolls is acutely aware just how much of a David he appears to Golovkin’s Goliath, but, like most fighters cast in the role, he says he’s not letting the long odds affect him.
“Yeah, I’m aware of it, but that stuff doesn’t bug me, man,” Rolls said. “I don’t play into it; I don’t feed into all that stuff. I’ve been an underdog before and I came out victorious. I’ve been an underdog in a lot of different situations for most of my life. It’s just one of those things that you learn to deal with. I’m aware of a lot of the negative things but I don’t pay attention to it, I don’t let that dictate anything that I’m gonna do.”
It’s true that if every sleight Rolls endured really affected him, he definitely wouldn’t have made it this far.
Growing up playing a variety of sports but primarily focusing on basketball, Rolls always had athletic gifts. When he was 17, well on his way in his high-school career, a buddy decided to take him to a local boxing gym to try the sport out after noticing a spark of pugilistic talent playfighting in the John McGregor Secondary School cafeteria.
At the gym, that spark his buddy saw was confirmed by more seasoned eyes who dubbed him a “natural,” and asked if he was interested in taking things seriously and entering formal competition.
Obviously, Rolls said yes, and began an illustrious amateur career that saw him amass an 83-14 record and climb as high as No. 12 on the world middleweight amateur rankings.
Most importantly for Rolls, during those amateur days, he met the coach who’s now guided him for 14 years: Howat. “The gym I was training at was shut down for renovations, so a mutual friend of ours, he took us to a gym he was training at — it was just a fitness gym — and he introduced me to Tommy and we just started working and we hit it off,” Rolls said of how he first met Howat. “I was like, ‘This guy has a lot of knowledge,’ but the main thing was the connection. So we just went from there. We had a lot of ups and downs and I think that’s very important.”
Rolls looks back fondly at the roller-coaster ride he’s shared with Howat, a man who tried his hand at being a fighter himself but found his true calling as a coach when he was in his early 20s.
“I didn’t consider myself a coach yet because I was just helping friends out because I had some knowledge on it,” said Howat of how he started out as a trainer. “Then I started seeing the guys I was handling actually having skills, so I said to myself, ‘Hey, this could be something.’ So I started believing in myself as a coach.”
Included in the down years were times when both Rolls and Howat had to take public transit together, carrying their equipment, to get to the gym. “We didn’t have no ride, we were bussing everywhere,” said Howat.
These were the lean times that forged a relationship between coach and athlete. Through the flames of amateur competition, what has emerged is a polished weapon. “[Rolls] would joke and say, ‘Yeah, Tommy’s so hard on me, he’d tell me to go chase a car on the highway, and if ya don’t die from this, then you ain’t gonna die in the ring,’” said Howat. “So I put him through a lot of things and I’ve never trained anyone as skillful, [who] had as much drive and was as much of a gentleman and as much of a friend — he’s also my best friend.”
Though Rolls took to boxing quickly, the fact remains that he still started very late, so there really wasn’t a whole lot of time to waste if he wanted to make his professional debut while still in his athletic prime. He ended up making that debut just a few days before his 27th birthday, a unanimous-decision victory over fellow Canadian Paul Bzdel, and it was as a pro that he really started to hone his craft.
“Steve’s a real student of the game — he understands what he wants to do, he understands his body,” said Ryan Grant, another of Rolls’s trainers. “This is a thing where if you’re just strong and tough, that can only get you so far. If you’re skilled and gifted, that can only get you so far. But if you try to harness all the attributes that you’re trying to put together … it works.”
Grant — the younger brother of Howard Grant, who represented Canada in the 1988 Olympic Games, and Otis Grant, a former WBO middleweight champion — has also worked with Rolls for about a decade now and sees some advantage in his delayed start. “He started late so he hasn’t been through the ringer like some of these guys have been starting early,” said Grant.
Added Rolls: “I didn’t start boxing when I was 25 or anything like that. I still boxed. I had 100 amateur fights and I got international experience. But yeah, that’s why I’m in my prime today. Where most guys, at 35, they’re probably retired or they’re slowing down quite a bit, I’m only getting stronger because I don’t have all that mileage on me … That’s why I feel I’m still strong and I’m in my prime right now and the best is yet to come.”
Another reason Rolls might be feeling good is that despite the 19 pro fights he’s had so far, he’s almost completely unknown to top competition. Before this bout with Golovkin, Rolls’s only “big fight” seasoning came from his time as a highly sought-after sparring partner for the likes of world-class fighters Adonis Stevenson and Billy Joe Saunders.
It was in those moments that Rolls knew he could hang with the very best. “Him sparring the high end-calibre guys, Steve wasn’t just giving them good work, he was having great moments with these guys,” said Grant. “I mean, round-by-round he looked like he belonged in the mix with these guys. And some fighters at that level would be like, ‘Who the hell is this kid?’”
And now Golovkin is going to learn all about this 35-year-old kid, whether the Kazakh superstar wants to or not. “I think it’s no secret that GGG has ambition to go back and fight [Saul Alvarez] again pretty soon,” said Joe Markowski, executive vice president of DAZN North America. “We’ll be looking to make that fight shortly after he comes through Saturday night — that’s probably the worst-kept secret in boxing.”
Golovkin attended Alvarez’s most recent fight against Daniel Jacobs and last weekend’s bout between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz Jr. At both events, he seemed completely dismissive of Rolls, something that suits the Canadian just fine. “Whatever he wants to do, that’s on him because I know what I’m coming to do and I’m coming to fight and I’m coming to have my hand raised,” said Rolls.
And he just might have the gameplan to do it.
Though Rolls’s 53-per cent knockout rate doesn’t hold a candle to Golovkin’s freakish 85 per cent (over 40 pro fights), he still has lethal power punches, particularly going to the body.
In Golovkin’s only defeat, Alvarez exposed an apparent weakness to GGG’s body. Small wonder, then, that Howat was in the middle of that West End Athletic Club ring getting the ab workout of a lifetime.
Last weekend, Ruiz shocked the world by stopping Joshua. Who’s to say lightning can’t strike twice?
“I know what I have in front of me. This guy’s a monster,” said Rolls. “I know it’s gonna be the toughest challenge of my life, but if anybody can get it done I’m confident that I can.”
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