Jack Loew and Ozell Nelson are always looking for the next champ

Kelly Pavlik and Jermain Taylor both took their lumps but displayed courage and determination to succeed.

By JOE SCALZO

VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF

LAS VEGAS — Kelly Pavlik was 10 when he entered his first boxing match, a fight against a kid who had already been in 24 fights and had just won the Ohio State Fair.

“Kelly smacked the [heck] out of him,” Loew said. “You knew he [Pavlik] was a real ballsy kid. He had a lot of heart, he was a good little athlete and he was just a rugged little kid.

“But in the south side of Youngstown, we have a lot of those.”

Loew opened the Southside Boxing Club in 1989 as a hobby, giving him something to do on evenings and weekends. Pavlik, 25, followed his older brothers into the gym, but Loew didn’t give him much thought at first. There’s a picture above the door at the SBC of Pavlik with some other fighters just before his first amateur bout.

Pavlik is the only one without a uniform.

“He’s the type of kid who took numerous little butt-kickings, who had bloody noses all the time,” said Loew. “But he wanted to spar five times a week. If there was a kid who beat his butt the day before, he wanted me to put him back in with him.”

The turning point came when Pavlik was 15. He sparred with a couple of Loew’s pro fighters, B-level boxers with good records.

“They smacked Kelly around pretty good,” Loew said. “Then one day, he went in with this kid and everything just turned around.

“By the end of the week, he was hanging with both of them. Within three or four months of working with those kinds of guys, he was the man in the gym.”

Loew realized he had found the kid he was waiting for.

There are guys like Loew all across the country, training fighters in their spare time, hoping one day they’ll come across the fighter who can make it big.

Ozell Nelson found him about 15 years ago when a kid named Jermain Taylor walked into his Little Rock, Ark., gym and started training.

“Usually kids will come in and stay about a month and go right out the back door,” said Nelson. “They all seem to have that real good style of boxing, but as they get older and get girls and get a car, you lose them.”

Taylor was different. For one thing, he didn’t start paying attention to girls until he was 18 or 19, Nelson said. (Taylor, by all accounts, caught up quickly.) Nelson made sure to keep him busy, traveling to different states with him for weekend competitions in between running track and doing schoolwork.

Taylor, like Pavlik, had talent and worked hard. Nelson has four sons, all of whom dabbled in boxing. One day, one of Nelson’s sons went up against Taylor in a sparring session and, Nelson said, “knocked Jermain upside the ropes.”

But Taylor stood in, never ducking his head or swinging wildly.

“I said, ‘Son, stick with me for six months and you’ll be kicking my son’s butt.’ ” Nelson said. “My son didn’t want it. He was going through the motions.”

And when they fought again?

“He kicked my son’s butt,” Nelson said, laughing.

Although they came from different backgrounds — and took different paths to the top — Taylor and Pavlik share a lot of the same qualities.

The biggest one is, they both have big hearts. When they got hit as young fighters, they fought back. When they lost, they came back stronger.

Talent matters in boxing, sure, but courage often matters more.

The best have plenty of both. That’s what makes them so rare.

Loew and Nelson still train amateurs at their undersized gyms. Nelson has as many as 30 kids some nights, while Loew is up to 35 or 40.

“I’m looking for a new building,” Loew said.

“It’s not because I have money now. It’s because I have to.

“It’s growing so fast.”

Most of those kids won’t make it past the amateur level, if that. When asked if he was looking for the next Taylor or just trying to provide a place for kids to come, Nelson laughed and said, “All of the above. You never know what you may get, but you also want to give a place for these kids to go and help everybody.”

“Everybody thinks their son is going to be the next Kelly Pavlik,” added Loew.

“I’m looking now. Hopefully, I’ll find that next one.”

Both trainers were instrumental in making their fighters world champions.

Loew has been with Pavlik from the beginning. Even when outsiders were telling him to drop Loew, Pavlik never considered it.

“It’s worked so far,” Pavlik kept saying. “Why change now?”

Nelson is a father figure to Taylor, training him as an amateur then staying on as a coach for head trainers Pat Burns and Emanuel Steward when Taylor turned pro.

Now he’s the head trainer. And he’s thankful.

“To me, that’s every trainer’s dream,” Nelson said.

“To have a kid come off the street and you have the hands to take this kid and guide him into a world champion, I think that’s a blessing.”

He smiled, then added, “I wish I could get another blessing.”

scalzo@vindy.com