By Coach Tim Walker – The current heavyweight landscape is viewed by many as thin. I am in the minority who feel that the division isn’t necessarily thin, just not packed with personalities that fans gravitate towards. Case and point, Vitali Klitschko is as effective a champion as a heavyweight can be typically winning by some mode of stoppage (37 knockouts in 38 wins is not a fluke). In addition to that he has only two recorded losses and was winning both of those fights before a shoulder injury in the ninth round stopped him against Chris Byrd and an awesomely bad cut above his eye ended his fight with Lennox Lewis. Neither fighter re-matched Vitali. Byrd lost the WBO in his first defense against Wladimir Klitschko and Lewis retired. Thus, the problem isn’t there not being a dominant heavyweight rather a lack of a magnetizing personality within the division.
Recently Lewis suggested that the next great heavyweight might be as much as 30 years from discovery. If that number is accurate then the next great heavyweight hasn’t been born. I can’t argue what I can’t prove, referring to Lewis’ timeline, but I can introduce you to a boxing stud that can potentially fill the character cavity within the heavyweight division. This week’s Weekly Stud, heavyweight Tor Hamer..
Tor Hamer, heavyweight (9-0-0 KOs 7)
Walker: Hey Tor what’s going on? How is everything going for you right now?
TOR HAMER: Everything is going great.
Walker: You’re 9 and 0 with 7 knockouts. How do you feel that your career is going thus far?
TOR HAMER: Excellent. Actually I couldn’t be doing much better than I am. I am learning on the job as my trainer Bob Miles would say. I’m increasing my competition. I recently beat a guy who was 5-1 with 5 knockouts and I am only interested in fighting guys with winning records who can fight. Hopefully next year I’ll be ranked in the top 20 in the U.S. and hopefully the world. Then after that we can start talking about title fights but the way I do that is to keep winning and not get my head knocked off.
Walker: Though I saw you fight in South Florida people outside of New York might not be as familiar with you as I am. Introduce yourself to the Eastside Boxing family of readers.
TOR HAMER: Okay. I’m Tor Hamer and I’m 26 years old. I got a late start to boxing coming out of New York but I’m here and progressing at a pretty rapid pace. Not so much to be compared to guys who are smaller heavyweights. Size-wise Holyfield and Tyson come to mind and Joe Frazier. My character is more similar to Muhammad Ali. I like to joke and I’m pretty strong minded about certain opinions.
Walker: Where do you stand and what do you feel is missing from boxing right now?
TOR HAMER: I’m really interested in transcending the sport and making people invest in my career not just in the ring but outside the ring as well. I think that’s really important and I think that’s missing inside the heavyweight division. A lot of guys just win and think that’s just supposed to be it. One of my boxing heroes Eddie Chambers has been going to Western Europe and challenging the strongest heavyweights in the world. It used to be us but now its them which is another ingredient to the cavity that is the U.S. heavyweights. The point is he didn’t do enough outside the ring promoting and he’s not visible. But here I am at 9-0 talking to Eastside Boxing doing interview. This is something that is missing in the heavyweight division. They just don’t do the media. They expect their fan base to know who they are. They expect the fans to come to them like they do in football and baseball. But in those sports the team is more important than the athlete that’s why they don’t have to worry about the media outlet. Very rarely does the team highlight an individual. Mostly it’s about the team. In boxing you are the team and you have to push your brand. You have to make the fans want to know you. That’s why I appreciate the first question which is “Why would someone be interested in knowing Tor Hamer?” The answer to that is because I’m a nice guy (laughing).
Walker: You’re kind of past the first wave of your boxing career. Is that accurate?
TOR HAMER: Yes, in my case, but I’m not quite there. If I had to make an argument I could say I passed the first wave. But I just broke into my six rounder’s. I would say the first wave really ends with your first eight rounder. I would say that will happen definitely by February. But around the holidays it’s not good to take big, big risks. Everyone’s eating food, enjoying family, hanging out with friends. So right now even though I am facing guys with good records the guys that I face are guys that I should beat not guys I have to beat. Next year I’ll be facing individuals that I will have to beat. It will be guys just like me. One guy that comes to mind is Tyson Fury from across the pond. He’s out there doing a good job but he’s someone that either I can wait to see in a championship fight or I can face him now. To my benefit with the current state of the U.S. heavyweight I can make a dramatic statement. Our heavyweights have to be willing to go over there and challenge them and that’s what Eddie Chambers is doing. Fighting each other over here is one thing, no one cares. But I think if we make this more of a national thing of us versus them it’s going to make people care more about their fighters. Especially in the boxing world which right now is not the coolest place sometimes.
Walker: One of the things you point out is the lack of attention to detail fighters possess outside the boxing ring. How involved are you in the process with Mr. Lou Dibella in handling your career?
TOR HAMER: There’s a couple of interesting points that I want to respond to. First, before I answer your question you are a good writer and I’ve done my homework on you as well. To answer your question specifically I am my own manager. I am completely hands on with my career and have been called an extreme self promoter. I don’t think of myself that way I think of it as doing what I am supposed to do. I mean I go out and I find the interviews. If there’s not an interview to be had then I will find something to keep people thinking about what I am and what I have to offer. My team is very close. My matchmaker is Joe Quiambao and the team is Shawn Raysor, Bob Miles and Adam Cohen handles my branding and marketing. I don’t have an entourage. I can’t afford one nor do I want one. My team is small but between them they have over 80 years of boxing experience and with that kind of information surrounding me I don’t feel I need a manager. I can make educated decisions on my own. That being said I don’t hose off the expertise of my promoter Lou Dibella. The guy has been around for years and been in every possible cycle of boxing and has a pretty credible reputation as an honest guy. You know he’s a businessman but he’s not my buddy which is another thing I’ve learned in my short career. I know what I am to him. I am an investment. But as long as we keep our relationship honest and clear and transparent we work well together. Now if I don’t win and do what I am supposed to do in the ring then the stuff that I do outside the ring won’t matter. My primary function is to win fights.
Walker: Are you the type of fighter who goes by the mantra of letting your team decide what’s best for your career?
TOR HAMER: Touching on fighters being hands off of their careers. I wouldn’t say all fighters do that. I would say that’s more guys who get some success then don’t know how they got there. They just sit back and focus on going to the gym and winning fights and that’s just the way it is. Fighters aren’t dumb, they aren’t dumb people. They might come off as dumb or might come off as a little shy because they aren’t use to being in front of the spotlight. As opposed to basketball, football and baseball players who are use to being in the spotlight even in high school. It’s breed into them that they are much more personable characters. IN comparison boxing is back alley sport. You’re in the gym in high school as a boxer and you get no attention because you’re an amateur. Most people don’t even know the difference between a pro and an amateur besides the money. They don’t know the rounds, the headgear, the times, most don’t even know how fighters get to the Olympics. They think these guys just show up. Boxing used to be a lot more main stream and a lot more accommodating and you had that breeding ground to make a more personable athlete during the heyday of boxing. Amateurs were a lot bigger. You would have 2,000 people show up to watch amateurs fight in the Gardens not just the Golden Gloves. You got your Sugar Rays and Tommy Hearns out of that but nowadays you don’t have that. You have guys who just show up and you don’t know how they got there. And then some guy one day shows up with a lot of money that you’ve never seen before and it’s legal money that you can touch and not worry about going to jail. You can’t just stick that person in front of a camera and expect them to be able to communicate to multiple audiences especially people across countries. That’s what we see with a lot of athletes in the sport today and unfortunately I don’t see a big change happening anytime soon.
Walker: You touched on the Olympics so let’s go there. When I put this interview out there that Tor Hamer is a heavyweight that people need to pay attention to immediately they will ask “Where were you during the Olympics?” I know you’ve probably moved on but what are your feelings on the Olympics and how it was handled?
TOR HAMER: First, I didn’t go the Olympics and I didn’t go to the trials. I didn’t even attempt any of the process. When the trials came around I had just come on the boxing scene. I started boxing late. I was about 20 years old. Before that I was doing martial arts. When I got on the boxing scene I had success early. Won early and went into the open class and that was the year of the trials. My eleventh fight was against a guy who was ranked number 2 in USA Boxing. I won that fight but did I think I was ready for a 5 day box off tournament or a trial situation? No way! People were like Tor you had some success but you would have to do that 5 times in a row. I had just gone to four round fights. So we decided not to go. Now as I kept winning and I beat Kimbo Bethal, who was also ranked number 2 when I fought him, to get to the Future Stars Tournament and I had success there people started saying you know maybe we should give him a shot. That’s when Nate Campbell, the Olympic boxing coach, reached out and showed interest in having me in a dual meet and have me come up to the camp. I thought that was great. But then he disappeared. I didn’t hear from him again. He didn’t call back. I called him several times. Tried to figure other ways to get in touch with him and was willing to get myself out to Colorado Springs. No contact. Then I started hearing all these horror stories about guys jumping the ship like Kimbo Bethal who was the Olympic hopeful in the super heavyweight division. This was only the third time in history that we didn’t field a full Olympic Boxing team. The first time was in London in 1902, the second was in Munich when we boycotted the games and in 2008 when the guy didn’t make qualifying. Our superheavyweight didn’t even qualify. It was an 18 year kid (Michael Hunter) who got three chances to qualify and didn’t. You would think you had an alternate for a reason right? And Kimbo Bethal can fight. This guy is 230 pounds 6 foot 4 inches with 80 plus amateur fights from Buffalo. The guy can really fight. Kimbo lost a decision in the trials and they just went with the 18 year old kid Michael Hunter cause, well, Nate Campbell is in love with him. And we had another guy not make weight (Gary Russel, Jr.). Not to mention that the best amateur to come out of the US amateur system since Mark Breland was Danny Jacobs and where was he? Because he lost one fight in the trials. The kid was 99 and 2 or something like that. You mean to tell me that this middle weight shouldn’t at least be the Olympic alternate? Come on now that’s ridiculous. USA Boxing for the 2008 Olympics completely screwed the pooch and they let down an entire country. They did a great job with getting us TV time though. They did a great job with making certain people could watch boxing but our fighters were terrible and the rest were just as bad as well. You know we should have swept this year. It was clear that everyone decided that Deontay Wilder would go. Deontay didn’t fight at superheavyweight. He’s a 6′-7″ guy who was fighting heavyweight but in his second fight he threw 2 jabs. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t have swept the whole round and the whole tournament. We should have swept the whole games instead we got first round losses in more than half of the divisions. It was terrible. Looking back it seems that it benefited us who didn’t go more than those who did.
Walker: Your father has a doctorate degree and your mother has a master’s degree. You attended Penn State where you earned your bachelors degree. Though not unprecedented it is very rare for a boxer to attain such a highly regarded education. How do you transition from that background into becoming a professional boxer?
TOR HAMER: It wasn’t overnight. The way it came about was almost like a fairy tale. I mean who grows up saying they want to work for Morgan Stanley except maybe Morgan Stanley Jr. When you’re growing up you say “I want to be a fighter” but then when you get a little older you approach it a little more tactically. You say what are my strengths, what am I good at, what are my options, where do I know people, where can I make a decent living and what’ll make me happy? Boxing was never really considered an option or a possibility. When I got older and was progressing in martial arts and having success then it finally became tangible for me to become a fighter. Lou Dibella comes along and says I’ll make you a champion. I said, well, I don’t know. Let me ask my mom (laughing). So my parents and I talked it out. In my household you have to make arguments. The way you win in my household is by laying out the pros and cons. You have to express how it will benefit you and how it will hurt you. Then it became apparent that it made more sense for me to attempt it than not to attempt it and if I fail I still have my degree to fall back on. And if I’m successful well then what will that get me? That eliminated the majority of the cons which left my parents with one option. That being them admitting they didn’t want me hurt. That’s all they had to resort to. They had to go into complete parent mode. But it’s kind of hard to argue that point when you’ve been doing martial arts since you were thirteen and you never came home once with a broken nose, or a bloody eye, or a broken arm. I’ve definitely been rocked a couple of times in the gym but never with any serious injury. At the end of the day it came down to what was best for me. Being a professional athlete isn’t an opportunity that is afforded to very many people. It is rare that a fighter gets a promoter, has a team that is so concise and invested in you and knowledgeable about what they are doing to help you move forward in the ring and in life. Which means you have the ability to add more and more value to your career. Honestly, I thought this was normal but apparently it isn’t for a boxer. It isn’t very difficult either. Other people can do it they just don’t.
Walker: Boxers want challenges but promoters need to fill seats. If you find yourself getting to 15 or 16 wins you will be known on a much broader scale. Vitali is 38 and Wladimir is 33. Do you see a point where you will face either of them or do you see yourself remaining on a path of development for future potential?
TOR HAMER: Let me add a side not. Boxing isn’t linear. If I decide to wait to fight them it doesn’t guarantee me to be champion for any length of time. I will definitely be in the game where I have more rounds but having more rounds doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a better fighter. It can make you more comfortable being in the ring that’s a guarantee. But it doesn’t mean you will improve. That being said, if I advance to the top 20 in the world which is my goal then I will be easily able to catapult into the top 10 of many ranking systems. Fighting for a belt, going back to your question, means they will fight me if I can fill seats. Do I want to fight them at that point, probably not and I’ll tell you why. It’s not because of the quality of the fighter though I think I would have a difficult time fighting those particular 6′-8″ guys. Those guys are huge and strong and they know what they are doing. I don’t have the best punching power out there; I’m not the best boxer out there. I don’t have any delusions of myself. Why wouldn’t I think to fight them then? Because I don’t think that in one year I will have the momentum and fan base support behind me that’s necessary to validate the fight. If I do everything I’m supposed to do then I am a challenger not just someone challenging and can make the fight worthwhile because I’m a serious opponent. As you so eloquently put it they have to have guys in there. If I got in there and I get bumped off what’s the point? If I go into Germany like Kevin’s (Johnson) doing and lose no one will know besides boxing. People on a broad scale won’t know and won’t care and I won’t make that much money doing it. Now if Kevin was to take his time and fight other top ten guys and build his name in the game as a credible guy like (Chris) Arreola was well on his way to do. Number one, Chris is Mexican. There is no city in this country that doesn’t have at least a district where it’s mostly Mexican or Hispanic. There is no reason why every person of Mexican heritage shouldn’t be representing Chris Arreola especially with the excellent job Oscar De La Hoya did and the fact that he’s no longer boxing. There’s no reason win or lose. Winning has nothing to do with national pride. If I go into a title shot by the end of the next year I have to win. If I don’t I set myself back three years. But if I progressively build my reputation as a credible heavyweight that people can be vested in then I will be able to have heavyweight fights in Vegas, Madison Square Gardens and the Staples Center.
Interview to be continued…
My take on Tor Hamer
Can he fight? Who doesn’t understand that question? That’s all we really want to know isn’t it? While there is no such thing as the perfect fighter, though each boxer pursues perfection, it will ultimately come down to whether he can punch, move and take a punch.
Many of the suggestions that I have gotten for Weekly Stud are excellent but when I came across this heavyweight I was intrigued. So that I don’t get beat down terribly please understand that I am not suggesting that this young heavyweight is a contender just yet. In fact, I think he might be at least 2 years from being a contender but as I watched him I couldn’t help but be intrigued. When I engrossed myself into his story I actually wanted to know more.
Tor Hamer (yes that’s his real name) is a native of Harlem (New York City), New York with a dash of surburban Baltimore sprinkled on top. His boxing story is absolutely not typical. He isn’t a fighter who comes from nothing and uses his base beginnings as his boxing fuel. He didn’t grow up poor or draw to boxing as a way out of harsh circumstances. Tor became a professional boxer because, well, he loves the sport.
As an amateur boxer Tor suffered only one loss on his way to compiling a 34-1 record many of those wins coming against the best amateur heavyweights at major tournaments. Amateur titles are somewhat but not fully suggestive of the possible professional success that lies before a fighter. Still, Tor’s amateur accolades read like a whose who of amateur boxing. Ranked #1 by USA Boxing in 2008, 2008 National Golden Gloves Champion, 2008 Silver Medalist at the US Championships, 2007 Nickel City Invitational Champion, 2007 Empire State Champion and 2007 New York Metropolitan Champion and more. You can throw in a few other titles and 16 mixed martial arts titles to that as well.
I have no take just yet on his championship potential. I will wait to see his development but for now he is absolutely worthy of being introduced to the Eastside Boxing family of readers. So in response to my initiated question of “Can he fight?” My short answer is yes he can and he will be a force to be reckoned with soon.
Stay tuned for the conclusion of this dynamic interview. You will be amazed at what he has to say next about his future possibilities, his take on MMA, how he feels about being highlighted on Weekly Stud and more.
Coach Tim Walker is a contributing writer for Eastsideboxing.com and his own blog at boxing4life.blogspot.com. For questions, comments or to suggest fighters for Weekly Stud please contact him at tpwalker@hotmail.com.