Joshua Clottey Working His Butt Off For ‘A Miracle’ Against Manny Pacquiao
Filed under: WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO, HBO, Showtime, IBO
A native of Ghana who is preparing for a March 13 challenge for the WBO welterweight (147 pounds) crown held by seven-division champion, Manny Pacquaio (50-3-2, 38 KOs), Joshua Clotey (35-3, 20 knockouts) of the Bronx, N.Y., spoke to FanHouse recently from his sleeping quarters near his training facility at Fort Lauderdale’s Contender Gym in Florida.
This is the third of four diaries for Clotey that will appear regularly on FanHouse as the 32-year-old Clotey enters the most lucrative and biggest fight of his career, one that will be aired live on HBO pay per view.
Bad things just kept happening to one of boxing’s good guys.
The initial thing was Joshua Clotey’s first major fight against future world champion, Carlos Baldomir, in November of 10 years ago, when he was disqualified for head-butting in the 11th-round of a matchup he needed only to stay on his feet to win.
Clotey, to this day, believes he was the victim of foul play against Baldomir, but he never thought that it would be the story of his career.
“That was a very, very, big frustration for me. We were dealing with two promoters. Frank Maloney, he was the one who had the money. The other promoter, Panos Eliadis, loved us African guys. Too much for Maloney’s tastes, in seemed like.
So Maloney was jealous because we always surprised him by winning. He didn’t like that,” said Clotey, who is 32.
“The day of the fight, I went to the bathroom, and I saw Maloney, and Baldomir’s managers and trainers talking. Then and there, I thought to myself, ‘Something bad’s going to happen,’” said Clotey. “I think they did something to the referee, because he was all over me. You know, everything that I’d do, he warned me too much. It was painful to me.”
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