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A cut above

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

He goes to work in venues ranging from small, stuffy halls to electric-charged Las Vegas arenas, tending to prizefighters big and small. It not much of an exaggeration to say that Lewis, the British giant who’s dominated the heavyweight division for the last decade, might be a little known club fighter if not for Gavin.
Affable and with boxing coursing through his veins since he was a 9-year-old growing up in East New York, Gavin is the consummate professional.
The co-recipient of the Boxing Writers Association of America’s 1999 James J. Walker Award for “Long and Meritorious Service to Boxing” dismisses the kudos heaped on him with a shrug.
“If you stop the flow, you’re the best cutman that night. If you don’t stop the flow, you go,” Gavin said, laying out the simple rule to success in his profession.
The son of a County Wicklow plumber, he’s invariably been the best on many a night, creating a notoriety that has made him a prize asset for some of boxing’s top fighters.
As of January this year, Gavin, who turns 70 on Feb. 21, had worked as a cutman in 91 world title bouts.
The Bethpage, L.I., resident has been with Lewis since 1991 and worked all but two of the heavyweight king’s fights.
Gavin was also in the corners of bantamweight Junior Jones, featherweight Kevin Kelly, heavyweight Bruce Seldon and super bantamweight Tracy Harris Patterson, among others, during their world championship reigns.
Micky Ward, Martin O’Malley and Queens-based light middleweight prospect John Duddy are some of the Irish fighters he’s worked with.
“Inspirational,” Duddy describes the cutman.
The young sensation recalls the awe both he and his father back in Derry felt when Gavin joined Team Duddy last year.
“We were completely shell-shocked,” he said.
Four fights later, Duddy says that he’s benefiting from veteran’s vast boxing knowledge as well.
“Every advice he tells you is worth taking,” he said.
Gavin’s also a trainer of note, a vocation he first took up after ending a decent amateur career.
He’s father, Caskey, boxed in Ireland and stoked the flames of pugilism in Al when he gave him a pair of gloves one Christmas.
Gavin was 9 and soon lost his dad. Boxing then became a cathartic exercise, and besides, “all the kids did it in the neighborhood,” he said. “It was a very good thing and kept the kids out of trouble.”
At the local PAL, he met an Irish trainer named Mickey Donnelly, who would become his mentor and surrogate father.
“He took an interest in me and I learned a lot from him,” Gavin said.
Gavin, who’d grow to be 6-foot-2, started as a lightweight and peaked at middleweight before quitting the ring at age 21.
There were no titles and no pro career, just a practical evaluation of his chances.
“I won more than I lost and never turned pro,” he said. “I had the opportunities, but I had to work. Also, I felt that I wasn’t good enough.”
Yet even after he’d joined New York’s working class as a landscaper for the Parks Department, boxing still beckoned.
Gavin went back to Donnelly to learn how to train fighters.
“He showed me the rudimentary stuff and for 18 years I trained fighters in PAL clubs around New York,” Gavin said. “I had every champion apart from an Olympic champion.”
New York promoter and matchmaker Lou Fugazy was a 17-year-old Golden Gloves winner when he met Gavin at a PAL club 38 years ago.
“No one knows more boxing than Al. He’s just a tremendous guy,” Fugazy said.
Gavin was still learning the ropes as trainer in the 1950s when he started visiting Stillman’s Gym on Eighth Avenue to mingle with legendary cutmen like Johnny Suzllo, Tony Canzi, Eddie Aliano and the great Rocky Marciano’s “surgeon,” Freddie Brown, in action.
“I was lucky to talk to some of the best cutmen in the business. I watched and learned,” he said.
Now doubling as a trainer and cutman, Gavin would cut his teeth in the latter craft by working with renowned bleeders such as heavyweight Chuck Wepner.
The inspiration for actor Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” character, Wepner was nicknamed “The Bayonne Bleeder” for his tendency to cut at the slightest touch.
One night with Gavin working as an assistant to head cutman Al Braverman, Wepner required 68 stitches to close cuts on his face after a fight with Sonny Liston in Jersey City.
Although he continues to coach boxers such as New York Golden Gloves prospects Will Zito, a heavyweight who’s the nephew of tough guy actor Chuck Zito, 240-pounder Derek Rossi and professional welterweight Jimmy Lange, Gavin says he’s just “dabbling” in training.
“I’m busy with the cut work. It’s more profitable for me,” he said.
By standard, cutmen are entitled to 2 percent of a fighter’s purse. Gavin, however, negotiates a fee and is happy with how men like Lewis and Ward have treated him.
“Lennox and Micky have always been fair,” he said.
Born in Brooklyn in 1934, Gavin has no intentions of packing his innocuous looking tools away — not while he can still mount the steps into the ring every 3 minutes.
“When I can’t get up the stairs, I’ll stay home,” he said.

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