The "Beat Your Feet" Dance: Created in the Ring?

By Von Black
Thursday, September 4, 2014

Joppy was the type of boxer that liked to dance, but he could also stand in front of his opponent and clutch it out; it just depended on what the corner told him to do. He was usually patient when it came to following the corner's game plan. When we asked him what fight was a turning point in his career, he didn't have to think too long. "Carl Sullivan. Yeah, when I beat him the rest of the world knew that I was for real."

Then, he got his big shot at a World Title, but he had to go completely on the other side of the world to get it done. He traveled to Japan to fight the only World Title holder that Japan had ever produced, and he was a mega star. His name was Shinji Takehara. "Man, they had this big ole picture of him next to something like a 5x7 picture of me. Man it was crazy," said Joppy. "But I always said to myself was that a person can do whatever they believe they can do, and I wasn't returning back over here with a lose."

Joppy goes on to recount the fight with Takehara for the WBA Middleweight title. "I'm not kidding; the whole country found a way to get into that building, and when they introduced me you could hear the boos or whatever, but when they introduced him; I ain't never heard nothing so loud in my life."

If the crowd was trying to intimidate Joppy, it worked. Joppy said that he never felt so nervous before a fight. He went back to his corner, his trainer, Adrian Davis, gave his instructions and the bell sounded. Joppy recalled that after throwing a few punches, he regained his nerves and settled into the fight. "I just let it hang out. Dropped him in the first round. Danced on him. It was easy, but really hard at the same time."

Joppy was referring to all the obstacles he had to deal with on his side. For one, his camp didn't trust the mouthpiece, so his corner boiled it without letting him fit it around his teeth before it hardened. "Man, didn't these guys have kids in little league football," Joppy laughs with a shake of his head. "The mouthpiece didn't fit, then my shoes were too big, so my feet were sliding and started to itch like I don't know what. I had to beat my feet, kick, stomp, aw man it was terrible. Then my cup wasn't tight; it kept dropping, and he kept coming. I was fighting against him, the crowd, my equipment, and my itching feet."

Then, in the 9th round, Adrian Davis changed the game plan. He told Joppy to take the fight to Takehara. It worked. "He was used to stalking all his opponents. He didn't know what to do with someone stalking him. He didn't have an answer for it. I knocked him out before the end of the round. But all I remember was wanting to get out of them damn shoe."

Now it was time to defend his title and it wasn't long before he met up with fierce competition. He said that his toughest defense of any title was with Peter Venancio. After round one, "I went back to my corner," said Joppy, "Looked my trainer in the in the eyes and said 'I'm in for a long night'". He won the fight by unanimous decision, but loses his next title defense to Julio Cesar Green. "That fight pissed me off because I beat that guy, but they penalized me at the end of the fight. I didn't even think it was that close, but I'll tell you what; I punished him the next fight, then in our third fight; I knocked him out."

Joppy styled himself behind Sugar Ray Leonard, whom he thought was the best that ever did it. Unfortunately, he didn't manage his life outside of the ring behind Ray. Joppy loved all the pretty girls that came with the territory of being famous, and as time went on he began to love the booze too.

"I regret changing my management, Ollie Dunlop, J.D. Brown, and Henry Bunch. They had me right. When I left them, my career went down and all my money went too." In our next article we'll explore the last chapter of Joppy's career along with his mission today and how he's using his own demise as a platform for to help reform troubled teens in and around his community. Stay tuned to.

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