With his stable of fighters at his Everton Red Triangle Gym, trainer Paul Stevenson is working with some great talent, fighters such as Peter McGrail, Andrew Cain, and others. But the current star of Stevenson’s gym is reigning WBA featherweight champ Nick Ball.
One of the most exciting fighters in the world right now, regardless of weight division, Ball, 21-0-1(12), is fast becoming everyone’s favorite fighter. Andm at age 27, Stevenson says Ball has many years ahead of him yet. With talk of unification fights and a massive fight with Japanese superstar Naoye Inoue being heard, Ball and his trainer continue grinding hard, with Ball continuing to learn his craft.
Here, Paul kindly takes time out to speak with ESB:
Q: Firstly, belated congratulations on Nick’s stoppage win over Ronny Rios, which is yet another great action fight from Ball!
Paul Stevenson: “Yeah, he’s a beast and a joy to watch. You know, you look at the top fella out there at the minute, your Terence Crawfords, and they’re good boxers, aren’t they, your [Dmitry] Bivols, and people like that. But they’re nothing like as exciting to watch as the featherweight champion, are they?”
Q: Absolutely, and so many fans are fast warming to Nick Ball as their favorite current fighter. Some fans are saying Ball is a “British Arturo Gatti!” How happy were you with Nick’s overall performance in the Rios fight, on a scale of 1 to 10?
P.S: “Hard to put a figure on it. Nick will feel he took a few too many shots. He is a very good defensive fighter, which is difficult to do when you’ve got the style he’s got; there’s an art to it. So he will feel himself that he was a little touch careless at times. But that’s to be worked on, and I think with the [home] crowd behind him and the fact that he nearly got the fella out of there in the third round, he kind of thought the job was done, but he had to push on. And you’ve got to give Ronny Rios his due. As I said to Nick, our days of fighting bums are long, long, long gone. So all these world rated fellas, they’re there for a reason, and that featherweight division is no joke. That top 10 is a tough one, so you’re going to get your ups and downs in a fight, but he dominated the fight really, from start to finish. Ronny had his moments, but it was sort of a one-sided war.”
Q: Ball’s engine is truly remarkable.
P.S: “Yeah, just the pace and ferocity in Nick, in that 10th round, when most fighters, even knockout merchants, usually if they don’t get you within six, that’s it. Whereas Nick is one of those rare ones; that’s his third championship rounds stoppage, he’s stopped two in the 12th and now that one in the tenth. Just the energy of him in that tenth round. He hadn’t sat down all night, and it was just a burst of energy and fury.”
Q: I don’t think I’ve seen Ball tired in a fight. I’ve watched him now since the sort of breakthrough win he had over Isaac Lowe in April of 2022.
P.S: “No, I’ve never seen him tired, and not just in a fight, in sparring, in training. I’ve never seen him tired in the crazy roadwork that we do with him. People say he’s a machine, and he is a bit like a machine. He’ll come back after an absolute killer round, maybe during 15 rounds of sparring. He’ll come back in, say, round nine, he’ll take a couple of deep breaths, and then it’s like it’s round one again. His recovery is something different. I’ve been training fighters for 25 years, and I’ve never seen recovery quite like that.”
Q: Is Nick 5’2” or 5’3”? There are different stats out there……
P.S: “He’s actually closer to 5’4.” BoxRec had him down as 5’2”, and he is definitely not 5’2.” Naseem Hamed was 5’3”, and he’s taller than him by about an inch.”
Q: And his jab is great for a relatively short guy, kind of like the great Dwight Muhammad Qawi, who also had an effective jab and, of course, threw a ton of punches.
P.S: “He was a great fighter, I love watching Qawi, and the man he beat, Matthew Saad Muhammad. They’re not similar to Nick in style, but they are similar, and they’re so great to watch. I could watch them guys all day. I love watching some guys more than anyone, Matthew Saad Muhammad, for example. I think it’s a responsibility as a fighter to entertain. If you can’t do it with flair and style, who cares? With Nick, we’ve developed his style, where he has been able to use his natural gifts, his speed, his strength, his tenacity, and his quickness; he’s got quick eyes, Nick. With quick counters coming back, he sees them before anyone, and he’s out of the way of them. There’s a lot of underrated ability to him.”
Q: Some of the experts, they always seem to find a flaw. They suggest a guy with Nick’s style can never really have a long career, that he will inevitably burn out fighting that way. Do you agree?
P.S: “It is crazy what he puts out in a fight. But it depends on the life you live, as well. Back in the day, you look at the ’50s, even the ’70s, and the 80’s, lighter weight fighters were pretty much washed up by the age of 30; I would say mostly, it’s considered old. Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman at age 32, and that was considered old. But time is different now. And what happens with fighters is, they get to be world champions, then in-between title fights, they go out of the gym for three months, and then they come back and they try and get fit, and it’s difficult. That’s not what they did on the way up; on the way up, you’re usually in the gym every day. Well, Nick is in the gym every day.
“Nick’s like a [Rocky] Marciano, he’s all-year round. I’ll insist he has a week off after every fight, or else he wouldn’t! Then he’s back in. So if you live that type of life you can go a long time. And as he’s boxing, he’s learning as well. Like a young Roberto Duran, he was a lot like Nick, his early days, proper energetic, crazy output, combinations shots, vicious, non-stop. Then, as he aged, he proper got his smarts in, that he’s picked up along the way. Obviously, Nick’s energy is a big part of his style, he’ll keep that going….I can’t see, just the way he lives….. The day will come, of course, as it does for everyone, where that [energy and sheer explosiveness] slips, but he’s got a lot of other skills in place, Nick. I think he can have a very long and proper exciting reign.”
Q: We all hope so, because who doesn’t like watching Ball fight? Would you like Nick’s defense to improve? Some fans were alarmed at the bloody nose Nick got in the Rios fight, or was that worse than it looked?
P.S: “You don’t ever want to get touched, so that’s always something to work on. And generally, he went two world title fights against Rey Vargas (a draw, but almost everyone thinks Ball won) and Ray Ford (a points win for Ball), and he barely took a hard shot in either of them. He took some, but not many, and he certainly threw a lot more back. He got a little bit careless in that second round (against Rios) and he took two uppercuts bang on the nose, one after the other, and it was quite a bad injury to the nose. It was pouring blood all night until the cuts man did a good job. But again, with that style and with the crowd, he just got a little carried away, a little careless, that’s all. But he’s aware of it, and in sparring, he doesn’t really get touched. It’s just a case of learning, and that was a great learning fight for him. Defense is a key thing with me for all my fighters, hitting and not getting hit, it’s an art, like playing the piano with two hands; you’re doing two things at once, and that’s where the skills come in.”
Q: Ideally, when would you like to see Nick fight again, and who against?
P.S: “It’ll probably be early New Year, I’d say. He could probably box again in December, but it wouldn’t kill him to have a Christmas. So, say February or March at the latest. And as for who against, I’d like to see him box [Naoya] Inoue. Because Inoue’s coming up, and he’s a massive name, and deservedly so, he’s knocked everyone out. He’d probably be favored by the bookies and everyone else to beat Nick, but I do believe, personally, that it might be a step too far for Inoue in weight. Nick is a big, strong featherweight. And while he got a little bit careless at times against Rios, he wouldn’t be careless against someone like that. He’d be all business. What a fight that would be. It’d be like a Hagler-Hearns. Probably one of the best match-ups in recent times that I can think of.”
Q: You think Inoue will move up again, he hasn’t confirmed that he will as far as I know, and he did say a while back that he will see how his body feels. But it would definitely be a great fight if Inoue did fight Ball.
P.S: “I don’t know, but if you’re Inoue and you’re moving up, he’s undisputed at super bantamweight, and after that, the challenge, he’s a legacy type. And two of the [current] featherweight champions are six feet tall, pretty much (Rey Vargas and Rafael Espinoza), and there’s Nick, who is a lot more like Inoue in terms of size. I think that’d be the best match at featherweight for Inoue, mostly because of the excitement.”
Q: Would you got to Japan for that one?
P.S: “Yeah. That’s where the payday is, and that’s a mega-fight. I’ve been to Japan before, on an Inoue card with Peter McGrail.”
Q: I’d love to see Ball get it on with Inoue! Nick wants to unify at featherweight, doesn’t he? Who of the other featherweight champions do you think is the most dangerous?
P.S: “They’re all great at that level, and they’re all absolutely massive. But give me a choice tomorrow for a February match, and Nick wants that rematch with Vargas, he got robbed in that fight. He wants that one; he wants that belt. The WBA belt is more established and a little bit older than the WBC. But more than that, the WBA belt is the old NBA belt from the 1920s when Jack Dempsey fought Georges Carpentier; that was the title that became the WBA in the ’60s sometime. But in everyone’s eyes, they see Nick, especially at his age, they see [Floyd] Mayweather with seven or eight WBC belts, and [Manny] Pacquiao with them all (laughs), but the WBC belt, Nick feels that’s his. So that’d be the next one if you gave me a choice.”
Q: And finally, Nick is your first world champion as a trainer…..
P.S: “Well, that’s the thing. I think someone told me that I’m the first Liverpool-born trainer in history to have a world champion. I don’t know if it’s true. But I think, ‘f*****g hell!” But there actually haven’t been that many from Liverpool; we’ve had a few. Nick has gone in with the two best fighters at his weight in the world; he’s done it the hard way. He’s ready for anyone now.”
