Mourad Louati: From Champion to Champion Trainer

Photo: Ex-Champ Mourad Louati (right), having gained a little weight
as well as an excellent reputation as a trainer, is pictured with his biggest prospect, unbeaten heavyweight Richel Hersisia

27.10 - Moments before he made the walk to the ring with his unbeaten heavyweight terror Richel Hersisia to guide him to his 15^th straight pro win on October 11 in Denmark, trainer Mourad Louati walked the same way, but in different company. At his side was a man with a walking stick and a large white beard, which made him look his age of 71 years. Louati took the old guy to a ringside seat, went to his fighter and later accompanied him back into the dressing room aera when the business inside the ring was finished by Hersisia with a crushing third-round kayo. Both Louati and the old gentleman embraced warmly, with tears in their eyes, once arriving in the dressing room and it was just like it used to be in the old days.

The man Louati cared for like a son does for a father is John Kristalijn and the old days in question began way back in the early 80ies, when a skinny little teenager from Tunisia one day walked through the door of the amateur boxing club that Kristalijn was running in Den Haag, Holland. "My parents took me to Holland and I was kind of a foreign street kid without any direction in life," recalls Louati. "My mother tried her best to control me and my brothers, but my father gave me some bad memories of my youth and I don’t really like to talk about the things he did to us." So when little Mourad, now of course a Dutch citizen for a long time, found Kristalijn, he was more than just a boxing trainer for him: "John became my surrogate father and whenever I had a problem, I went to see him at his gym."

Quickly, it became apparent that Louati was blessed with a natural talent for boxing and a mental toughness that quite probably has its roots in his childhood. In both 1986 and 1987, Louati won the national Dutch amateur championships and it was clear to Kristalijn that a pro career was the best way to go for Mourad, who had build a reputation as a hard puncher. Instead of letting him go his own way, Kristalijn took advantage of the amateur/professional set-up of the Dutch boxing Federation and decided to guide his 21-year-old prospect himself to pro success. He started to promote small mixed pro-am cards in Den Haag, risking his own money earned through a successful electronic business in order to stay with Louati. By 1990, Louati had build a professional record of 16-2-1 (8) and in December of that year was finally paired with the dangerous Kid Taylor for the Dutch superwelterweight title. What looked on paper a difficult assignment turned out to be Louati’s coming-out party. He crushed Taylor in two brutal rounds and a few months later received an offer to face world-ranked European champion Said Skouma in Paris for the continental crown. Remembers German manager Olaf Schroeder, who now guides the career of the aforementioned Louati-trained Richel Hersisia: "I worked with John Kristalijn for most of his shows and got him and Mourad a good payday in France, 11 months before Mourad won the Dutch title, against future European champion Frederic Seillier. Mourad didn’t look impressive at all and John retired him in the corner after six rounds. Based on that performance, Skouma’s promoter thought Mourad would be ideal for an easy voluntary defence, but what nobody knew was that Mourad was really ill when he fought Seillier and not the fighter he normally was." So came May 3, 1991 and boxing fans in Paris witnessed not only a huge upset, but a riveting battle to stick in their memories for a long time. Both champion Skouma and Louati fought like pitbulls, but it was the Frenchman who would suffer the shock of his life when the underdog heavily floored him in round five. Louati had by that time already suffered a broken rib, but fought through the pain and knocked Said Skouma out clean later in the same round – a feat that took ring great Mike McCallum four rounds longer when Skouma challenged him for the WBA superwelterweight title earlier. The little foreigner from Tunisia and the financially well-off businessman cum boxing guru Kristalijn had climbed together from the first punch to the top of the European boxing tree. "I owe John not only my success in boxing, but he made me the man I am today," Louati is quick to remark when discussing his life and career. "He helped me and still does whenever I need him and never in my wildest dreams did the thought of leaving him for another manager or trainer crossed my mind. We have a once-in-a-lifetime relationship and I just love the man."

Unfortunately, their time at the top didn’t last too long, for Louati lost the European title the same year in his first defence to another Frenchman in Jean-Claude Fontana, who stopped him in four rounds. He tried a comeback, but the hunger was gone. Sometimes, Louati gained a lot of weight between fights and that was reflected in his performances. In the 11 remaining fights of his career after conceeding his Euro crown, he won only six times. When upcoming puncher Fighting Nordin, also a Dutchman with roots in North Africa, stopped the ex-champ in six rounds in February 1996, the journey finally was over and Mourad hung up the gloves for good, leaving a career-total of 21-8-1 (12 KO’s). "It was very hard for me to stop boxing, because its in your blood. Many times I thought about one more fight and it took me more than a year to come to terms with the fact that it was best to stick to retirement. I had started a family myself and had to take care of them financially, but still it was difficult not to think about fighting," remembers Louati. In retirement, he always kept the bond with Kristalijn and his Dutch wife Betsy acknowlegdes: "Boxing has forever linked Mourad and John. When John was in bad shape last year health-wise, Mourad really suffered with him." A few years earlier, Kristalijn had decided to retire as a trainer and turned to Louati to offer to take over his own gymnasium – a no brainer really given Mourad’s love for the sport. That was the moment history possibly started to repeat itself in the shape of a shy kid from the Netherland Antilles who walked into the Den Haag gym one day. His name: Richel Hersisia. Turns out that the big heavyweight shows enough promise as an amateur for Louati to decide in early 2001 that the time was right to take him on the same route that John Kristalijn had taken him fourteen years earlier: To professional success. "My problem, however, was that I knew everything about boxing but nothing about the business side to it, because with John as my manager, I had nothing to worry about. I just signed where he showed me the dotted line and knew it would turn out well," explains Louati, "Therefore I knew that I needed an experienced partner whom I could trust and who can guide us through the minefields of the boxing business." He asked Kristalijn about the German guy he used to work with and John duely called Olaf Schroeder, "to tell me to move my behind and get to see Mourad about a cooperation," remembers the German manager and matchmaker. "To tell you the truth, I was a bit hesitant about it all, but when Mourad said he would show me how serious he is by promoting Hersisia’s professional debut all by himself in a small hall near Den Haag, I just couldn’t resist. To continue this almost fairytale-like story intrigued me like little before in boxing," recalls Schroeder.

It was a new beginning in Mourad Louati’s boxing life and in the last two years he and Schroeder, with the help of Schroeder’s partner, Danish promoter Anders Vester, build Richel Hersisia to a perfect 15-0 record with 12 knockouts. Now the next generation of the old Kristalijn set-up has reached the threshold of professional success and Hersisia will get his first chance at a title this coming November 30 when Schroeder and Louati take him back to his birthplace, the island of Curacao, to contest the vacant WBC Caribbean heavyweight championship. It would be fitting if Hersisia can also crown himself like his teacher and trainer Louati did more than a decade ago.

When getting back to their hotel in the small Danish village of Thisted after Hersisia’s aforementioned warm-up win on October 11, Louati accompanied Kristalijn, who is handicapped by the after-effects of a brainstroke suffered last year, to his hotel room before having a good-night drink at the hotel bar. "It was really nice that John could come all the way from Holland for this fight and I hope he is happy. Life is good to me these days and this is my way of thanking John for being the man who is responsible for this. I just wish that I can do with Richel what he has done with me." Louati is happily married to Betsy and they live with their two childred, son Kareem (12) and daughter Yasmin (9), in a nice aera of Den Haag, close to the beach. As often as the sport of boxing shoots itself in the foot, it can’t help but every once in a while produce a heartwarming story.