Berinchyk's Trainer: "We Prepared for Navarrete for 17 Weeks"

Trainer Iegor Golub, who coaches WBO lightweight champion (up to 61.2 kg) Denys Berinchyk (19-0, 9 KOs) and is an ambassador for Ready To Fight, commented on his protégé's victory over Emanuel Navarrete (38-2–1, 31 KOs).

– What were your emotions?

– Denys came to the corner and said, "Bro, I think they're not going to give it to us." I replied, "No, everything will be fine." What were my emotions? I don’t know, I think I still don’t have them. It was a lot of exhaustion. Moral exhaustion; we’ve been away from home for a long time, and we were tired. I’m glad it worked out, glad that Denys is in the champions' club. He deserved it. I’m happy that I helped him achieve this.

– What exactly were you preparing for?

– We prepared for 12 rounds, did a lot of work. We trained for 17 weeks. There were very heavy physical loads. The main thing I focused on was how dangerous his left uppercut is. We worked on various plans to counter this.

I watched about 15 of Navarrete's fights and realized one thing: he always had big problems with southpaws. Since I know that Denys works very well as a southpaw, I suggested we spend half of each round working in a southpaw stance – shadowboxing, heavy bag, sparring. Half the round orthodox, half southpaw.

And always twist him with the lead hand, finish attacks with the lead hand. "Eat" his foot – that’s a boxing term. So that his lead foot was inside Denys’ stance.

We twisted him completely with punches because he’s a guy who always falls forward, and his footwork is very weak. Pulling, "jerking," drawing him in, meeting him, constant control with the lead hand, because his head is always forward and he keeps coming forward. That was the plan.

On the night of May 19, Denys Berinchyk defeated Emanuel Navarrete by split decision to win the vacant WBO lightweight title.