SpotlLight on Johnathon Banks, Boxer and Trainer for Wladimir Klitschko

Our conversation with Johnathon Banks who trains Wladimir Klitschko. Wladimir Klitschko fights 

2012 - Banks stopped undefeated top contender Seth Mitchell, 25-1-1 (19KO’s), on Saturday, November 17, 2012 in the second round at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey on HBO World Championship Boxing.

Dropping Mitchell three times in the second round, referee Eddie Cotton called a halt to the destruction at the 2:37 mark of the second stanza.

Wrote ESPN’s Dan Rafael, “Maybe some things are just meant to be. The script couldn’t have been better written for Banks in his major upset if a screenwriter had taken on the task.

He was supposed to fight Mitchell in July, but the fight was postponed when Mitchell suffered a hand injury in his exciting third-round knockout win against Chazz Witherspoon in April and couldn’t be ready in time.

It was around the time that the fight was postponed that the late Emanuel Steward, the Hall of Fame trainer and HBO announcer, first became ill.

Steward had taken Banks under his wing when he was a 15-year-old amateur. Banks learned to box from Steward, spent time living with him and considered him a father figure. When Steward died in late October, his No. 1 fighter, heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, needed a trainer for his Sept. 10 title defense against Mariusz Wach and he turned to Banks, who had been in Klitschko’s training camps for years with Steward.”
“So Banks was training Klitschko for his eventual win against Wach at the same time that he was preparing to fight Mitchell. While in Klitschko’s camp in Austria, Banks, 30, of Detroit, was doing four training sessions ...