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BOXING

Berry chases boxing dreams

22-year-old Brandon Berry of West Forks commits to his passion

By Travis Lazarczyk tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com
Staff Writer

Berry’s General Store is busy this time of year. The rafting guides who descend on West Forks for the summer are constantly in and out, buying sandwiches or cigarettes or beer.

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THE CANNON: For six years, Brandon Berry, made the 240-mile round trip from West Forks to Lewiston to train at the Gamache Boxing Gym. Now he drives 21⁄2 hours to Stockton Springs, where he trains at Wyman’s Boxing Club.

Photo by Jeff Pouland

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HARD PUNCH TO FOLLOW: Brandon Berry, 22, of West Forks trains with fellow boxer Joel Bishop of Bingham on Wednesday in Skowhegan. Berry’s next fight is Saturday at Skowhegan Area High School. In 14 amateur fights during the last four years, Berry is 7-7.

Photo by Jeff Pouland

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The store also stocks some hardware, and the Berrys will be happy to fill your propane tank or your car’s gas tank.

Brandon Berry, a third generation Berry to work in the family store, runs the register and makes small talk with Robert Henderson, who lazily watches the day go by from the rocking chair near the door, when he’s not napping.

Behind Berry, tacked to the shelf stocked with alcohol, are newspaper clippings trumpeting

Berry’s fledgling boxing career. A few feet away, a handful of his trophies sit in a display case.

Every customer who walks into Berry’s General Store on this hot July Wednesday was greeted the same way.

“How ya doin’ Bud?” Berry said.

This is the pugilist at work.
 

• • •
 

Boxing is not just a hobby to Berry, 22. He has a plan.

“I want to be a pro within 20 months,” Berry said, standing behind the cash register of the store his grandfather built in 1963. “I have very high expectations of myself. I have big goals, big dreams. But it’s right around the corner.”

Berry’s next fight is Saturday at Skowhegan Area High School. In 14 amateur fights during the last four years, Berry is 7-7. But since moving down from 152 pounds to 141, he’s 4-2, and he’s won his last three fights. In June, he won a unanimous decision over Andre Lukomski in a three-round fight in Rutland, Vt. In early May, Berry earned a second-round knockout win over John Snyder in Somersworth, N.H.

In April, Berry won in what was essentially a hometown fight, a three-round decision against Malbar Cruz at Bingham’s Valley High School. Berry graduated from Valley in 2005, and 600 people packed the small gym, many to watch Berry box 28 miles from his hometown. Berry won the award for Outstanding Bout of the Night for that one.

“Best night of my life,” Berry said.

It was so much different than his first fight, at the Vermont Golden Gloves when Berry was 18. The fight was stopped in the second round, to keep Berry from taking a total beating.

“I was out of my weight class, out of my league,” Berry said, “and wouldn’t change it for the world.”

This, too, is the pugilist at work.
 

• • •
 

Berry fell in love with boxing for the same reason many boys fall in love with something: He emulated his older brother. Gordon Berry Jr. wanted to be Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies. Brandon wanted to be his brother.

“It was (Gordon’s) passion, and I wanted to be just like him,” Berry said.

The Berry brothers set up a speed bag, shadow-boxed and mimicked the moves they saw on television. Finally, Gordon Sr. called the Gamache Boxing Club in Lewiston. Berry spoke to Joey Gamache Sr., whose son, Joey, won world titles as a Super Featherweight and Lightweight in the 1990s.

"My wife (Carol) or I would drive them to Lewiston all the time,” Gordon Sr. said.

Eventually, Gordon Jr. lost the passion. Now he works in his brother’s corner. Brandon’s passion reservoir is plenty full.

“He is the main reason why I started. Every fight I have now, one of the prayers I say in the ring before the bell rings, is to let me make my brother proud,” Berry said. “He inspires me to do this. When he was into boxing, with the right opportunities, he could have been something special. He had much more natural talent then I will ever have.”

For six years, Berry made the 240-mile round trip from West Forks to Lewiston to train at the Gamache Boxing Gym. It was something to look forward to all day in school.

The travel was no big deal. If you grow up in West Forks, travel is a fact of life.

“To buy anything, to see anything, you have to travel. I didn’t have to get used to it,” Berry said.

Every morning, Berry is at the store by 5 a.m. He’ll work until mid-afternoon, when his father takes over behind the counter at 2. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Berry leaves work and loads his stuff into the van he bought and drives two and a half hours to Stockton Springs, where he trains at Wyman’s Boxing Club.

Sometimes, he picks up other boxers along the way. Usually three or four. He’ll train in Stockton Springs for a couple of hours, then return home. He’s back in West Forks by 10:30, 11 p.m.

“I go right to bed. It goes by so friggin’ quick,” Berry said.

Ken “Skeet” Wyman has been Berry’s trainer since the fall of 2008.

“I don’t know where the kid gets his drive,” Wyman said. “He drives 700 miles a week to come to my gym. What athlete in the entire country does that?”

Carroll Ware, who trained Berry before Wyman, put it simply.

“He’s not a natural,” Ware said. “He works very hard. ... I saw a kid with a willingness to work hard. He just needed some direction.”
It’s how Berry grew up. To do anything, you have to travel.
 

• • •
 

Berry is the personification of West Forks. Small, tough.

According to the 2000 United States Census, the town’s population was 47, and it hasn’t really grown in the decade since. In the summer, river guides and tourists give the town a modest population bump, but year round, it’s just about four dozen hearty souls happy to exist 50 miles north of Skowhegan in a wide spot on Route 201.

Year-round residents and summer folk, most of them frequent Berry’s General Store, built by Cliff Berry, Brandon’s grandfather, in 1963.

“After everybody gets off the river is when it gets busy,” Berry said.

When Berry says he knows everybody in town, it’s probably not hyperbole. He grew up here, and he’s on the Forks, West Forks and Caratunk volunteer fire department. His father was a founding member of the fire department, and Berry joined when he was 15.

The good thing is, when you answer a call, you’re helping somebody you know. The bad thing is, when you answer a call, you might become witness to a friend’s tragedy.

“You come to some of them, you want to walk right away,” Berry said. “But you can’t.”

The first call Berry ever answered was in July 2004. A traffic accident. Federal Express driver Jesse Sirois attempted to pass another car, rolling his van on Route 201. Sirois, who often made deliveries to Berry’s General Store, was dead when Brandon and other rescue workers arrived.

“You shouldn’t be excited to go on a call to an accident, but I couldn’t wait for that pager to go off,” Berry said.
He paused. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know why the hell I was excited to come to this.’ ”

Berry was in the ambulance with Brian Rowe’s wife, Judy, after Rowe — the town’s fire chief — died on the way to the scene of a fatal snowmobile accident. Berry dedicated the fight in Bingham to Rowe’s memory and put Rowe’s name on the right leg of his boxing trunks.

“He made it to a lot of my fights and was a huge supporter of mine,” Berry said.

Berry has had offers to move, train in another gym. Travel less. He’s turned them down.

“I like it here. I like it all,” Berry said. “I like the weather change. I enjoy plowing snow. I have 30 driveways I do. ... If I need a day off, I take one. I don’t know what other job I could do and box. It doesn’t even feel like a job.”

This is the pugilist at home.
 

• • •
 

Berry knew he wasn’t ready when he took his first fight. He took it just to so he could change the answer to an annoying question.

“People would ask how many fights have you had. I got sick of saying none,” he said.

Berry lost his first fight, and his second. He checks the trophy on display in the store to make sure he gets the date of his first win right. It was his third fight, and it was April 19, 2008, at the Laconia (N.H.) Ice Arena.

A couple of weeks later, Berry earned a knockout win in Dover, N.H.

“It felt like everything was clicking. I was 2-2 with two knockouts. I felt great,” Berry said.

Ten fights later, Berry’s career record still hasn’t jumped over .500, even with his current three-fight win streak. Part of that record can be attributed to the weight at which Berry entered many of his fights, 152 pounds. Berry is 5 feet, 5 inches — much shorter than most of the fighters in that weight class.

Wyman convinced Berry he had to drop to 141 pounds or continue losing fights.

“Skeet said, ‘Look, this is where you belong.’ I pretty much started from scratch,” Berry said.

“It was the only thing to do. Brandon’s a small man. That’s where he needs to be,” Wyman said. “At 152 pounds, you’re fighting men 6-feet tall. Brandon’s 5-5. You have to work with what God gave you.”

What Berry is working with is speed and strength. In high school, Berry participated in Jack Kaplan’s power lifting program, and that strength manifests itself in his nickname “The Cannon.” Berry’s knockout percentage is 57 percent.

“He has good power. In fact, he has excellent power,” Ware said. “He has quick hands. He understands what he has to do. He can’t stay outside. He has to make tall guys miss him and get in where reach doesn’t matter. ... He moves his head, he moves his feet, and he lets his hands go.

“He’s never going to be a ballerina.”

Berry’s favorite boxer is the late Arturo Gatti. Like Gatti, Berry is undersized and strong.

“I’m the aggressor. I favor my power,” Berry said. “I love Gatti. Hard chin, tough guy. Take three shots to land three shots.”

Wyman would rather see Berry fight like the late Alexis Arguello. Punch and move. Win on points.

“It’s not about knocking somebody out. Every time you knock out somebody, there’s brain damage, to some extent. I’d rather see a fighter go out and mesmerize,” Wyman said.

Along with convincing Berry to drop a weight class, Wyman has Berry pushing himself to work more.

“Skeet’s big on conditioning. I never would’ve admitted it before, but I kind of skated around his rules,” Berry said. “I trained as hard as I ever trained, but not as hard as he wanted me too.”

Added Wyman, who has been in boxing for 32 years: “He realizes everything I tell him, there’s a reason. You need to do what your coach needs you to do.”

Berry and Wyman came together in the fall 2008, when Berry moved to Old Town to take a job as a plumber. Although Berry and his brother bought a used ring for $2,000 and installed it in Somerset Sports and Fitness in Skowhegan to train with Ware, Wyman’s gym on the midcoast in Stockton Springs was closer to Berry’s new job.

When Berry was laid off in June 2009 — “Which was fine by me,” he said — he moved back to West Forks to work in the family business. He stayed with Wyman.

“I’m going to go where Skeet is,” Berry said. “Our ideas feed off each other.”

Like Gatti, Berry has a tattoo of a cross on his arm, with the words “Live in the sky” underneath. That’s the name of a song by the rapper T.I., and they remind Berry of his cousin Dustin, who died when Berry was 15. Before each fight, Berry takes a knee and says a quick prayer.
 

• • •
 

Berry’s best fight of the year might have been a Feb. 6 loss in the Golden Gloves championship in Burlington, Vt. Fighting in the 141-pound novice division, Berry lost a close decision to Danny Mott of South Burlington’s Precision Boxing.

Berry thought he’d won the fight, and so did the crowd.

“The whole crowd booed their own man out of the ring,” Berry said.

Now, Berry thinks the judges might have gotten he and Mott mixed up. Both wore black and white trunks. Berry shrugged it off and vowed to never enter the ring with the same color trunks as his opponent again.

The next year or so is crucial to Berry’s goal of becoming a professional boxer. The more he wins at the amateur level, the tougher it will get.

“Brandon’s competition is getting stiffer and stiffer,” Wyman said. “It’s like a student going to school getting an education. Once we get this amateur thing down, and we have a way to go, a few years from now, we’ll see.

“It’s a learning experience, as they all are, as long as you’re not being pummeled.”

Berry sees Portland’s Jason LeHoullier as inspiration. LeHoullier has fought for North American middleweight titles.

“To see him make it that far, I have all the hope in the world,” Berry said. “I’m at a perfect age to do what I want to do in boxing, but I have no time to waste.

“I’ll be OK with it, no matter what happens, as long as we give it a shot.”

This is the pugilist, not yet content.
 

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com