LEWISTON — At the end of his fifth — or was it his sixth? — lap around the Androscoggin Bank Colisee crowd, Brandon Berry saw his trainer, Ken “Skeet” Wyman.
“Hey Skeet, you looking for me?” Berry asked.
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Wyman put his left arm around his star pupil and the pair chatted for about two minutes, discussing one of a half-dozen mini-dramas that trainer and fighter were still trying to juggle two hours before Berry’s main event junior welterweight title bout with Eric Palmer.
As the first round of Saturday night’s opening bout came to a close, Berry was off again, headed for the entrance. Moments earlier, the ring announcer surveyed the crowd of about 1,000 fight fans, asking for a round of applause from the partisans rooting for each of the dozen fighters on the NEF card. Berry’s fans easily eclipsed every other boxer, including hometown boy Stevie Gamache, the son of Joey Gamache, the former champion from Lewiston.
Berry couldn’t make it out the far entrance without running into two more of his supporters, Graham Haley, of Skowhegan, and Steve Deschenes, of Portland. Haley asked Berry about his father, Gordon, then got in a quick handshake before Berry was off again.
What do you think about Berry’s chances, an observer asked Haley.
“No chance, as far as the other guy’s concerned,” he said.
Minutes later, Berry was back in the locker room posing for pictures with Brazillian fighter Paulo Souza, who’d just lost the opening bout to James “Boxcar Willie” Carville, of Lisbon, by unanimous decision.
Carville had called out Berry before leaving the ring, telling the crowd he wanted to meet the West Forks native in the main event.
“You hear Willie?” he asked one of his handlers. “He called me out there in front of the whole crowd. I was (in the bathroom).”
With John Cougar Mellancamp’s “Small Town” playing on a virtual loop in the locker room, Berry talked to the man taping his hands about the family’s general store in West Forks and discussed seating and post-fight dinner arrangements with his girlfriend, Jillian Plourde.
Before leading another one of his pupils, Joel “The Baby Bull” Bishop, of Clinton, to the ring, Wyman assessed Berry’s state of mind as the biggest fight of his career loomed.
“He’s very relaxed,” Wyman said. “Not that it’s become routine, because you never know. Every fighter is different and every opponent is tough. Every time you step into the ring, you don’t know what you’re going to get.”
“But it’s positive nerves, if there is such a thing,” he added.
Berry tried to calm those nerves by meeting friends near the arena entrance and selling “Team Berry” T-shirts while making his rounds. A couple of hours later, the nerves, and everything else, would have to go away.
Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638
rwhitehouse@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @RAWmaterial33
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