Boxers generally have nicknames that suggest something about their style of fighting or, their prowess.
Muhammad Ali was `The Greatest’, Tommy Hearns was `The Hitman’ Ray Leonard was `Sugar Ray’ and you get the picture.
However, there was never a more apt sobriquet than that given to the second Guyanese to win a world boxing title, Wayne Braithwaite.
Braithwaite was known as `Big Truck’ and the six feet tall cruiserweight usually just overpowered his opponents in the ring.
Braithwaite took the cruiserweight division by storm winning his first 21 fights, 17 of them by knockouts to announce his presence as a genuine threat in the division.
He later went on to win the World title which he successfully defended three times on Showtime Promotions.
He is also one of the few Guyanese boxers to be ranked world number one by the Ring Magazine which he did between 2003-2005.
Born 9th August 1975 at the Georgetown Public Hospital, Braithwaite’s father Orin Argyle was a former Guyana Defence Force Officer while his mother Claire Small, served for some time as his agent or manager.
Braithwaite, who attended Plaisance Primary and Vryheid’s Lust Secondary Schools, had an outstanding amateur career by Guyanese standards winning a gold medal at the 1994 Junior Pan American boxing championships held in Venezuela.
In the final he knocked out his Venezuelan opponent in three rounds.
Braithwaite told Stabroek Sports that he decided to become a boxer after visiting the home of a friend Shawn Perreira and saw a trophy adorning a piece of furniture.
He promptly told his friend “I am going to win one of those,” and the rest, as they say is history.
He won a gold medal in the junior middleweight division at the annual Novices boxing championships and followed that up with a gold medal at the Goodwill Games in Barbados.
His biggest disappointment as an amateur boxer he says was after winning the trials to attend the Commonwealth Games, his place was given to anther boxer whom he had knocked out, he recalled.
He boasts a decent professional record of 30 fights, 24 wins and only six losses. Two of those losses were back-to-back after he lost to Jean Marc Mormeck and Guillermo Jones.
Braithwaite’s professional career began with a debut win over 1996 Olympian John Douglas at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
Then a mere 21, he scored a knockout over the 25-year-old Douglas in the final round of their four-round contest.
It was also Douglas’s first professional fight. The two fighters’ careers took off in opposite directions with Douglas losing his second fight and Braithwaite reeling off 21 straight wins.
Among his opponents were Ken Sharpe, whom he defeated on three occasions, Wayne Harris (for the national light heavyweight title), Dale Brown and Louis Azille.
His defeat of the highly rated Brown on February 12, 2000, (TKO in Round Eight) saw him defending his World Boxing Council’s International Cruiser Title and capturing the NABF Cruiser Title.
He had earlier won the WBC International Cruiser Title when he went all the way Down Under (Australia) to defeat Tosca Petridis at the Melbourne Town Hall.
The fight against Azille, an eliminator for a title crack, saw the `Big Truck’ scoring a third round knockout at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Then in 2002 it happened.
Braithwaite travelled all the way to Italy to defeat Vincenzo Cantatore and win the vacant WBC Cruiserweight world title winning by way of a 10-round knockout.
Braithwaite had joined the late Andrew `Sixhead’ Lewis as then the only Guyana-born boxers to capture world titles.
It was a heady moment for the then Plaisance lad and by extension all of Guyana who celebrated his victory with gusto.
After defending the title against Ravea Springs, Luis Andres Pinada and Luis Azille, Braithwaite suffered his first defeat when he lost to Frenchman Jean Marc Mormeck.
The fight, a unification bout, was originally set for October but was postponed after Mormeck reportedly got injured.
When the bout eventually took place at the DCU Centre, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, on April 2, 2005, Braithwaite lost by a unanimous decision. Perhaps the postponement took a toll on his body or perhaps Mormeck took the added time to get better prepared. Who knows?
Some five months later Braithwaite took to the ring again and lost this time to Guillermo Jones for the WBC Cruiserweight title and the WBA Fedelatin Cruiserweight title.
He soldiered on with three losses in six fights.
A win against Yoan Pablo Hernandez on March 29, 2008 for the WBC Latino and WBA Fedelatin Cruiserweight titles briefly raised hopes of a return to former glory.
However, losses against Shawn Cox and Shawn Corbin in front of his home fans at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall forced him to call it a day.
Stabroek Sport salutes Wayne Braithwaite for his exploits in the ring and inducts him into this newspaper’s Hall of Fame.
