By Mario Ortega Jr.-
One of two fighting sons of the late former WBO heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison, Kenzie Morrision, takes a step out of relative anonymity and onto the grand stage of a Las Vegas, Nevada pay-per-view heavyweight main event. Morrison takes on fellow second-generation fighter Hasim Rahman Jr. in the headline attraction at The Theater at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas for the regional WBC USNBC title this coming Friday night.
Though Morrsion (19-0-2, 17 KOs) of Shawnee, Kansas by way of Miami, Oklahoma finds himself headlining an event dubbed “Sons of Legends,” the former high school basketball standout did not foresee a future in prizefighting as a younger man.
“I graduated high school and I had a couple scholarship opportunities to play basketball, but I was more interested in going right to work and making money,” recalls Morrison. “So I did that for a few years, but kind of got tired of the road work and being gone. So I came back and I was still young enough for boxing. I grew up around it, even though I was pretty young when my dad’s career ended.” Morrison, who was born in 1990, the year his father hit the big screen as Tommy “The Machine” Gunn in Rocky V, was six-years-old when his dad’s primary run as a professional came to an abrupt end after his well chronicled medical diagnosis.
After a short stint back in the ring in 2008, the elder Morrison stayed close to boxing for a bit while living back in Kansas. “When I moved to Wichita when I was 19-years-old, my dad was opening up a gym on the southside of Wichita, which was kind of a low income area,” explains Kenzie. “He was trying to give them an opportunity to get into a boxing gym. So he started working with me a little bit and was kind of surprised by my ability. I was always an athlete, but I wasn’t a fighter growing up.”
Morrison worked with his dad for a while, before moving and training for a stint with his uncle Tim, another former professional fighter. “I was up there about nine months and then we had a falling out over something stupid,” recalls Kenzie. “I was young and I was like, ‘Dad, I’m going, I don’t feel like working with you.’ That was the last time that I trained with him because after that unfortunately he wound up getting sick. He wound up in Tennessee and then he would up getting in a hospital where he slowly, slowly declined in health.”
With their time training together ultimately being very brief, Kenzie never received the positive recognition from his father as his trainer or an observer of his improvements that he likely would have heard at some point had things gone differently. At least he never heard those words from his father while his father was still with him. After Tommy’s passing, his widow ended up coming across audio recordings, which included messages he had recorded for himself about his son’s impressive progress in training.
“He was kind of a night owl,” says Kenzie of his late father. “He’d stay up late and think and he’d read the bible and do his meditation – the things he thought was necessary for him. He would also make these recordings. It was neat to hear. It was assurance that damn, he really did think I could do it. He just wasn’t going to tell me because he wanted to keep pushing me or for me not to get a big head. That was kind of his downfall. It was good to hear him say that. Even if it was in private and there was no one there to hear it.”
A little ways into his run as a professional, Kenzie Morrison ended up joining forces with an individual that had strong ties to his father’s career and has helped move the young aspiring contender to the doorstep of big things.
“My dad was involved in Tommy’s career, so I was around Tommy my whole life growing up,” explains Joe Kelly of Ares Entertainment, Kenzie’s promoter and the co-promoter of the event on Friday. “He was one of the investors in Tommy, so I got to see that and experience that [beginning in the late 80’s]. Tommy was always one of my favorite fighters growing up, because of the connection there, and with him training and living in Kansas City and whatnot. That is how I got into boxing. I guess everyone gets into it, at my age, probably from Mike Tyson. But my first true, intimate connection to boxing was with Tommy.”
Over their run together, Joe and Kenzie have developed a clear bond. “It makes it even better because there is history behind it,” explains Kenzie. “I wasn’t fortunate enough to ever meet Joe’s father, but I did get to meet his mom. She was at two of my fights. She was awesome. How close his dad and my dad were and how it was all affiliated, with Joe growing up with my dad being one of his heroes and seeing all the lights and the glamor right there, front row and everything. Now, transition, and we are doing the same thing. It makes it a special deal, more than just business. You may hear it all the time: ‘This guy is family,’ but it does actually feel that way with Joe. You can tell when someone genuinely cares and the way we’ve done business so far, we are doing this together every step of the way.”
Morrison and his promoter had architected a step up in class when the COVID-19 pandemic helped slow those plans completely down. Now, with the wheels of the boxing business moving along again, Kelly can help Morrision see those plans through, beginning with the Rahman bout on Friday night.
“This is the fight that would have been the fourth in our progression,” says Kelly, who did three fights with Morrision pre-pandemic. “It is the right time to do it. Kenzie trains really hard, he’s ready for it. At this juncture, you have to make a step up in order to progress. I feel like a fight like this, with two great prospects, is a great fight for both of them. The winner takes a big step forward in the game. The fact that it is the first time in boxing history that sons of two former world heavyweight champions have fought, also makes it pretty cool. Just on the basis of competition, it is time for him to step up and I can say the same thing about Hasim Rahman, that it is time for him to step up as well. They are at that point in life where they need to progress.”
Morrison’s career path may have been slowed by unforeseen circumstances, but the young fighter seems to think he is ready to make up for lost time. “Joe and I were on our escalator and we were going up at the time, but then for a year and eight months I didn’t do nothing,” explains Morrison of the pandemic-induced hiatus. “We molded a game plan and we were pursuing it, but it kind of got cut short. I won’t know if it was a blessing until three years from now, or on April 29th, if what happened was good or bad. Some things happen for a reason. Maybe I needed that year to reflect and hit sort of a rock bottom in a way, to feel my hunger. I think it made me a different fighter. I feel like my mind is better conditioned for it in a weird way. Physically I am another year older, but physically I am doing things that I have never done before. I feel like I am still in my prime, at the moment. I am working my way out of it, but I am still in it right at the moment.”
Morrison understands the gravity of the moment and has been doing his homework in preparation for the regional title clash. “All I can do is watch footage, the bit that I could find,” says Morrison. “And then me and him have fought the same guy, Ronny Hale, from Alabama. Ronny came here and fought me in Oklahoma and turned around and fought Rahman, I think in New York. He ended up hurting Rahman, maybe hitting him around the ear, and I could understand why. Ronny can hit like a mule. He caught me off guard. [Rahman] is unorthodox in a way, where he fights orthodox and left-handed. He seems like more of a boxer and a defensive style boxer that likes to dictate the pace. I feel like he is going to challenge me. I’ve fought guys that have fought higher ranked people, but I’ve never fought someone that’s as athletic as Rahman, so it is going to be a step-up. He’s coming to fight and so am I. You’ve got two guys that are coming to test themselves and their opponents are their biggest test, so it has to turn out good.”
Morrison, like Rahman (12-0, 6 KOs) to this point in their careers, has been carefully moved, with little risk taken in competition, away from hardened eyes of national scrutiny. Now he takes the leap against an undefeated fighter under the bright lights of Las Vegas. “I am still trying to wrap my head around it,” explains Morrison. “This is for me one of the biggest fights I’ve ever had. I’m a country boy. My town has 2500 people in it and one stoplight. So I am a small town guy. I’ve been to Vegas one time on spring break, on our way through to California, but I was too young to go into anywhere, so I had to sit in the truck.”
On Friday night, Kenzie Morrison’s hard work will have put his family name back on the marquee in a town where his father never lost a professional fight. It will be up to Kenzie if it is a one-night only occasion, or whether there will be encores. In any event, he hopes to have earned the approval he’s only heard back on tape.
“I know that there are going to be a lot of people watching and there are going to be a lot of comparisons, so I need to be and appear worthy of this opportunity and that’s what I plan to do,” says Morrision. “And I hope my dad is proud of me regardless, because everyone wins and loses. He knows that, and I know that too.”
Tickets for the event, promoted by Roy Jones Jr. Boxing and Ares Entertainment, can be purchased online at AXS.com. The event is also being broadcast via pay-per-view on Fite.
Photo by Keaton Ward
Mario Ortega Jr. can be reached at [email protected] or followed on Twitter @MarioG280
