BJ Flores is as old-school as they come, but he is now at the forefront of a new-school industry – he trains boxing influencers.
Flores is training broadcaster-turned-fighter Wade Plemons for his debut Saturday in Manchester, England, on a Misfits Boxing show streaming on DAZN. Plemons’ opponent is Moziah Pinder, who goes by the name Masai Warrior.
How did Flores, now 45, become one of the most high-profile figures and trainers in the upstart influencer boxing landscape? After all, he spent most of his career as a blue-collar-type fighter.
“When I retired from fighting, I was struggling to [have] something fill that void,” Flores said. “My entire life was boxing since I was 10 years old. I went through a transitional period where I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do.”
Whether it was real estate or other endeavors, nothing stuck until a 2018 sparring session with Jake Paul, the prime example of an influencer athlete. Flores went to Big Bear Lake, California, to work with Paul, and that is when he started to find direction.
“One of my friends from Vegas called me up and asked me to come to Big Bear to work with Jake [Paul] for sparring,” Flores said. “I didn’t really know who Jake was at that time, but I saw he had a fight with Deji earlier that year on a big card and it was a massive event.”
Flores began to spar with Paul.
“I walked away really impressed with his toughness,” Flores said. “Obviously he was very raw, but he had a lot of toughness.”
This was before Paul’s professional debut on January 30, 2020, against Ali Eson Gib.
“I started working the mitts with Paul and helping him to prepare, teaching him how to set up his attack,” Flores said. “I was an assistant on the side. After that fight, Jake called me up and asked me to move to California and live with him to work with him full-time. That is how it started.”
Flores would work with Paul all the way until Paul’s lone career loss to Tommy Fury in February 2023. A little after that fight, Flores went to Colombia on vacation and was shot in the leg in an armed robbery. It took the better part of a year to recover. When Flores returned to the United States, new opportunities arose.
“I had multiple people asking me to train them and work with them that were influencers,” Flores said. “I just started working with Tristan [Hamm], and then taking on a few other clients, and then it kind of grew. I think that’s how business is supposed to happen. It was organic.”
Training young hopefuls who have little to no amateur pedigree takes Flores back to his early days with Kenny Adams, who was his biggest influence.
“Kenny Adams was a master at breaking down the fundamentals and teaching the basics,” Flores said. “My dad tried to pattern his training style after Kenny Adams, and that’s how he trained me, and that’s how Kenny worked with me.”
Plemons, who is a boxing novice but an accomplished athlete with a kickboxing background, noted: “BJ has taken the thinking out of everything. He is the coach and what he says, I do. It’s refreshing for me. I like it a lot, because my job is thinking and I tend to overthink. He helps me get back to being an athlete.”
Plemons also noted that he saw a difference in Paul’s fighting style with the inclusion of Flores. That had always made him aware of Flores’ ability to teach.
“The first time I saw a massive difference with Jake Paul was the fight he had with Gib with Shane Mosley and BJ,” Plemons said. “You saw just a rapid increase in how good Paul was getting. It was night and day. It didn’t make sense. How could he be getting this good so quickly? That’s how I’d heard about BJ. You do your research on BJ Flores and you realize why Paul was getting so good so quickly.”
Though they were previously cordial, Plemons and Flores were not even supposed to train for this fight. The training came about because of a text message.
“I was training in California for this fight,” Plemons said. “I live out in Orange County and I was training and something felt off. I get a text from BJ out of nowhere. I didn’t talk to BJ for probably three months, and this message just shows how detail-oriented he is. The message from BJ fired me up. He sent me this list of things I should do. It was more detailed than anything I had done in my camp. I looked at that message and I thought I’d better get with it.”
Plemons made the lengthy drive from Orange County to Scottsdale, Arizona, arriving by the following day to start training at 2 p.m.
Flores explained what went into that initial text message:
“I saw Wade go in the ring against HSTikkyTokky, and it felt like they were setting him up to lose,” Flores said. “You know what: I want to get on board. I want to help this kid win this fight. I got excited. I sent Wade that message the next day, because I wanted him to be more prepared. I just wanted to see what he was doing, what kind of things he was working on, and then it just evolved from there.”
Those dialogues led to Flores training a relative novice boxer in a high-profile fight. Plemons is a broadcaster for Most Valuable Promotions. He talks the talk. Now he’ll walk the walk with the old-school veteran Flores, who is still adjusting to the new world he occupies.
“It’s really different,” Flores said of some of the personalities in influencer boxing. “I come from the school where [if] anybody talks, you get in there and we settle it immediately. I’m from Missouri. The Show-Me State. There’s zero talking. It’s all doing.”
Some of the theatrics and over-the-top talking antics draw in new fans. Plemons equates the talking to some of the excitement around this new faction of boxing. It is creating a sort of cult following.
“I think at the highest level, there’s nothing in combat sports like high-level boxing,” Plemons said. “Boxing is special – the feeling you get, the moment it creates, is like nothing else to me. It’s hard to recreate the buzz around Tyson Fury-Oleksandr Usyk I or II. Those kinds of fights bring real excitement. But I will say, influencer boxing does have a unique way of getting people from around the world, who maybe aren’t the biggest boxing fans but are fans of individual boxers, to come together and enjoy the sport. They get enthralled, and they do it at a fever pitch.”
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