Otis Griffin - Sacramento Boxer

As you can see from previous posts, I've been spending a little bit of time around boxers and hot, box gyms. A few months ago, I got a sudden urge to photograph some boxing activity but I have no idea where the inspiration came from. A Floyd Mayweather tweet? A Manny Pacquiao Hennessy ad? I don't know. I photographed boxing before...the negatives are around here somewhere.

Anyway, I got online and on the phone emailing and calling boxing promoters, matchmakers and gyms in the Sacramento area. I got a call back from Eddie Rodriquez who gave me Otis Griffin's number and that's how it all came together. Eddie told me that Otis was fighting on August 24th and being around mid-June, I thought it was an ideal time frame for a small project. O had already been on and won a boxing reality show called The Next Great Champ produced by Oscar de la Hoya. The show premiered a little bit before The Contender debuted, but definitely wasn't as popular.

I called Otis and told him who I was and what I wanted to do and to my surprise, he was down. Between the training sessions and fight night, I spent about seven days with the Griffin camp and they put in work! He was in the boxing ring, the weight room, on playground equipment and hitting the stairs at his high school amphitheater. I took plenty of days off...but whenever I came back around, they were in the same routine. One of his goals is to get back in contention for the light heavyweight crown with a series of 5 fights in his hometown of Sacramento. The first fight occurred on August 24th against Adam Collins from Ironton, Ohio and 4 minutes and 30 seconds later, it was over. O now sits at 23-10-2 with 4 fights left in this series that will hopefully prepare him for a title shot. Here is the journey, in pictures, to the first bout. Shout out to Otis "Triple OG" Griffin.

CHECK OUT MORE PICTURES HERE!