When Brooklyn’s Luis Collazo faces Keith Thurman on Saturday in Tampa, Fla., Nirmal Lorick will be far from the action.
Lorick will likely be home in Richmond Hill, watching the bout alone, quietly trying to keep his feelings in check.
“It’s an emotional thing, you know?” Lorick said over the phone. “When you’ve been with someone so long, you never know how you’re going to feel.”
For the past 15 years, one of the more stable and effective relationships in professional boxing has been the bond between Collazo and Lorick, who trained Collazo from the age of 11.
With little interest from promoters coming out of the amateurs, Lorick helped coax Collazo’s rise, guiding him to a record of 23-1.
To get him fights, Lorick put him on other promoter’s shows. When he couldn’t do that, he ran his own cards at Club Amazura in Jamaica, Queens to keep his career going, functioning as both manager and trainer
When the money ran out, he brought in co-managers.
The fruits of their labor paid off when Collazo signed with Don King and the southpaw won a welterweight title in 2005.
Big fights followed. So did controversy. Narrow losses to Andre Berto and Ricky Hatton stamped Collazo as a hard-luck warrior whose talent was world class.
Still, they kept on winning. Collazo destroyed Victor Ortiz in two rounds at Barclays Center last year.
But no marriage lasts forever in boxing.
And for a second straight fight, Collazo will attempt to out-slick an opponent without the reassuring presence of Lorick, who was jettisoned from Collazo’s team after a lopsided loss to Amir Khan in May of last year.
The bout with the powerhouse Thurman (25-0, 21 knockouts) for his WBA welterweight title will take place on ESPN (9 p.m. ET) as part of Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions series.
Collazo was straight-forward about the divorce.
“We went our separate ways,” he said in a phone interview last week. “Sometimes you have to move forward and forget about the past. Sometimes change is best, not only in the sport but in life you have to be open to change. Everything happens for a reason. I learned from everything and it’s time to move forward.”
Collazo (36-6, 19 knockouts) said the shift in personnel stemmed from a lethargic performance against Khan, in which he was dropped three times and was never in the fight.
Following that fight, Lorick said that Collazo texted him, suggesting that change was in order.
The two met in person.
Lorick said he was open to taking a secondary role if he wanted to bring in another trainer. But Collazo wanted to move in a different direction.
With his career winding down and opportunities dwindling, Lorick was out as both trainer and manager. Collazo would promote longtime assistant trainer Willie Vargas to lead trainer with veteran hand Felipe Gomez serving as an assistant.
Lorick said he was basically blind-sided by the news.
“After all these years, he wanted to do something on his own,” Lorick said. “You feel hurt. It’s been more like a father-son relationship than a fighter but it’s not personal. I don’t think it’s personal. It’s a young man’s world. I can’t be angry or negative. He was one of the unique people in the business (to keep the same trainer) and I told him that. I was surprised. It hurts but you move on.”
Collazo acknowledged that he and Lorick were a rarity in boxing: a long-standing relationship that nearly survived the test of time.
“Oh man, it’s amazing,” Collazo said. “You don’t see it much in the sport and I started with him and it’s sad the way it finished but I just have to move forward and focus on my career.”
Collazo is pleased with the change, saying it’s akin to getting a fresh start at the age of 34.
“I feel happy, man,” he said. “There’s nothing I would change. I’m happy doing what I love to do and that’s the important part.”
“I think he’s in a much better place mentally,” said manager Wilson Naranjo, who said the decision to move Lorick out was Collazo’s alone. Naranjo is now his sole manager. “The whole camp he was just very hungry.”
Thurman, a rising star, hasn’t hidden the fact that he was hoping to fight a bigger name than Collazo. Thurman has even said that if he gets rid of Collazo quickly without much trouble, he could be ready to face Floyd Mayweather Jr. in September, when Mayweather says he will fight next.
Collazo doesn’t take offense to the remarks and believes his experience will give Thurman fits.
“He can say what he wants to say,” Collazo says. “You have to always take the negative and turn it into the positive. That’s part of the game and that’s how life is. People always want to count you out but as long as you have the passion and the desire to step up to the level and do your part- no one can take that away from you.”
Lorick believes that Collazo has the talent and craft to beat him.
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” he said. “I know what he can do.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/m...y-fresh-start-split-trainer-article-1.2285245
's gonna 
Collazo a punchin bag, didn't Khan stagger him? Is Atlas gonna be on the mic? seriously
at this fight