Try hunting deer without a rifle or playing tennis without a racket.
Brandon “The Cannon” Berry’s sporting tools of choice are his fists, and a dislocated left shoulder suffered early during Saturday night’s boxing match against Freddy Sanchez at the Portland Exposition Building left him not only a one-armed combatant but lacking the punch at the foundation of his undefeated start in the professional ranks — his jab.
Still, he survived until the last minute of the fourth and final round when Sanchez was awarded the victory by technical knockout while sending Berry to a likely surgical date that could sideline him for several months.
“It’s one of those fights I wanted so bad, I wanted to prove a lot about myself and who I am, and I wasn’t able to do so,” said Berry on Wednesday morning from his family’s general store in West Forks. “But Freddy did what a fighter does. He went out to finish me when he saw I was hurt, and good for him. It’s a good win for Freddy Sanchez, that’s for sure.”
Berry, 8-1 since turning pro in May 2013, was scheduled to visit his doctor again later Wednesday and undergo a magnetic resonance imaging test on the ailing shoulder on Saturday.
“Then they’re going to tell me realistically what type of surgery I’m going to have,” he said. “The doctors have told me they’re pretty sure I’m going to need surgery.”
Sanchez, a Worcester, Massachusetts, product who entered the fight with a 2-0 pro record after a decorated amateur career, figured to be Berry’s toughest opponent to date.
The two boxers were still in the feeling-out process when Berry absorbed the biggest blow of his career.
“I think it was a missed hook,” he said. “I threw a left hook, and I believe I missed, and the shoulder popped out completely. When it first came out in the first round it scared me for a second, but it went right back in, and I didn’t even say anything. Then in the second round it came out completely, and then it just continued. Every time I used it, it would pop right back out and go back in.”
Berry and trainer Ken “Skeet” Wyman of Wyman’s Boxing Club in Stockton Springs have focused much of their time together developing his left jab, so suddenly trying to avoid using the punch during the middle of a fight was difficult, pain or no pain.
“We’ve worked so much on the jab, everything comes off the jab. In the past year it’s been drilled into my head,” Berry said. “After it happened, I was still throwing the jab even when I knew I shouldn’t and the shoulder would pop out again. It’s just instinct, and it was so hard to adapt to only use my right, especially when I knew I had to stop him and half of my mind was on that and the other half was thinking about just surviving.”
Berry said he considered ending the fight only once.
“One time I turned my back from the fighter, and I was going to stop because I didn’t think it was going back in, so I was going to take a knee or do whatever I had to do,” he said. “But then it popped right back in. The ref asked if I was OK, and I said, ‘I’m good, I’m good.’”
He admitted disappointment in lasting as long as he did only to have the fight stopped with 57 seconds left — shortly after Sanchez scored a knockdown.
“I’m not going to say the guy didn’t hit hard. He could bang a little, but the arm is what made me get stopped,” said Berry. “No disrespect to Freddy Sanchez at all because he’s a hell of a fighter, the best fighter I’ve fought. If I had three good arms I would have had a very hard time with him, but my mind wasn’t where it needed to be. I was focused on [the injury], and I took some shots I shouldn’t have taken.”
Berry hopes he can return to the ring in a few months, depending on the nature of the surgery he anticipates in the aftermath of his MRI.
“[Continuing to fight] probably wasn’t the smartest move in the world, but a fighter is a fighter, and I didn’t want to quit,” he said. “If we can fight again in March or April or even May, it isn’t that much of a step back.
“This is going to be an advantage to my body. I’m going to take care of whatever’s wrong, and I’m going to work my butt off and come back in better shape than I’ve ever been in,” Berry said. “I just want this shoulder to heal correctly. That’s the only thing on my mind.”
