Quiet achiever Dana Coolwell plans to spring the upset on Bruce Carrington

It’s been a long wait, but ‘Deadly’ Dana Coolwell will finally get the chance to show the world what he is all about when he takes on highly-regarded featherweight Bruce Carrington at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas on November 15.

If that date sounds familiar, it should. The eight-round bout will feature on the undercard of the crossover fight between 58-year-old former undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson and YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul. The card will be broadcast globally by Netflix to their 282 million+ paid subscribers.

“It’s a massive opportunity,” said the 25-year-old Coolwell (13-2, 8 knockouts), a proud Mununjali man from the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland, Australia. “I’m very excited for it, especially in my US debut. There’s no bigger card to be a part of. I’m just grateful for the opportunity. It’s taken a few days, but I’m settling in over here, I’ve had my first spar and gotten that out of the way, so now I’m just training hard.”

Carrington (13-0, 8 KOs) and Coolwell have long been linked. They were slated to meet on the original date of the Tyson-Paul card at the same venue on July 20 before ‘Iron Mike’ suffered an ulcer flare-up in early June that forced the bout to be postponed. Things hung in the balance for a while for Coolwell and he was unsure if the Carrington fight would still go ahead.

“We weren’t quite sure what was happening, we got left in the dark a little bit,” said Coolwell. “I was staying ready, staying in camp, and we were almost going to do our own thing, but everything turned out.

“I’m just going to go out and do what I do, box, fight and perform. I’m just excited to perform on such a great card, and with all the eyes on me, it’s a perfect opportunity to show the world who I am and break out into the scene.”

Brooklyn’s Carrington, 27, has been on the fast track to success after turning pro three years ago following a decorated amateur career that concluded with a reported record of 255 wins against 31 losses. He won the New York City Golden Gloves in 2017 and the US Olympic Trials in 2020, but when the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the Tokyo Olympics by a year, he opted to join the punch-for-pay ranks instead.

But it hasn’t all been easy work for Carrington. After the initial postponement of the Tyson-Paul card, Carrington decided to take an interim fight against Ugandan southpaw Sulaiman Segawa at Madison Square Garden on September 27. That bout, which was featured as the opener on the ESPN-televised tripleheader headlined by Mikaela Mayer vs Sandy Ryan, almost ended in disaster. Segawa got out of the blocks quickly, claiming the first two rounds before Carrington worked his way back into the fight but never looked fully in control. When the dust settled after 10 heats it was a majority decision win for Carrington, but it was far from convincing.

“I think he struggled a bit with the movement,” said Coolwell. “Segawa was a bit awkward too. But I’m not reading too much into it, because obviously I’m a different fighter. It’s hard to compare because I’m not a southpaw. But I’m expecting the best version of Bruce because he will want to erase that fight. I’m just preparing to make sure I turn up the best I can be.”

Not everyone thought Carrington, The Ring’s Prospect of the Year for 2023, deserved the nod. You can count Coolwell’s trainer Stephen Pitt amongst their number.

“I thought Sagawa was unlucky not to get the decision,” said Pitt, who has coached Coolwell out of the Hinterland Boxing Club in Beerwah, Queensland since he was an amateur.

But Pitt was quick to add that they weren’t underestimating Carrington, saying they were expecting the very best version of The Ring’s No.10 ranked featherweight to show up.

“We think that Bruce is very sharp and very smart,” he said. “He has the ability to adapt. But we also think his style will suit Dana well, with his movement, boxing IQ, his jab and his work rate and experience. I think the fight maps well for us. Dana just needs to apply his work rate. The eight rounds is a sprint for us, it’s a sprint for Dana.”

Boxing is a sport filled with feel good stories and the origin tale of how Coolwell met Pitt and fell in love with the sweet science is no different. The slightly built but naturally gifted Coolwell started out playing rugby but took to the boxing gym in the off-season to keep fit after his mom spotted an ad for the boxing gym in the local paper. Coolwell’s father had recently passed away and at the age of 13, his family were worried he might go off the rails.

“I was always a fan of the sport, but I was playing rugby at the time for a local club and initially, I just wanted to try it out,” Coolwell recalled. “I found I enjoyed it. Then I started sparring and got to like it even more. After finishing the rugby season, I wanted to have my first amateur fight. After that, I never looked back.”

It was a fortuitous meeting with Pitt that shaped his destiny as a prize fighter. A former amateur boxer who missed out on going to the Beijing Olympics after losing a qualifier to his namesake Brad Pitt in 2008, Stephen took a redundancy from his role in criminal justice to start his own gym to train boxers in the unpaid ranks. At first, he took little notice of the slim Aboriginal kid hitting the bags. That was until he saw him spar.

“I ignored him at first,” admitted Pitt. “But I had a kid who I was working with who was going to state titles around the same weight and I needed sparring for him. The kid was in the ring and Dana was sitting there. I distinctly remember thinking, ‘he’s just this scrawny little boy’. I said, ‘Hey brother, do you want to spar?’ I thought he’d say no, but straight away he jumped up. He couldn’t contain himself.

“I put a head guard on him, put his gloves on, and he had no mouthguard, but he outboxed this kid. I thought it must’ve been a fluke. So I thought I’d get him back in, but he did it again, he outboxed this kid. That’s when I knew he was something special.”

Pitt quickly became a father figure to Coolwell, and later, a confidant. There have been some difficult times, but the duo have endured and built as strong a bond as any trainer and fighter in the game.

“I’ve been with Steve from the start and I don’t plan on changing that ever throughout my career,” said Coolwell. “We’ve got a good relationship. We both see things and we both can communicate it well. It just works.”

The COVID-19 pandemic was perhaps the most trying time for the pair. Fights were hard to come by and Coolwell took the opportunities when they came along, losing the two fights outside of his natural weight class.

The first fight he dropped was against local boxer Jake Wyllie at lightweight in October 2021. The second was against Venezuelan southpaw Ender Luces at junior lightweight in April 2022. Coolwell went the distance against both undefeated big-hitters, losing by split decision over 10 frames on each occasion.

“In the Wyllie fight, Dana was 60kg wringing wet and we were fighting at lightweight,” said Pitt. “We took that fight because it was during COVID and there was no one else who wanted to fight. We couldn’t get a fight, so we stepped up. We still campaigned at super featherweight, but we probably should’ve been lighter.

“The other fight with the Venezuelan was a big step up. That guy was a beast. At the second-day weigh-in under the IBF rules, Dana was 62kg, again wringing wet, with the cut-off weight being 63.5kg at 9am on the day of the fight. The Venezuelan was still in the sauna dropping that weight. He would’ve had 4-5kg on Dana by the time they got into the ring.

“That fight was the main event on TV [in Australia] and it was quite confronting to lose like that because there was all the buzz about Dana. But he took it in his stride, I took it in my stride and we learned from that.”

Coolwell has now settled into the featherweight division, where he has now won six bouts on the bounce, including four by knockout. This recent success has buoyed his confidence and the long lead time for the Carrington fight has only allowed him more time to study his opponent and prepare. After a solid training camp in Australia, he landed in LA more than a month out from the fight and has been putting in the hard yards at the Matchroom Churchill Gym in Santa Monica, where he has been sparring with Adam ‘Blunose’ Lopez amongst others before he moves down to Texas ahead of the big show.

Coolwell says he’s ready. Pitt says he’s ready. So how does the Carrington fight end?

“With my hand raised,” said Coolwell. “I believe I match up quite well against him and with the stuff we’ve been working on, I’m confident I have what it takes to beat him on the night.”

Pitt shares that confidence.

“Dana loves the big fights, the big atmosphere, and lifting to the challenge,” the trainer said. “He does that all the time, he just rises to the occasion.”