By Thomas Gerbasi

Tom Brown remembers the look he got from his brother-in-law, Dan Goossen, and it wasn’t a good one.

“No, it was not,” he recalls. Brown is normally quick with a laugh, but as he recalls Andre Ward’s second pro fight against Kenny Kost, one in which the future world champion got rocked in the second round by the unheralded Minnesotan, it’s as if he can picture it all over again.

“The kid (Kost) buckled his knees against the ropes,” Brown continues. “And I saw my brother-in-law look at me. That would be such a major embarrassment for me too if I got the guy beat. I’m the one who ultimately talked him into taking this 8-0 kid.”

As one of boxing’s last great matchmakers, Brown and his peers occupy a unique place in the Wild Wild West of boxing. He’s expected to develop fighters, build stars and give the fans an entertaining fight – all at the same time. If he succeeds, only the insiders know the job he’s done. If he doesn’t – the prospect gets knocked off by a journeyman, a rising star goes ten boring rounds with someone he should have dispatched in two – then he gets attention that he doesn’t want.

“It takes a weird breed,” he said. “I’m an old lineman. I’m down in the trenches, and an old football coach of mine said, ‘You make a great play, you get up, you give yourself a pat on the back, but just one, and you go back to work.’ It’s the same thing here. You give yourself that pat on the back, but it’s right back to work because you’re on to the next one.”

This Saturday, the company Brown is the president of, TGB Promotions, will be back in action with a Spike-televised card featuring Robert Guerrero vs. David Peralta, as well as former Olympians Terrell Gausha and Alfredo Angulo. The card comes on the heels of the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and it’s appropriate that Brown is working with two Olympians just after the conclusion of the Games, because while the signing season is about to heat up, no one knows better what it’s like to build a former amateur star than the man who was behind the scenes with the last two men to win Olympic Gold for the United States, Ward and 1996 medalist David Reid.

The rise of both is a living, breathing example of the reality of the fight game, that no two fighters are the same and that no two fighters can get moved the same way. This is no exact science, but Brown will admit that when he led Reid to a world title, he followed a blueprint established by one of his mentors, the matchmaking Godfather Bruce Trampler.

“With Reid, I used to tell Dan all the time, ‘I’m gonna follow that blueprint that Trampler put out there for De La Hoya,’” he said. “I was around working with Bruce in those days. And with Reid, I had it in mind to have him prepared and ready by his 12th fight to fight for the world title. But I think his opponent in his 12th fight (Laurent Boudouani) was a lot tougher than what Oscar had (Jimmi Bredahl). I was comparing everything.”

He’s not kidding, as he reveals the records of each fighter’s opponents leading up to that 12th fight.

“Reid’s was 271-44-4; Oscar’s was 230-53-19. And I really did try to follow that and have a clear, defining fight in there. That’s when we got (Jorge) Vaca in Reid’s fifth fight. And it was a pretty good blueprint for two similar type guys.”

On the other side of the gold medal, Ward was moved a lot differently. There was a clear point to Brown’s strategy, yet in both cases, going beyond tape watching was key to the success for each fighter.

“You spend a little more time talking to the trainers than you normally do as a matchmaker doing shows,” he said. “I stayed very, very close with (Reid coach) Al Mitchell, and he and I were on the same page. I knew what was going on in the gym with Reid, and it was the same thing with Andre. I talked all the time with Virgil Hunter, and we knew we were getting him more adapted to the pro style. He was coming down from light heavyweight and we were working him down slowly to hit 160 also. I probably spent more time with those guys talking to their trainers more than I ever have in the past. You got the full feel of what they were doing and how they were developing.”

Needless to say, Brown made sure he checked out the Class of 2016 in Rio, more work for an already busy man. But if he does get an opportunity to work with any of this Olympic crew, he believes it’s a lot different task than it used to be. And that’s a good thing.

“One of the things I’ve seen from this class, and maybe it’s one of the few good things about them taking off the headgear, is that most of the US Olympians pretty much have a pro style,” Brown said. “It’s not something you have to worry about, weaning them off of that amateur style, the old days of the rat-a-tat-tat, just scoring points when the judges were hitting a button together. Now that they’ve gone to the conventional pro-style judging, the US fighters have more of the pro style, so they’re ready for that, and in their first one to five fights, you’ve got to put them in with quality opposition. You just have to do it, and give them that little edge though, because the spotlight is on.”

That’s the toughest part of the job, and with Olympians, it gets even tougher. But few do it better than Brown.

“In a case where you might normally get a guy a 70-30, you gotta make it 60-40,” he explains. “In a case where it’s 60-40, you got to make it 55-45 as far as getting your guy the edge, and it’s nerve racking on fight night because you get the opponents, especially the first few, and then you doubt yourself and you worry and you talk to people. And then you die for the whole fight while it’s going on early in their career. But what I found out is, most of these kids, obviously the last couple Olympic Gold medalists, they’re so damn good they can overcome your mistakes if you make one.”

Well, it keeps it exciting at the very least, though Brown would likely have some different words for those fight nights when things are going south for his guy. But he’s still here, still making fights, and still doing it at the highest level of the game, where the stakes are at their highest. That’s a gift. And a lost art.

“I would agree with that,” he said. “It’s more than just making a phone call and getting someone to say yes and accept a fight when you’re really trying to develop and build a young prospect. And I would say there’s only a handful of guys out there that can still do it. And somehow they probably all have a tentacle to Bruce (Trampler).”