Chordale “The Gift” Booker doesn’t have an opponent lined up for his next fight. There are names floating around, but it won’t matter to Chrodale, and not just because confidence drips like sweat off his chiseled frame. Chordale has already fought and won the biggest fight of his young life.
After finishing up a stellar amateur career, in which he qualified for the 2016 Olympic trials as the top ranked amateur middle weight in the country, Booker is 2-0 as a pro. Booker was blessed with the ability to box. It could be called a gift. That could be the idea behind his boxing nickname.
Maybe it’s a nod to his second chance at a successful life.
Chordale was facing a sentence of 13 years in prison for several drug and weapons charges. He was only 18 years old at the time. Before his trial, several people from Chordale’s past sent letters on his behalf to the judge.
“I had police officers writing letters,” explained Chordale, “and my basketball coaches, teachers, a ton of people from the community in Stamford wrote letters for me. When I put it all together it was almost like a biography from when I was a kid to the age of 18. That’s what kept me out of jail.”
Chordale spoke with me about his past mistakes, his current career and the workout that keeps him in shape for his next fight. Wherever and whenever that will be.
BroBible: It’s now 3 o’clock in the afternoon, how many times today have you trained today and what have you done?
Chordale Booker: I’m always training. Yesterday I did 2 workouts, today I worked on shadow boxing, padwork, strengthening my core. I don’t have an opponent yet, so I haven’t really broken out the tape. I’m just preparing for anything. Kind of like the amateurs.
BB: Right, so is there a difference in preparing for regular training and training for somebody?
CB: Well, if you’re training for a specific type of fighter then you kind need to implement that in your training. We train with different styles everyday. We do a couple rounds as if we were going to fight a tall guy, couple rounds for a short guy, couple rounds for a guy who puts pressure, causes we just want to be an all-around great boxer, not just one style
BB: How much cardio do you usually get in a day?
CB: A ton. One of my workouts is like 3 hours long. I’m in the gym for like 2 and a half to 3 hours.
BB: Is that all cardio work? Or boxing and running?
CB: It’s pretty much all cardio. A lot of it is punching, moving around the ring. Then I do my sprint work, then push ups and pull ups.
BB: Do you ever do free weights?
CB: Honestly, I haven’t done weights in a long time. I try and stay away from weights. I just do body-weight exercises. I did use Olympic lifts before the Olympic trial. It works, but it’s not my thing.
BB: I know life kind of took a wrong turn there for a minute, but what led into it and how did you ‘righted’ the ship? How did you get involved in boxing?
CB: Well for me, I always knew that I wanted to box. I still do love basketball, but I wasn’t going to be an NBA star. I would always watch boxing on TV and then in middle school I got a book about boxing. I was in high school and I was bored, getting into trouble, and then I got arrested. I got hit with some serious charges, 2 gun charges, a narcotics charge, and they put a spin on each charge. They gave me like 3 charges for each one cause I was on school grounds and things like that. And I realized that I couldn’t keep doing the same stuff. So I said ‘you know what? I’m gonna go to the gym’, as soon as I got there I fell in love it. I knew that I’m so competitive that if I had something like this that’d I’d wanna do it every day. I knew if I did this every day, I wouldn’t be in the street every day.
BB: People think that when people get in trouble with drugs, and guns, and things like that everyone always says that they’re victims of circumstances or culture or the place in which they were raised. Do you think kids get into trouble more when there’s nothing else to do?
CB: I think it’s both. I don’t think it has to do with where you live too much, it’s more about who your role model is. Who you choose to pick when you’re young. You see the people that you think are ‘great.’ The people I thought were great, weren’t so great. I always wanted to know how they had a nice car, nice clothes, and they told me, and I was like ‘ok, well since you guys are doing it and you got nice stuff, I’ll do it.’ So it’s about role models. That’s another reason why I coach basketball for little kids. That’s one of the reasons I do that. Cause if they think that I’m cool, there’s a better chance they’ll listen to me over a person on the street.
BB: You get all the charges against you, and you somehow manage to get out of it, because you didn’t serve any jail time, right?
CB: I was in jail for like three days and got bailed out. I went to court for like a year-and-a-half. Eventually they gave me probation for 3 years. I served that with no problem. I got arrested one time, and it wasn’t really my fault. I was hanging with the wrong people like a month into my probation. And I was like, ‘man, I can’t do this ever again.’ I’m not hanging with these dudes any more.
BB: A lot of people stood up for you when things went wrong. IS that one of the reasons why you went onto the straight and narrow? Because you realized that a lot of people do care?
CB: Yeah, that’s what kept me out of jail. My mandatory sentence was up to 13 years, and they wouldn’t let me use my AR which would have given me 2 years probation. They wouldn’t let me use it because I had guns. I had police officers writing me letters, my basketball coaches, teachers, a ton of people from the community in Stamford wrote letters for me. It was almost like a biography about myself from when I was a kid to 18, at that point.
BB: How hard is it to separate yourself from that life? You can wake up tomorrow and not sell drugs or guns, but how is it to separate from the people of that life? How do they take it?
CB: It’s tough in some ways and it’s easy in others. It’s tough in a way when you think, ‘these are my only friends. What am I going to do now?’ But then you realize that they’ll make it easy for you. They’ll talk bad about you. Even some of the kids I would help when they were getting beat up in school. Then they’ll turn around and call me a pussy or a bitch or that I’m scared to come outside cause of the police. In that way they made it easy for me cause I was like, ‘alright, you guys aren’t really my friends.’ I’m trying to do better with my life. But because I’m doing better, now I’m a bitch? You know.
BB: Does a lot of that have to do with them not doing better?
CB: I think that’s what it is. IF they’re down, they’re trying to keep me down.
6 SIMPLE EXERCISES YOU CAN DO TO TRAIN LIKE A PROFESSIONAL BOXER
BB: Let’s say a person walks up to you in the gym and asks ‘How do I get into shape like you, without actually getting in a ring and getting my face punched in?’ What are some suggestions?
CB: I like to do things like that. I do a lot of medicine ball work, tire flips, jog, burpies, rope drills, pull-ups, dips, I’m really big on functional training. I love exercises like that. They’re fun for me. Boxing isn’t one of those sports where you wanna lift, because you want to be flexible. Lifting weights kind of tighten up your muscles. I love doing power drills, slamming the medicine balls, the tire is one of my favorite things cause you can do so much with it. I’ll flip that tire though the whole parking lot. Instead of just doing squats with a weight in my hand, I’d rather push the tire. Get that power in my arms that I’m looking for, power in the legs that I need. I like those things. It’s more geared towards your body. Lifting weights – I see the guys with the huge muscles, but it’s like ‘what are you gonna do, lift up a car?’ It all depends on what sports you’re doing.
BB: How much do you think diet comes into play?
CB: That’s the biggest and hardest part. Training is easy. Diet is hard. For me, I need to diet down to a certain weight to then cut the rest of the weight to fit into my weight class cause I’m big for a welterweight. I diet down to about 57 then I cut 10 pounds to make it to 47.
BB: What food do you have the hardest time saying ‘no’ to?
CB: I’m big on sweets. Like candy – I love it. So I just need to stay away from all candy. Like, get it away. Eating healthy is hard for me. Cause I like eating starbursts, skittles, reese’s, I love candy.
BB: Now, tell me if we have the same problem. To me, I love candy too. There is no threshold or anywhere I stop. Even if I don’t feel good, I’ll keep going. Right? Is it just me? I could be sweating and I’ll still be eating candy.
CB: I don’t know if I’ll go that far. I mean.. I’m telling you. If I wasn’t boxing, I’d probably be eating candy all day. Like when I was in high school that’s all I did. Practice, before practice, after practice, I’d be eating candy.
BB: Yeah, and sometimes I don’t even want it. It’s just something in my head going ‘you should probably get some candy now.’
CB: They got something in the candy that’s making you want to come back.
BB: Absolutely and it’s way worse now than ever before. I guess maybe cause when I get to a certain age I don’t give a shit. I’m an adult man and I can eat 6 milky ways in a day. Do you have a trick or something that keeps you away from that type of stuff?
CB: I try and eat fruit. That’s what I go with. Strawberries and pineapples taste really sweet to me. Whenever I’m craving something sweet I try and go for the strawberries and pineapple.
BB: I read once where this nutritionist who works with athletes said the problem with athletes is because they workout so much, sometimes they tend to overeat – even if it’s good stuff.
CB: Definitely
BB: Like you’re supposed to have a steak, but maybe you shouldn’t have 2 steaks. They kinda overdo it even with good stuff. His tip was to sit down with a plate of food, and you look at it and you think to yourself, ‘if I had to, in two hours. Could I eat this whole meal again?’ And if you think yes, you’re ok. But if you say no, then you should probably put some stuff back.
CB: That’s kind of how my nutritionist thinks. She’s like ‘you gotta eat every 2 hours, at max 3.’ She’s huge on vegetables.
BB: Before you were worried about a probation officer and now you’re worried about a nutritionist. That’s probably not a bad thing.
CB: (laughs) It’s hard though. Cause I get so hungry from working out. I’m hungry all day, all night. I feel like there’s no time that I’m not hungry.
BB: That’s good though? As a fighter it’s good to be never satisfied?
CB: I’m always hungry.