Derrick "Smoke" Gainer (born August 22, 1972) is an American former

professional boxer Professional boxing, or prizefighting, is regulated, sanctioned boxing. Professional boxing bouts are fought for a purse that is divided between the boxers as determined by contract. Most professional bouts are supervised by a regulatory autho ...

who competed from 1990 to 2012. He held the WBA

featherweight Featherweight is a weight class in the combat sports of boxing, kickboxing, mixed martial arts, and Greco-Roman wrestling. Boxing Professional boxing History A featherweight boxer weighs in at a limit of . In the early days of the division, this ...

title from 2000 to 2003.

Professional career

In 2000, Gainer defeated Freddie Norwood to win the WBA featherweight title and after four defenses lost to

Juan Manuel Márquez Juan Manuel Márquez Méndez (born August 23, 1973) is a Mexican former professional boxer who competed from 1993 to 2014. He is known for defeating Manny Pacquiao. He is the third Mexican boxer (after Érik Morales and Jorge Arce) to become a ...

, who became super champion, via technical decision in 2003. Since his defeat to Marquez, Gainer lost in a challenge to WBA titleholder Chris John via unanimous decision. Gainer is also a colleague and good friend of fellow

Pensacola, Florida Pensacola () is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle, and the county seat and only incorporated city of Escambia County, Florida, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 54,312. Pensacola is the principal ...

native

Roy Jones Jr. Roy Levesta Jones Jr. (born January 16, 1969) is an American former professional boxer who holds dual American and Russian citizenship. He competed in boxing from 1989 to 2018, and held multiple world championships in four weight classes, inc ...

, and often fought on his under-cards. His last was a

split decision A split decision (SD) is a winning criterion in boxing, most commonly in full-contact combat sports, in which two of the three judges score one particular competitor as the winner, while the third judge scores for the other competitor. A split dec ...

win over Carlos Navarro on the undercard of the Roy Jones-Anthony Hanshaw bout at the

Mississippi Coast Coliseum Mississippi Coast Coliseum is an 11,500-seat reserved seating, 15,000 festival seating, multi-purpose arena in Biloxi, Mississippi. It was built in 1977. It hosted the WCW Beach Blast in 1993 and the Sun Belt Conference men's basketball tourname ...

, in

Biloxi, Mississippi Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in and one of two county seats of Harrison County, Mississippi, United States (the other being the adjacent city of Gulfport). The 2010 United States Census recorded the population as 44,054 and in 2019 the estimated popu ...

. Derrick started a charter high school for at risk kids in 1999 which he named after his late grandmother Dr. Ruby J Gainer. This year Gainer started Fit Nation which is a childhood obesity program with goals to help kids make healthy life style changes.

References

External links

*
Interview with Fightnews
*DiBella Entertainmen
Profile
, - 1972 births Boxers from Florida Featherweight boxers Living people Sportspeople from Pensacola, Florida American male boxers African-American boxers World Boxing Association champions World featherweight boxing champions 20th-century African-American sportspeople {{US-boxing-bio-stub