Trey Lippe Morrison, left, is the son of late heavyweight champion Tommy Morrison/Photo courtesy of Sherry Cook
Being the son of the late Tommy Morrison comes with a price. People want to know you because of who your dad was, which can be beneficial to an up-and-coming boxer. There are also expectations because dad was once heavyweight champion of the world.
Heavyweight prospect Trey Lippe Morrison is cool with all that.
“It doesn’t really bother me that people probably first come and want to watch me fight or want to ask me anything because of who my dad is,” Lippe Morrison said. “I kind of saw that coming.”
He admits he does feel the burden of having a father who was so successful in the ring.
“Yeah. I think there’s a lot of pressure on me to do well, and I think that really weighed on me the first couple of fights,” Lippe Morrison said. “That’s always going to be there. No matter who I fight, or how good I do, they are always going to compare me to my dad. I just have to deal with it.”
Lippe Morrison on Friday night will put his unblemished record of 11-0 with 11 knockouts on the line when he takes on Ed Latimore (13-0, 7 KOs) of Pittsburgh at Buffalo Run Casino in Miami, Okla. (on Showtime).
Lippe Morrison, 26, is raw, as he didn’t even lace up the gloves until he was 24 and had nary an amateur bout. He had wanted to play football in the NFL and was a defensive end at Central Arkansas.
“But I screwed up in college and kicked off the team my senior year,” he said.
Not ready to walk away from athletics, a light went off in his head.
“The only other sport I could think to give a shot was boxing, you know, because my dad did it,” Lippe Morrison said. “So I was like, ‘Maybe I could do it.’ And around the time football ended for me, my dad passed away and I went to Tony Holden, my promoter.”
Holden promoted many of Tommy Morrison’s fights. He turned his son down flat, though.
“So I told him I was going to try boxing without him,” said Lippe Morrison, of Tulsa, Okla. “And he was like, ‘OK.’ And we parted ways and about three days later he gave me a call and he was like, ‘Hey, if you’re going to do it, I’m going to help you out.’ ”
Lippe Morrison at times sounds exactly like his father, who died Sept. 1, 2013 at age 44. Morrison’s mother said her son had full-blown AIDS. Morrison was diagnosed with HIV in 1996, which he later claimed was a false positive.
Upon learning of his diagnosis, Tommy Morrison admitted a wild lifestyle was responsible. His son said that his father did advise him about not making the same mistakes he made. During a telephone conversation, it seemed that’s what Lippe Morrison remembered most about his father – their buddy-buddy talks.
“I had a good relationship with him,” said Lippe Morrison, who will be 27 Tuesday. “I would say, if you saw us hanging out, you would think we were like good pals. Good friends, you know? The relationship we had, it was cut short and we didnt get to hang out a lot. But the times we did get to hang out, it was great and fun.”
