‘Termite’ Watkins Addressed New Jersey PCOs

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – He’s been called “Termite” since infancy, but Maurice Watkins first gained fame as a professional boxer who fought on the same USA Olympic boxing team as Sugar Ray Leonard. On Thursday, August 17, Watkins addressed members of the New Jersey Pest Management Association as part of their 59th annual Clinic and Tradeshow on the Cook College campus of Rutgers, the State University.
 
“Termite Watkins is a terrific, motivational speaker,” says Leonard Douglen, the Executive Director of the New Jersey Pest Management Association, “and we know our members will be inspired by someone who grew up in our business.”
 
The son of a pest management professional was born in 1956 and his father nicknamed him Termite. Watkins knew by the age of ten what he wanted to do beside work in the family business. A natural athlete, by age 16 Watkins became the nation’s youngest Golden Gloves champion with a record of 128 wins and only ten losses.
 
He turned professional in his senior year of high school, racking up 58 wins that included 48 knockouts. In 1980, he fought on the undercard of the Muhammad Ali versus Larry Holmes fight held at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. After retirement at age 31, he returned to the family fumigation business and then sold cars while settling into a comfortable suburban life with his family in Deer Park, Texas, with his wife and two, grown children.
 
Like many Americans, he was deeply affected by 9/11 and wanted to contribute to the war effort that followed. Learning that the Coalition Provisional Authority needed someone to provide pest control services to rid military camps of scorpions and other pests, Termite contacted Kellogg, Brown & Root and, despite the concerns of his family, went to Iraq.
 
While there he offered boxing classes to soldiers, officers and aid workers. Word soon spread about an inspirational trainer and, in the midst of war, Termite was asked to train a boxing team that Iraq could send to the upcoming Olympic games in Athens. Under the regime of Saddam Hussein, athletes had suffered greatly and the nation had been refused participation in Olympic games as a result.
 
Termite found 24 young Iraqis who had not fought competitively in more than two years, but who had with “lots of heart.” Discovering they had virtually no facilities or equipment, Termite had only 57 days to equip and train them, and amazingly was able to field a team of nine boxers for the 2004 Olympics with coalition assistance.
 
To motivate his Iraqi boxers, Termite used to chant “Iraq! Iraq! Iraq is back!” and the phrase became so popular that the United States Military ordered a thousand t-shirts to be printed with it that were given to Iraqi boxing enthusiasts.
 
Word of his exploits led to a book, “Termite”, by Suzy Pepper that has been adapted into a screenplay for a major motion picture by producer Fred Kuehnert.