Teddy Atlas joins me to talk about the Canelo vs. Canelo Triple G fight and much more. We also talk about our favorite movies and sports movies of all-time. Teddy also shares his thoughts on the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight and what it means for the future of the sport of boxing. I hope you enjoy the episode and can't wait to do it again! Thanks to Teddy for coming on the show and for being a great guest. If you like the podcast, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms. I'll be looking over the best ones in the next few weeks and will do my best to put out a new episode next Wednesday. Thanks again Teddy. I appreciate you and your support greatly. Love ya. -The O.J. Crew -Jon and Jono Jono & Jono talk boxing and a little bit of everything in between. -Jono & Tom talk about their favorite movies, sports and other stuff. Tom talks about his favorite movie and sports movie of all time. Teddy talks about the movie Denzel Washington and the movie 'The Equalizer. And we talk about baseball and baseball. We talk about some of his favorite movies from the 80's and 90's. Thank you to Teddy Atlas for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Enjoy, Jono and Tom Enjoy the show. XOXO -Jonos and Jonos is a great guy. Jon is a good friend of mine and I hope he comes back soon! - Jono is back from the next episode. Tim Bradley is coming back from his trip to Mexico City, Mexico and more! -Jon is coming soon. --Jono and I have a good time in the middle of the world. . . . Jono talks about some other stuff! -- Jono also talks about boxing and much much more... -- . Tom is a lot of other stuff and much, much more in this week. Thanks Jono loves you, he's a good guy too. :D And much more!! Love, Jonos :) Thankyou, Jon is back! Jonos, & much more.... , Subscribe to the OJ & Co.
00:00:47.000And it's making me think about the Denzel Washington movie, The Equal Eyes, the first one, where he was in with those Russian guys that were like messed up guys.
00:00:56.000And he was trying to protect that girl.
00:00:58.000And he started pointing, there were skulls and stuff at the guy's desk, you know.
00:04:15.000You had all these guys fighting each other.
00:04:17.000You probably couldn't have pulled off the Mayweather-Pacquiao thing that you pulled off, and it turned out to be a bit of a, I don't want to say scam, but it definitely wasn't what it lived up to be.
00:04:33.000Wasn't that because Pacquiao came into the fight injured?
00:04:37.000I never saw any, listen, I'm not saying he didn't have an injury, but you're in a tough business.
00:04:43.000You were in Taekwondo and all that kind of fighting stuff and MMA and Whatever part of it, I'm probably not giving it the proper understanding of what it was and exactly what part of the fighting, not just MMA, I'm being too broad,
00:04:58.000but I know you did taekwondo, you did kickboxing, I know that you're You were a national champion when you were young.
00:05:05.000Somebody showed me something about it.
00:05:12.000I mean, like, when are you not injured?
00:05:14.000If you're a football player, if you're a fighter, if you're in the contact business, tell me when you're not injured, like when there's not something wrong.
00:05:20.000So I never saw proof during that bout.
00:05:23.000I was there covering it for ESPN. I never saw proof where he winced or he didn't throw that hand or he threw it in a...
00:05:32.000In a poor way or in a less than high level way.
00:05:46.000But what I did see, I saw him and his trainer...
00:05:49.000In the runway was more telling to me taking selfies because they had got paid a few extra dollars to promote some kind of product where the selfies were attached to it.
00:06:04.000To me that was more debilitating to see a guy before the biggest fight of his life where people were going crazy and gonna break the pay-per-view record and paying $100 for the freaking thing.
00:06:16.000To see him taking a selfie when the mentality should be in a different place and normally is in a different place before you're about to walk that hundred yards to the ring where you might not come out of there.
00:08:10.000And the people, you know, they have a thirst, if you will, to see something that the PR department can bring it, can use the right material, because there has to be fighters that obviously are marquee fighters with a name,
00:08:27.000that they can build it and get the imagination of the people to say, this is going to be a great one.
00:08:31.000So when they see it and they pay $100 or $85 or $95, whatever the heck they're paying...
00:08:38.000For the fight, and then it's a good fight, well it becomes a great fight.
00:10:20.000You start to hear people like you, you know, that know something about fighting, that had it closer, so maybe you don't want to yell that you had a 117, 112. But yeah, you still got to yell it.
00:10:42.000I'm not going to pick out anybody because that's not really fair to do when you have a podium and they don't have a podium, but sometimes it is because they deserve it, but not generally.
00:10:58.000And the judges nowadays, I think that they just give it, I see too often that That they almost go down the easy route.
00:11:12.000Like, you know, they just give it to who's aggressive.
00:11:17.000A guy's walking forward, a guy's throwing punches.
00:12:55.000We're suddenly in a universe where the jab of a guy doesn't mean anything when we don't want it to mean anything, when we want to give it to the aggressive guy, to the guy trying to get in there.
00:13:08.000The question is, what's more important?
00:13:10.000Is a jab more important or a hook to the body?
00:13:15.000But if the jab outnumbers the hooks to the body through many rounds and the numbers are significant that it's greater than, then you have to account for that.
00:13:28.000So you think that people are watching, they're watching a couple of jabs and then one hook to the body and they count that one hook to the body better than they count the two jabs.
00:13:35.000And I don't have a problem with that because I counted that way too.
00:13:49.000But if the jabs are 20 jabs, and it's two body punches, well then I'm starting to say we can't forget the jabs because the body puncher's got your attention.
00:14:04.000Moved you out of your seat a little bit, maybe, for whatever reason.
00:14:08.000So I'm just saying that the criterion is not clean enough for the judges sometimes.
00:14:20.000I mean, I think the problem with judging is the same in both sports.
00:14:24.000You should have someone who has experience in the sport.
00:14:27.000I mean, they have to have a deep understanding of what they're actually watching and that's not the case.
00:14:31.000I know it's not the case in boxing because I know a lot of the same judges from boxing also judge MMA. They don't know what they're talking about in MMA and I don't think they know what they're talking about in boxing either.
00:14:43.000It's a huge disservice to these professional athletes who literally are, as you said, Risking everything as they step in there, there's a real good chance that they might not come out.
00:14:53.000I mean, it happens every so many fights a guy dies.
00:15:53.000Boxing has no real accountability, no structure across the board, no real lateral structure and conformity.
00:16:05.000Nothing unilateral because you have different states that have different commissions and they're supposed to be tied together but they all act differently.
00:16:33.000Church and state, so to speak, where the people making the money in the sport are separated, truly separated, from the people supposedly administrating the sport.
00:16:44.000I mean, promoters actually that are making the money and have obviously a horse that's running in the game, so to speak, that night, that they want that fighter to win, they pay the judges.
00:17:03.000There's no separation where you can have promoters and managers that can actually go to the commission and say, we don't want these judges to judge.
00:17:13.000They can't say, put this judge in, but they can knock judges out.
00:17:17.000And the commissions will listen to them.
00:17:30.000I mean, if you're going to be honest about it and you don't have an agenda where you're afraid to say it because you have an agenda, which a lot of people do in my business.
00:17:37.000They have an agenda, so they're not going to say it because they're part of it.
00:17:50.000And they understand how the corruption works.
00:17:53.000So they understand, you know, is it a smoky room with cigars like the old days where Frankie Carbo was running things and you put an envelope?
00:18:03.000But you might be paying $30,000 for an ad at a convention for the WBA or the WBC or the WIBF or WBO or whatever the heck they are, and you might be paying $30,000 for an ad.
00:18:19.000You know why you paid the $30,000 for that.
00:18:22.000I don't think that you just like to see your name in the ad, in the brochure.
00:18:28.000There was a purpose behind paying that ad.
00:18:36.000You have the administrators of the sport, the commissions, and then you have the alphabet organizations that get paid a sanctioning fee from the champion.
00:19:55.000Because again, people making money, people running the sport, people making money, people administrating the sport, it's not supposed to blur.
00:20:34.000I'm not going to say something if I can't stand behind it.
00:20:38.000And you will see at the restaurant, it's a big table, kind of like, you know, not the Last Supper, but it's a big table.
00:20:47.000And you will see all the officials at that table that are going to work to fight the next night.
00:20:52.000And you will see the organizational heads, the heads of that sanctioned body and the guys that are in charge, the presidents, vice presidents.
00:21:23.000And it's being picked up by the promoter who wants a specific fighter to win that night.
00:21:29.000And he's got access to all the judges, all the officials, all All the organizational heads.
00:21:37.000Now, so I would say to the people that are listening out there that just to make the analogy that really I think would hit home, the New York Yankees, they're obviously a universally known name and brand,
00:21:57.000organization, maybe the biggest of all time.
00:22:02.000So how about in New York, you go to the best restaurant, and the night before a World Series game, you walked into the restaurant and you saw all the umpiring crew, all the officials that are in charge of the umpiring for the World Series game,
00:22:19.000sitting at a dinner hosted by the Steinbrenners.
00:22:28.000And it can't happen because the commission would never let that happen because the integrity, the credibility of the sport would be down the tubes in one moment before you could finish your shrimp cocktail.
00:24:36.000And the people that come into it and everything else, I'm not going to get into all the other stuff that you could get into that is so popular to get into in some ways nowadays.
00:24:57.000Well, the perception of the sport, it's not cherished the way baseball is cherished.
00:25:03.000When there's a big fight like Canelo and Triple G, people get excited, and a lot of people will buy it, but it's not necessarily thought of as something that represents America.
00:25:12.000And particularly in Canelo and Triple G, you're talking about two people that aren't American to begin with.
00:25:18.000And there's a history to boxing, though, that unfortunately, you know, because I care about the sports for my whole life, That it's kind of corrupt.
00:26:15.000And they were special for different reasons.
00:26:17.000Like Jackie Robinson was special, we know.
00:26:19.000We don't have to go into why he was special.
00:26:21.000But nobody knows that Joe Lewis, he was quiet and everything, but when he was in the Army and there was segregation and all that crap going on...
00:26:32.000And he quietly used his position as heavyweight champ of the world to make sure that when he went to movies and they put him in the front row and he saw that blacks weren't allowed to come in, he said, I'm not going in there unless blacks can come in there.
00:26:49.000When he went to other sort of events where the same kind of junk was going on, he very quietly but powerfully...
00:27:01.000Integrated things and said, no, I'm going to make a change here.
00:27:04.000You're not going to have me and not have people that look like me kept out.
00:27:12.000And there were people, I've read about it, because I like reading about those things, about history, to see how we could be better and where we've come from.
00:27:22.000And there were history of black families, poor black families that would get hope From just saying, hey, Lewis did it.
00:27:32.000They would tell their kids, hey, Joe, listen, I don't want to hear this.
00:27:36.000I don't want to hear that you can't do this.
00:27:45.000It's freaking important that that history and the history of other fighters like him, doesn't have to be black fighters, but that what they did, what they overcame, where they came from.
00:27:58.000Betty Leonard, one of the greatest Jewish fighters of all time.
00:28:01.000It was a time when, and it's still around unfortunately, there's a lot of anti-Semitism, but there was a time where You know, it was tough being a Jew.
00:28:11.000And you're growing up and you get called a kike.
00:28:16.000I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right.
00:28:18.000And you get called all those kind of, I don't even know what the hell it means.
00:28:20.000I just know it's a bad name to call a Jew.
00:28:24.000And you had all that stuff going on, and Jews women thought of being, they were thought of moving towards banking, and they were moving towards things, we were making money, and later on they started doing that.
00:28:37.000But they were in the ghettos, and they were trying to pull themselves out.
00:28:41.000And so at that era, during that time, the 20s to 30s, the Jews were some of the best fighters, because that was their way of getting out.
00:28:51.000There was another significance to being a Jewish fighter that a lot of the kids, they weren't thought of as being tough, so they got picked on and thought of that they're going to go more towards academic and other stuff.
00:29:13.000So now all of a sudden Benny Leonard comes along when the sport's the biggest sport in the country and he's the best freaking fighter in the game.
00:29:23.000And he combed his hair before he got in the ring and he would come out without it being messed.
00:29:32.000And this was, this guy was, I mean, he was, he was Michael Jordan.
00:29:36.000I mean, before that stuff, before Michael Jordan, before Ed Jordan, before anything.
00:29:40.000I mean, this guy was not only tough, he was not only a champion, which obviously connected to being tough by itself, but he was, he was smart.
00:29:58.000You don't hear about these stories, but there were Jewish families I've read and I've heard from people where say, hey, don't let nobody pick on you.
00:30:10.000Benny Leonard is the best fighter in the world.
00:30:22.000So that kind of history, that kind of pulling of people up in many different ways, not just economically out of poverty, but emotionally, mentally.
00:30:36.000Because you can be in poverty mentally.
00:31:24.000And you can go anywhere, and I'm glad you can, because I love all sports.
00:31:29.000You can go anywhere and you can read about the greatness of the baseball players and the greatness of, of course, NFL hasn't been around that long, but the greatness of those players and the greatness of the NBA players.
00:31:40.000But where did the kids ever get value?
00:31:43.000To read and to hear and to see about the greatness of these people, these fighters.
00:32:06.000So it doesn't take care of itself the way the UFC, the greatness about why the UFC grew so much is they marketed themselves in a tremendous way.
00:32:14.000So there's nobody, boxing is just there.
00:35:11.000Every time you try to do something like with certain, you know, ethnic, you know, pronunciations, you sound like you go to one of those sitcoms.
00:35:21.000You go to one of those places, you know?
00:35:22.000And when I say somebody, I think my kid, I think my son said, you know, he had watched one of them.
00:35:29.000And I think he said, you sound like Sergeant Shultz, like from Hogan's Heroes.
00:35:38.000And what he saw was that Lewis would jab and he would leave.
00:35:43.000You should never leave your head on the right side because if you leave your head, you move your head to the right side, you're in a path to the right hand.
00:35:51.000You should actually finish on the left side because then you're outside the right hand.
00:38:03.000You know, he came from welfare to being a world champion.
00:38:07.000That's the Braddock story without getting into it too much.
00:38:09.000So, Lewis beats Braddock and had to give a percentage.
00:38:16.000You know, Don King and Aaron might not have been around then, but the people that taught him what to do were around.
00:38:22.000Taught him how to take advantage of fighters.
00:38:25.000Taught him what options were before options were ever known.
00:38:29.000You know, Braddock, I think, I forget his name, but Braddock's manager basically made Lewis and his people agree to give him a percentage of his purse for the rest of his career to get the fight.
00:40:36.000We had World War II on the horizon, the President of the United States called him up, and you had Nazi Germany, you had a guy named Hitler that is saying that he's got, you know,
00:40:52.000the master race, he's gonna take over the world, just starting that stuff, not too far away from World War II. And you got all that stuff permeating in the air.
00:41:04.000And you got Lewis fighting a guy who, of course, you know, propaganda was started by the Germans, if you want.
00:41:12.000To me, almost invented that word because you had the propaganda minister and you had all these terrible people with Hitler.
00:41:19.000That were putting out that they're the master race, they're this, they're that.
00:41:22.000You had the Jesse Owens situation in the Olympics.
00:41:25.000And now you had the biggest sport in the biggest country and the champion of that sport, the heavyweight champ, Joe Lewis.
00:41:35.000And he's fighting the German fighter Schmeling the second time, now for the title.
00:42:50.000He's got to go into Yankee Stadium outdoors.
00:42:55.000And in Times Square in New York, they used to have it set up where they would, the radio, because all the fights were on radio back then.
00:43:03.000And some of them on fights, on TV, on Gillette, Calvacator Sports and all that stuff, Friday Night Fights, but was coming along, you know, just coming along.
00:43:52.000And he gets in that ring and he annihilates with all this pressure that he's got to save basically the United States and the world from looking like this ugly person.
00:44:07.000That scourge and disease of the Nazi party is going to take over the world.
00:44:33.000Pull that fight up and put it in the background.
00:44:35.000And I think that when you talk about all the things that we're here to talk about, about character, about talent, about perseverance, about resiliency, about caring about more than yourself,
00:44:50.000about selflessness, about strength, When you talk about all those things that we try to say that we care about and that we sometimes look to be, and very rarely can we be that,
00:48:27.000Plenty of people get punched and they're not men.
00:48:30.000But what I'm saying is that You should understand what it feels to a person to put themselves on the line and to risk so much and to risk everything to try to get their family in a better place.
00:48:47.000I think there's also, they should be a fan.
00:48:50.000I don't think some of them are even fans.
00:48:58.000And what I'm saying is that When I see these people that haven't been in that place, and not everyone can be in that place, so again, I got to be careful with that if I'm going to be fair.
00:49:13.000But for them so easily to take something away from somebody.
00:49:18.000See, what's different for me, why I get passionate, if you want to use that word, people say, Teddy, you get a little crazy.
00:49:26.000If it happens in baseball and a guy beats out the throw, now you have cameras.
00:50:26.000He don't go back to the dugout and then come out the next day and play again with a new uniform on.
00:50:33.000No, he goes to the back of the line in boxing and has to take hundreds, maybe thousands of punches to get back to that place he was to earn the right to get closer to the exit in the business because everyone's trying to get to the exit.
00:50:49.000They're trying to gain what they can gain with their legacy, for their families, for themselves.
00:50:57.000In many ways, financially, you know, but also what's inside them.
00:53:15.000Having said that, it can feel like life's not fair sometimes, especially when you think about some of the things we just talked about in a day that's gone now.
00:53:23.000It's not there no more, but a day of Lewis and those kind of people.
00:54:13.000On one given night, If you worked hard enough, if you dreamed big enough, if you were tough enough and you made yourself tough enough, you sacrificed enough, you became polished and savvy enough and technically equipped to do things that you had,
00:54:38.000and you learned those things, and you just worked yourself to the bone.
00:54:45.000No matter where you came from, no matter what part of the world, no matter who your parents were, no matter what your poverty level may have been, may not have been.
00:54:53.000No matter what you had, what you didn't have.
00:54:56.000No matter what people had told you, didn't tell you.
00:55:04.000If you made yourself and took advantage of that opportunity and got yourself ready and you were ready to behave like a champion, you could get in that ring on one given night and make the world fair and have your hand lifted and be called champion of the world.
00:55:41.000You know, you hear too much the crap where I would die for that.
00:55:44.000There's people that would die for that.
00:55:47.000There were people in our times, in this world, in this country, and you used the right word, you know, tragically, whatever powerful word you had just used, ruthlessly.
00:55:59.000There were people, because of that word, because of the reality of the actions attached to that word, If you told him, listen, you're going to have to die after this,
00:57:02.000Whenever I go to a UFC, and like I said, a lot of it's the same judges, and I see some of these scores, I want to take my fucking headset off and throw it into the cage and scream and flip over the table.
00:57:15.000And you just kind of take a deep breath and calm yourself down because there's nothing you can do and these athletic commissions have kept these people on for whatever reason and you're watching a bad decision.
00:57:25.000You're watching someone who trained for eight, ten weeks for this one particular fight and years and years to get to that position and they're getting fucked and they're getting fucked because someone just sucks at their job and they don't care and this person...
00:57:37.000They're going to be there two months from now at another fight.
00:57:40.000And there's nothing you can do about it.
00:59:08.000There's a lot of people that could do it.
00:59:10.000I'm not saying it's an easy job, but I'm saying there's a lot of people that have a real understanding of boxing that would have done a way better job.
01:03:26.000But I always used to say when I was doing the broadcast, I would always say, and of course I wouldn't say it if I didn't have a belief in this and a proof of it in my mind at least, that punches are born,
01:03:47.000And I'll tell you something funny because you brought it up.
01:03:50.000About him being, you know, he's not a big, you know, he's not that prototypical big, you know, husky, you know, you know, wedged out heavyweight.
01:04:01.000But I'll tell you, when I was training fighters when I was young, and I was taking them to smokers in the Bronx to get experience every week, tough places there in the South Bronx, and we're taking them to these unsanctioned fights just to get them experience.
01:06:35.000And then the next flight, you know, you smelled urine, because people were there, they went up there, and they were, you know, going to the bathroom, doing whatever, and shooting up, whatever, and it smelled.
01:06:46.000But then by the time you got to the third flight, you started to hear noise, started to hear social music.
01:09:11.000And so I said to the guy, I was trying not to get into an argument, but I was like, boxing causes brain damage, but I'm taking guys away from kids that the alternative is the bottle of vodka, the crack, the needle, the pipe on the head.
01:09:29.000Or maybe the pipe on someone else's head where they caused brain damage to someone else.
01:09:33.000Maybe unfortunately you one day walking out of your house.
01:12:25.000Like I said, the guy who ran it, Nelson Cuevas, he was a great guy.
01:12:29.000But, you know, look, he carried a gun in his holster, in his belt, because he knew it could be rough.
01:12:37.000I mean, did I leave that part out to the parents when I was taking them, that the proprietor of the place, you know, has a gun and every once in a while he opens his jacket and makes sure that the people remember that he has it?
01:13:04.000And I looked out, we looked out for them.
01:13:06.000And when it came time to make the matches, the point I was making about Wilder and you talked about being long and about, I'm sorry I jump all over the place.
01:19:22.000So please, please, for you, for me, please, if it's what I'm saying, please, just tell Nelson, you don't have to tell me, just tell Nelson when I leave here that we're not going to fight.
01:19:44.000Nelson came back to me four minutes, three minutes, two minutes later and said, he said, no fight.
01:20:02.000Well, thank God that someone like you was able to understand that there is a big difference and that you can, you know, these guys that sandbag like that, it's very, very common.
01:20:12.000And, yeah, and see, they think they're gaining something because, you know what I mean?
01:20:17.000Well, they just want to fuck somebody up.
01:20:52.000When you're hearing that bongo music...
01:20:55.000And you're in the ring, and you're talking to the kid in the corner, and they're outside now with the bongos, and they're playing the bongos, and you're talking...
01:21:14.000And my kids, after six years of that, because that's about how long we did it, and I was up there seven years training fighters for class, so...
01:21:31.000But they took that and they used it to be better at what they did and to have the confidence to do things they might not have had the confidence to do without that experience.
01:21:43.000I got a couple of them that are state troopers.
01:21:45.000I got a couple of them that are teachers in high school.
01:22:19.000And I remember it was funny because when I would put it down, like I said, everyone lied about their experience, but, you know, they lied about everything.
01:22:26.000But I would put down, you know, the age and everything else, all the stuff for what it was worth.
01:22:32.000You had to have something to try to believe in, right?
01:25:07.000Let's just say we're going to make an arbitrary number because your man's going to pull it up, but let's just say it's 50 and 6. All right, we'll say 5. 50 and 5, but whatever.
01:25:20.000I think his record is truly, if you're going to be this, and we're not truly in life with anything, but if we're truly, truly in an absolute world, which we don't live in, but I would say he's 0-5.
01:25:37.000All right, now everyone who's listening to you would think it's just like, let me get what Teddy's drinking.
01:25:43.000I don't see him drinking nothing, but he probably had some before he came in.
01:25:47.000To me, a fight is not a fight until there's resistance.
01:29:33.000And so I'm only saying it because I would say it about somebody else.
01:29:41.000In the way that I calibrate things, the way that I evaluate things, that I don't think that you know crap about somebody until they're tested.
01:29:50.000You don't know if they're your friend.
01:29:52.000You don't know if they're a good wife.
01:29:54.000You don't know if they're a good girlfriend.
01:30:04.000And Tyson, when he got tested, when he had to overcome something, when he didn't run them over like one of those big monster trucks running over a Volkswagen, because he was a monster truck with Volkswagens.
01:33:22.000that you're really that guy and if you're a guy that hey listen he was convicted so I think it's fair that raped somebody okay now listen I wasn't in that room and I don't know a lot of people don't think okay but he was convicted or but I know enough people in the business that there was a lot of other bad things that he did that are just not things that that you would probably want to hang around with somebody if you know if you're a halfway decent human being That he did that were weak things,
01:35:44.000It doesn't mean I'm right, but it means I have a reason to believe I'm right.
01:35:48.000From the way I've lived, from what I've seen, what I've experienced in the business, the human condition, how strong it can be and how weak it can be.
01:36:02.000He was as strong a guy as you're ever going to see, but he was as weak a person as you're ever going to find.
01:36:52.000I mean, if you want to go back, if you want to go back farther, a lot of people won't know this, but Bobby Chacon was involved in a lot, and unfortunately he paid the price, okay?
01:37:01.000But Bobby Chacon in the 70s, 80s, he was involved in those fights every other day.
01:37:06.000You know, I'm just kidding, but he was in too many of those fights.
01:37:11.000And unfortunately, you don't know about Bobby Chacon.
01:37:14.000You talk to somebody again, like the baseball thing.
01:37:16.000You talk about the average guy, Bobby Chacon, who the hell's that?
01:42:25.000But there was a switch that Evander had to face.
01:42:28.000And that's what made him what it made him.
01:42:31.000And that's what allowed Tyson, part of what allowed Tyson, look, you make your own choices at a certain point in life, so let's not make too many excuses, but it is part of it that he was formed by what he was allowed to do when he shouldn't have been allowed to do those things.
01:42:49.000And that was one of the issues that you had with Cuss, right?
01:43:34.000So this is a, you know, this is a guy that his whole, you know, you use that word legacy, but really his whole existence was boxing and for him it was heavyweight champs.
01:43:47.000He had Floyd Patterson, youngest heavyweight champ ever.
01:44:01.000But it was the heavyweight champion of the world because it was around what we talked about before when boxing was the biggest sport, bigger than baseball, and it was the heavyweight champion of the world was Babe Ruth.
01:44:13.000And you're going to say that before you leave this earth, that you have a chance to have another heavyweight champ that might be the best, could be one of the best ever, and could break Patterson's record, which was part of the plan.
01:44:29.000Part of the plan when Cus was alive, you're going to break Patterson's record.
01:47:50.000Well, you had that with Shannon Briggs.
01:47:53.000Yeah, Shannon Briggs came from Brownsville, and I had him as a young developing pro that we got to a certain point.
01:48:01.000And you also had that situation with him where you felt like he wasn't 100% in.
01:48:05.000He wasn't doing the things you wanted him to do.
01:48:08.000He was lacking in a certain amount of discipline or he was distracted in a certain amount of ways that bothered you to the point where you didn't want to work with him anymore.
01:48:19.000He wasn't committed, I didn't think, completely, but he was a smart kid, a particular kid.
01:48:43.000But his real commitment, I didn't think, because maybe to his credit, he was smart and he thought of other things, but he never really bought in that the end all was boxing,
01:50:51.000And it was good, but he never really, there's that word committed, but he never really believed, and a lot of people don't, they find their way along the way, but he never believed that what he told the people around him that he was gonna be.
01:51:46.000Listen, it comes from, again, you don't want to be corny, but it comes from living a certain way, life, seeing things, traveling through things.
01:52:33.000But anyway, and you think Mexico, you think, well, he came from the dirt floors and the stuff which a lot of guys come from, and they pull themselves out, and that's part of, obviously, the motivation.
01:53:30.000So that the less of people with less could get hospital care because back in those days there were no HMOs, there was no Obamacare, there was no, you know, whether you think it's good, it's bad, it doesn't matter, there was nothing.
01:53:44.000You wound up in a clinic maybe, unless you had a doctor that took care of you.
01:55:17.000You know, when I went in his room one time, when he graduated NYU, they didn't have money, so he had to get scholarship, he had to get help from different things, whatever they had to do.
01:55:29.000But he went to NYU Medical School, NYU undergrad, and then he interned at Bellevue.
01:55:37.000He wasn't a big talker, but he did tell me, when you graduate at Bellevue, you're ready for anything.
01:55:44.000So later in my life, I took that as the South Bronx.
01:55:48.000You graduated to South Bronx to smoke because you were ready for anything.
01:55:51.000You learn there, you're ready for anything.
01:55:54.000You learn how to matchmake, you're ready.
01:55:55.000You learn how to be a trainer, you're ready for anything.
01:58:03.000He worked every day, including Sunday.
01:58:06.000His office hours were a joke, because if it said on the thing, you know, 4.30, he stayed till 9.30, because he didn't leave till the last patient left.
02:01:44.000You know, I didn't understand a lot of it until I got older.
02:01:48.000But then suddenly I understood all of it.
02:01:53.000And so if somebody says, hey, you know, I can't do this because, you know, last night my girlfriend, my wife yelled at me and she caught me with a girl.
02:13:03.000Principle of living, whatever you want to call it, all those words that make it sound better, but I would feel that by not doing it that way, when you're lucky enough to have a man that kind of taught you what he taught you without talking too much,
02:13:25.000and that might be the greatest teacher, is by seeing, right?
02:14:04.000You know, we all have moments of light, moments of Where we maybe worry about what's there when we're gone and where we're going and maybe we change.
02:14:51.000and the only thing that I could think because I try to put pieces together a little bit of what he how he got that way and All I know from people when he died, you know, patients come up to you,
02:15:06.000they're great, they want to tell you something, you know?
02:15:09.000And they told me, you know, that they were poor and all in the neighborhood and everything, a neighborhood called Mariner's Heart, but down by the water in Staten Island, a rough place, you know?
02:15:33.000And there was three sons, you know, and they were originally from, they weren't born, they were born here, but they were from Europe, you know, and they had just, you had to be what the mother, the mother told them what they had to be.
02:15:48.000She told each one what you're going to be.
02:15:50.000The oldest was my father, like I was the oldest.
02:15:53.000And Eugene, you're going to be an orthodontist.
02:16:56.000You walked in, he knew what was wrong with you.
02:16:58.000There was a great, again, we don't know, like the Babe Ruth thing, we don't know the complete truth to it, but there's a great legendary story that a guy walked in, he had been to Mayo Clinic, he had been to John Hopkins, he had been everywhere, he was dying.
02:17:16.000He walked into this place where you had to wait five hours to see him because the line was out the door because he had all the poor people.
02:17:24.000And there was cigarette burns in all the rugs.
02:17:27.000And she was like, where am I? But when you got to him, you knew where you are.
02:18:19.000And he said to me, the only definitive thing I know about that story, and there was a million of them, you know, similar, but was that I bragged to my father, you're smarter than all these other doctors.
02:19:55.000He was famous for people coming from Brooklyn, coming from Manhattan, coming over there to see this diagnostic genius in this little basement office with people out the block, like they were waiting for McDonald's or pizza.
02:20:13.000And he cost less than McDonald's to a certain extent.
02:20:19.000Because if he didn't have money, he didn't charge it, like I said.
02:22:37.000So I found all of a sudden this woman, you ever see, I don't know, I jump around with these things, but you ever see the movie, it was that comedy guy that was around back then and he did like Bride of Frankenstein and he did- Mel Brooks?
02:22:52.000Yeah, it was one of his movies and the Bride of Frankenstein, the white hair was all like, well this woman was the Bride of Frankenstein.
02:23:00.000She comes running out, and she was just shelved, and she was like half nude, and her gown was falling off, and she's an older lady, and her white hair was like that.
02:23:11.000And she comes running, and she's yelling, incoherent, and screaming, and they jump her.
02:23:16.000And they jump on, they start putting straps around her, I guess, like the old white coat, I guess.
02:23:22.000And apparently she was tied up to a bed.
02:23:26.000You know, obviously back in those days they didn't know how to deal with senile people the way...
02:23:31.000You know, it was a whole different thing.
02:23:32.000I mean, we're talking a lot of years ago.
02:23:34.000And so they had her tied up and she got loose.
02:26:29.000So he's got these plastic shoes and you know he's got the inks blow up in his pockets and everything else and my mother would always get upset, always mad.
02:28:48.000As a fight trainer, and as a guy who understands fighters, as a commentator, it makes so much sense that you have this just unyielding need for 100% commitment.
02:29:35.000So I went to a Supreme Court judge who was a friend on Staten Island because I used to be in front of the judges when I was young in a bad way because I got myself in a little trouble.
02:33:01.000And before he got to the last kid, so he wouldn't embarrass her, so she wouldn't run out of there and do that to herself and lose something more than she lost already, he said, this one's on me.
02:35:55.000They need the back rent paid because someone got sick and one of the people working there had to quit the job and they were going to be put into a shelter with six kids.
02:37:49.000Well, I'm saying a few minutes, but until a week ago, maybe less, maybe five days ago, I've decided to train a fighter.
02:37:57.000He's going to fight for the world light heavyweight title December 1st against the second hardest puncher in boxing, unfortunately, which he wasn't.
02:38:05.000And it's going to be, I think it's on Showtime, I think.
02:38:09.000I don't even know because I didn't even find those details out.
02:38:11.000When they asked me to train him, first I was saying no.
02:38:14.000And then my kids said, Dad, at least give it a chance.
02:38:19.000So I flew out to where he is in Oxnard, California to meet him.
02:39:01.000Donna Stevenson is a hell of a puncher.
02:39:03.000He's the second hardest puncher in boxing, left hand, softball on top of it.
02:39:07.000And when I flew out Toxin, I said, I'm either going to say no, which my kids asked me not to, so I said, then I've got to fly out and I've got to meet them.
02:39:17.000And when we had lunch, him and the manager took, you know, anyway, and I'm sitting with them.
02:46:24.000But he felt like when, you know, when he got dropped in a fight and he went back to the gym, immediately that should be dealt with, you know.
02:46:35.000But it was back to just basic training again rather than that specific, you know.
02:46:53.000When I went to see him, I had a couple pages written out already on things I saw on film that he does wrong, that he would have to correct.
02:47:01.000And the one thing that he has to correct for this fight would be good if you don't get hit.
02:47:08.000But the one really thing is you can't keep coming back in front of the guy at a certain distance and giving him a shot at you when he can punch like that.
02:48:07.000It's either going to be an eight or seven week camp.
02:48:10.000I'm trying to feel, I'm trying to find out by asking him questions how quickly his body gets in shape because I know it sounds funny to the average guy out there but if it's a week too long it could be bad.
02:50:03.000And again, I'm no better than anyone, but I will understand that.
02:50:09.000So when you're saying seven weeks or eight weeks, so either one, when you decide.
02:50:13.000So it's either going to be, so my first day, it's going to be a Monday, so the first day in camp in Oxnard will either be October 8th or October 15th.
02:50:23.000October 8th would represent eight weeks, October 15th seven weeks.
02:50:26.000And that would mean I would fly in on a Saturday, get myself settled, Sunday watch tape with him, and then start Monday with a structured schedule.
02:54:09.000So one day, I guess, I got around to asking him why he was so into sending my fighters to the ocean.
02:54:17.000And he told me, that's how my father would say things.
02:54:20.000He would just tell me things, and that's what I would learn.
02:54:23.000And he just said to me, Ocean is where all life came from.
02:54:26.000All life on Earth started in the ocean.
02:54:30.000Microcosms, whatever you want to call it, he didn't get into all technical stuff, but he said it started in the ocean and it came out onto land.
02:54:38.000He says our percentage of salt in our blood is the exact same percentage per cubic inch, you know, whatever it was.
02:54:46.000I'm just saying it probably not close to what he said, but close enough.
02:54:51.000It's the exact amount cubic inch as it is in the ocean.
02:55:08.000So, as a matter of fact, he told me a story.
02:55:11.000I remember I was going out with a girl that had a little baby that had bow legs.
02:55:20.000And he told me, he said, and he was serious, he wouldn't say it otherwise, but he said, send her down, he had a condominium in Daytona Beach, and he said, send her down to Daytona Beach, let her stay there for the summer, and let her boy be in the ocean and the sun,
02:55:51.000Because by being in the ocean, by being in the sun, vitamin A and D, healthy, of course, I guess part of it was the swimming and part of it was the ocean and part of it was the sun, but it was straight in his legs.
02:56:03.000Now look, did he need them to the point where he had to put braces?
02:58:09.000You know, have the separation of workouts.
02:58:11.000But if I had a slightly built guy that I thought two things, and the second one is one where probably sounds a little that you wouldn't normally connect to it.
02:58:22.000But the first thing was, if I thought he could physically be a little stronger, Not that he had to be fighting inside, but when he did fight inside, because let's face it, if you're a fighter, you're going to wind up in all quarters.
03:03:36.000We do a big dinner, a thousand people, a week before Thanksgiving, where we have people like Tony Dancer and Phil Simms and Bill Parcells used to come.
03:07:46.000You know, when I was flying here, I was reading the New York Post.
03:07:49.000Do you know, I don't know if people think I'm weak or something, but I didn't want to read some of the stories about some of these kids that got killed.
03:07:56.000There was a story about a parent that someone in a hospital in Manhattan that decided to slice up a bunch of infants just ran through the hallway of this place.
03:08:10.000It was for Chinese immigrants That they go to this place when they're young mothers, where they think it's a safe haven for their children to be there for like a month.
03:08:21.000And so they're infants, two days old, five days old, ten days old.
03:08:26.000And they're all in, it was all Chinese immigrants.
03:08:28.000And they're all in there, these babies.
03:08:31.000And this woman walks in there with a knife and starts stabbing these kids.
03:08:36.000Now listen, I know a lot of people out there are going to say, Teddy, that's psychotic.
03:09:25.000So we're going to, I don't know how the freak we're going to do it, but we're going to start this company, People Bear, but then we're going to have all these inspirational, if you will, but all these positive, positive, positive things.
03:09:41.000Things to say that, to remind you that, you know what, you could be anything you want to be.
03:09:46.000You know that old saying, you could be anything you want to be.