#524： Boxing Trainer Teddy Atlas on What It Means to Be a Man
Episode Stats
Summary
Teddy Atlas dropped out of high school, went to jail, and ended up becoming a trainer to 18 world champion boxers, including heavyweight champion Michael Maurer, who defeated Evander Holyfield for the title in 1994. Today on the show, I talk to Teddy about how and why he took the path he did in life, and the lessons he learned from his father about personal responsibility, managing fear, overcoming resistance, and what it means to be a man.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast teddy atlas was
00:00:12.160
born to a well-respected doctor in a wealthy part of staten island most kids like him end up going
00:00:16.640
to an ivy league school to become some sort of white collar professional teddy well teddy dropped
00:00:20.720
out of high school went to jail ended up becoming a trainer to 18 world champion boxers including
00:00:25.440
heavyweight champion michael moorer who defeated evander holyfield for the title in 1994 today on
00:00:30.420
the show i talked to teddy about how and why he took the path he did in life teddy explains how he
00:00:34.340
ended up boxing under legendary trainer custom motto and how cuss guided teddy towards becoming a trainer
00:00:38.940
himself teddy then shares stories of training kids in the cat skills taking them to unsanxed amateur
00:00:43.480
fights in the bronx and the lessons he learned from boxing and his father about personal responsibility
00:00:47.760
managing fear overcoming resistance and what it means to be a man after the show's over check out
00:00:52.540
our show notes at aom.is slash atlas teddy joins me now via skype
00:00:57.200
all right teddy atlas welcome to the show thank you appreciate it so you are an espn analyst for
00:01:13.420
the sport of boxing you've also trained 18 world champions and you're also the author of the book
00:01:19.360
it's atlas from the streets to the ring a son struggled to become a man and you've also started
00:01:24.700
a podcast the fight so i just finished your book atlas and it's an amazing story it's about your
00:01:31.540
story of how you started you became a world-class boxing trainer and what's interesting the story of
00:01:37.020
how that process began begins when you were a child you were the son of a respected doctor who
00:01:44.020
worked really hard and but somehow you know despite being the son of a respected doctor you end up being
00:01:50.400
a high school dropout and you end up start committing crime like how did how did that happen so my father
00:01:55.640
was a gp a general practitioner at staten island he took care of everybody he took care of all the poor
00:02:00.080
took care of people that fell through the cracks and as part of that he built his hospital that had
00:02:07.280
22 beds and it was called sunnyside hospital before a very old saddle bridge was built and he took care
00:02:13.620
of people that you know this was way before the idea of obamacare or there were no hmos there was
00:02:19.560
really really it was basically nothing if you didn't just have a doctor like this or and there wasn't too
00:02:25.440
many of them i don't think that existed but or if you didn't you'd wind up in a clinic in the clinic
00:02:31.220
it might not be the greatest care in the world so my father wanted these people to have the best care
00:02:37.860
possible so he built his hospital so they would get the proper hospital care and he would absorb the
00:02:42.800
cost the people that had money that had proper insurance that would obviously keep the place open
00:02:48.420
and as i said the rest of it he he'd find a way to absorb it he would just make a little less money
00:02:55.600
that's all and this hospital lasted for about 25 years and then the city built the bridge and they
00:03:03.000
came in and where the hospital was was where the highway was going to be so they they bought it from
00:03:08.080
they tore it down he wound up finding another hospital which yes a few years later called doctor's
00:03:14.940
hospital with 60 other doctors but he was the original founder the only way he could be with him was to go
00:03:20.420
on house calls he did house calls till he was 80 charging five dollars and he didn't charge when he
00:03:27.080
went to a lot of places he went into the projects he went to a lot of places that a lot of other doctors
00:03:31.680
didn't go and he didn't charge if if he called not to charge he didn't charge so i to steal time and that's
00:03:39.600
what i was doing i was stealing time i was just a kid i was only seven eight nine ten eleven you know
00:03:46.260
kept going maybe 12 13 and that's how i that's how i got to be with him go on house calls go to the
00:03:55.100
hospital when he went for the visits and so i figured that i i guess i i wasn't i want him to be
00:04:04.580
at baseball games i wanted to throw a football with him i wanted to other things and you know this is
00:04:11.480
going to sound selfish and it is it is selfish because i was just thinking about what i wanted
00:04:15.840
obviously you know we we all have that habit at some point and so even though i was with him it was
00:04:24.320
only under these conditions where it was you know on on the terms of his life on the on his turf so to
00:04:31.500
speak and i guess i wanted him in other places in my life and so with my infinite wisdom
00:04:37.940
of basically being an idiot as i got older i started to get in trouble because i realize it now
00:04:47.560
the people that got his attention were the injured the fractured the the messed up in some cases and
00:04:55.840
the sick so i got sick i got i got sick in a different way you know and i i started uh getting
00:05:03.240
on the streets and getting into things not good things and i thought it would get his attention
00:05:09.580
and that was obviously you know i guess the definition of a misdirected kid i definitely
00:05:18.260
was misdirected but and i'm not trying to make it more or better than it was because
00:05:23.940
there's a righteousness in thinking that you're doing something there's a cause behind it there's
00:05:29.660
a purpose behind it there's a there's a right behind it i guess that's where the word is derived
00:05:34.300
from and i did think there was a right behind it i did think that it it gave me the key
00:05:40.840
to the place i wanted to go which was to him and they got out of control quite frankly and i got to
00:05:50.060
bad places i'm blessed i'm in a good place i got to a good place you know but unfortunately it
00:05:56.800
it took a took a couple detours to kind of get there yeah i mean you ended up in in prison
00:06:03.040
a few times i mean did that get his attention i mean i'm sure it did but not in the way you wanted
00:06:08.160
yeah it got his attention but it it wrecked havoc on my on my home because he was a believer
00:06:17.740
that you were accountable he was the greatest teacher i ever had and he never he didn't talk a lot
00:06:24.980
the only person he talked a bit to was me when we were on our car drives for house calls when i
00:06:30.680
would ask questions but he was a believer in doing not speaking and so he was a great teacher in action
00:06:39.320
so i learned from him that you know the most important thing was to be accountable for your
00:06:45.420
actions and so it was maybe a lesson i didn't want to accept it at that point because
00:06:53.720
there's there's one thing about talking about being accountable there's another damn thing about
00:06:58.660
being accountable but the idea seems pretty damn good until sometimes it it's there but i i mean to
00:07:09.280
give you an example i i was a kid i was a wayward on the streets and i got hit with a tie iron one time
00:07:16.800
in a fight i wound up my friends took me to his office and bleeding all over the place i thought
00:07:24.640
i had the privilege of going right to the front of the line the nurse took me right to the front of
00:07:28.520
the line when he saw me he said let him wait with everybody else my father had the biggest practice
00:07:34.080
on stat now probably one of the biggest practices in new york because he took care of everybody took care
00:07:39.460
the people that you know didn't have anything so i waited four hours whatever it was and when it
00:07:48.060
finally came my turn the nurse did what a nurse does she came with the needle of novocaine and he
00:07:53.940
looked at her and he said what is that for and obviously she said it was to you know inject the
00:08:01.760
novocaine and obviously he knew but he said he doesn't want that if he's going to live a life like
00:08:09.560
this he's got to know how it feels and of course i said i didn't want it and you know i got 15 stitches
00:08:15.980
put into my head without novocaine not the worst thing in the world but not not the greatest thing
00:08:20.740
either and so when i wound up in prison well my father wasn't going to give me novocaine for that
00:08:28.720
so he refused to pay bail and again it's you you do something you accept what goes with it
00:08:34.880
you accept being in jail in this case rikers island and it took my mother who obviously didn't come from
00:08:42.500
the exact school that he came from because she's her mother it's a little different and it took her
00:08:49.740
threatening him took a little time but to eventually get him to put up bail to get me out and he was right
00:08:57.120
my mother was right too she's a mother but he was right ultimately he was right but these were
00:09:03.900
and again i i wasn't i was getting his attention but not obviously when you get to that kind of
00:09:13.540
confused place things are confused things are a little haywire and i wasn't obviously maybe listen
00:09:21.600
i maybe this is human nature i don't want to say this and i've never said this before
00:09:25.780
and it just came to me now and i hate to say it as i'm saying it but we are supposed to say
00:09:31.320
what the truths that we know if we're going to talk we're supposed to at least and maybe i was
00:09:37.760
trying to get even with him maybe i was trying to hurt him i you know i just now it hit me how could
00:09:43.780
i avoid the possibility that that could have been possible i hate to because he was old he was the
00:09:50.940
greatest man i knew but um as i speak yeah yeah that's that's a possibility that that was
00:09:58.720
you know lines get blurred and it's possible that line was blurred into that we're trying to get his
00:10:03.880
attention but at the same time in my selfish world trying to get back at him maybe a little bit that
00:10:11.140
i didn't have what i wanted yeah and was it during this time or this tumultuous time in your
00:10:17.860
your young adult life that you discovered boxing or had you boxed you know even as a child yeah i
00:10:23.220
boxed as a teenager and uh i was during this time it was a little before this time but it was you know
00:10:30.160
right right at the beginning of this time where i was getting into fights in the street i was hanging
00:10:35.860
out down in a tough neighborhood and a friend of mine was a boxer kevin rooney who later on led mike
00:10:43.040
tyson when custom auto passed away he led mike tyson to you know to world titles and made a lot
00:10:49.700
of money he was he was my childhood friend and we hung out on the corner together down in stapleton
00:10:57.000
area of staten arm and i followed him to the gym it was a pal gym little dingy place that's all it
00:11:04.360
needed to be and pal is police athletic league which they no longer exist in new york but at that time
00:11:12.600
they did and it was a haven for a lot of kids and i went in there with kevin and boxed in there and
00:11:20.600
then later on when i started getting into more trouble i got an opportunity to go upstate with
00:11:27.400
cuss which was provided by kevin obviously and i shouldn't say obviously it turned out that kevin
00:11:34.180
wound up going to cuss after he won the new york own gloves he went upstate to custom auto
00:11:38.740
who was semi-retired to train with him to become a pro ultimately and about four months after kevin
00:11:45.280
went up there i got into serious trouble where i was facing serious time 10 years and at that time
00:11:51.500
during the period that i was going to be out when my father finally did pay bail i was going to be
00:11:57.220
out kevin didn't want me to get into more trouble so he said why don't you come up to catskill
00:12:02.020
and and stay here with cuss and and me so i wound up going up to catskill continuing to box at a
00:12:10.200
higher level i won the gold gloves up there that around that gold gloves and you know the story went
00:12:16.260
to that you know it transitioned to that that place right and that's where you began you know getting
00:12:23.280
your feet wet with training how did that happen would did cuss see something in you that you could
00:12:27.340
be a potential trainer and he started nudging you in that direction cuss was a master psychologist
00:12:33.720
manipulator don't take that the wrong way because you know you can be a good person and know how to
00:12:41.460
maneuver and manipulate people as part of the magic of being successful with people being a mover of
00:12:49.180
people you know being a motivator uh inspiration to people so cuss had that ability and he used it
00:12:56.940
when he needed to and he said i was still he said i was a born teacher sounded good and um he said that i
00:13:04.720
was you know i was born to teach and that even though i had no interest in being a trainer at the
00:13:14.900
time he said that i could help people i could i could do more than i could even do for myself if i
00:13:21.820
was to become a champion that i could i could develop fighters and help people get to a place they
00:13:28.340
wouldn't normally get to themselves and uh and i'd be with them during that journey a piece of me would
00:13:33.400
be in the ring with them that's the exact way he put it to try again to maneuver me to do something
00:13:38.240
i wasn't inclined to do i wasn't inclined to dedicate my life to being a trainer to helping other people
00:13:44.000
i was still at that selfish phase where hey and look success is attached to selfish too so it's not
00:13:51.220
like you have to apologize for it all the time unless it gets out of hand but i was at the place where
00:13:58.080
i wanted to be a fighter the idea was i was going to turn pro i had an injury i had a
00:14:03.360
back injury and kush used that he used that situation to talk me into being a trainer it
00:14:11.400
didn't take with me right away but he kept at it you know he kept at it and i was a believer in
00:14:18.700
loyalty it was it was a thing that i you know again it was taught by my father the man who didn't talk
00:14:25.400
too much you know loyalty is attached to commitment loyalty is attached to you know just doing what you're
00:14:32.520
supposed to do right loyalty commitment keeping your word you know living up to living up to whatever
00:14:39.200
it is that you've obligated yourself to and so that was that was something that was important to me so
00:14:48.900
when kush said i couldn't fight i couldn't go somewhere else there was no thought of that if kush said i
00:14:55.680
couldn't i couldn't so the option was go back on the street doing what i was doing or become a
00:15:02.500
trainer eventually kush got me to that place it it took a little while we took some side roads to get
00:15:09.020
there that got me in trouble again but eventually i kind of succumbed to kush's insistence that i would
00:15:18.560
be uh a good trainer and then he started calling me the young master he he again he understood how to
00:15:26.580
move people he understood the psychology he understood what you needed to hear so i eventually
00:15:32.720
i eventually stayed up there at some point and i started training all these fighters these i started
00:15:39.560
developing a a gym because you got to remember kush was semi-retired at the time so there was nobody
00:15:46.720
up there there was me kevin rooney maybe three other people maybe four and when i 19 year old 18 19
00:15:54.740
year old kid and i started putting time into training kids in the gym kids started coming they
00:16:03.480
started coming from all different areas and next thing you know we went from having nobody in the gym to
00:16:10.220
20 people then 30 then 40 we had a real gym 50 people and i trained them all i trained the amateurs
00:16:19.080
at night and jimmy jacobs who was very close best friends with kush wealthy man owned the biggest fight
00:16:26.380
film collection in the world him and bill caden later on you the fight fans know who they are they were
00:16:32.180
the guys that managed mike tyson's career at its most formidable stage and they you know they basically
00:16:40.280
funded kush and they sent pros up there so i would train the pros in the day and i would train
00:16:48.860
amateurs at night i had no time but it was good i was committed to something and i created a real
00:16:56.220
gym up there with kush's you know belief behind me that's all i needed his belief behind me and again
00:17:03.140
i wasn't getting paid anything but kush knew how to pay me he would call me the young master and that
00:17:10.060
i think people listening understand that you need to hear things like that sometimes you don't know
00:17:15.580
if it's always true but you hope it is and it feels good you know it feels good you at the time you
00:17:22.260
you probably wouldn't be lying if you've said it felt just as good as getting paid maybe later on
00:17:28.920
you you it might not but at the time it did and you were you know i was i was i was in there day and
00:17:37.540
night in that gym and then after about four a few years i was up there about seven years training
00:17:44.240
fighters it turned out at the end but after several years of developing this gym a guy named mike tyson
00:17:51.200
came along and you know i developed him for another four years before i wound up leaving
00:17:57.340
we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show one part you
00:18:03.680
dig into in the book about how you train these young fighters were these you take them to these smokers
00:18:09.580
i think it was down in the bronx right what what were these because i've never heard of these before but
00:18:15.200
they just sounded really intense yeah they were intense they were again you know people that are
00:18:20.700
not knowing of what it is are gonna say it sounds dark and dangerous and maybe it is maybe it did but
00:18:29.580
you have to understand they were in the south bronx where there was nothing but bombed out buildings
00:18:35.800
and people in stairwells shooting up and lost people sometimes on some of the streets where
00:18:44.440
to a certain extent the police didn't go to certain neighborhoods they left it alone a little bit
00:18:51.120
unless unless they were forced to go and you'd have a lot of bombed out buildings and then you'd have a
00:18:57.280
building that was there that was actually maybe the safest most positive thing in the neighborhood
00:19:05.560
it was a boxing club the one i went to a lot was the apollo then later the jerome and then there was castle hill
00:19:12.240
there was there was so many of them but the ones in the bronx was the apollo and it was right
00:19:21.400
where the l the l would run right across on the same level as it so it would shake the whole building
00:19:27.680
sparks would go up and it would rumble by you couldn't hear anything for those couple minutes
00:19:33.740
three flights of steps to get up there as i said already you'd you'd walk past you know you'd you'd
00:19:40.080
smell urine you'd see discarded needles you might see somebody possibly shooting up so yeah i mean as i
00:19:46.960
say it now people are saying teddy what do you mean it sounds like it could be a little dark and they
00:19:51.640
yeah it had that but it was a safe and the safest place for these kids anywhere from ages 10 i'll tell
00:20:00.580
you sometimes maybe a little less and again i'm going into that area where people are going to say
00:20:04.640
is that responsible well is it responsible being in a neighborhood where you could get shot is it
00:20:09.400
responsible where dope is very readily available where you could get hit over the head with a pipe
00:20:15.860
stabbed but now you had a place where hopes you know hopes were formed and developed hope and dreams and
00:20:25.800
that's that's not dangerous and that's what this place was it was uh it was a few of them around
00:20:33.460
they were non-sanctioned fights so again yeah there was there was no doctors there was the aau at the time
00:20:40.720
was supposed to overlook boxing and then later on it was called the abf i think american boxing
00:20:47.540
federation usa boxing but they weren't in these places these places were they were on their own
00:20:53.520
and it was a chance for the proprietor of the place to to charge three dollars at the door
00:20:59.600
sell little cups of rum beers food and you're able to help yourself with the rent and that meant keeping
00:21:08.240
the doors open for hope where these kids could come and they could train they could train they could
00:21:14.080
box they could have a chance to get out of those places have a chance to become sugary lennon
00:21:21.580
or frido bonitas you know all these great fighters that they saw on television and they heard about on
00:21:30.000
the radio with their fathers maybe their uncles somebody in their family maybe maybe a neighbor and they
00:21:36.320
could get a chance to to become something a chance to feel better to feel better about where they were
00:21:42.820
about who they were it was important it was the most important place in the neighborhood now maybe
00:21:48.920
you understand i i gave you both sides i mean you know the other side is tough but without this side
00:21:56.480
it's unredeemable with this side it's redeemable there's a purpose to it and the place would be packed
00:22:04.480
and it was a chance for kids after the trainers did all that work teaching them the basics for months
00:22:09.560
it was a chance for them now to find out if they could be a fighter see what it was to get experience
00:22:16.600
you know you could catch with your father all day on the sidelines out in the street or in the driveway
00:22:22.480
you know if you're lucky enough to come from a place that had a driveway these kids weren't but you
00:22:28.100
could play catch with them all day but then there came a time you had to be in a game because now in a game
00:22:33.660
maybe that ball that's thrown the same way looks different why because somebody's watching because
00:22:40.420
it's a game and now you get a chance to get up to bat so you learn all these things how to hit a bag
00:22:48.080
how to throw a jab straight how to throw right hand how to follow with a hook how to move your head
00:22:52.920
to avoid punches and now you get a chance to get the real experience to find out can i do it do i want
00:22:59.940
to do it can i make the right choices when the choices come and you start learning how to be a
00:23:05.380
man you start learning how to grow up you start learning how i mean nobody outlines that to you
00:23:12.560
you're learning to be a fighter but you're learning a lot more than that and so these that's what a
00:23:19.740
smoker was so you go into these places and you're a nervous kid you're walking up those steps you got a
00:23:25.800
chance to think about turning around that's another part of being a man another part of growing up do i
00:23:31.760
keep going do i find it out do i get out do i escape or do i keep going what do i do and you get up there
00:23:39.600
and you got the spanish music blaring from four foot speakers and the you know the the pom-pom drums
00:23:50.180
and all that going on you're nervous i used to joke with the kids i said don't worry i i'm not going
00:23:58.860
to tell anybody you know what i nobody else could see it and they used to look what do you mean what
00:24:05.120
do you mean you know see your heart beating out of your chest where your shirt's going up and down
00:24:10.320
and they would look at their chest real quick to see if it was true of course because they knew what
00:24:16.660
they felt i said don't worry um nobody else saw it and all these other kids in there they feel the
00:24:26.880
same way so you started to teach them how to control their emotions started to teach them what
00:24:34.600
what it was all about you started to teach them that it was okay to be scared everyone else is scared
00:24:41.960
you just wouldn't know it by looking at them but you wouldn't know it by looking at you either
00:24:46.200
because you don't even realize it you're taking the first step already in overcoming it by not
00:24:52.320
showing it and by dealing with it and then they get in the ring and they fight i'll give you an
00:24:58.060
example an extreme example i had a kid named maymore this kid came to to me in catskill gym because he
00:25:04.920
was getting picked on his lunch money would say he had no father a lot of my kids had no fathers it's
00:25:10.200
not an accident they didn't have fathers that's why they came to the gym they were looking to find
00:25:15.620
the replacement for what a father would have gave him not just in the mentoring that was part of it
00:25:22.860
somebody caring somebody telling them when they're doing something right somebody gotta be there to
00:25:28.660
tell you that or when you're doing something wrong somebody gotta be there to tell you that
00:25:32.360
it's important and it can't always be a woman nothing not taking saying all women of course they can do
00:25:39.500
the job but sometimes it's gotta be a father and this kid made more had no father so he heard about
00:25:49.820
the gym and he started showing up but the funny thing was he would show up and he leave show up leave
00:25:58.400
so i'll tell you one thing as a trainer you become a psychologist without going to school
00:26:03.420
because if you don't understand the psyche of a human being you better get the freak out of this
00:26:08.740
business because it ain't just about x's and o's it's about people it's about how people feel and
00:26:14.880
how they want to feel and what they're not feeling so after a few times of seeing this kid darting out
00:26:21.720
he was 80 pounds he was 11 years old 80 pounds so finally one day i said come over here see i had
00:26:27.900
already gotten sort of the the the profile if you want of main his name was main more i had my kids
00:26:36.020
in the gym i asked about him and they told me everything about him yeah he's got no father he
00:26:41.260
gets picked on by a kid named goo takes his lunch money and you know stuff like that so now i got i got
00:26:49.360
what i need for my kids so next time he comes in is i come over here and he's looking around like are you
00:26:56.880
talking to me come here so i i show him how to throw a jab i throw a jab out by the mirror
00:27:02.880
and then i said you try that and he tried it i said that's good that's good you could you could
00:27:09.020
have a good jab and then i tell him to throw right hand that's good wow i said have you have you trained
00:27:16.960
somewhere else he looks at me like i'm crazy he says no you sure because i don't want to find out
00:27:24.520
you train somewhere else i'm taking someone else's fighter no no no i didn't train anywhere else
00:27:28.880
all right good all right we'll come up here tomorrow bring gym short stuff six o'clock
00:27:34.320
be here let's start training and that was it that's what he needed so i would teach him he picked up very
00:27:41.760
fast but then when it came time to get in the ring and boxing sparring then he would fall apart
00:27:48.100
he wasn't ready for that it was too much so the funny thing was i was a guy that came from this
00:27:55.440
troubled past where do you think the gym was of course where else above a police station and what's
00:28:01.140
across the hall in a little place called catskill of course uh a courtroom and we're in catskill they
00:28:09.800
didn't lock the doors so we had the courtroom at night nobody there you know to most nights
00:28:16.460
i've caught was open whatever it was sort of day usually so we have the courtroom we got the police
00:28:23.560
station downstairs so when main the first time i put main into box he he ran out of the he ran right
00:28:30.560
out of the gym started crying because he was scared and he figured that probably figured that he
00:28:37.380
couldn't handle this obviously figured he was yellow well why wouldn't he figure he was yellow
00:28:42.040
he he got his lunch money taken every day so i i would go out to the gym have some of my older kids
00:28:50.040
keep it going and i go out there and talk to him and the funny thing was there was no better place to
00:28:56.420
talk you had to sit down go in the courtroom and i had fun with it a couple times i remember one time
00:29:02.400
thinking after we did this a few times because it took a while with me to get him to that place
00:29:08.200
i remember at one point i'm sitting in the in the judge's chair i couldn't help but think you know
00:29:15.000
what it's it's a lot better sitting here than on the other side where i used to sit a few years ago
00:29:21.060
and i i kind of thought like maybe i had the right to sit there now or if i didn't i still was going to
00:29:28.560
do it anyway because it was kind of it was my own way of kind of making things uh getting getting
00:29:35.020
things back uh getting back something a little bit so we would talk and i would tell him you know
00:29:41.160
i want to tell you a story and he'd be crying and then he'd start calming down a little bit i say you
00:29:49.820
know i know it's got nothing to do with you but when i was a kid i used to i used to get picked on
00:29:57.360
so you could imagine what a shocker was because i run the gym and i'm known as a former fighter and
00:30:04.140
all that stuff this kid looks up to me so he says you used to get picked on i said yeah believe it or
00:30:10.280
not yeah yeah i got picked on and some guy used to take my lunch money now he doesn't know i know
00:30:16.300
everything about him so he said well what did you do i said well i used to i used to give it to him
00:30:23.900
and then i would i'd go home and i'd cry and you know i and then i i'd feel terrible but i wouldn't
00:30:31.160
tell anybody so he said well what happened and i said well one day i just got tired of
00:30:38.660
i got tired of being hungry and i got tired of feeling this way and i started to realize that
00:30:48.480
i'm gonna keep feeling this way unless i do something about it and i started to realize that
00:30:55.420
you know the way i feel is and what i have to do is two different things if i do something
00:31:05.500
it's only gonna it's only gonna last for a minute i said how how long does a fight last
00:31:13.240
before somebody breaks it up a minute 30 seconds it's but if i keep letting this guy do this
00:31:20.640
and i keep going through what i'm going through i'm gonna keep feeling this it doesn't go away
00:31:26.360
i feel it at night i feel it in the morning i feel it during school it's forever so he said what
00:31:33.480
happened i said well you know the garbage pails where you dump your trash he said yeah i said well
00:31:39.320
one day the guy asked me for my money and i didn't give it to him he said what happened i said
00:31:44.260
he wound up in the garbage pail and he said is that true i said yeah and you know he started laughing
00:31:50.860
and i said you know he said i never knew you were afraid i said i'm afraid all the time i said but
00:31:57.740
like you just said you never know it but i'm afraid of things all the time but i'm more afraid of how
00:32:03.720
i used to feel when i didn't do something about it when i didn't stand up for myself i'm more afraid
00:32:09.760
of that because i know how long that lasts i know that lasts forever i know the other thing doesn't
00:32:15.080
last that long so we went back in the gym the next day i get him in the ring again we might get into
00:32:21.600
two minutes before he break down go to the courtroom sit in the judges chambers you know have a talk
00:32:29.640
and after about a week or two of this he got through a whole round he got through two rounds
00:32:34.800
he got through three rounds he got through four rounds and i took him to the bronx it was time to
00:32:40.320
fight but i had to find the right guy i found a kid named raul rivera raul had the same problems
00:32:46.520
as maine he was scared he was insecure he had no father he had no confidence he was picked on i put
00:32:52.900
them together and i'm telling you it was the worst fight ever for people to watch because they
00:32:59.380
grabbed each other they looked at the referee they they held on to each other they they probably
00:33:05.280
threw about a half a punch each for the whole three rounds but it was the most beautiful fight
00:33:10.760
i ever watched because it was allowing the kid main to deal with what he had to deal with at the
00:33:17.900
right temperature and to get through what he had to get through and i put him in six times in a row
00:33:23.900
six weeks in a row with each other now the proprietor nelson said teddy you're making me
00:33:30.220
throw up i mean i can't watch this stuff no more i mean i i really i'm i can't watch this you're
00:33:37.160
killing me and i said look you're gonna keep watching it you're gonna keep watching it because
00:33:42.340
this is what they need and you know what by the sixth time they were fighting they weren't grabbing
00:33:48.280
they weren't looking at the referee they were fighting and even nelson had to say i cannot
00:33:53.980
believe it i cannot believe these are the same people and that's that's what we did yeah it sounds
00:34:02.580
like you weren't weren't just teaching these kids how to box you were you were teaching them to be men
00:34:07.060
yeah i mean you weren't you weren't separating the thoughts that way or articulating it that way but
00:34:14.800
yeah yeah they were they were they were learning they were learning the magic of being a grown-up of
00:34:23.760
being a man you know what the magic is to learn and to understand that you have the choice of how you
00:34:33.160
behave not somebody else not circumstances not the environment even the environment of the south
00:34:41.340
bronx tough environment beautiful people there great people tough environment tough environment
00:34:49.320
that those things did not dictate choice they did not dictate control they did not tell you
00:34:59.640
how you had to behave you did you did and they learned that they learned that no matter what no matter
00:35:09.420
how many of these things were lined up there to have basically excuses to be less that at the end of
00:35:19.500
the day it was your choice nobody else's your choice of how to behave your choice
00:35:29.020
of what you were going to do they learned that you know what that is that's the prelude to being a man
00:35:38.020
that's what it's about yeah i mean one of the things you you you hit on this as you're describing the
00:35:44.080
story of the smokers where it's just this terrible place people shooting up dope urine whatever that's
00:35:51.380
kind of like the story of boxing in general like ever since the beginning boxing's been criticized as
00:35:56.240
barbaric low brow it's been looked down upon by the media and i'm talking going back to the 19th century
00:36:03.420
but for students of the sport you hear these amazing stories of individuals from a lot of times minority
00:36:11.480
groups irish black jews who were in lower class they were they could have gone to a life of crime but
00:36:18.900
then they found boxing and for a lot for just a few of those guys they became champions champions of
00:36:25.240
the world for most of those guys they that didn't do that they still learned about discipline controlling
00:36:31.020
emotions managing their fear those skills that you've been talking about throughout these stories
00:36:35.460
and they became champions what is a champion champion i don't know for me i don't know when i
00:36:43.680
finally was smart enough to understand this but for me now it's got less to do with gloves on your hand
00:36:50.380
and how hard a punch you can take and how great endurance you have both you know emotionally psychologically
00:36:58.260
and physical endurance it's got a lot less to do with how fast your hands are than it has to do with
00:37:04.860
how you behave and that can be equated into anything and it is you know whether it's whatever it is
00:37:13.960
whether it's to be a a teacher a carpenter a board member of you know a ceo a guy working as a laborer
00:37:24.120
but to become a champion to become someone who can make his own choices that is completely free
00:37:33.240
completely separate from the environment completely separate from what's going on in your world
00:37:40.460
what's going on around you that you can make a choice that you can say today i'm gonna be the
00:37:47.700
best freaking carpenter in the world i'm gonna be the best freaking teacher in the world i'm gonna be
00:37:53.200
the best freaking laborer in the world whatever it is because you know that it's you who makes that
00:38:01.840
choice you know that you're in control of that and that's my definition of becoming a professional
00:38:10.140
doing what you need to do no matter what goes on around you no matter how you feel when you wake up
00:38:17.500
that day but it's becoming a man it's becoming a whole person and yeah you know the greatest thing i
00:38:27.440
could say about boxing if somebody said teddy you got one minute describe describe box i would say
00:38:35.300
okay the world's not fair sometimes now they listen okay all right and maybe sometimes you feel like
00:38:44.320
you haven't been treated fair you feel like you haven't been given as good of cards as your
00:38:49.980
guy down the street was to play with so this is what boxing is on one given night you can get in the ring
00:38:59.820
if you trained hard enough if you if you cared enough if you were determined enough if you were
00:39:11.980
driven enough if you were prepared enough on one given night no matter where you came from
00:39:20.980
no matter who your parents are no matter your ethnicity your religion anything on that one given night
00:39:32.020
you could make a choice to be the best you despite everything that happened up to that point
00:39:43.160
can have your hand risen as the best as the champion of the world where everything is fair and right
00:39:54.340
on that one given night that's boxing you you've trained with 18 world champions
00:40:01.880
including michael moore who was the heavyweight champion when he beat evander holyfield i mean during
00:40:07.960
all this time you've been training kids amateurs pros and what's the hardest thing to to teach a boxer is it
00:40:15.640
that idea that they they're in control that they're in charge that they can make the choices is that the
00:40:21.000
hardest thing or is there something else yeah that's a good question um the hardest thing to teach
00:40:27.040
a fighter is to know that the hardest thing to accept to get a fighter i'm going to use that
00:40:37.320
word instead of your word okay the hardest thing no no it's all good but the hardest thing to get
00:40:42.760
somebody to accept that's what a teacher has to do to get somebody to accept is that and i'm putting
00:40:51.180
this in a most simplest way that you either have reasons why and you develop those reasons why you
00:40:59.460
can't or you have excuses why you can't bang bang that's it i know that's you know as i said as simplistic
00:41:09.220
as you can get but it's not that simple when you try to unravel it and you try to execute it but
00:41:17.540
that's what it is you either have reasons and you take those reasons because people said you couldn't
00:41:23.580
do it because they said you were yellow coward because your your stepfather says you're a piece
00:41:28.920
of garbage because you got no father because your mother is is on drugs whatever it is whatever it is
00:41:36.980
you either you take those you'd make those reasons why you're gonna do it because you just want to do
00:41:44.120
it because you just want to feel good and you know what else you just want to know who you are
00:41:48.820
i just a kid just wants to know who they are they want to know am i somebody good am i somebody
00:41:54.960
worthwhile because i heard a lot of people say i wasn't and am i somebody worthy of of something of
00:42:02.660
success of feeling good am i allowed to feel good so you either have reasons to go forward in those
00:42:09.420
directions or everything i just said take everything i just said and use it on the left
00:42:15.780
hand column as excuses why you won't and why you can't you get them to understand that and you're on
00:42:23.120
your way it's something you've also said in your in your interviews and in your book is that a fighter
00:42:29.220
isn't really a fighter until they faced resistance but what's an example of a fighter who hasn't faced
00:42:34.540
resistance forget about a fighter you in life and anything you're you're not a teacher until you
00:42:43.740
had a kid in the classroom trying to put the classroom on fire and i'm kidding around i'm
00:42:48.640
exaggerating i hope there's nobody trying to put their teachers classrooms on fire out there
00:42:55.160
please don't do that but until you've gotten a kid that doesn't let you go home so easy that that is
00:43:03.160
not so agreeable you know that that is not so committed to what you want them committed to
00:43:09.280
until you overcome that you're not a teacher until you as a doctor you open up somebody and veins
00:43:17.160
that woman is supposed to be bleeding are bleeding you're not a doctor you're just a guy that understands
00:43:24.180
the anatomy you're a guy that passed a lot of tests you're you go into a courtroom and all of a
00:43:31.440
sudden the district attorney throws a curveball all of a sudden the judge says no you can't use
00:43:36.100
that brief today i don't care that you put four months work into it no you can't you're not a lawyer
00:43:42.520
you thought you were a lawyer because you got a diploma that's up on the wall that looks pretty
00:43:48.800
freaking good but you're not a lawyer not until you deal with that not until you overcome something
00:43:55.480
you're not a fighter it's the same thing you're just a guy that's in good shape you're a guy that
00:44:03.120
has physical abilities you're a guy who inherited good genetics you're a guy who's going through an
00:44:09.540
athletic exhibition great looks good but until there's resistance until there's something to
00:44:17.380
overcome you're not a fighter and that's when a lot of fighters who maybe have that talent those genes
00:44:23.760
when they face that resistance they just that's when they give up and they don't know that idea
00:44:28.820
that it's harder to give up than it is to fight yeah that idea is so simple i'll say it again i've
00:44:34.760
been saying it for the whatever amount of time we've been talking in so many words in different words
00:44:40.160
but you know i'll say it again it is harder to quit than it is to fight because when you fight
00:44:49.940
it's over with in a second 10 seconds really i mean really am i exaggerating a fight a world title
00:44:59.660
fight if it goes the distance lands 36 minutes that's a blink of the eye in somebody's life
00:45:07.000
a blink of the eye it's a second something difficult you got to deal with a minute a half a minute five
00:45:14.800
seconds whatever it is that's how long it lasts to deal with it but you don't fight whatever your
00:45:22.520
fight is you don't deal with it and you quit you submit you give in that doesn't go away that's there
00:45:32.180
all day all night comes at the worst times to you two o'clock in the morning you can't sleep
00:45:40.140
you're laying in bed you get up you walk into the washroom you look in the mirror and there it is
00:45:48.940
there it is there it is it's still there the next day still there the next day still there yeah if
00:45:58.620
you understand it in the way i just said it the real way yeah it's damn easier to fight than it is to
00:46:06.440
quick you know you've spent your your career training men to be young men to be fighters and
00:46:12.360
men i mean you started this when you were 19 20 how is your conception of what it means to be a man
00:46:20.740
evolved since then and i'm curious i mean obviously your father has a big influence on what you think
00:46:26.620
of what a man is that whole idea of accountability but as you've gotten older have you noticed that
00:46:31.720
your father's influence has it gotten stronger or maybe even cusses or maybe other people or maybe
00:46:37.380
you've discovered things that on your own on what it means to be a man it was my father you know cuss
00:46:43.340
taught me how to put it into words taught me how to teach it how to articulate it yes he put it into
00:46:50.060
a form into usable form custard bringing man special man but the real architect of this if if you will
00:47:02.960
use such a description the former of this my father there's no greater teacher than example
00:47:10.020
there's there's no greater lessons than to watch to see that no matter how this man felt
00:47:17.600
i mean this is a guy who no matter how he felt he did what he had to do this is a guy who had to
00:47:25.340
get surgery after back in the days when when surgery in certain ways was much more evasive much more
00:47:32.920
dangerous i mean my father had a i don't know if it was a double triple hernia whatever the hell they
00:47:38.800
called it but he got it as an intern when he was interning he went to the nyu medical school
00:47:45.160
and he interned at bellevue he told me that when you got out of bellevue you're ready for everything
00:47:50.960
and he saved an obese person's life it turned out when he was a young intern the person it was a woman
00:47:59.680
had collapsed on a street he got her off the street you know pulled her to wherever he had to
00:48:05.700
and she had a heart attack he's basically he saved a life and he formed a hernia well he didn't have
00:48:14.620
time to take care of that you know so 35 years later finally he had to get it it was strangling
00:48:21.820
him now i didn't know nothing about that stuff but one day i walked into his bedroom i shouldn't
00:48:29.260
have but again i'm seven years old i'm eight years old whatever the heck i was i walk in i open the
00:48:35.000
door and there was a big mirror that was right to the left that could show you what was to the right
00:48:40.720
of the room so i looked in the mirror and there he was a way i'd never seen in my life he was bent
00:48:46.320
over obviously in pain and he had this contraption around him around his midsection around his groin area
00:48:54.560
it was a thrust i didn't know what the hell it was it was made out of leather and it was to keep his
00:49:00.080
intestines from popping out it was to keep the hernia which was popping way out to keep it in place
00:49:06.720
that's what they had in those days and i i was confused he got angry he said close the door leave
00:49:14.880
the room and of course i never forgot that you know what that told me i didn't know a damn thing
00:49:20.320
but i knew he was in pain i knew my father was in pain every day and he still did everything he was
00:49:28.940
supposed to do every day in pain every day and he waited 35 years to get the surgery got it done at
00:49:39.980
doctor's hospital that he found it and i know this is crazy and my father was eccentric okay you know
00:49:46.540
i think great people are i think special people are sometimes and maybe we call it eccentric and maybe
00:49:52.560
it's really special maybe it's what what worked for them but he he actually had given himself
00:50:01.920
some and just started to the process by giving himself something just before he got to the just
00:50:09.440
as he was walking in the hospital so by the time they got him ready he saved him time he was he was
00:50:15.920
already starting to be you know a little bit ready for the anesthesia i guess and stuff whatever they have
00:50:21.520
to give i mean he he knew what to do so they got him on the stretcher and they're taking him to the
00:50:26.800
or room and he says hold on a minute stop here at the station nurse's station stop here dr atlas we
00:50:35.040
gotta get you into the or no no no no gotta stop here i gotta i just gotta go over a couple orders
00:50:41.440
for a few patients and he had a he had a sense of humor that was very different than other people
00:50:46.880
he said just in case this don't go right he says i gotta make sure that these this poor lady gets
00:50:52.800
out of here monday i gotta make sure she gets discharged and i gotta make sure that this other
00:50:59.760
guy gets his medicines changed so so stop at the station he stopped at the station looked at the
00:51:07.200
orders made a few adjustments and then he said all right go ahead let's go take me he was supposed to
00:51:14.800
be in the hospital at least eight nine days in those days in the hospital one day now was it was
00:51:24.400
it the right way to do it no no it wasn't doctors are the worst patients we get it but he could do it
00:51:32.720
he could do it he understood it was a matter of dealing with the pain it was a matter of what
00:51:39.120
his responsibility he was back working in his office three days later he knew he could do it was
00:51:46.240
it convenient no could you do it yes and that's what i learned and that's how i learned it and to
00:51:55.840
answer your question i think i'm remembering it even though i went down this road you said what is it
00:52:02.080
what is it to be a man what is it to be this convenience that's what it is to understand the
00:52:09.520
difference between convenience and responsibility that's it that's it well teddy this has been a
00:52:16.240
great conversation where can people go to learn more about what you're doing the podcast anything
00:52:20.320
else you got going on they can oh they can go to the podcast i think you go on you i don't know much
00:52:26.240
about this stuff i'm a caveman i'm the most unsophisticated uh media guy in the world but
00:52:32.560
somebody fortunately does this for me and talked me into doing it so i have a podcast you go on youtube
00:52:39.600
and you put in the fight with teddy atlas and i know there's some itunes and other stuff that you can
00:52:45.760
go on you know on on something on uh sure and what are they what do you talk about on your podcast we
00:52:54.800
talk about life you know what i i said from the beginning i said i'm gonna use this podcast
00:53:00.480
to talk boxing but to use boxing to connect the dots in life because for me everybody's fighting
00:53:09.120
i don't mean it that way i don't mean it the way it sounds because there is a lot of fighting going on
00:53:13.360
out there but what i mean is we're all in a fight it's just a matter what the hell you're fighting for
00:53:19.360
and for me what better to use to kind of take people through things than boxing to explain the
00:53:27.760
fight they might be dealing with so i talk about boxing i connect the dots with life and um i try to
00:53:35.760
go places where maybe people would like to go but they just don't know how and i try to show them how
00:53:41.760
and i just recorded my book into an audio book when it's coming out next month so hopefully that'll
00:53:48.960
be something too that people will you know that people will find interesting fantastic well teddy
00:53:54.320
atlas thanks so much time it's been a pleasure it's my pleasure thank you my guest today was teddy
00:53:59.520
atlas you can check out his book it's called atlas from the streets to the ring a son struggled to
00:54:03.920
become a man it's a great story also check out his podcast the fight it's available on anywhere
00:54:08.640
you can listen to podcasts and check out our show notes at aom.is atlas where you find links
00:54:13.360
to resources we can delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom
00:54:24.720
podcast check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find our podcast archives we've got
00:54:28.960
over 500 episodes there a couple episodes about boxing as well as thousands of articles we've written
00:54:33.680
over the years a lot of articles about boxing as well so if there's something that interests you
00:54:36.720
check it out and if you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the art of manliness podcast you can
00:54:40.800
do so only on stitcher premium.com head over to stitcher premium.com and use promo code manliness
00:54:45.600
to get a month free of stitcher premium after you sign up at stitcher premium.com you can download
00:54:49.920
the stitcher app on ios or android start listening to ad free episodes of the art of manliness and if
00:54:54.640
you enjoyed this show and got something out of it i'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give
00:54:58.000
us a review on itunes or stitcher it helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please
00:55:02.160
consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think we get something out of it
00:55:05.440
as always thank you for the continued support until next time this is brett mckay reminding you
00:55:09.200
not only to listen to the a1 podcast but put what you've heard into action