Valuetainment - Mafias Most Wanted Fight Fixer

00:00:00.000 In two years to within the hour of his only professional loss in the ring to Buster Douglas,

00:00:05.600 Mike Tyson was found guilty of the three charges against him.

00:00:09.140 Tyson is in prison. He gets convicted on a rape charge. So I've got a guy named Mitch Blood Green

00:00:14.720 who fought Tyson once on the street and once in the ring. And they hate each other. I say to Al

00:00:20.400 Brave from them, can you get him into the facility where Tyson is being kept? He goes, I can get him

00:00:26.440 in. He said, what's he going to say to Mike Tyson? I said, he's not going to say anything to Mike

00:00:29.600 Tyson. He's going to hit him with the best shot. And when Tyson gets out, who's the fight that

00:00:33.880 everyone's going to want to see? What made you so good at picking the winners? I just had watched

00:00:38.660 boxing all my life and I had an aptitude for it. I could tell who would win. Manny Pacquiao fought a

00:00:43.420 guy named Tim Bradley. He beat Tim Bradley nearly to death and he lost the decision. Manny has tax

00:00:49.360 problems. He said, it's not going to hurt me in terms of my marketability because everyone's going

00:00:55.120 to see I won this fight. So somebody behind closed doors bought two of the judges. Yeah.

00:00:59.260 Why is it that even though fans watch fights and knowing it was fixed, they still keep wanting

00:01:03.680 to watch these fights? In fights that have any consequence at all, you have to follow the money.

00:01:09.020 If it's going to go to a decision, it's going to favor the guy who's going to bring money to the

00:01:13.560 business. Canelo Alvarez was fighting Floyd Mayweather. Mayweather will handle him with ease.

00:01:18.440 They can't let Mayweather lose. They will have him either win one card or get a draw on one card.

00:01:23.960 And then they can frame the narrative. He suddenly becomes the best fighter of all time.

00:01:28.520 My guest is Charles Farrell. He wrote a book called Low Life. Good title. A memoir of jazz

00:01:39.580 fight fixing and the mob. This man is known as one of the greatest fixers in the sport of boxing

00:01:46.040 we've had in the last, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 years, 40 years. And he's going to tell us maybe

00:01:51.200 some juicy stories. We'll see what's going to happen with that being said. Charles, thank you so much for

00:01:54.800 being a guest. Thank you for inviting me. So off camera, you fully committed to disclosing all

00:02:00.640 the names you committed to. I just want you to know that. Every one of the names, except for the

00:02:04.460 ones that will get me in trouble. Fair enough. So what a title. Why Low Life? Why'd you call it

00:02:10.820 Low Life? Well, it's parenthetical, as you know. Of course, I fully get it. So the life itself has its

00:02:17.440 low attributes. And some of what I did might be considered low life behavior. But it's conjectural.

00:02:25.160 And it's a question of what side of the fence you're on when you do these things.

00:02:29.940 So I've seen you play. I mean, the music instruments you play, like it's insane watching you play. I

00:02:35.160 watched the videos of you playing boxing. You were a kid following boxing. And then people were coming

00:02:40.860 up to you for recommending fights. And all of a sudden you're going to fix. And can you kind of give

00:02:45.480 me the evolution of how that took place? Sure. I've always been interested in boxing.

00:02:51.200 Okay. And I've always been involved in music. But I had a mobster uncle. My grandfather's

00:03:00.640 sister's husband was a mobster named Joe Martini from New Jersey. And you grew up in Jersey?

00:03:08.260 No, I grew up in Boston. Okay. But he would come to visit. Got it. And one of the things that I

00:03:13.700 got from him, one of the things that interested me about him is that he was a genuinely larger than

00:03:19.600 life figure. He was incredibly gregarious. He was generous. He was emotional. And I thought,

00:03:26.660 you know, here was a guy who, when I was a little kid, would say to me, he would give me a math

00:03:32.520 equation. And if I got it right, which I did, he would slip $5 into my pocket. And he knew how to

00:03:38.700 slip the money into my pocket, which is a skill, you know. And I thought, wow, that's a kind of an

00:03:44.080 interesting way to live. He'd always come with a new car. So I thought, this is a pretty fascinating

00:03:49.660 life. He fixed up a concession for one of my grandfather's brothers at a hotel in Boston.

00:03:59.420 And it turns out that the hotel was connected with a mobster named Maurice Levy, who owned Birdland

00:04:09.080 and owned Roulette Records and, you know, and managed. What year is this? This would have been,

00:04:15.460 I would have known, this would have been the early 60s. Okay. So I was just a kid. Got it. And I met a

00:04:22.220 boxing, a Boston boxer who took dives periodically. Very good fighter named Tommy Tibbs, who's obscure,

00:04:29.320 now, but had something like 150, 160 pro fights. Very, very good fighter who had a losing record,

00:04:35.880 but didn't need to have a losing record. And I followed boxing. And Tommy said to the mob guys

00:04:42.280 who used to come to this concession, Charles knows everything there is to know boxing. You could bet

00:04:50.140 the guys he predicts will win fights and you guys will win money. So they started having me pick the

00:04:57.220 winners for them. And that got me involved in gambling on boxing, because they would give me

00:05:02.900 money to make predictions for them. And then they would make my bets for me. And they looked out for

00:05:08.660 me for a while. How did you make your money? What was the model? Like if you gave them the right

00:05:13.900 picks, did they give you a 5% SPF or did you, did you make something? Well, I mean, or they would

00:05:18.080 get a bet in for me, or they would do both. And you're how old at this time? 12. You're 12 years

00:05:25.800 old. And Tommy is saying that you know how to pick the winners. Yes. So what was your system for

00:05:30.160 picking the winners? I just had watched boxing all my life and I had an aptitude for it. I could tell

00:05:34.320 who would win. I just knew boxing. You said something. You said there's a difference. You

00:05:38.600 said there's a lot of guys right now that write good blogs that can figure out who can win a fight

00:05:42.480 and they have the right to exist, but they'll get it right 75% of the time. The key is to go to 90%.

00:05:47.320 What made you so good at picking the fights, you know, picking the winners? Well, as I said,

00:05:52.860 part of it is just natural aptitude, but also you get the more you know about it, you start talking to

00:05:57.400 people and you start spending time in the gym. And the gym is really if fights are real and most fights are

00:06:04.060 real. What percentage is real? Well, I could give you a percentage. I could say 90% of fights are

00:06:11.680 real, but it's more complex than that. Because to a great degree, real fights are so set up,

00:06:22.500 the information is so predetermined that without fixing the fights, you're still going to get them

00:06:28.600 right. And that's predicated on the way business works and the way matchmakers work. So, for example,

00:06:36.680 if I've got a young kid and I want him to win his fights and I don't want to fix his fights,

00:06:41.700 what I can do is I can get information about the trajectory of other fighters. If a guy is

00:06:50.360 10 and eight or 10 and 10 and he works driving a truck or he works at a factory and he's in the gym

00:06:59.380 for a couple of hours a week and he doesn't want to get hurt, he's got a wife and kids,

00:07:05.160 he's not going to fight with the same type of intensity. And I will know that. And so even though

00:07:10.780 the fight isn't fixed, I know this guy is not going to go more than two or three rounds because

00:07:16.540 he's not going to want to get hurt. So if you factor that in to what percentage of fights are

00:07:22.000 fixed, then it becomes 50. So would you say a lot of the fights that you were picking were they,

00:07:27.440 you know, like you're saying in baseball, you have major leagues, you have triple A, double A,

00:07:31.020 single A, whatever. And then you've got high college, you know, high school. Were a lot of

00:07:35.980 these fights, local fights, Boston fights, New York fights, or were they the big fights that you were

00:07:40.560 picking winners? All of the above. All of the above. So how do you, how are you able to be good at it

00:07:45.440 with picking fights that maybe the fighter's not from Boston, he's from New York, maybe he's from

00:07:50.420 LA, maybe he's from Philadelphia, maybe he's from a different place, and you can't see his training

00:07:54.040 routine. How do you get that intel? Well, in the beginning, I couldn't. Okay. In the beginning,

00:07:57.580 I got it all from, from television, from watching these guys and by analyzing them. So my percentages

00:08:03.800 weren't as good, but they were still good. And then when I got just a little bit older, I spent lots of

00:08:10.020 time in New York, lots of time in Vegas, you know, I went to the places where the fighters were,

00:08:14.580 and I got to know fighters and people who call me. And there was a, there's a kind of network.

00:08:19.560 Interesting. I went to a 2008 Kentucky Derby. Okay. And I'm there with my wife. They tell us the

00:08:26.740 night before, Hey, if you want to go talk to the horse, you go see the horses and talk to the

00:08:30.260 trainers, be up at four o'clock. You have access. ESPN is going to be there. Everybody's going to be

00:08:34.720 there. I'm like, okay, I want to go. My wife's like, you go. I don't need to go. I said, okay.

00:08:37.520 All right. I woke up. I went there, got the card, show it to him. I get in and the trainer of this

00:08:43.340 horse called eight bells is talking. Okay. It bells is a horse that she looked beautiful. Like,

00:08:51.020 you know, this, she could pull it off. And then that was the year of, I believe big Brown. I don't

00:08:55.180 know if you remember big Brown, the horse, he was like the main one, you know, everybody wanted to

00:08:59.120 have big Brown. Everybody was banking on eight Brown. And they asked the question, they said,

00:09:03.180 so what could you tell us about eight bells? He says, she's so competitive that she's willing

00:09:09.220 to race her heart at, even though it costs her life. Okay. So I'm standing next to all these guys,

00:09:16.140 kind of like yourself. They're looking at stuff. They're looking at the way horse walks. They're

00:09:19.560 looking at the temperament. They're looking at the mood because that's the date of big Kentucky Derby.

00:09:24.000 The final race starts. She's in it with big Brown. They're racing. She comes out of nowhere,

00:09:30.020 goes all the way down to second place. Big Brown wins 50 yards later. She falls, crashes her leg,

00:09:37.620 breaks her leg, became the first time ever to euthanize a horse on a racetrack of Kentucky Derby.

00:09:44.760 135,000 people in the audience are crying. It was absolutely intense. That experience stayed with me.

00:09:50.420 It's just a very emotional moment. But in the morning, I was watching everybody on how they looked

00:09:56.240 at the horses. When you go into Vegas, when you go into these different places and you're looking

00:10:01.260 at these fighters, what are you looking for? How do you know if they're going to be good or bad? Are

00:10:05.460 you looking for amount of time during the training? Are you looking for how nimble they look? If they're

00:10:10.900 eating, if they're listening to their coach, if they're focused, what are some things you're looking

00:10:15.100 for? Strangely enough, the first thing you're looking for, the most important thing is whether

00:10:20.040 they're in shape. That's more important than everything else. Conditioning. Conditioning.

00:10:24.200 Okay. Because if things get difficult, that's the first, the first thing that can go, you know,

00:10:29.860 that can go bad with you. You look for talent. That's a big thing. You look for the way the matchup

00:10:35.520 is done. So their opponent is a major factor. What does that mean? What does that mean? Well,

00:10:40.540 what you need to do is analyze strengths and weaknesses, relatively speaking.

00:10:44.420 So, you know, so-and-so does this well and that matches up very, very well with what his opponent

00:10:50.920 can't do. So there's that. That's a very big thing. But you also look at recent, as is true in horse

00:10:57.720 racing, you look at recent activity and then you get backstory and backstory is big. What are these

00:11:04.240 guys going through at any given time? And then you factor all these things together. And then once

00:11:10.820 you've done that, now we're talking about real fights. We're not talking about fixed fights yet.

00:11:14.100 What are you talking backstories? So backstories, you're looking for what? Backstory,

00:11:16.940 you're looking for relationship, boyfriend, you know, girlfriend, wife, drug use, drinking use.

00:11:20.980 Yeah. Whether, you know, whether they're staying in the gym, whether they're going out,

00:11:24.760 whether they're in trouble, you know, all these things. Um, so you factor those things in. Um,

00:11:32.040 and then, then the, maybe aside from conditioning, you know, because I mean, that's something that's

00:11:40.460 sort of insuperable. You know, if somebody's in shape, a mediocre fighter who's in great shape

00:11:46.240 will often beat a really good fighter who hasn't taken things seriously.

00:11:49.640 A mediocre fighter who's in great shape will beat a great fighter who doesn't take conditioning

00:11:56.520 seriously. Often. Wow. Now, not all the time. I get it. Yeah, that's big. But I mean,

00:12:01.360 you'll get, uh, you know, probably the greatest fighter in the last 50 years or so was Roberto

00:12:07.580 Duran, who late in his career stopped training hard and got beaten by people who wouldn't have

00:12:14.280 been a sparring partner. Bums. He shouldn't have lost to those guys. Well, you know, I don't,

00:12:16.920 I don't use the term bums for fighters, but I, but. Mickey, Mickey from Rocky would have

00:12:20.960 called them bums. Yeah, he would have. Yeah. Yeah. But yes, so there's that. But there's

00:12:26.620 the other thing, and this is very, very important. In fights that have any consequence at all,

00:12:32.520 as is true of almost anything with consequence, you have to follow the money.

00:12:36.140 Who's supposed to win? Again, we're not talking about fixed fights, but we're talking about

00:12:41.200 fights where, for example, if it's going to go to, to a decision, um, it's going to favor

00:12:48.000 the guy who's going to bring money to the business. I'll give you an example of this.

00:12:52.880 A number of, a number of years ago, Canelo Alvarez, who right now is probably

00:12:57.380 the top money maker. Crew me the crop right now. Yeah, he was fighting Floyd Mayweather,

00:13:02.080 who was the top money maker in the business. Before the fight occurred, I told people,

00:13:09.140 bet that the fight is going to be a split decision or a majority decision.

00:13:13.380 I said, Mayweather will handle him with ease. He'll win nine rounds, 10 rounds. He'll never,

00:13:19.160 you know, he'll never be troubled by him at all. But this young kid, who at the time was 23 or so,

00:13:25.540 is the future of the business. He's got a demographic unlike anything anyone has seen in years.

00:13:30.940 So he's going to lose. And they can't let Mayweather lose either, because Mayweather right now,

00:13:37.180 you know, is, is in the process of being the biggest money maker the boxing has seen.

00:13:43.740 But they need to protect Alvarez. So what they will do is that they will have him either win one card

00:13:51.220 or get a draw on one card. And then they can frame the narrative. So the narrative says, well,

00:13:56.600 he's just a green kid. He's just learning. And he only lost, it turns out, a majority decision

00:14:01.780 to the best fighter in the world. And then they'll reconfigure that. So it's not just the best fighter

00:14:06.720 in the world. He suddenly becomes the best fighter of all time. You know, so his, in other words,

00:14:13.760 How connected are the, the promoters to the media, to the commentators, to the writers, to the ref?

00:14:21.040 How connected are we like, who's not on the same team? And who holds who accountable? I don't know

00:14:26.160 if you know what I'm saying. I know exactly what you're saying. In a sense, everybody's on the same

00:14:29.400 team because. Why would they be though? Well, because if, for example, here's a fight where

00:14:35.520 it's important. I'll just go back to this example, where it's very important to Canelo's, um, saves

00:14:41.340 face. So he needs to get a, you know, he can't win. He can't get a draw, um, for a number of reasons,

00:14:48.560 but he needs to lose in a way that opens the door for a next fight or something else that, you know,

00:14:55.780 that this is a learning experience. Well, if judges, if referees don't follow the narrative,

00:15:03.900 they don't get assignments. It's very simple. You want those jobs. If you're not doing what the,

00:15:10.840 and the promoter doesn't have to ask because all of these. It's unspoken. It's a code.

00:15:14.900 It's a code. Okay. So it's not like, you know, some of these media companies on the left and the

00:15:19.620 right, they get criticized for, you ever seen those videos where they show where 75 different channels,

00:15:25.120 they're all, they're all using the same rhetoric, the same line. I don't know if you've seen that

00:15:28.720 or not. And they'll show, you know, coronaviruses and the same exact big words they use. And it's

00:15:34.160 like two sentences that I'll use. And people will say they should have had a conference. Somebody at

00:15:38.780 the top sent an email to everybody saying, use these two sentences and they'll use it. They look

00:15:43.080 like robots, right? Right. In this situation, you're not saying there's not a call. There's not a

00:15:47.340 meeting. There's not a memorandum. There's not any unspoken rule that I'm telling Cam,

00:15:51.460 hey, can you whisper, whisper to Charles that, hey, he needs to lose or she needs to lose or he

00:15:57.100 needs to, is that's not taking place in the boxing world. It doesn't have to take place.

00:16:01.140 It's unspoken. They know it. It's unspoken. They all know it.

00:16:03.280 Okay. So when did you go and flip from just being somebody that could read the fighters and pick

00:16:09.020 them well, when did you flip and saying, maybe I ought to think about, you know, fixing these fights

00:16:14.420 and get involved in that. How did that transition take place?

00:16:16.780 When I started spending my own money. Okay. Because no matter what happens to your fighter,

00:16:23.260 you're spending your money. And obviously it's to your advantage. Well, I was going to say it's

00:16:29.320 to your advantage that your fighter win. And that's true most of the time. It's not true all of the

00:16:34.120 time, but it's true most of the time. And well, we can get to that, why it's not always true.

00:16:40.800 Um, but you, I realized that first I was wasting time, you know, by even, you know,

00:16:50.780 I was picking, I was picking correctly almost all the time because I know the business and I know

00:16:55.340 fighting, but especially with heavyweights, things can happen. Guys bang their heads. They, you know,

00:17:03.060 um, they get hit to the body with a shot that, you know, there are contingency things that you can't

00:17:07.520 predict. And I thought, this is crazy. If this other guy is going to lose anyway,

00:17:13.700 why should he have to battle my guy for seven or eight rounds and really get kicked around

00:17:18.860 when I can say to him, you don't have to do this. You're going to lose anyway. I guarantee you're

00:17:25.740 going to lose anyway, but you're going to get hurt. But we can go home early.

00:17:30.160 Fourth round, third round, fifth round.

00:17:31.800 Yeah. Whatever you work out and you can work out, you know, there can be incredible

00:17:37.300 specificity at times.

00:17:40.740 But, but who introduced you to this? Like when, when, you know, a lot of times you,

00:17:45.120 you see somebody learns a skill or something, but they, the time they go and they learn,

00:17:49.740 they come out, they worked on their boss. They learned, they duplicate, they go do it.

00:17:53.140 How did you learn this?

00:17:54.660 I learned it for a couple of different ways. I learned it from being in the gyms.

00:17:57.380 That was part of it and talking to fighters. But Tommy Tibbs, the guy who got me into this

00:18:04.640 to begin with, fought a really, really great fighter named Willie Pep, one of the greatest

00:18:09.300 fighters who ever lived. And he beat Willie Pep. And I couldn't for the life of me figure

00:18:16.180 out how that was possible.

00:18:17.020 Tommy beat Willie.

00:18:18.120 Yes.

00:18:18.480 And he shouldn't have.

00:18:19.620 Not in any, right. And I said, how did you, how did you beat Willie? And he said, oh,

00:18:25.880 I didn't beat Willie. He said, Billy, Willie beat Willie. He said, we just took the odds.

00:18:31.760 And I thought, wait a minute. Right. This is about making money. It's not about pride. It's

00:18:38.640 not about honor. I mean, that those things exist. I'm not going to, I'm not trying to demean them,

00:18:43.400 but primarily we're talking about money. And if you can, if Willie Pep is taking a nothing fight

00:18:51.740 like this, for example, and let's say this is in a late, or maybe the early 1960s, and

00:18:59.620 he's making $1,500 for this fight. It's nothing. If you, if he loses a decision that's predetermined

00:19:06.660 and he bets on the other guy or the bet is placed on the other guy at 10 to one, he's making

00:19:14.540 $10,000. And that's a much, much smarter, you know, he's an older guy at this point. He doesn't

00:19:20.520 have a career to go. He's not going to be a world champion ever again. And a lot of ex-world champions,

00:19:25.860 and I know a lot of ex-world champions who do this, you know, it's, it's much smarter.

00:19:31.560 And anyway, that's how I started to learn about it. And then believe it or not, there was an ethical

00:19:37.120 consideration. And I'm not going to try to make myself out to be an angel or, you know,

00:19:40.940 an altruist, but I'm a human being. And I, I started to see what happens to these guys.

00:19:49.320 And I thought, you know, if they don't have to, I mean, they're all going to get damaged. It's just

00:19:55.420 going to happen. They're going to wind up neurologically damaged. You can say that about

00:19:59.580 virtually everyone. And the ones that you can't say it about are, you know, are the lottery winners.

00:20:04.440 It's like, you know, Mayweather's a lottery winner. Probably, probably. Because we don't know yet.

00:20:09.380 Because you don't know yet. Right. And I thought, if, if I don't have to be part of this,

00:20:16.180 if there's a way, you know, I can exclude myself from this, I'm going to do it. Because I think

00:20:23.820 morally, it's the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to fix fights. So you save them

00:20:29.240 four rounds of getting beat up. So in your own mind, you felt comfortable doing what you were doing.

00:20:33.980 I felt very, I wish I'd done more of it. I wish I'd learned about it earlier.

00:20:36.920 You wish you would have done more of it. I'll tell you why. Because you're not talking about

00:20:39.300 four rounds. You're talking about 40 fights at six, you know.

00:20:43.500 160 rounds. Yeah. And, and gym work. And, and, you know, a lot of these guys are sparring partners

00:20:49.680 for champions. And some would say that's pretty crazy to be thinking that way. A lot, a lot of

00:20:53.860 people would say it's wrong. Yeah. And I, well, you're comfortable with that. That's your position.

00:20:57.560 It's absolutely my position. Today, as it was 30 years ago. I'm more adamant about it now than I was 30

00:21:02.500 years ago. So you wish you would have done more. You just said that. I wish I had done it the entire time.

00:21:06.220 Okay. So what was your business model? So meaning, uh, the system is the system here. We got 30

00:21:13.000 fights coming up. Let me see this. Okay. This one doesn't. Okay. Boom. These are the four fights

00:21:17.100 I'm going to pick to fix. Then after that, I'm going to contact the manager or I'm going to contact

00:21:22.260 the trainer. Walk me through your system. I can't do that because I'll tell you why I can't do it.

00:21:27.720 Because with variation, everything's a little bit different and it depends on what the circumstances

00:21:34.420 are of the people I'm talking to, what their conditions are, what's at stake. Um, okay. I'll

00:21:40.880 give you an example and I'll, I'll use names this time. At one point I had a fighter who was a talentless

00:21:46.640 fighter and I was a talentless, horrible. I had been an Olympic finalist and, you know,

00:21:53.860 boxing is a, uh, an intensely racist business. The world is an intensely racist place. And he

00:21:59.440 was a white heavyweight. Okay. So white heavyweight, you know, it's the Moby Dick of boxing. That's,

00:22:05.880 that's where the, you know, that's the biggest potential money in the world.

00:22:08.780 A white heavyweight? A white heavyweight. Why, why is that? Because we're a racist culture.

00:22:14.440 You know, uh, that's why a guy like Jerry Cooney, who was never a heavyweight champ,

00:22:18.260 who I like personally, got purse parity when he fought Larry Holmes, who was the heavyweight champion

00:22:25.020 of the world. And one of the, you know, inarguably one of the greatest heavyweights who ever lived.

00:22:30.180 But because people want Jerry Cooney to be the heavyweight champion so much, there was so much money

00:22:36.060 on the line, he could demand an equal, you know, payday and got, and get it. You know, a completely

00:22:43.060 unproven commodity. Anyway. I'm listening to you. I've got this white heavyweight who I've, I'm moving

00:22:51.640 through the ranks and I'm keeping him undefeated and I get suckered. I get completely outplayed in Atlantic

00:22:59.520 City by Bob Arum's East coast matchmaker. Who's a guy named Ron Katz. Now I've got my unbeaten guy

00:23:09.740 and I've got Floyd Patterson training him because it's a good publicity move, you know, because Floyd

00:23:15.980 Patterson was a beloved heavyweight champion. And the idea is he wouldn't be associated with someone

00:23:20.660 who couldn't fight or someone who was, you know, he, he would be involved only with people who were

00:23:26.220 beyond moral reproach. So I'm buying a lot of goodwill for this talentless heavyweight guy

00:23:32.040 named Martin Foster. And he's coming in with against a guy from Canada, also unbeaten. And I assume

00:23:43.380 that top rank is looking out for me, but I get played and my guy gets knocked out in the first round

00:23:52.260 by a guy named Tom Gillespie. And that kills off, you know, a year of money, a year of business,

00:24:01.260 a year of building him up, a year of making deals, you know, it's all done. Okay. So he still got a

00:24:10.300 good record. And a little bit later, Riddick Bowe, who was a wonderful fighter, heavyweight champion

00:24:15.840 of the world. He's making a comeback. Yep. And I get along well with his, his manager,

00:24:20.860 Rock Newman, we get along well. I send sparring partners to him. And at one point, they need to

00:24:27.140 put him back on HBO, Bowe back on HBO. And I've got this guy who at this point is 11 and one.

00:24:33.600 And I say to my guy, look, there's no way in the world you can beat Riddick Bowe.

00:24:39.280 It can't happen. And he says, well, you know, I'd like to try. And I said, no, you will not like

00:24:47.040 to try. You've got a wife, you've got two kids on your best day. The best that's going to happen

00:24:54.000 to you is you're going to be beaten to a pulp by Riddick Bowe. That's the best that's going to happen.

00:24:57.840 You're telling him this. Yeah. That's what's going to happen to you.

00:25:02.460 Or you can get knocked out in the first round.

00:25:04.660 Now, this is my guy, but the business decision is for him to get knocked out in the first round.

00:25:14.200 And he said, okay, I'll do that. Now, the fight didn't happen. So there's no great ending to this

00:25:19.900 story because Bowe wound up doing bigger things and he didn't need the tune-up. But there are times

00:25:28.860 when it's to your advantage for your fighter to lose. So in that moment, if you do, if he does lose,

00:25:34.660 in first round, what is a payday for someone like you? Well, what do you make? What does he make?

00:25:39.520 There are two paydays or at least two paydays. Okay. So that's HBO. So it's, it's a,

00:25:45.680 in those days, maybe $60,000. Okay. Not much. You know, this is 90s. This is, this is 90s. Yeah.

00:25:52.380 So, you know, he gets 40, I get 20. So it's not a big payday. You want their tooth or split?

00:25:57.600 Yeah. Wow. Which is what, it's pretty hefty. Okay. That's what the law allows. Okay. And then

00:26:02.020 a lot of people take 50, but you're not supposed to do that. One third tooth. So one third goes to,

00:26:06.340 who would you be considered? You're who? I'm his manager. You're his manager. You get a third,

00:26:09.960 he gets two thirds. Correct. Hollywood is a lot lower than us. So boxing traditionally is a third,

00:26:14.260 two thirds. My agent doesn't get, believe me, he doesn't get 33 and a third percent,

00:26:17.880 but that's not where the money is. Okay. So the third, two third, 40, 20, he gets 40,

00:26:25.140 you get 20. Where's the real money? The real money is betting that my fighter gets knocked out

00:26:31.360 in the first round. How much is that? Well, it's, at that point, that would have been about eight to

00:26:36.640 one. So you put 40K, you put 320. I put the whole thing down. 60, you put in it. I put 60 in it.

00:26:42.140 So you'd make 480. What is it? Yeah, it's 480. So how do you do it to not be under your name?

00:26:47.920 Anybody can place those bets in Vegas. So you would tell somebody else to go place a bet for

00:26:51.860 you? Well, it'd be a number of people because you wouldn't be one person doing it because you get

00:26:57.620 too much attention. Way too much attention. What are you typically looking at the max? Is it 5K?

00:27:01.720 Like, you know, 16 people do five a piece? No, for something like that, you'd use fewer.

00:27:08.460 You'd use, you could probably get away with six people. Six people do around 13 a piece.

00:27:13.400 And you're generous. Gotta. You know, you give them something. You give them a lot. How do you

00:27:18.780 know those guys don't flip on you? Well, it's got to be people you trust. But also, how are they

00:27:25.060 going to flip on me? What are they going to do? Well, what if they tell the world that here's what

00:27:29.620 you did? So they kind of have leverage on you as well. Why would they do that?

00:27:33.900 To keep the entire money. Well, they could do that once, I suppose. And they won't get any more if

00:27:39.040 they do that. Right. And of course, if that becomes something that people know about them.

00:27:42.960 Now, at this time, are you backed up by a mob family that's protecting you or no?

00:27:46.780 You're not protected by anybody. Unfortunately, I was never protected by a mob family unless I was,

00:27:51.560 you know, fixing fights for their fighters. So let me go back to a question. I asked you a question. I said,

00:27:56.120 so what is a system? You look at the 30 fights. You take three. Okay, this is the three I'm going

00:28:00.760 to pick. And then from the contact, the manager, you said, I can't tell you. Why can't you tell me?

00:28:05.120 Because it's contingent on, it's not that I'm keeping a secret from you. It's because it's

00:28:09.500 contingent on a variety of conditions. Or not, I can't tell you. It's my secret. I just can't tell

00:28:14.220 you. I can't tell you because there's not one thing. Right. Fair enough. Yeah. I just thought maybe

00:28:17.660 because to me, everything is systematic. There is a system to the madness. Like even if you look at

00:28:22.640 Oceans 11, Oceans 12. Right. If you look at the movies, I'm sure you've seen both of them.

00:28:27.800 You've probably seen Oceans 11. I saw the first Oceans. Okay. So if you see first Oceans,

00:28:31.320 you've seen the first Oceans. Yeah. I'm not a kid. So you have to, you have to think about who you

00:28:34.660 need. You need a tough guy. You need an entertainer. You're going to need a distractor. You need somebody

00:28:38.280 that knows how to deal with safes or locks. You know, somebody that's got to be pretty. You know,

00:28:42.900 someone that knows the contacts, you know, someone that's a driver. So there is a system to the madness.

00:28:47.300 That part of it. Yes. You're saying in your world, there is no system to the madness.

00:28:50.320 Well, no. If you use those criterion. Yeah. That all exists. That continues to exist.

00:28:56.800 In your world. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Can you tell us what that system would be? Like,

00:28:59.760 what would it look like? What are some things you need to fix a fight? All right. For one thing,

00:29:04.560 there are a number of ways to do it. So I'll give you a bunch of them. The easiest way is that

00:29:13.160 you've got one guy who's going to get knocked out. By far, that's the easiest. And that's what you're

00:29:18.800 looking for. You know, because again, it doesn't take into account extraneous factors. You're talking

00:29:26.120 about two guys and they control. Actually, I was going to say two guys, but that's not even true.

00:29:30.280 One guy controls the entire play. So that's the easiest way to do it.

00:29:35.600 The second thing is that you've got the ref. If you've got the ref, he can give, he can do things

00:29:45.580 that engineers the nature of the fight. If your guy is getting hurt and isn't supposed to be, he can

00:29:50.980 call breaks. He can call fouls. He can stop the fight. There are a lot of things that he can do.

00:29:55.700 The other thing is that on any fight, if it's going to go the distance, you only need two judges.

00:30:09.220 Hmm. And judges make how much money? A couple hundred grand a year?

00:30:13.040 Judges don't make anything close to that.

00:30:14.600 Okay. So you can buy judges.

00:30:16.180 Well, here's the funny thing. Not only can you buy judges,

00:30:18.920 judges, this isn't true of all judges, but a lot of judges are in it because they like being in it.

00:30:29.780 Lifestyle. Connection. Who were you with tonight?

00:30:32.260 I was on TV.

00:30:34.220 I was in a ring with Mike Tyson.

00:30:37.160 What's an average judge make? Are they making money or no?

00:30:39.460 No, you can't make a living at it.

00:30:41.780 Okay.

00:30:42.180 You can't make much of a living at it. It depends.

00:30:44.880 I mean, there are guys who referee a major fight.

00:30:50.260 I just typed in right now. Average boxing judge's salary. It's at $100,000 to $250,000 a year annually.

00:30:57.100 And that's a legit...

00:30:58.100 That's a star referee.

00:30:59.920 That's a star referee.

00:31:00.700 Yeah.

00:31:00.980 Okay.

00:31:01.420 Yeah.

00:31:01.760 So a regular referee and making a judge.

00:31:03.520 Regular guys and making that kind of...

00:31:04.920 No, they all have...

00:31:05.900 So these guys want to be in their life. They're like, oh my gosh, look who it is. Hey, you know,

00:31:08.920 the starting player for Chicago Bulls comes and shakes my hand.

00:31:12.120 You know, Hollywood stars here.

00:31:13.360 So it's kind of one of those things.

00:31:14.180 And that's what you play up.

00:31:16.040 Got it.

00:31:16.240 So you become friendly with these guys.

00:31:17.980 So you got, number one, is a guy's going to get knocked out no matter what. Whether

00:31:21.440 it's the ninth round, the fourth round, the second round, you're getting knocked out.

00:31:24.120 Why don't we convince you to knock out in a first round? Number two is a referee.

00:31:27.780 Number three is a judge. All you need is two of the judges.

00:31:29.960 What else do we have?

00:31:32.580 Other than that, that's really all you need.

00:31:34.640 Got it. So who talks to who? Like, how do you talk to the judge or how do you talk to

00:31:38.520 the referee? What does the conversation sound like when you're speaking to these guys?

00:31:42.220 Well, again, it depends on how well you know them, how close you are to them, and whether

00:31:46.140 you've done business with them before. There are guys you can say, you've got to give my

00:31:51.000 guy the decision. Straight up, you can do that. You can also say to people, look, I'm trying

00:31:57.700 to build so-and-so. If you can look out for him a little bit, I'll appreciate it. And, you

00:32:05.620 know, it's four favors down the line. And again, you have to be good. You have to be as good as

00:32:10.580 your word. It's very important that if you say you're going to do something for somebody, they

00:32:16.500 have to know that you're really going to do it.

00:32:19.960 Got it. So, my mind, creative mind went somewhere.

00:32:23.720 Okay.

00:32:24.220 In a business model like this, I see fear. Hey, Joe, if you don't do this, dot, dot, dot.

00:32:29.880 Okay? Fear. Threat. Number two is selfish. Okay? Which has to do with money.

00:32:35.620 Mm-hmm. And number three to me is favor, right?

00:32:37.920 Favor.

00:32:38.340 Okay. So, you got favor. Hey, look out for this guy. It's pretty enough. Let's look out

00:32:42.260 for him. He could, you know, okay, great. I'm going to look. Don't worry about it. I

00:32:44.820 got you, Charles. I'm going to do this. Great.

00:32:46.240 Right.

00:32:46.580 The other one is money. The other one is fear. Which of those three tactics is the most effective?

00:32:52.840 Money.

00:32:53.720 Okay.

00:32:54.200 You know, no. I didn't deal in fear.

00:32:57.020 Because you didn't have backup. That's why I was wondering if you had anybody.

00:32:59.480 Right. I'm not a tough guy.

00:33:00.860 Yeah.

00:33:00.980 You know? Now, there were times when I was working, when I was fighting, making fights

00:33:08.220 for mob guys, that the fear was inherent. And it's implied.

00:33:13.380 But you never brought it up. They just knew.

00:33:15.180 I would say he's with him.

00:33:18.860 Got it. He's with, you know, he's with whatever.

00:33:20.580 Yeah. I mean, if I was bringing, you know, a Russian fighter down south, well, the inference

00:33:26.380 someone would make is, why is a Russian fighter fighting in, you know, the Carolinas?

00:33:31.440 Well, look at who he's going to the ring with.

00:33:33.500 I got it.

00:33:34.140 So.

00:33:34.620 Yeah.

00:33:35.080 Yeah. And you always, you know, and you're not stupid. And people love to be told that

00:33:41.220 they're not stupid. And they love being in on stuff.

00:33:44.280 Got it. So, Johnny, you're not stupid. That guy's right there. Just so you know, his muscle

00:33:48.100 is right there.

00:33:48.620 I don't even say that.

00:33:49.520 What do you say?

00:33:49.980 I say, look at him. Look at him. Look who he's with.

00:33:53.600 And see, it doesn't matter who he's with.

00:33:56.420 Now, let me ask you, how dangerous is the life for a referee or a judge?

00:34:00.600 Like, you know, you know how in soccer, remember that one Colombian soccer player accidentally

00:34:06.160 kicks the ball into his own goal. You know what happened to the guy? They killed the guy.

00:34:10.880 I don't know if you know this, sir. They killed the guy. You know, these stories happen.

00:34:16.540 Is it a dangerous life to be a referee or a judge? Or are they pretty protected?

00:34:21.900 Do you know what I'm saying?

00:34:22.780 Yeah. No, I would say it's not particularly dangerous.

00:34:25.120 Okay. So, they're protected. So, it's not like they're worried.

00:34:27.060 They're protected. It's that mistakes happen. You know, and it's not, that's nothing that

00:34:33.080 people get killed for. The other thing is that, again, you have to understand the way

00:34:37.340 the business moves. A couple of mistakes in key places and those, you know, those contracts

00:34:43.600 dry up.

00:34:44.560 Charles, at your peak, what kind of money were you making?

00:34:47.720 Oh, not a lot. Not a lot.

00:34:49.820 Idea.

00:34:53.740 I'm trying to think how much of this I can say.

00:34:55.480 Best fight you ever made? Like, what's your best fight? Best one you had where you said,

00:34:58.480 I made a shitload of money on this one fight.

00:35:03.800 Just under $100,000.

00:35:05.700 Just under $100,000. That's your purse.

00:35:07.340 That's mine. Well, not purse. That's what I made.

00:35:09.820 Right. What you made off of that.

00:35:11.220 Yeah.

00:35:11.480 Okay. And, you know.

00:35:12.800 But I lost a lot more than that on the biggest loss I ever did.

00:35:15.320 What's your biggest loss?

00:35:17.020 I lost $420,000 or $430,000.

00:35:21.520 How did that happen?

00:35:23.400 It's an amazing story. I'm not sure if I got suckered or if I made a legitimate mistake

00:35:28.840 because the person who brought me that bet was my best friend in boxing and a guy who

00:35:34.800 actually saved my life. So, I hate to think that I got taken. But the deal was this.

00:35:40.180 There was a middleweight championship, vacant middleweight title between a guy named Reggie

00:35:46.600 Johnson and a guy named Stevie Collins, Irish Stevie Collins, who were very, very well-matched

00:35:53.140 guys. And if the fight were real, which it turned out to be, neither one had ever been knocked

00:35:59.580 out. Neither one ever did get knocked out in their career. So, it would be a close fight

00:36:06.320 and it would go to a decision.

00:36:07.160 Okay.

00:36:38.000 Nothing.

00:36:38.880 Your friend is telling you this?

00:36:39.900 He's telling me this.

00:36:41.040 The guy who saved your life?

00:36:42.160 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

00:36:43.320 Saved him from the mob, interestingly enough.

00:36:45.780 He saved your life from the mob?

00:36:46.840 He did.

00:36:47.120 So, the mob was after you and he protected you?

00:36:49.260 Yeah. Yeah. Not for this fight, but for something completely different.

00:36:51.700 Something like that. Got it. I'm curious to know what it is, but please continue.

00:36:53.660 I'll be happy to tell you that. Although, that one, we won't give names because they're

00:36:56.620 all still around. But it should have been an even money bet. And I thought, well, he said,

00:37:04.600 but the only thing is, it's got to be a big bet. Okay. So, I got together all the money

00:37:10.540 I had without having to borrow, which at that point, it was either 430 or 420 and I don't

00:37:16.460 remember which. And I had to fly in a private plane under the radar down to Santo Domingo

00:37:23.340 to get the bet made. And the fight went the distance. It was very, very close.

00:37:31.460 And the other reason I bet Stevie Collins is politically, it was by far the better business

00:37:39.620 move because Collins had big business with super middleweights in Europe. There were a

00:37:45.980 plethora of big money fights for him to be, to be made for him. So I thought, of course

00:37:51.060 he's going to win. You know, as, as Braverman said, nobody gives a shit about either of these

00:37:55.620 fighters. I said, well, in Europe, they, you know, Collins, they do, but nobody gives a

00:38:00.400 shit about Reggie Johnson. So he loses. Anyway, Reggie Johnson wins a majority decision.

00:38:08.280 And I'm down in Santo Domingo with my bodyguard and cash and whoever I bet against, who I never

00:38:16.580 met, some gangster, had his two bodyguards and they had their cash. So I handed over the

00:38:24.440 cash and that was it. And I thought, well, you know, I made the wrong bet. It happens.

00:38:29.520 You were supposed to make what? 1.29. It was one to five, I think, or something like that.

00:38:35.860 You're a good mathematician. Yeah. I mean, enough so that I was going to get out and I

00:38:39.820 was going to, you were going to get out like, I'm done with it. I'm done. I've got, I've

00:38:42.640 got money that nobody knows about. I'm going to live in the Caribbean.

00:38:45.680 Quietly. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I don't need this. I'm, you know, I'm, uh, I already owned real

00:38:51.280 estate down there, but I was going to buy it. How many times have you, have you replayed that

00:38:54.080 moment in your life? Well, here's the thing at first quite a bit, but I, you know, it's

00:39:00.420 done. There's nothing you can do about it, but here's what I started replaying. I thought

00:39:05.100 if the guy who I lost the bet to could find 10 people to make this bet with and buy the judges,

00:39:17.340 one, you know, again, two judges, 10 people, you know, that's, that's 4 million, 300,000

00:39:26.100 or 4 million, 200, you know, for nothing, for no, I mean, you have to have the cash to

00:39:30.860 put up, but that's not so hard to do. And he walks away and I thought, did my best friend

00:39:38.260 get a cut on it, got a cut on it. Are you still friends with the guy?

00:39:42.520 He died. He was, he was, he was an elderly guy when I knew him. He, he died in a completely

00:39:48.260 innocuous way. How did he save your life? How did he save your life? Um, I was making

00:39:55.040 fights for a kid who was in the, whose father was in the mob and they had spent money on his

00:40:01.940 white heavyweight, I won't say his name. He was terrible. He was absolutely horrible. And

00:40:08.460 um, I had been doing business down South with a veteran matchmaker and who, who knew his

00:40:17.800 business, guy who really understood what he was doing. So this kid was going to turn pro,

00:40:23.760 this mob kid. And we brought him to a safe environment where under the radar, you know,

00:40:30.340 nobody, cause we wanted a first round knockout. And I was given money to give to this matchmaker,

00:40:36.440 which I did. And I said, okay, so it's one round. It's one round. And he said, um, yeah,

00:40:45.100 no problem at all. We're at the fights and I don't, I Patrick, to this day, I don't know how

00:40:52.760 this happened, but just before the fight, I had this intuition where I went into the loser's dressing

00:41:02.940 room. And the loser was clearly a kid who couldn't fight. I mean, I could see that right away.

00:41:07.380 And I was talking to his, his handler, his manager, I don't know who the guy was.

00:41:12.820 And I said, so he knows what to do. And he said, what do you mean? He says, you mean,

00:41:19.300 does he know how to fight? I said, no, I can tell you he doesn't know how to fight,

00:41:22.540 but you know what's going to happen. Right? And he goes, I said, how much did you get paid for

00:41:27.820 this fight? He goes, you know, we get paid 80 bucks a round, four round fight. And I said,

00:41:34.620 okay. So I go back into the audience because the New York guys are all there. And I said,

00:41:41.420 look, there's a little, there's a little issue here. And I still remember the kid's father gets

00:41:47.100 up and he puts his arm around me and he makes sure that I see he's got a gun. And he says, well,

00:41:53.200 you're going to handle it. And I said, yeah, I'm going to handle it. And he says, okay,

00:41:58.060 how bad language can I use here?

00:41:59.880 Whatever you want. Yeah, it's fine.

00:42:01.640 He said, if we don't get what we want, we're going to kill you. We're going to kill that

00:42:08.040 motherfucker who stole our money. And we're going to kill the fighter and everybody else we can

00:42:13.900 think of. And these are serious guys.

00:42:16.200 He whispers this to you.

00:42:17.140 Yeah.

00:42:17.420 And he's a boss at the time.

00:42:18.640 He's not a boss, but he's, you know,

00:42:20.540 connected.

00:42:20.980 He's connected. Yeah, he's connected. And he's, and he's the, you know, he's got the

00:42:24.940 fighter. So he, and he's the son of a son of somebody, somebody powerful in the mind.

00:42:28.660 And they've already, they're already spending a lot of money on this kid's career. And this

00:42:31.760 kid cannot fight at all. Not, not even a little bit. And he's petrified because this is his

00:42:36.620 first pro fight. So I go back to the dressing room and I say to the kid, you're going to lose

00:42:44.660 this fight. You're going to get knocked out in the first round. And he says, I can't do it.

00:42:50.980 He's a Southern kid. He's, I can't do it. He's my, my parents are in the audience, my sisters and

00:42:58.260 brothers. And I said, we're going to all be dead in the next 10 minutes. And it gets weirder.

00:43:06.440 He says, he's from New York. He's going to kill me anyway. I said, no, no, no, you don't understand.

00:43:11.540 He's in his dressing room throwing up right now. If you even look at him, he's going to faint. I

00:43:18.220 know you can't fight, but he doesn't know that. So you're going to lose. And then the matchmaker

00:43:25.660 comes in. And I said to the matchmaker, what did you do? He goes, this kid can't fight at all. I

00:43:31.640 said, that's not what you got paid to do. You got paid to fix the fight, fix the fight. He goes,

00:43:37.380 no, but it's going to be a one round fight. He can't fight. I said, you took his money.

00:43:41.960 And I said, give me all the money you've got, everything you've got. He goes, well,

00:43:46.740 some of this is my money. I said, it's not your money anymore. It's this kid's money.

00:43:52.120 And then I said, and I said to the kid, I'm not going to tell you his name either,

00:43:56.380 but I had a brainstorm. I said, look, you don't have to fight under your own name. Nobody cares.

00:44:02.980 Makeup. And I'm just going to say like, his name is, you know, Billy Alexander, which it's not. I

00:44:09.780 said, make up a name. He goes, and he's crying at this point. He's actually crying. He goes,

00:44:14.380 Bobby Alexander. And I said, no, no, Billy. See, Bobby Alexander sounds quite a bit like Billy

00:44:19.840 Alexander, you know, and he'd say, well, Bobby Alexander, you know, it's okay. We'll take care of

00:44:25.480 it. And I said to the matchmaker, you got to give this kid under his own name four wins.

00:44:35.280 So he starts his pro career at 4-0. This is, you know, so he said, okay, we'll do that.

00:44:41.040 And I take the kid out into the parking lot. And there are still people straggling in because this

00:44:48.380 is, you know, early, this is one of the first, this is in fact, the opener of the fight.

00:44:52.600 And I said, put your hands up. Now, I'm not a fighter. And, you know, I was a lot younger

00:44:58.060 then, but I wasn't a fighter then either. And I hit the kid in the mouth as hard as I can.

00:45:04.220 And then I hit him in the stomach as hard as I can. And then I hit him in the mouth as

00:45:07.340 hard as I can. And he starts, he gets a bloody lip. And I say to the kid, the guy who's kind

00:45:12.140 of, the towel comes in right then. That's what happens. And I said, don't you throw a punch

00:45:16.480 back. Don't you dare throw a punch back. This is how it is. And I said, you throw the towel

00:45:21.440 in high, right up to the middle of the ring. And you yell something as you throw it in.

00:45:27.420 Which he did. The fight lasted 17 seconds. And it looked sensational. And the mob guys,

00:45:34.900 they love me again. Everything is good. And I think, okay, everybody got what they wanted.

00:45:40.900 That's good business. And then they say, we need to talk to this matchmaker.

00:45:47.620 And I said, you don't need to talk to this matchmaker.

00:45:53.940 You got exactly what you wanted. He's scared to death. He didn't make a dime.

00:45:58.400 He lost his own money. It's done. Just think business.

00:46:03.640 You're telling this to the mobsters.

00:46:05.760 Yeah. This is business. You know, if something had happened, it would be, you know, I could see

00:46:11.560 the wisdom of doing something about it. But there's nothing to be done.

00:46:17.020 They said, go get him.

00:46:19.520 So, we drive over to the restaurant where this guy, you know, is eating with the matchmaker.

00:46:27.640 Matchmaker is a rich kid whose wife bankrolls these things.

00:46:31.740 And they're, you know, they're spending time with their society friends, you know, rubbing elbows with the fighters.

00:46:38.060 And this matchmaker is sitting and eating with them. And I said, come on over here.

00:46:42.760 And he gestures. I'm eating right now.

00:46:46.520 And I almost never get mad at anybody.

00:46:50.420 I thought, okay.

00:46:52.360 I go to the matchmaker and I, to the promoter.

00:46:54.820 And I said, we need to borrow this guy for a little while.

00:46:57.440 And this is one of those guys, you've met them, we all met them, a promoter,

00:47:00.920 who has a sense of when to cut loose the weak, you know, the weak part of the herd.

00:47:08.260 He knows that something's going on. He goes, go ahead and take him.

00:47:12.020 So, we bring him out and the mob guy said, get into the van.

00:47:16.720 And I think, oh, Jesus Christ.

00:47:19.840 And so, he gets into the van and I get into the van.

00:47:23.520 And I'm thinking, this is so stupid.

00:47:27.080 But, you know, I'm also thinking, this is it.

00:47:30.480 And they make this guy direct them, because he's a local, out of town.

00:47:36.980 So, they're driving.

00:47:38.160 We're in the van in the back seat and we're surrounded by these mobsters.

00:47:43.800 And one of them, I know what he does for a living.

00:47:47.840 And I won't say what it is, but you can guess what it is.

00:47:49.980 And they're talking about the matchmaker as if he's not there,

00:47:54.740 which is maybe the scariest thing of all, because he's pleading.

00:47:58.700 You know, he said, I know I made a mistake.

00:48:00.340 I'll never do it again.

00:48:01.380 It was stupid.

00:48:02.460 You know, the guy I got can't fight.

00:48:05.220 It's nothing, you know.

00:48:06.660 And they're talking about him in the third person.

00:48:09.640 You know, what do you do with a piece of shit like this?

00:48:11.480 You can't reason with him.

00:48:12.960 I think, oh, no.

00:48:14.060 This guy's over with.

00:48:15.440 Well, that's what.

00:48:16.240 So, we drive out to the middle of the country.

00:48:19.180 They open the van.

00:48:20.040 They say to the guy, step out and walk 10 feet.

00:48:23.060 Take 10 steps.

00:48:24.600 And he's stumbling.

00:48:26.980 And I think, all right, well, you know.

00:48:29.580 He takes 10 steps.

00:48:31.460 And they say, okay, get him back in the van.

00:48:34.440 And nothing happens.

00:48:36.000 They drop him off.

00:48:37.420 And I said, okay, that was great.

00:48:38.980 You know, you scared them to death.

00:48:40.420 You scared me to death.

00:48:42.280 And they said, oh, this isn't over with.

00:48:45.160 And it turns out it wasn't over with.

00:48:47.820 So, something happened.

00:48:51.240 He died.

00:48:51.960 They killed him.

00:48:52.540 I'm not going to say what happened.

00:48:53.740 Because I can't say that.

00:48:55.160 But he's not around anymore.

00:48:57.200 Physically.

00:48:57.900 Spiritually.

00:48:58.540 I don't even know if he's around spiritually.

00:49:00.520 And then somebody else associated with the same.

00:49:04.280 Did that happen fairly quickly or no?

00:49:06.400 Not as quickly as you would imagine.

00:49:08.340 But fairly quickly.

00:49:09.400 And then somebody else had a mishap, too.

00:49:12.240 That I can't talk about.

00:49:13.360 The other person who had a mishap.

00:49:14.600 But not the fighter.

00:49:15.400 Not the fighter.

00:49:15.960 The fighter, as far as I know, is still around.

00:49:18.800 And the guy that brought his fighter, the guy that the son of a gangster, is the gangster no longer around, but the son is still around today?

00:49:29.480 I think they're both still around.

00:49:30.700 Oh, you're saying they're both still around.

00:49:32.640 Yeah, I think so.

00:49:34.300 I mean, they're not.

00:49:34.980 Have I interviewed them?

00:49:36.760 No.

00:49:37.480 Okay.

00:49:37.880 No.

00:49:38.200 Well, that takes a lot of names out.

00:49:40.240 It takes a lot of names.

00:49:41.120 Yeah.

00:49:41.360 No, you haven't.

00:49:42.280 And you know who I've interviewed.

00:49:44.060 I know some of the people you've interviewed.

00:49:45.520 Yeah.

00:49:45.660 No, no.

00:49:46.020 It wouldn't have been.

00:49:46.540 No.

00:49:47.600 One of them in particular would come to mind.

00:49:49.640 But no.

00:49:50.100 Okay.

00:49:50.460 No.

00:49:50.820 Got it.

00:49:51.040 But what's interesting is that they decided they were going to kill me.

00:49:57.800 Partially because they thought I would give them up.

00:50:00.220 Which is something I wouldn't do.

00:50:02.440 And Al Braverman fixed it for me.

00:50:05.100 The guy who the 420, 430, that could have been a 1.25.

00:50:09.040 Yeah.

00:50:09.200 I was living in the mountains of Puerto Rico and they were looking for me.

00:50:13.020 And I was getting really desperate.

00:50:14.280 I mean, I was really getting desperate because the guy who was going to be dispatched liked

00:50:19.280 to me and he called me before and he said, you better straighten this out.

00:50:25.060 And I said, are they sending you?

00:50:26.360 And he said, I think they're sending me.

00:50:28.220 So you better handle it.

00:50:29.200 If they send him, it's over.

00:50:30.180 It's over.

00:50:30.680 Yeah.

00:50:30.860 So, I mean, it'd be hard to find me.

00:50:33.240 But, you know, I don't necessarily want to.

00:50:35.380 In those days, I lived in a place called Las Marias, Puerto Rico.

00:50:38.620 It's in the mountains.

00:50:39.840 You know, it's the middle of nowhere and I liked it there, but it's not where I wanted

00:50:43.480 to spend the rest of my life.

00:50:46.360 Anyway, Braverman had us all meet in New York.

00:50:50.500 I came in from Las Marias to New York and we had an in-person meeting.

00:50:56.000 And he said, we can sign your kid with Don King.

00:50:59.160 We can sign your kid with Don King.

00:51:00.960 He said, we can sign your kid with Don King.

00:51:03.460 But Charles is with us and he's not talking to anybody.

00:51:09.560 And this is the end of it.

00:51:11.320 If anything happens to him, your kid will not be welcome anywhere.

00:51:17.320 And if he does get a fight, you're going to wish he didn't.

00:51:20.500 And Al Braverman is one of those guys who's just completely fearless.

00:51:24.000 You know, just a...

00:51:25.720 And so, that was it.

00:51:28.080 And of course, I've never mentioned their names.

00:51:31.100 Let me ask you, how much till today is that still happening?

00:51:34.760 How much is fixing still happening today in boxing?

00:51:37.140 It's about the same as ever.

00:51:38.900 It's about the same as ever?

00:51:39.880 Yeah.

00:51:41.780 Yeah.

00:51:42.880 So let me ask you.

00:51:44.620 So, you know, every time there's a fight and you're sitting there, you're like,

00:51:47.300 there's no way in the world what just happened here.

00:51:48.920 There's no way that guy should have won.

00:51:51.260 Are you kidding me?

00:51:52.160 In every possible way, the other guy won.

00:51:54.520 Right.

00:51:54.800 I don't know how this makes any sense.

00:51:56.180 Right.

00:51:56.640 And then people will go on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and say, this fight was fixed.

00:52:00.260 I'll never watch another boxing fight.

00:52:02.360 Right.

00:52:02.580 The next big fight comes.

00:52:03.920 They're working on pay-per-view.

00:52:05.020 Right.

00:52:05.320 Why is that?

00:52:06.340 Why is it that even though fans watch fights and knowing it was fixed, they still keep wanting

00:52:11.000 to watch these fights?

00:52:12.460 Because, well, for one thing, most of the fights you're talking about go to a decision,

00:52:15.960 right?

00:52:16.200 It's a bad decision.

00:52:17.140 It's a decision.

00:52:17.640 Yeah.

00:52:17.820 So they see a real fight.

00:52:20.100 I'll give you an example.

00:52:21.140 Now, I don't know personally that this is fixed, but I would bet my life that it was fixed.

00:52:25.620 Do you remember a number of years ago, Manny Pacquiao?

00:52:29.160 Sure.

00:52:29.400 I fought a guy named Tim Bradley.

00:52:31.120 Yes.

00:52:31.580 Okay.

00:52:32.080 He beat Tim Bradley nearly to death and he lost a decision.

00:52:35.800 Now, at this point, Pacquiao is maybe the biggest moneymaker in boxing or, you know,

00:52:41.960 maybe Floyd would, you know, but he's certainly the most influential guy in boxing.

00:52:45.940 I mean, he's going to be the president of the Philippines.

00:52:47.600 I mean, you know, he's a major icon.

00:52:49.740 Sure.

00:52:49.800 Yep.

00:52:50.880 He wins nine rounds, 10 rounds, and he loses to Bradley.

00:52:56.180 Now, a couple of times, I'm watching this fight and I see that Manny can knock him out

00:53:02.080 and he doesn't do it.

00:53:04.260 Get out of here.

00:53:06.380 Again, Manny has, this is what people tell me, tax problems.

00:53:11.400 And he's got gambling problems and he has hangers on.

00:53:15.920 And the odds, again, are about eight to one.

00:53:19.960 I think what happened is he said, it's not going to hurt me in terms of my marketability

00:53:26.120 because everyone's going to see I won this fight.

00:53:29.220 So, that won't do me any harm.

00:53:32.360 And whatever you can make, make.

00:53:36.780 Now, I don't know.

00:53:37.960 You know.

00:53:38.780 Eight to one, you put two million, you make 16 million.

00:53:40.980 Whatever you can make.

00:53:41.700 Yeah.

00:53:41.940 Whatever you can put down.

00:53:42.820 And in China, you can put down, you know, a ton of money.

00:53:47.600 You know, at that point.

00:53:48.900 What do you mean China, you can put down a ton of money?

00:53:50.140 Well, at one point, China wanted to, was, you know, Manny was Aram's fighter at the time

00:53:55.700 and Aram was looking to do big business in China and wound up doing some promoting there.

00:54:00.380 And my guess, again, it's just, you know, kind of experienced speculation.

00:54:05.280 That's all it is.

00:54:06.300 That's where the money came from.

00:54:07.560 And I think everybody made a ton of money.

00:54:09.720 And to me, that's a fixed fight.

00:54:12.960 To you, that's a fixed fight.

00:54:14.260 Sure.

00:54:14.380 That to me is also a fixed fight.

00:54:15.880 So, somebody behind closed doors bought two of the judges.

00:54:19.000 Yeah.

00:54:19.580 That's what you're thinking.

00:54:20.540 Did it in a way that didn't harm?

00:54:22.580 Do you have any insider clue, insider feedback that gives you even more validation that this happened or no?

00:54:28.000 On this fight, I'm not even sure if I remember what happened.

00:54:30.740 But I'll tell you there's a kind of rule of thumb that you can follow.

00:54:34.460 If a fight's going to be fixed through the judges, you often see the kind of standard names who show up all the time.

00:54:44.160 And then a ringer comes in from out of town who no one's ever heard of.

00:54:47.640 Don King used to do this all the time.

00:54:49.340 He said, who is this person?

00:54:52.460 And that's a bot judge.

00:54:55.940 That happened in one of Lennox Lewis' fights against Evander Holyfield where, I forget the woman's name, but, you know, this completely improbable score.

00:55:07.460 And she showed up for the one fight and no one had heard of her before and no one has heard of her since.

00:55:14.920 And, you know.

00:55:16.400 So, let me ask you this other question.

00:55:18.240 So, let's just say if I'm Vegas, I'm the other side, right?

00:55:23.000 Well, if you're Vegas, what you're trying, well, yeah, I mean.

00:55:25.880 What I'm saying is, but if I'm Vegas on the other side, the eight to one is to me as well as much as it is eight to one on the street money, right?

00:55:31.940 Okay.

00:55:32.540 Because I'm dictating the numbers.

00:55:34.740 So, if I'm Vegas, am I not hiring the highly intellectual investigators like you and I'm getting somebody like you?

00:55:42.000 You're like an IT guy.

00:55:43.060 You're not a fighter.

00:55:44.320 You're brains.

00:55:45.180 You're a guy that's sitting there.

00:55:46.300 You can read all that.

00:55:46.880 I would give a guy like you a quarter million dollars saying, hey, can you read the bullshit and to see if anything's going on?

00:55:52.240 And I got 20 of you guys on a payroll.

00:55:54.260 But nothing's going on in a fight like that.

00:55:56.580 The odds are exactly what they should be.

00:55:59.480 Think about it.

00:56:00.100 The odds.

00:56:00.600 Yeah, but, okay.

00:56:01.640 So, for example, give me an idea in the insurance industry, okay?

00:56:04.620 I've been in the insurance industry now 20 years, right?

00:56:06.340 I've dealt with AIG, Trans-American.

00:56:08.220 You name them, I've dealt with them, right?

00:56:09.580 Okay.

00:56:10.220 So, one of my client dies, okay?

00:56:13.600 Got it.

00:56:14.200 I got a quarter million dollar insurance policy on him.

00:56:16.040 Getting ready to deliver the quarter million dollar insurance policy, okay?

00:56:19.700 The investigators come and they do their audit if it's within two years.

00:56:22.780 In contestability clause phase that they have, they'll go through it, right?

00:56:25.660 And they'll go back and they say, wait a minute, this guy tested the non-smoker, but the last 17 physicals that we looked at and any kind of thing he's tested for, everybody said he's a smoker.

00:56:35.720 Why did he come out in a non-smoker?

00:56:37.400 They'll go deeper and they'll say, oh, his brother peed for him instead of him peeing for him.

00:56:40.540 We're not giving a quarter million dollars because they spent, they have the brains, guys they hired to go do.

00:56:45.880 The investigation, that's what happens on an insurance case, right?

00:56:48.340 Sure.

00:56:48.700 All the time.

00:56:49.480 Why isn't Vegas hiring a full-on team of 40, you know, forensics guys that can go out there and audit to see how dirty it was?

00:56:58.720 And on the inside, let's figure this, because if you don't, this person can never have a job here ever again.

00:57:04.140 You will never work with us ever again.

00:57:06.120 You think this is fun.

00:57:07.300 You think you will never be a referee ever again.

00:57:09.440 You will never be a judge here ever again, because that can control that, right?

00:57:12.480 Why wouldn't Vegas hire a team of forensics to catch this?

00:57:15.400 Good question.

00:57:16.560 For one thing, judging is subjective.

00:57:25.340 Now, it's true, everyone's going to look at it and say something's wrong in this.

00:57:28.000 But the other thing is you're talking about one fight where they get hit, they get hurt.

00:57:35.560 But you're doing business with them all the time.

00:57:38.500 You know, there's, you know, every once in a while you're going to take one on the chin.

00:57:44.780 And you do that.

00:57:46.280 That's your fourth order.

00:57:47.180 I'll give you another example.

00:57:48.820 Okay.

00:57:48.960 I was in the room.

00:57:54.140 I brought Vin Vecchione.

00:57:55.500 I paid for him.

00:57:56.660 I flew to New York with him to talk to Al Braverman when he fought Mike Tyson.

00:58:03.480 Okay.

00:58:04.080 So, at that point, this is the biggest money event in sports history.

00:58:08.500 It's not anymore, but it was at the time.

00:58:11.400 So, we'll go there.

00:58:13.380 Tyson was supposed to fight somebody else.

00:58:15.040 He was supposed to fight.

00:58:16.400 He was supposed to win the title on his first fight back.

00:58:18.960 He was supposed to fight Oliver McCaul.

00:58:20.720 But Oliver McCaul was considered too much of a loose cannon.

00:58:24.620 And he would have knocked Mike Tyson.

00:58:26.920 Mike, we can talk about this in your show, by the way.

00:58:30.300 You know, so they come up with this kid, Peter McNeely, who's got a totally fabricated record.

00:58:36.720 Meaning what?

00:58:37.980 You know, he's fighting guys who can't fight.

00:58:39.760 He has a record, but it's not like anybody in real.

00:58:42.220 It's 38-1.

00:58:42.800 Okay.

00:58:43.240 And, you know, he's fighting guys who just can't fight even a little bit.

00:58:46.940 And in friendly environments, too.

00:58:49.600 So, but, so the fight gets made.

00:58:57.240 It's the biggest money fight in history.

00:58:59.620 Biggest sporting event in history at the time.

00:59:01.400 The day before the fight, I get a call from somebody I know.

00:59:06.800 I'm still, I'm in Puerto Rico again.

00:59:09.060 And he said, somebody just made a million dollar bet that the fight wouldn't go a full 90 seconds.

00:59:17.360 Somebody thought you might be interested in that.

00:59:20.000 Now, I couldn't do anything about it.

00:59:22.020 I was too far away.

00:59:22.900 I couldn't get a bet down.

00:59:25.360 At the 89-second mark, my friend Vin Vecchione steps into the ring, forcing a stop to the fight.

00:59:34.740 Now, somebody made that 90-second bet, and I know who did.

00:59:38.560 And, you know, it takes nerves of steel to wait till, you know, because you have to find some plausible reason to do it somehow.

00:59:47.640 And, you know, you have to hope.

00:59:49.200 Now, this is not a fixed fight in the sense that neither fighter was told to do anything.

00:59:53.920 It's based on what Vin knew about his fighter's skill level, that he was terribly overmatched.

00:59:59.880 The point is, Vegas understands that something went wrong.

01:00:07.720 Yeah, because the questions they asked post-fight were like, he was selling himself why he got knocked out at 89 seconds.

01:00:13.540 If you notice closely, my knee's buckled.

01:00:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:00:16.700 You know what I'm talking about.

01:00:18.100 Yeah.

01:00:18.960 But here's the thing.

01:00:20.340 And this is.

01:00:21.280 But you were saying he didn't know because Vegas thought he knew.

01:00:24.060 That the fighter knew?

01:00:25.200 The fighter did not know.

01:00:26.040 Peter had no clue.

01:00:26.820 No clue.

01:00:27.540 No, he was told.

01:00:28.360 Because, again, if he had gone, if a miracle had occurred and he'd won, that would have been even bigger.

01:00:37.260 Because, again, you've got a white heavyweight who's knocked out Mike Tyson in his first fight back.

01:00:42.960 So you do it again.

01:00:45.580 So there's no lose there.

01:00:47.500 It doesn't matter.

01:00:48.580 You know, I mean, obviously, the thought is.

01:00:51.420 It matters to the one better than $1 million, whatever the amount is, with the 90 seconds, 89 seconds.

01:00:55.940 It matters to the right.

01:00:56.380 Yeah.

01:00:56.500 So, but here's the thing.

01:00:58.500 Okay, so.

01:00:59.200 How feared of a person was that $1 million or better?

01:01:02.720 Oh, my guess is not feared at all.

01:01:05.240 Okay.

01:01:05.480 I think what happened is Vin found one person or a couple of people and cut them in for a big piece.

01:01:13.000 Makes sense.

01:01:13.480 Yeah.

01:01:13.780 Yeah.

01:01:13.980 I mean, it wasn't a sports book bet.

01:01:16.800 Got it.

01:01:17.160 It was a private bet.

01:01:18.040 Okay.

01:01:18.240 Anyway, please.

01:01:19.340 So you have to assume that people who are associated with boxing in Vegas look at this and they see something's not right.

01:01:27.800 You don't step into the ring to stop a kid.

01:01:30.700 He's going to get knocked out, maybe.

01:01:31.960 But this is the biggest event in history and what can accrue from it is enormous.

01:01:38.240 So you give him a chance.

01:01:40.140 If he gets knocked out, he gets knocked out.

01:01:41.660 But, you know, nobody knows what Tyson is at this point either.

01:01:46.520 You know, he's been in jail for years.

01:01:48.040 He's put on tons of weight and he took it off, you know, in ways that have nothing to do with getting in shape.

01:01:53.000 You know, so he looks great, but he's not in fighting shape.

01:01:59.760 At first, they think about holding up the purse.

01:02:02.460 But what happens if you hold up the purse?

01:02:05.960 The biggest money fighter, a guy who brought in about a billion dollars in revenue for the city for that fight.

01:02:15.180 If he's under, you know, under suspicion, it means the whole game is under suspicion.

01:02:20.660 Now, do you fuck up the whole game for this one thing that got you the result you wanted anyway?

01:02:27.180 You don't.

01:02:28.340 So, you know.

01:02:31.420 So that's how something like that is.

01:02:33.120 Are there any fighters where you went up to him, you're like, you said you fixed how many fights?

01:02:38.100 Hundreds of fights?

01:02:38.640 Hundreds of fights.

01:02:39.100 Hundreds of fights, yeah.

01:02:40.620 And were any one of them you fixed, like title fights?

01:02:43.320 Were there any big, big fights or no?

01:02:44.980 I fixed championship fighters' fights many times.

01:02:53.760 I didn't fix championship fights.

01:02:54.800 Big names people would know about?

01:02:56.180 Yeah.

01:02:56.580 Big names people would know about?

01:02:58.180 Oh, yeah.

01:02:58.640 From 80s, 90s?

01:03:00.540 From 90s to 2000s, early 2000s.

01:03:04.660 Heavyweight, lightweight.

01:03:06.040 All over.

01:03:06.560 But I'm trying to think of how many former heavyweight champions.

01:03:10.940 Do you have a fight you fixed, hypothetically?

01:03:14.660 Do you have a fight you fixed that you were part of that if the world knew about it, that

01:03:18.080 would be shell-shocked?

01:03:21.020 Yes.

01:03:22.520 Yeah.

01:03:23.300 A few of them.

01:03:24.800 I can't, they're around, and you know, when people do you favors.

01:03:31.480 Can we do like one question?

01:03:33.780 Just one question.

01:03:34.520 You don't have to answer.

01:03:35.180 I can try.

01:03:35.600 I'm going to ask a question.

01:03:36.600 I'll do my best.

01:03:37.320 Because let our imagination have some fun.

01:03:39.440 I will do my best.

01:03:39.960 See if we can answer this.

01:03:42.900 The one that we would be shell-shocked, was the fighter Latino, black, or white?

01:03:49.580 The one that you would be shell-shocked, both fighters were black.

01:03:54.800 I mean, if you would have said Filipino, we figured it out.

01:03:57.760 But that's definitely not going to be the case.

01:03:59.020 No, I'll give you, I'll tell you what, I'm going to give you one more hint.

01:04:03.900 But this is where it stops.

01:04:05.040 Riddle.

01:04:05.500 Give us a riddle.

01:04:06.260 Both, both, both fighters are black.

01:04:08.280 And both fighters at one time had been the heavyweight champion of the world.

01:04:12.400 And you haven't mentioned their names today?

01:04:14.360 No.

01:04:15.160 No, they're both around.

01:04:16.180 They're both friends of mine.

01:04:17.060 We've given a lot of clues.

01:04:18.180 If I'm a betting man, a person should be able to figure this out.

01:04:21.160 And these two were in the 90s.

01:04:22.960 These were in the 90s.

01:04:24.160 At this point of the game, I mean, people who are watching it, they're probably guessing

01:04:27.740 down there, putting their names there.

01:04:28.960 But again, you're not going to say who it is.

01:04:30.420 So this, and this was a, this was a you thing.

01:04:33.940 This was a mop thing.

01:04:35.180 This was a collaboration.

01:04:36.600 This was the fix.

01:04:37.840 Were other big names involved in the fix or?

01:04:40.540 Oh, no, this is, this is something that the fighters themselves fixed.

01:04:44.260 And they knew about it.

01:04:45.380 Yeah.

01:04:46.080 My guy called me beforehand.

01:04:48.140 And neither one of them talks about it till today.

01:04:50.040 No one knows about it.

01:04:50.900 It's never been written about.

01:04:51.800 Never been talked about.

01:04:52.520 Never, never, never.

01:04:53.860 How many people know that that fight was fixed?

01:04:56.240 If you were to say there is this many people that were on the inside, two of them are no

01:05:00.200 longer with us.

01:05:01.300 How many are living that were involved in that fix that would know it?

01:05:04.540 Five names, three names, maybe five, maybe five, maybe five, including the fighters.

01:05:10.480 Five, you guys have kept it to yourselves all these years.

01:05:14.660 Let me, you know what, let me change that.

01:05:16.080 Yeah, yeah.

01:05:16.960 No, five names.

01:05:18.540 If you guys are good at keeping secrets like that nowadays, the CIA should hire you.

01:05:22.800 You shouldn't hire me.

01:05:23.760 The CIA should come work.

01:05:24.920 We want you on our team.

01:05:26.920 I want you, Charles.

01:05:28.700 Yes, bro.

01:05:29.120 On the CIA.

01:05:29.640 Dang, that's pretty intense.

01:05:31.100 And you're saying it still happens today.

01:05:32.540 Now, let me ask you a different question.

01:05:33.540 So, my opinion, my opinion where I'm at.

01:05:36.900 Okay, so you got boxing.

01:05:38.500 Okay.

01:05:40.080 Before I get to my one question, one basic question I'll ask.

01:05:42.600 Is there anything, any sport or any game that's more fixed than boxing, in your opinion?

01:05:47.460 Or you may not know.

01:05:48.420 I don't follow sports.

01:05:49.580 Okay, so you don't know horse racing.

01:05:51.040 I'm told by people in horse racing that horse racing is almost entirely fixed.

01:05:55.180 Entirely fixed?

01:05:55.700 Almost entirely fixed.

01:05:56.640 Okay, so perfect.

01:05:57.860 Let's put, so all those paintings of horses have on the wall, I should take them down.

01:06:00.620 All that money I spent at these options, take these things down, man.

01:06:06.620 Take them down, take them down.

01:06:07.140 It's fake.

01:06:08.020 It's probably another horse.

01:06:09.220 Let's put the horse's name down that was 99 to 1.

01:06:11.720 He probably should have won the whole thing.

01:06:13.300 But, okay, boxing, UFC.

01:06:17.720 UFC comes in, okay?

01:06:19.580 Yeah.

01:06:20.240 It's controlled by a personality.

01:06:22.480 Boxing doesn't have that.

01:06:24.560 UFC is controlled by a boss.

01:06:27.120 Right.

01:06:27.640 Dana White is a boss.

01:06:28.620 Right.

01:06:28.740 He's not a, you know, Adam Silver personality.

01:06:35.480 He's a, David Stone could have been a boss.

01:06:38.240 David Stone was a boss.

01:06:39.080 I don't know if you all know David Stone basketball.

01:06:40.740 I don't follow sports, but I know who he is.

01:06:41.280 But I'm talking commissioners, right?

01:06:42.560 Different sports.

01:06:43.160 Yeah.

01:06:43.300 Okay.

01:06:43.820 Yeah.

01:06:44.820 You don't hear a lot of this stuff with UFC.

01:06:47.280 Matter of fact, there'll be a UFC fight where the judges favor somebody else.

01:06:52.120 Dana White goes and fires them.

01:06:53.720 Yeah.

01:06:54.740 And he just flat out goes and says, you're flipping fired.

01:06:56.920 Make the hell out of here.

01:06:57.700 Do you ever do something like this again?

01:06:59.340 So to him, it seems like he is so maniacal about making sure fixing doesn't happen in

01:07:04.420 his sports.

01:07:05.440 Do you think fixing also happens in the UFC world?

01:07:07.940 Well, again, I don't, I don't follow, so I don't know.

01:07:09.860 But my guess is he's, you know, Dana White seems to have the thing so monopolized and is

01:07:15.440 making so much money at it.

01:07:16.800 And part of the, it seems to me, part of the pitch for that is that we don't play games.

01:07:22.800 Anybody can lose at any time.

01:07:24.420 And, you know, even, even the guys who are building up, they can lose.

01:07:28.060 There's no great shame in losing.

01:07:29.940 If that's true, there are probably good reasons for him not to fix fights.

01:07:36.540 But I, but I don't know.

01:07:40.140 That's an uninformed opinion.

01:07:41.640 Like, you know, like, for example, give me an idea.

01:07:43.760 If I'm a fixer, okay, if I'm a fixer, let's just say, my name is Dana White and I'm trying

01:07:50.080 to set up for a big fight.

01:07:51.880 Conor McGregor is fighting Poitier, right?

01:07:54.360 Conor's supposed to win.

01:07:55.680 Right.

01:07:55.980 Conor loses.

01:07:56.860 Right.

01:07:56.960 Poitier knocks him out.

01:07:57.940 It's like, dude, people don't want to watch Poitier fight, you know, Khabib.

01:08:03.060 They want to see Conor Khabib, right?

01:08:05.140 Yep.

01:08:05.540 Everybody in the world was pissed off because that's the big fight.

01:08:08.320 So if it is about fixing, you go and tell Poitier to drop, you know, in second round

01:08:13.060 because, but it didn't happen.

01:08:14.860 Right.

01:08:14.980 So that's the part where the game keeps the integrity.

01:08:18.020 The fight keeps the integrity.

01:08:21.120 Was there any, any time where some big boxers, and, you know, we can wrap up on, on a couple

01:08:26.060 of these and I'll give you the final thoughts.

01:08:27.300 Anything else you want to share with us?

01:08:29.560 Was there ever a fighter where you're like, you know, we tried to get this guy to fix.

01:08:33.720 It was a big name.

01:08:34.380 He just wouldn't do it.

01:08:35.060 He has so much pride.

01:08:35.920 He wouldn't even do it.

01:08:36.600 Whether it was at the end of his career or not, he just wouldn't do it.

01:08:38.800 Was there any, anybody like that?

01:08:41.660 Again, if there were, I wouldn't tell you.

01:08:44.700 But I'm just curious if you know, like, I'm not asking for a name.

01:08:47.700 Was there any fighter where you're like, this guy was a cover on every ring magazine,

01:08:51.560 every word, sports list.

01:08:52.620 We knew him, but he wouldn't, no matter how much you paid him, he wouldn't do it.

01:08:55.860 There is one guy who was, in fights that were fixed that he didn't know were fixed,

01:09:03.740 who we were interested in getting.

01:09:06.080 I was interested in, other people were interested in getting, and it was no dice.

01:09:10.080 I can say again, he's a, was a very, very high profile heavyweight champion.

01:09:17.420 Mickey Ward?

01:09:18.320 Mickey Ward.

01:09:20.320 No, Mickey Ward, as far as I know, Mickey Ward's only been in real fights, as far as I know.

01:09:24.920 No, I see Mickey, like, you know, his fight with Gotti.

01:09:28.100 Yeah.

01:09:28.740 Three of them.

01:09:29.920 One of the greatest fights of all time.

01:09:31.240 I mean, you can just sit there and watch that one.

01:09:33.480 Gotti's down.

01:09:34.420 Oh my God.

01:09:34.920 Oh my gosh, guys.

01:09:36.260 There's another round.

01:09:37.140 There's another round.

01:09:39.180 What the, like, the fans won that day.

01:09:42.680 I mean, the video today's got like 100 million views.

01:09:44.980 You can watch it on repeat over and over and over again.

01:09:46.840 But, yeah.

01:09:47.460 See, it's fights like that.

01:09:49.980 You know how they say in golf, you know, here's how golf works.

01:09:52.920 You hit one good bow, you're coming back.

01:09:55.520 You hit one good bow, you're going to come back and try this again, right?

01:09:59.620 And you're like, today sucked.

01:10:00.840 And you're like, oh, did you see that drive?

01:10:02.440 Let's do it again next week, right?

01:10:03.980 Right.

01:10:04.580 Boxing's like, you get that one fight.

01:10:06.840 We haven't had it for a while.

01:10:08.000 I mean, I haven't seen a good boxing fight for a while.

01:10:10.820 But you look at the Mickey fight, the Gotti fight.

01:10:13.540 Mickey Ward made a million dollars in the, I think it was in the second fight and certainly

01:10:17.900 in the third fight.

01:10:18.620 And here's a guy who works in construction.

01:10:21.460 His top payday is about 40,000 bucks up until then.

01:10:25.980 HBO says, we'll give you a million dollars.

01:10:27.640 And of course, it was the smartest million dollars you could find, right?

01:10:30.280 I mean, you know you're going to get something for your money.

01:10:33.180 And they did a movie about him.

01:10:34.160 It's actually a very good story.

01:10:35.140 I don't know if you watch it.

01:10:35.900 Well, I know Mickey.

01:10:37.100 I know his brother.

01:10:37.720 Who's the biggest fighter?

01:10:38.500 Who's the best fighter you've ever seen?

01:10:39.660 Yourself?

01:10:40.040 You're a fight fan?

01:10:41.320 Favorite fighter of all time that you didn't fix and screw up?

01:10:44.180 Like, favorite fighter of all time?

01:10:44.800 When I was a boy, I actually saw Sugar Ray Robinson fight live.

01:10:49.240 So, Sugar Ray Robinson.

01:10:51.420 Any specific one?

01:10:52.540 Or just he was your favorite fighter to watch, period?

01:10:55.520 He was my favorite fighter.

01:10:56.460 He's the best fighter I've ever seen.

01:10:57.860 Now, when I saw him, he was 41 years old.

01:11:00.340 He was, you know, way past his prime.

01:11:01.840 And he, in a fight where the judges got bought, interestingly enough, in Boston by Sam Silverman,

01:11:07.380 he lost his title to a guy named Paul Pender, who's a Boston fighter.

01:11:11.540 The best fighter I've ever seen.

01:11:12.520 Now, so I saw, I actually saw Robinson live.

01:11:15.960 And he's the best fighter.

01:11:17.300 But the Robinson I saw was a 41-year-old Robinson.

01:11:20.480 So, the best fighter I ever saw in his prime, by far, was Roberto Duran, who I saw fight live when he was 20.

01:11:29.020 At 20.

01:11:32.480 Hands of stone.

01:11:33.440 Monster.

01:11:34.480 You know, he fought in Madison Square Garden.

01:11:36.540 I went to the fight.

01:11:37.640 He fought a guy named Benny Huertas, who was not a good fighter, but a tough guy.

01:11:42.820 And he knocked him out in the first round.

01:11:44.440 And everybody in Madison Square Garden said, okay, we're seeing something important.

01:11:51.620 We're seeing somebody memorable.

01:11:54.100 And it turns out he was, you know, better than anyone I've ever seen.

01:11:59.100 I mean, Tyson swears by him.

01:12:02.400 Tyson, Tyson's like a big Duran fan.

01:12:04.500 You know, it's a, I went to Panama.

01:12:06.440 And when I went to Panama, he had a restaurant there.

01:12:08.880 He would always dance with his wife at the restaurant.

01:12:12.140 And you just see a regular guy.

01:12:13.480 Well, people don't realize.

01:12:14.360 Just a regular guy.

01:12:14.760 25 years prior to that, he would whoop your ass.

01:12:18.220 Do it right now.

01:12:18.880 He probably would do it right now.

01:12:20.940 He would do it right now.

01:12:21.840 Yeah, he would do it right now.

01:12:24.140 Doesn't look like a boxer, though.

01:12:26.060 You see, he doesn't look like a boxer.

01:12:27.220 But it's any, any, give you the last chance here.

01:12:31.680 Your book.

01:12:32.520 Low life.

01:12:33.320 Low life.

01:12:34.520 Do I have to, do I have to trade a secret for selling the book?

01:12:37.420 Any last untold stories you have for us to share.

01:12:42.140 Any crazy last untold stories you have for us.

01:12:44.760 Just think about it like, you got a bunch of grandkids.

01:12:47.220 Let's just say they're watching right now.

01:12:48.400 They're sitting there saying, Grandpa, Papa, Daddy.

01:12:51.620 You don't, you don't think that.

01:12:52.520 Give me one last thing.

01:12:53.440 You don't think that the Tyson McNeely thing is.

01:12:55.700 Okay, I'll give you.

01:12:56.520 Give me one more.

01:12:57.560 I'm greedy.

01:12:58.140 I'll give you one.

01:12:59.400 One more.

01:12:59.560 A fight that didn't happen.

01:13:01.140 But it's worth telling.

01:13:02.260 Okay.

01:13:03.540 Tyson is in prison.

01:13:05.800 Okay, so.

01:13:06.980 And Tyson can't fight.

01:13:08.680 I know, everyone knows Tyson can't fight.

01:13:10.860 He was, he, I'll give you a little backstory, too.

01:13:14.120 He's put in prison deliberately.

01:13:15.380 Because he's dissipating.

01:13:18.540 Remember, he's the biggest money fighter in the world.

01:13:21.460 But he's falling apart.

01:13:23.000 What year is this?

01:13:23.980 This is whenever, just after he lost to, to Douglas.

01:13:28.520 So this is like, starts in the late 80s.

01:13:30.880 So he gets convicted on a rape charge.

01:13:34.040 King does everything he can.

01:13:36.000 To keep him out.

01:13:37.600 Just the opposite.

01:13:39.800 Just the opposite.

01:13:41.360 He needs to put him on ice.

01:13:44.180 He's falling apart.

01:13:46.240 So he's going to implode.

01:13:48.020 What's the best thing you can do?

01:13:50.300 Take him out of circulation.

01:13:52.040 And he becomes the hottest property in the world.

01:13:55.220 Right?

01:13:55.620 All, and it doesn't matter who he fights when he gets out.

01:13:58.840 But he can't fight anymore.

01:14:00.800 That's important to know.

01:14:02.520 So I've got a guy named Mitch Blood Green.

01:14:05.420 Who fought Tyson once on the street and once in the ring.

01:14:09.960 I say to Al Braverman.

01:14:11.380 And they hate each other.

01:14:13.400 I say to Al Braverman.

01:14:16.140 How about Mitch Green?

01:14:17.680 He goes, you know, he's crazy.

01:14:20.360 I said, I got something for you.

01:14:23.260 Can you get him into the facility where Tyson is being kept?

01:14:28.680 He said, yeah, I can get him in.

01:14:30.200 I said, just get him in.

01:14:31.700 Just get him in.

01:14:32.920 He says, why?

01:14:33.440 What are you going to do?

01:14:34.440 People are going to want to know what Mitch Green has to say to Mike Tyson.

01:14:38.180 Since they're mortal enemies.

01:14:40.360 He goes, I can get him in.

01:14:41.540 He said, what's he going to say to Mike Tyson?

01:14:42.960 I said, he's not going to say anything to Mike Tyson.

01:14:45.320 What's he going to do?

01:14:47.100 He's going to nail Mike Tyson.

01:14:49.060 He's going to hit him with the best shot he can think of.

01:14:52.540 And when Tyson gets out, who's the fight that everyone's going to want to see?

01:14:56.560 And you've got a safe opponent.

01:15:00.220 And I've just made a million dollars.

01:15:05.660 So, why didn't it happen?

01:15:08.900 Because Mitch Green says to me, how much are you making?

01:15:13.620 I said, I don't know.

01:15:15.380 You're making a million dollars.

01:15:18.540 He going to get more than me?

01:15:19.820 You know, I'm trying to say, I don't know.

01:15:24.980 I said, yeah.

01:15:26.040 So, knock him out.

01:15:27.520 And then you'll make more than he does.

01:15:28.980 And he says, I ain't doing nothing to promote that guy.

01:15:33.880 And I couldn't get him to do it.

01:15:36.080 Why didn't he want to promote that guy?

01:15:37.680 He hates him.

01:15:39.620 Just because of that?

01:15:40.640 Just because of that.

01:15:41.420 All the money in the world, he wouldn't do it.

01:15:42.440 A million dollars, we're both broke.

01:15:46.360 A million dollars.

01:15:47.460 And I said, Tyson can't fight anymore.

01:15:49.980 Just get through the first few rounds.

01:15:51.680 And he's, I can see it.

01:15:53.600 You know, he's going to implode.

01:15:54.920 And then you'll be the heavyweight champ.

01:15:56.400 And Mike actually has no business being the heavyweight champ.

01:15:59.080 But, you know, things are what they are.

01:16:01.600 And Tyson, I can see, doesn't want to fight.

01:16:04.480 So, that's kind of a boxing story.

01:16:08.160 That's a boxing story, for sure.

01:16:10.160 That's a crazy boxing story.

01:16:11.360 Folks, if you're watching this, Low Life, A Memoir of Jazz, Fight Fixing, and the Mob.

01:16:20.220 By our friend here, Charles.

01:16:21.660 Thank you so much for coming on.

01:16:22.920 I really enjoyed it.

01:16:23.820 Thank you.

01:16:24.120 Thanks so much.

01:16:24.740 Really enjoyed it.

01:16:25.280 We're going to put the link below to order the book.

Valuetainment - June 11, 2021

Mafias Most Wanted Fight Fixer - Charles Farrell

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