Valuetainment - March 19, 2026


“We Were The Underdogs” - Joey Merlino REVEALS How He Built Respect In South Philly


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

192.64885

Word count

1,209

Sentence count

97

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Joey Mazzone grew up in a tough neighborhood in South Philly in the late 80s and early 90s. He was a tough kid growing up in the streets of South Philly, but he was also a loving kid with a great sense of humor and a drive to give back to the community.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.080 Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice.
00:00:04.820 I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community.
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00:01:00.000 At what point did kids know or you know that there was something different about your toughness?
00:01:05.780 Or did you even think that?
00:01:07.140 No, I didn't think of it.
00:01:08.040 It's just the way we were.
00:01:09.000 It's the way we were brought up.
00:01:09.700 People know you were different, though, Joey.
00:01:11.220 I mean, you know, for a guy that, you know, don't take this the wrong way.
00:01:16.660 I know, like, Michael was a big guy, right?
00:01:21.060 Who?
00:01:21.260 Is it Chagliani?
00:01:22.620 Oh, Michael Chang, yeah.
00:01:24.200 Michael Chang, yeah.
00:01:24.820 He was a big guy.
00:01:25.700 He was not a small guy.
00:01:26.620 No, Michael was big.
00:01:27.480 Michael feared.
00:01:28.460 He was tough with his hands.
00:01:30.000 He was tough with his hands, but he was a family guy.
00:01:32.240 He was respected and loved and feared,
00:01:33.960 which is a very weird combination to have loved, respected, and feared.
00:01:37.780 It's not common to have someone like that.
00:01:41.260 And when they took out Michael, this was apparently your best friend.
00:01:46.140 This was my guy, their friend.
00:01:47.960 Best friend.
00:01:48.520 When they took him out, Michael was big and intimidating,
00:01:55.880 but based on what people tell me.
00:01:57.080 When I see you, you know, you're a nice guy.
00:02:00.880 I'm talking to you right now, even off camera,
00:02:02.600 and every time I've seen you, we have a good conversation together.
00:02:05.280 But there is an element of fear towards a guy like you.
00:02:10.960 Why did they fear you, respect you, and love you?
00:02:13.440 Why did the people in South Philly have that feeling towards you?
00:02:17.200 The average person can say fair with Michael, but why towards you?
00:02:20.860 We're nice to everybody. We help everybody.
00:02:24.760 People in Philly love me.
00:02:26.420 We help everybody.
00:02:27.700 We go in a restaurant, we tip everybody.
00:02:30.660 We take care of people.
00:02:31.940 We give turkeys out.
00:02:32.860 I've been giving turkeys out since the 80s.
00:02:35.160 You know, it's all you're doing it.
00:02:36.060 Now you want to be on the internet.
00:02:37.120 No, I've been doing it before.
00:02:38.020 There was no internet.
00:02:38.760 There was no cell phones back then.
00:02:40.640 The beepers weren't even out yet.
00:02:42.480 Why'd you do that?
00:02:43.620 We always did.
00:02:44.360 My father did it.
00:02:45.660 We're the underdogs to help people.
00:02:48.960 So you saw your father do it and you did it as well?
00:02:50.660 Yeah.
00:02:51.440 I mean, it's a good feeling to help people.
00:02:53.640 A lot of people don't have nothing.
00:02:55.940 I mean, electric bills we paid ladies getting their electric shut off in the winter. 1.00
00:03:00.680 Like, we did it for a year.
00:03:02.740 We still do it.
00:03:04.340 Yeah.
00:03:05.000 Yeah.
00:03:05.820 There's a – I want to get his first name right.
00:03:08.260 I know his last name.
00:03:09.120 Is it Sonny Mazzone?
00:03:10.320 Is it Sonny or is it –
00:03:14.720 Stevie?
00:03:15.280 Stevie Mazzone.
00:03:16.020 Yeah.
00:03:16.140 Stevie Mazzone.
00:03:18.900 He had this shop by this arcade store,
00:03:22.960 and he would do he would do embroidery for jackets yeah okay i don't know if you remember
00:03:28.060 this or not i don't remember this is 88 87 88 89 and one day one of my friends who is from 2j2
00:03:34.520 which is 22nd and jackson and he goes up to stevie and says hey i want to get this jacket
00:03:40.960 with the embroidery uh you know philly for my girlfriend it's okay great so they do it and
00:03:45.900 he's about to pay him whatever the embroider is going to be stevie says what did you get for your
00:03:50.480 mother and this fellow says uh yeah i got her nothing i don't have a lot of money this year
00:03:55.820 i can't do anything about that but next year i'm going to get her something he says no i don't want
00:03:59.820 you to do that i want you to not pay for this embroidery take the jacket but go get your mother 0.95
00:04:04.340 a gift yeah that's how these are the types of stories that comes back to me steve is a classy
00:04:09.040 guy that's we all we're all like that that's what we do i mean we help everybody in the neighborhood
00:04:13.960 we did it our whole life everybody likes us they respect us they like us how'd you guys make money
00:04:19.220 i worked we worked i worked my whole life what'd you do i was a jockey gambler i did it all
00:04:27.320 jockey gambler um as a jockey were you making real money like was there real money in the
00:04:35.940 jockey bit yeah i made money when i was a kid though i was 18. 41 races how did you get into
00:04:41.880 that business i started out i'll tell you i got into it salve testa took me they used to have 0.93
00:04:47.840 horses in jersey there ain't no horses in south philly you fucking see a horse and we went down 0.97
00:04:53.500 the cabana downs and we used to go riding yeah and he owned he had a horse and i i used to you 0.98
00:04:59.080 know he said well you ride good and then we used to rent them you go down like fucking five dollars 0.98
00:05:02.660 for two hours and we would go you know all our friends and philip narducci had a horse and we
00:05:07.700 used to go down and ride and then i i love it and i was little and then i i got a job down at
00:05:14.020 Atlantic City racetrack is a hot walker.
00:05:16.320 And, you know, groom, exercise boy, and jockey.
00:05:19.120 That's how it started.
00:05:20.520 Passion?
00:05:21.040 Loved it like till today?
00:05:22.140 Love it.
00:05:22.740 I've seen you at the racetrack.
00:05:23.820 Yeah, I could get, yeah, I've seen you.
00:05:25.280 Yeah.
00:05:25.720 What was it?
00:05:27.080 It's the best one in Florida.
00:05:28.500 It's the Florida Derby.
00:05:30.380 Florida Derby.
00:05:31.000 Oh, my God.
00:05:31.280 I think it's coming up in two weeks.
00:05:32.380 Is it really?
00:05:32.820 End of March.
00:05:33.160 Oh, can you text Mateo?
00:05:35.000 Tell him I got to go to that route.
00:05:36.840 Let me tell you, it is such a spectacle.
00:05:39.360 We go every year?
00:05:40.160 Every year.
00:05:40.540 You go to the Derby a lot or no?
00:05:43.140 No, I've never been to Kentucky Derby, but Florida Derby.
00:05:46.300 Okay.
00:05:46.880 The Derby, you know.
00:05:49.440 I want to go.
00:05:50.140 Yeah, I've been going every year for many years.
00:05:52.160 It's a great experience.
00:05:53.280 My name's Joey Merlino.
00:05:54.700 Any questions you have on my neck, you want to ask me.
00:05:58.100 I'm an expert in sports, gambling, restaurants.
00:06:02.000 We've got the best cheese steaks in Philly.
00:06:04.540 Anything you want to know about Philly, South Philly, Atlantic City,
00:06:08.920 reach out, and I got you.
00:06:10.700 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.
00:06:13.760 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.