That's all that matters, that he got there,
that he got to the place to act like a fighter,
to do what we want him to do, to be ready to persevere,
to go beyond the comfort level, to do another round.
He didn't want to, damn right he didn't want to,
but he knew we want him to,
and he knew in order to pass the test, he had to do it.
He goes, now it's gonna be your job to get him in the gym,
make him mentally stronger, make him face things,
and teach him how to slip punches,
and create holes, and fill those frickin' holes
with devastating punches, punches with bad intentions.
The following is a conversation with Teddy Atlas,
a legendary and at times controversial boxing trainer
and commentator.
When I was going to this conversation with Teddy,
I was ready to talk boxing,
styles, matches, techniques, tactics,
and his analysis of individual fighters
like Mike Tyson, Michael Moore, Klitschko, Usyk,
Povetkin, Lomachenko, Triple G, Canelo, Muhammad Ali,
Chiguray Leonard, Hagler, Duran, Floyd,
and on and on and on.
Like I said, I came ready to talk boxing,
but I stayed for something even bigger,
the Shakespearean human story of Teddy Atlas,
Cus D'Amato, and Mike Tyson.
It's a story about loyalty, betrayal, fear, and greatness.
It's a story where nobody is perfect and everybody is human.
To summarize, in the early 80s,
young trainer Teddy Atlas worked with his mentor Cus D'Amato
in training the young boxing protege,
now a boxing legend, Mike Tyson.
Mike was a troubled youth, arrested over 40 times,
and at age 15, he was sexually inappropriate
with Teddy's 11-year-old niece.
In response to this, Teddy put a .38 caliber handgun
to Tyson's ear and told him to never touch his family again
or he would kill him if he did.
For this, Cus D'Amato kicked Teddy out.
Why?
Well, that's complicated.
In part, I think to help minimize the chance of Mike Tyson,
who Cus legally adopted, would be taken away by the state.
And with him, the dream of developing
one of the greatest boxers of all time.
Of course, that summary doesn't capture
the full complexity of human nature
and human drama involved here.
For that, you have to listen to this conversation,
the things said and the things left unsaid,
the pain in Teddy's voice,
the contradictions of love and anger
that permeate his stories and his philosophy on life.
Like I said, I came to talk about boxing
and stayed to talk about life.
This conversation will stay with me for a long time.
The people close to you, the people you trust,
the people you love are everything.
And if they betray you and break your heart, forgive them.
Forgive yourself and try again.
Happy holidays, everyone.
I love you all.
This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors
in the description.
And now, dear friends, here's Teddy Atlas.
You wrote in the book that your father
had a big influence on your life.
What lessons have you learned about life from your father?
When you ask that question, you know,
I remember Cus D'Amato, when I was with him
up in Gadsden for all those years,
he used to say to me,
Teddy, you learned through osmosis.
I believe that's true to that, if I know what osmosis is.
And, and I, but it sounds good.
But I learned through osmosis with my father.
He wasn't a big talker.
He was, you know, he was a doer.
And I, when you're around someone who lives
a certain kind of life and does certain things,
it penetrates.
He was a doctor.
He was, I'm going to sound like an idiot right now
because I'm being a son.
But he was the greatest diagnostic doctor.
I mean, if I say I ever knew, what's that mean?
You know what I mean?
Are you a doctor?
You know, you know what I mean?
Like, what does that mean?
But other people have told me this.
Like just legendary stories.
He would do house calls and help people.
And like you said, a lot of people have spoken
about the impact he's had on their life.
He built two hospitals.
And he built two hospitals before the Verosado Bridge
in New York, connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island.
And he built it so people could get proper hospital care
that couldn't afford it, period.
And everybody looked at him as eccentric.
Yeah, nice.
Yeah, because he would literally sneak patients,
not sneak them in, he was Dr. Atlas.
He could do what he wanted to sort of accept,
but he would bring patients in without administering,
putting them through administration.
So there was no charge because they didn't have anything.
There were street people.
I remember being, my only way to be with my father
was to go on house calls or to go to the office.
There's no, you know, and so I went on house calls with him.
And he did house calls, by the way, till he was 80.
And $3, I mean, it was better than like McDonald's.
You know what I mean?
I mean, the deal.
$3 and you got medicine, you got everything.
And, but he used to, right around the holidays,
there was just certain things that I didn't understand,
but I understood later,
where we would just drive certain areas
and he just, all of a sudden, opened his door.
He would pick up these homes and, you know,
I'm 10 years old, you know, move over and move over,
you know, and.
It's just you, him and a homeless guy.
A couple.
Yeah, a couple.
Yeah, whatever he could fit in, three, four,
you know, whatever it was.
That's a big heart.
And then he took them to the hospital, dropped them off.
So, you know, I would ask questions
after it was all over with.
I'd say, Dad, they're sick.
He goes, well, not in a way,
whether you put them in the hospital.
So he said, yeah, and he tried to explain things to me.
You know, he would try,
he didn't talk much unless you asked him something.
Yeah.
And that kind of works.
And, you know, don't talk unless someone asks you something.
And he explained to me that, he said,
I said, well, why are you putting them in the hospital?
They're not, you know, and of course,
the sickness was, they were alcoholics.
But why you put them, it wasn't an alcohol rehab, you know.
So why you put them,
and it wasn't for the purpose to dry out.
He wasn't trying to cure them.
Yeah.
Let's put that first before we anoint him for sainthood,
you know, like by Teddy Atlas.
So I was like, we finally get to the point.
Why you put them in there?
Yeah.
Oh, because it's the holidays.
All right.
Why you put them in there?
Well, the holidays, you know,
are good for certain people and bad for others.
And it was always before the holidays.
It was before Christmas or whatever.
And New Year's, whatever.
And so I said, why?
And he said, because they remind people,
certain people of what they don't have.
Yeah.
That other people enjoy the holidays
because of what they have.
Family, you know, whatever.
And it reminds them their mind is that.
That's pretty profound.
Yeah.
And then, I don't remember,
because he didn't use the word suicide, but I got it.
Like he basically, I forget how he said it,
but like, I just got it.
I don't know how I got, I don't know.
But I just got it like, so they don't hurt themselves.
Yeah.
In every way.
I don't think he ever articulated that.
I never verbalized that, but yeah,
they don't hurt themselves.
So, and well, how does that work?
Well, just basically, they're going to be around people.
They're not going to be alone.
They're going to be around people.
They're going to get fed.
They're going to be warm, right?
And it's going to be for three days, two, three days,
whatever.
And basically it's a bridge.
So the funny thing as a 10 year old,
I wanted to, I want to be connected to him.
So I enlisted myself in the job.
When he used to drop them off,
he would take them, get them in, right?
And then the thing that I know, again,
he didn't say nothing, but you notice things.
And if you care enough, you don't notice nothing
if you don't care.
But if you care, if it's important, you notice.
And this guy was important to me.
I just was, I didn't know what a hero was.
No clue.
I love Mickey Mantle.
I love Willie Mays.
I love Muhammad Ali.
I never, ever connected with my mind as heroes.
Never.
My father, I didn't connect it that way, but he-
Looking back now-
Looking back, he was my first connection to a hero.
The two of you ever talk about how much
you love each other?
The word love?
The one thing that was not allowed.
The greatest memory I have, my father showing me love,
was we were down in Florida at an airport.
And we were, I was born in Miami.
Don't ask if I was passing through.
And the rest of my family is born in New York, stand out.
And so I was supposed to go back there, right?
And I wanted to stay with my mother for whatever reason.
And so he, you know, he of course conceded to it
and he's okay, you know, whatever.
And very quiet, very.
And there's a man who never showed emotion to anyone.
I mean, for the most, you know, really.
All of a sudden, he just turned and kissed me
on the forehead and left.
And I was like, that's different.
Yeah.
You still remember that, huh?
Yeah, like that's weird.
You lost them 30 years ago.
How did that change you?
It made me realize that some of the deals I used to make
for God weren't realistic.
When I was a kid, I used to make deals for God.
Let me die before my father.
And then, you know, you get older, you have kids,
you're blessed.
Why did you make that deal?
You know what I mean?
Like, thank you for not taking me up on it.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah.
You know?
Ah, yeah.
You miss him?
I miss him in moments when I'd like to know what to do.
And, you know, I remember when I would drive with him
on the house calls, he didn't listen to music.
He was a guy, he read books to his, when he got older,
he read books till blood vessels broke in his eyes.
He only read nonfiction books.
Science, he loved science.
Wars, generals.
I mean, I cheated on a couple of book reports
because I didn't do the reading of the book tonight
before I had a freaking book report to put in that.
I got a book report to do on the war of Stalingrad.
Really?
The war of Stalingrad.
And who the freak could tell you where you get an A?
I got an A.
I just wrote what he told me.
Told me generals, he told me times, he told me strategy.
He told me about the winter
that came and destroyed the Germans
and the Soviets were tougher than the Germans.
And, you know, the Germans picked on the wrong opponent.
I was already in the boxing business.
I didn't even know it.
I didn't even know it.
Matchmaking, very important.
They mismatched.
They made a mistake with picking the opponent.
And so when we would be driving in the car,
my father would be in a trance.
And dad, he wasn't ignoring me at all.
He was just with his thoughts.
He was wherever.
He wasn't even here on the radio no more.
I always wonder where he was.
I did.
So I asked him one day.
And just, so we're driving, I said, I want to know.
So I said, dad, what do you think
when you're basically in this place
that I know you're somewhere?
What do you, where are you?
What are you seeing?
I actually said, what do you see?
And he said to me, I see what could be.
I see what could be.
And I'm like, oh, all right.
I gotta ask you, when did you discover boxing?
When did you first fall in love with boxing?
When it saved me.
How did it save you?
I was a stupid, violent kid that was angry.
Not exactly know why he was angry.
I fit in real good in today's society
because there's a lot of angry kids out there
that I don't think they know why they're angry.
I was just out there getting in fights
and I got this stupid thing from that.
Can you tell the story of how you got that?
I was just running around doing stupid things, bad things.
Some people physically, but I hurt my family.
That's BS, you only hurt yourself.
That's a good way of alibi-ing it.
But at some point, the truth usually finds its way.
I'd like it to look like I was just hurting myself,
but it wasn't, obviously.
So I was just out on the streets
with kids that didn't grow up in the neighborhood I grew up.
I grew up in a neighborhood where my father was a doctor
and I walked down the street.
The funny thing was down the hill
was a very tough neighborhood called Stapleton
and most of the people down there on the corners
wished they could get up to hell
and I wished I could get down to hell.
So I went down to hell and I hung out
with all these friends that became lifelong friends.
I gravitated to that because I figured out later
a little bit, but I wanted family.
We were just joining a family.
My father was a doctor, he didn't have time for nothing
but being a doctor.
I think when you're great at something,
you sacrifice something too.
When you're really great at something,
so great that maybe God made you great
and you're too great for your own good.
I don't know, it took me to these stupid dangerous places.
Dangerous for me but dangerous for other people too
because I got to the point where I was doing robberies
on the street, I was fighting everybody
and you know what the most dangerous part about it was?
And I came to this realization on my own all by myself.
I figured out, I was really as dangerous,
these kids from the project, some of them, they got nothing.
First of all, I learned you don't have to be poor
to be poor.
You don't have to be deprived of certain things
to be deprived because you at least think you're deprived.
And I was poor in a way that I didn't have
the only thing I wanted to have, him.
So here I am where I'm out there doing everything
these things and what made me more,
I was more dangerous than some of these psychopaths.
Well, I was a psychopath too I guess the way I was behaving
but some of these psychopaths, they really had nothing.
Really, they obviously would kill you.
I was dangerous almost in the same way
but for a different reason.
I know it's ridiculous what I'm about to tell you
but I figured it out because I felt it.
I thought I was on a righteous path.
I thought I had a right because it was gonna get me
my father back.
Why, why?
I mean, you're a scientist, you couldn't figure this one out
because all the people that had him were injured people,
fractured people, screwed up people in some ways
but hurt, damaged people.
So if I get damaged, I'll get him.
So I was on a crusade, really a righteous crusade
where I thought it was okay.
I had permission.
I had permission to do these terrible things quite frankly
and to fight everyone and do it.
I did and then it came almost to a crash
of doing all that, winding up in Rikers Island
like an idiot.
Not understanding the damage I did to this poor man
that he was a great doctor and he's got to see his son
and hear about, you know what I mean?
Like, God, I was out on that day
with the guys that I grew up with now,
the guys from the projects, as I described
and I was with one of them who, he's dead now.
So I was with him and we were in a neighborhood,
the neighborhood we grew up in that I hung out
and he grew up in, Billy, he came from the project
and we got into a thing where somebody cut us off,
we cut them off, jumped out to fight
and it turned out there's like five or six of them
and two of us and we fought right on the side right there.
Only about a block from where I used to hang out
and maybe a block and a half
and right in front of like a Spanish bodega
and it really does happen in slow motion.
I actually saw the guys, fighting the guys
that I had to fight and then all of a sudden
I was able to get one guy out of the way a little bit
and I noticed the guy go into his pocket
and I knew why he was going in his pocket.
When he came out of his pocket,
I knew what it was right away.
It was weird because in the neighborhood,
guys used to hang out, they went to this,
they get into fads like right on the streets
and they went to, at that time,
they went to this cheap knife but it was,
they thought it was, well, we thought it was cool.
It was a 007 and the cool thing, whatever,
was that you could flick it, you could learn
and I learned how to flick but I never carried a knife
but when my friends would have it,
I would just, you learn how you could flick it open,
not a switchblade but flick it with your wrist
and I was like, here I am in the middle of this frickin'
fight and all of a sudden, oh, it's a 007, you know?
And so I'm like, you gotta make a decision
and I got a split, I could either not do nothin'
which didn't seem like a great option.
I couldn't run away.
Why not?
Because you gotta live with yourself afterwards
and that's more difficult to live with
than whatever it is at that second
because that don't go away.
You couldn't live with yourself running away.
It just don't go away.
That thing, nothin' to do with bein' brave.
It's nothin' to do with bein' brave really.
It's got to do with just common sense in life
that for me, whatever you're dealin' with, it's done.
Like, okay, deal with it, go to bed, whatever
but you do that, that other thing, you're gone.
That never ends.
This thing ends.
The memory of you being, let's say, a coward
in that moment, that never ends.
The only thing I had at that point in my life
in my stupid mind was a reputation
that I would stand up to certain things.
And that for me was worth somethin', whatever
because I didn't feel any worth to anything else.
That was the only thing I felt a connection of worth to.
You stood your ground and got cut.
No, I made a decision.
I stood my ground but I actually, things do slow down,
they do, and I actually said it's a 007,
he's got to flick it, but he's got to flick it.
I got a split second, either, like I said,
either I do nothin', whatever, or I get to him
before he gets it flicked.
I went to get to him before he got flicked.
And just as I got close to him, I did him a favor.
I walked right into a counterpunch
because I cooperated with him, I went right to him.
And just as I, he practiced more than I did
with the 007, apparently, because he was like,
whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.
And anyway.
What did you think, what did you think that happened?
I was all slow motion.
Did you think he might die?
Yeah, well, not immediately.
Took me a minute.
I'm a slow learner.
I put my hand up, right, wouldn't you?
I guess so.
And it went into my face.
And that was it, it was gooey.
It was warm and gooey, and I was like,
I don't know what this means, but I don't want to know.
But I think I know.
And,
Do you think about your dad in that moment?
No, you know what I thought about him was,
you don't know who anyone is until they're tested.
And I learned that.
Coach used to tell me, but I learned it.
He used to say, I remember one time,
Coach, I was a 17, 18 year old kid up there,
and thought I was whatever I thought I was.
And he said, you got a lot of friends?
And I said, yeah, because I was on the street
hanging out with a hundred kids at night sometimes
on the street corner.
So I was like, I don't know, too many people
that hung out with a hundred kids on the street,
on the corner on a Friday, Saturday night.
And I was like, yeah, I got a lot of friends.
He goes, really?
Yeah, really.
He said, how about if I told you, you might not have any?
Most likely you don't have any.
And he goes, and then he just started this thing.
He said, everyone's going to be tested, you, me, everyone.
Because you don't know about nobody until they're tested.
He goes, you know nothing.
He goes, you know nothing until you know.
Until something happens to test if they were really a friend.
And then he told me this story about a guy,
a guy came to him and he was upset.
What are you upset about?
He goes, I'm upset because I just lost a friend.
After 20 years of friendship, we're not friends no more.
So the customer looks at him and he goes,
let me ask you a question.
What made you think you were ever friends with him?
Now the guy gets insulted.
He goes, did you hear me?
He goes, I just told you 20 years,
I've been friends with this guy.
Why would you say that to me?
He said, well, I'll say it again.
What makes you think he was your friend?
He goes, whatever happened in the 20 years
other than chasing girls,
because I figured that went out fast,
chasing girls and drinking together
and whatever else you're doing out on the street,
whatever gave you the inclination that he was a friend.
He goes, whatever.
When did he risk himself to be your friend?
When was it dangerous to be your friend?
When was it uncomfortable to be your friend?
And you know what the guy said?
You can figure it out, you're a scientist.
He said, he said, today.
And today came for me and today, today, today,
kept coming for me, today.
And that day, my friend, Billy,
it turned out while I was fighting these whatever,
five, six guys, and where was Billy?
He was on a roof, he was on a roof.
He was on a roof, he was my best friend.
So anyway, they take me to the hospital
and here's the thing with my father.
But one thing Billy did do for me
when he got off the roof, thank God, he did.
He dragged me into this bodega, laid me on the floor
and started putting towels, right?
And the towels, I vaguely remember this,
they filled up with blood.
I mean, completely like drenched,
like you put them under a shower.
And I heard the bodega owner screaming,
you know, like, wah, you know, whatever.
And everyone's screaming and there's chaos.
And I'm like, I don't know, I'm calm, weird.
I'm like real calm.
And I'm just in this place, everything's calm.
And all of a sudden I hear Billy, he's screaming,
call the ambulance, call the ambulance.
And nobody's doing none, everyone's frozen.
I'm starting to understand already.
People get frozen in situations.
People, the fear, fear, fear, fear, fear,
just paralyzes people.
And I was going into a fear business.
I was learning, I was getting a learning, early PhD.
And he, yeah, and all of a sudden, genius,
Billy genius, really, street kid.
He jumps up on a freaking counter, jumps over the counter,
grabs the phone, calls 911, says a cop's been shot.
And forget about it, that was crazy.
All I remember after that, I'll tell you a couple things
I remember, lights being put onto a stretcher,
bounced around, you know, rushed.
I felt everyone's anxiety, except mine.
I had none, but I felt everyone's anxiety, everyone's fear.
Like it was all around me, it was like,
oh, this is interesting.
It's kind of, I know that's stupid,
but like, well, this is interesting.
You really have an eye for fear, that's fascinating.
You're really studying it.
Well, I had no choice, I got introduced in a crash course.
And they put me in the ambulance,
and this is what I remember to your point.
I'm sorry it took so long to get to it, I am.
Although I'll probably do it again
before this conversation's over.
But I-
It's all about the journey.
Yeah, we'll get there, we'll get there, Pops.
So I hear the cops say, we might lose them.
And I'm like laughing to myself.
I'm not laughing because I'm not, again, I'm not John Wayne.
John Wayne would have laughed.
But I'm like, hey, lose, you guys are stupid.
You know, I didn't say that.
But I'm like, lose me?
My father's the greatest doctor in the freaking world.
There's nothing to worry about.
You people are all uptight and whacked out here with fear.
And there's nothing to worry about.
Dr. Atlas is my father.
So anyway, so they're taking me to the,
and they say, we don't have time.
I hear a couple of things I remember.
Don't have time.
Take them to, and they take me
to the US Public Health Hospital.
Marina Hospital was called at the time,
but US Public Health.
And it's in Stapleton, so it's close.
Thank God.
So they're taking me and I hear them on the radio,
you know, saying this stuff about we gotta move,
we gotta move.
And I start talking.
And they're telling me, don't talk.
But I like to talk a lot, you know?
And I'm, so, again, fear.
There's no fear when the fear's been removed.
It's the only time you're really free in life.
And I know that sounds absurd, but really, it is.
It's the only time you're really free in life.
I was, when you're,
Close to death?
When you're devoid of things that normally hold you back,
that normally influence you in ways that, you know,
that are not of the influence that,
always positive influence, where you're in a pure place,
where you're in a purely free place from all inhibitions,
from fear, from anxiety, from joy.
Joy can screw you up.
And you're free from all these things.
And I'm in this place, just all the way.
In the back of an ambulance, you're free.
Yeah, I'm like, I said, just get me Dr. Atlas.
And they say, we don't have time.
No, no, no, no, no, you don't.
You have to get Dr. Atlas.
You have to get him.
This was the, dammit, this was the, you know what I mean?
I finally freaking hit the number,
and I'm not getting paid.
And then all of a sudden, I'm out.
How many stitches?
Well, I think it was 400, 200 inside, 200 outside,
or whatever it was.
A lot.
Look, after 50, that number doesn't matter no more.
Either whatever, 60, 70, 80, 90, whatever.
So I was fortunate.
I was fortunate.
And of course, I was fortunate.
They told me afterwards, they'd miss my jugular
literally by like a centimeter.
I mean, whatever.
And so then we wouldn't be having this conversation,
obviously.
Well, I'm glad you made it.
Yeah, I'm kind of glad too.
And it just missed my eye, which, thank God.
It's bad enough I have a scar matched to me with a patch.
I mean, it's enough that I got this freaking thing.
And look, it goes all the way, you know what I mean?
It's pretty long.
I don't know, I was out, and then somehow,
I sensed like they had the curtain closed, you know?
And it's amazing how vivid this is.
And the curtain's closed, and I see a shadow.
I felt a presence.
I did, and I felt him.
He's a powerful guy.
And I felt him, and I just see like a shadow, you know?
And all of a sudden, the curtain gets pushed back.
And I can't really see.
It's dark, and I'm out of it, but not completely out of it.
And pushes the curtain back, comes in,
and his hand, even though it's all bandaged, you know,
whatever, but his hand surveys.
It felt safe.
And it felt warm and safe.
I was happy.
And he got there, you know?
Did he say something?
Yeah, yeah.
Remember, I gave you a little bit of introduction
to my father, right?
You know him now a little bit, right?
Yeah.
What'd he say about the job?
He just said, this is what he said.
I remember to this day what he said.
That I do remember.
I don't know if it was six or five people,
but this I do remember.
He said, they did a good job.
You're gonna have a scar the rest of your life.
And he left.
Oh, man.
They did a good job.
You mentioned Cus D'Amato, legendary trainer,
and you also mentioned it turned out
he really cared about you.
In the book you write about a testimony he gave,
I was hoping I could read it,
because it speaks to your character,
it speaks to his, it's just powerful.
The testimony goes, your honor,
I realize you might not know much about me,
but I spent my whole life developing young men.
As a boxing manager, I trained two world champions,
heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson,
and light heavyweight champion, Jose Torres.
I've also helped a lot of other young boys
straighten out their lives and build character.
I know things about Teddy Atlas this court doesn't know.
Things you won't find on his arrest record.
This boy has character.
He has loyalty.
He'll hurt himself before he'll let down a friend.
These qualities are rare, and they shouldn't be lost.
He's made mistakes, we've all made mistakes,
but I've come to know this boy, and if we lose him,
we'll be losing someone who could help a lot of people.
Please don't take this young boy's future away.
He could be someone special.
Let's not lose him, please.
Those are powerful words from a powerful man.
What have you learned about life from Mr. Custom Auto?
He gave me a quote, and he drilled into my head.
I became his guy, you know?
He loved me.
I loved him.
He said to me, Teddy, no matter what a man says
is what he does in the end that he intended to do all along.
That's what I learned from Kuz.
The rest of it is BS.
And a lot of people say things.
You just have to give them a minute
to let them show you eventually
what they really meant by it.
I also learned from him that
everyone's afraid.
Kuz says, well, you're saying to another great saint,
you'll get a kick out of this.
Anyone who's in a situation where fear should be prevalent,
where fear is actually necessary to survive the situation,
anyone who says that they're not afraid,
they're one of two things.
They're either a liar or they should go to a doctor,
find out what the frick's wrong with them.
He was right about that.
You know, we live in a taboo society
where that word to a certain extent is taboo
because it invokes weakness.
You know, we are just layers of what we saw and learned
since we were kids.
We all are.
We're products of those layers.
I learned that on my own, but through some help.
At the end of the day, you know, fear,
people will find their way of avoiding that term.
So they use the word anxiety.
They use the word, you know, butterflies, apprehension,
you know, a million different words.
I find all those other words to be cousins of fear.
And fear causes a lot of things in life.
It causes a lot of problems
and it also solves a lot of problems.
Without it, we couldn't be great.
If we are great, if we ever have a chance to be great
or at least to aspire to be great.
How does fear connect to greatness?
That's a profound statement.
Without fear, we wouldn't be able to be great.
Yeah, you couldn't be great without fear
because fear allows you to be brave.
The most important word for me in this whole, you know,
conversation, right, neighborhood, would be selfishness.
And it allows you to be, for a moment, less selfish.
One of the things I learned, I guess, partly on my own,
everyone thinks my greatest teacher was Cuss.
He was a great teacher, but mentor.
My greatest teacher was my father, the one who never talked.
And I realized one of the things to be better towards great
is if you can submit less than we submit.
See, one of the things that I'm afraid of,
one of the things I was always quitting in my business,
it's kind of not a good thing.
Every business, I think.
Yours is just more clear.
Yeah, it hurts more.
True, in the moment at least.
Yeah, in the moment, but you're right, 100%,
because something's hurt for a long time afterwards.
And something like regret.
Regret is the worst thing in the world
because it's a solitary sentence.
And man, oh man.
That's a powerful phrase.
Regret is a solitary sentence.
So I...
You're full of good lines.
Ha, you know, it wasn't easy to accumulate them.
Yeah, it was a little bit hurtful.
But so, submit less, because we submit every day.
And if we can get to a place where we submit,
or compromise ourselves less, we'll get to a better place.
You know, again, one of the words for me
that attaches to things that give you,
that wind up hurting you in life,
and have hurt me in life,
one of those boogeyman words is the word of convenience.
That's attached to everything.
People disappoint you,
not because they want to disappoint you,
or let you down, or betray you,
because they want to betray you.
They do it because it's more convenient to do
than the other thing.
An old man once told me, he said to me,
I was trying to rationalize something.
I was trying to make someone an excuse for something.
I was trying to make myself better than I was.
I was trying to say it was okay.
And he just looked at me, and he liked me.
And he said, Teddy,
there ain't no such thing as being a little pregnant.
I was like, yeah.
Because either you're pregnant or you're not pregnant.
Either you're real or you're not real.
Either you're, you know, truthful or you're not truthful.
Either you're tough or you're not tough.
Either you're, you know,
committed or you're not committed.
Either you're in or you're out.
That applies to a lot of things, including loyalty.
That's quite a statement.
But the lifeblood of humanity for me is loyalty.
It's what goes through the veins of, you know,
everything has to have some veins in some form.
And if humanity has veins,
what runs through the veins of humanity instead of blood
to keep it alive is loyalty.
Without loyalty, without loyalty we're dead.
We're freaking walking, we're vessels.
I never understood what a ghost ship was.
You know what, as I got older,
I know what a ghost ship is, it's people.
It's people that are empty.
They got no loyalty.
Therefore they got no humanity.
Therefore they got nothing.
Therefore, freak them, freak them.
Because, and you know why they don't have loyalty?
Convenience.
And you know why?
Because it takes, it's hard to be loyal.
It's actually hard.
I'll be a son of a gun.
Yeah, you're telling me, yeah, it sounds great.
Give it to me, give it to me, paint me with it.
Yeah, it's great, yeah, I'm loyal.
Yeah, I'm great, yeah, this is good, I'm ready.
I'm on that team, I'm ready.
Put me in, coach, I'm ready.
Okay, now you have to, you're gonna have to get hurt here.
What do you mean get hurt?
Oh, it's gonna be painful.
I mean, to be loyal, you know, you're gonna be in danger
because the person that you committed your loyalty to
for a reason, because obviously you did something
in your life, whatever, whatever.
You're actually gonna get hurt to be loyal to them.
You're actually gonna, hold on a minute,
wait, hold on a minute, coach.
Hold on, call a timer out of here.
Let me think about this, coach.
I might need more practice.
I'm not ready for the game.
I'm not ready to go in the game yet.
Give me a little more practice, coach.
And it hurts to be loyal, it freaking hurts.
But without loyalty, we're ghost ships.
We got no strength, we got nothing.
We got nothing, we got nothing.
I agree with you in a deep fundamental sense,
but there's pain that comes with that.
I have to ask you to introspect on this part of your life
because of your value for loyalty.
As people know, you and custom auto trained young Mike Tyson
and the interaction there between the three of you
led to the three of you parting ways.
Given your value for loyalty, can you tell the full story
of what led up to this and maybe the pain you felt from that?
I guess it was the second time in my life I felt betrayed.
The first time was when I was whatever, young, 17,
and I got arrested.
I was with all these older guys, tough guys, whatever,
and supposedly, and the detectives separated us,
that's what they do.
And they asked me who did whatever, who's gotten this, that,
all that, the particulars of obviously what we did.
And it was me, and they said, are you sure?
You don't want to change that?
Because your friends changed it.
And these cops, they were nasty, but they were cops.
They were the way, you're going to wind up in Rikers
with, and they're going to be doing this to you.
And I won't even say the things because then why say them?
Figure it out.
But they're trying to get what they're trying to get
and it's just, I don't know, I don't know.
You want to change it?
And no.
But I felt very betrayed, you know?
And especially when I was standing in the cell in Rikers,
looking at the airplanes, leave LaGuardia Airport,
and then hoping I was on one.
I was making a deal with God that let me be on one
of those planes and let it crash.
I'd take a shot.
Was part of you proud that you didn't give up your friends?
No, because I didn't understand what proud was.
I didn't understand nothing.
I just understood that.
Rules are rules, you're just loyal and that's it.
I didn't even know there was an option.
I didn't think, I know the cops said you could do this,
but there was no option.
My father never had an option, but the betrayal,
the private betrayal was like, and so when Cuz,
we were partners, me and Cuz.
Cuz was retired.
This stupid kid goes up there and all of a sudden
I start training fighters.
First I won the gloves, Cuz put me in the gloves,
I won the gloves that I had injury, whatever.
But bottom line is, I still want to fight.
I want to turn pro, I want to fight, that was the plan.
And Cuz had a different plan.
Cuz was like, you can't, and he had it set up a little bit.
Without getting into it, hey, he did me a favor.
I'd like to think he knew he was doing me a favor.
And you know what, I do think he was.
He was doing himself a little bit, one, two.
But he was doing it for the greater cause
because he believed in this thing of boxing.
He believed that it changed lives.
He believed that it was worthwhile.
He believed that there was a power to it
beyond the left hook.
The big picture of boxing, he believed in it.
Yeah, he believed that to be a champion,
you had to be special, you had to be smart,
you had to have character,
that you had to be a better person
and that you couldn't make a champion
if you didn't make him a better person first.
And that this could strengthen people,
the sport could strengthen people in those ways.
So he was married to it.
And he was old and he needed,
there was no one in the gym.
It was empty.
And it was above a police station, which was crazy.
And he needed an heir to the throne.
He needed to pass it on to someone.
And he saw something.
And all of a sudden he said,
he saw that my career as a boxer was less important
than having me become his heir to the throne
and become his trainer, his man, his guy
to continue that we could do a lot more for him
and for everyone, not just for him, but for everyone.
It was more like to keep it going.
Like it couldn't die.
It couldn't die.
And the cousin was afraid that it would die with him.
And he committed his whole life to it.
He didn't get married because of boxing.
So he saw me as the little bit of the seed to plant
for more things to grow before that plant died.
And so all of a sudden he says, you can't fight.
And I had people tell me that I could go somewhere else
and fight, and I could, but I couldn't
because I'd be disloyal.
Loyalty is everything.
Yeah, so I couldn't leave Cus.
And he kind of knew that.
And so I couldn't leave him.
And he said, you have an ability to teach.
He said, knowledge means nothing.
He said, see these botanica?
He had botanica encyclopedias the whole set in our library.
He said, you see these?
Yeah, I see them.
All the knowledge of the world, whatever, is in these.
All right, means nothing if you don't have somebody
to convey it to people.
Otherwise it just sits on a bookshelf and looks good.
He goes, you have the ability
to convey knowledge to people.
You're a teacher.
You were born to be a teacher.
You'd lessen yourself by only being a champion fighter
because you'd only take care of one person.
You could take care of all kinds of people
and you could do this and you could do that
and you could do this.
So we go on this venture, took a minute
because I didn't believe him at first.
But finally we, I am, I'm there, I'm training fighters.
And then he gets me to buy in and I was a teacher.
And I start teaching these kids
and there's no one in the gym that's dead.
And all of a sudden there's 10 kids, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40,
45, Catskill Boxing Club, which was never there.
Now it's there.
And I'm training fighters.
I'm taking them down to South Bronx to get experience.
One of his former fighters, Nelson Cuevas,
down to South Bronx.
I'm taking them down there to get smokers,
to get fights when they're ready.
I'm wearing out dungarees.
I'm getting holes in my dungarees.
I was fashionable before it was fashionable.
I had to have holes in my dungarees.
I could have made a lot of money with that
because I was on my knees with these little kids,
nine years old, 10 years old, eight years old,
10, 12, 13, 14, all these kids.
And I'm teaching them and I'm building a gym.
And Cuss only came once a week
because he was semi-retired, you know?
And when he would come once a week,
he knew he couldn't give me money,
but he gave me more than money.
He gave me praise.
Oh, and he said, look what Atlas is doing.
He's creating champions.
And I was like, whoa, yeah, wow, I'm doing good.
And then all of a sudden, after four years of that,
because I was up there seven years, eight years, eight years
after about three and a half, four years of that,
we get a phone call that they get this kid in prison
and try on prison from one of the guys that knew Cuss,
Matt Baranski, and there's a state,
there's a correctional officer named Bobby Stewart
who used to box and Cuss had helped him out a little bit,
little bit, and they knew we had this gym now
that was really starting to become something
because we were winning tournaments and everything else.
They're going, we got this kid, Mike Tyson,
he's 12 years old, he's 190 pounds, he's a mess.
But Bobby Stewart got involved with him,
the former fighter, and he's taken a liking to it
and now where he didn't behave at all
and he didn't listen to anyone, now he's listening
because Bobby's got a carrot
and the carrot is hit teacher boxing
and now he's at the point now
where we want you to take a look, you and Teddy.
Bring him down.
What'd you think when you first saw Mike Tyson?
Well, I wanna see his birth certificate
because he 190 pounds, 12 years old and all solid.
Really, but yeah.
Just physically, just as a physical specimen, big guy.
Yeah, and listen, Cuss was right, I was a teacher.
He was right and he was testing me even that day.
He said, what do you think?
So I said, well, we ain't gonna know nothing in the bag.
Who the frick cares about that?
He knocked the bag down.
We gotta put them in.
We got no one to put them in that way.
They didn't have anyone that way.
We gotta test them.
Everyone's gotta be tested.
So you gotta put them in responsibly,
but let's put them in, just responsible,
but let's put them in with Bobby Stewart,
former pro fighter, had 14 profiles.
Smaller than Tyson.
When he was fighting, he was 175,
but still he's 28 years old.
Tyson's 12, come on.
And he'll work with them, right?
So we do, we put him on.
Tyson, he recognized the moment.
He understood this was an audition.
This was a chance.
This was that TV show, Change Your Life.
And he understood that if he passed the audition,
he could change, possibly change his life.
He wasn't sure what, how could he be sure what exactly,
but it was better than what he had.
And so he was on audition, so he wanted,
he innately understood what we would wanna see.
Ferociousness, toughness, character, desire.
And of course, ability.
Well, we saw the ability, power, speed,
but it was unbridled, it was untaught, it was raw.
He didn't know really much at all, at all.
But we saw that.
But he wanted to show more.
He knew that wasn't enough.
Again, innate intelligence.
He had to show desire, he had to show toughness.
And so I was being responsible.
After two rounds, that's enough.
Normally I don't put a guy into boxing
until maybe four months, five months,
six months, eight months, 10 months.
It depends what it takes to learn on the floor
before it's responsible to put him in the ring
to actually take on incoming real live shells
instead of blanks.
And so normally I wouldn't have him in.
And I knew after today, he wouldn't be in the ring again
if I trained him.
I would teach him first,
and then he'd get back in in a few months.
But for this day, it was the only way.
It's kind of like, I used to make this analogy
and Kuss loved it.
He said, what's training a fighter?
What do you look for in training a fighter, Teddy?
You know, he asked me these ridiculous questions
just to test me.
And I say, it's like going to Macy's.
Ah, he loved it.
I said, it's like, I said,
it's like going to Macy's window.
And Chris, he goes, what do you mean, Macy's window?
You know, Kuss was like, boom, boom, boom.
So what do you mean, Macy's window?
You go to Macy's window and they get the window
of everything you want to see, everything in there.
And it looks great.
Everything.
And yeah, and then what?
Well, then you ask what's in the warehouse
and they tell you nothing.
And then Kuss says, that's it.
That's the trainer.
And I wanted to see what was in the warehouse
because I saw what was in Macy's window.
I saw the power, I saw the speed.
So he goes two rounds and he gets a bloody nose.
Here's the weird thing, not weird, very telling.
We knew what we were doing.
Not bragging, but we knew what we were doing
because he got a bloody nose because he got hit.
After that bloody, he never got another bloody nose.
You know why he didn't get hit?
Because he learned.
He was still strong, but he was smarter now.
Anyway, he goes two rounds and I saw,
and I'm being responsible because if he goes more,
it's not responsible.
I saw what I needed to see.
I saw speed, I saw power, I saw athleticism.
And I saw, I didn't believe him.
I thought he was lying to me, I'm just telling you.
I thought he was lying, trying to act tough
when he wasn't really feeling tough.
It didn't matter.
Cuss questioned me on it afterwards.
What did you see?
And when I said, he goes, young master.
Again, he wasn't paying me money.
So he had to give me something, right?
And that was better than, that was currency.
Young master, I'm the young master, whoa.
Young master, you know what I mean?
I felt like that guy Kung Fu, like in the movie,
like Kung Fu, Grasshopper, when you're ready,
when you can take this out of my hand,
you can leave.
And-
That's powerful.
Yeah, it was.
It worked.
Cuss knew how to work me, and he did.
And it worked.
And so, but you know what?
I didn't mind being worked.
I kind of knew I was being shuffled a little bit.
Well, you're making it sound a little bit negative,
but it's also extremely positive.
That's a teacher instilling wisdom into you
that you carried forward and impacted a lot of people.
Yeah, Cuss got the job done, but he did it his way.
And he did it for a myriad of reasons.
And, but at the end of the day, it was all good.
And I just had to understand that eventually, later on.
But-
And you do the same, you do things your way
and carry some of him in you, some of your father in you.
Yeah.
That day, you know, that day was funny
because when Cuss said, what did you see, Teddy, with him?
After two rounds, I got up with a ring.
I knew I was going to train him.
Obviously, we weren't going to say no.
And he still had about four months to serve
and we were going to work it out.
And when I got up on a ring apron, that's my dream.
I'm the boss.
You know, people later on in life called me a dictator.
You know what I said?
Yeah, you're right.
I didn't deny.
People thought, you mean I'm right?
Yeah, I'm a dictator.
I'm a trainer.
I'm the boss.
I'm in charge.
If I, you wouldn't be here if I wasn't.
What the freak you need me for
if I'm not freaking in charge, you idiot?
Yeah, yeah, damn right.
Well, what do you think it's a shared responsibility?
No, it's my responsibility.
That's why you're here.
Yeah, I am in charge.
You shouldn't be here if you don't understand that.
So I get up there and I know that I'm going to be training.
I got to show them who the boss is.
You know, I'm being really frank about this.
So I get up there, I say, that's it, out.
Yeah.
No, no, you know, this is Tyson.
No, let me go.
I want to do another round.
I want to do another round.
I said, out.
Did you hear what I said?
Because I knew that, you know, he was going to test me.
He was testing me.
I said, I said, get out.
He got out.
But were you impressed with the fact
that you want to keep going or no?
Yes.
And I recognized what it really was.
So Kuz asked me, what was that?
Kuz wanted to know what the young master saw.
So Kuz said, what was that?
I said, it was an act.
He goes, you saw that?
Did he really want to go?
I said, no.
I said, he didn't really want to go.
But he knew that we want him to go.
And he made himself ready to go in order to satisfy.
And that's just as good.
And Kuz said, damn right, it's just as good.
All that matters was not how he got there,
but that he got there.
That's all that matters, that he got there,
that he got to the place to act like a fighter,
to do what we want him to do, to be ready to persevere,
to go beyond the comfort level, to do another round.
He didn't want to, damn right he didn't want to,
but he knew we want him to.
And he knew in order to pass the test, he had to do it.
And he said, you're right.
He goes, now it's going to be your job to teach him,
to make him a fighter that don't get bloody noses,
that don't get hit, and will get to that place
without being coerced to get there,
to get to that place on his own,
instead of using the things that he had to use
to get to that place today.
Those things are not going to be available one day,
when you, and listen to this,
you talk about a man being prophetic,
because it's pretty good.
You talk about man being on the job, on the money, Lex.
He says, how do you think he finishes the sentence?
He goes, because someday, because you're going to have
to make sure that he learns these things,
because he'll be your first heavyweight champ.
What did you just say?
He's 12 years old.
He's been arrested 30 times.
He's getting out of jail, out of juvenile detention,
try on, he's a mess in a lot of ways.
There's a lot of things we find out later,
a lot of problems, weaknesses.
He goes, and that's part of your job.
That'll be part of your job.
But he really said that, and then he turned to him,
he goes, you want to come live with us, young man?
You want to be a fighter?
Yes.
Even that, Cus said to me later,
what do you think about that?
I said-
The way he said yes.
Yeah, the way he said yes.
Yes, sir, yeah.
He said, what do you think about that?
And we're talking, I said, ain't going to be that polite
in a little while down the road.
Again, he knew that that's what he felt that he needed
to project himself as, to present himself as,
to get to where he wanted to get to.
He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Did you see what Cus was seeing
in terms of the heavyweight champion of the world?
No, again, the easiest answer would be yes.
Teddy Ellis, genius, wow, wow.
Teddy, wow, no, no, no, no.
But again, it was my job.
And I just, my job, it was simple, simpler than Cus's.
Cus knew too much.
I knew nothing.
I just knew, you know, rudiments of boxing.
I knew what it took to be a fighter
and how to execute it, the steps of executing it.
So I took those steps.
The rest of it, you get blurred by those other things.
I wasn't blurred by those other things.
It was just get them in the gym,
make them mentally stronger, make them face things
and teach them how to slip punches
and create holes and fill those fricking holes
with devastating punches, this is Cus.
And what are you going to do?
I'm going to teach them to fill holes
and fill them with punches with bad intentions.
And that became the moniker.
And then Tyson would say that,
I'm throwing punches with bad intentions.
Yes, you are.
How do you make them mentally tougher?
So that part of the job.
You said don't get a bloody nose,
but the part of the job that makes them mentally tougher,
how do you do that?
Most important part of the job, to make them face things.
Make them face where he's lying to himself,
where he's submitting.
We start this conversation with submission, submit less,
submit less, submit less every day, submit less.
Cus only come to the gym once in a while.
And if I had him sparring, he would come
because that was his project, that was the heavyweight.
Now he came, put life in Cus, Cus had life.
He was losing a little life,
but that made the light bulb bright again, it did.
And it was great to see, I felt proud of that.
I felt connected to that.
And that's why when it all went bad
and Cus took the side that don't he said he could take,
the side of the next heavyweight champ in the world.
But he left me, his partner, the young master.
And of the second time I get portrayed.
And I'm like,
for a while I thought everything Cus taught me,
said to me was a liar.
I didn't want to be any part of it anymore.
Until I got a little more mature
and I got a little past that.
Where I was able to understand,
I was able to understand
that just because so many that you perceived as great
in every area is you find to be weak in certain areas.
Doesn't mean that they can't still be what they want to you.
It's something that can be understood or forgiven.
It's hard, it's hard to get to that place
and forgive somebody in that kind of way
that I felt betrayed.
Because Cus told me the most important thing was loyalty.
Cus told me he loved me because I was loyal.
Cus told people that the reason that he went to court
was because I didn't give up anybody
even though it meant putting me in a risk
of going to jail for 10 years.
And Cus felt that he admired those traits.
And so I assumed that he would show the same traits.
And he took a deal, he took a deal, he took a deal.
He signed the papers that those so-called friends
of mine signed.
He took a deal to have the future heavyweight champions
that turned out and to let me go,
to sign the deal, to let me take the weight.
For people who don't know,
Mike was inappropriate with a young girl
and you pulled a gun on him.
I don't know if there's deeper things to say
about that situation, but why do you think Cus
made the decision to cut you off
from both Mike Tyson and from Cus D'Amato?
Like to break that when he valued loyalty so much?
I served my purpose.
I got him to the way he needed to get.
Brought life back in the gym.
If I wasn't in the gym at that particular time,
Tyson never would have been in the gym.
There would have been no gym to bring him to
when they called up and made that phone call
to bring him to the gym.
There would have been no activity.
There would have been no boxing program.
There would have been no training,
training him 24-7 the way I was,
where Cus wasn't capable of doing that
at that point in his life.
But then again, it's not poor Teddy.
I get the benefit of a career.
I get the benefit of knowledge.
I get the benefit of a life.
I get the benefit of learning,
of becoming hopefully a better person.
I get the benefit of being portrayed again.
But...
That's a hell of a statement right there.
I don't know what the benefit of that is.
You can learn to forgive weakness.
When you realize how,
how easy it is to be weak,
and when you realize that...
Somebody asked me,
how did you get to the point where you could forgive?
Right, it's a pretty good question.
Pretty simple, pretty basic.
Pretty important, right?
And I didn't understand I understood,
but I did understand immediately for me.
I said, how can I not forgive somebody?
It becomes easier to learn how to forgive
when you're still trying to forgive yourself.
When you're still in the process of trying
to forgive yourself for all your own inherent weaknesses
and betrayals of people like my father,
in different ways that we forget very easily
because it's handy and it's a way of surviving.
It's a lot easier to figure it out, rationalize it,
to find forgiveness when you realize
that you still haven't figured out completely
how to forgive yourself.
I'm still trying to figure that out.
So that helped me figure out how to forgive costs.
Because to figure out how to forgive me,
I had to understood why I did these things,
where the weaknesses came from,
where the selfishness came from,
where the convenience came from, that they really existed.
But they didn't exist for malice.
They existed for me not being prepared
to understand that I could be stronger,
to want to be stronger.
And then I looked at Cuss, he wanted to be stronger,
but he got to a point in life where he had been strong
for a lot of his life.
He was strong with me, he was strong
with a lot of things in his life.
And does everyone deserve a pass in life?
Where he got to a place where everything was in one basket,
the basket of boxing.
He once told me that he never got married
because it would've been selfish to a woman
to have gotten married when his whole life was boxing,
that he couldn't give to a kid, he couldn't give to her.
And then I thought about it, he had no money really.
And Jim Jacobs and Bill Caiden took care of the bills,
so he didn't really need money that way.
But what was the payoff for that kind of life,
that kind of commitment, that kind of sacrifice?
Really, what was the payoff?
The payoff was to have champions,
to have a champion that would keep your name alive.
That word legacy, what does it mean?
Sometimes it's just a word, sometimes it's more than a word.
It's a reprieve, it's a pension plan.
It's being given a pension on your way out
for the rest of your life, for your life wherever
you're going, you're going to wherever you're going
for eternity, it's the only thing that you take with you
as what you left behind.
And for Cuss, it was all about leaving behind a mark,
a mark that of champion.
Yeah, it was attached to ego, we all have it.
Yeah, it was attached to some selfishness and all,
but yeah, it was also attached to wanting
to leave something great behind,
to know that you were part of it,
that you existed for a reason,
that you sacrificed for a reason.
And all that freaking pain I brought my father,
I was searching for something.
Yeah, I made it into a righteous search,
I made it into, I did, and I made it into,
it was okay because it was righteous,
but it still did damage, it still did damage,
it still hurt people, it still betrayed my father's trust.
And Cuss betrayed mine, but he didn't do it maliciously,
he did it out of, again, my father came home,
this is how I'm going to connect it,
my father came home from work one night at 12 o'clock
and I was waiting out, and like I said,
I was over nine, 10 years old, and he got mad at me,
he goes, go to bed, what are you doing up?
I said, I'm waiting for you, I'm waiting for you.
And he said, well, go to bed.
I said, no, what were you doing?
I said, I was at the hospital.
You were there, why were you there so late?
He answered me, he said there was a patient,
there was a sick patient.
I said, he must be better now because you're his doctor,
because my father could fix anything.
My father, nothing got in the way of the truth,
nothing, nothing, even blowing his son's bubble.
Matter of factly, he said to me,
no, he's not going to get better, he's going to die.
So as a nine year old kid, you're a kid, you're selfish,
not in a bad way, but you want what you,
and I said, I said two things.
First, I said, how, you're his doctor.
How, it can't be, and then I said,
I just said it almost angry.
Then why were you there,
like you should have been here with me?
Yeah.
And you know what he said to me?
Because you don't give up on life, go to bed.
And give up on life.
And that's, I finally connected the dots,
this idiot that didn't graduate high school.
I finally connected the dots.
I was asking Cuz to give up on life.
You know, you don't give up on life.
You don't give up on aspirations of life.
Life is all forms of life.
Doesn't have to be a physical form of it.
It's life, it's having a reason to be alive.
It's having a reason to have tomorrow.
And Cuz's only reason to have tomorrow
was to have another heavyweight champ.
And Teddy Atlas, even though we were together
all those years, and we were partners,
and we trained together, and we were,
the only thing we didn't do was what they did
in the Indian movies, where they cut the finger
and they became blood brothers.
That's the only thing we didn't do,
and I felt like we did that without cutting.
And now here we are, and he frickin' betrayed me.
And then all of a sudden I connected the dots.
I was like, he didn't betray me in that cold sense.
He didn't give up on life.
Years later, Mike Tyson apologized to you.
What's meaningful to you about that?
How does that fit the story?
I want to be the great, gracious guy right now.
Say, oh, I'm so human that a man's man enough
to say, sorry, that's it, we're good.
I want to be, really, that's the best presentation
of Teddy Atlas I could put out there.
He's a good guy.
He forgives, he's a good guy.
He's a standup guy, and he's a good guy.
I'm not sure if he truly did it for himself,
that he really did it because he felt that it was true.
But if he's persuaded by other things,
he was in the middle, I know I'm taking it too deep.
I know it, but what am I gonna do?
He was in the middle of 12 steps
with getting out of drugs, alcohol, 12 steps,
which is a commemorable thing, really, it is.
And he's taking the steps, and part of the steps
was to admit or to apologize to all people
you offended in life.
Okay, but are you doing it for the 12 steps
or are you doing it because you really, truly
have come to terms with believing what you did
was that hurtful to me and that it matters to you
that it was that hurtful to me
and that you were wrong in doing it?
Did you do it for, I know that's deep.
I know that I'm a freaking idiot.
Teddy, freaking, you should be better than that.
He's better than you.
Yeah, maybe he is better than me.
Maybe he is, really, seriously, maybe he is.
And I took it, he put his hand,
I took it, we hugged, he said, I love you.
Yeah, yeah, but I wanna believe.
But what did Cuz tell me?
No matter what a man says, it's what he does in the end
that he intended to do all along.
So to this day today, was it really genuine
or was it reflexive of that moment for him
to get what he needed for that step?
Or was it truly for what I needed to really,
that he really cared that what he did to me
caused me to do what I did?
Because I did something that was pretty damn bad to him too.
Is he able to deal with that
and put that where it has to be put?
Is he able to put that?
Or is it just, he did something he had to do
and maybe he's sorry he did it.
I know, look, I appreciated that he,
I would have rather been in a private place.
Yeah, so people don't know you were in the middle
of commentating a fight and he walked up from behind you
and he said he was sorry, he shook your hand, gave you a hug.
I didn't know, he said, I love you.
Yeah, he's emotional.
I get emotional a little bit too.
But he's emotional and he can be,
I can see why people have a fascination
and a love affair with him right now.
Because he was, because he was,
he was the meteor that went across the sky
that is, if they didn't see it,
their parents told them about it.
There was a meteor that came across the sky one day
and the meteor's walking around in the room now
and that's the meteorite and it actually landed here
and that's it right there.
And now he's come a long way and now he's more human
and he's lovable and compassionate and he cries
and I get the fascination, I get the love affair, I get it.
Because we're inherently, we're people that want to forgive.
We're people that, we want to be good
and part of being good is to forgive people
and to show compassion to people.
And so, and when somebody's been damaged,
to acknowledge they've been damaged,
to acknowledge that you know they've been damaged
and you care about them being damaged.
And how do you show care?
Through admiration.
You know, in some ways almost through adulation.
And he's getting adulation from people like, you know,
which is to an incredible level.
And it's because, it's a phenomenon.
But I get it, I understand it.
And I don't know if he gets it.
I don't know if underneath all of this, he's a complex guy.
He's a sensitive guy.
I don't know, and I am too.
One complex guy talking about another complex guy.
I don't know if underneath it all,
where he's really truly at as far as that day
that he said that to me.
Is there part of you that's sorry to Mike for?
I'm not sorry.
The point that got on him.
Yeah, and that's, listen, that's fair.
I know dimensions of human nature too well.
To not know that he still has to have certain,
because I have those strong feelings.
What, it's not fair for him to have them?
Damn right it's fair.
Now, he could look at it if he was to be held
to his word that night, that he just acknowledges
that what happened he deserved
because of what he, the position he put me in,
and he put himself in, what he did.
And I wouldn't change nothing.
You know.
But still, you don't regret pulling the gun on him.
I regret that I had to.
Yeah, I regret very much that I had to,
that I regret very much.
He crossed the line.
I hated him for putting me in that position.
That, you know, how dare he think
that somebody's feelings are that trivial.
That the way I would feel about myself
and the way the girl would feel about herself,
that was 11 years old at the time,
how she would feel about herself.
How dare he think it's that trivial that, you know,
that I shouldn't be ready to freaking,
to both die and kill for that.
Why didn't Cus D'Amato see it in a deeper way
and talk through it?
The word came back to me.
But of course, what does it mean?
But the word came back to me that Cus said you were right.
But if he took the side of Teddy,
he would destroy potentially a great fighter.
Why do you think that, okay,
if you were to try to understand the point he was making,
why is that true?
Isn't the part of greatness that you said
is building the character of knowing what is right, you know?
Cus was afraid to go there where he used to not be afraid
because it's kind of like you're never afraid of going up.
And I get it.
You know, when I train a fighter now,
if I come out of retirement and I train a fighter now,
I feel in camp like I'm,
I feel like I'm on death row every day,
that if every day I try to retrace my memory
and say, did I feel this way when I was younger?
I don't remember feeling this way.
I feel every day a dreadful feeling
that if I don't get this right, I've betrayed everything.
I've betrayed the fighter's trust.
I've betrayed what I'm supposed to be.
And then one day I tried to figure it out.
Why do I feel this way?
It's so intense.
I was in camp for two months training a guy
for the world title a few years ago,
fighting the hardest puncher in the world at the time,
and Adona Stevenson, and the fighter was Ukrainian.
And I was brought in to train him for that fight.
And he trusted me and changed his whole style.
Trusted me.
Oh my God, I went to bed every night praying, dread,
waking up dread, my stomach down to here,
every day saying, what if I fail him?
What if everything that I told him was going to happen,
don't happen, what if I fail him?
What if he trusted me and I betrayed that trust?
And the thing with Cus was,
he used to be stronger than that.
And then I tried to figure it out why I got this way
and why it was so dreadful to me
and why I felt like I was on death row
every day training a fighter.
Like, did I do enough, did I do right?
Well, will we accomplish what we,
will we accomplish what I promised him we would accomplish?
Would I keep my word?
And then I started thinking, how did I become this weak?
How did I freaking become,
I was a pretty strong freaking guy.
How did I become this weak?
And then finally I think I figured it out.
You know why?
Because I was always working to get up.
But once I finally got up, now I was looking down.
And I finally hit me.
I said, I didn't want to lose.
I said, there was nothing to lose on my way up.
Now all of a sudden there's something to lose
when you're up there and you're looking down.
And that's where he was.
And that's where Cus was.
Cus was at the end of his rope.
He accomplished two world champs,
all this stuff, right?
Everything, and he did it right.
Now all of a sudden, it wasn't about moving forward.
It was about not falling down.
Holy cow.
I was like, I got it, Cus.
I got it.
I got it.
You didn't want to fall down.
Oh my God.
You didn't want to fall.
And he, this was his last chance.
You don't give up on life.
This was his last chance to live forever.
To make everything he did worthwhile.
To have the youngest, it wasn't just heavyweight champ.
You got to remember,
he was the youngest heavyweight champ ever.
And to have that, it was okay to die now.
And how's loyalty?
Someone named Teddy Atlas gonna get in the way of that.
That's a tidal wave that there ain't no wall
that's been made high enough to stop that tidal wave.
And now I'll stop myself.
Yeah, there is.
But it would have to be awful big one.
And you know what?
Who are we to say that we could ever build
that wall that big?
Who is any of it?
Who am I to say?
Do you think if you were to put yourself
in the shoes of custom auto,
can you see yourself having the big enough wall
where you would choose loyalty?
Now if I answer the way I feel,
then I'm making myself John Wayne again.
You don't have to answer that.
I think loyalty is important.
No matter what a man says,
what he does in the end that he intends to do all along.
I didn't make that up custard.
And when this all went down,
those words came freaking echoing into my freaking ears.
I didn't want them.
Cotton doesn't help.
And they freaking kept coming into my ears.
And what do you think?
Still an immature kid at the time.
You know, I was young.
Still an immature kid at the time.
What the freak do you think my response was?
You were full of,
but I got past that.
Do you forgive, Gus?
Have you found forgiveness?
Listen, I forgive him because
he gave me more than he took away from me.
If I can, what kind of man am I to,
if I can at least acknowledge that
and be grateful for that.
He gave me more than he took from me.
I'm grateful for that.
I'm also grateful for what I gave him,
that I had, you know,
that I did give him something.
And at that point in his life, you know,
a place to still have test tubes
and chemistry experiments, you know,
a laboratory where you could still create great fire.
And I helped give him that.
I helped, I was part of that lab
and making sure that lab was there.
And just that there was the existence of test tubes
in the place because you can't freaking do experiments
without test tubes.
Now you're the scientist with the test tubes.
Yeah, I guess so.
And I just hope that,
what I said earlier is really,
it's really my thread through this whole thing.
When you say, can you forgive,
cause I'm still trying to forgive myself.
And if I can have hope that I can forgive myself,
I think that hope has to start
with the power to forgive someone else.
How can I ever forgive myself for all my failings
and figure it out if I can't start and practice it
by forgiving someone else for some shortcomings?
And for me, that's the only sense of sometimes
a very hard thing to make sense of.
That's my North star.
That's my compass.
Cause just to make me laugh,
but me and him did everything together.
We drive and we get lost in the city.
We get lost in the Bronx and he get all frustrated.
And he said, Atlas, you're a great trainer,
but you turn you around, you spin you around
and you're lost.
And I said, me or we?
Because I was the only one who would argue with him.
And it was really funny sometimes.
And I said, we or me?
And he goes, I don't care.
Cuz, you're lost, I'm lost.
What are you talking about?
And then all of a sudden Cuz couldn't give in.
He just couldn't admit, he couldn't give in.
You know what he said to me?
All of a sudden he goes, when I was in the army,
if I had a compass, I could get out of the woods.
I said, we're not in the woods, we're not in the army,
we don't have a compass.
Cuz, Cuz, just, don't argue with me.
One time we're driving, I want to get back to Catskill.
We just finished at the Bronx.
It's been a long day, you know?
Visiting the murderers' houses and everything else
that he took me through for the 1800 time.
And he would fall asleep.
You know, he was getting older.
And he would just fall asleep in the car.
So, what do you think?
I went a little faster, right?
Because before he went to sleep, he said, don't speed.
So, I don't consider myself, I try to be an honest guy,
and I try to be a freaking, but, you know.
It was the five or six guys.
What did I say earlier?
Try to do less submitting.
Yeah.
Really, in all faces, try to submit a little less.
Try to lie a little less today.
A little less.
Try to get stronger.
Try to get a little better.
So, here we are, and we're driving,
and all of a sudden, what did I do, 80, 75?
Probably.
Probably did.
You know, whatever.
And all of a sudden, he wakes up.
He was speeding.
Oh, I lied.
No, I wasn't.
Don't lie.
I'm not lying.
He lied again.
You were speeding.
Now, come on.
This guy, he's, you know what I mean, he's unbelievable.
So, I got a freaking, you know, he's David Copperfield.
I want to know the trick.
I want to know how he freaking,
he made this thing disappear.
So, I said, what are you talking, how do you know?
He goes, because I timed you.
I looked at the post number, and I'm like, what?
I looked at the post number on the side of the road,
where we were, whatever miles,
and I never knew they even existed.
I looked, and I said, yeah, there's little numbers.
He started timing, and then fell asleep.
Yeah, he timed it, and he looked,
and he goes, we couldn't have got from here to there
in that amount of time unless you were going 75 miles an hour
and I'm like, all right, I'm impressed.
Don't try to get the mile per hour part right.
It's enough that you got me.
That's enough.
Yeah, I said, and I'm not going to do that no more, you know.
And just, he helped me in crazy ways where
there would be times where I wanted to be,
you know, where you wanted to be, whatever, right?
Convenient, weak, submit, right?
And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden,
in my mind, Cus was there with the stopwatch.
And I'd be like, you know, no, you know,
where I was about to say yes
to whatever that particular situation was.
Somebody up there calling, hello, hello?
Yes, you're great, thank you.
Just for the record, never had a phone call like this.
It's hotel security.
The question is, he asked me is, are you okay, sir?
Are you okay?
Are we okay?
I think so.
I think so, so far.
Yeah.
You know, I can only go like so far.
It's kind of like that old joke, you know,
where the guy jumps off the Empire State Building,
he falls down and he's going, you know,
80th floor, 70th floor, 60th floor, 50,
and he gets past the 50th floor
and they're looking him out the window
and he goes, how am I doing?
So far, so good.
I don't know where it's going to end, but.
So Mike Jackson is considered by many
to be one of the great boxers,
one of the greatest boxers of all time, heavyweight boxers.
What do you think on the positive side made him great?
I don't know if he was ever great.
I know he was sensational.
I know he was the greatest mix of maybe speed and power ever.
I know he was one of the greatest punches
from either side of the plate, left or right.
There's been great punches with just the right hand
like Ernie Chavis and Deontay Wilder and Max Baer.
I don't know if there's ever been anyone
who could punch as good as he did on either side
with either hand, other than Joe Lewis and a few others.
I don't know if there's ever been such a combination
of speed and power to that pure level that he had,
and it was a pure level.
I don't know if there was ever as good a fighter
as Tyson was where maybe one night he was great,
where he wasn't tested, but he might've been ready
to be tested that one night against Michael Spinks.
When he took him apart 90 seconds,
I think I saw a great fighter that night.
I don't think you can be great
unless you have all the requirements of being great.
What does it take to be a great fighter, truly great?
To not rely on someone else's weakness to be strong,
to be strong on your own.
Too often he relied on other people's weakness,
whether it's by being intimidated
or whether it was because his talent was so much greater
than theirs that it was like putting a monster truck
in there with a Volkswagen,
and the Volkswagen was gonna get crushed.
No matter how much horsepower the Volkswagen
might've had under the hood and you put under the hood,
it was gonna get crushed.
The monster truck was not gonna allow it to be a contest.
And to be able to find a way when your talent wasn't enough
he didn't find a way when his talent wasn't enough.
And I'm not making statements if I'm not ready
to put some evidence,
like if we were in a courtroom exhibit A,
when he fought Buster Douglas,
Buster Douglas matched his will and didn't get intimidated,
stood up to him.
He didn't do what most people did.
He didn't submit even a little bit, not that night.
He had in the past, but in that night he didn't.
Why?
Because Buster had a secret weapon that night, his mother.
Buster's mother had died a few months previous.
He loved his mother very much.
Buster had always had talent, big heavyweight,
talented, could punch, technically solid.
He was all those things, always was,
but he quit in fights.
He did less than he should have done.
He never lived up to his ability.
He gave in, he submitted.
He wasn't strong enough.
He never had a reason to be strong enough.
When his mother died, he had a reason.
Nothing could hurt him
as much as his mother dying hurt him, Mike Tyson included.
That night, Mike Tyson could not hurt him
as much as his mother had hurt him by dying.
That night, he had a reason to be strong for his mother.
And he was strong.
He was everything he was supposed to be and more.
And he stood up to Mike.
And Mike, for the first time, maybe ever,
was in a fight where he had to overcome something,
where he had to be more than talented, more than a puncher,
more than a guy with scintillating speed.
And he wasn't.
And then that night got followed
by another night with Holyfield.
Holyfield wasn't as talented as him,
as big as a bunch of puncher,
but Holyfield had the character.
He was strong in ways that Tyson wasn't strong.
He was strong in a way where he could find a way.
He was willing to find a way.
He's willing to go to the cliff
to truly die before he submitted.
You know, a lot of stuff is just worth.
Yeah, they're gonna have to carry me out on a shield.
Yeah, sure, okay.
Until it comes time to be carried out on the shield.
Sometimes there's people that actually mean it.
You think Mike didn't have that?
Well, all right, let's just say arbitrarily,
I don't have his record for me.
Let's say it was 55 and five.
I know he had about five losses.
All right, let's say it was 55 and five, right?
A lot of knockouts.
I have a saying, a fight's not a fight
until there's something to overcome.
Until then, it's just an athletic exhibition, contest.
Yeah, who's a better athlete?
Who's got more quick twitch fibers?
Who's more developed?
Who's better at this?
Who's more developed in those physical areas?
But a fight is not a fight
until there's something to overcome.
Okay, so if you go by my definition, not Webster's,
my definition, which I think means something,
Mike Tyson was only in five fights in his life.
The five fights where there was something to overcome
and he didn't overcome it.
Now, I know people hate me for this, including Tyson.
I understand, hate me.
Oh, you're a hater because you weren't with him.
You didn't make the money because this, because that,
because you got betrayed.
I think I'm better than that.
I hope I'm better than that.
I believe I'm better than that.
I'm not a hater.
I've broadcast fights for 25 years on ESPN
where there was some people in the corner I did not like.
And if they did a good job, this guy's doing a great job.
And then there were guys that I liked
and I had friendship, but he messed up
and we weren't friends no more.
Friendship got to be tested, remember that?
So we weren't friends no more.
But why did I do that?
Because it was my job.
It was more important for me, when it's all over with,
the only thing you're left with is,
I mean, we're gonna be dust, all of us, right?
The only thing we're left with is what carries on,
our reputation, you know, legacy, whatever that is.
But our reputation, that's all we're left with.
And that's all our kids are left with.
I want it to be as good as it can be.
I've always had an ability, I've done a lot of things wrong
and I've had a lot of lackings.
But the one strength I've had if I had a strength
is to understand somehow, through osmosis, I guess,
to learn the lesson that was important
is not what's in front of you for those five seconds,
for that moment in life.
It's what's left behind you when those five seconds are gone
when that, whatever it is that you're dealing with,
you know, whatever that moment is, whatever,
that moment, what you do in that moment,
the action of that moment is gonna stay with you
and be you, it's gonna become you.
What you face for that moment, it's gone.
It's gone in the air, in an instant, it's gone, it's done.
Whether you stand up there and you get shot in the head
and the guy freaking blows your brains out
or you're freaking, you stand up here
or you're fighting a guy who's like a scary guy
but you fight him and you beat him or he beats you up.
But how you represented yourself in that moment
is all that matters, that's gonna live.
What happened don't matter.
It don't matter that you got shot in the head.
I know that sounds absurd, but if you believe
that it was important to stand up
and take the chance to get shot in the freaking head
rather than to live like an empty vessel, you know what?
That's all that freaking matters.
And somehow that got freaking wrapped
into this freaking head of mine.
Like that's what matters, that's all that matters.
You know how many times I went and I,
there were things, whether it was with this one,
with Tyson, with that, I didn't wanna be there.
I was scared to death.
But I was more scared.
I was more scared.
Living with regret.
How I would have felt.
I don't wanna be in solitary confinement
the rest of my life with that freaking guy
in the cell next to me called regret.
I don't freaking wanna be next to that guy.
If I wanna freaking go down that road, I'll watch Papillon.
You know what I mean?
And then I'll get my fill from that.
But I don't wanna freaking live it.
I'm afraid of what my children would think of me
if I fell in those areas.
Why?
Because that's forever.
When I'm closing my eyes for the last time,
I don't wanna have that fear.
I don't wanna have that fear.
You know, whether I'm going down there
or whether I'm going up there,
you know, I laugh because I was around guys years ago
that used to, when we talk about that, you know, in jest,
you know, and I would get a kick out of this one guy
who'd been around the block a few times.
When he'd say, hey, Teddy, I ain't worried about that.
I got friends in both places.
That's a good line.
And I thought it was good.
Listen, Mike Tyson, you want me to say
he was a great fighter?
Then you want me to betray what I really,
you know what I mean?
You want me to do that?
I ain't doing it for, listen,
I could do it to be a bigger Teddy Atlas
and I know it would work for me.
I know it would do great promotional work for me.
I know it would make me more popular in certain areas.
I know it.
I'm not that dumb, not that dumb.
But I also know what else it would do to me.
And I don't want it to do that to me.
I think he was a great talent.
I think maybe the night with Michael Spinks,
maybe the night with Mike,
maybe he could have been that fighter.
Maybe he could, but he didn't never really get tested.
But he might've been ready no matter what
to be tested that night.
That's how good he was.
That's how, even though it was a guy
who used to be a light heavyweight, I get it.
But it was still a guy who beat Larry Holmes,
who still had something left, Michael Spinks.
So, and a great puncher and an Olympic gold medalist.
But, and a special fighter,
one of the great light heavyweights of all time.
You know what Mike Tyson was?
He was a meteor.
He was a meteor that struck a cross,
and not too many meteors crossed.
And we still talk about him.
And unlike Halley's Comet, he came back.
And he's walking around.
And he has become greater after his career,
more loved, more beloved, more awed.
And he's been forgiven.
He found the fountain of forgiveness.
I don't know, I wish I could find that.
Where he has been forgotten for all his shortcomings,
all the things that he may have done, may not have done.
We don't know, only him and God know.
But he's been forgiven of all that.
And he's been, not only forgiven,
he's raised above it and above that,
and been brought above that.
He's been brought to the pyramids
of the greatest athletes in the world.
And in every way, in every way as a person,
as a fighter, as a historian,
as a figure, as a celebrity, I mean.
Even a philosopher.
Everything.
So I will take it back.
All right, all you guys out there, you forgive me?
He's the greatest of all time if you encapsulate all that.
If you encapsulate everything I just tried to describe
and explain, if you put that all,
he's the greatest of all time, yeah, he is.
But he still might be 0-5 in a record of 55 fights.
He might, in Teddy Atlas' book,
again, I got friends in both places, so I was okay.
Wherever I go, I have company.
Somebody there will like me, despite me saying this.
He might be 0-5 because of five fights
where there was something to overcome,
which really defines a fight.
He came, he didn't find a way.
Let me ask Teddy Atlas to introspect on the human nature
here as part of the complexities of your feelings
on this whole thing is that you know to some degree
that if you were coaching Mike Tyson,
he could be truly great throughout.
I know, I'm gonna cut you right off
because you asked a million dollar question.
I wish you didn't, but you did.
You did, because that's why you get paid.
I get it, you took the words out of my mouth.
That's why you are where you are, and that's why I'm here.
The humility.
I'm gonna, again, full disclosure, it's important, right?
I'm gonna cheat.
I'm gonna take some of Custer's wisdom, all right?
A little bit of mine.
Custer told somebody that if Teddy Atlas got his way,
he might've been a better person,
but we would have risked him not being a great fighter.
Now I believe, and I thought Custer did,
and I think he did up to that point in his life,
that part of your strength of character
made you a great fighter.
And truly a great fighter.
And part of that battle to be a better person,
that fight, if you will, to be a better person,
to overcome the themes, to be a better person.
Part of that fire you have to go through
to be a better person.
I really truly bought into it, and I'm in for life.
That is really the only way to be a great fighter.
And I don't think that's what Cus meant.
I think he meant that Cus knew more than I did
of what was about to come and what would come
and what the world was,
but how people would try to steal him,
how people would take him,
how people would steal his guy.
The last thing he had to, really?
The thing that he lived for,
because he lived to have another heavyweight champ.
The greatest fighter ever, Cus, in Cus's mind,
that he could be.
And I believe that Cus knew that he could put forward
a guy that had the ability to be the greatest fighter ever
without fully completing the mission
of what it takes to really be great,
but that he wouldn't be around to have to witness it.
And that he wouldn't, he was, man, this is awful.
He's willing to concede that he might be dead
in order to have eternal life, in order to have greatness.
Which Cus does have greatness,
and part of that greatness is attached to Tyson.
And he deserves it, he deserves it.
Cus was a great man.
And I wouldn't be here, partly, without him.
But that was part of the calculation.
I know that's deep, and I know that's,
oh, God, I hate myself right now.
But, um, but Cus, he knew he was getting out free.
He knew he was gonna not have to be there.
He was getting off easy.
Oh, Teddy, how do you say someone's gonna be dead?
They're getting off easy.
Well, I'll say it again in case you didn't hear me,
all right, he was gonna get off easy
and not have to face where he came up short
because he did his job,
because he put forward the greatest fight of all time,
and you guys screwed it up.
And he knew that that might happen,
but you guys screwed it up.
And whatever, that's your fault, that's on,
I tell you, Tyson would be mad at this,
but that's on Tyson.
How can you say that, Teddy?
He loved me.
I'm not saying he didn't love you,
but he loved him, he loved some other stuff, too.
And I don't know if Tyson could ever come
to grips light with that, and it's not his job to.
But it's my job not to hide from it.
I know Cus in dimensions that other people
just only think they know.
Did Cus know?
Did Cus know this about himself?
Did he reflect, did he introspect?
Well, he sent a message to me.
Cus sent a guide to me.
My wife was pregnant.
We were living in an apartment in Catskill
on Cordeskill Road.
We went through all this,
and I was getting ready to move to Staten Island.
And we still were there for a little while,
before we did, after all this went down.
He sent a guide to me, to the house.
Secret, whatever you wanna call it, my wife, me.
So, I listened to him.
Cus said, if you leave, I'm a messenger,
you know, whatever.
If you leave, this was in the aftermath
of what, the gun, the whole thing.
You gotta remember, Tyson was a ward of the state.
He was put in Cus's custody.
Cus was looking to adopt him, for obvious reasons.
So he had control, and he loved him.
How dare I say anything less?
I won't.
But it made sense, too.
But he was a ward of the state, still.
Do you know what that means?
There's rules.
Means the state's still overlooking it.
If he ain't living the right life, you know,
you gotta remember, he came out of a jail.
So, reform school.
But if he ain't living the right life,
he could be taken away from Cus.
What's not living the right life?
Well, he wasn't in school no more,
they didn't know about it.
He had some things that were going on,
we won't get into that right now,
in school and different things, whatever.
And he had a strain to put a gun to his head.
That ain't so good.
If a report came back to them that that happened,
he would've been taken away from Cus.
That couldn't happen.
Look, nobody knows this.
I talk about it a little bit, but never probably,
because why would I?
I don't know, why am I doing it now?
I don't know, because, I don't know.
Because I am, because it's now.
Because it's now, maybe.
Maybe because it's now, I don't know.
So he sent this man that, you know,
obviously we both knew, and he said,
here's the deal, Teddy.
If no talk about this wants it to disappear, basically,
you leave, and he will give you 5% his word.
Can you imagine?
He will give you 5% of Tyson's earnings
for the rest of his career.
But I don't regret it one bit,
because it wouldn't have happened anyway.
See, that's where I, I can be honest with my,
people say, oh, he's a stand-up guy,
because I told him to shove it where the, you know,
in that place, and tell Cus to shove it
in that freaking place, you know, I was mad.
Teddy, Teddy, don't get angry.
Don't get angry?
Are you out of here?
Are you serious?
Get out of here.
Tell him to go shove it over.
And, you know, my wife was like, huh.
But, and then people were like,
why didn't you take the deal?
It wasn't a deal.
It was an escape clause for Cus.
It was, it was a, it was an insurance policy
that his, you know, this kid wouldn't be taken away from.
And thank God he wasn't.
I wasn't going to go and say nothing.
They didn't have to worry about, Cus forgot who I was?
Cus forgot why he went to court for me?
Because of those, because of those characteristics
that he said he loved, and he noticed,
and that he admired, I didn't lose those characters.
He forgot that that was me.
He forgot who he was talking to.
He didn't have to do that.
How about, that's why I told him to shove it up his ass,
not because of the other insult.
And then, and then when people said to me,
oh, you would stand up,
because it was around a little bit.
It was around in the circles.
And then when people, ho ho, stand up Teddy.
He didn't care about the money.
I said, stand up, Teddy, what are you talking about?
How, how about, how about just realistic Teddy?
How about I live in a real world
that I was never going to get that money?
So I'm saying, I'm standing up to something
that I knew never existed.
So I ain't stand up, not in that way.
I am in other ways, maybe,
but not, don't, don't put a medal on my chest for that.
Because, because that never existed.
It was never meant to exist,
but he didn't even understand.
That was the one thing that,
that really disappointed me and Cus.
I was like, Cus, you really allowed this to get to you.
Where you allowed it to really fog up your thinking
to the point where you're smarter than that.
You're better than that.
That you would actually think you got a freaking off from me
of freaking pieces of silver.
Yeah.
You really think that?
That's what you, freak you.
Like all that you told me that you love me
and that we were, I was the young master
and all this, and you think you were gonna buy me?
And I was gonna, and that was gonna keep me quiet?
How about I would keep quiet
because I would always keep quiet.
So he thought maybe you might betray him.
Isn't that interesting?
Yeah.
And why did he think that?
No, no, really.
Fear?
Yeah, but yeah, fear is at the essence of everything.
It's connected with everything.
Fear of losing what he was gonna lose.
But it was more than fear.
It was him not believing in the things
that he told me he believed in.
He didn't even know that.
He believed in me because I was a standup guy.
Because I didn't sell myself.
Because I didn't freaking turn evidence.
I didn't make a deal.
I didn't do, and that's why he went to court.
That's why he stood up for me.
And I appreciate it.
And that was what he lived by.
And that was his, those were the blocks of being a man.
Oh, so much for those blocks.
Well, it's like you said, loyalty requires,
he would have had to take a risk
on losing immortality that he would achieve
by creating a great heavyweight champion.
100%.
But the only way you ever find out
if somebody is doing that.
It's hard.
It's the test.
And it was Kust.
This is Shakespearean, you know, the story.
Kust told me, Kust said,
and the tests come in different forms.
Yeah.
I said, all right, Kust.
This was his test.
And some people pass this test
because they're able to pass that test
because it's not really a test.
Not for them, because it doesn't speak to their weakness.
But it's the test that speaks to the weakness.
That's the one.
So this one, I get it.
I get what it spoke to, Kust.
You know what?
At the end of the day, I forgive you.
And I feel bad for you.
I feel bad that you were put in that position
after you lived your life that way
and that you taught that
and you preached that from the mountaintops,
that you had to be...
That you had to be...
I'm not gonna use the word,
but that you had to fail yourself
and that you had to somehow know that before you died.
I just pray that you didn't know that.
And you still don't know that because you were great.
You were great.
And you've given me some...
You know, you've given me something to aspire towards,
to try to be less weak,
try to be better
and try to be as good as you want it to be.
I wish I can someday.
More importantly, I wish I could make my father
you know,
feel,
just feel good up there.
Your grandfather now?
Yeah, for the grandchildren.
What, if you can give them advice
on how to live a life they can be proud of?
Just...
Do everything you can
to the best of your ability, every day,
to like yourself.
To give yourself a reason to actually say,
I'd like to be friends with that guy.
Is loyalty one of the reasons,
one of the things to aspire to?
Loyalty is your chance to have a fulfilled life.
Loyalty is your chance to have strength,
to have all the things you need to have a good life,
to be a good parent, be a good husband,
be a good grandfather, hopefully be a good role model.
Loyalty is...
Loyalty is, if you can find something to drink,
to take into your body,
to make you prepared for life,
to be all the things that you wanna be,
to be strong enough to be those things.
Loyalty would be the thing you would drink.
And when I say loyal, I mean unequivocally,
I mean unconditionally, not conveniently.
Obviously, you know that.
If you could be loyal, you could be a good person.
You could be a person that you would actually
like to be around, because you could be a person
you could rely on.
And I think that's one of the greatest assets
that a human being can have.
And what do you do when you're betrayed?
How do you overcome that?
You think of what you learned from it.
Use it as a roadmap
to remember and to think back of how you got there,
and how you got to the place where you got betrayed,
and how that person got to that place.
Try to remember that in your own journey.
Has it, for you, made you cynical?
Like, how do you try, how do you take the leap of trust
towards people again and again after that?
Just by remembering that I'm still trying to forgive myself
for the things that I came up short with.
And if I haven't figured that out yet,
it's probably okay.
To say
they didn't figure it out yet.
They didn't get it, they didn't figure it out.
And if I couldn't figure it out
and I'm still trying to figure it out,
maybe I could get over that initial stabbing
of what it feels like.
It does feel kind of like a stabbing
that you feel when you're betrayed initially,
and that you can only think of anger, revenge, hatred.
And those things, I'm not proud of that,
but I've felt all those things, you know?
And I still feel them sometimes.
And then I go back and say,
hey, you're still working at forgiving yourself
for some things.
Try to remember that, kid.
Remembering is an important thing.
Forgetfulness is pretty important, too.
And I'm trying to remember why we forget.
Why do we forget?
Because it wasn't something you felt proud of.
You think about your death?
Are you afraid of it?
You know, it's funny you ask that.
I never used to think about it.
I know people in both places, you know.
I know.
You got it covered.
You're gonna be all right.
Don't forget that.
I know people in both places.
Yeah.
Both neighborhoods.
I,
I,
I've been given credit for being brave
in certain spots in life.
I hope I can be brave when it comes time to leave life.
I hope I can be.
And that's as real and honest as you can be about it.
I hope I can be.
So far, so good.
When I've had to be certain things
that I was scared to freaking death,
I've found a way to beat them, for the most part.
And so I figure when that day comes,
I figure that out too.
It's gonna be another test.
Maybe the last one.
Teddy, it's a huge honor to talk to you.
It's my pleasure.
Thank you for being the human you are,
for being honest, honest about the full range
of human nature.
And thank you for talking today.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me and thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Teddy Atlas.
To support this podcast,
please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from Muhammad Ali.
I hated every minute of training, but I said, don't quit.
Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.