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September 2, 2024 40 mins

Newt talks with David Nino Rodriguez, a former heavyweight boxing champion whose career was abruptly halted by a near-fatal attack. Rodriguez shares his journey from being an undefeated boxer to surviving an attempted murder that left him with hundreds of stitches and a broken spirit. He discusses his struggle with destructive behavior, addiction, and suicidal thoughts, and his eventual redemption as an advocate for bullied children. Rodriguez also talks about his transition from boxing to podcasting, where he candidly discusses his experiences and reaches millions of viewers annually. Despite the challenges he faced, Rodriguez's story is a testament to resilience and the power of second chances.

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of Newts World. He was on his
way to stardom with a career as a six time
heavyweight champion, then an attack sidelined his aspirations and his
boxing future. David Nino Rodriguez was an undefeated boxer with
a knockout punch, headed for the heavyweight championship of the

(00:25):
world until an attempted murder left him with hundreds of
stitches in his throat, a permanently scarred face, and a
broken spirit. In his book When the Lights Go Out,
From Survivor to Champion, David describes his journey back from
the brink of despair with a no holds barred style

(00:46):
that reflects his boxer's craft. He reveals the turbulent past
that pushed him not only to the forefront of his sport,
but also into destructive behavior, addiction, and thoughts of suicide,
and ultimately to rede as an advocate for bullied kids.
I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, David Nino Rodriguez,

(01:08):
is the executive producer and host of Nino's Corner podcast. David, Welcome,

(01:29):
and thank you for joining me on news work.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
That's an honor and a privilege. And thank you for
having me.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
First, for the listeners who may not know you, let's
talk about your nickname, Nino. How did you get it?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well? It was El Nino? Okay. So basically they were
doing write ups about me as a kid when I
was like nine years old, and they'll passo times and
they'll passo paper. This upcoming kid with all this talent.
I was attracting crowds at a very young age to
watch me box and they called me, you know, El
Nino or Elweto. I look like a white boy, so
it was a Nini. But they would still write that

(02:02):
in the papers, and I didn't know how to say
it properly. I would say Nino. So that stuck with
me my entire career. Trust me, I wanted something a
little more threatening, but the kid is all I got.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
So well, then you became the threat once you were
in the ring.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
What that was in the ring? It was game over? Yeah,
I was. I called myself the calculated killer.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Why do you think you were so good so early?

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I think it was because my dad put me into
boxing at a very young age, at five years old.
I was picked on a lot as a kid. But
you know, people know in the seventies and eighties. You know,
when you're a kid, you get to just run the streets.
You just come home when the lights come on. And
I was always out on the neighborhood. So I was
constantly getting picked on and beat up as a kid.
And my dad just said he had enough of it,

(02:46):
and he just took me to the boxing gym tough
love and left me there. And the boxing gym was
in the ghetto, and he just left me there. And
my uncle was a trainer for the four Bliss Army
team and he saw me and just started training me
at a very young age. Let me tell you, I
was petrified. I was scared. I was terrified because in
my first visions of boxing, the first thing I saw

(03:06):
were these kids in the ring, blooding each other up, boxing,
sparring really hard, these two little ghetto kids, Mexican kids,
fighting each other. And I wanted no part of this. Man,
I wanted out of there. There was nowhere to go.
I had to stay, and it was just tough love
for my dad. I went under the tutelage of Tom
McKay and Rocky Delarza and they started training me at
five years old, and I developed a left hook from hell,

(03:28):
and I just took off with it. I ran with it.
It was my way to overcome my demons. I guess
you could say.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
When you got in the ring, how did you feel me?
What were the emotions as you watched your opponent get
in and you watch the ref What did it feel
like as a young kid be right there?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
You know? Terrified? You know when I first started fighting amateur,
I was terrified. I was terrified all the way into
the pros too, because it's a scary. You know, you're
stepping into the unknown. You really don't even though you
trained your ass off and you worked very hard, you
really don't know what's going to happen when you get
into that ring, and it's a flood of different emotions,
Like when you're leaving the dressing room into that tunnel

(04:09):
and the curtains open up, and then you're heading into
the ring. You're walking on clouds. I don't feel my legs.
I don't know how I'm going to be able to
take a punch. I have all these doubts flooding my mind.
I'm already toasted. I do enough. Everything's just a blur.
I can't believe I'm getting in the ring. Then you
walk up those steps, your whole team walk in with
you. You're under these bright lights, and then all of a sudden,

(04:30):
everybody gets out. You're alone, and you're looking across and it's,
all of a sudden, the most quiet place on the planet.
Even though the crowd's going wild, even though you can
hear the roar from the crowd, all of a sudden,
it's just the most quiet, peaceful place for me, even
though my nerves and butterflies are going everywhere. It's just
the most surreal place you could ever be. It's the battlefield,

(04:55):
right and it's just you and the other guy. And honestly,
that's what it took. That type of lifestyle is what
it took to take me out of my depression, anxiety,
suicidal thoughts. I mean, was that type of atmosphere was
the ring?

Speaker 1 (05:10):
So your dad and your uncle played a real role
in making you outstanding at an early age.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, I kind of feel like it wasn't much my
choice though. It was kind of like my dad just
dropped me off there. I don't really know how to
say it, except that he told me I'm not going
to raise a coward and although I was in the
boxing gym, I was still getting picked on quite a
bit from the bigger kids because they found out I
was boxing and all this, and it just ensued up

(05:38):
until my junior high years. To win. I finally started
fighting back, and then I turned into the bully. I
turned into the guy that I didn't want to be,
and I started finding these guys and beating them up
and becoming the bully, the guy that I turned into,
that rabbit dog, that junkyard dog that I wanted to
make sure nobody ever met with me again in my life.

(06:01):
And I started becoming a big man. So I was
six three sixty four in high school, and I had
a little man's complex. So go figure the small man's complex.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
So it's sort of like in your head you were
still six, but in your body you are now an adult.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
I'm still like that till this day. I have a
small man's complex. I just I was picked on so
much as a kid that it just it stayed with
me my entire life.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
I'm fascinated because you went to Catholic school, but the
challenge wasn't that you couldn't learn whatever. The modern normal
attitude about boxers is the challenge was that, thanks to
your mother, you were learning faster than the school. That's
a fascinating twist.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
My mom started teaching me to read. I get four
years old, three or four years old, I was sounding
out words and reading, and I was reading on a
college level by the time I was in third grade.
And I would sit there in class and just be
bored to death as the other kids were sounding out
were and trying to reget through a sentence, and whenever
they would pick on me to read, it would just
ble bit a bit real fast. It was just completely

(07:07):
boring to me. So I started getting in trouble. I
started throwing spit wads at teachers and just trying to
create things to just keep my mind occupied. And I
was constantly going to the principal's office, constantly going to confession.
I had to go see the priest for confession, and
I got more of an adrenaline rush from just getting
in trouble, so that became my high. I was always like, Okay,

(07:30):
what can I do today to piss off the teacher
so I can go to the principal and hang out
with the principal Because I liked the principle. He was
my friend, and we'd talk in the principal's office and
he would always like, show me the shoe, shine, show
me some punches, you know, and I'd work out in
his office and we were friends. And so that's what
my life was like all the way up to junior high.
And then in junior high, I'd just got in so

(07:51):
much trouble. In my eighth grade year, I got kicked
out of four different schools. I was an ISS and
I was an alternative. I was expelled. Then that led
me into high school to where I dropped out when
I got my GED. I got my GED in like
two days. The GD teacher was like, you see all
these kids in this classroom, they're all studying for the GED.

(08:12):
And I was like, well, that's stupid. Why don't they
just go to school. He's like, exactly, you should go
to school. You just passed the GED, had one of
the highest tests the results in the last ten years.
He goes, what's wrong with you? Why don't you get
back to school, blah blah blah. I was like, I
don't want to be in school. I want to be
a fighter, and that's what I'm going to do. I
knew what I was going to do, and that's what
I chose to do. And I went right into training camp.

(08:32):
Right when I left and I got my GD, I
gave my dad my ged, I said, Dad, here you go.
He was so disappointed. I felt really bad about that,
but I went on to follow my aspirations as a
professional fighter.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
So in that process, you go to the San Juan
Recreation Center in boxing gym. How big a influence on
your life was that?

Speaker 2 (08:55):
It was massive because that area of Olpaso was very ghetto,
It's very a lot of projects, a lot of poor kids.
And I always called and even though I was just
middle class, I mean, all of them said I was
the rich white boy, blah blah blah. I got picked
on a lot, and I wanted to prove I was
just as tough as any of those kids. But I
was bigger than everybody. And this is a true statement.

(09:16):
And you can ask anybody that knew me when I
was a kid growing up. When I was twelve years old,
I had a deadly left hook. At twelve years old,
they were bringing in football players I played for the
UTEP football team that were taking boxing camps and they'd
put them in the ring with me, and I would
be knocking them out one by one. I mean, I'm
talking snoring. I mean, these guys were huge football players

(09:38):
and I was just a twelve year old kid and
I had a gift. I just had a gift with
that left hook. So I got pleasure out of this
and next thing, you know, I just decided this is
what I want to do for my life.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Didn't it make some people jealous of you?

Speaker 2 (09:53):
Oh? Yeah, especially in my twenties when I decided to
turn pro and I started really knocking out guys. I
thought I had a lot of friends. You know, I
had about thirty thirty five friends that were always around me.
I guess you could call them an entourage. Some were
very close, we were like brothers. But later on in
my career I found out why they were really with me,
why they were hanging out with me. They're real motives

(10:16):
and it really bothered me. And I'll say to this day,
I don't talk to any of them anymore. But I
will say that I don't have many friends today, and
I'm proud of that because I realized what a lot
of people's intentions truly are and I couldn't see it
when I was young and dumb, doey eyed and bushy tailed,
whatever you want to call it. But I just couldn't

(10:37):
see it then, and I see everything so much clearer now.
But yeah, I had a lot of friends that were
around me that were really out to get me.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
One of the people who plays a really big role
in saving your life is officer Joe Sullivan. Tell us
about that. It's a fascinating story.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
You know, I can't help, but did you read my book,
because I a lot of people don't ask these d
tailed questions, so like, you're really digging deep here. I'm
actually impressed. Yeah. He was a police officer and he
was a boxer as well. He was a heavyweight fighter,
and I remember he would always come to the calls.
He would show up when I was in trouble, and

(11:15):
he would show up with one of his partners, and
they'd show up to a vandalism call or a disturbance
or whatever. He would arrest me, and he would arrest
my friends, but then end up taking my friends to
jail and dropping me off at home with my parents
and giving them a long speech on like why he
dropped me off this and that. But he would pick
me up every day after school and take me to

(11:37):
the boxing gym. He just felt like his responsibility. So
every day after school I'd get picked up three point
thirty at the bell. This was before I dropped out
by the way, and he would pick me up in
the cop car and drive me all the way to
the boxing Everyone thought I was getting arrested every day,
and he would take me all the way to the
boxing gym and train with me. And I got to say,

(11:58):
he played a pivotal role in my life life. I
owe a lot to that man, and I'm still in
touch with him till this very day. He is a solid,
solid guy, and I just I owe a lot to him.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Now there's a key point where you finally decide that
San Juan is not everything you need and you go
to Rockies bar and gym. What was Rocky's Bar in jim.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
It was off Alberta Street, off Reynolds and Alpaso. It's
under the underpassers under a bridge. It was in the
ghetto and it was a bar. It was called Rocky's Bar.
Well outside the bar was a boxing gym. So basically
you have all the drunks, the neighborhood drunks getting wasted
in the bar, and then outside was the boxing gym. Well,
the way they groomed me and built me up as

(12:44):
a fighter was Rocky. God rest his soul by the
way he passed away. He was murdered. He was murdered
in his house by a woman. Next girlfriend blew his
head off. The way he would train me was he
go get the drunks in the bar, bring him outside,
put him in the ring with me, and have me
knock them out. And he would make bets with them
and said the bar that they couldn't hang with that kid,

(13:06):
that thirteen year old, fourteen year old kid outside, and
they'd come out and they'd put the gloves on and
they'd get in the ring with me and I'd drop them.
I mean, I used to have a really good time
doing this because these guys just did not know how
to fight, and they were drunk, so it was really
quite easy. He would give me fresh meat, you know.
He would just send the next drunk guy over and
I would beat him up a Rocky and then i'd

(13:28):
go hit the bags. And I got a knack for
knocking people out. I couldn't imagine something like that happening today.
But back then it was all fair game.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
So he's having a big influence on you. Then he
gets killed, and as I understand it, you really fall
into a depression.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, because he was my mentor and he was like
a father figure to me. And I loved Rocky a lot,
and he did a lot for me for building me up.
I went to go train one day and he wasn't there.
I would always open up the gate and go in
the back where the gym's at, and he's usually there
with the stopwatch, just ready to meet me and get
me going and get me warmed up. And he wasn't there.

(14:25):
So sometimes he would go to like a fruit stand
or the grocery store and grab an orange or an apple,
and he'd be peeling it while I was wrapping my
hands or shadow boxing, and he'd be watching it and
watching me and mentoring me while I was getting ready
or warming up. And he wasn't there that day, and
I thought it was very strange. So I was looking
all over the bar. I was yelling his name. I
couldn't get a response. He lived in the house right

(14:47):
next to the bar. So I walked over there, raining
the doorbell, tried to open the door. It was locked,
and I just was very confused. His car was outside.
I just didn't understand what was going on, and so
I went ahead. And I can't remember if I got
in a workout by myself or I just left, but
I think I probably got in a workout by myself,
and I just left very confused, like this is not Rocky,

(15:08):
this is not what Rocky does. And I get home
and then the next thing I see, he's on the
news that he was murdered. So I rush over to
his house and there's yellow tape all over the house.
There's cops outside of his house. I see him on
the gurney and he's covered in a blanket, and I
just couldn't believe what I was witnessing. And he got

(15:29):
his head blown off by a jealous girlfriend. I think
she was like an ex barmaid or something like that,
just was jealous and just blew his head off with
a shotgun.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
So how did you deal with the depression that set
in after the killing of your friend.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Well, at that point, I was already very depressed. Boxing
was the only thing that really relieved my depression. I
don't know if it was something that was genetic, but
I was always dealing with depression as a kid. It
really started at thirteen years old. I was in severe depression.
That's when I met my next trainer, which was Louis Burke,
who's had many world champions and was a contender himself.

(16:08):
I went and sparred at a gym or something, and
he saw me, and he saw my talents, and he said,
I'd love to work with you, and I said absolutely,
And I started going to see Louis Burke up in
Las Cruces, New Mexico, and I'd drive there every day
to get the work in, to get the training in.
And then when he saw that I was dedicated, Louis
took it as a full time job to start training me.
And Louis Burke is ultimately the one that turned me professional.

(16:32):
So Louis definitely took me to the next level. After
a Rocky Glarza was murdered, it was Louis Burke that
really took me to that next level. And the biggest
regret I have today was leaving Louis Burke in the
prime of my career because I thought I knew too
much or whatever it was, and we had disagreements. But
my biggest regret was leaving Louis Burke because he was

(16:53):
a hell of a trainer. Man.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
You came up in part through the Golden Gloves program
and near mind, is that a pretty good program?

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah, I mean I think the program is really failing
the youth right now. I don't think a lot of
kids are boxing like they used to. Obviously, UFC and
MMA is really taking hold and a lot of kids
are doing that now. But I think the base for
any kid to learn how to fight is boxing and wrestling.
I mean, I think you got to learn those two
arts in order to really get a solid foundation. But

(17:24):
the Golden Gloves back then was stellar. It was very competitive.
It was a lot of kids in it, highly competitive.
My first amateur fight actually was against the Junior Olympic
champion and I knocked him out in the second round,
first ten seconds of the second round. And that's when
I knew, Man, That's when everyone knew that kid had
three hundred fights and that was my first fight and

(17:46):
I knocked him out, and everyone knew from that day forward, man,
this kid's going to go places. So it was really
just an amazing time in my life to just know
that I had all these aspirations and all these dreams
ahead of me.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
What was the big challenge and moving from amateur boxing
to becoming a professional.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
It wasn't a big challenge for me. Actually, if I
would have stayed in amateurs, I probably would have got
more experience. But I didn't have the style for the amateurs.
It was more of a point system, and a lot
of these kids were real busy and really fast. I
had more of a stalking, plotting system and style that
once I hit you, it was over. And they felt that.
When I went with my manager, Boss Spagnola and Louis Burke,

(18:26):
they thought they could groom me and maneuver me into
the right fights and step up the ladder the correct
way and build up experience as a professional. So professional
is different in the sense that the gloves are ten
ounce sometimes six ounds of your fighting in Mexico, no headgear.
It's a lot more brutal. But I think actually amateurs

(18:46):
can be a little more difficult if you stay in
it long enough. A lot of people that stay in
the amateurs too long keep that style throughout the pros
and they never develop into a really good pro. But
for me, I had about twenty am fights and went
right into the pros and they developed me. They thought
it would be better to develop me through the professional process,

(19:07):
through the ranks, then just get a bunch of fights
in the amateurs. So that's the decision I decided to make,
and that's what we made.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
You had a real career developing and real potential, and
then in twenty eleven you get attacked outside of a
bar in ol Paso, Texas. Did you have any idea
this was coming, I believe.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
It or not. It wasn't in an Opasa. It was
in Phoenix, Arizona. Was in Scottsdale, of all places. But
you know, and I don't play victim to this. That
year twenty eleven was very turbulent for me because I
was thirty six, and oh I had a lot of
pressure on my plate. I just broke up with my team,
which I regretted fully. It was like we were not
talking anymore. I went with a new team. I just

(19:51):
got done with a win against I think his name
was Hicks, my Kicks or something like that, and I
knocked him out in the first or second round, and
I remember I was out and I overdosed on drugs.
This happened twice in twenty eleven, the very turbulent year
for me. Twenty eleven February, I was at a bar
or a club in Dallas. I was partying with my friends,
and at this time, I was really juggling different extremes.

(20:15):
I was juggling alcoholism, drugs and being a professional fighter.
And if you know, it's like oil and water, it
doesn't mix. I was burning the candle at both ends.
So I'm at this bar and I'm partying, and I'm
doing everything with my friends, and I'm taking all these drugs.
I'm taking an adderall, I'm taking a handful of Viking
in I'm drinking alcohol, and all of a sudden, I
drink this stuff called GHB, which is a very potent drug.

(20:39):
And that was it. That's all I remember. And for
nine to ten hours of my life, I had no recolleation.
I just heard from a third party that I was
dragged out by the bouncers. I was thrown in the alley.
They didn't want the liability of a death inside the club,
and in the alley a nurse that was off duty.
When got my friends, I said, you better take him

(21:00):
to the hospital or I'm going to blame you. I'm
going to tell his family you all didn't do it.
He'll be blamed for his death. They raced me through
the highway to the hospital. I got to the hospital
and all I remember is waking up and seeing all
these doctors standing over me saying, we got him back,
we got him back. And there was like a crew
of like eight or nine doctors all standing over me.

(21:22):
Looks like I was abducted by aliens or something. And
just see this bright hospital light. And then I'm looking
up and I'm like, where the hell am I? And
then I remember the most telling thing and all of
that was the doctor's like, man, we almost lost you.
And I looked at him and I said, ah, should
have just let me go. And I threw my hands
up and I was very pissed. I was mad. I
just said, you should have just let me go. And

(21:45):
then they called suicide watch and they had nurses stand
over me and watch me. I was in the hospital
for three days. I think it was an ICU for
like two or three days, but then in the hospital
regular hospital room for another four days. And that was
the beginning of the year of twenty eleven. Then I
went off and won two more belts. I knocked out
Owen Beck and then I knocked out Byron Pauli. Then

(22:06):
after Byron Pauli, I was like, now we're in the
sights of a heavyweight championship of the world to fight
Klitchko or someone like that. We are right there, We're
getting offers, we're sending in offers, we're getting counteroffers, and
the world's ready to open up for me. And for
some reason, I just felt more pressure than I ever
have in my life. And I'm juggling all the extremes. Remember,

(22:27):
so after the Byron poly fight in December, so if
that happened in February. In December, after the Byron Poly fight,
I go out with my friends once again because I'm
getting ready to go back to training camp to train
for a much tougher fight. And I'm out in Scottsdale,
and of course I'm on drugs and I'm drinking again,
walking out of a bar, and I know there had
to have been an altercation in the bar, and I

(22:48):
don't remember exactly what it was because I was three
sheets to the wind. As I'm walking out, I hear
footsteps behind me faster and faster and faster, and then
I turn around and next thing you know, I'm surrounded
by about four or five men, and one of the
guys says, hey, man, I just want to shake your hand.
I'm swaying back and forth because I'm so drunk. I

(23:09):
stick out my hand to shake his hand, and out
of my peripheral vision, I see, like how a fish
would see a fishing lure. I saw something silver shine,
and as I tilt my head up, boom, and I
just feel my whole jaw gets slid open from my
ear all the way through my throat up into my lip,
and I leaned over and all my blood just starts

(23:30):
pouring out of my neck. And I thought, right then
and there, I'm dead. This is it. It's over. I
just got killed. And I see one of my friends
out of my peripheral vision come running up, going what's
going on here? And I hear all these screams and yells,
and then all of a sudden, he lifts his arms
up and they started viciously stabbing him in the arm.

(23:52):
He falls on top of me, and I remember like
he got stabbed three or four times in the arm
and shoulder, and he didn't even care. He was looking
at me. He's like, don't die on me, Dave. I
don't die. And next thing you know, I wake up,
I'm in the ambulance and blood is all over the EMS.
I saw worry on their face, and I just I
don't know why I did this, but I did. I
stopped and I said, hey, guys, guys, guys, please calm down.

(24:14):
I'm clean, because I knew my blood was all over them,
and they looked. I don't know. I just thought that
was the right thing to say, and then I blocked
out and that was it. That's all I remember. I
wake up a day and a half later and I
have three hundred and sixty nine stitches in my face
and a cosmetic surgeon just happened to be on call
that night that was there to fix my face the
way he did. But little did I know. You know,

(24:37):
they didn't take my life that night, but they definitely
took my career, and I wouldn't find that out till later.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
I don't want to take you to recover. I mean,
it sounded like a pretty terrible wound.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
I mean, physically, I guess a year, but emotionally, I'm
still recovering to be honest, I don't remember their faces.
They never got caught.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
So here you are. Now you've been beaten up, scarred,
almost killed, but you decided to go back to boxing.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah. The WBC had me in the top ten and
the WBA, and like I said, I was getting positioned
for a championship fight, and they put me on medical leave.
I went out to Las Vegas and I got with
another whole different team. So I've moved from two teams
and I got with a different team and I signed
with Main Events, and we thought it was to get me.

(25:29):
I guess a journeyman, a tune up fight before I
could get back in the ring again against a guy
that's in the top ten. And they got me a
guy named Johan something. He was six foot eight six ' nine,
big guy. So I'm getting ready for this fight. I'm
sparring big big men. I'm crouching down low, I'm exploding
up Bob Bob Bob, knocking guys out in the sparring.

(25:51):
I'm looking really good. I'm ready for this fight. And
then a week before the fight, he pulls out and
they come at me and they say, hey, he pulled
out of the fight. But I was already in shape.
I was ready to fight, and they go, we got
a replacement for you, and that was Darnell Wilson. And
I said, Darnell Wilson, and this guy's five to ten.
He's a completely different style than what I was training for.
But I took the fight anyway because I didn't want

(26:14):
to look like a coward. I was ready and I
just wanted to fight. But I had so much emotional
baggage and so much just distraught and frustration with my life,
and just after being attacked with a knife, it took
something out of my soul. I got into that ring
with Darnall Wilson, I just felt everything was off. I

(26:34):
just unleashed hell on him and we had I think
we had the fight of the year. We just were
trading punchers for six round straight. It was just a
crazy fight. And then the last ten seconds of the
last round you hear the and boom he caught me
with the left hook, knocked me out. All I remember
is waking up off the canvas and I see him

(26:55):
jumping up and down, and immediately I knew I lost.
And let me tell you, that feeling was worse than
getting stabbed in the throat for me, that feeling right there,
knowing that I threw it all away, I blew it
was worse for me so much more. And I cannot
tell you how I felt after that. My whole life

(27:17):
was just like a nuclear bomb went off. And I
tried to come back on another fight, got knocked out
in that fight as well. I wasn't recovered from the
last fight. So now I'm thirty six and two, no
longer thirty six and oh, and my whole life has
just gone, and everything I've ever worked for since I
was a kid just blew up in my face. Then

(27:39):
I get back in the ring. I win the last fight,
but I throw my back out, which needed an emergency
back surgery. So all these things just aligned, and you know,
ultimately the end of my career was thirty seven and
two with I think thirty five knockouts, twenty five in
the first round. But I still hold the record for
the most first round knockouts. But I could have done

(27:59):
a lot more, and I totally I have to say
I blame it on my drug and alcohol problem that
I had.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
So how hard was it for you to go through
withdraw and to function without dependence on the drugs.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Well, those were always just an escape. I was going
through so much and boxing and so much of my
life that I didn't know how to handle it. I
didn't have the right I don't know what you would say.
I just mentally just there was just so much pressure
on me. I just didn't know how to handle it.
It was just too much. I didn't know I was
going to be this undefeated prospect, and I don't understand.

(28:55):
I was just every time I drank or did drugs
was escape from reality. I was having a good time
with my friends. I was womanizing and doing all of it.
Do you know what, young guys? Do you know? And
I just I thought I had all the time in
the world. I guess I just didn't, you know, And
I just live and learn. I guess. You know, father
time is undefeated.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
So you turn from that though. You took those lessons,
and you've really focused your life on helping children who
were bullied. Talk to us about that.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, a friend saw me in the gym. I stopped
going to the boxing gym and I went to the
weightlifting gym, and there was a guy there. His name
is Salmontelongo. God rest his soul. He just passed away
last year. He was my age and he was a
professional basketball player in Mexico and he would see me
coming to the gym and he came up to me.
He goes, Dave, I can tell you're depressed. He goes,
you gotta do something, man. He was come with me

(29:46):
in my program and help me help kids. And I
was like, man, I'm nobody to help anybody. I don't
want to help anybody. What am I going to say.
I'm a loser, I'm a failure. He's like, Oh, you're
the champ. You're all pass those champ You got to
talk to the kids. And I was like, that's for
someone else. And he kept bugging me every day and
it was to the point that I was like, oh,
I'd see the guy and I'd go the other direction

(30:07):
and I was just like, oh gosh, here it comes,
and he come walking up through me. Hey, Champ, I
have you made up your mind? I'm like, dude, you
bothered me so much. I'm going to do it one time.
One time, I'm doing this for you and then leave
me alone. I did it one time and it just
grew on me and I let me tell you, I
showed up to the school in front of an audience
of about two thousand kids, and I got this strange,

(30:28):
little like return of an adrenaline rush. Nothing like boxing,
but something like that resembled it a little bit. And
I smelled like a liquor cabinet because I was out
drinking the night before. And I got up there and
I started talking about how I was bullied as a kid,
and the kids started laughing at my stories. And then
I could see the kids that were in the audience
that were being picked on, and I knew I was

(30:50):
resonating with them, and all of a sudden, it just
took a life of its own, and I was like,
you know what, sal I go, I'm going to do
this again. Man, you got it. I'm going to do
And I wasn't making any money. I was broke. I
was living on a couch, but I had my only
suit in the closet I'd put on and go out
there and talk to these kids. I'd take it to
the dry cleaners every day three days to get the

(31:10):
same suit clean, you know, and get out to the
schools and talk to these kids. And all of a sudden,
I felt dissatisfaction from it. And then the next thing,
you know, I'm feeling like, man, I feel like a hypocrite.
Here I am showing up hungover to talk to these
kids and how they needed to change their life, and
how I was bullied. And here I am a drunk

(31:31):
talking to these kids. But that was really the first
step towards my sobriety. To be honest with.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
You in that sense, the kids were helping you change
as much as you were helping them.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
They were helping me much more, much more.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
I'm curious about two things. One, what kind of role
does your faith play? We went to a Catholic school system.
Does it matter?

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Well. I was always a big believer in God, and
I still am to this day. In fact, I believe
more in Christ than I ever have before. But during
that time I would say I was just a fair
weather type of Christian. I wasn't really. I was like, yeah, yeah,
I know how to play the Rosary, I know how
to say the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and my consciousness,
I thought, was just so much bigger than that. I
was learning about all things, you know, dimensional and trans

(32:17):
interdimensional travel and aliens, and I was watching ancient aliens
and sacred geometry, and I was into all this stuff,
and I was just really just a believer of all things,
but not certain in one until recently, by the way,
But I don't know, but I always believed in a
higher calling. I always believed in a higher I always
believed in God. And that's really although I was completely

(32:39):
depressed and completely blackness, I still had. Even though the
fire was completely out in my soul, I still had
a little coal that was burning, and I knew that
if I could just stoke, that I could return somehow.
Now I really thought of my mind it would be boxing,
but it turned out not to be boxing. But I

(33:00):
still had that small remnant of a cold burning in
my chest that I could still be something. And that's
the only faith I had was God was going to
see me through this rough and terrible, turbulent time.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Your podcast is Nino's Corner, It's on Rumble, It's on
Nino's Corner TV, it's on YouTube. And I understand you
get like eighty million views a year. How did you
get into the podcast business.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
It was a complete accident. So this is how God works, right,
I was newly sober. I just decided in twenty nineteen,
on the twenty sixth, December twenty sixth, twenty nineteen, I
was at a bar and I was looking at my
friends and I was about to commit suicide. I really
felt I already wrote my book. The book was mainly
for my family. I wanted them to really just know

(33:50):
who I was before I took myself out. I was
severely depressed. I was so depressed. I remember that Thanksgiving
that they had to pull me out of the bar
to take me to Thanksgiving dinner. Then then when I got
to Thanksgiving dinner, they kicked me out of the house
because I was so drunk. That's just the way my
life was. And well, it turned out December twenty sixth
of twenty nineteen, I just got out of the hospital

(34:12):
for heart problems due to drinking and cocaine and adderall
the whole thing, and I had a aphibulation. And December
twenty sixth, that next month, I'm at the bar with
my friends and I just looked at them and I
thought to myself, Wow, I really have not given God
a chance. I've really never if I do take myself out,

(34:35):
and I'm just saying real talk here, have I ever
really given God a chance? Have I ever really quit drinking.
Did I ever really give that a chance? I mean,
did I explore all options? And the answer was no.
So I was at a bar with my friends and
I was drinking, and I looked at them, and I
looked at the mirror behind the bar and saw myself,

(34:57):
and I said to myself, first, I don't want to
be like these guys in five years. And then I
looked at myself in the mirror in my reflection, I go, Wow,
this is who I am now. And I put the
beer down and I said, if I don't leave right now,
right here, I'll continue drinking for the rest of my life,
and I will die a drunk. I waved at them,
and I walked out of the bar and said I'm

(35:18):
out of here, guys, and I never returned ever again.
Now fast forward three months later, I'm freshly sober. I'm
in my backyard and I'm doing Facebook lives. And as
I'm doing Facebook lives, I'm just candidly talking like I
am to you, just talking. And I got like maybe
three thousand people on a live, five thousand people just
listening to me go on and on about my sobriety.

(35:41):
And I was really the first one to kick the
door open for this. Right before twenty twenty hit, the
movie Out of Shadows came out. The documentary, and it
was right at the same time. I started talking about
pedophilia and the problem that's within Hollywood and politicians and
all the stuff, and I just laid into it. Man,

(36:02):
I just went all in. And it was the first
time anybody really heard anything like that, and it went viral.
Like I had no idea that that video was going
to do anything at all. So I'm sitting there, I
turn off my Facebook Live. Like I said, three thousand people.
By the end of the night, it usually gets five thousand,
ten thousand views. And by the end of the night,
I go back and check my Facebook and I'm like,

(36:22):
wait a minute, this can't be right. Two hundred thousand views.
Then next thing you know, I'm like five hundred thousand views.
I was like, what's going on here? Next thing you know,
I'm putting my phone down and I'm putting it on
the dresser and then notifications are going off and it's
going killing my battery because I'm getting so many notifications.
Now I'm thinking to myself, oh, I'm dead. They're gonna

(36:43):
come after me. Whoever the hell I pissed off, and
I'm sitting there just sweating bullets. I remove it off Facebook,
but it's already been copy and pasted everywhere, so it's
all over Instagram and it's all over everywhere, and it
gets millions of views, to the point that it's getting
translated in Chinese and German all these other languages, and
people are sending this to me, and I'm like, oh,
I have people that I haven't talked to in a

(37:04):
decade calling me saying, dude, do you really say this?
I'm like, oh my god. It was a complete accident. Okay,
this was not something I planned. It was a complete accident.
And then from there, I was like, I can either
run from this or pray about it. I prayed about it,
and I was like, I did run from this or
embrace it. I decided to embrace it. I started going

(37:25):
on shows. Next thing, you know, I'm buying a computer.
I never had a computer, and I'm plugging in a mic.
I'm buying a mic. I'm buying a light. Next thing
you know, I'm like doing podcasts. And I swear it
just happened like that. Nothing ever was planned. I didn't
plan any of this. If you want to know the truth,
I didn't sit down the pen and paper and say
how am I going to be a podcaster. I had

(37:46):
no desire to be a podcaster. I had no desire
to do any of this. It just took off on
its own and created a life of his own.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Well, it's an amazing story, and people can go to
Nino's corner. You know, you're really a remarkable person in
that you have sort of lived your life as opposed
to planning and being in the shadows and what have you.
I admire your courage and no matter what happened, you've
got up and put another foot forward and kept trying.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
I was a risk taker, and I just thought you
get more taken a risk than not. And it's just
like gambling. You got to go in there willing to
win big, but you got to be willing to lose big,
and if you lose big, you got to come back
and try again.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
You have a fascinating American story. People have the opportunity
if they have the courage and they're willing to put
in the time and effort, amazing things can happen. And
you're an example, you know, Dave, I want to thank
you for joining me. Your book, When the Lights Go
Out is a great read. It's available now on Amazon
and in bookstores everywhere. Your podcast, Nino's Corner can be

(38:49):
found on Rumble, at Nino's Corner TV and on YouTube.
You're really an amazing guy and this has been a
remarkably fun conversation.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
I appreciate. Thank you so much for having me on
as a privilege. When I found out I was going
to be on with the great Newt Gingrich, I was like, Ah,
this is cool. I'm going somewhere. Looks like I'm goid somewhere.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Thank you to my guests David Nino Rodriguez. You can
get a link to buy his book When the Lights
Go Out on our show page at newtsworld dot com.
New World is produced by Gingish three sixty and iHeartMedia.
Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson.
The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley.

(39:35):
Special thanks to the team at Gingish three sixty. If
you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple
Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give
us a review so others can learn what it's all about.
Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my
three free weekly columns at gingrishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter.

(39:57):
I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld
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