Mark Kriegel & Andre Ward get HEATED over Terence Crawford & Mike Tyson’s Secret Ability

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Where kren At I learned. I learned a few things
from this guy. You make those those tear and decks
open up.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
But you gotta ask the right, that right question, the
homework first.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yeah, I'm trying to get you too.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome back to another episode of the Art of War.
I'm excited about my guest today. Well, I'm excited about
every guest, but this guest today is a friend. He's
a former colleague and one of the best storytellers of
our time. He's also been called one of the finest
boxing writers of our time. He's a New York Times
bestseller several times over. He just released his latest book

(00:43):
entitled The Baddest Man, The Making of Mike Tyson. I
want to welcome to the show the highly acclaimed Mark
Kreegle brother.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
I'm going to go now. That's all I need.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
I normally don't like. The intro was probably not you
deserve more, you know, with all the acclaim that you
have and all all all that you've done it throughout
your career. But this is different for you. You're normally
sitting in my scene.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
I'm waiting for you to come with me. I don't
know how how does this feel I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Nervous and I'm I'm happy to have you anytime I
interview somebody like yourself. I just interviewed Stephen A. Smith,
you know, former writer, analyst or writer.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Remember it was a kid in the newsroom coming Yeah
you knew, Yeah, he played enough ball, Yes he knew.
I don't know if he remember I was still like
covering like cops and courts. If I do, remember when
he was covering high school? We run past names. Yeah,
you know, I played ball too, just not particularly well.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
We're gonna get into that, but it's hard for me
because I gotta come correct grammatically intros conversation research like
I gotta I gotta come correct when I'm sitting next
with guys like you said, this is This was painstaking
research for me. Man, I always want to start at
the top. I love the origin stories and I love,
you know, going back to where it all started. That

(01:57):
that always does something for me and brings a story
to life.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
You were raise.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
He's born and raised in New York City. You know,
take me back to every time we do a show
an imagg like, Man, I grew up right there. Tell
me about your earliest memories growing up in New York
City with your mother and your father.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
My dad taught it at City College and Harlem. It's
a wonderful man. He had a polio, got polio when
he was eleven, so lost the use of his legs. Leonard,
my dad was the most macho cripple anyone's ever seen.
So he's you know, he built himself up, physically reconstructed himself.

(02:33):
You know. It was from the Bronx, and so he
lost the use of his legs. And I think that
was it was the defining, defining event of his life,
and to a certain extent mine and and marrying my mother,
raising a family as he did. But my dad was

(02:53):
was it was a gentle guy, but a very tough guy,
very charismatic, was a teacher writer. I grew up a
couple of blocks. We're in New York now. I grew
up on Eighth Avenue, And if you ever see co
Op City in the Bronx, it's like a whole bunch

(03:14):
of buildings, it's a development. It's like it was like
back then. It was like the projects for June and
it was just on eighth Avenue, right by the garden.
I remember, I remember playing ball on twenty sixth Street,
Sat Columbus School Yard. I remember getting my ass kicked

(03:36):
after school PS. Thirty three A couple of times. I
remember sneaking into the garden because now I'm on eighth
and twenty eighth and the garden is like it starts
on thirty first Street, so we you know, you could
sneak in through the bowling alley. You could sneak in
through a couple couple of places. There was a there
was an elevator on the side. I remember lighting a

(04:01):
bag of dog poop, pressing the elevated but the security
dude comes out. He comes out, steps on step. We
run and go up the elevator into the garden. The
dry cleaner downstairs, Murray, the dry cleaner, the the knicks
would drop off the uniforms. So I remember going in
and like before I go out to play, you could

(04:23):
you could touch the unis like Clyde Frasier, Old Monroe,
you touch the uniforms, go out to play. It still
didn't do me any good, nothing rob but even a
little bit. No. But I love New York in the seventies.
I love the music, I love the town. I never
thought i'd leave, but I don't. I don't think I
come back man, to ust to California.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
You hear a lot of New Yorkers that leave that say.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
That I never thought i'd leave. Man, I never thought
there was any other place in the world. And my
wife's the same way. We met. We met late in life,
and I don't. I don't know if she come back highly.
You know, I mean you you know, I'm a little
what do we call it? You know, you remember me
on the set. I'm a little high strung, and you

(05:08):
know I'm conditioned. Man, I'm conditioned, like no one can
get in front of me in line, you know.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, but talk to me about that, because that was
one of my questions. Like, you know, I used to
meet like you know, we you know, I'm from northern California.
And as a kid, as an amateur, you go to
the National so you see everybody, see Philly kids, you
see d C, you see New York kids. And the
New York kid was always that he acted older than
he was. I'm looking at you, I'm looking at you know,

(05:35):
the Curtis Stevens and you know Joe Greens and he's
gotten like man, hold on, mate, y'all at my age, Like,
what are y'all talking? They just always had an old soul,
like they had to grow up fast? What is that
about the New York kid? They were different.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
I don't know if it's like this today, but everybody mixed.
I go around the country now, I don't see people
mixing gyms. It's Mexican gym, it's black jeeps, white whatever.
It is. Like we went to the park, everybody was there.
So the kids from the projects, the kids from my blinde,

(06:10):
kids from you know, tenements. Everybody's mixed in. And it
was democratizing. And it made you slick, and you knew everybody,
and and you knew when someone was trying to get
over on. You learn those skills. And I remember like
going to college or going to summer camp, I'm way

(06:32):
beyond these kids, you know. And and and in the
way it was almost like and again, I don't think
that this is I'm not sure that this is true anymore.
How how New York was to the rest of the
nation was how New York produced great point guards because

(06:52):
they were smarter and they were slicker, you know. And
and and that goes from from Bob Coozy to Mark
Jack to Pearl Washington, Nate Archibald, all these great point
guards because they were crafty and they were they were
a few paces ahead. And I think that when New
York was best, when I love it the most, there's

(07:13):
something to that point guard analogy, like New Yorkers figured
out figured out the game ahead of everyone else. When
it came to boxing, there was always a great New
York fighter, even if like Ray Robinson wasn't necessarily from
New York, and boxing was woven in. Basketball and boxing

(07:36):
were woven into the fabric of this tower. I mean
a place like Jimmy's Corner, you know what you see
like in Raging Bull. I mean, I remember when we
were on strike in the newspaper businesses. We go to
Jimmy's corner. He would take care of us everyone on strike.
You could run a tab. But I think that this

(07:59):
town made you little bit slicker, some of us a
little bit louder. And I know because we've talked about
kids you met in the amateurs. It wasn't just louder.
It was also like I know something you don't know,
and a lot of it at least in my generation,

(08:22):
not me. But you learned talk better, and there can
be an advantage to that. You know, I never had
any doubt that this was the center of the planet.
Like I remember Ali Fraser, I remember kids talking about
it in school. I remember something happening like this is
the eighth Abnues like two blocks from my house. Something

(08:44):
incredible was happening in the world. Had grown ups and somehow,
even though it was a fight, it had something to
do with politics and culture and this and that and
all stuff. I didn't understand it whatever, it was second grade,
third grade, but I knew that I was in the
center of the world.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
That's wild to me being from where I'm from, and
even like just California as a whole, but now people
when you hear California for a non Californian, they think
southern California northern as a whole.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
We're two totally different places.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
But like you have these massive events happening, like you
could throw a stone and hit MSG. That's crazy to
me to think about because I got to drive twenty
minutes thirty minutes to my nearest arena from where I live.
So the fact that that MSG and then MSG at
that is right there that I don't I can't even
fathom how that.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Is first time my father took me to a ball game.
We had to go up in the players elevator because
it handicapped right, and I went up with Phil Jackson
was there and a guy named Bob Kaufman from the
Buffalo Breves. I think it was Christmas nineteen seventy or
seventy one, and I just thought like, oh, I'm in
the middle of the planet. I remember, I remember because

(09:52):
the dry cleaner couldn't go giving me tickets for the
Knick Celtics in nineteen seventy three and double overtime. I'm
watching this like you know. And also there was a
sense now it's it's it's different. There are a couple
of things coming up in New York that were city rituals,

(10:15):
the Golden Gloves at the Garden, and there was always
a great New York fighter like say Camacho. Okay, But
but also you had a sense that that the great
basketball players were from New York and this was the
city game. I don't I don't think that's the case anymore.
And I also I also think that you know, if

(10:37):
you're any if you if you have any game as
a ballplayer now you never see the park, Yes, never
you know, like you're on an AAU squad specialty training.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
You can train up and dropped out. You need to go,
You're not get on your bike running walking.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
I associate, I associate playing ball with New York and
that it was. It was the park, the game was
thirty two by two's, the smell of Chiba and a
big ass box radio, and that was all part of

(11:14):
ball for me. And now if you have any game
at all, you like you're your only scrubs play outside.
Now it may be a cliche, but I don't think
it's a lie. I think that through the decades, the
New York athlete, the high school kid who comes up
point guards whatever, New York fighters do have a swagger

(11:36):
and it's not it's real and it's it's part of
the act, is part of the game. I think the
even though he he came of age upstate, in many respects,
Tyson was a New York fighter and he had the

(12:01):
most swagger. I mean, he had a swagger on a
different letter, on a different level. It became certainly it
became one of the most, if not the most potent,
part of his arsenal. But I remember you telling me
about kids and the amateurs in New York, like, where'd
you get this? Where'd you get this swagger from? Part
of it is you think you're you're smarter and slicker

(12:22):
because you've met different types of people, you've been in
different types of circumstances, but also because you know that's
that's part of what was for here.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
When I first met Curtis Stevewell, I hadn't met him yet,
but we had the same tournament my first national ten
years old. I'm in my room resting, and you know,
the coaches would go downstairs and they'd be drinking and
doing their stuff at night, but they'd be talking smack.
Verse came up the next morning, was like, hey man,
it's a kid from Brooklyn Brownsville. I was like, I
didn't know what that was. And coach Andre Rosier, they

(12:54):
were down there bragg He said, my nephew grew up
under Mike Tyson's door. Like that's what they were clinging
to me. But but there's also that there's there was
a sense.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
Of of pride when you go back to this idea
of swagger and the culture of New York. I'm not
passing myself as off as a as a as a
hip hop guy or a historian. But I do not
think it's any damn accident at all. The hip hop

(13:26):
was invented in New York, in the Bronx. If these
seminal rappers came out of Brooklyn, I don't think it's
you know, when you talk about the folklore of Mike
Tyson in Brownsville, that's the original murder Incorporated neighborhood. And
it doesn't matter if it was Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, Italians,

(13:48):
it was always it was always some version of murder Incorporated.
And and that came with a certain swagger. And I
think that one of the one of the things that
I truly loved about New York is that it's always
a tale of ethnic succession, so that it doesn't matter

(14:14):
if it's politics, crime, music, ball or boxing. One group
replaces another group, so that you know, you start off
in Tyson's neighborhood with murder Incorporated, and you end up
with all these like legendary stick up kids who became
you know, some of them became bosses you others became debt.

(14:38):
But the continuum, the way that cycles through time, whoever
lands here goes through the same stuff that to me
is what the New York swagger is about.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
But how much of it I guess what I'm asking
is how much of it is? How much of it
is real? How much how much of it is substance?

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Right?

Speaker 2 (14:58):
So, like I said, there's you got in a bucket
in every city, in every state. But I've seen New York.
I'll just say fighters right now, I've seen them have
to They've started good, not all of them, but they've
had some some unique struggles. Man where at a certain
point there was a falterer of fault. And that happens
everywhere all over the where. I'm not just picking on
New York. I'm just asking you, because you know the

(15:20):
fabric of the New York athlete, what have you seen.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
The ultimate the ultimate case, it's Tyson for all of
his physical ability and prowess, which was considerable, and I
don't think he gets nearly enough credit on the come up.
Once the fear is punctured, he becomes easier to beat.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
But that's the character part. Where is the fall off,
like what is the fall off from?

Speaker 1 (15:48):
I mean, look, it depends, it depends on the guy
or the woman, It depends on the politician. It depends on,
you know, the artist, It depends on the athlete. You know,
does your talk, does your talk match the deed? For
each guy, it's different for each guy, there's a different

(16:09):
breaking point. I mean, it's funny. One of the one
of the interesting cases, like zad Judah, who's whose dad
knew Mike as a kid. It's in the and and
they're Brownsville guys. If you're a Brownsville guy, you expected
to act. You can't show any vulnerability, right, And what's
the one thing? We all have vulnerability? Man, So you know,

(16:33):
if you probe and you were an expert at this
in the ring, if you probe right, Covilev was a
scary guy. But you're going to find a vulnerability. The
question is where does it? Where does it come? And
like I think that in the case of Mike my
my opinion here one of the many reasons he became

(16:55):
a much nicer guy in the last in the in
the last act, it was because he's no longer a fighter.
And when you have to know when you're obligated, when
you're obligated to play this persona hey, man, it necessitates
certain things in the rest of your life. It's almost

(17:17):
like I'm reading this book. A friend of mine did
on Tupac and he's like a really sweet Katie's a
nice kiddies in a drama program, you know in Baltimore.
He's like a theater kid. But he gets he gets
mixed up in hip hop and there is a persona

(17:39):
that he's playing. Now turns out he was a tough kid.
He was a reckless kid. But it's always having to
prove to get you jammed up, to get you in trouble.
It's tough and it can kill you.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
It can kill you or it can ruin your life
and give you a lot of heartache and pain. Because
my pastor always says, this, man, be who you are
because what you win the people with you got to
do that to keep them.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yes, So if I win you.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Where are I got to beat that because as soon
as I start being that, they're like, that's not what
I'm following you for. If I'm the money man, I
got to be the money man all the time because
that's what people, that's what you want the people.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
But it also it also necessitates. It's like once you
start playing the role, whether you're entertainment or sport, once
you start playing the role and people you're getting paid
for playing that role. Now you're obligated to play. No
one wants to see you become like a pacifist. No, no, no, all,

(18:39):
especially the sport of boxing, right. You know, it's it's
interesting because I very sort of like reverse engineered my
psyche went the opposite way. Like he would point to
the Mike Tyson mentality and he would say, we got
to learn how to beat that, because there's a.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
Lot more of that out there than it is. The
humble guy. I didn't say humble, but just a guy
that is quiet. But really it is about that life
when it comes down to it, in that ring or
on whatever sport he's playing versus You're not gonna look
the part, but you will have it, and he will
work on my mind even at.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
The nationals, like anti New York mentality, and I always
I think you know this from the beginning from I
admire that. I admire that so much because New York
in many respects, not all it's built on deed, but

(19:31):
it's also built on reputation, and in boxing especially that
I can create some some funny situations. But in the
in the case of a fighter like Mike, you can
never show any vulnerability. Also the the other thing with
Mike and with other fighters too, but it's also its

(19:54):
most pronounced entyson is it. He came up in the street.
He came up in Brownsville, which is like it's its
own thing, and that was particularly brutal time to grow
up in Brownsville. But then when you're incarcerated, especially as

(20:20):
a juvenile, and you're in and you're out, and you're
in and out, the place where you really can't show
any vulnerability is inside. So I think that this this
notion of being the scary guy and not being able
to show any vulnerability, even though in his interviews now
one of the things that's most endearing about him is

(20:43):
his ability to be vulnerable and to be honest. But
you know, when you got to play that all the time,
But what happened, And it goes to this point of
always you know.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
For a fighter, even an athlete, even a straight guy,
you don't want to wake up and be that guy
every single day.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
But once you are that guy, you have to be
that guy. I can't you know how many I've covered
so many, so many guys who you know, stick up
kids and they became like big bosses. But they couldn't
let anything pass. And this is a theme that runs

(21:22):
throughout this They couldn't let anything pass because once your
reputation is damaged, then you have then then someone else
is going to try to punk you. And and that
runs all through all through this, all through this book,
and I think it's that way for all athletes, but

(21:45):
fighters in particular. I'll never forget first time I go
to SPA in gleasons, Yeah I'm scared, but just the
act of going up and coming through the ropes and
then you realize I'm on a platform and guys are

(22:05):
watching me. So there's there's there's three, there's three real
actors in this play man. There's you, there's me, and
there's the audience. And one of the things that was
most intoxicating about Tyson is how he played in front
of the audience, the quality of the knockdowns, whether it's

(22:28):
the same thing in the street. If you see a
guy get like really messed up in the oh my,
oh wow, it stays with you. But you're I hate
to say, part of it is a performance. And if
your rep is built on all these people watching you
on the audience. Now you're you're obliged to give them
a show. And I think that that's that's what makes

(22:52):
it's true for all athletes. It's true for all performers,
but boxing the most because you're in there and you're
basically naked.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Mike took it to the next level. You know, it's
one thing to perform on fight night and be that
rare guy.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
But Mike. Mike had a vocabulary.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Mike is spit, meaning he could talk well, and he
knew what to say and when to say it. He say,
he say that, He'd say that one thing at that
press conference and you see a grown man get fearful.
Mike had that to go along with what he did physically.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
And that's a huge element of what took Tyson to
this level where he remains today, why we are still
addicted to him, and why Jake Paul, who's a really
smart guy, at some level he knew. I think they
did like one hundred and thirteen, one hundred and eight

(23:38):
live streams, but I don't know how, like something crazy, right,
but he could only do that number with Tyson. I
don't care if he's fifty eight thirty eight, ninety eight.
You want to whatever you want to say about the fight,
and there was an ancillary benefit that we got this
great female fight right before that. But he knew. And
when you talk about what he said, there are a

(24:00):
couple elements of it. First is the knockout and and
people it's like jazz. People lie their asses off, Oh
I love jazz. Oh yeah, what's your favorite album? You know? Oh? Well,
you know, okay, I love I love I love the
Sweet Science. Okay, yeah, well you know, but you know,

(24:22):
and I know you're here to see some type of
Mike Tyson. And when Trevor Burbeck falls, when he wins
his first title, he falls in every corner of the ring.
That stays with people with the first generation of video.
But then you put a microphone in front of him
and there's the voice and you go wait and you're
trying to reconcile his voice the high with the destruction

(24:45):
you just saw. And then it's the stuff that comes out.
And to me, even back then, I thought that that
the the sort of racist, the quasi racist thing that
kept pop been up in the assessment of Mike Tyson
was that he was stupid. He is the smartest son
of a Yeah, very smart. That always rubbed me the

(25:08):
wrong way, even when I hated him. And the stuff
he cited was so extraordinary. Some of it came from
cust to model okay, like I'm going to put the
bone up through his you know, and his handlers were like,
oh my god. He didn't say that. Don't lie. He
said it, and it came from cuss but it did
the opposite of scare people away from it. Wait, I

(25:31):
got what did he say? I got to hear that again.
The famous speech that everyone remembers as a goof I'm
going to eat your children. Well that really started was
this is after a really quick knockout lousavarice in Scotland
and it comes atlantic on on each your children. But
the whole time he's grieving in camp, he doesn't even

(25:53):
train because a kid he grew up with, who he
did time with in Spatford, which is the which was
the infamous juvenile detention center out here in the Bronx,
had been killed. One of these stick up kids who
had been You'd been killed, got named Darryl Bound called
him homicide and he was he was straight up grieving
through that. I didn't train. And that's the stuff that

(26:17):
the people forget. Was he selling the fight? Yeah? Was
he out of his mind with grief? Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Let me take it back still back to your father, man,
you had You had an interesting quote. You said, my
father was very charismatic, a crippled man writing about the
nature of masculinity. It informed almost everything I've ever written.
What did you learn about your father watching him throughout
the years in your lifetime?

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Your biggest takeaways? I remember being four or five years
old watching him teach a class and the kids spell bound.
I remember reading sentences and paragraphs of his that I

(27:03):
wish he never sold it, never sold anything, I mean so,
but I never had commercial success. I'm thinking how beautiful
the sentences were, and to me, the really unit of beauty,
the measure of beauty for me, is in a sentence.
I remember what I think was his frustration and not

(27:24):
having commercial success. But he was a different kind of
he was a different kind of writer. He felt that
not having commercials. I think so he would never he
would never admit it. I remember my earliest memories of
him were of him working out like we had like
the old iron bar bells, sitting on the floor doing
you know, he was massive up here. And remember, take

(27:49):
me out through football, tell me he was a good
ball player. Who wasn't And I remember him falling. Mm hm.
I remember him falling. So from until I went away

(28:12):
to college, most of the time he was on crutches.
So you have a like this, this big guy with
with with braces, old fashioned, you know, braces and barrel chested,
big arms on these aluminum crutches. And he walking in
the streets in New York and he would walk, he
would walk upstairs, little stairs in Rome, walk everywhere, drive everywhere.

(28:37):
But I remember him falling, and I remember the crash,
all coming down mm hm, the sound of it and
the might of it, like a wave. It just hit and.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
M hm.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
He was the superman. H You don't want to see
you you don't want to see your father, you know,
falling and he couldn't get back up himself. You had
no legs, trying to grab onto something and pull himself up,

(29:25):
or reluctantly or furiously accepting help. And you know, you're
four or five years old. I can't. This big son
of is like two hundred and some are pounds, how so,
so no one wants to see their father fall but
I remember that, I remember the crash be coming down

(29:49):
like a tighter way.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
But it's interesting to me, you know, just that that
what he dealt with didn't didn't limit him or or
cripple his mind like he was very That's the part
I'm saying, like, what did you learn from him pressing
even though he had that limitation.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
That there are no excuses. You know, there are no excuses.
I mean, he's poor and crippled and born in the Bronx.
I'm middle class, born in Manhattan. There are no excuses.

(30:24):
You became a writer because of your father. I didn't
want I went to college, and even after I got
out of college, I thought I was going to be
a lawyer because I never wanted to be vulnerable in
the same where my father was. I never wanted to
have to depend on the reception of what I wrote,

(30:45):
or I thought it was unfair. I don't know, but so,
but I was a talented writer, and I go. I remember,
I'm tending bar and I'm studying for the l Sacks,
and I start writing because you know, I'm supposed to

(31:07):
be a writer for a lot of reasons, my father
and whatever my natural talent, what I was actually good
at Yeah, I take the essay portion of the test
and walk out. Mm hmm, I'll go to my friend's house.
He goes, what's mine is supposed to be in the lats?
I say, I am going to do it? Really? Yeah it.
I go through four years of college. I quit playing

(31:31):
basketball because obviously the coach was saying, but he didn't
really recognize my true genius as a shooter. Yeah, I
get out. Did you have some game? Though? Well, not enough?
Let me. I went to a school, Swarthmore College, very
prestigious division but not not prestigious for basketball. But it

(31:54):
was the only place I knew I could actually like
play ball as a freshman. So your your game above
the room?

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Or blow the rim?

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Well blow? Well? Blow? Well you can shoot that right? Shoot?

Speaker 3 (32:07):
Yeah, you had a three ball? You shoot a three point? Well,
I'm so old they had a three point I played
these in high school. If they did, I might have
like hung around a little bit longer.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
But was Pops feeling it? I think that, uh? I
think that I wanted to. I was not a talented athlete,
but I fashioned myself into an an adequate like high
school basketball player. I loved it, but I also loved
like I did love the idea like giving him legs.

(32:49):
I loved it. I thought of making proud of me.
You know. So I get out of I get out
of school and I take a job. I take a
job at some place in Washington, d C. Which is
like you go for a year or two before you
go to law school or something like that. I'm like,
I hate this. Man might just hate this. It would

(33:11):
have been a down on my lawyer. But I think
I think I would have. I think I think I
want to be a writer. So I quit. I come home.
I say, Dad, I'm gonna write my novel. Yeah, where
you're gonna live like I'm living my Yeah, I'm really
happy novel. I can't even write sentenced and uh. I

(33:39):
remember being torn down that year trying to think of
what I was supposed to be. And I went through
the books on his shelves, you know, which is mostly
like male American literature, and a lot of it about
you know, how how to be a good man or

(34:02):
a tough man or whatever. You know. It all had
an influence later later I did find on his shell
a student of his gave him a book about boxing.
My dad liked boxing. I thought that he thought of

(34:25):
himself as a fighter, and it's not a particularly original metaphor.
But I found a book called Reading the Fights on
his shelf. It's a beautiful anthology of boxing, right, and
it was from one of his students who said, keep
on fighting. And I start. This is eighty eight now,
and I start looking through the book and there are beautiful,

(34:49):
beautiful boxing stores like Pete Hamill, who was my mentor,
my rabbi, and the newspaper Business wrote a beautiful eulogy
for us, the model. And there's a piece from Norman
Maylor about Ali's ego, which is essential. And then there

(35:11):
was another piece on the death of a of a
of a Welsh fighter by Hugh mcilvenny great I think
Scottish columnist about the death of Johnny Owen who's killed
in a fight with Lucy Pantur in La in nineteen
eighty and I'm reading it, I think, holy like, I mean,

(35:35):
this is beautiful. I think I can I can sort
of do this without without knowing that this was a
I think this is the sport I was supposed to
write about. I didn't know that then, but I kept
I kept returning. I kept returning to it and those
books on my father's shelf, Norman Mailer action with I

(36:01):
found this extraordinary account of the Patterson Listing fight, all
of it, all of it wound up in here and
one way or another in my head or like the
Patterson listening is essential in this like you know, custom
model builds up Floyd Patterson, who really ain't much more
than the middleweight, and he makes him the youngest heavyweight

(36:24):
champion ever, which is extraordinary, insane, and then he gets
demolished by Listen. And I think and and Listing figures
very heavily in the Tyson story. Everyone was scared of
Listing because he was He was the scary black guy,

(36:46):
and it was so much he should have been redeemed,
This country should have embraced him, and he was scorn
from the White House on down. And what Tyson's handlers
didn't understand was that the world the change was it
was okay to be sunny Listing now. But I found
all this stuff on my father's shelf, this ego piece

(37:08):
by Norman Mailer, and now I think the boxing is
a whole is a symphony of ego. All of this
stuff that I found on his shelf. The later winds
up here. I remember you telling me we were talking
about your doc. You said, hey, I found this. I
don't know if it was a Duffel bag or foot
lock or something with all your dad's stuff. And I

(37:30):
think of that that shelf in our apartment with his books.
That was telling me something, you know, that was that
was a It's shaped the nature of my ambition. I
became a sports writer by accident, and my entre into
it was was basketball. But once I found boxing, you know,

(37:53):
I just feel like covering the nets of the jets,
but boxing, it was. It was a gift. Now. I
remember the first big fight I covered Bo Holyfield one
watching it and I remember like like a glob of
like vasoline and flying off at Vander's face, like redicated

(38:14):
with an uppercut, and like it was brutal. But I'm thinking,
oh wow, this is this is what it's about. This
is this is beautiful, might be terrible, it's violent, damn,
this is I understand what all those guys were writing
about it. This is where I want to be.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
You write about many things, but you know, like I
was close to my father before he passed in two
thousand and two. And you know, like we mentioned, you've
got multiple New York Times bestsellers, you know, columns, essays,
and you're writing about complex family dynamics and more specifically
with fathers and son. What is it about the father
son relationship that draws you?

Speaker 1 (38:55):
I mean, look my dad, full of reasons. We've been
talking about. My dad was this extraordinary influence. And everything
I did in my first novel was about fathers and sons.
My book about Pete Maravich Man it's about fathers and sons.
Mancini and Marivich are explicitly about fathers and sons. Joe

(39:17):
Namath was was not Tyson's both. But I think the
most driving force is the mother. But I think that
anything you do, all the dysfunction follows you all around
and makes you who you are, and and the love too.

(39:38):
But in boxing it's the most clear, it's the most explicit,
and people like people break my balls. Oh man another
like father's story. So from Kriegle, I get but hey,
but but but I started certainly with ESPN since the
time we know each other. I didn't ask for this age.

(39:58):
I didn't. But but here comes this sport where everyone
now is trained by their dad. And we've talked about
it that your dad reached this point where he had
enough sense of himself. And I don't want to speak
for you, but this out, okay, but say, hey, I'm
going to give you to another man. He's going to

(40:19):
trade you because I know the perils and I know
all the stuff that doesn't happen anymore for whatever reason.
But one of the reasons I do this story about
fathers and sons so often is because just the way
this sport ended up, you know, Ta Femo, Devin Hainey, Lomachenko.
I go on and on and on and in a

(40:41):
certain way. Look, I understand it. I want to be
a writer in large measure because of my father. Okay,
but the ultimate in male vanity and what it is, Hey,
my son can kick your kids. I forget. Literally, my

(41:02):
kid will mess your kid up. What you're gonna do
about that's at the pro level. But that that you
know where it starts. No, I understand that.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
But I'm saying, that's that that intensity like that that's
starting locals, regionals, nationals, guys going out, I understand, And
that's what the that's what the young kid is brought
up in too. Like people don't they don't like register
that obviously because they're not in the in the sport
like that, or don't they're not in those formative years.
But like, that's the stuff we're around, that that type

(41:29):
of energy, that type of you know, ego, that type
like hey man, my boy, and you now we gotta
go back it up. I gotta back up your smack
talk in the lobby at two in the morning while
y'all drinking.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
And there's and there's, and there's another. I see this
whole time in the amateur circuit. I see it in
the gyms, but there's another element to it too, and
it's less attractive than even in the ego, which is
the money. And I do feel there's a lot of kids,

(42:01):
you know, who feel responsible for the family's livelihood. Someone
once made the family family family. You're the family, Yo're
you within a couple of golden gloves titles. Guess what
you're the family business. You're going to bring us out
of here. I once had a manager make the case

(42:24):
because I can't prove it, but I think it has
something to do with the financial crisis of two thousand
and eight. Everyone became after that, the every dad became
a trainer. You know, check out YouTube videos, some of
them pretty good. Okay, you know David Benavite's father to
your Femo's far it goes on run. You know, these
guys did not come up in the game, but some

(42:46):
of the kids, the kids are championship level fighters. But
I also think that there's a sense it's New York.
I also think there's a sense that becomes very clear
to the kid by time he's a teenager, like you're
the family business. You're going to get us out of this.

(43:06):
You are our hope. That's a tough one for me.
And I also think, by the way, and Tyson subscribes
to this notion, by and large, I'm typecasting here, and
I guess you're an exception. The toughest fighters, the great conquerors,

(43:27):
are Mama's boys. And Tyson makes this case it's like
Alexander the Great, which is another thing, is like, maybe
got this from Cussin, maybe it's him. He has this
breadth of knowledge of really interesting stuff bouncing around in
his head by Alexander the Great, and he compares himself

(43:49):
to Alexander the Great. My line here is like I
wonder how like Alexander the Great would have done on
amboy stream. But Tyson is not really available to him.
After his dad splits, She's broken. He knows that, and
he can never at least from from his autobiograph, which

(44:13):
is a great resource in this, he comes back and
I won this title. I want I'm going to be
the greatest. Well, there's always someone better, someone's gonna he
can never get that love. The interesting thing to me,
and the incontrovertible fact of his career is that the
three guys who beat him when he was still Mike Tyson,

(44:38):
Vander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis and Buster Douglas, whatever else you
want to say about them, they were all straight up
mama's boys. And that's an extraordinary that that's more than
a coincidence to me, you know, I think, look to me,
the toughest, most resourceful fighter we have today is a

(45:00):
mama's boy. It's Terrence Crawford. Now it wasn't the too
much love, it was like the motivation, but Terrence Crawford's
motivation and proving his mother wrong. You canna get your
ass kicked now you watch. It's not unlike what Tyson
talks about with Alexander the Great, I'm gonna conquer Europe
or Ranger to show my mom and somehow, the at

(45:25):
least anecdotally here the the motivation that comes from the
mom's side is even more potent and the stuff that
comes from the dad.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, I think for me, I relate more to like
a man Sini. That's probably my you know, my favorite
work from you the good Son, that's probably the most compelling,
most most relatable, because my father passed and I made promises,
you know, I made promises to my dad, you know,
when he was dead. The day he died, I leaned
in and I knew he couldn't hear me, but I

(45:54):
said it, you know, more more so for me than him,
because I felt myself teetering, like I want to just
abandon everything and just just just just bot so, you
know Mancini, you know, promising his father world championship that
he didn't get but he was still alive when he
was still alive, and then finally getting the world championship,
and then six months later killing the man in the ring,

(46:17):
and that that forever.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Shaped his career, shaped his life.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
I didn't do that, but I would always think about
even those moments that if this ever happened, I knew
that I'm done. I can't go go go forward. But
when I look at that story and even even even
Kim's mother, you know, do cook him, you know, his
mother committing suicide three months after he died of brain damage.
That But but the father, the father son, like man,
the the motivation and the and the fire from the debt,

(46:43):
like that's what I relate to.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
I it's for you. I didn't want to do this
because I didn't want to go back to the nineties
when I was like columnist who knew everything about everybody
but Mancini I wanted to do and man Cini, you know,
the publisher wasn't crazy about it.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
You're supposed to be doing the book on Jordan's supposed
to be doing it. Dild you not want to do
a book on Michael Jordan For.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
The same one of the same reasons. I didn't want
to do a book about Tyson. What the hell am
I going to say? The bar is so high? What
are you going to say? That's what's a new way
of thinking about him? And I think also it was
too fresh. He hadn't left the stage long enough, man
Senior was forgotten. But you're right in that the father

(47:32):
son thing was was most was most compelling to me.
And I had this idea of Ray, who I knew
from California, Ray talking to ghosts. H was me, Kim

(47:53):
and his brother and and and there's another element here
because he's religious, so he believes in and after life,
and the ghosts were reeled to him. And I started
thinking about Ray and his present life in California, and
I remember those fights, and Ray was like, it's hard

(48:15):
to remember now. It's hard to remember what this was
like now because boxing was a major league sport and
it was on Saturday and Sunday, and it was on
Network TV and there was no internet. That's what you saw.
And after Ray Leonard, there's a time where where Ray
Mansenior is the highest paid athlete in America. Forget basketball, football,

(48:40):
forget all that, and he is like in the Perfect Storm.
He's from the rust Belt. He's from, you know, a
busted out factory town. During the first term of Ronald
Ray Youngstown. Youngstown. Youngstown's like the Brownsville of the sort
of Midwest of you know, Brownsville is Brownsville is its
own thing. It's like I remember guys, you know, like

(49:03):
a friend of mine from college, like talking about fighting
and oh he's from Brown, he's from he's from Youngstown.
Like no, that's a different thing. Like they're tougher than
like us, but also a big organized crime town, you know,
And there's always this question in Youngstown, like who does
it belong to the mafia of Cleveland or or the

(49:25):
Mafia Pittsburgh. But I saw Ray talking to talking to
these talking to these ghosts. I remembered how heroic he
was because he didn't just say he didn't. It wasn't
like speaking over a casket. He was saying it to
the world, I'm gonna win the title for for my dad,

(49:45):
who got screwed out of a title, never got a chance,
you know, never got his title shot. And this was
in the forties. How can you not love that story?
And and he was so big. There's this period in
American life, a brief one where people will come up
to him. Remember he's like he's demographically at that moment

(50:07):
in the early eighties, he's like the perfect white guy
to come along for television, white ethnic It's like your
father would have life of your father's father, all this stuff.
He's gonna busted out town or.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
So.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
It's like this irresistible story that they can sell. And
he and there were I think in large respects. Sometimes
it's really unfair. They're two kind of fighters, the fighter
with a story or fighters who story you know, and
the fighters hasn't The story hasn't been told. But his
story was irresistible. And there's this moment in American life

(50:40):
where people come on up to him straight up serious, saying, yo,
when you're you gonna kick mister Tees. They don't make
any distinction between him and Rocket's just like the same,
like Italian dude who fights a certain way and that's crazy,
but it's real, like people when you're gonna kicks. So

(51:02):
he was super charged, and he had the right kind
of style. It wasn't it wasn't a style that was
going to make him have a long career. But he
was also by the way, he's better technically than he
gets credit for. He had a better jab. I remember
Bramble telling me that.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
But think he forgave us solf for killing Kim.

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Yes, but I don't think he killed Kim. I think
it's boxing and I think that.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
And I would keep dying at the hands of and.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
He's he's devoutly religious him. I don't think he was
having the same fighter and he and it certainly hurt him.
I remember Aaron telling me, he goes, look, you can
sell a lot of stuff, and with Mancini you could
sell anything. Again, he's he's rocky, but you can't sell death.

(51:53):
And he's right, all the heat that he generated, like
right up there with Ray Leonard, the height of Ray
Leonard goes away. You can't sell dad. So what do
you do when you you've done everything righteous? You win
the title? You you you you make it right for
your family, for your father, for your for your busted

(52:15):
out town. And this happens, and this happens. What you do? Man?
And now you left talking to these ghosts. And there
was another element with him, with with with his with
his brother was mixed up on a lot of stuff.
So what do you do when you're a kid and
everybody's everybody's on your job, everybody wants to hang out

(52:38):
with you? Mickey roar this one not one? And now
the other thing that that did draw me to man
seeing his story was his dad in that and this
was personal. Is that the more I knew about his father,
the more I understood the father as a wounded character.

(52:58):
And I do know about out a son's love and
wanting to I don't want to say rescue, but but
ennoble the wounded father. And I remember like Ray talking about,
you know, being a little kid picking up his dad
at the bar when he had too much you drink,

(53:20):
and between the lines, you know what that was about.
And I think that the make the family name right again,
that he succeeded in that, that was beautiful. I mean,
it's not a chance that the tyson of a guy.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
Shift gears for a second. H You've been at espnsin
twenty seventeen. I think we got there right around the
same time.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
You can get me in trouble now a little bit bit.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Okay, phenomenal writer, but you're not signed for the camera.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
What do you like more? Do you like to write?
Still currently?

Speaker 1 (53:54):
More than you love writing? And I've always hated writing.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Come on, man, you just told me you loved it.
That's why you were drawn to it.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
How you gotta telling you so good at because I'm
good at it and I worry about every sentence, every
mark of punctuation and I and I see the same.
It's funny because like you know, well, we would argue
about you.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
You tease me, you call me neurotic.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
You're neurotic like me.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
I'm like, I'm not neurotic. I just I'm just me.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
I admire that. Man. It's like and it's one of
the things that one of the things I always thought
that would work so well with you and Timmy. Timmy's like,
it's coming out bang you have to no, wait, wait, wait, wait,
I want to say that again. And there's a perfectionism
about you, and and it's not natural for television that

(54:47):
you want to you want to perfect everything. And there's
a sentence or a paragraph that you have in your head,
and I see it. I know how much care you
taking it, so I do the same damn thing. It
was the funny thing that we would argue about the media,
but to me, we would agree more times. And I
talked about this with Timmy all the time, like we

(55:08):
would usually agree, my like, and most of our assessments
came about the character of the fighter, and Timmy was
like emotional and making a judgment right away, and it
was about strategy. You gotta know you got boom. He
would come out. And that's why I thought you guys
were so great and I miss it.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
You like being on camera?

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Yeah, apparently you don't like writing. I like when it's done.
I'm happy when I when you know the pieces. I'm
happy when I crafted, which you know, I like to
take to the grave with me. I like. I like
the beginning of this. I like the end of it.
There are characters in here. I love. There are paragraphs
and sentences I love. I'm proud of myself. I'm happy

(55:51):
when it's finished. I go damn, I am mm hm.
We saw you in this book.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
We saw you in the middle of this book.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
And I was it was worse than usual. How's the book? Man?

Speaker 2 (56:01):
This thing is gonna kill me? Yeah, and you take
us up.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
But every time it doesn't, If it doesn't kill you,
it doesn't make you cry. It ain't. I remember the
first time that happened. I wrote a basketball piece, piece
about New York and basketball, and I got to the
end I started to cry. I didn't know why, but
from that point I said, if it's something, if it's

(56:26):
a big thing, I can't I get to the end.
I don't cry, man, something's wrong. I was faking it,
like the perfectionism I have when I write. Not that
I'm not that even not good. No, no, it kicks

(56:47):
my apologize. I apologize all the times I was an
extra pain in the while I was while I was
working on this, But I never felt I never felt
so kindred with you. Is when you're working on your
autobiography and you're walking around like me, You're walking around

(57:08):
like you just got your It's hard because it's and
I don't I think what you think is what I
think is just once it's there, it's there forever, forever,
going back and TV.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
It's like you say one thing and then you know.
But I'm watching you for many years. You're measuring those
words the same way you're writing them.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
And it would be better if I just boom. If
I would be better and broadcasting, if I could ever
simultaneously control my writer's instinct and my writer's ego and
let my hands go just up like Timmy lets his

(57:50):
hands go like I got to think about it and
make a grand statement. Sometimes it gets in the way.
I would have been a better broadcaster if I could
let my hands go and be quicker, and I had
to learn things, you know, by trial and error, a
lot of error over over the years. I tell you
the writing that I learned to really love was essay

(58:10):
writing for TV, and it was a whole different craft.
When you when you have something like this and you're
taking custody of one hundred and twenty one hundred and
thirty thousand words, two hundred thousand words. God helped me
in a case with Joe Namath. You think that the
weight of the book has to do with it's you

(58:30):
know how heavy it is nonsense and TV I learned
to cut through and get to the heart of it,
and it was the only way I could stay on
the broadcast was look to I don't know if masters right,
but to learn this essay form and to boil it
down to what's the nub, what's the issue, And more
often than not, it's about the fighter's ego. It's about

(58:53):
the spectacle of it, and it's this incredible continuum the
boxing is, which is like ecstasy to humiliation, and it
keeps going. The stakes are so damn high. So writing
about that. Writing for TV made me a better writer,
made this an actual shorter book that I found exhilarating,

(59:17):
and y'all like TV because I don't. There's a famous
columnist and read Smith and he was asked, well, what's
what's your process? Oh? My process is real, My process
is easy, he said. I just sit down in front
of the typewriter and I opened a vein. And he

(59:38):
was a bleeder. Larry Merchant once said to me why
he liked TV or Lary Merchant was a great newspaper columnist.
I was a bleeder too, Mark. I know what you're
talking about. I'm a bleeder. I'm a bleeder. You're a writer,
and you are you're a bleeder because it hurts and

(59:59):
it's supposed to and if it doesn't hurt my feeling, yeah,
now you're doing it right. Yeah, but how do you
how do you hurt? How do you bleed?

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
When you're writing about another person an athlete?

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Where? Hold on?

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
How do you how do you? How do you respect
that person? How do you respect that athlete as a
man or woman?

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
Not treat them sub human, but yet still do your job.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
I don't think I ever treat anything.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Not saying you, I'm saying a right, no, no, no, how
does that work?

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
I can only tell you for me, Okay, I try
to treat I think a how think of have not him.
When I was a kid, he didn't exist to me.
He wasn't real. He was just the villain in my column.
I came up, I was covering cops and courts. My
first Tyson job is Mitch Green, go up to Harlem.

(01:00:46):
You know, he just got into a fight with Mitch Green.
It was a group like it just it was another thing. Man.
It was like going to Bensonhurst. It was like going
to East New York. It was just another job, you know.
It was like it was a city side reporter. I
knew who he was, but he was an abstraction to me.
And then he became a full on villain. So he

(01:01:07):
was a bad guy in my column. Another guy, Lloyd Daniels,
was a basketball player, became a junkie, but an incredibly
gifted guy grew up next door. He was the hero
in my column. But I knew Lloyd, and I knew
what he had struggled with, and I could empathize with him.
And I remember he came back from getting shot. I

(01:01:28):
meet him at West for Street and my career, Yeah,
when he had become human though to me, to me.
In twenty twelve, I go to see his one man show,
which his wife really, in her infinite wisdom wrote the
first making sense of his life, and before Spike Lee

(01:01:52):
got ahold of it, so it was really rough man.
It was in preview at the MGM, and he wasn't polished.
It was the performance was kind of dagged and you
can still stay working on stuff, and I'm watching the show.
Here's a guy probably never one good thing about him. Yeah,

(01:02:14):
I told you before, a boy crying. I'm holding back
the tears. I'm like Tyson making me cry, and with me,
I'm doing a story meet backstairs. I probably wrote more
bit about you than anybody. Did he know who you were?
And who knows? He might might might not. I don't

(01:02:36):
know what you remember when he didn't if he cared. Yeah,
And I told him my first job was like Mitch Queen,
my first Tyson assignment. And then you know, I would
get like tips at the city desk, like he threw
through stuff all over the house and the mansion in Bernardsville.
From page we Young reported me, I want to get

(01:02:59):
on the front page. He says to me, Wow, how
does that make you feel? Yeah? How to make you feel.
So I started thinking about being a young reporter in
this town and like being on the front page and

(01:03:20):
being in the in the heat of that mix. Man,
I'm like, it's like getting high. It was a form
of it was adrenaline. It was rush, it was I mean,
it was about New York, it was about Tyson. It
was it was live. Man, that's all. He's just kind
of like not it's like, not in judgment, but acknowledging that, yeah,

(01:03:44):
it was. It was all a dreamalized. But that was
the moment I'm ashamed to say it that he became
full on human to me. And how does that work?
When I said said, did you ever yes, he was
like forty five. Then I said, did you ever imagine

(01:04:07):
being here? Because what do you mean? Like because like
being forty five? And I could never imagine being this old.
And that's the thing that's one of the peculiarities and
the beautiful things about the Tyson story is that he

(01:04:30):
outlived not just mine, but his own capacity to imagine.
He was born to die. There's a famous line about
about Sunny liston. I'm probably mangling it, but that he
that he was dying. He started dying. The moment he
was born. Tyson was like that too, But here he is,

(01:04:55):
and now he's in this place that no one could
have anticipated.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
He's beloved.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
This book doesn't deal with that, but from the beginning,
this book deals with why are we addicted to him?
Why is he such an important figure in the American imagination?

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
But if writers right, I mean, you talk about this
a lot, and we have throughout the years. If writers
don't have that moment like you had with Mike, when
do they humanize athletes? When do they humanize five that
it goes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Back to what we're talking about. Before I could say,
gods that cover on camera? Nah, I want I need
the guys. When I go back to my room, I cry,
see a female did that to me? So it is

(01:05:43):
far like like his father's voice. I heard that in
this neighborhood. My whole life is that voice like in
the park, Hey bro, But I know what he went through,
even when he's crazy, you know, I want to like,
what do you come on? What are you kidding me?
The great thing about boxing, and I've said this before,

(01:06:05):
boxing made me a little bit better writer than I
actually am, because it deals with all the stuff I
wanted to deal with as a writer, fame, masculinity, how
you deal with humiliation, heroism? What is heroism? What is fear?
So all that stuff is explicit. You don't have to
go searching for it. It's right out there. Because the

(01:06:27):
protagonists male female that you know, they're naked physically, almost
physically and certainly metaphorically. It's all there and and and
what made them fighters? What? What? What makes you want
to empathize with them? The wound, the hurt. It's not
just the ability. You like, ability of athletic ability, Okay, that's

(01:06:50):
one thing, but there's got to be something in there
makes you a fighter that's different, and more often than not,
it's the dysfunction in your backstory.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
But if a writer has not put the work in,
and it's not just on the writer, but I'm saying
if a writer has not been trustworthy, every time you
read an article, he's coming for you. I'm not saying
just regularly understand, but this is where we listen. Every
every time you turn on your fight, let me go
see what they said. It's nothing positive. It's always a
backhanded compliment or something negative. And you already got trust

(01:07:21):
issues coming from whatever lifestyle you came from. You don't true.
I'm not true. I don't trust you, So I'm not
gonna give you the thing that you need to start
humanizing me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
How does that work? Athlete? Writer? How does that work?
You may not have a good heart, doesn't mean doesn't
mean what you saw was wrong. If I'm calling the fight,
I may you know. I could say something is heroic
or something is cowardly. May not mean the guy is
heroic or cowardly. Do I know him personally? Maybe? Maybe not.
It's harder for me to call a guy a coward

(01:07:52):
or to cite him for an ethical or moral fault.
If I don't know him, it's easy. If it's hard
if I do. If I do know, it's easy. Confession
it's easy. When I was a kid in the nineties
a columnist. I don't know him, I don't give it.
And plus he ain't behaving well. You know. Some things

(01:08:15):
I wrote were overboard, some things weren't man you know,
and Tyson's an extreme example. But and this is what
I this is what I liked about the old media formula.
You call out a guy, you threw a bad pitcher,
But whatever you know, you're in the locker room. The
next day, you got to say, Okay, I'm in the

(01:08:35):
locker what's you know. I remember the Mets wanted to
kill me, but I didn't care because I didn't want
to be a sports writer. I wanted to cover like
New York. I think that the problem that you're talking
about is more pronounced today because every idiot with a
phone can have an opinion on something they really know
nothing about. So, I mean, part of its human nature. Now.

(01:08:59):
If I have a job and I gotta go cover
a ball game, I can't know everyone on both teams,
you know, or a fight, I can't know everyone. I
gotta rely on my best judgment. I trust my best judgment.
Sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes there are biases that I don't
even know about, but I trust myself ethically. Basically, your

(01:09:20):
point's well taken. But everyone tweeting and instagramming or whatever
the hell else they do right now, I can't even
put a picture up on there, but they're offering their opinions. Yeah,
I mean at that point, I really, I really, I
really admire Sakur and I like Secur because he he

(01:09:40):
was honest with me, Like when it came down to
going on camera. He gave himself up. Always always be
indebted to that, and I think he got a bad deal.
I think he got a bad deal in Dold Santos
because he beat a guy who's supposed to be big
and bad with one hand. Okay, people didn't like to fight,
that's great. I asked the paint about that, and a
pain didn't know it was coming up on this fight.

(01:10:01):
So I don't know how it turns out this week.
But to pay the knows, I said, what do you
think Chakour's weakness is, Well, if he listens to the
social media when he answers social media, that could be
his weakness. He said that, yes, and I don't think.
I don't think that he's wrong. Okay, but how is
that different all those chuckleheads who are now experts on

(01:10:23):
boxing and think Shakur isn't tough, isn't this isn't that
has no game, he's boring, doesn't want to fight as
a runner, which is I've never I still haven't seen
Chakour run. I've seen it be not violent, I've seen
it be not ambitious. I've seen him for one punch
at the time, but I've never seen him run but
you have not thousands, not one sports writer. You have

(01:10:44):
millions of dudes on here going like, oh, he's a runner.
Well you're basing that on what? So what I'm saying
my question is how is that less evil or less
informed than the old media formula, because I don't think
it is. I think we have these like stupid notions
that are reinforced a million times over. But guys who
I don't know what fights are they watching? It's a cool,

(01:11:07):
violent fighter, No, I don't think so can he not
be excited? Okay, depending on what the task is? Is
he a runner? What the hell are you watching? What
are you watching?

Speaker 2 (01:11:16):
With social media, you gotta contend with it. You have
to deal with and just like the meaning you had me,
but it's a different ballgame because I don't have to
engage you, I don't have to talk to you, right,
So I use Terrence Crawford as an example, and I'm
not gonna name names, and I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
Just speak Jim.

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):
A lot of people were wrong about him. Bob has
his opinion about I'm not looking at the books. I
can't speak on what he lost, and I can't speak
on that. But I'm saying him not being a draw,
you know, talking about his personality, you know, and not
realizing this dude's story, what you've detailed in great detail
this whole time in ESPN, but not having a wherewithal

(01:11:57):
to say, Man, maybe he's not very talkative because of
what he's coming from, and there's a trust thing. So
let me do a little work to try to build
his trust and then maybe we can have a better conversation.
They just they wrote what they wrote. They put the
headline who is they? I'm saying, those they know who

(01:12:19):
they are, those that did it? All I can this
is this is, this is But hear me, I said,
those that did it, they know who they are.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
This is a point of frustration to me.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
They tried to bury that dude, and what happens is
but here's my here's my real issues. Not even the action,
because that's probably not gonna stop. It's probably not gonna stop.
People are gonna write, they're gonna do what they want
to do, and then they'll show up for the media
event and then they'll put a camera in your face.
And I don't think fighters should engage writers as if

(01:12:48):
they were other fighters. You know, these guys aren't fighters.
I wouldn't engage you on that level of me personally,
But how can you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
Put a camera a couple of times you wanted to
smack me?

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe if you don't, but no.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
You put you put, you put it just because you
have a job to do.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
But man, you've been writing that. I was just looking
at the last dance the other day again and and
I forgot all the stuff because you know, I was
young when that stuff was happening that they're writing about
Mike Michael Jordan. I don't know what some of his
relationship is with some of the media, but it's like
it's like these are these.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
Are cheap shop. But Michael Jordan didn't suffer from bad
press at times. He did.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
His father died, he went to go play baseball. They
his airs, They they had certain things that they say, some.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Of it some of it in the media press like
you're doing the you're doing the best you can. Yeah,
you're doing. Let me get to Jordan and I'll get
to because Crawford, I think, is an interest. I ain't
done on crump for you, neither of mine, neither of mine.
I agree with a lot of what you say, but
like Jordan's man, you're there, you got something coming out

(01:13:55):
the next day. You're doing the best you can on deadline.

Speaker 2 (01:14:01):
And but isn't the best when like he retired and
then they say that, oh, it's really a suspension and
they're hiding something like those are personal thing or his
father dies, it's probably because they're gambling and.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
Doing the best.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
That's doing the best you can.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
You think, do you think people didn't like people think?
And I was there, I covered it. People were on
Jordan's job and they should have been. He was the greatest.
He didn't Michael Jordan didn't suffer from bad press and
and and so he did and some of the some
of the things that are cynical, it's like you have
a right thought. I'll tell you what I think you're
talking about, which is something that I was taught when

(01:14:37):
I was a kid. I was a New York tabloid
commerce probably everything you hate in the media, okay, cool?
And I was taught this to your point. And man,
you want to be like Shakespeare, are like I don't
like great, knock yourself out. Go be Shakespeare on your
own time. But right now I want some red meat.
I want red meat. I want some to tell the newspapers,

(01:15:00):
and they were allowed to ask you for that. And
in one way or another, most consumers want some form
of red meat, certainly on the phone, on social media.
You do the best you can and the time allotted.
Some guys and women are good, fair, some not. I've

(01:15:21):
been on I've seen both sides. I don't think Jordan's
suffered from bad press. I mean, it wasn't like he
was in New York and in New York especially you
talk about the New York swagger. We were expected. He's
a global superstar, but we were expected in New York,
the city, but we were expected in New York. Yo,

(01:15:42):
don't be guiding up the athletes. They could do that
in Chicago. They definitely do it in La. But New
York man, you know, and he'd always like throw a
punch just to make sure you were doing your job.
Is that dishonest? Is that wrong? I don't know. I
did the best I could as a kid. No. No,
But I'm telling you I'm kind of malicious. But I'm copping.

(01:16:04):
I'm copping to what you said as a columnist, and
I'll tell you why. I just told you. Hey, this
is the instruction this is the job. Man. You can't
if you're if you're a New York City columnist, you
can't forgive me, can't be seen as straight the same
thing you were talking about New York swaggery. Man, don't
let him like, don't let him get away with that.

(01:16:26):
It was. It was a mindset.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
What's the non New York's guys excuses?

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
It depends on the I always thought the other guys
around the country were like much softer than we were.
We were just like filming in New York. They go
back to Crawford. I don't think the last time I
spent as much time covering ah trying to think on

(01:16:55):
just a single assignment as I did on Crawlford in
Nebraska might have been a homicide in Brownsville of a
copper who died in the Tilden projects, where social characters
from I had a hard time selling that. I had

(01:17:17):
a hard time selling the Crawford thing, and like people
are like, well, who is he easy here or there?
And ESPN gave me a lot of space and a
lot of time I took with that Crawford thing. And
I'm really proud of it because I was in like
the minutia of his life in Bomax's life, and I
felt privileged to do that, and I wanted to show
it around to everybody, like, look at this story. And

(01:17:40):
a lot of it was about Crawford and his mom,
and I didn't go easy on them and Crawford and
his kids in Crawford driving to go wrestling with his
kids three four hours, five hours in the damn car,
probably because he didn't, you know, his dad wasn't in
the navy. And I love that goddamn story and I

(01:18:06):
wanted everyone to read it. And then we did another version,
like sort of on camera with him and his mom,
and it was a hard story. And I remember he
fought Benavetez and if you go back you look at
the rating for that fight, it did a really good number,
I mean, like great, and Benavite's was a Benavetez was

(01:18:30):
a for that time, considered a little bit substandard opponent,
even though he came up he was incredibly talented. And
the fight got juiced up because because Benavide's went to
go slap him at the way Crawford has a story.
It's an incredibly dramatic story, and I think it was
under sold and you don't have to be like a
song and dance guy to sell a fight. Interesting case,

(01:18:53):
you know, Floyd Mayweather says, what do I gotta do
to sell him? To my mind, he reconstructed himself and
he became this incredibly probably the second most lucrative fighter
after Tyson. But Terrence shouldn't have been asked to do
anything other than what he did. My opinion, no, And
I think that, well, I'm sorry, who are these other

(01:19:14):
guys who were who like a household words that are
selling he needed. But here's the thing. To me, what
Terrence got blamed for is the inability to get him
a sufficiently worthy opponent. So what do we have covered

(01:19:35):
a mere khan who's really gonna that outcome is in doubt.
This is the thing that is plagued this generation of
the sport, and it really came down on Terrence a
success after he goes to forty seven, whether whether Spence
was promised or not, they never got him. They never

(01:19:56):
got him Spence, and he had to run through so
many damn hoops to gets Spence even after he left.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
But to but to my earlier point that that's also
that's also a fight that that that Mini wrote about
and said it's not gonna happen, right, And Terrence said,
we can figure it out. I talked to Spence, we
can figure it out. That fight, that fight, that should
have been the primary goal for Terrence Crawford, not just Terrance.
I'm saying his team, But.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
I got, I got, I got a question though. Okay,
where was I've done stories on Aero Spence. Okay, he
was a great fighter. I've seen him in the gym,
like beat up, like light heavyweights, a cruiser weights, an
incredibly strong guy. No one ever questioned Spence's drawing power.

(01:20:47):
Was he a bundle of personality? No? Like when I
look at Terrence Crawford, I see a complicated, interesting guy
with a story. And if you can't tell that story,
shame on you. But the the biggest thing in boxing.
You want to sell a fighter. The first thing you do,
you want to quibble with him because of his style

(01:21:07):
or this. The first thing you do. Get him an
opponent worthy of his worthy of his titles, worthy of
his ability, an opponent who you see him fight and
you will remember.

Speaker 2 (01:21:21):
But you can't fabricate that, And you gotta take no
big gotta take what you're giving sometimes And what I'm
saying about Crawford is, and I can name ten fighters.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
I think I'm with you on this art. I think
what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:21:35):
To name ten fighters right now that have not had
a marquee matchup. But because we like him, he's our
guy and we got a good rapport, you're gonna think
he's the next coming Terrence Crawford.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
I think that's true in any I think that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
And yeah, but we're just talking boxing right now, Terrence Crawford.
The biggest issue is that things will be said and done,
and then when you overcome the thing that they said
that you couldn't do many times over which he's done.
He got the fight, he performed than the fight, his stature, groove,
he continued doing right. He's making more money than he's
ever made before. Oh and then he got the Canelo

(01:22:08):
fight that that many said he wasn't gonna get.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:11):
Where I lose respect a lot of times for those
that are speaking about our sport that we're lifers in,
we're risking our life to be in. They never come
back and apologize and say, man, I was wrong about
this guy and the same energy that I have doing
the best that I can to make sure I get
meet this deadline.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
We don't put that same energy to say I've done this.
I've done it with Mike, you did it with you.
But I mean no, no, But look what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
We don't come back and say, you know what, man,
I was wrong about that guy, you were right. We
don't try to balance out them skills or write that
wrong and we just we just normalize it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
I'm giving, but it goes up last thing. Let'st thenk
we normalize the creed.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
And then when you when you, when you do get
on the soapbox and start to elevate your voice and
speak about it. Oh, nobody wants to hear that, all right, Like, man,
I love this sport, and I love the fighters that's
in it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
I do too. And I'm not saying you don't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:59):
And I don't appreciate those kind of things where it's
coming my way. I'm not saying critique. Sometimes fighters just sensitive,
some of the toughest guys in the world. But I
can't tell him something because they they're sensitive about their
work and and and it's like, dude, you shouldn't have
felt that way about that. But there's sometimes you got
an agenda, you got it, you trying to but.

Speaker 1 (01:23:19):
But but you just said it. Sometimes you look at
I remember, I remember the Benavitas fight and I could
not love Crawford more. But I had done a story
about Beneveta's getting shot in the knee before and I
saw him hobbling on that. He just couldn't so I talked.
So I talked about now he's hobbling on their knee,
lading around and Terrence is like, you know what what

(01:23:39):
you made about his knee for you? But it wasn't taken.
But I'm not taking anything away from you, Terrence. I mean,
and Benevetez did a lot better. He did do better
when I fights, and I thought he's gonna do I
thought he was just gonna get house from the from
the beginning. But but but here's a here's another element
here that is particular to our time in boxing, and
that is the inability of promoters to make the fights

(01:24:03):
the fighters should have. Now, talk all you want about
your core, how popular would he be if he had
fought Tank Davis, if he just had the fights he wanted?
All of these guys, you know the first thing and
making the guy popular, want to make people care about
your story. Put him in a big fight, Tommy, hearns

(01:24:27):
you cared about him. Fort Ray Leonard. You saw what
was best in both of those guys souls. You saw
how tough Ray Leonard was. But if you don't have,
if you not matching guys up and you can't make fights,
jeez my god, Don King and Bob Aaron could do
business together. But these guys out here today they can't.

(01:24:48):
I don't think we know. They haven't been able to
for the last I don't know how many years. And
that and that has that has resulted, in my opinion,
a presumption against a lot of guys who haven't gotten
the fights they should have. Look, why isn't David Benna
Vitte's a household name because Canelo hasn't for him. That's
straight up, that's the truth of it. I don't think

(01:25:09):
we know really how to make a star in box.
I do put them in big fights, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:25:14):
Think, because you know what I mean, fighters crashed and
burn trying to beat Floyd Mayweather.

Speaker 1 (01:25:17):
Oh the money man, No bro, every.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
Like you gotta add to jail time, man, You gotta
add the headline about this. You gotta allow add this
in that he overcame you don't. There is no no secret.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
Sauce to becoming a star. I think, I actually think,
I think that there's elements.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Yes, if you can have the market name that don't
help you. Yes, If the media, if you they know
your story and they embrace it and endear themselves to
you because of it, that can be a reason. But
that's not a guarantee. Danny Jacobs got knockouts. Danny Jacobs
has a tremendous story. The man beat cancer and it's
still beating cancer. And I didn't see the media. I

(01:25:53):
didn't see there. I don't see the media like that.
He's got a great personality, smiles, clean cut.

Speaker 1 (01:26:02):
I remember, there's no there's no there's no source of controversy.

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:26:08):
I remember and Peter Quillen was was working out the
gym I go at the time, and I remember going
to see him and Quilling and and Quilling just got smoked.
Why is it Danny Jacob's bigger? But I do think

(01:26:32):
that the first element in becoming a star, even before
your personality and the rest of it, Like some guys
are stars, some guys are not, and TV executives most
of the time can tell you with some accuracy. Writers
can tell you who was the factor who doesn't. But
the one thing we're lacking today is a consistent source
of good matchups. Maybe that maybe that changes now with

(01:26:52):
t k O and so. I don't know. But you
never had to worry about Ali Frasier if they were
going to fight. But I understand. But what I'm but
what I'm but what I'm saying is that it took
Ali Fraser less time to fight the greatest trilogy in

(01:27:12):
the history of this or any sport. Then it took
Pacy Allen Mayweather to get together for one rousy boring fight.
I liked it, Okay, I liked it. But if you
can't you have a sport, you know, you never have
to worry about like what's going to happen in the
NBA or the NFL is a playoff system. Okay, you're

(01:27:34):
seated and then it goes to its conclusion. Boxing you have,
you have a mess. You have nothing to ensure that.
So for the longest time, to go back to Terrence,
he wants Spence and Spencer's being held out. I don't

(01:27:55):
know if it was Bob's fault, PBC's fault, whatever fault
it is. Now what I had heard was Terrence was
promised this and didn't come through. Well, then you got
a problem. But all of a sudden, what did it
take for Terrence Crawford to become this universal star? Even

(01:28:16):
though he had HBO all the way up? Once once
he smokes Errol Spence, Oh we have a star, and
then all of a sudden, I see on Good Morning America,
my clip is with his mom is playing, you know?
Oh yeah, of course where was everybody before? It's the
matchups that were being denied? Listen, even after he loses

(01:28:38):
to holy Field, who holy Field is convinced, like from puberty,
that he's gonna beat Tyson how I do not know.
But when Tyson beats Spinx Evander, who has never fort
a heavyweight fight yet they say it. How can I
say he's the best one? He hasn't for me. He
believes in himself. But even after at Avander beats him
the first time, next time, right back, Tyson fights him again.

(01:29:00):
I know it was the ear bite, no, but like
you didn't have to Bow and holy Field, they fought
each other. You can't sustain a sport where the best
don't fight the best. I agree with that. I think
that a lot of guys have been conned into like, oh, yo,
you're a pay per view fighter. I don't know who
he's a pay per view fighter. Okay, Mayweather is a

(01:29:23):
pay per view fighter. De la Joya was a pay
per view fighter. You can count them on one hand
who's a pay per view fighter. And usually what happens
is it's like a transitive property. You got a fighter
pay per view fighter to really become a pay per
view fighter. There's very few pay per view fighters, but
it's become because as the pie is shrunk. I think

(01:29:43):
fighters are getting conned. Yo, you're a pay per view fighter.
Don't worry about that fight, man. You want to make
yourself big and irresistible. Fight the best names you got,
perform well and even if you lose, you win. Did
a vander lose anything from losing to Riddick bow the
first time? Hell, it was a heroic fight. God.

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
You know the fighters today, man, and even in my generation,
they see the told that those fights took. Yeah, And
I think that a lot of guys don't want nothing
to do with that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:12):
Number one.

Speaker 2 (01:30:13):
I also think that the money is not always there
for those types of matchup. But what's enough money? I
don't know, but it don't seem like enough whatever you're
offering me. That's another thing. I don't think it's just matchups.
I think certain guys, for whatever reason, you guys can
figure out what that reason is, they need a matchup.
You need this to be a star, then maybe will accept.

(01:30:33):
If you get the right guy. Then other guys you
don't need the right guy. We're just gonna promote you
as if you're the guy because we like you, we
believe in you, and we appreciate you. I just think
for guys like Terence Crawford and others, we gotta do
a better job.

Speaker 1 (01:30:50):
Don't know if that's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
But like, if you don't understand where he came from,
or where certain guys come from. If you don't know
how to tell that story, man, maybe you should ask
somebody or go ask him and learn how to tell
that story. Because if it ain't this story, I really
don't know how to judge. Because this guy, you gotta
entertain me, You got it. You need to write opponent?
Why does he talk like that he don't talk enough. Listen, bro,
everybody ain't called to be Mayweather. No, I could crash

(01:31:15):
and burn trying to be Mayweather. You know how many
things Mayweather had to overcome. I'm not gonna name no names.
You've seen them. No, But I don't call him out
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:24):
But you know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
I'm just saying, here's a lot of people like Jesus property,
there's some thing for the integrity of journalism.

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
They got to start being able to do that. There's
there's one there's one wrinkle in the cross. Last word
I want you to which is what's stranger? Still. Look,
I understand, I understand Chaquur not especially violent fighter, and

(01:31:53):
I understand what people want. They want red meat, they
want to Terrence is Terrence is a violence. That's my point.
I understand missing but Terrences has this really unique balance
of violence and craft. That's that's what's really in the ring.

(01:32:14):
That's what's most interesting about him. He's got this computer,
he's working from the left side, he's working from the
right side. And I wonder how this is, like, how
this will work with Canelo. It blows me away, right,
But but in terms of this is to your point,
the wrinkle in Crawford's case is it he knocks guys out.

(01:32:37):
I don't you know. I don't. I don't get it.
I don't. I don't you know. I disagree with you,
as I have somewhat about the media, but I really
don't disagree with you about Crawford. He should have been
shouldn't have been considered a burden to sell him like
we got.

Speaker 2 (01:32:56):
I can't guarantee you guys gonna sell even if you
say the most glaring things about him. But I just
I think the things that were said were unfaired, and
I think it's a lot of people that own an
apology that probably won't happen. But you know, his success
is speaking loud right now, and it has been for
the last few years. But we can do this all day. Man,
We're gonna do a part too, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:33:13):
Appreciate you man.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
Wonderful read wonderful so much, man, I said, Man, me
and Cree can do that. We this is this is
what we did at ESPN driving in the cars before
we went on television live.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
We we just we just we're just talking, man, and
getting it in. That's my brother. I appreciate him. That's
another episode of the Art of War.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
We'll see you next time.

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