Shannon Briggs - Let's Go Champ

Full transcript: Shannon Briggs on London Real

5:38 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Shannon “The Cannon” Briggs, the former two-time world heavyweight champion boxer. You began your career in 1992 and were undefeated in your first 25 fights, and then went on to beat George Foreman for the heavyweight title in 1997.

6:05 Today you become synonymous with your mantra, let’s go champ, which inspires and motivates people of all ages from around the world. Shannon, champ, let’s go champ. Welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me, Brian. We showed you that, sir.

6:18 I appreciate you being here. Talk to me about the UK, about London. It’s almost like when you come here, you’re almost like coming home. What’s the vibe like? Why do you keep coming back here?

6:28 I love your jab. I love the environment, the people here, great. It’s just, I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life. To wake up every day and just go outside, it’s not you know, not expecting anything happening. I was like, let’s go champ, and it’s just a feeling I’ve never experienced.

6:46 And at my age of 47 thousand years old, and at my age, this is a good place for me. Was it always that way when you came here? Uh, not in the beginning. I believe that when I first came, people like, “You know what’s this crazy American doing over here?” But you know, I think he wants to, got to know me, to see my story and hear what I’m about.

7:04 I came here looking for an opportunity, so to work with the people, to look for phrase, because this is the box of capital to war right now. I mean, boxing began handing, and of course, and it’s the hottest market for boxing in the world. So this was the reason for me coming here. Why is it the hottest market here? Because we got football, soccer in America, right?

7:24 But other than that, it’s like boxing is kind of next, right? It’s like, I think it’s like neck and neck for football, soccer, I believe, but maybe it’s not. I just feel that way when I walk down the street. There’s so many people are boxing fans. It’s just, I’ve never seen anything like this, and I say often I should have came in much earlier in my career and established myself, but I’m happy to be here now.

7:44 I still feel as though he’s on some term left on the clock, and I’m looking forward to just being healing when I fight you. They’re having a great time. It’s the home of ox, and the rules were created here as well. Does it feel like us? Yes, Jessica.

7:56 Does it feel like a country that likes to scrap it out? Yeah, it also likes rules as well. Yes, I’m so impressed by just the average fan’s boxing knowledge and the acceptance of it here. It’s just unreal. I mean, if you’re a boxer, any way around the world, you want to be here and establish yourself, give fights and make a name for yourself, because they really truly love boxing.

8:18 I mean, you can see it from the children. So you’ve even the women. Yeah. And you see people like Joshua, who are selling out these big stadiums at Wembley, and that kind of happens, like, it’s kind of nothing, right? But enough, that’s a big thing that doesn’t happen in the States, or not at all.

8:31 I think by at home, in the States, we have a lot of competitions with other sports. You have Major League Baseball, you know, our National Football League, so many different sports, hockey, tennis, you know, just you can go on for days. And I think here, there’s a little different. Boxing began here. They’re getting their soccer, football, but boxing is right there, neck and neck, and they love, they love the violence.

8:51 But again, like you said, I think they believe in the rules, and you can see a scrap in the street, and then I was just straightening it out, and then, you know, shirts off, they have a straightener, and there’s back tight. Okay, let’s go champ. Yeah, there must be in the culture if they develop those rules in the first place, right? Yes, like saying, hey, we’re gonna fight, but it’s not gonna be, let’s try to kill each other, it’s gonna can’t do this. And then people respected it and became a sport.

9:14 I love it. It says a lot about the culture. It really truly does, and I hope that America adapts that same mentality, because you see fights, which means people will go too far with at least, or God or man stomping the man’s head out. That’s not necessary. You have a straight nutrient.

9:30 You’re not with a man, you know? Shake hands after when it’s over. But you get this mentality, I think, in America. It’s like, I got to go to the extreme and we don’t have to do that, man. We all here, means let’s have a fight, and if you even have to have a fight and this, call it a day, you know?

9:45 Ya know. I hear that for sure. Now look, the past few years you’ve been showing up in this country. Yeah, and popping off, and you got people scared, you know, you’ve been showing up calling David Haye. Oh, you’ve been showing up here with Tyson Fury.

9:57 I mean, feels like you got your own jet coming over here, five miles. I mean, last four years, what you even here, right? Looking for a fight? The champ can fly. No, a superhero chair.

10:08 But I just basically, I love it here. Again, like I said, it’s just amazing, the culture, the boxing culture, the fans are great. You there’s nothing like it. Yes, I’m like it around. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.

10:21 When you go to a stadium, like you said, you know, Joshua, we’re fighting. You see thousands of people packed, boxing fans, singing, drink, and having a good time. It’s just amazing. And what’s been the reaction to fans when you came over the last few years and start challenging people, shouting out to people? I mean, I mean, I think even David Haye said he’s like, I kind of respect that, you know, because it’s, it’s something they’re not used to, right?

10:44 Right. We never really seen a guy come out from the crowd saying, let’s go champ. Let’s go champ. That’s right. It’s okay.

10:50 What was the reaction at first? And then do people get next to it? Excuse me. At first it was like, you know, it wasn’t really, it wasn’t really, you know, at first to him, to be honest with you. I basically came over here.

11:01 I went to, uh, I got off the plane. I went to the Buckingham Palace with a wig, with a camera, and I was like, you know what, I want to talk to the Queen. The police arrived, old bill arrived, and said, uh, what are you doing here? Jed, actually, they said you were expecting you. We heard you were coming, so it was pretty funny.

11:19 I think we had a great laugh. You know, I didn’t come over here to disrespect me. I came over here to show, to show love to everyone and hopefully be accepted, and that happened. So I couldn’t wish for a better thing, for a better situation. I mean, the people just accepted me.

11:33 I love them. I gotta be honest, it’s not even just a like, is the fact that my career has been extreme. I mean, it’s been bipolar, extreme highs and extreme lows. It’s been a roller coaster ride. So to come to a place where unaccepted in love, you know?

11:47 It’s just, I can’t, I wouldn’t never give this up. I mean, I’ll be a fool not to live here. And did they know what to make of you at first? So they’re calling the police and the other fighters are a little freaked out, and then they’re all, now no one knows who’s gonna show up. You might be showing up at Tyson Fury’s press conference, and they’d be at Haye’s press conference.

12:06 Yeah, but now they’re talking about your name some people say that you’re a marketing genius? Thank you. Thank you to those guys who say that. I’m just, I’m a guy. I’m hungry.

12:15 I’m a family man. I have three children and a beautiful wife. I have to take care of my provider. Mike, the mailman, the postman. I get up every day and go to work, and my job is to provide, and and in this business, unfortunately, I was never, at one point, I believe I was early in my career, you know, I was the guy that everyone was looking at.

12:35 I had the manager. I had to promote. Well, I never had a good manager. He was behind me as far as pushing me, and then, unfortunately, my train came off the track, and then at that point I was on my own when I was 25, 26 years old, and I had to realize I had to learn how to navigate this business and survive. That call promoters, call managers, be told no, call matchmakers, and sometimes make my own fights, and they pay for my own fights, and I do a lot of things in the business to do.

13:02 I am so, to be here today, and they still be doing it. It’s just my natural thing. I’m out here to work on my hair, looking for opportunities. I’m looking to grow the brand. I’m looking to have longevity in a sport, whether it’s promoting, helping fighters in the future, and really more, more so, awesome.

13:19 But what I would like to do is use boxing as a platform. That’s what I’ve always done. I’ve never really made a lot of money in boxing, but I’ve always used it for our platform, whether it’s to get into movies, in order to get, or to get into other businesses outside of that box, and so on. What I’d like to do now is use this opportunity to give back, and give back to the people, cuz they give me so much love. I want to help the people out there who need it, like the homeless people, homeless kids, kids suffering, what parents who have substance abuse it’s something I endured growing up.

13:48 My parents were addicted to drugs, so I want to give back in that way, because it’s just to be alive and to be here. It’s given me a second chance in life, a third, excuse me, a fifth chance in life. If you’ve had a few versions. You know, you had those early days, those 25 fights in a row, then you came back again, you know, and fought Klitschko in 2010, and now you’re back again. You like rising the phoenix from the ashes.

14:14 Look at him, he took it himself. Look at him. Tell me about this phrase, let’s go champ, and this lit, this, the newest version of you, because the last three or four years a lot of people know you now that didn’t know you before. The last kids, I mean, they weren’t even born when you were knocking guys out, right? And so they know this guy with his shirt off, somewhere out in Florida.

14:35 Would they make us smoothies beats going on in the background. Champ, let’s go champ. You know how did that guy get created? And how did you get to there from that brutal fight with Klitschko and going in the hospital for two weeks? And like, those are two extremes.

14:53 How did you do that? Well, Brian, you know, it was, it was, again, like I said, after the 25 ways of training were off the track. I was highlighted on HBO as, you know, next superstar. I was knocked out in the turnaround by Darrell Wallace and I suffered a heart attack in the first round after the fight. My trainer, tell us, we split.

15:15 I was pretty much on my own for the next few years, making fights here and there. I was able to come back again in 2006, won another heavyweight championship, and I went back underground for a while after losing that. I bragged him off with a pneumonia, lost the title took some time off, and then I was like, you know me, I’m a given, I’m gonna give it another shot, and they doing so. I put together a little team of, you know, investors and boxing people, and that went off the track as well.

15:46 I was taking advantage of. I wasn’t paid for the Klitschko fight. I took a beat in the first round. I popped my left, my left bicep, in my elbow joint, pops, and for, for 12 rounds. Yummy.

15:57 So I, how can a guy that doesn’t have a hard fight for 12 rounds, that’s to think, yeah, like the people that said that earlier about you. I mean, they can’t look at that fight and say that well. I’ve always, I’ve always, uh, in some ways, twisted did thinking, like when I fought, for many, were like, oh, well, you know, Foreman, Juan, it was close fight, and then I fought Lennox Lewis and I lost the lineal title to him, but it was great showmen in people’s eyes to me.

16:23 It wasn’t our lowest, but she followed a lot of heart and kept getting up off the mat, or they never thought you were out. Yeah, but that’s nothing. I mean, I never had lack of heart, you know? To be, and it’s any man can walk in that ring, any man that goes into those ropes got heart, you know? He’s got his mind set on, you know, either if you win an illusion, and to go in then it takes hard, because you know, even in losing, you can get hurt.

16:45 So it takes some sense of heart or craziness. I myself, I’ve had, I’ve had to be strong when I was weak all my life. You know, I grew up with asthma. I grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the same day, but it’s Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe. It’s a, it’s a legendary crime-ridden neighborhood, and me, it’s the only child, no brothers and sisters, single parent.

17:09 My stepdad was in and out. I had to learn how to fight early. I had to learn how to defend myself, and I was picked on. I was bullied. I was, you know, I was taken advantage of because I was asthmatic, and I didn’t have a strong foundation of people that, to support me.

17:23 So throughout my life, those struggles made me, you know, little building blocks for the future, and that’s why I’m here today, because those blocks got me here, and I don’t, I don’t regret anything. You know, I worked. I wish I was had them hit the lotto, but we all do. So I’m here, man. Now I’m rich in life, to be honest with you.

17:44 Chip. I’m rich in life, because my spirit is so strong, my energy is so strong, even when I sometimes doubt myself, and I feel like, and I just say you know, whispering. You know, so is this natural? And so, walk me through what happened with Vitali in 2010, you know 12 rounds with him. Hard rounds, everything’s busted up, you tearing your biceps, throwing your shoulder out in the first round, you know I mean, later we would find out, your orbital bone broke, and a fractured bone, you.

18:14 I mean, you know, yeah, but you powered through those 12 rounds. You were like, I’m here. Yeah, yeah, I was my last opportunity. I felt it was my last time for Tony. Um, my back was against the wall.

18:26 It was like, you know, do-or-die for my family. I went in there, I almost died, but I didn’t, so I came out. I came home like $36,000 in my pocket, and I felt pretty much, faith in my career was over. You know, everyone said it’s over, you know, and I was okay. I got a job three months later, and you’re in the hospital for two weeks.

18:47 Two weeks in the hospital, but again, a lot of that stuff was hyped up based off, you know, I think the papers, they wanted to make me look like I was destroyed. And, you know, this has been a theme since I lost my after one in 25 fights and I split with Teddy Atlas. It’s been a theme in my career for writers and for the media to throw me under the bus. I’ve heard some nasty things about me. I’ve read things that will make any man cry, you know, but just bad things said because it was a whole push between people that was in the business that didn’t like the fact that I was still fun in a way.

19:22 I was still fun, though. I couldn’t give up because I don’t have a second job. This is what I’ve been doing, Brian, since I was a kid, 16, 17 years old, you know. So, you know, before that I worked on a watermelon truck. I sold ice cream.

19:33 I worked in a printing company, Mills on wheels. But when I gave my life to boxing, it was that’s it. I stopped doing anything else. I had dreams aspirations of, you know, going to college and becoming, you know, possibly a lawyer at one point, or to become a preacher, but boxing was like, this is you, this is where you’re gonna make a living for yourself. And I started doing that, so I dedicated my life.

19:57 Said a lot of people don’t like that. They looked at me like, oh, who’s he think he is? I’m gonna make it regardless. So I’ve turned some people off in high places, and then he told me, they told me in 1996, you’ll never get a fight on network television again. I was told that again in 2001 after I forged a loss to me, Jamel McClarren.

20:16 I was told I’d never get a fight on network television again, and here I am talking to you right now. Let’s go champ. They’re always exaggerating more to your story to fit you in this narrative. Yeah, that makes it convenient for them to kind of overlook you. Yes.

20:30 And yet you keep coming back and showing up on the big fights. That’s right. Like I’m living day this, the chance, stop by after Klitschko. Things get hot, did get tough, and you, and you got depressed, and really, and you’re down, and your place is down, and you’re getting up to 403 pounds. Shoes you got, you got guns everywhere.

20:51 On some medication, and you’re really thinking some dark thoughts. Yeah, champ, I was. I had like I was saying, I apologize. I had got a job after the cleanse. Go fight, and I was working for an internet marketing company, and things were going well.

21:04 You know, I was happy to finally, like, you know, have to be making some money, and I was thinking about my life in corporate America. You know, I’m like, wild case in life, for me what are you gonna do? This, you’ll be doing this now. 265, I believe I was. I was like 37, 38.

21:17 I was okay. this is it now, and it took me, like, I was in, I had an office. I had a huge office. I’m like, okay, I got an office with a window, and I was like, wow. So after about three or four months, they moved me to another office, no window, but it was huge, and then on about another three months, I went to another office, which is smaller, with no window, and I was okay.

21:37 What’s next? I feel like that movie, Office Space, but it was this, you know, is this your business world? Was it moves very slowly, opposed to boxing. I get up, a trainer, I know I got the fight coming up in six to eight weeks. This was just like a different, coming to work every day.

21:53 I got my tie on, and I’m, as I was doing that, Brian, I would go to work, and you know, have my lunch and breakfast in the morning, breakfast sandwich or whatever launch, and after work I’d go out with the guys to our happy hour, and we, you know, we put in bag, drinks, and stuff like that, and I started ballooning up, you know, and then I was realizing, being in this environment, that I wasn’t used to corporate America and the corporate world, where, our, you know, I was told, you’ll hurry up and wait, like we’re gonna be doing this next week, next week, next week, next month, and we’re gonna be doing this, and nothing was happening, and I was like, well, I really want to work. I’m used to working, so it was just like hurry up and chill. So, um, after about, after a while, just became depressed.

22:35 I was, you know, I was a lot of thinking, sitting in an office from 9:00 to 5:00, sometimes 8:30 or 6:30, just really just doing nothing. I mean, I was like, wow, this is what people do in office, leave, every, up and do nothing. So, um, I got really depressed, and it was crazy. My, the owner of the company, and he wanted to get into boxing, and I was, I was really against it, because I had left the boxing world. I had went through so much pain and dealing with people trying to navigate and keep it going.

23:05 I was like, you know what, finally I got a great job I’m making one hundred twenty thousand dollars a year. I’m going, what, with the company, different places, to conventions, you know. I’m like, well, okay, this, this is okay, you know, but I still had that goal. I mean, that’s driving me. You know, once you, and again, as a fighter, if that’s in you, was in you, nobody can take it out of you.

23:26 You could be eighty thousand years old, but if you want to fight, you want to fight. So it’s been in my, I think it’s in my DNA. It’s what I’ve been used to so after a while I was fighting with that, like, damn, so bored. I’m so disgusted with life, and I was piling on weight. I was getting fat.

23:40 I was just kidding, disgusting. And I’m, and then the guy wanted to get into boxing and doing so. I was against it, but it happened. I was okay, look, you know, you the boss. If that’s what you want to do with your money, your time, okay, let’s get in the box.

23:52 So we started doing boxing and also seen there’s opportunity, because I had been hired to work for the company to break nutraceutical products to the company. That was my thing. I was always involved with nutraceuticals and business outside of boxing. I was the first and only athlete with Metagenics. A fellow Metagenics, yeah, provide something, right?

24:12 Exactly. I was, I was with Metagenics since 1992. Okay, Dr. Connolly. I was his first and only athlete, and then Dr. Connolly wound up selling the company for 1.6 billion dollars. I was like, ah, but if you look at all my early fights, I had Metagenics on my trunks and my t-shirts and stuff like that.

24:29 So I’ve always had no one kindly personally going to his house, haven’t spent time with him and listening to what he was saying, and being the, the crash-test dummy, tried it before anyone did. I seen him as a future and nutraceuticals, invited me to supplements. So I’ve always dabbled with that at different businesses, real estate, different things. So I had came to this company to introduce products. I had James Fulton who invented Retin-A, he, he died a few years ago.

25:02 Rest in peace. I was not waiting. And Charles Hensley, he, Invictus, I can, which cuts the duration of a cold from like seven days to three. he was my partner as well. So I bought these people to this company to basically bring new products to, to the world.

25:17 Basically it was an internet marketing company, so it was phenomenally, had a list of 80 million people. They were allowed to send emails to. Something, create no spam, we’re gonna have customers with millions of dollars. Billy, I’m gonna be a billionaire, let’s, no chance. And uh, unfortunately, the, God, one they did in a box, and we started getting the box, and makes me know, usually I want to meet Mike Tyson.

25:37 I’m like, what, does I want to be Mike Tyson? So I called Mike Tyson. I was like, hit Mike, I got a guy really wants to meet you, and you really want, you know he’s a fan. So Mike and Craig Boogie came into Florida and sat down with him. He loved it.

25:51 He worked it out, wrote him a check, five million dollars. Let’s go champ. So now we’re in the Mike Tyson product promotions business, you know, and then, um, that, you know, that’s, I think, let’s, real quick, because now he had my Tyson. You know, you got the big, big man, you got, you know, I’m just a little guy that might, you know, and in terms of Korea and all that, so that was a little push to me, cuz I came to this business to make money outside of boxing.

26:17 Now we’re in the boxing business, and now I’m even pushed back to the side. So I mean, really, you know, I kind of just play my position. Then it was, it was to the point, Brian, where he was like, don’t even worry about coming to work no more. Like we had a little disagreement, and I was told not to worry about coming in. So I went home, and Friday my check came. the following Friday my check came, you know, it was every two weeks, and I was like, wait a minute, we had these words, we didn’t speak.

26:41 I’m unsafe for like a year and a half, and I was still receiving this, and I was like, wow, what’s going on? And then, on, I was using the money to kill myself personally. Like, not, I look back in retrospect, I was using the money to kill myself I was basically like, I’d go out, buy like two boxes of Krispy Kremes, KFC, McDonald’s, any type, just junk food, and I’d go home, and I had nothing to do. I wasn’t training. I haven’t already bloomed up, in some somewhere.

27:10 Now I’m piling it on more, but now I’m trying to put myself into a diabetic coma. I’m trying to feed the pain. And this, this sweet jelly raspberry doughnut makes me feel happy for a second then I need something else. I need ice cream. So I need, I mean butter pecan Haagen-Dazs ice cream, like ism, you know?

27:29 Forget about, like, it’s hot soup. I’m just eating it, and uh, I’m going through it, man, and then my life was just in turmoil, and I’m like, I want to end it, because I think what happened to me was, my life when I was young, I didn’t put a lot of things in the closet. I mean, like, my life, my pain. My mom died on my birthday. My stepdad, who raised me since I was, Naamah, so he died in prison, and I was really close to them, so losing them the way I loved, it, lost to my mom.

28:00 She had a heroin overdose on my birthday. Heart attack, heroin overdose. My dad died in prison. We don’t know what’s going on. We haven’t heard from him.

28:09 And, and, and, and then my mom is like, I think she’s just, I have got a feeling. I got a feeling, and I was like, nah, why? He’s okay. He’s okay. I never forget.

28:19 I said, we got to find out if she was, just, something happened. Something happened, you know, when you were somebody so long, I guess there’s a connection between so you feel this, and I felt that with her when she died. So she’s felt the connection. Something wrong, Jean, Jean, something wrong with Jean, and I want to call the prison, Mohawk Correctional Facility in upstate New York, and they said we can’t give out any information. I’m on the phone.

28:42 I’m like, hey, look, this is Shannon Briggs, I’m so sorry. I’m gonna, so we can’t get him any information. So my mom in the background crying, and I started crying. I’m like, it’s my daddy, man. I just want to know.

28:53 We said, when he said the guy was like, look, now I can’t give me anything, man. She said, he said, look, we’d love priest. The priest had died, you know, and I was like, what? And I said, mom, and I didn’t want to talk. I said, ma, he died And I never forget.

29:05 She stood on the bed. She stood up, but she stood on the bed, and she started shaking, and she was trembling, and I was like, ma, she was standing on the bed. She was just standing on the bed. I’m looking at her, mom, get off the bed. She’s like, no, no, no.

29:17 And then that was, that was a tough moment, for that was a tough moment. So, a lost huh. I lost him, and then years later she wound up, you know, dying on my birthday, so that was a real tragic blow for me. So what I had to do was learn how to take those deep, work, and put them in the closet, right? In Hardy for now.

29:34 And I think when I got older and after the Klitschko fights, the punches I took, you know, to the head, I think those took, they took a lot out of me as well. Not from the standpoint of I had brain damage, but just, it just depressed me to take. I wasn’t able to defend myself, and I really wanted, I really needed to win. I really wanted to win. I’m passionate about winning.

29:55 I hate to lose. I feel like losing sometimes could be the worst thing ever happened to me, you know, because I’ve lost a few times, but then I say, they’re learning experiences, not losses, learning experiences. But, after that fight I got really bad on myself. I was really down, and my daughter was born, and I was still a mess, but I was holding her every day, every day. My wife would give me to give her to me and say, here’s the baby.

30:22 It’s a baby, and I’m responding hard. And I had two boys, but it was different, you know? First of all, she came out looking just like my mom. I was like, what’s going on? Shane, yeah.

30:32 I was like, DNA? Wow, what’s going on? You don’t like, she came back, so I was very happy, excited to have my baby, and I held her every day, literally 364 days, Brian. I held every day in my arm. My wife was just breastfeeding, or give it to me.

30:47 I’ll give her the breastfeed, give it back to me, bottle, whatever, and I will just hold every day and watch television and talk to her, talk to her. I talk to her. I think at the time I was trying to, um, you know, maybe I’m a little crazy, but trying to, like, relay message to her. I was still in a bad place. I was like, look, you tell her my baby, kiss her all day, talk to her.

31:10 Then I said, I may not be here, you know, but I hope somehow you can remember these things I’m telling you, and that you can somehow have a great life, you know. And I was like, and I felt like me leaving her at some point might have been a better choice than me staying. Huh? Seeing me as a POS, you know? I’m saying.

31:28 So I was like, wow, what do I do? And then, what kind of thing are you telling her just talking about my life in her life, and how, how my mother sacrificed everything for me. Although she had a drug addiction, she loved her boy, you know. She called me “our boy” because I was the only child. You know, she wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids, and she had me and she was like, this is my boy, my boy, my boy.

31:52 And I just be talking to a battle, no, babbling about life, and guessing on plan, you know? I call it mumu, mumu, fact it was a fat little baby, as it were, Chinese-looking. Ah, so you moving fat. So did you ever talk to her as if it was your mom? Okay, so I could see it, right?

32:12 And I believe, for some hot reason, that we come back, and then we just forget everything, and then we just go into our new life, you know? There’s trying to believe that, Lyme, Syria, there’s some type of weirdness going on, because it was some really, some kooky stuff going on. Yes, when this little girl was born, and I think kids channel that somehow, because until they get older, they don’t know any better. So first of all, maybe they’re living the previous lives.

32:33 Maybe they’re seeing things we can’t see. Crying I’m terribly tiny. My three-year-old son, my three-year-old son. I’m telling you, he knows stuff that I’ll never know. I’m telling Brian about, could’ve recorded some of these things, even as she got older.

32:43 One, two, three things she said or did. I was like, this is weird. Yeah, this is really weird, but people around me who knew her, only my mom, literally couldn’t believe it when they came in, seeing her for the first time. My family, mother, it was late, and you know what I mean? You say, yeah, I was just, let them see.

33:01 They’d be like, I believe, what’s wrong? He’d be like, oh, nothing, and I’d be like, come on, be honest, what’s wrong? He play. I could’ve sworn to see Margie, or felt Margie in the room. It was weird.

33:11 So I went through that for a while, time, and then one day, was 364 days in, and I looked at her one day and I was like, that’s it, I gotta get myself together, because if I don’t, this poodle girl is gonna be in a bad position, right in a few years, someone’s gonna be taking advantage of her, someone’s gonna be, half on the position where she’s not gonna be able to be the best. Push, she can’t be, you know, I mean, I was like, if I’m not here to protect, someone’s gonna hurt this girl. I guess with my boys I was a little bit more, you know, we different.

33:43 I think woman where I survived, all my, all Browns Brooklyn, they’ll make it. Let’s go champ. You don’t, nobody, but a little baby girl. I was like, no way, I’m going to war, you know, I’m gonna fight my demons and do whatever I can. I had been doing research, to O’Brien, to be honest with you, about CTE, about, you know, what they call punch-drunk and different punches.

34:06 I’m thinking, why am I so depressed? Why, muscle depress? CTE is that kind of thing with a lot of NFL players, with which is that chronic brain damage they can’t examine until after you’re dead, but they’re finding in some of these autopsies with these suicidal guys that seemed to have led from those blows to the head, right? Yes. So you say, okay, so you’re researching.

34:24 I’m researching, champ. I was fortunate to have a mom who really wanted to be an educated person, but was never good at math, but I could read my behind off. I went to Lutheran school, so I was reading the Bible constantly from first grade to, uh, a threat. I withdrew from school, that I went to Catholic high school, so I was, well, first, head, the law, religion, reading. Math was never my strong point, but I was a comprehensive reader.

34:48 I was doing research on what’s going on with me, and then I was realizing there was a lot of things with my past I didn’t know. What insecurities, no self-esteem, having asthma, not having a lot of experience in boxing, led to be jumping fast into big positions. I mean, 10 fights, I’m on the US, 18, I’m fighting 18 fights. I’m fighting Felix, of all, two-time world, four-time world champion, two-time Olympic, you know, champion. I’m like, whoa.

35:18 I want ABC Wide World of Sports in front of millions of people. I was just homeless a few months ago, sleeping on the training in Brooklyn, sleeping in abandoned cars, trucks, wherever I could sleep. When your couch, if you let me. Now I’m on TV, Wide World of Sports, the whole world watching me. I lose big, knockout, big loss, both come down.

35:37 I’m embarrassed. I’m like, wow. I had had somewhat of a concussion, because I didn’t know the fight happened. I really didn’t remember the fight. So I was going back to ask that, if I rode a bus, and I told her friend, I was like, you know, this is the longest ride ever, will, me, gonna get there?

35:55 What I was like, now you takin’ forever. You’re like, man, you fought? Yeah, like, yo, he didn’t even know he got knocked out. I was embarrassed. I was like, nah, I was just joking.

36:11 I literally had to watch anything, okay, for all the playback where Castro put the medal on me and everything. I was like, whoa, this bouncing thing is dangerous. So I’ve always known how rough and dangerous a sport is, but took the risk because I had to, I’m not, I’m gonna do whatever I gotta do to feed my family. It wasn’t a choice. I had to go fight these people.

36:31 I had to fight for it, and I’ve had experience, I’ve had no, in spirit. I didn’t have no confidence, so I never had anyone, Brian, to pat me on the back and say, great job, growing up. I was told, you ain’t nothing, you ain’t never gonna be nothing, from other people. My mom loved me, but she loved me so much that people became jealous. I was a little boy, so I got brand-new sneakers, you know, Christmas came and I ain’t get one bike, I got two.

36:57 You know why? Because I might want a different color. Racing tracks, comic books, computer games. I was saying that to say I had a Commodore 64, a RadioShack TV, in ’82, ’83, so my mom was teaching me how to type. A, S, D, F, J, K, L, semicolon.

37:15 Right? Am I correct? Right. So I was, I was like this, so as a kid. So now I get older, I’m doing my due diligence on what’s wrong with me.

37:25 What’s wrong with, yeah, I mean, most people would see Shannon Briggs, you know, 25 years old, this massive chiseled guy with the dreadlocks, and say, that guy doesn’t have a low self-esteem problem, but that’s a common mistake when it comes to fighters. Right? The truth, because you got all sorts of demons locked up in there. Yeah, and you’re fighting them out sometimes in the ring, or you’re putting them in the closet, right? Yeah.

37:44 Yeah, definitely. I know that that. So, you know, what people didn’t know about me was hurting me more and more, because I wanted something. I wanted to talk to someone, to say, look, now see, I’m trying and doing my thing. I’m really, really nervous.

37:58 I’m really, yeah, I really, really need time to, to develop myself, but it wasn’t no time. It was like getting it, getting it, getting it. I think, I believe in a beginning Teddy. Really, Teddy Atlas was the first, any person who really noticed that. He was like, you got a lot of talent, but you’re not, it’s not what people think.

38:16 You just, you know, you’re telling a skillful fighter and you do very, why fast, but, and you don’t have the confidence. And I was like, okay, but I gotta do it. I gotta do. He was, again, I think, instead of building up my confidence, I think he kind of was like playing with it like a, uh, like a puppet. You know, it was like, okay, I need you to be strong, so be strong now, and now I need you to be weak, so that you’d know that when you’re strong is because of me.

38:44 And that was the rift, back and forth. You know, I’m like, you know, you know I had to be strong, but with him I had to, okay, okay, okay, and it was bad for my, my self-esteem. Do you think he thought that was the own, the best way forward somehow? I think that was the way he was taught, by me, from the Cus D’Amato school, right? And it was about controlling a fighter, controlling the mindset, make him stronger, but also being able to pull, like a remote control, and that did, I, with you, no.

39:16 I’m not coming from my background, unlike Mike Tyson, who went to the Catskills at 13 years old. I believe earlier, in 13, 14, they could kind of mold his morality. You were, you were thrown out of your house at 13. Your whole world changed in 13, and you’re sleeping on the streets and everything crumbled around you. Or, and later you found boxing, right?

39:36 So you’re a completely different psychological being, different animal. And with your career it was like you had to be there right then. We need you to fight now. You gotta be the show, and that’s it. You just thought, by the way, I’m like, what you just saw?

39:48 I’m like, I’m on ABC Wide World of Sports. You got guys with, all my team with hundreds of fights, superstars, but you know, I got the personality. I got the look, I got the dreadlocks. It’s okay. This guy, he’s, you know, he’s got energy.

40:01 Look at him, he’s scared. I’m not, I’m not gonna show you I’m scared. I’m from Brownsville, you know, I mean, and if I show you I’m scared, you go take my shoes. If I show you I’m scared, you’re going to take the money in my pocket. If I show you I’m scared, you might literally rape me.

40:15 I’m coming out in jail. You might rape me in the street. You might rape me in a suit. Serious. It happened, so for me, my life was about not showing fear.

40:26 So all this time I was doing that. Now I’m not. Chloe, you know, I’m, it’s 364 days, and I looked at it and I say, no, you got to get this money now. Now get up for this baby, because if you don’t, she’s going to end up in a bad, bad situation. So I was like, let’s go champ.

40:42 I got up. I was fortunate to, I was doing a lot of research on CBD. I was doing a lot of research on PTSD and veterans coming back from war, and it was, it was, it was so so ironic, because I grew up, I lived in a two-bedroom apartment, and my uncle, my mother’s brother, he, I went off to Vietnam. I’m gonna say the ’60s. He was the only boy, so he would have to go, of four sisters, and you know, three sisters, and he went off to war, and then he went missing, and everyone was, at all, he must have died, you know.

41:24 But he, one day, showing up, a bus pulled up, they say, on Halsey Street in Brooklyn, and he came off the bus wearing a trench coat, nude under it, with combat military boots, and he had came upon a big Army bus. They put him out in front of it, and they say when I took him in the house, he was stalked, raving mad, insane. He had been, listen, he was in a military hospital for a while. They were just about to send a flag to do a funeral for him, and now he shows up, and he stalk, raving man.

41:55 They say he’s ripping off every door in the house, ripping one, boom, ripping off the door, rip, and single-handedly rip off the doors, because he didn’t win. He was, whatever he was, act. They had him in a cell. He was even go to Vietnam, then he went to Germany, but something happened with officer, and he was thrown into the stockade and he went completely mad. They say he could have been drugged as well.

42:21 You know, drugs, that’s his, what the story came out later, to be sorry. Growing up with him, he becomes your roommate. He’s my, he’s my uncle. I’ve known him you know, he’s my, him, he can’t, I was born in ’71. He might have came home around that time.

42:34 I’m not sure. And he, we literally live in the same room, you know, and he was stalk raving mad at times. He was alcoholic, and I grew up with him, but I loved them, but it was times when I got, I got old. I was, say, wait, uncle, am I crazy? I called him names.

42:49 Everybody call him, Amy, and Amy crazy. And he would fight my brother sometime, and I mean, little, even, black eyes, knocked off. I mean, not close, both eyes, and it got to the point where one time I fought him. He was sleeping, I took a, a big spoon like this, back in the seventies. Black, you just have like this big wooden spoon, a big wooden fork that was like 12 years old.

43:18 Matt took it. He was sleeping, snoring and ice, and I took it, and I took it off the wall, and my mom was in the hospital because he had beat up, like the day or two before, in my house. He was still laying. I don’t know why the cops, they have a motto, I don’t know what happened, but I came in, he was sleeping. I hit him on, as I could, Brian, across the head, blown with this bone, and it’s broken.

43:41 He did like this. He went to kill me, and he chased me, Brian. I really literally ran around a park, man. He was killing. I made it out the door, and he finally, killed me, and I ran.

43:52 I love them till the day he died, which was many, many years later. He was mentally sick, so I understood, you know, understood. I loved him. He was my uncle. Literally, I look like him.

44:02 I’m the spitting image, and so growing up in those environments, the violence, the drug abuse, the alcohol. Yeah, I’m saying, I stored a lot of energy. I stole her when that pain later on, it all started creepin’ out on me. You know, I was drinking, I was partying I was using, partying, handing out to help me cure the pain, you know, missing my mom, not really having friends growing up, you know? I mean, how did friends associates?

44:29 But no one really had my back. Every time, you know, somehow they had my back, they left me for dead. They left me for dead. There’s nothing to do. They left me out to dry, and no one ever thought that I’d be successful, so when I got success and people was like, oh, man, man, we love you, we loved, I was like, I was on thank you, but I think in the back of my mind I was like, look at this, look at this, and when the terms I failed, our laws, they went right back to, oh, look at him, he is, he got you that.

44:57 So I wanted, I were early, and it was hot, but again getting back to Chloe. I had that baby girl. I was like, forget everybody, it’s all about her, but make it, I was told by research on CBD, cannabis, anything that could help me. I had been prescribed, typical, Seroquel, Xanax, Paxil, Zoloft, and those things was keep, but they were just sedated me. I was sitting in front, in front of the TV, and just eat cereal and just be sedated.

45:27 And I’m allergic to milk. I’m asthmatic, so I’m literally trying to kill myself. I know I can’t drink milk. I know what milk does to me, and I’m still eating milk. I’m still eating cereal boxes and cookies, in there, sweets.

45:39 I’m trying to kill, mice, and we’re trying to kill you. Yeah, I’m not conscious. Yeah, I was diabetic, cold, but that’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll just have a seizure, something died. So now I’m looking up CBD, I’m looking up cannabis, I’m looking up veterans.

45:53 I’m not gonna, a Mika, help me. I know these pills can help me. One day I go outside, Brian. I am. I don’t, like, tell people, they said, I don’t know if how you feel about this, but I tried cannabis, and it changed my life, man.

46:10 I’m telling you. Bad, I was alcoholic. Bryson’s a big fan, right? Yeah, I was a social alcoholic from 13 to 40. When I’m out, I’m drinking.

46:19 If I’m out, we treat others, how, drink shots, whatever. I’m out. I wasn’t really a home drinker, never really in all hearing, they had a big bar, you know, where I made money, but I was never a home, never home drinker. I, well, I’m not even type of guy who would have a beer at home, you know. Just, if I go out, I’m putting down two six-packs, three six-packs of Bibles, Patron.

46:37 I’m getting hammered, but at home I wasn’t. But now my boy was like, yo, try this, and I was like, really? What I’m asthmatic. Smoke bothers me, and I had a relative that smoked, and she was abusive. She was very busy, so physically, and I, I think the smell of it always reminded me a little.

46:57 Vegans, you know? Right? Those are necessary, that was for nothing, so I always equated marijuana with that, facilities in my senses. So I was always anti-marijuana. A guy leaves a joint in my house, he was my cook, he was my friend, my cook.

47:12 Y’all see, I hired him as a chef. We wanted to get him, coming really close they want to believe in the joint in my house, man, and man talk, but I wanna, for some odd reason, I try, don’t ask me why. I’m outside, I hit it, and I started crying, Brian. Like, number before, I never had tears come down so fast and so hard. I’m just like, I was crying and I, I had the time, I had blonde dreadlocks, you know, for 27 to 28 years, and I’m crying, crying, crying, and then I had a flash.

47:41 I had a flash, but I kid you not, I see myself traveling the world, and people loved me, you know? And I’m, people, like, you know, it wasn’t saying, let’s steal chair, but they was loving me, and it was like, happy to see me, and that made me feel good, that people were actually you looked, had genuine love for me. So I went in the house immediately, and I laid down, and I fell asleep, Brian. When I woke up in the morning, I can’t tell you to this day, I just woke up in the morning I walked, I, my back, I started with my… college, I didn’t go, getting bailed.

48:13 My wife fell asleep on the couch and I got up in the morning, and I walked in the bathroom, and I took a pair of scissors, and I just started, kind of, my hair, without thought, without thinking about, I was gonna do that. I cut my hair, and I start looking for clippers to finish shaving the rest, and my wife, I walk out of the bathroom, my wife sees me, and she starts crying. Oh my god, he’s gone crazy again. He’s gone crazy, dude. I’m like, no, no, no, I’m okay, I’m better.

48:40 She’s like, oh my god, she’s telling my son I’m like, no, no, no, I’m okay, God, my son. Money, bet 15, 16 15. No, I’m okay, daddy’s okay. I don’t know what it is, but I’m okay. Don’t like you know, and then wonder what it was.

48:55 Brian, apologize, what it was, was that it was for the first time in like three or four years, when I had that vision. I dream like that. I see myself. It was the first time that I had seen myself in a good light. You feel?

49:18 I’m saying, it was the first time that I see myself in the light, where people was happy for me, and I was happy for me. So first time ever, or no, first time in years, years, because I’ve always used fantasy and dream, not sleeping, dream. I just fantasized to make me better. Okay. I’ve always seen, when I’m broken, homeless, I’m just like, I’m gonna, I see myself in a nice car, what a nice house, a beautiful wife and kids, because that was my fare.

49:49 That’s what I wanted, so I set that bowl. I’m gonna make you so I could get this I want to get close one day. I’m gonna have nice clothes so people don’t see me again, you know? My sneakers will always bum me. At a time I didn’t have good coaches, you know?

50:02 Tommy was colder than having good coach jackets I was gonna buy a nice jacket one day. Oh no, nice stuff. I’m a hat, and then that hurt me too because I did everything I ever wanted to do, everything I ever dreamed of. I did it, and that was an issue because I think what I dreamed up was material things, and things that don’t make you a better person. You feel me?

50:22 I wanted the cars, I got them all. I wanted the houses, I got them all. I wanted the girls, I got them all. I wanted to close, I got it. I wanted, I got it all.

50:29 Got everything I wanted, but I didn’t have me. I didn’t have a strong inside and never dealt with the things. So now I hit the joint, I cut my hair, I come out the next morning. You think I’m crazy? I said, no, I’m better.

50:44 I fantasize something I hadn’t done at least two or three years. I fantasized for the first time see something, that my, whatever happened to my, in my head, the hope fantasy, dream switch, cut completely. I had no aspirations for doing anything that was worth anything, right? And you were probably thinking I’m horrible, look at me, almost garbage. I’m a worse time.

51:11 Okay, so that’s it. Yeah, I kid. Bend down and tie my shoes. You don’t, fat, my stubble, getting away you know? I remember one day I was in the mall, and I bent over to tie my shoes, and I was bent over, and I heard these girls, these young girls, laughing, cuz, you know, this will get his crack, you know hey, it’s a crack.

51:32 There was my blood crack. I was so fast, I was so fat, and I was like running you know, pull my pants up so my arm, I’m a mess. So at that moment I knew something change. Ray of hope. Yes.

51:45 Ray a hole, but that comes from, okay, from the spliff a day for beat down the side, but something inside clicked me back, and I went back in my pool house, my my guest house. I hadn’t spent, forget, I called my buddy. I said, come over here, bring me some more, some, sound something’s wrong. I went to the doctor a few days later. I said, yeah, I pulled all of the tablets in the sink.

52:06 The bells. I was like, nah, nothing for me, and at that point I was like, I’m coming back. If he was, are you crazy? I was like, no. I had a vision.

52:14 I’m gonna be heavyweight shape in the world again. I seen it in a dream. It was like, you really lost mice, and know why? I’m for getting three pounds. So now I’m every day, I take my baby, I put in this tool, and I’m walking.

52:25 I’m walking, Brian. I’m walking around the neighborhood. People laughing at me. I look at his fat ass. I’m like, okay, I’m still walking.

52:31 I got a dream now. I set my mind on. I’m gonna do something, and you know, one day I tell people who store our there was no big thing. I was just, I was done. I was pushing myself, war, trying to walk, trying to make things hot, man.

52:44 I’m back with the phones. I’m calling people. I’m like, ain’t no managers. I’m doing people like, you gotta be kidding me. And then one day I was sitting down.

52:54 I had walked really far, and I was thinking about you know my whole life, and I like, I’m a little baby in a stroller, and I’m like, you know, I’m like, you know what? Get up and get, make this happen. I’m just tired. I want to quit. I’m tired of this.

53:07 I don’t know what’s gonna happen. Wooster, how do I lose? How do I lose 400 pounds? How do I get back to 225, to 230, to 240? How is impossible?

53:16 I said oh, let’s don’t care, it just does. So when I said, let’s go champ, to get myself up, I kept saying it when I got, let’s go champ. The reason why I needed a mantra. I needed a mantra, Brian. I needed something.

53:32 I had no warrants. Raj, nobody to pat me on the back. Nobody said, you keep going when you get tired. You know? I heard Adrian Adrian Davis, a great trainer out of Milan, Milan, Milan.

53:46 He’s a phenomenal trainer. I trained with him when I was young and he told me a story one time. He said that Larry Holmes was hitting a giant hit me bag one time. He was hitting the heart. Is he cool?

53:57 Just in my head, I mean, killing it, boom, boom, boom, and he said that his whole team was like, hey, come on, champ, come on, champ, and he said that, um, around around, I’m about round seven, everybody’s getting quite tired. You’re not even long, you know? Thinking about whatever they do on, and they do arts. Roger, okay. The Chairman had chopped.

54:20 Had I went down, and he said, Larry was hitting. He said, well, he said, what? Don’t believe me, no more. And he started, okay, champion was doing a job, a job was to motivate, cheer, award, and I have that. I never had that.

54:36 I never had nobody saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s go champ. Was it me, or was it me? So when I was saying less to a champ, and I was pushing, Brian, I was pushing on. I was using my own mantra. I had to read the mantra for myself many, many years ago.

54:51 A man told me, he said, on, you think it’s me, Sean? He makes t-shirts – no, he’s a printing company in Florida. He told me many years ago, he said, when he’s tied, just, I want the blue we would have in the conversation. He was, he just said, you know, and I’ll tell you, this thing is crazy. He said, we said, you know, sometimes when I get tied and I’m running, I say, to be the man, you’re gonna be the man, to be the man, you gotta be in a man to be the man, you’re gonna be man.

55:18 I’m like, I said, that’s dope, man, that’s good. Yeah, yeah, it’s a mantra. I say, the beaten man, you gotta need a minute, and I kid you not, Brian, I said, I need something like that for myself, and out four years, I would like to be the man, might not, I says, and then when I said, let’s go champ, but I can’t have said, let’s go champ, but I’m getting more and more energy, and I’m walking. I’m in the sun now. I’m close to the home.

55:40 Let’s go champ, let’s go champ, let’s don’t share. I’m programming myself. I’m telling myself, when I say, I don’t feel good, let’s go champ. I’m quiet him out. I don’t want to hear you.

55:50 Let’s go champ. This was my own switch, my office, which my go-to buddy. Okay, you want to quit, you want to give up, you think you’re negative, let’s go champ, right? So now I’m home, and I get home, like, let’s go champ, and after a while I kept saying it, when I got tired, the bag, when I want to, didn’t want to get up, I said, let’s go champ, and, um, I said, you don’t trade marketing copywriting, because Michael Buffer made a billion dollars off “Let’s get ready to rumble.”

56:19 We got this. So I just, I’m more so used it as a reminder to keep going, not give up. And what does it mean? It means many things. Yes, it means everything.

56:32 It means everything. It means hello, let’s go champ. Yeah, let’s go. It means goodbye, let’s go champ, till next time, let’s go champ. It means everything.

56:41 It really does, cuz you the champ. We are, we all, champ enough. And again, I didn’t say let’s go champ cuz I won. I won in boxing. I said, let’s go champ, and it means I’m a champ.

56:52 You a champ for the things that we didn’t give up on, for the times that you wanted to quit, we wouldn’t. If you ever wanted to kill yourself, if you ever felt like, in your life, let’s go champ. No, did that forget that you the champion? Father, in the champion, find the things that you can grab on to that you feel good about. And for a long time, I couldn’t do that.

57:15 So say it, let’s go champ, was able to give me a little self-esteem. Tell myself, on my channel, I never felt like a champion in boxing when I fought. For men I said, oh, it was close. It was this time when I fought like Klitschko. Oh, Dr. Morrow, there was one second left on the clock.

57:31 It was always something, knock against me, and I had a lot of knocks against myself. So saying let’s go champ was able to tell me, you a champion, you a champion, and not for no boxer, you a champ, because he was 13 years old, homeless. You didn’t jump her from the train tracks. You, when you was, you know, got arrested for this, you know. You didn’t go into a life of crime, you know?

57:53 I’m saying, you, you, you didn’t, you know, you didn’t have a lot of kids out of wedlock. You didn’t do a lot. You didn’t do a lot of things that you should be proud of yourself. And I had to ask myself, what am I proud of? I’m probably, I’m proud of some things I’ve done, you know, some things I’m not proud of, but you know, I’m not a bad person.

58:09 Unfortunately, I’m a person that, um, I’m a person that, um, I’m hard on myself, part of myself, because I’m just hard on myself. Yeah. I don’t know, champ. I don’t know. I just had a rough life.

58:25 They had it rough. My mom wasn’t hard on you. She believed in you. Love me, man, lucky, and believe in you. Is that why you’re hard on yourself?

58:31 Um, I think I’m part of myself because I wish I’d done things different. Well, you know, she was, uh, she was suffering from drug addiction. We are said to down at us off the Virginia to live, and that was the best thing I could have done at the time. I didn’t have much, and then I said to New York, and I wasn’t in New York when she died. She went back to my old neighborhood, and I was in Vegas.

58:59 I was out. What she was really doing, cause she had cleaned up a life. She’s doing good. She came a registered nurse again, and I just had just held a lot of pain for not, and not so much things that I did for just wishing I could control. I wanted, wish I could be, they had made things different, you know?

59:16 I wish I had made my career, poppin’, it had took off, and I would have had money, millions of dollars. I put my mind and rehab, board our house. I would have not. I would have had a better life. I think if some decisions I made that wasn’t right, but again, I was making decisions early, thirteen years old.

59:34 I had nobody to tell me what to do. I’m saying, and I was making decisions. I was like, you know what, that’s not a good choice, you know? I had a good base, you feel me? I had a good base.

59:43 I’m Bob at home, love, she’s not a issues, but she loved me. She in a drug addiction up until 13. You are a great life, right? And for mom arrived at schools. You live in Brownsville, but still, Imams, no, that’s part of Browns, best part of Brownsville.

59:55 She’s functional, your honor with her addiction. Yes. And then work did everything. 13 is when it all came. Then we got evicted, and that was on America’s most money, that’s a magazine wanted.

1:00:05 I mean, that’s got a second at her episode, and I was embarrassed, and I was like, whoa, and everyone knew, cuz we lived in a working-class building, and everyone was like, you know, pointing fingers and it already been a build ugly. You know, I was starting to see, you know, hypodermic needles around the house in the early age, and oh, my mom was a nurse, though, so always me, you know? Okay, it makes sense, you know? Yeah, but then my mom had a lot of, you know, marks on hand, and she, she had small hands a lot, and she wear gloves to try to hide it, but people do, and as a kid, people don’t spare you sometimes, you know?

1:00:41 Not a, they know, sometimes people may spare you in the hood. Then I’m, I spare your feelings and your emotions, cuz you’re a kid, you think you know, but people would say things to me, question me about my mom, and I’m like, you know, why your mother got those blocks on our hands? My mother do this. Why your mother be, you know, sometimes looking like she’s falling asleep? And I’d be like, I’m a kid.

1:01:02 I gotta ask these questions and deal with this, so that made me strong later on in life. I became I never became better, but I became like, um, I held it in, and when my mom died, I could say that I had a lot of grass, and I wish I’d done. There’s something’s different. I love that, a deaf, and I just, and I mean, I’m just crazy for thinking that, but you know, I, I really do miss and love her, you know? Yes.

1:01:29 What do you tell people who have loved ones that are addicted, you know, whether it’s a mom or a brother or a wife? And you know, I mean, I’ll be honest, Janan, last year, I came out about my story. Back in 2001, more, I was actually addicted to heroin, an idea I had in my own overdose when I was a banker on Wall Street. You know, I know what it’s like to be functional, right? Just like your mom.

1:01:48 Right? People don’t realize you can do the same. You can do both at the same time until you can’t. Just refine, right? Missile fire, and you know, when you use that word, heroin, everyone freaked.

1:01:57 Yeah, they don’t think they’re real people. They think, no, these ghouls and goblins, working on the movies, but they’re actually people, not true, and most of the time they’re functional. They had their times. What do you say? Because all my people in my life got the hell away from me, because I was a train wreck, right?

1:02:10 What do you tell people when they’re struggling with that kind of thing? There’s only so much you could do. With your mom, okay, that’s the fact, that’s a fact, and that’s what I have to realize, that was only so bad. I can’t, any one thing, Brian. There is no time machine, you know?

1:02:22 I mean, yeah, that we know of. Many people we use it. Yeah, maybe it is with your daughter and your mom and another time machine on someone else’s terms. Exactly. So on these, can’t go back.

1:02:33 What do I say to people who suffer from addiction, or who have loved ones suffer from addiction? Do the best you can to do, to knowledge. I call it the research, you know? You do diligence on what it’s gonna take to cuz you know what happens. There’s a lot of time when you, you take care of people who would are hooked on drugs.

1:02:53 You become a codependent, you know? And that’s what happened to me. You know, how I became a codependent, because anyone talking about regrets, one regret was, what is a sort of cycles, right? So I was, my mom was an addict, and I was tending the horses, early age, early, early age. I would pack bags in supermarkets, shovel snow, sell newspapers, bring the money home for food, and my mom was working at the time, or she was too sick to work, and we needed food.

1:03:23 So early age, by 10, 11, 12, hours working. So I became codependent when I started making money. I started bringing friends around me, you know? Oh, he’s my brother, he’s my friends, you know, my friends, my friends, my friends, but I was always that way. In a weird way, my mom used to spank me.

1:03:40 You got to stop. New friend, crazy. You want your friends to have everything you got. You know, you’re fighting him over you. Give me your toys, so they could stay and play with you.

1:03:47 Stop. And I’m just like, I, I have a brothers and sisters. I was always alone. I grew up in the hospital most of the time. My mom was at work.

1:03:53 I was in hospital. She visited me after work. I might be in the hospital for a month or two, weeks. I was home alone after school, go home, lock the door. I’d be home like, you know, I was, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, we go home, to three o’clock.

1:04:06 I’m eight years old, kind of home with the chain, with the key on the chain. I’m, excuse me, on the tail, on the rope. She’s been on the shoelace. Open the door, make sure nobody’s looking, going, closed the door, lock all the doors, call me. I gotta work a double, so I’m coming home in the morning.

1:04:21 I’m ten years old. I on your clothes in the morning, go to school. I’ll get up, I’ll do my thing. I walk to the bus stop. I’m nine years old, ten years old, so I’ve learned how to survive and move and shaking.

1:04:32 I’m saying a rough place. Those things help me, but those things hurt me, to being alone, because I wanted people, you know? I’m saying, I wanted people to be around me, because I spending so much time in their apartments alone, in different places, you know, so I feel hard to say, when I got older, I started letting people in easy. Oh, come on, come on. I got this mother.

1:04:54 I’m making money now. Got a little entourage, and they taking advantage of me, you know? I mean, they taking advantage of my kindness, one weakness, and they peep that I’m codependent. You feel me? In some ways, at people okay, he needs us as his, from his friends, you know?

1:05:08 I mean, so that was, that was a big thing for me. And I said, I want to say, if you’re suffering, if you’re suffering yourself with addiction, you got to grab the bull by the horns and know that it ain’t no way. I’ll accept the way out, which is cleaning up diet, exercise. Facts. I don’t care what nobody say, diet, exercise.

1:05:28 The people you run, I mean, and I mean, diving for me, died in a lot of places. The people are around, God, I can’t be around more the news, then the music. You don’t listen to, you don’t listen to rap music. I don’t listen to hip-hop like that. No, I’m not a rap music fan, and him, I grew up on it, and I loved it more than anyone.

1:05:46 I loved hip, I loved the whole. I don’t mean the news, I, the hip-hop culture, because it’s taken Africans in America and gave him one life that they never had. People don’t realize how important, how much music has done for people around the world. First of all, because when people with England saw hip-hop and they sort of videos from MTV in the early ’80s, and they were able to say, wow, that’s not a dress, and we were able to see, what, for being from New York, we were able to see what people in the West Coast was doing, their former hip-hop, how they dressed, the khakis, the Dickies, for you, like, wow, just like what they see, nothing was like, wow, you, D, Grandmaster Flash, looking, Run DMC.

1:06:27 So hip-hop was able to spread around the world, and that’s why I love hip-hop, but the music, the world’s, the beats, unreal, nothing liking in the round, killed with nobody say, UK. It’s nothing more to me personally, dope, than a beat with a bass that’s crazy. That’s a feeling through your body. The words could be phenomenal. They can transcend throughout the world.

1:06:52 You could listen to the message, and you know, I’m like, wow, Grandmaster Flash says so many amazing things in that record. Amazing. He just is to be the best hip-hop song ever made, but then over the years, being raised in that culture, we’re gonna listen to it all the time, and there’s a negativity started coming in, to killing, the drug abuse, as far as the Drake kid, and I’m getting drunk and celebrating, celebrating murders, celebrated crime, and we all part of, be talking, we’re singing, rapping, which it was happening.

1:07:24 It’s over, and all this going in your head, you’re saying that you program yourself, just like I had to. We program myself and say, let’s go champ. It was, that was part of it, that’s why I said, let’s go champ, everything, cuz that’s my reaper. That’s my go-to button. That’s my cold, but boom, red.

1:07:41 Let’s go champ. When I start thinking negative, it wrapped the rap song, telling me I just killed him last week. Yeah, nah, I with that. I ain’t telling nobody next week. I got a family to go home to.

1:07:51 I got, I’m not going to jail. I took the celebrate in jail. I did this that in the jail. No, I’m not going to jail. I’m not with that.

1:07:58 I don’t want to. I don’t want to even put that in my psyche, because it’s not necessary. I want to think about something positive. I want to think about my success, my family success, one thing about my daughter growing up to be a beautiful woman and being such an educated person. I don’t want to think about, you know, killing and all that.

1:08:16 So if I’m constantly listening to it, how can I escape it? So I realize, champ, Brian, seven, eight years ago, eight years ago, almost like, y’all gotta go on a diet, champ. No more ratting lyrics. I okay, I don’t want to hear it. Some of them are phenomenal, but I’m gonna hear it because I heard it all.

1:08:35 I know you’ll kill. Oh, you did this. Three, gonna die. The second of all, also celebrates money and blink. Yeah, and I got you nowhere, and that got me nowhere.

1:08:43 You don’t play that now at all, man. I got me nowhere fast. I used to wear Gucci. I used to wear Dolce & Gabbana, facade, G, you name it. I was the, I was suffering.

1:08:53 I had a hole so deep that I would do anything to try to fill it up. My hole was so deep, then out of the pain, was so, dude, I was like, okay, I got this manager. He’s got money. He sees TCS. I’m talented.

1:09:06 He’s gonna keep me going because he’s gonna make money off of me, and it was a deal. It was a silent deal. You helped me feel this pain with your money, and I’ll give you, I’ll give you the knockouts. He was able to go take that and raise money, all for my name, my wins, and throw me a couple, and I’m like, okay, I’m going to the mall. I’m gonna buy some bling.

1:09:27 I’m gonna buy a car. I’m one of the center-right, cuz I want to feel good. He’s like, yeah, you look at you, you feel, you feel good, go feel good. I love it. I complain.

1:09:35 I’m like, oh, but my contracts at this, and why am I getting, you know, how much money am I gonna fight? All y’all hit your knees, actually, money, and go to more here. So I was I was doing that a lot, a lot in my career, and that was my ignorance, and my, it was also, it was also a way for me to, um, cover it, mask it, go to the mall. I’ll spit of mm today. I’ll split farm under tomorrow.

1:10:03 I spent $59 the next day on the credit card, and my bill will cover like $10,000 a month, probably, and he won’t say anything because he doesn’t really want to pay me $30,000. I made up that last fight, so it’s a win for him. So this time, you plug the hole temporarily. Yeah, you feel good, and you think your friends, you think you’re the man, but but you know deep inside you’re not. I’m asking, is so hard, though, so I don’t even know.

1:10:29 So I’m just constantly and I’m buying clothes. I’m looking good. The women love me. My boys is like, wow, you know, I’m Sam. They’ve benefited from it as well, cuz, well, I’m not, I was never stingy.

1:10:42 My biggest flaw is that I’m, again, person, and if I go to the ball and I just and they say, yo, we’re gonna do more fences. My boy Dean, right, or Krag, those people, a ball, but you happen to be what I see them sent me. Let your bright with us. Come on, Brian, and we shopping. I’m like, damn, I, you’re Brian, you nice thing, you need to be something.

1:10:59 I just met you two minutes ago, but you need some don’t worry about the chat, we having a good time. Yeah. You know what, did we say, man? It’s a cool tool. I like this dude, man.

1:11:07 You know, thank you, Shannon. You know me, and now maybe I was doing it for that, to be light, codependent. Right, codependent. Let’s go champ. You are very, so, so, cut that round music out, rat, trying to kit, just all that stuff out.

1:11:21 Jacob eats, just went to the beats, champ. I start, met a guy named Lao Lord, DJ Smokey. They’re some of the most amazing music I’ve ever heard, just beat, no words, so many different people out there, man, that’s gonna believe it, that it would really good music makers. Um, alright, and that’s a big part of your life, and it’s always in the back, your Instagram videos. You roll up to my place, we’re really know, let’s don’t repeat, says, yeah.

1:11:46 Alright, so that’s in the head now. Tell me about the people you’re surrounding yourself with. You’re trying to make sure it’s positive people, only 100 percent. Okay, diet, diet, chance, talk about diet. Yeah, die, so food, sugar, fight it as much as I can, because it’s poison.

1:12:03 You know, it’s poison. I’m unfortunately I’m an addict. We all, I mean, I don’t say we all are, but I, I play with the sugar. It’s bad. I had to really cut it down, cut it down.

1:12:17 I even to this day, like, I might do my sugar early in the morning, but I said, okay, you did enough for the day, champ. Some days I try to do no sugar. TV, when I watch, uh, if I was sitting there watching Law & Order over and over, in or 48 hours, you know, whatever they killing sprees they on, or violate shows. I’m cursed, we watching a wild murder mission. Why?

1:12:39 I’m not killing nobody. I don’t need to know how to get away. I’m trying to stay away from that, because there’s a side of me that I don’t play. You feel me? There’s a side to me that a whole lot of hurt inside, and that, when unleashed on its own, one is bad.

1:12:55 You film. I’m not trying to, you know, sit here and say I’m gonna kill her. I’m a bad person. Another that people know, you can see who I am, but there is a side of me that holding, lino, hurt, and when I crossed that line with that hurt, it’s coming on you. You won’t, you won’t take this pain, so I don’t want it.

1:13:10 No beef with nobody. I don’t want no beef. I don’t want no static. You see me, I’m walking around, let’s go jab. Now, if you a fighter, you legally fight, you are, you just like me.

1:13:20 We have weapons. These are weapons. These are licensed weapons. So if you a fighter, you sign a contract somewhere in some state with some commissioner, your hands will leave the weapons. So I’ll come to you and say, you should fight in the ring.

1:13:31 I don’t mean street fight, unless you know, it might happen, but I don’t fight for free. I don’t fight. I fight for money in the rain, but I’m not gonna fight. I’m right. Look, it’s bad.

1:13:40 Hey, let’s go champ, it’s gonna find me, and you don’t get me. Wow. I don’t care who it is, I’m gonna fight you. Oh, that’s I like, like, I like Joshua. I love Dillian.

1:13:49 Why, this is my love. Those guys, good guys, happy for for the sport. Some guys I might not want to fight, lamp, some glasses, give money, fight Tyson Fury. I love Tyson Fury, rocks, brotherhood, so it’s a brotherhood, world sponsors, but I fried them cuz there’s money to make. It, and he offered to put me on his undercard.

1:14:05 He’s, uh, he’d loved to fight me. Unfortunately, I think this is issue what my rice is. I’m 47 thousand years old. They think I’m ancient. They think I can’t, but I can perform like nobody, nobody, cuz nobody could stop me.

1:14:18 You have to understand, Brian, there’s another side to me inside. That’s, I’m crying, hurricane, that it, once the bell rang, I unleash, and my brain go into another mode, and that’s allowed. That’s kept me back in some ways, because I’m dangerous. I’m dangerous for a fighter. Always come up.

1:14:35 I’m a risk. You never know what Shannon Briggs might show up. He might show up in shape. He might show up and just go crazy. You know me, and that’s what they don’t want.

1:14:43 So, and that’s why it’s all downside to fight. You the soiled else, alright, sold out, ain’t no upside when you looking bad. They get you on the wrong day, on the right day for you, you could take any of them. I’m, let’s go champ, yeah, and you’ve been out there talking to everybody. Tyson, yeah, Joshua, yeah, Klitschkos, get him back in the ring, body, David Haye, yes.

1:15:08 Let’s go champ. Um, while there anything, champ, anybody can get it. NBG, anybody can get it. All right, so you’re caught, you’re on the comeback. Food is a big thing.

1:15:18 You go to Whole Foods every day. You’re really thinking about what you’re eating, all organic stuff. Yes, the people were saying, come on, champ, does diet really make a big difference? A huge difference, champ. Number one, number one, the dashi put in the car.

1:15:31 You don’t pull up and say, I’m putting any gas I want. You know what to put in your car. You know, unique oil. You know you need water. You looking me, what’s the fluid, the anti-food, whatever, the crazy fries.

1:15:42 You know you need this in your car. You know the car don’t work without it. So how do you think that you’re gonna get around? And I’m put sugar a chalk with this, that 1/3 alcohol, which is sugar again. And I’m just gonna be a nut and expect good things to happen.

1:15:56 Not gonna happen, champ. So I changed my diet. Once I start changing my diet, I started taking a little clearer, you know? I started not watching that. I’m not listening to hip-hop.

1:16:05 I don’t want to hear Bobby, people, you kill. I mean, the girls you got, and how many calls you buying? I need to focus on my little baby girl, my two boys, my family. I’m the focus on that, nothing else. So I got rid of that.

1:16:19 Then it was the people I was around. I was around people that I had again wanted to take advantage of me, and the benefit to be able me was good. Benji was gonna happen. I had a guy told me. I had a guy tell me, he said, he said, you know, I don’t see you often, but when I do see you, it’s a movie, literally.

1:16:38 When I see you, we go somewhere. I might see you twice a year, once every day. He said, when I see you, in some movie, is your life like this every day? Do you just go out, and every day some amazing days happen, and you just have fallen, and people ugly? Well, I would see this guy.

1:16:55 We’d go out to a club. He might get me. It’d be the most amazing night of, like, y’all I can’t believe this life, because you’re outgoing, people know you, crazy stuff. It’s always epic. When, thank you.

1:17:05 Alright, the movie so that means everybody wants to be around you, and not always the right people. Not at all. And I had them all around me that benefited from being around me, but they didn’t really like me, more so, nothing in there like me. It was like a weird thing. Some people will become jealous of you and love you and like you, but they become to the point where I’m like, if I, if that was me, I mean, weird personality, but I’ve had people robbed, and I said, if that was me, I would have did things different.

1:17:35 I would do thing. I wouldn’t have this. I wouldn’t do that. I’m like, well, you ain’t me. You will, you wit me, and you enjoy the ride, champ.

1:17:41 You know, I’m saying, but that’s jealousy enough for me, because they really sent me, he doing that. If I had the money, I wouldn’t be doing it. He would, and they really said, if I had the money, you wouldn’t be with me. I want me taking you out and partying in and showing you the good time. That’s what they really were saying, so I had to really look at who was around me, and the day I cut my hair, that same day I cut my hair, a friend of me, which was an associate that I codependent took on, and I was helping him all the time.

1:18:09 He was funny, like a jester type of guy, so it made me laugh, but it was just to be around somebody. He was available, he was funny, but at the same time he was jealous of me, and I cut my hair off. Enough, forget us, he’ll come to my house. I said, cut my hair, side armer, what I told him, but when I opened the door, Tamar, I had a courtyard house. When I opened the front door to my house, he looked at me, Brian.

1:18:31 He said, he looked at me. He said, your first look. He said, and his smile grew, and it started from, and they grew to my hair. His smile, he was, he said, I kid you not, I don’t know what it was, Tourette, whatever. He had his spoke.

1:18:51 He said, he looked in my head. He said, it’s over for you, smiling. He said, it’s over for you. He said, it’s over. He just kept it like this, it’s over, and I said, I said, now, which means he said, it’s over.

1:19:07 He said he couldn’t say anything except, it’s over. He said, ain’t no more boxing for you, movies, nothing. I was numb on you. I had just cut the hair that day or the next day. I’m 403 pounds with a ball head.

1:19:20 I had locks for 20-some years, my head, my head, so your spots never seen the sun, so I’m looking like Hellraiser, but my head is this big, like a football helmet. Right, something like a mother, hiccough, juggernaut. I open the door, I’m big as a house, on 403. He looked at me like, yes, finally, you, it’ll be nothing. So I’m like, okay, but I don’t remember that, and I still do.

1:19:47 I relive these things sometime, which is bad, but I use them to as motivation. I looked at him, and I was like, I just remember his planning on high school when he left. Excuse me, chap. I told my wife, I said, man, he was happy that I cut my hair from that, you know? And she was like, yeah, he thinks it’s over for you.

1:20:06 She was, I don’t know why he cut the head. I said, you see, and I lost that way, champ, and Brian, when I lost that way, that people see, he could see my face and my cheekbones just coming back, and I was kid small. I just kept seeing, let’s go champ. And I was told by a guy who was financially invested in me, partnered with me on it. He told me, miss top, saying that, let’s go champ stuff, man, just like they said, man, that stuff, man, you look really foolish, man, you look crazy, man, way that this is when I first thought.

1:20:35 I said, no, I just, I just got a lawyer in Compton, rolling. I said, nah, man. I said, it’s energizing, it’s good for me, it’s good for me. I said, it’s gon catch on, or was not, but it’s good for me, and I suggest in case our trademark to make an icon ready. And he said, man, you need to stop that, man.

1:20:51 He was my partner financially. If that’s healing, you stop saying that, let’s go champ stuff, man, you look, you know, people. I said, nah, I kept saying it like I’m set into this day. I’m never gonna stop sending to a day I died. Good, the person that looked at me and said that, I never spoke to him again.

1:21:05 He got who came to my house and said he was happy. I haven’t spoke to him, that’s been seven years, eight years. I hadn’t spoke to him, not once. I refused, and not even I refused, it’s just, it was ended. It was he was in my life for about ten years, hey, five, eight years.

1:21:22 It ended. I was like, wow, and that’s what I do with all these type of relationships, that I really looked at the person for who they weren’t. So how did I meet this person? What are they, what are they did for me? Okay, he’s not a good person, and I just eliminated.

1:21:36 Then I was done, but by myself, no friends, nobody, no entourage, no manager, no promoter, just to chant his little baby and his family and me, saying, okay, I just came here. That voice, I was like, what’s that? There’s me. It was me waking up, me. That’s the wake-up call.

1:21:58 You feel me? Telling myself it’s time. I, my momma, super, amoled mine. He cooked. I’m a superhero because I survived.

1:22:04 Yeah, you feel me? Yeah, super. Here I feel it. We all, we all, our superheroes, man. We all are superheroes, man.

1:22:13 Look at it, man. We all supe, arrows, champ, to be alive. We are Superman’s, we are Batman’s, we are Avengers. If you don’t feel that way, then good luck to you. I’m a superhero, man.

1:22:26 I survived everything. I’m gonna be great one day. I’ma be financially well-off one day. It may not come from box, and they may come from boxing. I’m gonna be happy.

1:22:35 What there would be, a better shape than I am now. I’m gonna be living for a long time. They say humans in the future may live to 150. I’ll be right on point. I’ll be right on point, so you start putting stuff out on Instagram, the whole world starts feeling you.

1:22:48 Yes. Jay, let’s go champ. Are you cooking up, making these shakes, and just, champ, that’s champ, and everybody gets it right away. You don’t even have to know English to understand your vibe. Let’s go champ.

1:22:59 And it’s crazy. I mean, I just say these videos, and it’s just like you’re there in the kitchen, just jam in the kitchen with the child, and it’s inspiring people all around the world. Are you surprised? I’m surprised. I’m happy.

1:23:13 I’m not, I’m sobs. I’m more grateful than anything, so wherever I go is America. Here to get love on me. I apologize, but are a lady tailor to me, and she, um, she did speak English, and she took the baby out the carriage, and she put the baby on me. She asked me, she, she say, take a picture.

1:23:37 She took the baby out, and she put the baby on me like that, and I was okay. I got to take the baby, and she, I said, you know, picture, and she explained to her son, who translated, she know, she just wanted you to hold the baby, because she watched you, and I explained to who you are, and what you machine watched. I translated the video, my interview did, and I apologized to her, but she put the baby on me, champ, and I was like, man, I started feeling like, you feel me?

1:24:08 I started feeling like I started feeling good, like, now I’m doing something that I never thought I’d be able to do. Make people feel good, and they make me feel good at the same time. Make me feel like my life is worth something, you feel me? And not just losing my mom, not just, not just a kid suffering with asthma, and that was totally, he wasn’t gonna be none. You tell me you feel connected to a champion, connected to you, other humans, like you never had felt before, never, never dead, and they love you now, not cuz you punch some guy in the face.

1:24:40 That’s why they love you, for your energy. That’s it. That’s another thing. I apologize. You know, I’m not, I’m not a crybaby, but you know, these are we’re not.

1:24:47 When you see these tears, these are these are somewhat tears of joy, because they basically, I’m a happy person. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life, and that’s a tears of joy, because I’m walking around England, London, England, Newcastle, Manchester, aka champ Chester. I’m in Leeds. I’m in Liverpool. I mean, ten, you know, I’m saying, I’m in Chad of Rochester, you me.

1:25:13 I mean, I’m in Wales, you feel me? I’m in Cardiff. I’m around the world. Glasgow, Ireland, anyway, I go, let’s go champ, let’s go champ, let’s go champ. I’m like, let’s go, all right, let’s do it, and it’s keeping me alive.

1:25:26 I’m alive. I want to fight. I want to win. I want to share this around a peak world. And if I never fight again, Brian, if I never fight again, check this out.

1:25:35 If I never fight again, the rest of my life, my last fight was in the O2 Arena in England, the birthplace of boxing. I was loved and cheered by the people. If I’d never step in the ring again, I’m okay. If I never fight again, I’m okay. If I fight again, I’m all for it, but if I don’t, I could say to book club, the boxing part of it closed within a great way, or to win in front of some great people.

1:26:02 Now I’m ready to go for another three thousand years. You know, I’m saying, I would like the nine, another stop, stop, I can’t stop. I puppy say-so. You want one more? I want 10 more.

1:26:16 You want 10 more? I just want to fight you. You know what I’m wondering? The competition part of it. It’s therapy for me, you know?

1:26:24 Without boxing, out training, exercise. I think all people need exercise. Exercise is a part of any type of rebuild. I believe you have to physically, as well as mentally. Again, the diet, watch what you do, what we read the right things, but it’s also physically sweaty.

1:26:46 Get him, get your mama. Shout out to Highland Williams. He only should tell me, come on, champ, let’s work out. You know, he’s, he’s my little homie. He’s my own Highland Williams, a professional boxing and you need people around you.

1:26:58 Again, I always, sometimes felt like I could do it alone, cuz I’ve done a lot of long, but you need people. At Tom, you need people, and that’s what I really realized more so than ever now, and my agent, 47, you need a team. I was I was never really mad. I was never a team player. I was always one of the people around me, but I didn’t make him.

1:27:20 I didn’t analyze them or reveal who they really were before I let it, man. Now you need a team that can really work. Like, you need a guy that’s on point with his cameraman, you know? Craig Brown, you me, the guy that’s up early, making calls, days, making things happen. Dean Watkins, you feel me?

1:27:39 Quit his job. He was a bricklayer for all his life. He was like, yo, no, I’m bigger than that. I’m gonna be more. You want more, champ?

1:27:45 Cuz I seen something to him. He was like, you think so? Like, I’m on you too, champ. And like he, he put this together. He put anything against me.

1:27:52 He put my tour together, so I start putting together the right people, put my team together. And, um, and that’s opened my eyes to a lot more, and we all can do the same thing, but the right thing in our bodies, the right thing in our head. Surround yourself with the right people, at the right people, yes, and get that emissions, a sauce, exercise, and get mantra. Let’s go champ, everybody, the champ. I think Bob, let’s go champ.

1:28:13 Yeah, you want to get high? You feel like you know, I had to, I was, they gave me Zen tonight. I never heard of what it’s an ex. Was doctor, was like, oh, try this, America day. Just feed the pills to me, feed the pills to me, and I was like, okay, and I took his ethics for the first time, and all my problems went away, literally.

1:28:30 I took his dad next. I said, whoever made this drug, I said to myself, when I took Xanax for the first time, I said, whoever made this drug might be the most evilest person that ever lived. I kid you not, I said the pur, whoever made this drug may be the most evil person I ever live, because I’ve never thought you could take a pill and take away your problems, but it does. It comes with a rebound effect, and after taking them for a while, when I didn’t take it, I started feeling funny.

1:29:00 I was like, I never felt like this before. My brain wiring was different, so I had to, like, literally say, yo, I’m going cold turkey on this. Then I was told, you can’t do that, you’ll die. I’m like, what? How did I get on something that it’s gonna troll me for rest of my life, like my mom, and she died.

1:29:18 How could I do this? So I had this thing, let’s go champ, when I felt bad and when I wanted to, I needed it. It’s a Mac, so I wanted something. No, let’s go champ. That’s my, that’s my, we had that.

1:29:32 That’s my button. I’m going to fall. Let’s go champ. I won’t go hard, and I’ll party. My trainer, let’s go champ, forget that.

1:29:38 Jam, find the strings inside. That’s the button, the go-to boy. That’s it, to shut off or to go. It’s to stop or to go. You need to go, let’s go champ.

1:29:48 You need to stop, let’s go champ. Chill out, chill, chill, champ, chill. There’s 20 different meanings. Everything was his life. Yeah, it says that Bugsy Brasco movie about the gangsters, and they say, like, well, it was like some expression he has, like forget about it.

1:30:05 He said it can mean 25 different things. Same with let’s go champ. Flavored, all those things. Yeah, and now Xanax stuff is some nasty stuff, man. I was with that back in ’01, and nasty, and with, with all of these things, drugs, and sometimes television and music, it just postpones you dealing with your own problems.

1:30:21 We became our Ishigami. In my life, um, women. I was, I was addicted to women. You know, they made me feel good. It was a point where, you know, I just needed to be around women to make me feel good, and I was bad from everything in my life.

1:30:33 It was bad for me in the early age, when I, before boxing. I was, you know, women would like me, and I would like a bomb, and that became something that, you know, I was part of, and that too. I had to say, let’s go champ, focus, that focus on you. You can’t give it away, giving it away, giving away too much. Job.

1:30:51 Yeah, you know, and that takes you off your own problems too, because you’re in someone else’s world also. Honey, I’m the man. No, well, I’m just, I’m just putting the attention on you, taking it all for me. That was the big part of it, giving my attention to everyone else. You did, 15 people in the room, I’m gonna give them attention, so I’ll have to put it on myself, right, and examine what’s going on with you, what you’re not doing right.

1:31:12 Go to those dark places you locked up when you were a kid and deal with that. Still do you have active ways of dealing with that stuff? Do you have people you talk about? Is it through things like this, with me, where you can talk about your mom? In the business, phenomenal for me.

1:31:25 Champ, this is my therapy, talking to you and talking to the world, and hopefully one kid out there, one woman, one man will see, hopefully many more, but if just one says, okay, this dude came from a bad place, he pulled it together. I can’t tell you, feel me, I’m no different than anyone else out there. I’m no, sir, I’m not special at all. I was born less than 2 pounds, addicted at that birth. I survived.

1:31:52 I’m not special. I’m not a survivor, survivor, and I’m no different than you. If you’re here on this earth right now, you’re a survivor. You can do it. Oh my god, do it.

1:32:02 So let’s go champ. All you gotta do is just forget. Let’s go champ. All you gotta do is say you want to do it, you feel me? We do what we want to do.

1:32:09 Is here with beans all the time. We do what we want to do. In most cases, you want to sit down, you go sit down. You want to eat garbage, you’re eager, you want to eat good. You need good.

1:32:17 Your choice is yours. Decision, make it. Make the choice. I made a choice. I saw my baby girl was my reason.

1:32:24 I looked at her and I was like, y’all, you got to make a choice, champ, what you want to do. And I never called myself champ, Brian. I’ve never caught myself, champ, until years ago, eight years ago, when I started saying let’s go champ. The day I did it, I said, you know, you have low self-esteem, Shannon, and unless you change this, nothing will ever change. And I start saying, you the champ in the mirror.

1:32:47 I would be talking about something. I’d be like, look at you, you’re the champ now. I was practicing. Look at you, look at you. I’m in the mirror.

1:32:54 Look at you, look at you, look at your chair, and I’m like, yeah, you are the champ. I had to convince myself that I’m the champ, and then I realized that I convinced myself. I was like, you are the champ. Look at what you pin to your life. It’s not the farm, by boxing and the people in it, the nasty people in it that said you had no heart, that said you was dead.

1:33:15 It’s not the firebot. Oh, it’s number different. All the writers, there’s one in particular, Blake’s, my guts, right? In America, he hates my cards. He’ll do anything to slander me, to talk bad about me.

1:33:29 He’s been a thorn, somewhat, in my boob, but me being here talking to you, he losing again, cuz I’m still alive. Yeah, I’m saying, and he’s just a pain, but guess what, champ, I’m still here. So I’m fighting these people, man. I’m still fighting the system. They don’t want me to fight again, but I’m coming back, and I’ll get a license somewhere.

1:33:52 You show me. And the good thing about Lesko, champ, is that everyone’s a champ now, and so many people out there are saying, oh, no, when I get the money, I’ll be a champ. When I got the title, I’ll be a champ. When I get the girl, I’ll be a champ. It’s not true, right?

1:34:07 Right now, right, man, you would today, you breathe it. We all champion. Listen, it’s real simple, at least keep it real with you. It’s no such thing as a champion. A champion DNA.

1:34:20 They’ve done studies, champion DNA. They say it’s in everybody. It’s in anybody to win. Championing DNA, but not everyone activates it, right? Not everyone knows how to cut the switch on.

1:34:35 One knows how to turn up, knows how to get motivated when you don’t want it. When you want to quit, you’re tired, you want a treadmill, or whatever, you want to quit. You gotta control your mind. The mind is like a car. You’re saying, if you take your head off the stand, well, you started talking and doing it, boom, it goes off the road.

1:34:52 The of cars. Like, you gotta have the steering wheel. And me saying, let’s go champ, business, third wheel. It’s me saying, okay, I had let it all go off the road. I let it go off the track.

1:35:02 Now I’m back on. I drove back on the highway. Now I’m keeping it going. Diet, when I watch what I eat, who I’m around, my exercise, those are part of me driving in the road. You think I got my tires checked, engine checked?

1:35:17 I got my brakes, everything is going. If I don’t have, I don’t have my brakes, how am I stopped? you feel me? So it’s all about, let’s go champ, stand on your game. That’s right, hit Chandler in that chamber.

1:35:28 I every day, every day, and you can’t let it slip, cuz it could be gone, right, easily, man, with distractions. Distraction can be the biggest, you know, arm, my great, my great grandmother in law says procrastination is the thief of all time. You feel me? Procrastination is the biggest thief of all time, and she’s to tell me that, and I said, I’ve heard her, Nana. Nana says that Madison’s to this day, not, it’s like 98 years old.

1:35:57 I love her to death. You know, she’s my wife’s grandmother, and she says, crashing nation is at the fall, Tom, the biggest thief of all time. She’s a hundred percent right. Won’t procrastinate, we don’t do, we gotta do what happens. Things don’t go right if you just do it.

1:36:14 That’s another thing with me. I’m fascinated and I’m a procrastinator. I picked up that tree, so what I had to do, what let’s go champ was, again, that’s what, that’s the first day I said it. I was sitting in, looking at how they can started thinking negative. You ain’t gonna be able to do it.

1:36:33 Look at your stomach, look at this, look at that. Shut up, let’s go champ. Rise today. Stop playing, stop talking negative. That’s the negative.

1:36:45 Calm, let’s go champ, that’s, that’s, that’s the person I need to go beat up, the negative person. Yeah, yeah. Tell me about the champ. What’s something you have to do every single day, non-negotiable, for you, even when you’re here traveling in the UK? But you got basic things you’re doing in the morning to make sure you stay the champ.

1:37:00 What are those things? Get up in the morning, brush my teeth, wash my face, say let’s go champ in the mirror three times, try to get a little exercise in, immediately, if nice one, because if not I started thinking negative. It’s not going away, champ, whatever I’m suffering from. It’s not gonna go away. And it, from a pill, it’s then gonna go away.

1:37:20 From a joint, it’s not worth me. They don’t go away from consistent, just a guy, get up in training. I’d like to, Sicily, be on top of myself. I got consistently, even if I have the safeguard myself, saying, look, I’m paying you for a job. Your job is to make sure I do so-and-so, because that’s what I need.

1:37:36 I might have to, you know, I may have to say, look, man, your job is to pay so that you make sure that I’m up and I’m doing this. In a third, if you see me doing it, I don’t mind. If I had, if I don’t, I gotta do it myself, and that’s okay too. That’s what I’m doing. I’m doing to myself, but I gotta stay on track, cuz I’m a go off track, but go off the highway, now I’m in the ditch, looked at stupid, and now it’s so hard to get out, the dead strap.

1:37:59 It’s so hard to get back on. The depressions, gonna keep every day by default. Yes, if you let it in. Yeah, every day is a fight to keep. Every day is a fight.

1:38:07 I’m not, people look at me and sell you the happiest person in the world. You’re full of energy. I’m a human being, half human being, mixed with ape, dinosaur, dragon, rhino, lion. It’s all in my DNA, and you, by the way, check out my website, my out for DNA, calm, you’ll see what I’m talking about. So I’m part in the blog, psychologize tab.

1:38:30 Um, so I said, say, like, you know, every day I’m human. I gotta get up, and I’m gonna tend to attend to my situation. My situation is I suffer from depression. You know, fill me. I can’t press the button and erase my whole life, Brian.

1:38:45 I wish I could. Some things have happened to me that constantly, I say, can’t wait to see this person again, you know, me, for what they did to me, but now I had to tell myself let’s go champ. Yeah, let’s go champ, because that’s not what champions do. That’s done with jets. No, let’s go jam, leave that alone.

1:39:04 Okay, yeah. What was the best day of your life, and the worst day, best day of my life. Today I woke up. I woke up. I came downstairs, and hotel Dean Watkins said, we’re gonna talk to Brian.

1:39:22 It’s gonna be great, man. It’s gonna be great. If you got to be the best, when I was like, hey, I’m here, let’s go champ, and today is my best day of my life, because I woke up. I’m alive. I’m healthy.

1:39:33 Excuse me, champ, I’m able to talk with you. Who knows what the day’s expect there for me? You know, in my life, who knows, worst day? I don’t know, man. Chopped a big, I’ve been beaten up by 30 men.

1:39:56 It was a draw, by the way. I got jumped by 30 men. That was about a draw. I’m into. I had some rough days.

1:40:03 My mom died, was a rough day. Excuse me, champ. Um, had some rough days, champ, but ain’t nothing. It’s all right. I think I was here before, thousands of thousand years ago.

1:40:16 I fought wars. I did crazy stuff. I eat only. I was an astronaut. I’ve done everything, ma’am.

1:40:21 I’m living a life, man, as a crazy person in the body. People just having a fight, and I don’t want to hurt nobody. I don’t want nobody to hurt me. I want to laugh. I want to enjoy my life, man.

1:40:33 I really want to enjoy what I got. Laughs. I really want to have fun. I really, and I’m down, but I want to be the life of the party. Have fun.

1:40:38 I just want to. I just want to be able to live a life and be at peace, you know? I mean, because I’ve been at war. I’ve been in wars. I told you I was here ten thousand years ago.

1:40:47 Dent wars. I just want to be at peace now. I just enjoy life, man. Yeah, let’s go champ. When you sit up on that chair, look at me.

1:40:53 You look like a warrior. For me, I’m like, oh my gosh. And do you ever think, you know, all those all those bad times created, let’s go champ? Yeah, right. So without your mom dying, without that day when you’re 13, getting thrown out of that building, getting jumped by those 30 dudes, there is no let’s go champ.

1:41:10 No, no, not at all. And then that woman wouldn’t give you that baby to put on your chest. She didn’t know that you, that that came from a place of pain and struggle. Yeah, right, yeah. That was, yeah, that’s blood, and those are the things that really make me happy, like being here in England, and just this morning walking here.

1:41:30 God was like, he was like, oh, what’d he say? He said, look at him, y’all. He said, look at him, y’all, and that’s something I say, just had. But I said, look at him. We’d always, he said, I look at him, y’all, and I was like, oh, let’s go champs and bands everywhere.

1:41:44 Those things make me happy. I don’t think you feel good. No, it’s not about me. It’s not about, it’s making me feel good. It’s that we feeling good.

1:41:51 Look at him, he’s laughing, he’s having a good time. That’s it, man. I can’t act much more. I got a lot. I’d done a lot, man.

1:41:57 Oh, no, don’t look at me like, oh, I had the worst life. I did, but I had a bad life, but I had some good times. I was heavyweight champ of the world at 25 years old. Again, at 35, um, I’ve traveled the world. I’ve met some amazing people.

1:42:10 I met a beggar. People to hear my language. I met on some crappy people as well, but I’ve lived the life. I’ve had many friends that growing up in Brownsville that’s dead, that died in the ’80s. A few friends died in the ’90s.

1:42:27 My best friend, Jermaine Dye, my pumpkin, died. My cousin, Maul, died. I could go on and on, literally, what, so many deaths. Oscar died. So many friends that I was grew up with, dead, and I’m here, I’m alive, and I’m just living my life now.

1:42:46 I didn’t, I didn’t think I’d be 47 years old, you know? I never thought I’d, never thought I lived to 20 when I was a kid, you know? I never thought I’d live the 20 years, right? It was not, I thought that when I’m 20 and when I’m 19, I’m 14 years old, I’m 15 years old, thinking about, okay, I hope they don’t shoot me, but let me get a gun in case I got to shoot up back, and I’m the hope, I hope I’ll get away. I’m 15 years old now, 16 years old, I’m getting arrested, I’m going to jail, and I’m like, wait a minute, what am I doing?

1:43:12 I was just in Lutheran school, you know, what, the Bible, reading the Bible. Now I’m here, and jail would grow men, and I’m fighting for my life. You don’t, saying, so light life has been hills and valleys, and I love the champ. Wouldn’t having no other way. Let’s go champ.

1:43:28 What scares you failure, drug addiction, scares, because again, you have no control. If you can’t control, then you just honor. If you are lucky, you off the road, you’re back in the ditch. My family, for us, my losing my family, hurting my family, because of a decision I made that’s not, you know, the right one. You know, those things, you know, regular fears, you know?

1:43:54 I’m saying, being fat again, being a loser, you know? I’m saying, those things. Skinny, but I’m not gonna let that happen. I’m gonna say, let’s go champ. My kid.

1:44:02 I’ll never go back. I’d say that with confidence. I’ll never go back to that. I’ll never go back to that place, because I always keep fighting. I’ll keep fighting.

1:44:12 What would we be surprised to learn about Champ, and something you do in your downtime that would be like, that’s crazy? Like doing that, or what, the kind of thing you do? Do we see it on Instagram? Pretty much, you know? I’m, you know, what people don’t see is that I’m an entrepreneur.

1:44:28 You know, I mean, I’m really, I try to diverse my different energies into different businesses, future businesses, us, you know, that I might look down a lot, like, you know, this might be hot. Down a rod, and I can see a potential, and I said, I’ve been fortunate. I’m not trying to give myself a blow job, but I’ve been fortunate to be in the right places and make good money doing things that unconventional, legal things that people, what are you doing in the stock market?

1:44:54 What are you doing, and lessening this? And it prospers. I’m like, y’all can live off that. Many people say, how do you make a living as a boxer? How do you make a living as a boxer?

1:45:01 Impossible. Legal hospital, check. Okay, I want to, I want a CBD business. Yeah. CBD, even in that early, right?

1:45:09 Boroughs, I was, I was early. I dog, like I said, I took some punches to the head. I really wanted to figure out how could I. I cannot. I cannot make myself better.

1:45:19 I was doing, I was doing a lot of, I was doing my due diligence when it came to cannabis and CBD. In the potential of what it could do for veterans who suffer from that, injuries, people cry, accidents, and I was, and I started literally taking him and seeing. I’m walking. I wanted the world to know I’m not a stingy person. If I find a cure, or if I find something, it’s free.

1:45:43 Everybody, look now, look now, look, look, y’all, this work, because I lot of fighters who suffer. I know a lot of athletes who suffer from, you know, what, just depression, period. So I was like, yo, I had a big issue with sweet before. I started taking CBD, so what did I do? I dive.

1:46:02 I died there like a pool. I went to Colorado. I spent 2 years going to the farms, look at that plants, learn everything I could about this plan, that was so amazing for me and others that I was seeing. It was like, wow, look at what it’s doing. So I got into the business.

1:46:19 I dived in on my first, my first run wasn’t great, as far as always, it, the first run, first run wasn’t, for the first one tanked, and now on my second run with a phenomenal partner, Scott Stevens, just some, just amazing journey that I’ve been on. There, and now for this company, Champ Organics is the name of our company. We, I’m literally so blessed and so happy to be, when I’m a, I have a phenomenal partner in Scott, and Champ Organics will be a brand that I think will be around in the future.

1:46:53 I really believe so, because like myself, it’s real. It’s not like about, you know, white labeling something I’m putting out. I spent the time. You can look on my Instagram. I’ve been in, living in Colorado.

1:47:06 I’ve been living in California. I’ve been studying the plan, but using it, and now I’m right at the threshold, we’re about to go over and make it, make some sense, and more so, not financially, helping people. It’s about to make sense now, to be able to spread it to people who mean it. A lot of people suffer from drug addiction, and they look at it like, you know, it’s a death sentence. But even though with CBD, I’m not a doctor.

1:47:34 I can’t make claims. I’m not gonna even put it out there, but I know from my personal experience that my joint pain, my anxiety, my sleeping pattern, that was a huge part of problem for me. Sleep, not sleeping. I’m thinking, racing mind. Yeah, you know, ease of that bond.

1:47:50 It’s powerful. Chain, let’s go champ. What keeps you awake at night? The crazy world out there these days, like the world cycle, where I look at the news. I didn’t do this diet as well.

1:48:03 You know, the world can be a hell of a place, man, but what keeps me up is the world itself, but I’m working, chanting, I’m working on focusing my energy on me, meaning not giving it away, easy giving it to the right people, so that it can come back to me, and we can reciprocate. I posters, we just giving it out, giving it out, and then taking and running with it, and then laughing at me in my face. You know, I’m saying, you’ve done that before. None at all, man.

1:48:34 So what keep well? Nothing is keeping me up, except if I don’t do what I got to do. It’s not, it’s not easy. I’m here. Look, I’m here.

1:48:42 I don’t have a manager, promoter. I’m working with, go, go start promotions, Dean Wonka’s. These guys, James Woody is a phenomenal, gob. Been on the road with him, him and Spencer have treated me like an, like they taking me in like an Englishman, you know, man, and he brought me in, took me on a tour making money for my family. Big things on the horizon, so I’m just happy to be with good people.

1:49:03 Down, you know, yeah. Champ, I always ask a few people a couple questions at the end. I’m gonna hit you with these, if you could pick up a magic phone and ring up the 20-year-old Shannon Briggs and give that young man a bit of advice. Wow, how much time I got on the phone? What would you tell him?

1:49:21 Excuse me, Jim, um, you were boxing at this point, right? In Windsor? I was 20 years old, and would be the perfect time. Gonna talk to him. It wouldn’t matter, perfect time.

1:49:29 He’s got the dreadlocks. Yeah, he’s winning. You have phenomenal shape, and also, deep down inside, he’s got lots of stuff locked away. Yeah, and he’s basically masking it. He’s using material things to try and cover it and take away the pain.

1:49:47 He’s using, he’s, he’s, which I’ve been in some frivolous relationships with women, so that he can use that as an escape. You know, ice for my song. You know, something else to do, an escape, and just chill out. Champ, I just focus on your craft. Do the best you can.

1:50:08 Taking a lot of pressure off yourself. You go be okay. You’re gonna be okay. Just have fun. That’s the biggest thing I would tell myself.

1:50:13 Have fun. I was having fun, you know? You would you watch a kid play, Brian. They play all day. Yeah, they want, they just having fun, but you say go to work, everybody, like, work.

1:50:24 That’s that work in itself, so hard, right? Why did you say play? You have fun, you enjoy what you’re doing. So my, was I’m, I would have really enjoyed what I was doing as a fighter and had more fun. That’s my temperament.

1:50:36 If I’m having fun, I’m having fun and I’m having fun. I’m smiling. Life is good, but I’m one another mole. My friend, that good, champ, my friend, I don’t remember many smiling pictures of Shannon Briggs back in the day. Yeah, not a lot of smiles then.

1:50:50 Mike’s mom, still. Yeah, no, not, not back then. I know, I’m not serious. Nah, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me, champ.

1:50:58 It wasn’t me, Brian. It’s an act. It was an act. This is what they wanted me to be. They wanted me to be the next Mike Tyson.

1:51:05 I’m a boxer. I was more of a skillful fighter before you know, people was even looking at, like, that type of style. This was me, naturally. You look at my amateur style. I was just a fluent amateur box with no experience.

1:51:17 They threw me in there, and I watched Muhammad Ali. I just kept watching the VHS tape of Muhammad Ali, and I just memorized everything he was doing, saying, talk, and he walked, and I got a rear office and tape, and once I got a Ray Robinson tape, Brian, nobody could tell me nothing. I jumped in the ring, and I started copying everything Ray Robinson did, and I’ll, he did, and I was winning. It was like five fights. I want a New York state championship, Empire State Games, fire fights, phenomenal, spectacular, spectacular skills.

1:51:49 Like, who’s this kid? They’ve taken me around, taking the tri-state area, Boston, nobody can stop them. USA team, 11 fights, no national power with a less than eight, nine fights. Now I’m in the USA. I’m one of us, a team.

1:52:04 I’m traveling the world now. You fights them all, the two-time Olympic champion, why, Cuba, and killed by a thousand, 50,000 people screaming. You know, I’m right, but you can’t tell. Watch the team, you can’t tell. You look at me, he’s do this big thing when he jumps up in a ring before every fight.

1:52:20 He would jump up in there and the and he’d do like this and lay on the ground, and everyone would be like, whoa. You know, so I did it before he did it. When I guess about this money, I jumped off it, and he looked, and he was like, and if you look at the fight, he was sure. He was sure, he was sure. I don’t care what nobody said.

1:52:40 I had seen him a couple days before the fight in the Olympic Village, big, huge, six-six machine, built like a steel robot. I’ve never seen a man like this, neck, arms long, like a, to the ground, like he was so tall, but his arms could touch the ground. I was like, what kind of machine is this? But I said, one thing, he’ll never know what I’m thinking. So I went up to him in Olympic Village, almost like, yeah, yeah, it was like he was looking at me.

1:53:13 He never said, he’s an Olympic champion, he’s gonna, for everybody in the world, but he got a crazy American from Brownsville, from Brownsville. He never seen that kind of, never seen it. So he was shook up, but he got on the scale before the fight, and he was 220. It was not supposed to be over 200,201. He was 220.

1:53:33 I was like, no, there was like, no, no, no. Got him. Oh, speaking Spanish, got him on the scale. I was like, you know, I got on the scale. I was like, 180, cuz I had been over there for so long, and I was in the finals.

1:53:48 I had 80. There was no, it wasn’t anywhere, wasn’t enough full, substantial food for us to go to a family of four. I might not have no, no food, hardly knew tremendous Snickers bars. I would, but you couldn’t tell when I jumped up, and you did that in the ring when he, but he does watch the tape, y’all. I swear to Brian, Brian, on my mama, she buys.

1:54:10 He look at the tape. Cash dough did like this and put on his glasses and started talking to, uh, tell Teofilo Stevenson. He looked at him and put his glasses on, because he couldn’t believe this American was over there, and he was, you know, Braska melody. He quit me, boo. I got back up.

1:54:31 I tried to scrap with him, but he clipped me, and it was a wrap, but I still went out there. I still gave him my best. I still was like, yo, anybody else would have been trembling, legs shaking. We’re doing out there, same time, what the doc. I was like, now I buy the dollar.

1:54:45 I’m gonna try to catch me a kill first. Oh my god, on that second note, what’s the best advice you ever received here in your career? Could have been from you, could it mean from your mom? It could have been from a coach, or someone, word of advice. What’s the best one?

1:55:04 I don’t know. What the advice has been, a lot of good advice, and well, that took it or not, but I know one moment, and my wife, I’ll never forget, is when, um, – this is strange – I’ll tell you, there’s some weird connection going on. I started boxing in like ’88, you know? I’m saying some, like the ’80s, you know, but I’m just dialing, going in some, and one day this disturbs in the rain. He was, you know, fighting bots and everything, and it was like, yo, he needs some work, and I had came around.

1:55:38 I was hitting the bag and stuff like that, and he said, hey, hey, kid, you want a box? I was a now in a box. I’ll give you a couple dollars. I said, I’m hungry, the stomach growl, right? Pan heated air to him.

1:55:49 I come with dollars. I was like, how much? Like five dollars. Come on, someone, all right, five hours from, make father Isaac, my own fortune. Do we get French fries or juice and a map, some bus money, so I’m forgetting it, ringing him, a smart way to do them, on my man, it’s easy.

1:56:12 He tried to get on me. I’m Louie, throw one punch of them. I’m young, I’m like, slipping. He’s bleeding. I’m like, yeah, mister, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.

1:56:22 He’s still trying to come at me, so I’m said, mister, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. You know, he said, I, you know, I just want to make the flowers. He like, can’t you good? You’re good. You could say, came, but to me, have this bar.

1:56:33 You could man, why don’t you keep going? He was talking, mumble, are you to the gym? What’s wrong with you? You’re so good at this stuff. What do you bid?

1:56:40 Wait, I’d never see you no more, yeah. You could be so he wouldn’t even hit the baby. Mother, come on, come on, what you worked out? He was like, no, this kid, this kid, it was like this man, crazy, and it was, Vino Antuofermo, the legendary middleweight champion, and he wanted to say, I’m gonna train you, and he started training me. He started training me every day.

1:57:00 Vito Antuofermo, I just started. You know, I came a couple times. He started training me, and we, it meant a lot to me. You know, I’m saying, fortunately, I do see him, not much of them, but Vito did a lot for me, and it says that, you know, he encouraged me because he believed in me when nobody did. He was quiet.

1:57:18 He was a quiet man. He was quietly, you know, and I seen him, not too many, it goes many years ago. I still got love for, but ironically, years, years there, you know? I’m pro-life, or maybe in 2005, it was, I was fighting a guy named Abraham, okay, a kind on ESPN, and who comes up to me? Marvin Hagler, and I had fought the night before, and was the Boxing Hall of Fame awards ceremony for the weekend, and Mama Hadley came up to me and said, he’s funny, I kid you not.

1:58:00 He double-take. He seen me, and he double tape, and he walked up to me and he said, hey, just like they said, hey, hey, baby, Pope, usually, hey. I said, what’s up, champ, how you doing? Chairman was so happy they even saw me. He said, I watch you fight last night, cuz we, it was the whole weekend, and I had four tonight, and next day he said, he said you could do something.

1:58:23 He said, I said, thank you, Chuck. He said, no. He said, no, I mean it, and he said, even though Mama Hogg was a serious man, yeah, he said, no, and he poked me again. He said, no, I mean it. He’s that you give in, shake, you could really do something, and that would to me, you talk about advice, that was the biggest thing I could feel.

1:58:44 Now I had, now the convention is they fought each other. They fought each other, so yeah. Vito, at the firm, oh, who basically gives me a good push in the beginning, and then you got Marvin Hagler, who tells me I have potential, and that could be something. So that was just two moments for two different people that I would really remember. There’s been many.

1:59:03 I’ve met Ali. I’ve met a John Joe Frazier. Was a Joe Frazier like me, man. Joe Frazier used to be like this, cake, a fight. Joe Frazier, whatever, what, man, I don’t know if him is B, yes, the way every time he said he would double take.

1:59:15 That’s him. You say, come in, hey, take a really fight. You know, and you talk about regret. Sometimes I wish I had reached my potential fully, maximized my career, reached. I don’t know how good I could have been, Brian.

1:59:30 I don’t know how good I could have been. I don’t know what I could have done if I had a trainer or someone who had mesh wood. Well, and I’m grateful for Teddy Atlas. If it wasn’t for Teddy, I won’t be sitting here. If it wasn’t for, an ephemeral, wasn’t for Jimmy O’Pharaoh, who was his gym.

1:59:47 I first started City Boxing Club, guys like Larry, Larry Jones, Bulldog. These are old, old men who was in the gym, you know? I’m Sam Bell, Mr. Tate. These guys were part of my life that I remember. I had a great memory, so I remember all these people that touched me.

2:00:04 I’m appreciative, and I’m so appreciative to have met them. I’m so appreciative to have experienced what I have with them, cuz it was a phenom. I was sleeping on the train. I was, you know, basically homeless. I was nothing, so all that got me to today.

2:00:17 I’m saying, with you, I’m feeling good. I’m looking good. I’m smelling good. Let’s don’t jam. Is that crazy?

2:00:24 All these random strangers just gonna give you a nudge and push you along, yes, and now you’re doing the same with, you know, let’s go champ. That’s why I just give everybody a little bit of something, and you’re already doing it. Pass it along, when they call it moving forward, for painful or delay, or forward. yeah, that’s much better, forward. Last questions.

2:00:41 You just to that 20-year-old that’s out there watching us now, you know, man, woman, in any country around the world, what advice do you give to them? They’re looking down the barrel, their day, and they’re like, man, I got all these problems, but I can’t be like Shannon. I can’t do all these great things. I’m not a champ. How did that?

2:00:57 What do they do? What advice to give to them? What are you kidding me? Look at me. I told you, I’m from nothing.

2:01:05 They case said, you’re never gonna be nothing. A friend of mine’s mom told me, when I had a little success, at turned pro, I had my first fight. I used to walk around with the VHS tapes, and we had duplicates, and I would give him out to be. But it’s my first fight, my little Preston, and I had to see those little Tom, and she seen me, she said, wow, I can’t believe it. You really in box?

2:01:30 Are you really on TV? We thought you’d ever be, and she said that, she said, we all thought you’d never be. courses, There’s brothers wish they never met you, not worse.

2:02:09 Look, Adam, I’m the worst when they come to stalking a fighter. I’m on you, and you following that morning. I warn you, the video, you not get over Vladimir on the water, man. I mean, that’s crazy. That’s all you, champ.

2:02:23 Yeah, that’s what their let’s go champ, let’s go look, let’s get, let’s get you this fight just right. Let’s get you in that ring. Yes, brother. Um, one thing I have to say is that, you know, it’s easy to look back and say, okay, it could have been this, could have been that, and you had credit. You have incredible talent.

2:02:39 That’s for sure. Thank you, but I would also argue that if you had become that reigning champ for 10 years, you wouldn’t been coming back saying, let’s go champ. No, no, that’s a guy who still got something to prove for the world. That’s true, and I don’t think we’d see those videos of you with your shirt off, looking like some 25-year-old, just a young man talking to people about positive energy. I don’t think it would have had the same weight, you know?

2:03:03 And so, in a weird way, maybe it was all designed for this moment. Now I would have been in the rows where he said that’s the past, the Grey Poupon. Exactly, let’s go to this roots. That’s right. Yeah, and so look, I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, ever since I saw you, you know, Rogan almost two years ago.

2:03:19 Thank you, and I love your energy. Again, it transcends everything, cultures, races, languages, like you said, that woman brought her baby up, doesn’t even know what you’re saying, doesn’t know it, and wants the baby on you, right? So we need this energy as humans. And I’ll tell you, I’ll be honest, Shannon, when I get the O.G.s in here, in that seat, right? Guys and women that have been around at the very end, they all say the same thing.

2:03:45 They said we got to give back to each other. Yes, we got to pass it forward to the kids. Yes, we’re all one, you know? We’re all one energy, and we all got to step up and be challenged there. That’s what you’re saying.

2:03:55 That’s all I’m saying. Ain’t nothing knows I was done, and now nobody deprived me on the back except me. Self-motivation, self motivation, self-motivation, self-motivation, because if you got nobody, and you just lay down and say, I got nobody, what else I’m, what I’m gonna do? You just gonna lay there? No one cares.

2:04:13 Don’t step over you. You got to say, let’s go champ to yourself. You got a something more to meet you, sir. And again, when you want to go tempted, you want to go mess up, with mess up, and you see you bout to go over the track. Hit that button, let’s go champ.

2:04:27 Get it back. Let’s go challenge. All right, British Boxing Board, whoever’s watching, get this main fight, get this, vandalize, you’re right. Please make this happen. It’ll be the biggest crowd ever.

2:04:36 You, every, can everybody’s gonna be tuning in from around the world. The whole train is gonna be crazy. We kind of make that happen. Please, all right, British Board, a boxing commission on karma on them. Throw myself on the mercy of the court.

2:04:49 Let’s go champ. Any physical I could pass, anything, got to pass a fight. You want me to fight the hardest fight first? I’ll do that. It’ll, and again, I’m not people say, think I’m scared.

2:05:00 I’m not scared. I’m not looking for money. I’m not, no one’s paid me to be here. No one’s paying for my hotel. No one pay for my fight except me.

2:05:08 I have no manager. I have no investors. I make a living. I own a pharmaceutical company, membership program, a CBD company, real estate. Do you do diligence?

2:05:20 And maybe I just like to fight. I just got something to prove to me and the people, right? Not sort of people around the world. They want to see me. They want to see me hurt you in the ring.

2:05:32 Let’s go champ. Fool, but I’m the best ever. I love it. Let’s go champ. Thank you so much, and that Keays-Byrne honoring, like, so much.

2:05:41 Thank you so much.