Full transcript: Teddy Atlas on London Real
3:50 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Teddy Atlas, the American boxing trainer, fight commentator and podcaster. Over your 30-year career you’ve trained 18 world champions, including Mike Tyson and Michael Moorer, who you guided to the world heavyweight title in 1994. Four years later you joined ESPN’s boxing team on Friday Night Fights, and you have commentated for three Olympic Games.
4:11 Brian Rose: For four, you’ve also been an Omega, right? You’ve also been inducted into the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame and the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame. Teddy, welcome to London.
4:21 Teddy Atlas: The International Boxing Hall, I’ll get that word, what the hell. That’s all good.
4:26 Brian Rose: Teddy, welcome to London Real in New York City.
4:28 Teddy Atlas: It’s good to be with you. Good to be with anyone who matches their socks with that. Time you like that. Yeah, I love it.
4:33 Thank you. You’re doing good.
4:34 Brian Rose: Well, thanks for having us at ESPN. This is a nice place here. Don’t mess around.
4:38 Teddy Atlas: You know, it’s okay. It’s not bad. You know, dude, it’s okay to hang out for a minute. For me, what makes good places? It’s not the ambience you know.
4:50 And what’s in a place? It’s the people. If there’s good people, I’ll make it a good place. They don’t feel like a good place, you know. And for me, that’s for mattes.
5:01 You know, it kind of goes back to those old sayings, you know. It’s, it’s who’s in a home that makes all the people. Enormous to love. It’s to care. It’s a, you know, appreciation for each other.
5:14 So I know, you know, you don’t think about that in the workplace too often, but it to me it should be thought about any place you are. You know who the hell is there that kind of. For me, you could put me in a freaking hole, you know, but if there’s good people there, you know, somebody with a good smile and a good heart, like you seem to be good, then you know what? The cave will warm up. Yeah, you know, amen to that.
5:41 Brian Rose: Yeah. So I want to talk about boxing today. But before I do, there was a big event here in New York City on the weekend, Madison Square Garden. It was the UFC. Nate Diaz or him as my man, my Zidane, which you had on your show yeah.
5:53 Teddy Atlas: We interviewed on Street Jesus, right? And then Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee, yeah, because he does it his own way, yeah. he does, right?
6:00 Brian Rose: And I mean, it was a big event.
6:02 I mean, I remember when it wasn’t even sanctioned in this city. The president, the United States goes there. When you look at the UFC, what do you see? It’s different than boxing, but it’s still a combat sport. You interview guys like Jorge Masvidal.
6:15 What are the what are the differences? And one of the things that are also the same, I have a bad back. Song just when you talk, you, I’ve seen it starts hurt.
6:27 Teddy Atlas: You know, listen, when, when you ask me that question, I see tough guys, then I see tough guys, and I see a tough sport, a brutal sport. People call my sport boxing my whole life, a brutal sport, but we don’t hit you with elbows.
6:44 Well, sometimes we do. Depends on the referee if he allows you to get away with it, but it’s not supposed to be allowed, and everything else. And the gloves are bigger with boxing, so it’s a tough sport. It’s for tough people. And, um, but you know what I love?
7:04 That these people who say, oh gee, you know, no, it’s too light, so it’s kind of tough. It can beat the crap out of you, you know. So why not be able to be honest about it and say, hey, yeah, this kind of speaks to our instincts, to our beginnings, that we want to find out who you are. Who you are, we want to know how bad we are, how tough we are sometimes. And also, you know, why pretend to have parameters when in the rest of the stuff in life we will beat the crap out of each other?
7:35 We don’t have no parameters, right? Let’s be honest. So I, what I appreciate about the sport about UFC, about MMA, is that you find out who somebody is. You know, it’s no height, no hiding. In my sport, my sport is to chamber truth.
7:56 You know, it comes to you. You know, there’s other places out there in the world that I guess a place of truth, obviously, but it doesn’t come to you. You don’t find it out as fast as you do a boxing.
8:07 Brian Rose: Okay, and is that why we watch?
8:08 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, that’s why people watch.
8:10 We want to see the human story and see how people react.
8:14 Brian Rose: Yeah, but the thing I finished with the UFC is Dana White did a good job. Has done a great job of marketing the sport, growing the sport.
8:22 Teddy Atlas: They’ve grown. They have really grown, and you touched on it, and part of it is because he’s a dictator.
8:29 Not it takes its own. I guess they’re useful sometimes. Little sin, I kill people, you know, and he’s a dictator. He controls all aspects, so he makes competitive fights. You have no choice.
8:41 Hit the highway, baby, if you don’t do it. Boxing, no boxing. You know, it’s the Wild West. You know, that there is no unilateral control, you know, uniform conformity, where there’s somebody saying these are rules. Would you abide to disa best for the sport?
8:57 No, there’s a bunch of freaking bloodthirsty promoters out there that are money hungry. Hey there, okay, guys, other the night you can have dinner with them. They’re there. Okay, they’re making money. They put on good fights sometimes, but they’re just worried about their bezel, and the only piece of property.
9:16 It’s not like the NBA, the NFL, you know, MLB. Whether it’s a national commission saying these are the rules, this is better for the sport? No, it’s about what’s best for them and their piece of land. So that’s why the UFC has grown so fast, and it has, it’s grown really fast. Now, getting back to the other question, as far as why we are drawn?
9:37 Yeah. You see all the actresses and actors come to the big fights. They all come. Why, it’s like, it’s like one of those, those Viking guys with the horn, whoo. You know, they, and it all come.
9:50 Why do they gonna come? And you’re touching on it, you know, you’re right, because they want to see. They pretend they want to see what real people do when real crap happens. When you’re threatened, when you read risk, how good could you be? And sometimes I think people, they, I more than think it, I feel it, that they want to be touched by it.
10:16 They want to be touched by it, that maybe, maybe it’ll be absorbed by them. Maybe, maybe someone further go into their veins, that they could be better. They could watch these noble warriors, and when they do it right, they, that’s what they are. They go watch them and say, maybe I could be better. Maybe my choices could be better, stronger.
10:40 Maybe I could make better decisions, then next time, instead of making a weak decision and screwing somebody. Yeah, you know, maybe maybe I can be whole. It’s kind of like people go to Lourdes, you know, to get the water on them, hoping it’s gonna make them healthier. It’s gonna heal them. They come to these fights thinking that’s gonna heal them a little.
11:03 It’s gonna make them a little stronger just by being around these men, these people. They can go in there, go into a ring, and just go into the fire that’s inside that ring. All the fear or the threat or the danger, going in and face what they gotta face. Face all their inhibitions. You know, people think, oh, you just facing a guy with left him.
11:28 No, you’re not. You’re facing yourself. That’s the magic. That’s what people want. Say, oh, this guy’s face them.
11:36 Can I face myself someday? You’re facing your inhibitions. You some doubts, your insecurities, all the stuff that’s been laying on you through the years that you’re trying to get rid of. Well, you hope you could get rid of, but you can’t. Maybe you can, maybe you can, maybe you can’t.
11:55 Yeah, maybe you can’t. You can’t, and prove to yourself in that ring that maybe you can’t get over that stuff. I knew Ken and you can. Yes, you can. Okay, and that’s what makes this sport special.
12:06 Brian Rose: So you can teach that. Are people born with that will to fight when things are down, chips are down, and there’s no way out, and the guys tapping out, and one guy doesn’t tap out?
12:20 Teddy Atlas: Oh, you can be developed. It can be nurtured. It can be aspired towards.
12:25 If we learned it, it could be wanted. You know, I, I talked to the NFL teams. They asked me sometimes, go into motivational talking, and the first thing I do is probably the coaches alike. I say you know, you coaches, great cultures. Don’t get me wrong, you’ve been in the business.
12:45 They’ve come from sandlot, the high school to college. They paid their dues. They know what the hell they’re doing. They’re there for a reason, but they all say to you, come on, we want to win. Winning is natural.
12:56 Winning is, no, it’s not. Who the frig said winning is natural? You ever see a baby come out of the womb? So I want to win. Oh, I want to survive.
13:08 I want milk. I want, I want a blanket on me. I want to win. I want to win. No, that’s taught.
13:21 That’s tort. That’s learned. That’s grabbed. That’s chased after, but you know it’s natural. I’ll tell you what’s natural.
13:31 They instinct. They’re given to us by God or whatever you believe. I know that’s a tough subject, so I just say, nature can’t argue with me. Okay, I’m usually not safe, but I’m being safe, so. Nature.
13:45 What, what, what is natural? The instinct to survive. We all have it, but that ain’t to win. It gets in a way of winning sometimes because you just want to survive. You want to live.
14:00 You want to breathe. You want to, you and, and live in different ways. They don’t mean that somebody’s gonna, you know, hit you over the head with a hammer, and you know, but but you want to live emotionally. You want to survive emotionally. Your honor, you don’t want to feel the way some people can feel when they get depressed.
14:17 This is real. So it’s about avoiding things. Sometimes human nature, it’s about avoiding some things that can threaten those things that can threaten you physically, emotionally, spiritually, getting you out of the way. I say, I one time I’m talking to the New York Jets. Eric Mangini was head coach, smart guy, young guy, and, uh, in fact they even put him on the Sopranos.
14:47 Quorum man, genius. I mean, he, he so he was hot, and he brought me in to talk to the team. Even Mike Tannenbaum, good guy, general manager, and back in the, in that time, and they brought me in to talk to the team, and so if I’m gonna talk, I want some information. So I said, good news, tell me. Oh, we’re not doing too good, you know what?
15:11 All right, well, what happened last game? Well, you know, we’re, we’re not playing up, you know, same old stuff. We’re not playing up to, you know, all potential. All right, well, what’s going on? Well, the last game we’ve missed a lot of tackles.
15:26 Gotcha. All right, I know the basics of tackle. The basics, tackling. You, you gotta have your head up. You gotta see the target.
15:36 You probably aim for the stomach, because everything else can Duke you. Just like boxing, can Juke you out of position, and you gotta see what you gotta tackle. Pretty simple, right? So I get in front of the team, start talking. I said, why you guys missed so many tackles?
15:54 And I knew what it was gonna be for the most part, the physical component, the physical excuse of it, or reason of it. The head was too long, cuz if your head’s down, you could go this way. I don’t see it. I miss you. Why was your head down?
16:09 I said, let me, let me give a little spout on this, a little bit from my. I’m not trying to be Vince Lombardi over here, but I, I understand fights, and you were in a fight, because you in there, there was something that could be a little scary, getting hit. So you’re in a fight. So I don’t know about fighting. Okay.
16:32 I don’t have to be Vince on body. So that’s first of all. Did anyone teach you to keep your head up? Yeah, I think they did. If not here, they taught you in sandlot, high school, college, and now here.
16:45 So okay, it’s a lack of experience? No, because you’ve been doing it a long time, because if you’re here, you’ve been there. All right, so we’ve answered those things. Maybe that’s the incentive. Maybe you don’t have enough.
17:00 And said, well, you guys, with all, any guys that don’t have guaranteed contracts. MLB, NBA, everyone else has guaranteed contracts. You don’t. You don’t perform, pop on the bus out of here. So it’s not that.
17:14 So why is your head too long? Did you ever think that it’s because, human nature, mister human nature, that keeps us alive? That’s the reason why we don’t walk across the street and get killed every day. That we look to make sure a car ain’t gonna kill us, because human nature instincts tells us to look. Was scared?
17:40 No one likes that word, but there’s a form of fear right there. I know we were scared. That’s, yeah, they were. Yeah. So when that mom, no, wants to hear that, because the connotation to that is yellow.
17:50 Somebody took out, so you push it away. You can keep that wolf away from the door, get out of here. But then you avoid what’s real. How you gonna solve something if you’re pushing away from the door and you’re not allowing yourself to understand? To think it is, so now here you are.
18:11 Brian Rose: So you admit that you’re fearful?
18:13 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, we can work on the pre controller, because now we Face what we gotta face. How do you control your fear by wanting to and knowing you need to? Yeah, that’s a warning tool, knowing you need to. You know, though, that crazy word, discipline.
18:28 Oh, okay, okay. You do it. Fear, okay, but controlling yourself, saying that it’s more important for me to face this than not to face it. Right, because there’s more important. That if I faces, I’ll feel the right way afterwards.
18:45 The other way, I won’t. Yeah, and I don’t want to live with that feeling. I don’t want to live with that truth, that afterwards I’m gonna feel the way that that comes to you, and then gone. So I told him, I said, so what happens is, what do you try to tackle? Trying to tackle guys.
19:02 It’s usually about 225,230 pounds of solid muscle that runs, possibly a 4.40, that has legs like your grandmother’s old table that you used to have Thanksgiving dinner at. Right, those old tables. Um, you don’t want to get hit with one of those, and it’s coming right at you. It’s coming right. Guess what?
19:22 I would talk to, so, mister, missus thing comes along. Mr. Fear, instinct to keep you alive, comes along and says, get the freak out of here. Don’t see what’s about to hit you. Just avoid it. Don’t see it at that moment.
19:38 Now you’re aware of it. Now you can do something about it. Control the damn thing, right? Stay, stay with that wheel in the car. How many times you drive it?
19:47 Really, you’re driving a car, and this could be an analogy for people. You’re driving a car, and it gets you going a little tougher, and there’s almost a feeling, really, the turns come too fast, and it’s getting a little out of control. You want to just get over here. You want just let go of this still and be over here. You don’t, because you’ll crash, but you’ve got to feel like, forget it, let me get over here.
20:11 I don’t want to be here. Hold on to the steering wheel. Keep driving.
20:15 Brian Rose: Is this how you coach boxers, yakking about the fear? And you said before that the moment of the fight is an instant, and then you remember, not dealing with the fear of the rest of your life.
20:26 It’s harder to quit than it is a fight.
20:29 Teddy Atlas: Harder to quit than it is to fight. What does that mean? What it means is the truth. It means that if you quit, you have to live with the ramifications and the understanding of that for eternity.
20:42 If you fight, it’s over with in a second. A second. Do you know what a 12-round fight is? 36 minutes. What have you done in your life in 36 minutes?
20:52 Brian Rose: Seven, and you’ve taught us. A TV show is only 36 minutes.
20:56 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, for 36 minutes, and the moments come in moments. That’s why they’re called moments, by the way. So 30 seconds, you have a difficult spot.
21:05 It’s not all the fights, a whole fight for 36. Guys go for 30 seconds. You’ve got to deal with that, and then it’s gone, and you give up for that 30 seconds, you’ve got a problem, buddy, because now you have real time on your hands. You have an eternity to live with what you didn’t do, or what you did. You gave in.
21:29 Brian Rose: Are these the kind of conversations you’ll have with boxers, to get their head around that?
21:34 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, because if you don’t know what’s at the door, how are you gonna deal with it? You got to know what’s at the door to deal with it. You got to know what’s there. You don’t know what’s there.
21:44 I mean, you know, you again, you’re hiding from it. Yeah, you’re, you’re avoiding it, and we all avoid things. That’s what we do.
21:54 Brian Rose: Feel like, and you said life is like a fight.
21:57 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, it is.
21:58 You know, I talk to Wall Street guys. They ask me sometimes, come in here, let’s have a little breath of fresh air. I don’t know if I’m gonna, fresh air. I’m something, I guess, and they’re not, as change it up. Let’s bring you and talk to CEOs.
22:10 They flew me to California to talk to all these CEOs. None of them, Adam, knows like me. All right, no, no, no. How to pretty? No, they all have pretty nose, I guess, and they were powdered up for them.
22:22 And, um, yeah, so I start talking about this stuff. I say I gotta adjust my talk a little bit to this audience, just a little bit. I’m not gonna change me, because what I say is what’s real to me. It’s life, fighting or fine for something. It’s the first thing I said.
22:41 Well, fine for something. You know, it’s just a matter of what but we’ll fight. We’re in a fight, and if we’re in a fight, there’s certain things that are happening, and there’s certain moments when doing a fight you want to avoid that moment, so all of a sudden I pick some pause. Smoke. It was a poor guy.
23:03 I mean, he’s not, Polly, probably driving like three, you know, Rolls Royces, because every one in that room was supposed to be ultra successful. So I said, you owe you any is, have you ever experienced where you’re just, you haven’t a, a tough time. You have to go to a board meeting, and you, in between that board meeting, and there’s somebody there you don’t want to face. There’s always someone you don’t want to face, right? There is, there is.
23:36 Sometimes it’s you, but there’s always someone you don’t want to face. There’s the fight. So I said, so what do you do? I’m telling you, when I said this, the room got like quiet there. I think they were like, you know what I mean?
23:50 Like anyone catch me. I said, you walk down into the hall, we should know that they’re coming, and you stop at the water fountain, and you got the water going in your mouth, but you ain’t drinking it. It’s just running your mouth to run it out. What are you doing? You’re hiding.
24:11 You’re just waiting for them to pass down the hallway.
24:15 Brian Rose: Right. Yeah, the silence.
24:17 Teddy Atlas: You know that old saying, silence can tell you a lot. Can be deafening.
24:22 The silence kind of told me, I think I was right, what I was saying to that group.
24:28 Brian Rose: This has metaphors everywhere.
24:30 Teddy Atlas: The custom, I’ll teach you this. No, I listen. I shouldn’t say no so fast.
24:35 He didn’t teach me the articulation of it, or the wording, or the sentencing of it, phrasing of it. I lay a virus, so if they tell me I wish you, you know, I kind of have a thing for that stuff. I don’t know. My mother, and my father was Hungarian, but um, well, Cus gave me was the nuts and bolts of boxing as life. You don’t move your head after your last punch.
25:06 You get it. So he gave me the nuts and bolts for the technique, for the teaching of it, the understanding, and then the psychology that were all afraid. The war frayed, and that you know, he used to say to me, here’s the proof, my proof, Teddy. There’s a guy, cuz I’m, I’m listen, I’m 18 years old. I’m, I’m oh yes, you’re great.
25:31 I’m not let me learn. I’m mesmerized. I’m here.
25:35 Brian Rose: Was he mesmerizing?
25:36 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, so certain extent, but you had to, you had to know how to tiptoe away from that a little bit too.
25:44 You know, otherwise you might be one of these guys, and I’m just exaggerating, but you know, what was his name? The piece of garbage, Tones, and because of great man. Does that guy in, in Ghana, whatever that number is, when he had everyone drink the lemonade? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you don’t want to drink the cuss to cool it.
26:04 Brian Rose: Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, his cool-aid was okay, but you got to still understand you still have to have your own sense of what makes sense, right?
26:14 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, you know, like people say, oh, yeah, I am the first. Admit he gave me the nuts and bolts, but then I grew a little bit on my own. I said, let me go into this.
26:24 Let me keep this. Let me build on this. Let me find that. You know, so yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I mean, cuz was a great man, because it was a special man, very special.
26:36 Made him special, because it was dedicated to one thing: fighting, an understanding of aspects, all dimensions, or the windows, to creep holes, to the cabins, the, the little crevices, and that means the crevices of people.
26:54 Brian Rose: Is it all psychological, weakness and strength?
26:58 Teddy Atlas: Okay, that’s what is the brain. Yeah, and because the brain moves this, you know, the brain moves this, but um, you know, it’s,
27:08 Brian Rose: I mean, one of the UFC fighters, Darren Till, from this weekend had an interview after, and he said, right before I walked out, I was thinking of any injury I could fake.
27:22 This is a guy, is one of the top fighters in the UFC. He said that people were blown away, and they were like, what are you talking about? You’re a champion. And Cowboy Cerrone says every time he goes out, he’s thinking, why am I doing this? I must be out of my brain.
27:35 Brian Rose: Does that stuff surprise you?
27:37 Teddy Atlas: Surprise me? I live with it. Surprise me. That’s like saying, if a weed and a garden surprise me?
27:45 I mean, no, expect weeds to be in the garden.
27:48 Brian Rose: No, the public sees these champions, and we think they’re all indestructible cyborgs.
27:54 Teddy Atlas: You know, listen, they’re human. The human day, with all the strains and frailties of being a human, they, they, if not for their weaknesses, they couldn’t be strong.
28:06 Brian Rose: Explain that.
28:07 Teddy Atlas: Well, first of all, they wouldn’t be alive because it’s the weaknesses of making sure that you know you’re aware of things that can scare you. They can threaten you, they can hurt you. Are you aware of it? Be aware of it. I see a guy come in, any word with something that don’t look too good.
28:23 I’m gonna push you out of the way, and I’m gonna take the bullet. Well, no, I’m not. I’m not saying I’m gonna take the bullet. The nature would be to, to let you take, right? And we’re supposed to be talking to truth here, but that’s where character comes in.
28:37 So you, nature, human nature, human nature. We get a chance to develop something called character. We use that word like we just thrown around, like a bunch of pennies. It means care about more than yourself, and that’s what’s still good about this world. We still have people that care more about themselves, others than themselves.
28:59 We never have enough. We never have enough, but we still have them, and we get reminded every once in a while, thank God, because I get a little down sometimes. I get a little down sometimes. I say they ain’t looking too good, and you know what I mean? It ain’t looking too, but then you give reminds.
29:16 Didn’t you see an act of selflessness, and you say, we’ll be alright. We’ll be alright.
29:22 Brian Rose: But it’s nice to work on Wall Street, and I used to love watching that movie, Wall Street, and there’s a famous line in that, where you know the young kid is having a really hard time, and one of the managers pulls him over, and he says, he says, look kid, a man looks into the abyss, there’s nothing looking back at him, and that is when man finds his character, and that is what keeps him out of the abyss.
29:47 Teddy Atlas: You know, I mean, it’s a work in progress, you know. It’s kind of, it’s kind of like a snowball, you know, coming down the hill. You know, it starts off some more, but if it can keep going, it gets big. If you can keep developing through acts and true experiences in life, you know, the ability to look outside yourself, look at what’s important besides what you think is important. If you can continue to garner some momentum like that snowball, you can actually get to be a whole person, you know, and that’s, that’s that’s a good thing.
30:34 Not just a rich person, but truly a rich person. You know. And, um, that’s why you get people sometimes, you know, quietly. They make money. Everyone says, oh man, I wish you would stop, and they’re miserable.
30:47 They get depressed. I mean, I know that. I know some of them. Talk to me, but, and they get depressed. They get depressed.
30:56 You got me into that. All right, but they’re not, but they’re not whole. You gotta be whole. You can’t have a chance to be whole. Money don’t make y’all.
31:08 Yeah, and you know, getting back to what you put up before. I’m so glad you put it up. I can’t believe to see people being honest about that stuff. But I mean, I remember I remember Cus telling me when I was a kid that there’s a fighter, you know, waiting. Just a regular kid waiting in the dressing room alone.
31:30 You know what’s going on? Well, one of the things in his mind, he’s hoping he’s making deals. You know, you make deals. I remember Liz, I’m, if you’re gonna talk, you talk to you know, you gotta be ready to. I’ll shut him out.
31:48 So I was, I was a fool, and when I was a kid I got put in a place called Rikers Island. I remember looking through the windows, and I thought that these people were pretty, pretty, um, I don’t want to say evil, but maybe pretty pretty depraved in their thinking, that they put a prison with kids in it, and some vicious kids, put it, put it next to an airport, Okatee Airport. And so I’m looking. I remember my first night. I’m looking at this little postage stamp, baws window, and I’m looking out to see planes take off, but then they, then, so you see them going, and then you lose them, and then, like, if you go all the way over here, look, you seem calling up and this is the weakness, but we’re talking about, right?
32:45 If you’re gonna be strong, you gotta talk about your weakness, so you know how to be strong. And, um, I was just a kid, you know, and I was scared, even though I was showing I wasn’t. For you know, what we shown, what we are, two different things. But I was making deals, like, what ridiculous deals. Deals with God.
33:07 Deal, said, get me out. Put me, know, put me on one of those planes, and it can crash. I’m accepting that it will crash, and I’ll take my chances rather than being in Rikers. Yeah, I’ll take my chance. I know how people feel.
33:24 That’s why, if I see a kid, you know, I run a charity foundation for 23 years where we help families that need help through the cracks. We do, we fly out of state. They have a sick child that the insurance won’t support them, and give them a program they need for the, you know, the treatment, or we’ll put a handicapped bathroom in their apartment that they can’t afford, to put for an invalid child, whatever it takes, whatever will pay for surgery sometimes.
33:52 And um, so we’ve run social programs, but I talked to a kid. I know, if a kid has his feelings, pressed, maybe the parents tell me something. And, um, I want to talk to the kid, because I know that. Again, like me, I’m not showing you how I feel when I’m in Rikers, but I’m thinking those thoughts. You hear me?
34:18 You hear those thoughts. Obviously they ain’t good. They were only real good, and I know that. I know they’re scared. They’re fighting, and they’re real, and that kids thinking that too.
34:30 Yeah, I said, I remember, with my, sigh, of two beautiful children. I’m so pleasant now. I have three grandchildren. I am so blessed. My daughter’s a lawyer.
34:38 My son works with Oakland Raiders. He’s an assistant director of scouting. I am so blessed, and they’re good people. That’s the thing, they’re good people, and they’re good parents now. And I remember my son was about, he must have been about, what a cute little guy.
34:52 Was he was probably about four, five years old, right? And he loved me. He loved his family, but I mean, we had a spot, and he always wanted to be around me, and I had to be away sometimes, so when I was around him, you know, he grabbed, and because I’d be away in training camp with the fighters, and I’d be home. I’d be with him every minute. Go to the park, play stickball, play baseball, play everything.
35:19 I’d be the official pitcher for the whole neighborhood, just so he could play in a game. And you know, but sometimes, you know, if he did something wrong, came to part way as a parent. You have to be a parent, and maybe my wife, because it was hard for me, she might have to discipline and say, no, you can’t go to the park today. It goes whatever, you know. Did everyone makes mistakes, even kids.
35:43 And no, I want to go. I know, did some more, and I passed by his role, and the door was closed, and I heard him say something to himself, and he said, I’m bad. I opened up. I got so scared. I got so scared.
36:00 I opened to talk up. Immediately grabbed them. I say, you’re not bad. You’re the best. You made a mistake.
36:13 You’re the best. The other passes. I love you because I knew. I just knew, and instinctively, innately, I know what I knew before. Mica’s maybe, but I knew what he was feeling inside.
36:29 I’m bad. I’m not. I’m not good. I’m not work, and I could lead to something that’s, that’s dangerous. That native self-talk, you take it, lead to something that’s dangerous.
36:39 We hear about kids doing things to themselves. Yeah, it’s out there, you know. So, so I’m, I’m aware of that, and I mean, you know, in tune with that, and it’s important. That’s important, and with my foundation we’re, we’re in tune. It’s one thing to write a check, the son thing to know how somebody’s suffering, just not that they just need a bedroom for their kid with muscular dystrophy, but how they’re suffering because of that, privately, with no father, because a lot of all people have no father, no husbands there, and so you know, and negative self-talk, it’s something you really got to watch.
37:17 But the thing that I was touching on was that you brought up about the MMA guy being so honest, saying I could fake an injury. So Cus was telling me a story, and he said, here’s this kid sitting in a locker room, right? He’s a fighter, and he’s sitting there. You look, I’m saying, hey, he’s good, he’s tough. I wish I was that tough, and inside, you know what he’s thinking?
37:40 ‘Cause, said, Teddy, I’m 18 years old. Because you know what he’s thinking, now already forced so I kind of knew, but I didn’t talk about it because, says, he’s thinking like, I wasn’t Rikers. He’s thinking he’s making his deal, and saying, listen, and he’s a good person. It’s not a bad person. This is important.
38:01 I say this. Yeah, he cares about people, but it’s human instinct, making deals. He’s, he says, I want to make a fire in a place. I don’t want to get hurt. I just want to fire to break out over here, where everyone’s to be evacuated, and the show will be off, but I don’t want no one hurt.
38:18 Maybe a few people coughing, you know, from this, but I don’t want. I just, I just want to fire so I can get out of here, so I don’t have to face this. That, and that’s a fighter thinking that, and it, so was a fighter can take that. Yeah, what do people think on the streets? Yeah, in different situations.
38:43 Brian Rose: Yeah, we would take a quick story about me, and I got a question for you, Teddy. So, cuz I’m the reason I thought about this is, cuz I was watching you talk about one of the fighters you trained, and I thought that made me think about my life. So I went to MIT in Boston. I got a great degree. I went to Wall Street.
38:58 I was at Bank. Smarter, everything’s going great, right? And in 2001 I started hanging out with some guys that like to party, and I started messing around with some drugs, and those turned into heroin, and it turned into an overdose. It happened to me in 2001. I lost everything.
39:12 My best friend’s at me for my job. My girlfriend left me, and I was, you know, twice overdosed, almost dead. I moved to London. I rebuilt my life back into what it is now, and I just started talking about this a couple of years ago. A figure, thank you, man, I appreciate it.
39:25 But when you’re talking about, when I heard you speak about your thoughts on Tyson, it made me think about me, and it made me think that, yeah, I looked successful up until then, because I had all the things going right, but I had never been tested, and I could have lost everything. I could have lost my life. I could have quit, Teddy, but when I saw that I didn’t quit, I became so much more confident, and now is some of the best days of my life. Is that those low moments, and that taught me who I am today.
39:54 And so that’s what I got when you talked about how you thought Tyson was, Owen, five, because you said, okay, it’s one thing to have all this stuff, whether it’s a lawyer or doctor or a boxer, but when you get tested, that’s when you find out what’s going on. Did I get the right message?
40:11 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, because that’s why you’re here.
40:13 Brian Rose: For people that don’t know, can you explain what you mean by that, as far as your take on Tyson and his record, and people can learn from that?
40:21 Teddy Atlas: Nope. Oh, okay, good, glad. So, unfortunately, I have a PhD in that crap. Tyson, I don’t have this record, far. You could pull it up.
40:32 You could google it. I don’t know that it matters, but let’s just say it’s fifty and five, four, forty-seven, and five, whatever. To me, the real record is that he’s, on five.
40:45 Brian Rose: Oh, Teddy, how could you say that?
40:48 Teddy Atlas: Because those five, Lawrence’s, represent the only time he was tested, the only time there was resistance.
40:56 You don’t know crap. You don’t know diddly squat about somebody into this resistance. Remember that word. Even talk about it, and you do, and that’s why you could do this stuff pretty well, but until there’s resistance, until there’s, there’s something to fight against, and there’s, there’s something to overcome. You haven’t been in a fight.
41:21 You have him. You ever want to fight, they were, they were athletic exhibitions, because you know he was fast, he was powerful, he’d have run people over, and so they were displays of his athleticism, his skills, and they were extraordinary skills. I’m the first to say one of the greatest punchers ever in heavyweight division, with both hands, like Mickey Mantle, a great switch hit, left and right side of the plate, and speed. What a company like Manny Pacquiao.
41:54 That’s what makes Manny so great. You know, great combination of speed and power, and Tyson hide that with a big guy, but he didn’t have what Manny had. You know, he didn’t know he didn’t have to. I don’t want to say the capacity, because we all have capacity. He didn’t, he didn’t have to, he didn’t, he didn’t have the desire to go to those places.
42:29 The way ever thought, the desire to go to those places, those uncomfortable places, when they came, because he never had to in life. He always have found a way to avoid it. See, Holyfield was different. Holyfield was in his talented as him, but he had a mother. I remember, I’m talking about that.
42:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, I heard that, that in Atlanta, would discipline him, right?
42:56 Teddy Atlas: Well, she had these things called switches, and all days, they probably would have stuck, somebody would have came after in those days, but she did a pretty damn good job. Those sticks in the back, in a woodshed, when he did something wrong. I think sometimes she let him choose which one he was. You want this one, or that one, or this?
43:13 There was a few of them, and she’d go to work, and he loves his mother for reason. Right, it’s facing things. Right, you’re gonna do something, face it, face the consequences, the ramifications. You know, face what’s gonna put what comes with those choices, be accountable. That’s part of the problem in this world.
43:36 By the way, we don’t have time to get into all that, but people aren’t frickin’ accountable. They just want one, but be accountable, be accountable for what you say you want understand. So Holyfield developed. He might not have developed the quickness and the power that Tyson had, but he developed something much more important, the ability to face things, the ability to face something, to deal with resistance, to deal with difficult moments, to overcome.
44:06 Tyson never got that. He never got that, that quality. Never developed that. Could he have developed it? Somebody would, somebody would have to, made him.
44:21 Somebody would have had to be made him do it. But unfortunately, I’m not looking at, nobody here, but on his way up, people were thinking about, here we are again. Human nature was best for me to make of 300 million dollars for Tyson, or whatever. The holy, he made an obscene figure back then. You know, he’s making 30 million a fight, whatever the heck it was.
44:41 So to do, I make my portion of that money, or do I take a risk and make him face things that he might run away from? Me, by making him face those things. Yeah, I think I’d take the money.
44:54 Brian Rose: So no boundaries and no rules, and he gets out of jail free. Yeah.
44:59 Brian Rose: Hey, listen, I remember one thing that kind of resonated with me. Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to, who’s 12 years old, but I remember I have, hundred ninety pounds.
45:09 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, yeah, solid. I’ve taken these smokers on down in the Bronx to get them experience, and you know, and I’m the matchmaking, and you know, it’s a special place, you know, and I’m probably a lonely white guy in the place. It’s always my vision, you know, and I forget America there.
45:26 Everybody’s in there fighting, trying to, trying to get better, trying to, trying to get out of a tough place in the South Bronx. This is their ticket out. I mean, these are great people, and these are people that don’t have much. Poor people, I’m not afraid to say it, poor, but they’re not poor enough. All right, they got heart.
45:44 Yeah, they’re developing care of their heart through hard sport. Then they’re facing their fears every day. Some of the rich people poor, right? So, but these people, and I’m with them every week. We go down there to the South Bronx, drive to, and I have house.
45:56 I take my kids down there to get experience, because I’ve been teaching them now. They get experience, you know. It’s one thing, it’s one thing to, you know, to say, even for doctor to say, I’m gonna surgeon. Okay, have you done any surgeries? Oh, not a surgeon.
46:13 You got to do some surgery. You got a, I hate to say it, but you got to get some blood on your fingers. You know, you gotta, you got to open up and you got to sew, so it’s not just Louis’s quote that said everybody has a plan until they get hit. Yeah, the face that was Joe Louis. He was great, Joe Louis.
46:26 So here I am, I’m taking these, you know, taking these kids down.
46:30 Brian Rose: These are the kids your training. Yeah, you’re taking the South Bronx in these chapters.
46:36 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, take scary situation. Yeah, yes, you know, you smoke cigars in there to everything.
46:41 I mean, I don’t know what they were smoking, and you know, they’re feeling they get to lose shots of Rome in the plastic cups, and charging $3 to get in, to make rent money, you know, and so they drink in there, gambling on the fights. It’s rough. People gonna say, are Teddy, yeah, I was irresponsible? No, wasn’t. Oh, these kids are good men now.
46:59 Brian Rose: Good man, right? And because you made him face the worst.
47:02 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, walking up three flights of steps and And there were needles and stuff, us on your way up, and stuff. Back in those days they were doing crack, and and there was some stuff in these kids, in this thing, and you’re walking up there, and you’re walking up these steps, and you hear the bongo drums, because they were playing bongo drums in there. You, good music, good arena, fight, good music.
47:24 Well, they stopped it. Turn around to come right back on. I can, in the corner you have to talk loud. Let’s say use your jab. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
47:33 You know, so you got the bongo drums, you got everything. Go, and they’re hearing it. Where am I going? Where was he taking me? I used to joke with them on the way down.
47:42 I used to look down on. I said, you guys, what should I get? A flat tire? No, we’re not. You know, years later, when their kids came up to me, Kevin Young, he said, we want Machete.
47:52 Ever, never tried. I love these kids, okay, we, what.
47:55 Brian Rose: Teddy couldn’t believe it when you said, he’d, you look right at it. You said, you know, when I get a flat tire, right?
48:00 Teddy Atlas: And said, yeah, and one time I got a flat tire, but I fixed it.
48:03 They said, all, he fixed it in fixed it. Damn it, he has a spare. Damn it. But they faced it. They faced it.
48:12 They went through it, and they can face other things after that. They could face other things after that, right? You know, and so I didn’t have to do that. No, and, and I remember it was funny. The first time, for what I see, you brought it up, under 90 pounds, right?
48:27 In 12 years old. So I’m the matchmaker. I’m the guy, day job, know some quarters, grind, you, something, and carry a gun in his waistband, you know, just in case. But again, people gonna say, Teddy, your remaining? No, no.
48:40 I looked out for these kids. I kept the room. I protect him. I looked. I made sure they didn’t get in to match.
48:44 Long as I knew that the match was all okay, but you had to look. You had to know what the Freak you adorned, because everybody was looking for an edge. That’s life. Well, you don’t think that’s life out there? Come on, you know, they’re ready from what you went through.
48:56 So everyone was lying, but put you kind of, but you got a cold. You got a cold, and a formula, like, look, I would make it. I organized, and they never walk in eyes, so I organized everything. I said, wait, age matter, fights, you know, everything, right? I put the columns, right, ridiculous, but had to start somewhere.
49:14 So he said, okay, how many fights? Zero. How many fights? Zero. Anybody got fights here?
49:20 Zero, zero. So we learned the formula. If, if you had zero, if I bet you had three, if you, if you admit it, Drock, yeah, yes, yes. If you said yeah, three, well, you had seven, six, seven, eight. Okay, if you ever admitted to, like, success, of yeah, you could be a pro fighting in the Garden.
49:43 I mean, I mean, you, you could have anywhere from 15 to 40. I mean, so we knew the formula. It was funny. Couple of times, with, caught each other, like a guy, guy one time says, Teddy, and they’re being care, you know, because these are rough people. So all, like, we got a little, you know, already, and, well, Teddy, you know you gotta have more than I don’t think that’s true.
50:05 You guy have more than two fights. I know, I see, I see him. I said, sure. Jose, of course, you know, because it, for my guy two times. He, for my guy, you, because your guy for my god, and he don’t have one fight.
50:20 He’s got so how would they, like, we, we were playing the same thing with each other. Of course, you know, I was a, because your guy, Formica, you put down one fight for yoga, and your guy for my guy two times. So I guess we both know. So you had to be careful. You had to know what the fight is.
50:37 One, you had to really look out from, and, and, and Alyssa was a tough place, but we’re in a tough place. You know, you think, and you’re looking at. I want to tell you one thing here, to happen, would you put. So we get there. I’m doing okay.
50:51 Oh, you’ve got new guy, Teddy. What’s his name? Mike Tyson. No, strong. Yeah, okay, we try to match him.
51:00 Look, 12 years old on day 95. No, Teddy, now you lie more than us. You lie more, Teddy. We lie. We, we know, but you lie more now.
51:11 You’ll become better liar than us. I know what good lie is here. I said, I said, but I’m telling you the truth. He’s 12 years old. What am I gonna do?
51:20 What am I gonna do to make you comfortable, to make you guys happy? Say he’s 18. Oh, he’s 18. Thank you, Teddy. He’s not 18.
51:27 He’s 12. So I, you know, that was the legend of Tyson was starting, you know, right then, and there was a lot more, right?
51:34 Brian Rose: You know, but he didn’t face adversity in the smokers, so he never had to go through and build that character.
51:40 Teddy Atlas: No, he faced. He faced somebody always.
51:42 He faced his own fears, and give him credit for that. That’s not, that’s not make this guy a zero on the radar. Plug, that’s, that would be a travesty, that would be an accurate. He faced means scared, like I just told you. You know, walking up to, hearing those bongo drums, everything else.
52:00 I mean, you know, being in a call, which you get a flat tire. He felt those things, told, but he still went in there. He still fought his problem was magnified by your curse power, his great power punches are born, and I made that kind of, they’re born. They’re born, they ain’t made, and he was born to have power. So he, the rest of it, he had to find on his own, the other power.
52:29 So you know, a lot of times before he could get to that place, bang, he had that power, and he didn’t have to get to that place. Okay, he could always escape there. It was always a parachute waiting for it. It was the power to get him off that plane, but and so he didn’t have to build those qualities. He didn’t, you know, he didn’t have to look the devil in the eye, you know, because he knew we could give it, but the times when his power wasn’t enough, like with Holyfield.
52:58 Brian Rose: Yeah, and his intimidation, he knew how to play that. He was good at that.
53:03 Teddy Atlas: Oh, good at it. I had him in the Junior Olympics in, in Colorado, at the Air Force Base for the Nationals, his first national tournament, and, he, when he, he knew what to do. We had to weigh in.
53:15 People look, everyone’s looking at him. The other kids, they’ve hacked me. They’re goofy, you know. Yeah, that’s from the streets of Brownsville. Yeah, he knew what to do, and he’s doing it.
53:30 He knowing how, 11, twice. Always. I look at this, you know, you know, and, and he, and next thing you know, there’s a rumor that’s Mike Tyson’s nephew. I am Mike. I’m sorry, that Sonny Liston’s nephew.
53:41 Okay, oh, and we didn’t do nothing to dismiss the young woman. Now when I know we’re not. Yeah, we’ve, yeah, you want to think there was Sonny Liston’s nephew. That’s what we are, because we’re in you already. You’re lost, you know, gone already.
53:57 And these kids, like I said, they’re looking at him, and they said, well, what, what the heck, you know? And, and he’s playing it all to the hilt. He ain’t smile. He’s right. Yeah, he didn’t talk to know about me.
54:10 It was like, like, like he was playing you know. Like, I wish he was always that obese. He was like, yeah, later, he wasn’t. No, and he wasn’t disciplined, and cussed, let it slide because he wanted that championship before yeah. And listen, that’s, let’s understand.
54:26 People, some people have tried to give me a little, I don’t know, a little bit of a nice gesture, and say, you know, Teddy, you, you stood up. And you wait a minute. I just, it was easy for me. I was like young, and I was just going according to protocol. Somebody don’t obey the rules, you get out of the gym.
54:51 I’d film at a gym for doing things to school, because that’s what I did with the other kids. The kids that wasn’t gonna be Mike Tyson, they weren’t gonna make 300 million dollars, but it was the rules. Who was simple, was black and white. It was easy for me. I was a young trainer.
55:06 I was busting my backside. I was in a gym seven days a week, doing all the work. Kasich would come maybe once every two weeks, just look, and say, doing a great job, Bill. Oh, man, that was like that full. I was.
55:18 He would come in and say, look what Atlas is doing. He’s building champions. He’s building a stable of fighters, and I felt, you know, I wasn’t getting a cent. My father was paying for his failed, uh, you know. But boy, didn’t matter.
55:31 You okay, man? I feel great. He gave me just what I needed. Like, yeah, and an ad, a lot of,
55:36 Brian Rose: and he gave you a lot of leeway?
55:38 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, I just did you well.
55:39 Yeah, I mean, listen, he had to trust me. He wasn’t up to being able to do what I was doing. I was doing a day, I was training clothes, doing a day that Jimmy Jacobs said Bill Gain would send up. I was training. I’m doing the day, and I was trying to damage this during a night.
55:52 I wouldn’t get home to 10 o’clock, and, and every day, ’cause didn’t believe in Sundays being off, and then on the weekends driving down to the Bronx, and coming back at four in the morning to get experience for these kids, to build them, you know.
56:07 Brian Rose: So, you know, so he cusses in the 70s at this point.
56:10 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, you know, he, so. But again, for me, it was simple. For me, I’m climbing.
56:15 I’m climbing. I’m just doing what I’m supposed. Hey, guys got to have discipline. Kids got to develop character. They have to have responsibilities.
56:23 They have to learn the movement, today punch thrown, stiff jab, take them, stay tucked up, you know, control range, you know. Those, those were all the things I’m teaching, because I always said it was a born teacher. Oh, okay. So I’m doing all that, and it’s like I said, it’s rhythmatic almost. It’s, it’s simple, because this, this is what you’re supposed to do.
56:46 I’m not thinking, that hey, if I’m too strict with this guy, I will get another champion. I didn’t have no champions. I just, I was just going forward in a way that I was told to go forward every day. It was simple for me. Look, I don’t.
56:59 Guy comes in late for the gym, he ain’t training today. Why? Because if you don’t have to discipline to be on time, you don’t have to discipline to do what you’re gonna have to do in the rain. Caddy and a nuke us would say, that’s my guy. He’s a teacher.
57:12 He understands it. You know, and so I’m doing, oh, it’s, it’s easy. It ties into some long school. Get out of here. You learn how to treat people.
57:21 When you learn how to treat people and control yourself, then you may be something. You’ll control yourself in the ring. Now, now you’re out of the gym for a week. And, but so it was easy, because people say, oh, you were, but I wasn’t better at all, because ’cause had something hanging over his head, you know, that I didn’t have. Age and he knew what it was like to have fame, and to have these things, and he wanted it again for his legacy.
57:52 He wanted, again, think about it. I feel bad sometimes that I felt the way it did against costs, because I was angry, very angry. I felt betrayed, because he picked IC number. Yeah, I felt so betrayed. We were partners.
58:03 How is this guy? One time he said, Tucson, this is my man. I was like, I’m his man. I’m his man. He called me the young master.
58:12 I’m the young master.
58:13 Brian Rose: Oh my god, and now you had to manage people. Yeah, yeah, and now kool-aid here and there. Yeah, a little bit.
58:20 Teddy Atlas: Okay, and and but now I’m like, now he just, you know, he betrays me, and I was so hurt.
58:26 I was so confused, you know. I was a young kid. I was confused, and but now I understand. I say he had something hanging over his head. He had where he was getting old.
58:37 He had mortality. I know, I was, I didn’t have mortality. I was immortal. I didn’t think about that crap. How is this going?
58:46 I had to be in the gym at 10 o’clock the next morning to start with the pros, and then be ready at 6 o’clock at night with the kids, and grandpa cheeseburger in between, you know, and I just that was me. That was the essence of what I had to worry about, ’cause I had to worry about, we have another world champion before he dies. Well, his legacy, be impact. He had nothing. He had no fear.
59:09 He, he didn’t have. He didn’t get married. He told me, I married boxing. So what do you have? Where’s your family, your legacy, your legacy?
59:17 And he was, he was racing against time to ensure that, and he had that hanging like an anvil, like in the cartoons. We had that anvil that could smash head, drop on you. There was something real hanging over me. I didn’t have that, so was easy for me as to the things I was doing, because there was none of that pressure, none of that thinking of those things. I hope people say, oh, you would have made better too.
59:42 I don’t know. Hmm, how do I know unless I’m in that position.
59:46 Brian Rose: If he had had 10 more years, do you think he could have trained Tyson in a way where he would have fought through the pressure of what we feel?
59:57 Teddy Atlas: No, because when Tyson was a kid, one of the things he talked about, and his, had not know to work us. You would heavy things, right?
1:00:06 You inherit genes, genetics. That’s good, bad, whatever. Would you, and have had other things? Tyson was enticing. Everyone saw this baddest man on the planet.
1:00:18 I think he kind of created that term almost. They didn’t use it before him, and all that stuff. And he’s on the cover of Sports Illustrated, kid dynamite, all that stuff. But the real, the real Tyson, of forming of Tyson, was he’s in a tough place in Brownsville, and when all the tough people, whether they were drug dealers, whatever they want, whatever, street guys, thugs, all the guys were around the place, to abandoned buildings, to avoid them. He hid in between walls.
1:00:51 How he ever came out from that? Do you ever escape that? I don’t know. Do you ever escape, behind, in between a wall? You know, one of the things I said to somebody one time, they were saying, how come you know they never noticed how weak he wasn’t?
1:01:07 And they said, oh my god, you’re right. He’d been uptight. Holyfield’s here to get out of there. She had to. It was just to be street.
1:01:15 Being please, wake up, please. That was fear, please. I was making a deal to get it, get out, scape hatch, right? You know, and so I one time someone said, explained to me, tell you, I said, listen, when you do weak things, that he did a lot of weak things. I don’t know if he raped that girl, but I know he did a lot of things along, too good.
1:01:40 I think, you know, I think we, we kind of know where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Maybe I know this is serious stuff, so I don’t want to be trivial about it, but I just know that I was told by a lot that there was a lot of other things that money came along and all of a sudden, get in here about it. So how many things we didn’t hear about, right? I’ve done some things wrong to the gin in here about. So it’s just clear there.
1:02:03 Okay, so, meaty. Yeah, fair enough, right? And so here, here he is, you know, a guy that has to be, when a moment comes, when the devil does come to that door, and he comes, and he knocks. You gotta be ready, and you gotta feel like a Viking. You gotta feel like a warrior.
1:02:24 You gotta feel like a samurai. You gotta feel like a strong person. How do you have that truth? How do you feel that truth? How do you have it when you’ve been living with lies, with weakness, when that’s been your next-door neighbor?
1:02:42 How when that moment comes, you could do it with the press, and you could do when your power back. You hit a guy, bulb, ah, he’s gone. Don’t have to deal with that. You don’t go to that place, but what happens when you get taken to that place, when somebody, named Mr. Holyfield or Mr. Douglas, take it, take it to that place? You have to feel like more than a weak person, more than a liar.
1:03:06 You gotta feel like there was always Holyfield’s name, the real deal. Yeah, you gotta feel like the real deal. You gotta feel like that Viking. You gotta feel like that, summarize that warrior. You gotta, you gotta have belief.
1:03:23 You have to have somewhere to hang your hat, somewhere to say, yeah, yeah, I’m that, and then all of a sudden you’re the guy in the wall. So you’re the guy doing some of these things to want to good, right? I don’t that don’t mix well when you’re in that kind of place, and that’s why sometimes, when I talk to people, and they bring me in to talk to teams and stuff, I’ll go down a road that they never expected. I’ll say, listen, I know we ain’t no choir boys here.
1:03:51 I know that we’re not trying to be monks. They’re all going up into the mountains and stuff, but we do have to care about how we act and how we behave. First of all, it’s the right thing to do, but if you want to go into your workplace, whatever it is, and there’s resistance, there’s difficulty, there’s some of these things in that workplace that you want to go, then you gotta feel like a decent person. If you’re doing indecent things out there, weak things out there, lying, cheating on your wife, whatever it might be, you can, you, you know, you think you’re keeping it from the door.
1:04:27 You know, yeah, it’s common to the door in your workplace when that moment comes, when all of a sudden you have to feel like a strong person, and you know deep down inside I have to feel like a decent person. Right, again, it’s not deserve something good, and you can’t, and you sabotage yourself. Have you been sort of exactly that? That’s all I say to these players. I say, that get it right now.
1:04:51 I’m not saying you gotta be, because we all kind of things. I’m not saying, you know, you gotta become Peter Pan, you know. I’m not saying that, you know, you, you have to be the perfect guy, but you have to be better. You have to be cognizant of that, because it will come to you. It will come to here.
1:05:09 It will knock on that door. And I one time I told somebody, say, you know, the difference between the Holyfield and Tyson, what’s the difference? I said, the difference is when that bank comes on the door, when that bag comes on the door, all the field opens the door. That’s it’s called, when it comes down the door, Tyson bolts it. You don’t want to be bought in the door.
1:05:39 Brian Rose: That applies to everyone’s life who’s listening, right? Yeah, does any in that devil knocks? He’s gonna knock a bunch of times in your life, right? Yeah, he’s going through your mind when you pull a gun on Mike Tyson. That’s a scary thing to do.
1:05:53 Teddy Atlas: He, you know, it’s scarier, and that’s fine, that’s fairly the way you both. You’ve banged it in you know, it’s scarier. Have an 11-year-old girl? Oh, I’ve been approached by him, you know, and told by him what he was gonna do to Harlan, everything else, knowing that and not doing something about that and not stopping that, knowing that I could do something, knowing that the next time he might rape her. Oh, he probably will.
1:06:32 I know that’s tough for me, but hey, I have the right to say, because I lived it. I saw what he did. Now, so you know, did he rape her? No, but he told her what he was gonna do to her. She was 11 years old, and, um, and he did it partly out of meanness, out of just out of direct.
1:06:54 You know, I use a strong word, with stronger word than meanness, evil, to a certain degree, that he wanted to get back at me. You know, because I put him out of the German. I was, you know, having that problem with cousin Em over the disciplining of him, and, and that’s the first time me and cause, where it ends. We were partners, you know, and so he was doing that street thing, showing who’s got the power. But so don’t do with my family.
1:07:26 Don’t do it with somebody innocent. Don’t do it. It was somebody who can’t protect themselves, somebody who’s weak. Don’t do that, you know. To, to me, correct, and um, so when you say that, you know, it was scary, what was scary was me living with that, not doing on about it.
1:07:47 That’s scary. That’s the devil knocking on, you’re not his brains out. That wasn’t scary to me for that moment. I’m not saying I condone, and I’m good. I’m not proud of it at all, at all, at all.
1:08:00 And God helped me and made sure it didn’t happen, and I’m grateful for that, because I wouldn’t be here talking to a good guy, right, now. But so I’m grateful for that. I’m cognizant of what it could have been. I am, but I’m also very calm. Not gonna lie about it.
1:08:19 I’m cognizant that I wasn’t gonna, I wasn’t gonna feel, I wasn’t gonna go in and hide, because I didn’t want to face that, because was uncomfortable, was scary, and it was scary. No, I was gonna do something about it and make sure that I did what I thought I had to do, protect my family at that time, and I was more scared. You know, that goes to the same way. I say these things to people, and I could say it with reality behind it, with some strength behind it.
1:08:50 It’s harder to quit than it is to fight. It would have, you know, if I would have quit and just, you know, not done anything about it, I would have had to live with that. What would’ve came next, how I would have felt, and I you know, I was willing to. I know it’s, it’s a stupid thing, and maybe a selfish thing, because if my family would have suffered, but I was willing to suffer. I was willing to lose my life, whether it was through incarceration or whatever, to do what I thought had to be done at that moment, because of what I just said.
1:09:27 Brian Rose: Yeah, when you look at the world today, Teddy mentioned accountability. What, what do you think we need to focus on in the next five years when it comes to teaching the kids? And I know you teach fighters as a metaphor for people’s lives, but you know, if you had to give some advice to people, or tell people what’s important, what should we focus on?
1:10:10 Teddy Atlas: bipartisan. You have to care about both sides, not just about your side.
1:10:19 You got to be willing to understand human nature. That human nature protects us in different ways, but it can also curse us, and protecting us, it can, it can almost outcast us to a place, a private place. Well, we’re not seeing what we got to see, a solo universe, where you know, where we’re not seeing everything. We’re only seeing what our ego lets us see, what our own, you know, desires let us see, all hatreds let us see, all prejudices let us see. That we have to step outside that once in a while.
1:11:08 Just pick a head outside, and once in a while, it’s, it’s once. All five minutes sitting, got someone beside you. Five minutes a day. Guys out there, five minutes a day. I’m not good either, but I try to be better, and I’ve gotten, I’ve actually moved up that road a little bit, a little bit.
1:11:23 Now open, a move up wall. Just poke your head outside that place. Five minutes a day. That’s out of your own head. Yeah, think about someone else.
1:11:31 Think about the thing about, oh, and, and why use that word? Why, why someone would feel this way? Why I should feel this way? Why I should think outside of my own particular little universe, see what the things going on, and why are you doing things? Why are you doing things?
1:11:51 Because you’re righteous, because you’re beautiful, because you’ve a hole at heart, and all that, also because that’s more convenient for you, because you’re not seeing anything else.
1:12:12 Brian Rose: What scares you, Teddy?
1:12:15 Teddy Atlas: Oh, I’m not being better, not being better, and not, not having my kids be proud.
1:12:24 Brian Rose: But they are proud of you. Yeah, you want to make sure they stay proud of you.
1:12:33 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, be a better man. Are you better? Everything. Yeah, you better person.
1:12:40 Brian Rose: Is it hard, be a little less selfish for everybody?
1:12:44 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, you know, just every once awhile, tell the devil to shut the F up.
1:12:50 Brian Rose: What was it, best day of your life and the worst day of your life?
1:12:55 Teddy Atlas: I stay in my life. Oh my god, my first child, both my children, getting married. I dunno.
1:13:02 I just, I know it saved me, but you know, having my children, you know, I now have him grandchildren, but you know, and it was the scariest thing in my life, happiest day, scariest thing, my first child. Wow, life. Oh my god, something that’s gonna love me if I let it love me. If I give it a reason to, it will love me, both unequivocal love, that someone will never betray me. Some tired of being betrayed, someone that’s never gonna betray me, never gonna let me down if I do it right.
1:13:47 And then the fear, what if I do it right well, I let them down, you know, and hope that I don’t you know, the older I get, the more I realize I’m becoming my dad. And then when I get proud of that fact.
1:14:00 Brian Rose: Actually, I was wondering, you can tell me, do you feel like you’re getting more like your dad? I know you’re gonna be close, but I mean, how did he deal with you?
1:14:11 Teddy Atlas: He’s over my, he’s over there, though.
1:14:13 He’s up there, you know, wondering how he dealt with a kid in Rikers Island, or a kid that comes with his face sliced open every day. I got to think about how it hurts him, or hurt him. I remember when I was, I had 400 stitches, 200 outside, 200 inside that thing. Yeah, that’s quite a. Yeah, I mean, what he gonna do?
1:14:31 It’s there at this point, you know, and uh 200 stitches outside, 200 stitches inside, and what happened? All I, I got into a fight on the street. I was ready to fight. I’ve got to use the knife. There was a few people, few guys, you know.
1:14:45 I was in the wrong place, wrong time, but I put myself in the wrong place. No excuses. I put myself there. My mentality, all I was hanging, what I was looking for. You know, I realized afterwards I had the greatest father in the world.
1:14:57 I had a father, there was a hero. It wasn’t, it wasn’t you. No, making man, on Willie Mays and Muhammad Ali. They were my heroes. I looked up to them.
1:15:07 I loved them in a certain way. That you use the word love very quick and any, flipping, you know. But um, I liked what they were, what they stood for. When I thought they were, but my father was the real deal. My father got up every morning.
1:15:25 My father put a white pillow under his tongue when, oh, I didn’t know what then. It was nitrile, so he wouldn’t have a heart attack, so he could keep working. And, and boy, he was working. He was doing house calls, who was 80, for free for poor people. So, wasn’t working for this.
1:15:40 He was correcting something else. He took an oath. He took it, out, that, yeah, I’m a doctor, I’m gonna take care of people. Hey, he did that. Everyone lives up to those kind of oaths.
1:15:52 He built two hospitals. One had 22 beds in it. He built it so people, poor people, could get hospitalization when there was no talk about Obamacare, none of that stuff. Either had help, but you didn’t have help, and he put two people in the hospital that was sick, so they could get good hospital care in his hospital, and he absorbed the cost, and the rest of the people that had money, was advertised for. He’s a good doctor.
1:16:16 The people that had money covered the bills, and I let him down, you know. And but because I saw how he lived every day, and I said, oh my god, he taught. He was the greatest teacher I ever had without saying much, just by seeing, right, by seeing. And then, you know, but then I didn’t have him enough. He left early in the morning.
1:16:38 You know, he came home late at night. I remember one time I waited up for. I was like, I don’t know, I was like eight years old, and I’m waiting up. It was like midnight. That’s pretty late for an eight-year-old, you know?
1:16:50 And he goes, what are you doing? What are you doing up? I said, waiting for you. What are you doing? I see he was, you were taking care of somebody.
1:17:00 You know, what were you taking care? And he was a humble guy. He, he thought talking about himself was like, was like a sin. He did, he does. Just sin.
1:17:11 You don’t talk about yourself. You just do. You don’t talk about, you do. Don’t talk, it’s that nice. So, but, but I’m his son, and I was just closed.
1:17:20 I was his favorite. I know it’s not supposed to be, but I was. And so he said, I’m up, and he says, oh, yeah, I was a business owner in the hospital on my way home from he’s gonna be okay now, because he’s gonna be okay now. He’s, he’s getting better now. He goes, my father was my father.
1:17:41 His courage, and his strength was the truth, because he didn’t know any in between. He didn’t know any in between. He is, this was this, and so even with an eight-year-old, he said, oh no, he saw. No, he’s gonna die. I said, he can’t.
1:17:58 He’s got you. He, he can’t. He’s got you. He says, no, he’s got cancer, and um, no, that’s beyond that, you know, whatever you said to me. So I said to him, because we’re all selfish, even eight-year-olds, right?
1:18:17 Why won’t your home? That, why, why were you there? You won’t here with me. I didn’t say that, but I said why won’t you here? Why are we there, then?
1:18:26 You know what he says to me? Because you don’t give up on life. Go to bed. And you know what, I screwed up. But I screwed up because I was trying to screw up.
1:18:42 Because you know what I figured out later on, as a young teenager that didn’t have his father around, but adored his father, the way I just tried to explain to you, that the people that got his attention was the people that were hurt, but damaged. So you know what I went on? A mission. How can hurt, I’d get damaged. I’ll get him.
1:19:03 So I got hurt. I got damaged. And you know what he did? You want to know what he did? And this is more special man.
1:19:11 Over and people gonna say, what a cold man? No, what a special man. He came in late. I was like, I was just waiting for Dr. Atlas to get, when, when they were taking me in. The police would take me into the ambulance.
1:19:23 I heard him saying we might lose him. I heard him saying we’re gonna, I believe, where we may lose, because I was bleeding. Something about you, yeah, we lose them. So you know. And the only reason I got to help so fast was the guy with me jumped over the cabinet of a bodega, jumped over the counter, and picked up the phone and sent a copy shot area.
1:19:48 Oh my god, the whole place got invaded. It was a tough neighborhood, and they heard, they got a very bowl and they got me. You know, I know, and I’m like out of it, but I’m like talking, and they’re saying, listen, just, and, and I’m telling these cops, I said, you gotta call Doc. You got. I was thinking, even though it’s all screwed up, you know, and obviously screwed up physically and mentally, but I was thinking, where would he be?
1:20:17 Is he honest? See, on a house call, like, like, how quick could he get over here? And so I’m thinking, so I keep saying you gotta get back there, so they put me on the stretcher, and they’re about to put me out and rolling me into the surgery. I’m saying to the, to the surgeon in front of me, whoever’s in front of me. I’m saying, I’d see someone like with a mask.
1:20:36 I’m saying you gotta, you got to get Dr. Atlas. And I was like, apologize. I’m saying, I’m not saying you’re a bad doctor. Nobody.
1:20:45 Brian Rose: What did your dad say?
1:20:46 Teddy Atlas: So I always go by. You have the surgery. I’m laying there in a dark room, and I don’t know. It was probably around 10 o’clock at night when he finished his house calls, you know, and all I remember was I’m laying there, and he, he comes and pushes the curtain. He comes in, and I feel, I don’t really see him, but I know it’s him.
1:21:10 He had big hands, and he touches me, and he moved my face to see the scar, because he was on this side of the bed, and he looked, and he said, they did it. They did a good job. You have asked all the rest of your life. And he left. Hey, that’s what the freak you want?
1:21:37 What do you want, a lollipop?
1:21:39 Brian Rose: That’s parenting right there. That’s old-school Staten Island. Perry, Teddy. I really enjoyed this conversation.
1:21:45 Teddy Atlas: Yeah, yeah. I promised, me gonna come to London,
1:21:48 Brian Rose: and we’ll have part two of this thing, but I really appreciate your honesty. You know, you say, you, I think that really resonates with a lot of people, and I think people can learn a lot of lessons from life by thinking about what they can learn in the ring. So thanks for being so honest, man.
1:22:03 Teddy Atlas: Well, I play a total difference.
1:22:05 I said a lot. A will, man, come see us. All right. Yep, all right. Cheers.
