WHAT attracted you to boxing?
When I was a kid, I stayed with my father on the weekends and he had a lot of books for me to read, the main ones being the autobiographies of Muhammad Ali, Willie Pep and Sugar Ray Robinson, as well as the Ring Record Book from 1952. Every weekend, I would read them again and again and the images they put into my head intrigued me just as much as watching the televised fights on the weekends with my father did.
If I remember correctly, the first upcoming fight I ever heard about was the Thrilla In Manila in 1975, when I was eight years old, and the first fight I ever actually watched on TV was Ali versus Jimmy Young in 1976 so between Ali, the 1976 Olympics and the release of the first Rocky movie, I came up at a perfect time when all the stars were perfectly aligned to draw me into the sport of boxing, full steam ahead.
You’ve experienced more than most as a boxer, trainer and analyst. You’ve seen more than your fair share of the bad. Why are you still drawn to this business?
I still love boxing at the ground level because
