by Teddy Atlas
“A problem? A problem? What kind of problem? We’re on the air in two minutes.”
“He just made a left instead of a right.”
“What?”
“Look down on the casino floor, at one o’clock.”
The CNN producer looked down—and watched as I suddenly veered off in a direction that did not lead to the podium. I beelined toward this writer and cracked him one in the jaw. The CNN guy went, “Oh my God!” Meanwhile, security was racing over, the cameras were rolling, and as they pulled me off this piece of trash, some of my guys, who were trailing me, got into it. I tried to keep them out of it, because it was just about him and me, but I couldn’t stop one of them, Bobby, from hitting the guy a few times. Boorman said to the CNN producer, “It doesn’t look like Teddy’s going to be available. You want me to see if I can get someone else?”
When I showed up for the glove selection twenty minutes later, my shirt was torn, I had blood on my hands, and I was still a little keyed up. Now, Frans Botha happened to be trained by Panama Lewis, a guy who was a real lowlife. They were probably not the best kind of people for me to be mixing with in the kind of mood I was in.
Lewis was infamous for having given Aaron Pryor water that was allegedly juiced during his fight against Alexis Arguello, enabling Pryor to win. Also, and more seriously, he had removed the padding from Luis Resto’s gloves in a fight where Resto nearly killed Billy Collins. The young and until then undefeated Collins saw his boxing career ended by this abominable act—and a year or so later, having become an alcoholic, he died in a car wreck. Lewis spent a year in Rikers for that and got thrown out of boxing for life—or at least boxing’s version of banned for life. In actuality, the only thing he couldn’t do was work his fighter’s corner during a fight. Otherwise, his restrictions were few. So here we were, picking out gloves for the fight, Lewis and this wannabe wiseguy manager, and me and Lou Duva. A number of press guys had followed me in from the lobby, literally smelling blood.
Almost immediately, things got contentious; I don’t even remember over what. In the middle of our heated exchange, Panama Lewis turned to Lou Duva and said, “Hey, Lou, you better calm down. You might have a heart attack.”
Something snapped in me when he said that. I grabbed the neck of his shirt. “Oh yeah? You’ll be the one fucking dropping dead! You’ll be the one! You apologize right now! Right now! We don’t fucking talk this way because we’re fucking gentlemen here! We’re gentlemen!” Everybody was watching, their jaws hanging open but not a peep coming out. How they could keep a straight face with me yelling at the top of my lungs, “We’re fucking gentlemen here!,” I don’t know.
I picked out a pair of gloves and signed them. Usually, the other camp would get the first choice of the backup gloves, but I was so geared up I didn’t wait. I picked out my backup gloves, too. Not one word was uttered in protest. Afterward, Lou Duva said to me, “You could have put a freakin’ horseshoe in one of the gloves, and they would have said, ‘You want to put one in the other glove, too?’”
It wasn’t as if there were no repercussions from my encounter with the writer. The whole thing had been videotaped. It was on all the news channels that night. A friend of mine, Mitchell, who owned a couple of gyms, told me how he was in his gym when the news came on TV. They said, “Stay tuned for the big melee at the big fight in Vegas.” Mitchell was watching it with a few friends. When they showed the video clip, he said, “Hey, that’s Teddy in the middle of that…and there’s Bobby.” They watched Bobby hitting the guy. Mitchell said, “Jesus. I hope his parole officer don’t see this.” Bobby hadn’t gotten permission from his PO to make the trip.
The MGM management came to the decision that they wanted to remove me from the premises, and there was talk of pressing charges. The Duvas, Davimos, and, most important, Michael stood up and said, “Fine. You won’t have a fight tomorrow if Teddy Atlas is not in the corner. Is that what you want?”
The hotel was packed. The fight was sold out. In the end, they backed down and discussed instead kicking out some of my Staten Island guys. When they came and told me, I said, “No. I ain’t doing that to my guys. My guys risked themselves for me and I’m not doing that to them.”
“We knew you were going to say that, but do you think maybe you could just keep them in the background a little? We don’t want someone coming with a warrant or something.”
I left it up to my guys, except for Bobby. We decided maybe it was a good idea if he wasn’t at ringside. I didn’t want him to get arrested. Bobby stayed in the back of the arena during the fight.
BOTHA WAS A GUY WHO HAD A SOFT LOOK. HE WAS ONE OF those guys who, no matter what shape he was in, would never look taut or cut. But it was deceiving. It didn’t mean what you thought it did. To look at him, you weren’t going to be intimidated. His punch wasn’t going to scare you, either. But he was a guy who could give you trouble if you took him lightly. He didn’t have great talent in any one area, but he was very busy, he threw a lot of punches, and he could keep you off balance. He could out-hustle you. When you factor in that Michael could be lazy—and you had to be honest with yourself when you were looking at your fighter—it spelled trouble. I knew that Michael wasn’t lazy, that it was other things. But the bottom line was that sometimes he didn’t work hard enough. He let guys steal rounds from him. Some fighters have to get hurt before they come to life. Michael was one of those.
I didn’t want Michael to get hurt. At the same time, I was worried that this guy could lull him to sleep and steal the fight. During camp, I’d been afraid to make him watch tape of Botha because he wouldn’t see the things he needed to see, he’d just see the obvious things, the awkwardness, the softness.
Sure enough, that was what happened in the fight. Michael almost knocked him out in the third round, but Botha survived—he had a good chin—and Michael stopped pressing the attack. Meanwhile, Botha kept busy in his awkward way. He wasn’t right in Michael’s face. He wasn’t snapping his head back with jabs and putting a trickle of blood in his mouth. But he started sneaking away with rounds. Each round began with Botha looking thoroughly exhausted, his hands held low like he didn’t have the strength to keep them up, yet he kept throwing. By the tenth round, my spies told me that we were actually behind on the cards. It’s not supposed to happen, that you know that, but it does. Although when you think about it, what other sport is there where you don’t know what the score is?
Anyway, the point was I had to make a move. What should I do? Michael came back to the corner and sat down. I told Mo to give him water, and while that was going on, I walked all the way across the ring and got Mills Lane. I said, “Mills, do me a favor, I need you to come here for a minute.” I really respect Mills. He’s an impeccable ref. And I could see with someone else, he probably wouldn’t have done it. Even with me, he was a little leery, but he followed me. I got him to the corner. I said to Michael, “See this man?”
Michael looked up, and there was Mills Lane, the highest-profile referee in boxing.
“I’ve just instructed him—listen to me clearly—to stop this fight after this round if you don’t start fighting. You hear me?”
He nodded.
“All right, Mills,” I said, and at that point he knew he had been used. He was, like, fuck, I’m getting the hell out of here.
Michael dropped Botha the next round. The guy barely made it out of the round. I didn’t know if it was enough. I thought we might still be behind.
“Listen, Michael,” I said, when he took the stool, “there’s a saying. You know the saying, ‘It’s in God’s hands’? Well, it’s not true. It ain’t in God’s hands. It’s in your hands. Your hands! Now you take those two hands and you go out there and you fucking knock this guy out. Don’t leave it in anyone else’s hands. Not the judges. Not God’s. Yours!”
And the next round—the last round of the fight—he went and knocked him out.
I went nuts. I literally jumped over the top rope. I flew into the rin
g, right into Michael’s arms. He caught me. My son told me later that he couldn’t believe it. He said, “Dad, I never saw you act that way.” It was really strange because I had never showed emotion. In the Holyfield fight I didn’t show anything. The Foreman fight was what it was. The Schulz fight I was very happy, but not over the top. Not like this. Mike Boorman said, “I didn’t think a white man could jump that high.” There was so much that Michael and I had been through, that had built up—and I guess I just finally let it out.
The night wasn’t over, though. Because now Tyson was coming into the ring. A lot of people, fight experts, sportswriters, were actually fearful for Holyfield’s life. For his life! And we were supposed to fight the winner. Obviously, we were going to watch. But first, we went back to the dressing room. I noticed Michael’s face was real swollen. He had gotten hit a lot. I didn’t like the way he looked. The whole thing here was my fighter—that was my primary concern. I said, “We’re taking him to the hospital.”
There we were, all together, like a family, and we were going to make sure he was okay. It was funny, you could see how much that meant to Michael. As much as he fought and argued and acted out, he admitted to me years later that his happiest times were being with his fight team. Even though it was bought love to a certain extent, there was still genuine love and care. It was a place where he could get things he never got in his life. Love. Care. Discipline.
Me and a few of the guys were about to take him to the hospital to get X-rayed. Meanwhile, little Teddy was still out in the arena, so I told a couple of my other guys, I think it was Maurice and Tank, “Go get my son.” Teddy was sitting in the front row, ringside. He was twelve years old and cute as hell. Maurice and Tank went out there and said, “Your dad wants you to go back to the dressing room.”
“No, I want to stay here and watch the fight with my friends.”
“We’ve got to take you back. Your dad’s going to the hospital with Michael, and we can’t leave you out here.”
“I’m with my friends,” Teddy said. “I’m all right.”
At that point, Tank looked at who Teddy was sitting with, and it was Magic Johnson and Babyface. Magic Johnson smiled at Tank and said, “He’s cool. We’ll watch him. We’ll bring him back later.”
Tank and Maurice came back to the locker room empty-handed.
“Where’s my son?” I said, starting to get upset with them.
“Ted, don’t get mad,” Tank said. “You’re not going to believe this, but he’s with his friends.”
“His friends! What friends? What are you—”
“Magic Johnson and Babyface.”
“Magic Johnson and Babyface? They’re looking out for him?”
“Yeah.”
I shrugged. “All right.”
We left Elaine and Nicole in the locker room with the guards. The Tyson-Holyfield fight was about to start on the closed-circuit monitor. I got in the truck with Michael and Maurice and Tank and Flem and John Davimos and we went to the hospital. I thought Michael’s jaw was broken. It was all blown up. He wound up having to get an MRI, but it turned out not to be broken. The whole time we were in the hospital, we were trying to find out about the fight. One of the nurses got something off the radio. Third round and Holyfield was winning. What? I mean, following his loss to Michael, Holyfield had fought a terrible fight with Bobby Czyz, he had gotten knocked out by Riddick Bowe, and most people thought he was shot. But he still had character. He wasn’t that shot. And the character of the man was too much for Tyson. Fifth round, we got another report. Tyson got knocked down. We were going crazy. Meanwhile, Michael was inside this tube that was making these science-fiction sounds, these pings and doinks. When he came out, we told him: “Holyfield’s kicking the shit out of Tyson!”
We put the radio on in the truck, on the way back to the arena, and we heard, “Fight’s over.” Except they didn’t say who won right away. Did Tyson catch him with a punch? No. Eleventh-round TKO. Holyfield won. He was a champion again. Unbelievable!
If Tyson had won, we were supposed to fight him for ten million. With Holyfield, we’d get eight. Losing the two million—which would have meant an extra two hundred thousand in my bank account—didn’t make me unhappy. It would have been a rough thing for me, if we’d gotten Tyson. I mean, I was getting ready for it a little bit, by bringing my guys to the press conference. And Tyson kind of showed what it would have been like by not even looking at me. We had exchanged one look, though, and I’m sure he could see I was the same guy, that living was very important to me, but that dying the right way was also important. If it had come to pass, if we had wound up fighting him, it would have been a very difficult thing for me to deal with. The truth is, I’m glad it never happened.
COMPLICATED
BUT SIMPLE
ALL ATHLETES HAVE JOCK SNIFFERS HANGING AROUND them, guys who try to pal around with them and be part of their world. Michael certainly had his share, especially after he became champion. Roger King, the head of King World Syndications, who’d had a chance to invest in Michael at the beginning of his boxing career and didn’t, now started inviting Michael to clubs and gambling resorts, impressing his friends because he had the heavyweight champ in tow. Not only that, but if there was any trouble, he had the champ to protect him. This was the same King who had been sitting behind my family during the Holyfield fight—the big gambler.
I’d met him a couple of times and thought he was a piece of shit. He was a degenerate guy with a terrible reputation. He thought that having all the money in the world exempted him from acting like a human being or showing respect for anyone but himself. He indulged himself in any way that he pleased. He once, after a night of gambling and drinking, threw up at a casino bar and asked an employee to help him procure a prostitute. He would fly Michael to gambling joints in the islands, where he’d lose half a million dollars without blinking. Meanwhile, Michael would lose fifty thousand, trying to keep up—and that money meant much more to him. But Michael was dazzled by King’s show-offy excesses.
I wasn’t. When he showed up at Michael’s dressing room, drunk, with a whole posse of other rich white assholes, I wouldn’t let them in. I said, “Unless he’s looking to shell out some money for the reconstructive surgery that he’s going to need afterward, I advise him to stay outside.” He stayed out.
For the Botha fight, he was sober. He knew I wouldn’t let him in otherwise. He had actually gone out of his way to be helpful leading up to the fight, getting us into a smaller hotel than the MGM so we could be away from Tyson and the whole crazy atmosphere. He showed respect by having Davimos ask me if he could come in. I said he could come in and spend one minute if he was sober. He came in and said good luck. Someone said it was a put-down, the way I treated him. But it wasn’t. I was just protecting my fighter and the sanctity of the dressing room.
One night I got a phone call. This was after the Botha fight, around the time of the holidays. It was Michael and he was drunk. I could tell because he was slightly giddy. He put Roger King on the phone. Big mistake. Now, Michael’s contract was running out with Davimos, and with the Duvas and Kozerski, and King got on with me and basically said, “I’m going to be heading up Michael’s new management team. Don’t worry, you’re still with us, Teddy, but everyone else is gone.” He went on to say we’re going to do this and we’re going to do that, and I interrupted him. I said, “You’re going to do another thing, too. You’re going to get another fucking trainer.”
“Well, Teddy, we would never do that.”
“No, no,” I said. “You’ve just done it.”
“I think you’re misunderstanding—”
“I understand perfectly, you piece of shit. You think because you got fucking money that I’m impressed. You think you can take this kid who fucking hardly knows who he is and drink champagne with him and get him all screwed up so he does something like leave the guys who’ve been with him his whole career, and then you can come to me and think you’re doing me some kin
d of favor? You think I’m still going to want to train him?”
“Teddy, I don’t know why you’re talking to me this way. Everyone respects you—”
“No, you don’t. You don’t fucking respect me. You think I’m a piece of shit.”
“No one has ever talked to me this way. I don’t understand…we respect you. I’m here with Robert Shapiro, and—”
“He’s a piece of shit, too,” I said. Shapiro was one of the lawyers with O. J. Simpson’s Dream Team. “All of youse can go fuck yourself,” I said.
He was stunned. He said, “I got on the phone, talked to you respectfully, and—”
“No, you didn’t. You got on the phone telling me that you think I’m a piece of shit. Because the second you said you were taking away these guys who’ve been with him his whole career, who brought me into it, you were insulting me. Forget about what I did. I did my job. But these guys were there way before me. They took risks when nobody thought two things about Michael. They stayed with him through all kinds of shit. Where were you? Now he’s a champion for a second time, and you’re going to tell me, who you don’t even know, that I’m lucky that you’re going to keep me on board when you’re fucking everyone else? Well, I’d have to be an even bigger piece of shit than you to do that.”
I heard his voice now, but it was fainter, like he was holding the phone away from him, “Michael, I can’t talk to this guy.”
Michael got on the phone, all worked up. “Teddy, what are you doing?”
I said, “What are you doing?…You think you’re going to be disloyal to these people? You think you’re just going to walk away from these people and I’m just going to go along with you?”