Speaker | Time | Text |
---|---|---|
unidentified
|
Three, two... | |
Youngstown in the house. | ||
How are you, brother? | ||
Good. | ||
How you doing? | ||
Thanks for doing this, man. | ||
I appreciate it. | ||
No, thanks for having me on. | ||
I appreciate it. | ||
You're out here working with Danny Garcia? | ||
No, Mikey Garcia. | ||
Mikey Garcia and Garcia Camp. | ||
Also, I came out, you know, a couple things... | ||
As we mentioned earlier, a buddy of mine, Mark LaMica, throwing some ideas around and kind of just taking a week out here in California to, you know, keep moving. | ||
It's nice, right? | ||
It is. | ||
Yeah, it was nice in Ohio, believe it or not. | ||
And then this morning they woke up to like three inches of snow. | ||
So I'm out here enjoying and they got the snow. | ||
Well, the thing about L.A. is no one's from here. | ||
So everybody grew up in a place like Youngstown or something like that. | ||
Like you were saying, you're running into a bunch of Youngstown people out here. | ||
Tony Hinchcliffe got super excited to see you. | ||
Absolutely. | ||
That's what's weird about that. | ||
I'm excited to see him, and he's excited to see me. | ||
It was really cool. | ||
I've heard of Tony, and I knew of Tony before and everything. | ||
And then to finally be able to meet him and somebody from Youngstown that's doing great things, it was kind of cool. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, no, it was cool hanging out with you when we were in Columbus, too. | ||
That was a fun time. | ||
I was. | ||
That was good eating stew. | ||
Yeah, what was the name of that place again? | ||
You guys picked it, I believe. | ||
I think it was... | ||
Italian Market, I think. | ||
Whose joint was that? | ||
unidentified
|
It was your friend's friend of a friend. | |
Matt Brown's friend, right? | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, I don't remember the name. | |
Matt the Immortal? | ||
Yeah, another good guy. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah, no, he's a fucking scary dude. | |
He's such a savage. | ||
I gotta tell you a funny story with him. | ||
We're at my gym and he came and did a seminar at my gym. | ||
And I have just a fitness gym right now there. | ||
And he was going over and he was showing people when he kind of came in and I was showing like a little punch and a hook. | ||
And he started doing the elbow off the hook. | ||
Now, I'm a pretty big guy now since I retired, and I'm working on losing weight. | ||
But he hit me with that elbow on my arm, and it just hurt. | ||
And it was slow motion. | ||
He wasn't throwing it hard. | ||
And I'm going, if this son of a bitch really wanted to turn that over... | ||
I wouldn't want to get hit by it. | ||
Elbows are awful. | ||
Bones are awful. | ||
It always weirds me out that the UFC has little padding on the gloves, but there's no padding on your shins, no padding on your elbows, no padding on your knees. | ||
It's a terrible way to take a beating. | ||
It is, and people get into the brutality of it. | ||
Unfortunately, not because I boxed. | ||
I think box is more brutal. | ||
The only reason is because if you get dropped in boxing, you got 10 seconds to get up. | ||
Your brain could be rattled in the first round, and you could get dropped four more times in that fight. | ||
You got 36 minutes to fight. | ||
Unfortunately, in MMA, yeah, they're hitting you with the knees, the elbows, and if you go down, they usually stop to fight. | ||
Rightfully so, because somebody could come down with an atomic knee drop. | ||
That's not legal. | ||
I know, but I'm just saying. | ||
Or anything can happen in it. | ||
When you were fighting, MMA wasn't as big as it is now. | ||
But did you ever think about doing it? | ||
No, and to be honest with you, no. | ||
But I was always interested in it. | ||
I was. | ||
I was always interested in the martial arts. | ||
Actually, that's how I got into boxing, was a young kid taking taekwondo, and I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, but... | ||
unidentified
|
That's how you pronounce it. | |
Okay. | ||
And, you know, I got into it. | ||
To me, it was kind of like boring. | ||
I'm a young kid. | ||
You know, I was full of piss and vinegar, and I wanted to actually get in and do something. | ||
I played other sports. | ||
But, you know, then after I retired a little bit, I kind of strayed away from everything in a fight game. | ||
And I started getting interested in jujitsu and stuff like that. | ||
How old were you when you retired? | ||
30. 30. That's young. | ||
Yeah, still am pretty young. | ||
How old are you now? | ||
36. Yeah, you're still in the range, you know? | ||
That's the effective range. | ||
Oh, that's why I've been working out and I kind of slow down on the powerlifting a lot and been getting flexible again. | ||
So you haven't had a fight in six years. | ||
Do you ever get the itch? | ||
That's why I'm saying... | ||
Are you getting the itch right now? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Really? | ||
Yeah, I've been... | ||
Well, another reason why I came out and was talking with Mark and everything, but, you know, I don't want to leave nobody ever on either, you know? | ||
unidentified
|
Right. | |
This is something— You just think— I'm really thinking about it, and I'm working out, losing the weight, but at the same time, there's a lot of process behind that, too. | ||
I would have to sit down with the family— Just go over a lot of things, you know. | ||
Are you doing any boxing these days? | ||
I've been working out just sitting in the bag, pads, stuff like that. | ||
You know, I'm still lifting, but nothing. | ||
You're jacked, dude. | ||
Look at the size of your fucking arms. | ||
I know. | ||
You ain't fighting middleweight, son. | ||
No, and cruiserweight is the nice area right now. | ||
That's the range? | ||
Yeah, anybody but Usyk, and I'm not fighting that monster. | ||
That guy's scary as fuck. | ||
Yeah, and I don't... | ||
You know, the thing is, everybody, I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, and the first thing that came out about it was, he needs the money. | ||
So I can't win for losing. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Because there's other things right now that we're talking about. | ||
I've actually been in contact. | ||
Believe it or not, with Dancing with the Stars. | ||
Oh, Jesus. | ||
So I'm having fun with it now, I guess. | ||
Don't make no jokes on it. | ||
I'd rather take a fight. | ||
unidentified
|
I'd rather fight you sick, believe me. | |
Dancing with the Stars is fucking hard work, man. | ||
Talks. | ||
Talks of it. | ||
Which my buddy Mark's doing. | ||
I've had a couple friends that have been on that. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
And they said it's brutally hard work. | ||
It is. | ||
I have Reginald Ortiz, who was a fighter, been on it. | ||
Yeah. | ||
So that's where it's going, why I don't want people also, the rumor mill starting that, he's broke, he needs the money, because it's absolutely not the case. | ||
So you retired healthy. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You retired young. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And you set some money away, but you still, look, you were a world champion for a reason. | ||
You know, to become a real world champion, you have to have some There is. | ||
A lot of people don't understand any combat sport. | ||
Combat is combat. | ||
I'm not pat myself on the back. | ||
I don't know if it's even good to say, but combat role champion athletes and fighters, mentality-wise, you're always going to have that mentality. | ||
And my only reason why I'm even throwing this around, and I guess that's the right term to use, because if nothing comes of it, I don't want to backlash on that either. | ||
Because I'm still only 36, and I'm at that point where I got that small window still, you know, where I'm not 40, I'm not 38, and, you know, I've been healthy for, you know, four and a half years, and I've been working out. | ||
What made you decide to go powerlifting? | ||
I know, tell me that's... | ||
Just fucking show bitches what's up. | ||
Yeah, that's another one. | ||
unidentified
|
Show them guns. | |
Exactly, right? | ||
I was tired. | ||
Think about it. | ||
I was so damn skinny. | ||
If I turned sideways and stuck my tongue out, I looked like a zipper. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
And being 6'2", having to make 160 pounds, even between fights, you still had to maintain your weight. | ||
And I got tired of that. | ||
What was your walking around weight? | ||
I would walk around about 173. That's not that bad. | ||
No, that's not. | ||
For MMA, that's real light. | ||
Yeah, but as I got older, yeah, it started getting a little more difficult to keep that, and I started getting up to like 175, almost 180. So now you're looking at a, and I'm still skinny at that point, so now you're looking at having to lose 20 more pounds again to get down at that age. | ||
And it came to a point which caused a lot of issues for me in one fight with the Martinez fight, and after that, we had to jump up. | ||
Yeah, that point of diminishing returns, right? | ||
When you're just cutting too much weight. | ||
When you fought Jermaine Taylor, that was 160, right? | ||
Yes. | ||
Yeah, dude. | ||
That was one fight where I remember getting angry at Larry Merchant. | ||
Larry Merchant is calling a fight. | ||
He wasn't recognizing that you were tuning him up and you were hurting him. | ||
He was commenting on almost like a trend that he expected to see rather than what was actually happening. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
There was a lot of things about that fight. | ||
I love them guys because, believe it or not, in my opinion, that was a great fight. | ||
And I've seen that they had that fight in the top 10 middleweight, one of the top 10 middleweight fights of all time. | ||
And that's kind of a cool thing. | ||
But also, you know, some of that commentating though really made that fight, especially at the end, in my opinion, made that fight kind of what it was also, you know, besides the fact of me getting dropped and everything. | ||
But I didn't agree with the judging of it. | ||
I still had me ahead. | ||
I went back and watched it. | ||
I'm not one of those egotistical people either. | ||
I like to really break down what happened in that fight. | ||
And if I lost a round, I would say I lost a round. | ||
I was hard on myself with that. | ||
I watched that fight now probably ten times, and I don't see where they had Jermaine winning. | ||
I gave them one round plus the 10-8, so that's a total of three rounds. | ||
And I don't see how that happened. | ||
Well, you know, I mean, we've had this conversation a hundred times in this podcast, but judging in boxing and judging in MMA, judging is just terrible. | ||
It's sad. | ||
It doesn't make any sense. | ||
There's so many experts out there. | ||
There's so many really reliable people that you can call on that would do a great job of figuring out what's going on in a fight, and for whatever reason, they don't get those jobs. | ||
I think they've got to start doing something soon in boxing with that. | ||
They have to figure something out with the judging. | ||
Did you see the Charlo fight? | ||
Yes. | ||
Yeah. | ||
There's a handful of people I had the argument with that actually thought Charlo lost. | ||
I didn't think that he looked as good as he could have in that fight, but I thought he won the fight, you know, 116 and 112. But I don't know what system they could try to break down for that or try to get to actually start making some of them fights fair, but boxing's doing fantastic the past two years. | ||
I mean, the numbers are crazy. | ||
You've seen what The Zone did with Canelo and So it's there. | ||
The attention's at the sport and the popularity of it's coming back. | ||
But what could eventually hurt it again is things like the judging of the fights and the outcomes. | ||
Well, there's certain ones where you want a criminal investigation. | ||
Like Tim Bradley, Manny Pacquiao. | ||
That was one where after that was up, I was like... | ||
I was looking at the TV. I was looking to the side. | ||
I was looking away. | ||
I was like, what the fuck did I just see? | ||
What just happened here? | ||
That fight right there, I actually had to walk away with my head down. | ||
That was probably one of the worst robberies that I've ever seen in boxing. | ||
It was a horrible robbery. | ||
I searched to give Tim Bradley two rounds. | ||
I gave him one. | ||
I was trying to give him rounds to kind of like say, where did you get this at, in other words? | ||
And I couldn't do it. | ||
Yeah, I love Tim Bradley too, by the way. | ||
Awesome guy. | ||
Awesome fighter too. | ||
I mean, he's just all heart. | ||
I mean, that guy's amazing. | ||
But that just was a bad decision. | ||
And, you know, I think there was a lady that was responsible for two really bad decisions. | ||
Bird. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Hadley Bird. | ||
Was it her or was it? | ||
There was another one, too. | ||
Hadley Bird. | ||
She does MMA, too. | ||
I want to say, yeah, Letterman's daughter, maybe? | ||
No, there was another lady who retired from doing it after that decision. | ||
It was like a big controversy. | ||
Her score was so off, people were thinking she got paid off. | ||
There's so many anymore, though, it's hard to keep up with it. | ||
Well, the thing is, and people that are cynical or skeptical... | ||
Do you know how much money is being bet on fights, especially a Manny Pacquiao fight? | ||
There's so much money. | ||
And if someone like Pacquiao is a prohibited favorite, heading to a 10th Bradley fight, I mean, who knows? | ||
It could be 4-1, 5-1, 6-1. | ||
Somebody rolls up with a nice brown baggy filled with hundreds. | ||
Hey, look who we got here. | ||
It's $30,000. | ||
You never have to report. | ||
I think there's more behind why that happens, too. | ||
It has to be. | ||
The idea that there's no bribery going on anymore is crazy. | ||
I don't want to say it, but I think I have an idea. | ||
I think it comes down to... | ||
Who's putting the show on? | ||
And who's in the pocket? | ||
Well, Teddy Atlas was explaining it too when he was on the podcast. | ||
One of the things that he was saying was that they take these people out to dinner. | ||
Like, they're all in cahoots and friendly with each other. | ||
And if there's a certain result that the promoter would like to see, these judges will lean towards that if they have a good relationship with that promoter. | ||
You said it for me. | ||
Yeah, that's what it did. | ||
Look, Teddy laid it out. | ||
And I don't know. | ||
Yeah, it's bad because, again, boxing is really coming back. | ||
It is. | ||
And the fights, you got three or four weight classes right now that's so interesting. | ||
But the bad part about it is you don't get interested in it or you don't get as excited anymore because you're afraid of the outcome of the fight. | ||
I wasn't terribly upset at the Wilder Fury decision. | ||
I wasn't terribly upset. | ||
I thought, you know what, I think Tyson Fury did enough to win, but when I look at it, I like when they scored damage. | ||
Damage means a lot to me. | ||
When I look at that fight, when Wilder hurt him, he hurt him twice and he hurt him real bad. | ||
I mean, I think that's worth a lot. | ||
And I think he was always threatening. | ||
So I felt like I don't know if I would agree with a draw. | ||
I think it was a close decision win for Tyson Fury, but I didn't hate it. | ||
I didn't hate it because I think I'd like to see them fight again. | ||
Absolutely. | ||
I mean, it was one of them fights where, yes, you're 100% right, that it could end in a draw, and I think everybody would be kind of satisfied with that. | ||
Unfortunately, with the count knockdown, which I was so frustrated with the comments, and I had to stay away from the social media and the boxing groups and things like that. | ||
unidentified
|
Why is that? | |
Opinions of people, that's the way to put it. | ||
That was a long count. | ||
And this and that. | ||
There's been thousands of fights in the last 10 years and I've very seldom heard anybody complain about a count. | ||
That fight, they don't do a 10 second count in boxing. | ||
They go by the referee's count. | ||
Right. | ||
Another thing where Wilder kind of hurt himself, the referee tells you in the locker room before the fight, and he explains it to you, go to your neutral corner. | ||
If you come out of your neutral corner, I will stop the count. | ||
You know that. | ||
So the first thing I used to do when I dropped somebody is I ran my ass to that neutral corner so that referee could start counting. | ||
I didn't see any issue with the knockdown. | ||
I even recorded it on my phone, and if you did go by the 10-second count, Tyson Fury still beat it. | ||
unidentified
|
Really? | |
Yes, I have it. | ||
I'd have to go through and find it. | ||
unidentified
|
I thought I saw it on Instagram. | |
I think it was on Wilder's Instagram, where he had it where the count starts right when Fury drops. | ||
I counted it almost right before his back hits the ground until where he got up. | ||
And again, that's only a 10-second count without a referee even coming over to it. | ||
But as far as the fight itself, I gave Wilder, obviously, the two knockdowns. | ||
That's automatically four rounds. | ||
And I gave him one other round after that. | ||
I thought Tyson Ferry controlled the action, controlled the momentum of the fight. | ||
On the flip side of it, I think that Wilder actually could have made that an easier fight too. | ||
You know, Wilder actually has a hard time with his control. | ||
He don't know how to really work to the body. | ||
I don't want to put it on a trainer. | ||
I don't know what the issue is with that, but he neglected that body a lot throughout the fight. | ||
And I just thought that's why Tyson won most of those rounds. | ||
You know, he just controlled the action, the pace, and was kind of able to do what he wanted to. | ||
And I think that if Wilder went back with his trainer and watched the tape of that fight, they're going to see a lot of opportunities that were missed in that fight. | ||
Well, you know, what's crazy about Wilder is how little time he's actually been boxing. | ||
I mean, it's really stunning. | ||
When he was on here, he told us that he made it to the Olympic team a year and a half into learning boxing. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And he won a bronze medal. | ||
In the heavyweight division, though, you can kind of get away with that, too. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You can. | ||
You know, most of your heavy... | ||
Well, back then also, were big guys who came up. | ||
Usually most of them were football players or something like that. | ||
And they kind of just got into the sport and... | ||
Still, even to this day, you're talking about maybe three heavyweights that really could throw down, as where some of the other guys are just big, sloppy guys that come in. | ||
So what do we got now? | ||
You got Luis Ortiz, you got Fury, Wilder, Joshua, who else? | ||
Joseph Parker... | ||
Yeah, Parker. | ||
I think right now, Parker's one of the guys that could actually still upset anybody in the heavyweight division, especially with that style that he has. | ||
So it's getting interesting again, though. | ||
It is. | ||
Well, I think with Wilder and Fury, that was one of the more interesting heavyweight title fights in a long time. | ||
And Wilder, it's so weird. | ||
He's so different. | ||
He weighs 209 pounds. | ||
He's skinny as a rail. | ||
He hits you. | ||
It looks like you get hit in the face with a missile. | ||
I mean, it's crazy. | ||
Well, because that is a missile he's firing. | ||
Fucking crazy power that guy has, isn't it? | ||
And I try to explain to people on that, too. | ||
You don't have to be a big guy. | ||
It's all about the leverage, how you torque, how you generate that power. | ||
He's just one of them guys. | ||
That's one of the things where you either have it, you got it in the cradle, or you don't. | ||
That's another one you try to explain, even like in baseball. | ||
You're either a home run hitter or you're not. | ||
You could work on it a little bit and maybe knock one or two more home runs out or knock a guy or two out more, but if you don't have it, you're not going to unless you really go back over and find the time and patience to Reprogram that fighter and change the whole style. | ||
Yeah, it feels like one punch knockout power you either have or you don't. | ||
But the guys who can put it on you and stop you, like Julio Cesar Chavez, never had really that one punch knockout power, but he fucked a lot of people up. | ||
And he had that body shot, too. | ||
He didn't need a knockout punch to the head. | ||
Dude, he was so perfect. | ||
When he was in his prime, the way he would fight was constant bobbing, weaving, moving in, and then once he put that pace on you, it was just constant damage, constant punches, the volume, the volume, the accuracy, and the fact that he never got tired. | ||
He would just keep that pace up, bap, bap, bap, bap, bap, and you would see guys just start to wilt, just backing up all the time, just wilt under that pressure. | ||
And that's that body attack that he had. | ||
How he invested into that body from the early rounds. | ||
People carry those punches. | ||
You know, they carry that into the fifth and sixth round. | ||
And it was brutal. | ||
You know, I couldn't imagine fighting. | ||
I fought some tough guys, but I was glad, you know, being a tall guy, nobody ever went to the body like that against me. | ||
I would have hated that. | ||
It's a fucking rough way to make a living, bro. | ||
There is Chavez in his prime. | ||
God damn, he was good. | ||
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
He was so good. | ||
I mean, it's just constant movement, too. | ||
Constant cutting angles and the fucking pressure. | ||
Another one like him was Duran, too. | ||
That's Roger Mayweather, right? | ||
Yes. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Black Mamba. | ||
Yeah, people forgot about Roger. | ||
Yeah, he just systematically broke you down, Chavez. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Very tactical and textbook, and it makes many mistakes. | ||
He wasn't flashy, he wasn't overly fast, he wasn't overly powerful, but he just broke you down the right way and threw the right punches. | ||
Yeah, that's the best way to put it. | ||
Threw the right punches, he was just relentless, and he was constantly moving forward. | ||
Constant pressure. | ||
Goddamn, he was good. | ||
Yep, and you know Greg Haugen. | ||
Oh, remember that one? | ||
Greg Haugen said he fought a bunch of Tijuana taxi drivers and he beat the shit out of Greg Haugen. | ||
Yeah. | ||
There's those left hooks to the body. | ||
Those are some tough taxi drivers. | ||
Young fighters, man. | ||
You want to emulate a guy who just fought with perfect technique. | ||
This is the guy. | ||
Well, you know, that comes down to another thing that I was breaking down. | ||
Actually, I touched on it on my show a lot. | ||
A lot of people get mixed up and confused on the fact of footwork with people. | ||
And some of the guys that had the best footwork in boxing were not flashy guys with the footwork, or even like Mikey Garcia now, or like Bernard Hopkins is another one. | ||
But you had the guys, Pranel Whitaker. | ||
I know I'm going to probably get beat up on this. | ||
He had decent footwork. | ||
What I mean by that is because, yeah, he'd make you miss, But Pernell Whitaker a lot of times put himself out of range by moving like that. | ||
You know, he'd make that move or he'd do it too much and then he wasn't there to counter. | ||
So what good did it do? | ||
You get guys like Chavez or Duran or guys like Mikey Garcia now, they take that one little step, inches and angles. | ||
They take that one step and they're right in position for that punch and They take the opposite step to suffocate your punch and throw you off. | ||
They spin you around. | ||
That's where footwork comes in, and Chavez was great at that. | ||
Yeah, he was always in range. | ||
He was always in range. | ||
He was never running away. | ||
The guy who does it the best today about cutting angles and being bright in front of you and you can't hit him is Lomachenko. | ||
I mean, Lomachenko stands right in front of you, and then he's not. | ||
And then he's over here, and then he's punching you in the face. | ||
T.J. Dillashaw, who's a UFC Bantamweight champion, said he sparred with him. | ||
And he said the first round was like, you know, Lomachenko's just feeling him up, just figuring him out. | ||
And, you know, he's like, man, I'm kind of hanging in there with this guy. | ||
And then his dad yelled something in Russian. | ||
And then the second round, Lomachenko's just dancing around him, stepping to the side, touching him in the face. | ||
And unfortunately, that was the only round they put on YouTube, too. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, I've seen that. | ||
You know the thing with Lomachenko is this. | ||
And I tell people also, Floyd Mayweather is an unbelievable defensive fighter. | ||
But Floyd was really good on drawing you in and kind of countering off that. | ||
His defense and his reflexes were amazing, but he kind of lured you in a little bit, made you make a mistake, and then he would counter you. | ||
Lomachenko, on the other hand, is a guy you could throw a punch and that punch could be in midair, and he's spinning and he's already behind you. | ||
It's the athleticism. | ||
Is astonishing. | ||
I have not seen it. | ||
Granted, can he lose? | ||
Absolutely. | ||
It's boxing. | ||
And if you get one of them rugged guys that are just going to come in and say, you know what? | ||
Screw it. | ||
I'm just going to get hit, but I'm going to hit him. | ||
That may be a type of fighter that beats Solomachenko. | ||
Well, who was it that was the Mexican guy who beat him in one of his first fights? | ||
Oh, Solis? | ||
Solito. | ||
Solito. | ||
Right, right, right. | ||
Yeah, that was the kind of fight that he fought. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Just dirty, got on top of him. | ||
But you've got to understand on that point, too, that was Lomachenko's second pro fight. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Against a real veteran. | ||
A guy who's been there and done it and seen it. | ||
And that's the argument. | ||
And it's hard to explain. | ||
Again, and that was another argument on these that I get a little frustrated reading. | ||
Second pro fight, usually in boxing, it goes like the first year, you're up four, six. | ||
Second year, maybe you start getting up to eight. | ||
But you get a good amount of fights under your belt before you start getting into the 10 rounds and 12 rounds. | ||
You're talking about a kid coming out of the amateurs, fighting three three-minute rounds or four two-minute rounds, depending on whatever tournament or international tournament it is. | ||
And he's going right into a 12-round fight. | ||
I know myself coming up, and the process that Top Rank brought me up, which was a great process, too. | ||
They picked the fights, and they made sure that the fights that they picked for me were the correct fights. | ||
And they groomed me the right way, you know, by rounds and everything else. | ||
And I know just jumping from 6 to 8, the difference in that, you know? | ||
Let alone being a kid, and you're going into your second pro fight, and you're fighting a 12-round fight. | ||
So if he lost that fight, which he came back and he made it a really close fight, I would have to tip my hat to him just on the fact that he was able to go 12 rounds. | ||
People take a lot away from that fighter. | ||
What he accomplished is something that not many can do. | ||
Well, it's crazy. | ||
I mean, he had a second pro title at how many fights in? | ||
Yeah, the second fight was for the world title, then he won the world title in his third pro fight. | ||
Yeah, that's insane. | ||
But he's had more than one world title, right? | ||
Yes, he's won, I think, three different weight classes, though. | ||
But his second one was some insanely short... | ||
See, pull up his record. | ||
I believe if I'm right, I looked this up. | ||
What's that? | ||
This says his first fight was for the international featherweight title. | ||
That was against Toledo? | ||
Ramirez. | ||
He said he lost against Toledo for the vacant WBO featherweight title. | ||
Oh, okay. | ||
So what was the first title? | ||
International featherweight title, WBO. Yeah, that's not a world title. | ||
They have a bunch of weird titles, right? | ||
Like international title, continental title. | ||
You're assaulting me. | ||
unidentified
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I had the WBO. You were the world champion, motherfucker. | |
But you had all of it. | ||
You were unified. | ||
Well, I should have been. | ||
By all rights. | ||
But Taylor vacated, too. | ||
Oh, that's right. | ||
Yeah. | ||
But, you know, that's why I get mad and that's another big argument in boxing. | ||
How you break that down between the lineal and unanimous. | ||
You know, I had to ring the WBO. Scroll up CC's whole record. | ||
So, what was his... | ||
Okay, so his second world title was when? | ||
Retained, retained. | ||
One. | ||
Okay. | ||
One, two, three, four, five, six fights in. | ||
He's in his second. | ||
That's when he wins his second title. | ||
Six fights in. | ||
He wins a junior and a lightweight title. | ||
That's insane. | ||
Yeah. | ||
The international, okay, the first one wasn't a world title fight. | ||
But the second one was the WBO world title fight. | ||
Eleven fights in, he wins his third world title. | ||
What in the fuck? | ||
I believe now there was at one point it was seven world champions and just that short period of fights I believe it's around eight now eight world champions he's fought in just that short period three different weight classes I think when he fought Rigondi out, you really got a chance to see how he handles a real world-class, you know, Cuban amateur system-trained, top-of-the-food-chain boxer. | ||
And he just put it to that dude. | ||
That was the fight that actually really sold me on Lomachenko. | ||
Because I thought for a fact that that was going to be a chess match because of the boxing ability from Rigondiou. | ||
Their styles were very similar. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And I thought that, you know, I was like, it's going to be a boring fight for the first, like, four rounds, which I still would have liked because I like watching that type of fights, you know? | ||
And I see I go in there and I'm expecting this fight, you know, the amateur background of both guys, how talented the guys are and the skill level of both guys. | ||
And then next thing I know, I'm two or three rounds into it and I'm going, he's playing with Rigondeau. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Playing with him. | ||
I'm going, hell. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
That's the fight that really sold me on Lomachenko, that he's that good. | ||
My man Vinny Pazienza called that. | ||
Not Vinny Pazienza the boxer, Vinny Paz the rapper. | ||
This guy, Jedi Mind Tricks, he called it. | ||
He was taking bets on Instagram. | ||
He called it that early too? | ||
Yeah, so he was taking bets on Instagram if you think Rigondeo has anything for him. | ||
He's like, find me in the DMs. | ||
He goes, let's bet. | ||
I took Lomachenko in that fight, but I thought it was going to be a close fight, a really close fight, and I thought Lomachenko was going to pull ahead in the later rounds and win that fight. | ||
So that's why it really surprised me. | ||
Well, it was a stunning display of talent. | ||
He's such a weird guy, too, because his background, you know the story where his father took him out of boxing and made him do traditional Russian dancing for several years and just made him learn that for footwork. | ||
It seems like his dad was just a mastermind architect of a champion. | ||
Yeah, you probably know more on this than I would. | ||
Didn't he also have a martial art background? | ||
I heard. | ||
He definitely can do martial arts techniques. | ||
I've seen it, but I don't know what... | ||
See if he had a martial arts background. | ||
Maybe. | ||
I don't know. | ||
That makes sense. | ||
His footwork, though, is so extraordinary. | ||
And if that really is that dancing background, like learning the footwork and the way he's so agile with the stepping of his feet, I think a lot of people are going to learn and mirror that. | ||
Yeah, his training regimen is pretty brutal. | ||
So I got a buddy, Roger Romo, a good friend of mine. | ||
He's actually, he was working for a little while there up until the last fight. | ||
He was a strength and conditioning coach with Cecilio Flores, who was mine when I was in Oxnard training. | ||
And they said it was just crazy, the hours that he puts in, how he trains, how hard he trains, and some of the drills that he does. | ||
You know, I'm looking at them and going, I could use these not for me, but I could use them for some of the athletes that I got now. | ||
Yeah, he's definitely something special. | ||
And, you know, you get those guys, and it's kind of a shame that he's a little too small for Terrence Crawford, you know? | ||
I mean, I really would love to see those two fight. | ||
But it seems like Crawford's just a little bit too heavy for him. | ||
I agree, but that's another touchy subject, because I kind of agree with you, but I also go back, because I'm always trying to really break down and nitpick. | ||
I look at guys like Manny Pacquiao, who came from, I believe, 112 or something like that and went up all the way to junior middleweight. | ||
Which is crazy. | ||
Yeah. | ||
He's shorter than Lomachenko. | ||
Other than his calves, I don't think anything else is much bigger than Lomachenko on his body. | ||
And he was able to do it. | ||
What the fuck is going on with his calves? | ||
I don't know. | ||
It's like he's keeping hams in them. | ||
I don't know what he does. | ||
You know, I wish I knew the secret to that because I could use it. | ||
Get that secret to John Jones. | ||
This article says that his mother still is a martial artist. | ||
Oh, interesting. | ||
unidentified
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Gymnast and martial artist. | |
Well, it makes sense. | ||
unidentified
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A seventh boxer. | |
Yeah, man. | ||
Footwork, the way he does it, it's something to watch, man. | ||
It's just the ability to move and also to anticipate the other fighters' movements. | ||
It's like, especially earlier in his career, it's like he was fighting guys that just seemed so crude in comparison to his approach. | ||
Yeah, and you know what's even more crazy about it is being the opponent, because usually you go into a fight and you break down film and you're going over to film and you got a good idea of what he does right, what he does wrong, and what you might have to do. | ||
Lomachenko, it's hard to pick up where he's going to go. | ||
Different angles, so you can't... | ||
You can't go, well, you know what? | ||
After he throws the right hand, he likes to move over to the left because he does it one time and then the next time he's totally somewhere opposite. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
And yeah, the angles, it's really almost impossible to break film down on him. | ||
You know, like this last fight with this Pedrazo, everybody's going, that was the blueprint. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
No, it wasn't. | ||
And they're saying it was a closer fight than people expected. | ||
I go, why? | ||
Because he finally got hit with more than 11 punches in a fight? | ||
Oh, that's him doing some sambo, I believe. | ||
Yeah, he trained it when he was younger. | ||
Greco-Roman. | ||
Yeah, he's slamming kids. | ||
That's right. | ||
Well, you know what, man? | ||
I believe in cross-training, and I think that there's certainly some skills that would make you better at different martial arts. | ||
And I feel like if you have the ability to wrestle guys and move guys' bodies around that you would get from something like Sambo, I just feel like, as an elite boxer, having that extra strength, that extra ability to move your core that way, I think that would be beneficial. | ||
I mean, the thing is, no world-class boxer has the time to also be doing judo and also be doing wrestling. | ||
You just don't have the time. | ||
Nope. | ||
And being in combat sports, even I know that as far as... | ||
I'm not involved in MMA, but I know that. | ||
You know, these guys... | ||
They have to perfect three or four in a short period of time. | ||
I think Matt was telling me you would know more like sometimes it's two days of one, two days of the next, trying to fit that in. | ||
It's hard. | ||
You cannot, especially in boxing, the sweet science where it's just hands, but you got people, that's all they do all day long. | ||
That's why I say it's so unfair when an MMA guy goes in and fights at Mayweather because Mayweather, he perfected that. | ||
And you've got to use just that style of boxing. | ||
It's going to be almost impossible to beat a boxer, a world champion boxer. | ||
Did you watch the New Year's fight? | ||
That thing that he did with Tension Yoshikawa? | ||
Yeah. | ||
A lot of people think that was a fixed fight. | ||
I think that was a 120-pound fighter fighting the best ever. | ||
It wasn't a fixed fight. | ||
I don't know why people think it's a fixed fight. | ||
That guy fights at 126 pounds, I think. | ||
I think that's his weight class. | ||
And you could definitely tell the size difference. | ||
Just like I could actually tell the size difference, though, when McGregor fought Floyd. | ||
You know, I think both of Floyd's legs equaled one of McGregor's. | ||
Yeah. | ||
But, yeah, with that tension, that fight, the first knockdown was legit. | ||
Yes. | ||
And I think my personal opinion of what happened, it wasn't fixed, you know, or fake. | ||
I believe that he got hit with that right hand and seeing how strong and how the defensive skills that Mayweather had, and I think he said, you know what, this could be a long-ass night. | ||
And then the next couple punches, he just kind of went down because he's seen what could happen. | ||
He knew which way that fight was going. | ||
Really? | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's what you think? | ||
I do. | ||
The first knockdown was... | ||
Let's play that fight. | ||
See if you can find the fight and play it. | ||
I feel like the first one clipped him on the temple. | ||
He hit him with a left hook on the temple. | ||
Hit him with a right hand, but then hit him with a left hook. | ||
The right hand, and then he hit him afterwards as well as he's going down. | ||
But I think that left hand to the temple is what did the real damage. | ||
And then there was a big right hand afterwards that dropped him. | ||
I just think he was out of his league. | ||
Way, way out of his league. | ||
Not that he took a dive, but almost to the point of, like, he knew that that fight was not going any way the way that he thought it was. | ||
He was so smiley and relaxed. | ||
It was kind of funny. | ||
You know, he just sort of walked the dude down. | ||
He had a big ol' smile on his face. | ||
He's like, look at him smiling. | ||
When was the last time he saw... | ||
And he's so much bigger than this kid. | ||
Yeah, he's fighting like it's a joke. | ||
Like, look at him. | ||
He's so much bigger than this kid. | ||
What's really funny is, if they let this kid kick, he would fuck Floyd up. | ||
Yeah. | ||
But Floyd may look so dominant. | ||
I didn't even know on that part. | ||
But then again, that kid, his kicks. | ||
That kid would have kicked Floyd's legs out from under him in seconds. | ||
Oh, you went too far there. | ||
See, he got up right there. | ||
Boom. | ||
See, he hit him with the left hook and he stumbled. | ||
And then he hit him with the right hand behind it. | ||
And I just think he's too little. | ||
He's just a... | ||
He's a very small guy. | ||
And for him... | ||
I mean, and Floyd's not a big guy. | ||
This kid is tiny. | ||
I mean... | ||
I think he's fought as light as 121 pounds, and I think sometimes he fights at like 126. Yeah, I think you can see right there. | ||
Right there. | ||
Sometimes in a fight, a lot of times in a fight, the whole issue is you get hit with that and you're fighting and somebody taps you with a certain punch. | ||
Your brain, you'll be surprised how fast it works, you know, and all the things that go through that mind. | ||
unidentified
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Right there, boom. | |
Yes, that was it. | ||
And I think at that moment right there, he just knew going in, you could feel, just when somebody hits you on the arm or the shoulder, you know, how much power they have. | ||
And I think he was trying to, after that, he knew that was going to be a long night. | ||
It's so crazy they paid him $9 million for this. | ||
It must be nice. | ||
Yeah, I mean, fuck. | ||
There was a lot of people I seen going... | ||
He deserves to give some of these prospects a chance now. | ||
He should be fighting these guys instead of doing this. | ||
These guys ain't boxers, blah, blah, blah, blah. | ||
And my take on that also is the man went 49-50-0. | ||
He fought almost everybody in the sport. | ||
Even if you want to say that they were past their prime, some of them may have been a little bit. | ||
He still went in there and dominated them and beat them. | ||
This guy, in my opinion, if he wanted to fight defensive backs from the NFL... He has all the right in the world. | ||
I don't think that he owes the sport anything. | ||
I think actually it's the other way around. | ||
The amount of money that he has brought to the sport, the attention that he brought to it. | ||
So if he wants to go around and do these side shows, let him. | ||
I mean, what do you want him to do? | ||
Fight prospects until he's 51 years old? | ||
I couldn't agree more. | ||
I couldn't agree more. | ||
It's crazy, the idea that they want to see him sacrificed. | ||
They want to see him get beat. | ||
That's what they want. | ||
They want to see him finally fight someone who's younger and faster and hungrier, who's more active. | ||
And what will happen is that he will lose. | ||
And I think Mayweather is smarter than that. | ||
He wants to go out and keep that, his status, and the... | ||
The record that he built up and that resume that he has and go out like that. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Well, they're talking about him fighting Khabib Nurmagomedov, who's the UFC 155-pound champion. | ||
But Khabib's not really a boxer. | ||
I just want to say, but boxing rules? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Oh, that would be a... | ||
Same thing. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Khabib's a takedown ground type guy. | ||
Yeah, exactly. | ||
It would be the same kind of fight as the Conor fight. | ||
The only difference is I don't think Khabib would get as tired as Conor would. | ||
I don't think... | ||
He's definitely got better endurance. | ||
I think one of the only few in there right now that would be a good fight would be one of the Diaz brothers, as far as striking. | ||
That would be interesting. | ||
But he would box their face off. | ||
I still think that he would win that, but I'm just saying as far as stand up and letting the hands go, I think those are one of the two better ones in the MMA. Yeah, I mean, that guy's got all the right in the world to just keep fighting freak shows. | ||
Have fun, man. | ||
You're playing with her. | ||
The only thing is, if Father of Time shows up, he's getting to that age where you might get one of them guys. | ||
If he's having fun, do it. | ||
But if you go and get beat by one of them guys, that could change the whole outlook of a career. | ||
It's interesting how guys who are really good defensively, they're not just really good longer because they have such good technique, but also they've taken less damage during their career so that they're more durable as they get older as well. | ||
You definitely saw that with Bernard. | ||
Bernard, up until the Joe Smith fight, Joe Smith was the first guy to really put it on him like that and knock him out of the ring. | ||
It was hard to see that they had that ring set up too where he fell and landed on his fucking head. | ||
Jesus Christ! | ||
You know, I don't know if there was so much to ring. | ||
I just think it was an awkward way that he went out of them ropes in a way. | ||
Because he got hurt by that punch. | ||
And the legs buckled. | ||
And when the legs buckle like that, they could put him in that awkward position for him to slide out. | ||
Yeah, his ass was headed out and then he got clipped again and went right through. | ||
But I mean, it just sucks that there's nothing to protect the fighters if they fall out like that. | ||
There's no padding. | ||
There's no tables. | ||
No nothing. | ||
Nothing to break your fall. | ||
No one there for it. | ||
You just got to hope one of the ringside judges or commentators are there too. | ||
That's crazy. | ||
And you got guys that are 80 years old trying to push a 200-pound man back in the ring. | ||
Yeah, they're not going to get clipped like that and wind up somebody falling on them. | ||
But Bernard was able to keep his skill very late in life. | ||
I mean, deep into his 40s, almost to 50 years old, was still world-class, which is really crazy. | ||
That is. | ||
You got a handful of guys out there that could do that. | ||
And to be honest, you know, but he kept himself in good shape in between fights. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And he did what he was supposed to do. | ||
And some guys, you know, you get some guys out there. | ||
A good friend of mine, my trainer, Robert Garcia, retired at 29. Yeah. | ||
A Youngstown guy, Mancini, retired young and came back a couple years later, but it was only for one fight. | ||
Who did Mancini come back against? | ||
Greg Haugen. | ||
Oh, that's right. | ||
That's right. | ||
I forgot about that fight. | ||
Some guys, they go in and do it, and it's fun, and then it becomes a career and job and financial security. | ||
You know, the way a lot of fighters look at it. | ||
And then you get some guys like Floyd, Manny Pacquiao, Bernard Hopkins, who just love the sport that much. | ||
They don't know anything else outside of it. | ||
What was it like fighting Bernard? | ||
You know, and I don't know if this is the stage I want to... | ||
Fighting Bernard was totally different than what I expected. | ||
What did you expect? | ||
I expect him to be tricky. | ||
And sneaky and just very crafty and obviously experienced. | ||
I did jump up two weight classes to take that fight. | ||
But at the same time, that was not an 80% Kelly Pavlik. | ||
And this is true, and this is documented. | ||
I have it on my phone, and I was going to actually bring that out. | ||
But that fight, I sparred, you know, three times for that, maybe four. | ||
The fourth time was with an arm brace, and then it went into it. | ||
And I never said anything because I'm the type of person I don't want to have people think that I was making excuses. | ||
I love Bernard, and I think he's one of the greatest of all time, greatest middleweights. | ||
But that was not that night. | ||
You know, I came down. | ||
What's wrong? | ||
What was wrong? | ||
I had bronchitis. | ||
I was sick. | ||
I was running a temp, actually, in the locker room. | ||
We had to go through with the commission. | ||
We almost took the inhaler for it. | ||
Then we found out through the commission that you cannot take that because it's steroid. | ||
So we had to go to the nasal, or not nasal, the oral pill. | ||
We had it in the locker room. | ||
I don't know if you ever heard of a guy, Thomas Hauser. | ||
He writes, he used to write for New York Times. | ||
He does a lot of big boxing books. | ||
He was in there and Hauser don't, he's not one side with anybody. | ||
He writes what he knows, what he sees, and that's the truth. | ||
And he was in there when the commission came in. | ||
They were going through my prescription, you know, they were taking the temperature, giving me the exam. | ||
And that's what happened. | ||
It was a lethargic fight with Of all people. | ||
What was wrong with your arm? | ||
I had bursitis. | ||
Bursitis in your elbow? | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
And that came into an issue. | ||
And we sparred. | ||
Like I said, it was a handful. | ||
It might have been more than three or four, but it wasn't a lot. | ||
Because usually in training camp, you do three days a week for about eight-week camp for about six and a half weeks. | ||
And it was because of your elbow that you couldn't spar? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Because you didn't want to keep hitting it. | ||
Then I didn't like, just the way I am, I didn't like having a brace on it or nothing. | ||
So that was an issue. | ||
And there was a lot of things that sometimes if you could go back and you wish you could do it over again, but there was a lot of other things going on why we didn't postpone the fight. | ||
First of all, it was sold out and the Youngstown people bought all the tickets. | ||
We had the issue with the Paul Williams fight that it fell through. | ||
So I just came off fighting Gary Lockett, who was really not a well-known name, a household name. | ||
So if I would have postponed that fight, the backlash on that would have been bad. | ||
Really bad. | ||
It was more the ego thing, I think, and worried about what everybody was going to think. | ||
Taking nothing away at all from, and that's where I wanted to tap into, taking nothing away from Bernard Hopkins. | ||
Unfortunately, against A guy like Bernard Hopkins that had to have that happen to me is what sucks. | ||
And he was a tremendous fighter. | ||
I mean, he did things in there. | ||
A lot of times I've seen him making moves and I knew what he was doing and I just couldn't pull the trigger on it. | ||
And he was fast and he was strong. | ||
And then there was times that He just did some crafty things also that got to me, and his body work in that fight slowed me down a lot. | ||
But it was just one of them fights where I could honestly say that that was not an 80% Kelly Palak. | ||
And I could be honest and say if I was 100%, I don't know if I would have won that fight. | ||
And I'll be honest about it. | ||
I'm not going to be the guy that comes here and says, well, if I was 100%, I would have knocked him out. | ||
No, it's Bernard Hopkins. | ||
When you think about your legacy and you think about looking back at your career, those kind of fights where you had to take it when you were compromised, how do those factor in to you? | ||
Do those fuck with your head? | ||
unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
Yeah. | ||
Not in a real bad way. | ||
Right, but enough where you're like, ah, if I was 100%. | ||
Yeah, you know, I got invited to the International Boxing Hall of Fame over the summer, and it was cool as hell to be there. | ||
And you start seeing the inductees and everything, and you start breaking down your career. | ||
Like, am I able to qualify for this, you know? | ||
And is so-and-so going to get pissed off who didn't get in because I got in? | ||
And I look at it, and I break it down a couple ways. | ||
I say... | ||
40-2 with 34 knockouts is a hell of a record. | ||
You know, I held the belts for over three years. | ||
I beat a handful of guys that were legit when I beat them. | ||
And then I look at the fight, though, I fought Bernard Hopkins, and I got my ass whipped in that fight. | ||
And there's no other way of putting it, you know, it's the truth. | ||
So how much did that damage, you know, people remembering that? | ||
Nobody looks at the fact of the two-way class jump. | ||
And then coming back down and defending against a very game Antonio Rubio. | ||
And then, of course, the Martinez fight, which a lot of people, and it was documented on HBO with the commentators, you know, the weight issue in that fight. | ||
What was the weight issue in that fight? | ||
How we had to get down. | ||
That was my last fight at middleweight. | ||
Trying to cut the weight. | ||
I was 29 at the time. | ||
And another great fighter that happened. | ||
It was tough with the weight. | ||
I really can't use that as an excuse, though, because I don't know. | ||
But I know I was doing good. | ||
In the ninth round, I did hit a wall. | ||
A lot of people tried to use the cut. | ||
And I think even without the cut... | ||
The same result would have happened, though. | ||
You know, he would have boxed my ears off the last four rounds. | ||
It was just one of them things that there's nothing you could do. | ||
So when I sum up my career, I look at those fights, and I know personally that they could have been different. | ||
But at the same time, I'm very happy and content with the way my career went. | ||
I was 40-2. | ||
I won my last four fights before I retired, so I went out winning. | ||
And I was done with the sport. | ||
I truly was. | ||
And so I think right now I'm kind of content and happy with my career. | ||
Of course, I think anybody says it could have been better and I wish it was better. | ||
Yeah, maybe a little bit, but I'm not going to ever beat myself up over it. | ||
Well, it's just one of those things where when you look back and you think of all the great things that you did accomplish, then you realize that you retired at 30. Yeah. | ||
So much room there. | ||
30 is so young. | ||
You're in your athletic prime. | ||
I think they say 32 for a professional fighter they consider most athletic primes at 32. It was, but I look back on it again, the 42 fights. | ||
That's a lot of fights. | ||
Plus, I started when I was 9. I had a little over 100 amateur fights. | ||
There was a lot with that. | ||
I mean, for a while, well before I retired, I was throwing it around, you know, retiring. | ||
I was one of them guys that just, I liked it and I loved it, but I also sometimes got tired of it. | ||
You know, I'm a very simple guy and I don't care about the glam or the fame or any of that. | ||
I truly don't. | ||
You know, like even now with my podcast and what I'm doing With some of these other adventures, it's because I got bored and I'm on to have fun. | ||
Right. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
And keep myself busy. | ||
And I've been fortunate to have what I have to be able to do all this on my own, you know, and go out there and be around everybody. | ||
But yeah, so when I was fighting, you know, there was a lot of rumors around of the retirement, this, that. | ||
And I think the final icing on the cake was we were supposed to fight Andre Ward. | ||
And that's when Andre Ward ended up getting a shoulder surgery. | ||
And that fight fell through. | ||
And I've been out in California training or in Oxnard training for almost a year, which most fighters leave at the beginning of their career. | ||
You know, when they don't have a family, when they're not making the money, that's their opportunity to try and go and make money. | ||
Not when you're 12 years into it, you know. | ||
And so I went out there and that kind of took a little bit... | ||
From here, as far as the sport, even though I loved it and it was great training with Robert Garcia, I learned so much that I didn't think I could learn at that point in my career. | ||
And when that Andre Ward fight fell through, I was done. | ||
I mean, I rolled over, I never forget, I rolled over and told my wife, I said, I think I'm done. | ||
She goes, what are you talking about? | ||
I said, I think I'm retiring. | ||
She started crying tears of joy because she wanted me to be done even before that. | ||
She don't know the sport or what prime age is or not. | ||
I hung them up. | ||
Over the years, as we talked earlier, hearing her, I would get the itch. | ||
That could have been just going to the gym and doing a round on the pads. | ||
I just never wanted to keep doing it. | ||
My health, believe it or not, is more important than anything else. | ||
Well, that is something that every fighter has to consider. | ||
Like when have they fought too much? | ||
Yeah. | ||
How do you make that decision? | ||
When you lose it in here and that heart a little bit, it's a horrible hobby to have, especially at that high of a level. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Because you're not fighting guys that are getting off work at 3 o'clock. | ||
Right. | ||
You're fighting guys that are legit athletes and skilled professionals at fighting. | ||
And it's dangerous. | ||
Unfortunately, we've seen, and you know, when we're talking about this with me getting the itch earlier, there's a lot of things I take into consideration. | ||
Like, I'm really into it, and I'm really debating on it, and I'm hitting the gym working boxing. | ||
Then I see things like this Adonis-Stevenson situation, you know? | ||
And those are the things where I say, I've got to sit back and talk. | ||
Explain to people what happened. | ||
He got hit. | ||
It was a good fight. | ||
He's been fighting for years now. | ||
One of the most feared fighters also in boxing. | ||
And he fought the guy we were talking about earlier. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I can't pronounce his name. | ||
I don't want to chop it up. | ||
Pull up the Russian gentleman's name. | ||
There's a way to say it. | ||
It's... | ||
Better be... | ||
unidentified
|
I see him all the time too. | |
Adonis Stevenson. | ||
Russian cats have some crazy ass names, man. | ||
They do. | ||
I know it's hard. | ||
You know, me being a guy involved in a sport and talking about it all the time too, how hard it is for me to get it down. | ||
There's so many badass Russians these days. | ||
Okay. | ||
It's G-V-O-Z-D-Y-K, but it's Vosdik. | ||
You don't pronounce the G. Vosdik. | ||
He's a beast too, man. | ||
He is. | ||
He's a beast. | ||
So in that fight, Again, Adonis Stevenson is a brutal puncher. | ||
Devastating knockout puncher. | ||
He's been fighting all these years now, also. | ||
And this is the part that's scary about it. | ||
He's 41, right? | ||
Isn't he 41? | ||
Yes, and that's another situation. | ||
Factor. | ||
Factor where you might want to say, hey, I'm done. | ||
unidentified
|
Right. | |
You know, even before this happened. | ||
Unfortunately, I had to get to this point. | ||
But he's in there and it's a fairly decent fight from what I was watching. | ||
And next thing you know, he goes down, fights over. | ||
He dropped Vosnik at some point in the fight. | ||
He did. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And next thing you know, he ends up in a coma, you know, fighting for his life. | ||
The sport... | ||
You never know. | ||
That's the scary thing about it. | ||
You could get injured two weeks before the fight in sparring and have a little bleed that you would never know. | ||
No signs of it. | ||
And then the next thing, you're in a coma and dead. | ||
Well, I know that that really fucked up Roy Jones Jr. when Jerry McClellan, who was his arch rival. | ||
This was the guy that they thought one day he was going to fight. | ||
When McClellan was killing it at light heavyweight and Roy was 168-pound champion. | ||
And then, you know, to see McClellan now, you know, people who don't remember, man, McClellan was a fucking destroyer. | ||
He was so goddamn scary and so good. | ||
And he hit so hard. | ||
And he was the guy that, you know, he's a cronk fighter, you know, in the vein of Tommy Hearns and all those other great cronk fighters. | ||
And people looked at him like, man, one day that's going to be the fight. | ||
Him and Roy Jones Jr. It's almost like it was inevitable. | ||
It was like Canelo and Triple G or something. | ||
I know, because everybody does the fantasy matchups, and they ask me if Pavlik versus McKellum. | ||
I'm going, what are you guys trying to do to me? | ||
I don't want that fight. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Because he did hit that hard. | ||
He was a brutal guy. | ||
Yeah, and then to see him when he fought Nigel Benn, same situation, laps into that coma. | ||
We don't know how Adonis Stevenson is going to come out of this, but a lot of times when a guy does have a traumatic brain injury like that, they're never the same again. | ||
That's what I'm saying. | ||
That could have been something two weeks earlier that was never detected or signs of it. | ||
So it's scary. | ||
It is. | ||
So you take that into consideration, but you also have that itch. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
And again, I'm 36. It's something that, again, it's going to be a process of sitting down and discussing. | ||
So would you say you're like 60% considering fighting again? | ||
Maybe a little more right now. | ||
I know. | ||
unidentified
|
I know. | |
Do you ever go back and watch highlight reels and then you start shadowboxing and getting itchy and really start thinking about it? | ||
And it's weird because I'm in my gym and there's people lifting weights and I'm in the back. | ||
I got a couple bags back there and you start hearing the bags popping and everybody, they're not used to seeing it. | ||
So everybody gets curious and they come back and you see them peeking around the corner and watching me hit the bag and Then I get a little embarrassed. | ||
I'm like, alright, you know what? | ||
I'm going to chill with it right now. | ||
So, yeah, it's fun. | ||
It is. | ||
It's a thought, again, and we'll see. | ||
But a lot of that plays in my mind because the one thing is it becomes very selfish, too, at a point. | ||
I got two young kids at home. | ||
You know, that's going to be 13 and 10. They're involved in sports and a lot of activities. | ||
They love me being around for it. | ||
And it don't take me having to fight a Usyk. | ||
Right. | ||
For something to happen. | ||
unidentified
|
Right. | |
You know what I mean? | ||
But we'll toss it around and we'll see how that goes. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's a big consideration. | ||
There's a lot of things to factor in on that. | ||
Well, especially because you are busy now. | ||
So, what made you decide to do a podcast? | ||
Actually, I was excited when I heard you were doing that. | ||
I was like, all right. | ||
Let's get into the podcast world. | ||
unidentified
|
I am. | |
I'm looking. | ||
I hear some of these guys commentating, and I say, I think I could do that. | ||
Yeah, you could do that. | ||
After listening. | ||
And the podcast, we're kind of throwing it around. | ||
Like I said, I got a handful of investments going on, and I pick and choose on what I want to do. | ||
And the podcast started off... | ||
Hey, let's have fun. | ||
Let's throw this podcast on. | ||
We'll get some cheap equipment. | ||
We got a lot of followers on social media, so we'll do the social media live, and then we'll also hook it to the YouTube. | ||
And we were doing it, and it started off for a little while there, but no advertisement. | ||
It was kind of lonely. | ||
If you feel like I'm talking into a mic and nobody's there. | ||
And then it started taking... | ||
It's doing fairly well right now, too. | ||
How many downloads are you getting? | ||
Man, right now, well, the social media is the biggest. | ||
We end up hitting, it reaches out after the first episode. | ||
You got 2,000 people reached and maybe like 400 views. | ||
And then as the days go on and the shares go on, you start seeing it reaches out to over like 20-some thousand people. | ||
And then you see, you know, like 8,000 views. | ||
And that's on social media. | ||
YouTube is the one I'm working for, you know, really trying to push. | ||
And right now, sometimes we get up 113 views on there and And sometimes I don't even want to mention how many views are on it. | ||
So again, it's a process with that also. | ||
I know that. | ||
I'm starting to learn that. | ||
It's about consistency. | ||
That's the most important thing. | ||
But I get out to these fights and people know it, you know, who don't comment on a show because we do it where it's live. | ||
The format of it is to have everybody involved because they like that. | ||
They get asked questions and we're pretty much faces on the phone reading the questions and answering it. | ||
And I think they like that. | ||
And it actually is kind of funny because we'll get some great guests on there. | ||
We had TJ Dillashaw. | ||
We had Mikey Garcia, Terrence Crawford on. | ||
I think you could bring back Joe Lewis and put him on there. | ||
And people don't care about that. | ||
They want their questions answered through the social media or through YouTube. | ||
And they kind of don't interact with the guests that you have on. | ||
So it's weird. | ||
I think the format, I like the format of it. | ||
But at the same time, I wish people would be more involved with the... | ||
Guests that we have on. | ||
But for the most part, it's fun. | ||
It's different. | ||
That kind of format is, well, boxing fans in particular, well, I should say, just combat sports fans in particular, they love to comment on things, love to get in on it. | ||
I mean, whenever there's a big fight, social media just lights up, both with boxing and with MMA. And the ability to go back and forth with a guy like you and get your questions answered and stuff like that has got to be huge. | ||
Yep, and we tap in. | ||
We've had Matt Brown on, so we tap into the UFC. I personally don't want to because I don't want to make nobody mad. | ||
I don't know enough. | ||
I watch it. | ||
You're not going to make anybody mad. | ||
I know. | ||
I'm saying to some of the fans. | ||
I watch it. | ||
I enjoy it. | ||
But now, the co-host, James Dominguez, he's really big into that. | ||
And he was the one who actually introduced me to Matt Brown. | ||
So he knows. | ||
So on that show, that's where we work hand-in-hand together. | ||
He's able to do more of the questions and... | ||
I think it's fun when boxers don't know about MMA and they ask wonky questions. | ||
I know. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
That's how I feel, you know, vice versa. | ||
I'm sure, man. | ||
I'm sure. | ||
Like, when a big fight goes down, do you watch it and stream live? | ||
We do. | ||
Well, we tried. | ||
We actually tried on that. | ||
That's a great idea for someone like you. | ||
We do a thing called the Fight Companion. | ||
We do it all the time where there's a UFC fight. | ||
We'll put it up on that screen. | ||
We'll have a bunch of guys in here and we'll watch the fights and talk shit while the fights are going on and people play it alongside the commentary. | ||
So it's like they're watching the fights with us. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's an idea. | ||
Thank you. | ||
It's a great idea, yeah. | ||
It absolutely is. | ||
And that's the whole thing. | ||
We're just looking for a different... | ||
Plus, if you go into the comments and start having people ask questions, like, who do you think won that round? | ||
Then you go, this is why I think Triple G won the round. | ||
This is why Canelo lost the round. | ||
Or this is why you could make an argument that Canelo won it. | ||
That kind of stuff. | ||
That kind of interaction stuff. | ||
It does, and the fans love that. | ||
They love it. | ||
Yep, they love that. | ||
And that's what we're, you know, looking at different ideas, too, because you never stop learning. | ||
You can never stop, you know, expanding and doing things like that. | ||
So it's good, you know, we get places, we get to these big fights, and people notice the show. | ||
You know, hey, I love your show. | ||
Even if they don't, they're saying that to me, you know. | ||
Yeah, it was... | ||
Even if they don't, they're saying that to me. | ||
Yeah, you're saying that. | ||
That's very, that's keen insight. | ||
Yeah, you know, and it was cool, actually. | ||
What was that? | ||
The first Triple G Canelo fight. | ||
You know, when I retired, I, again, stayed away from boxing. | ||
I went there and I was all about promoting my podcast. | ||
And it was kind of cool. | ||
I walked in there and... | ||
Everybody went crazy in the media room, and I thought I was fighting again. | ||
After five years of being retired, I thought I was fighting. | ||
I mean, they were just asking, and I was trying to squeeze stuff in and tell them what I was doing. | ||
And then it was cool also because Bernard Hopkins was there, and I was already a year into the powerlifting. | ||
I was still about 230. And he came up and gave me a big hug. | ||
And it was awesome to be able to, after a fight, and being able to go in there with him to see how nice he was and how humble he was after that. | ||
He could have been cocky. | ||
He could have walked past me and not said hi or recognized me at all. | ||
And he just really brought me in. | ||
That's cool. | ||
What did he say to you after the fight? | ||
Did he tell you you need to box like a black guy? | ||
I think he did. | ||
You know, after that fight... | ||
He could have told me everything he wanted in the road. | ||
He could have sat down for an hour with me, and I wouldn't have remembered what he said. | ||
I was, you know, everybody's seen the fight, so I need not to say much more on that. | ||
But a little bit of it, because my trainer was there, it was, you know, keep your head up. | ||
You're a hell of a fighter, you know, and, you know, I'm experienced, and go back, go back to the drawing board, don't get too down on this, and come back strong. | ||
He goes, you're a champ, and that was what he said. | ||
Yeah, I remember something where he said that you needed to learn how to fight like a black guy. | ||
Yeah, I didn't hear that. | ||
I truly didn't. | ||
And maybe he might have said that in an interview after with somebody, and that's what people thought, but I know he didn't say it in a fight. | ||
Right. | ||
Yeah, that was... | ||
It was, you know, one of his best performances. | ||
I mean, he had so many great performances late in his career, the Tito Trinidad fight in particular, because nobody thought he was going to win that fight. | ||
He was a big underdog in that fight. | ||
Trinidad was the up-and-coming, rising Puerto Rican superstar, was fucking everybody up, and Bernard put on a show. | ||
I thought, you know, I actually had Hopkins in that fight, though, because he was just bigger. | ||
You know, the big guy, middleweight. | ||
Trinidad's moving up, and... | ||
There was a lot of good middleweights I didn't think Trinidad was going to be. | ||
I think Trinidad was an amazing fighter, but I think his great days were at 147. Yeah, I agree. | ||
Yeah, I was... | ||
I mean, he was a big puncher, though. | ||
I mean, he was a big puncher, even up into light heavyweight. | ||
I mean, even into... | ||
Middleweight. | ||
Middleweight. | ||
But he was... | ||
His style was almost tailor-made for Bernard. | ||
Bernard was so clever and such a good counter fighter and so good defensively. | ||
He didn't really open up. | ||
He didn't leave many openings. | ||
That goes back to the footwork that we were talking about. | ||
You notice when he fought that fight, even when he fought me, but Trinidad and other guys... | ||
When they go to throw a punch, he'd take that one step in and kind of suffocate the punch, especially if it was a straight right hand. | ||
Or then he would take that step and he would throw that overhand right and catch you with it. | ||
So he was really good at just putting that foot, not moving around much, putting it in the right spot to hit you and counter you. | ||
And he did that. | ||
Trinidad was probably one of the best technically sound fighters ever, if you actually watch him, you know, the way he threw his punches. | ||
He never made mistakes on that part of it. | ||
But I think he needed a little bit more, changed it up a little different with Bernard Hopkins in order to have even made that fight kind of close. | ||
One of the most ridiculous Trinidad fights ever. | ||
Remember when we fought Ricardo Mayorga and Mayorga let him punch him in the face? | ||
Yeah. | ||
He just put his hands down. | ||
Go ahead. | ||
And Trinidad teed off. | ||
And then he hit him with two left hooks on the chin. | ||
My girl was crazy. | ||
He was so crazy. | ||
Yeah, that was a crazy dude. | ||
He would smoke cigarettes in between rounds and shit. | ||
I don't even know if I can believe that. | ||
I don't know if that was a show. | ||
He did that when the cameras were on. | ||
unidentified
|
Right. | |
He was able to go a handful of rounds without getting tired. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
I know if you smoke a cigarette, man, that's going to take the wind out of you. | ||
Yeah, but I know fighters that smoke. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, Joe Schilling, who's a world-class kickboxer, top of the food chain, world champion kickboxer, smoked cigarettes. | ||
Whoa. | ||
Crazy fucker. | ||
I chewed most of my career. | ||
That's different though, right? | ||
It is. | ||
You know, nicotine restricts the oxygen in the blood and it's not good for boxers or anybody lifting weights. | ||
Nicotine does? | ||
Like regular, like chewing tobacco restricts the oxygen? | ||
Oh yeah, it restricts the oxygen in the blood. | ||
I didn't know that. | ||
Yeah, but it's... | ||
Can you pull it up? | ||
Just make sure. | ||
It's a stimulant, though. | ||
You know, it's actually like for your brain. | ||
People say the—a lot of folks—I actually bought some—I never tried it, but I bought some nicotine gum to try to see if I would write on it, like if it would help me writing. | ||
Because apparently it works as a nootropic, as a cognitive enhancer. | ||
Nicotine is actually an effective cognitive enhancer. | ||
I didn't know that. | ||
Maybe how much you take of it, the quantity. | ||
Yeah, I don't know. | ||
I mean, I didn't know that it affects your—because it's a stimulant. | ||
I didn't know that it restricts the oxygen in your blood. | ||
That's pretty neat. | ||
Yeah, from what I heard, and chew actually more so than cigarettes because of the amount of nicotine and how it gets into the stream faster. | ||
But to me, it was never... | ||
I didn't chew the day of the fight. | ||
Right. | ||
And I believe after so many hours, six to eight or ten hours, it's out. | ||
So... | ||
But either or, it didn't affect me. | ||
That stuff's so nasty. | ||
Because I was able to run, you know, three miles in 19 minutes, 19-some minutes, and five miles in 30 minutes. | ||
And... | ||
And I was chewing, so it never really affected me. | ||
Well, maybe it did, but just you were in such good shape. | ||
unidentified
|
Good shape. | |
Barely. | ||
No, smoking on the other hand, lungs, filling them, it is horrible. | ||
But after I retired, and the itch wasn't there for like a year, I wanted to give the gums a break. | ||
And I decided, well, you know what, I'll smoke. | ||
And I quit smoking shortly. | ||
You started smoking cigarettes after you retired? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Jesus Christ. | ||
Well, I didn't want to start them when I was fighting. | ||
Who fuck starts at 30? | ||
I was switching out because it was nicotine. | ||
Here it is. | ||
Smoke tobacco, smokeless tobacco, and health risks. | ||
The amount of nicotine the bloodstream after using smokeless tobacco may be higher than that of a cigarette smoker. | ||
Okay. | ||
What does it say about oxygen, though? | ||
unidentified
|
That's where it was going. | |
This puts it all together. | ||
The nicotine basically is taking the place of the oxygen, I think, is what the other... | ||
unidentified
|
There's another... | |
It's a less scientific paper, but... | ||
Nicotine stays in the bloodstream longer with smokeless tobacco than cigarettes. | ||
Oral tobacco. | ||
Which is why it causes heart disease. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Okay. | ||
It's not a safe alternative, folks. | ||
That's what it's saying. | ||
All right. | ||
Either way, bad for you. | ||
But you started smoking cigarettes. | ||
Yeah, not because... | ||
Were you a smoking when you're drinking kind of guy? | ||
Is that what it was? | ||
No, it was because I wanted, I liked the nicotine. | ||
Oh. | ||
And I chewed, you know, and I wanted to give the gums a break, the lips a break, and I smoked so that way I didn't have to chew. | ||
unidentified
|
Right. | |
And doing the lifting and powerlifting, I went over and I think I got seven squats and I couldn't breathe. | ||
unidentified
|
Jesus. | |
And I said, you know what? | ||
This is a shame. | ||
How long have you been smoking for? | ||
That was only eight months, seven months. | ||
That's long enough. | ||
Yeah, I said, you know what? | ||
Because I had no plans coming back to the ring. | ||
I didn't. | ||
So I was done. | ||
And I got to seven reps into the squat. | ||
And I was like, you know, this is sad. | ||
I was a former, you know, world-class athlete. | ||
So I was done right after that day. | ||
Put the cigarettes back. | ||
Good for you. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I'm sad you started it out, but glad you figured out to let it go. | ||
Yes. | ||
That's a weird choice, though, at 30. Yeah. | ||
Well, it's nicotine. | ||
That's what a lot of people do when they try to quit the chewing. | ||
They go over to the smoking. | ||
Don't they just go to the gum, usually? | ||
You could do that, too, but some people just like it. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
I don't know. | ||
Well, it does juice you up. | ||
Tony Hinchcliffe smokes cigarettes. | ||
He doesn't anymore, but he used to. | ||
And a couple of times, I took a cigarette from him and smoked it before I went on stage. | ||
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
And he's like, dude, you're going to get hooked. | ||
He was worried about me. | ||
You're going to get hooked. | ||
I'm like, I'm not going to get hooked. | ||
I'm just going to smoke this one cigarette. | ||
I'm not going to go buy a pack. | ||
But people are so scared of it. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Well, I see why, though. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Especially, again, as I'm mentioning, I'm over. | ||
I used to be able to do all that, and then I do seven reps on a squat, and I'm having a hard time breathing. | ||
And I racked it. | ||
Now, granted, squats are hard, though. | ||
I mean, you're going to... | ||
Yeah. | ||
If you're depending on the weight and how many reps you're doing, it's a different type of exercise. | ||
But, you know, I was done after that, so... | ||
You had a drinking thing for a while, too, huh? | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's one that gets a lot of fighters. | ||
Yeah. | ||
It does. | ||
But it's one, you know, on that... | ||
It ticks me off and it don't. | ||
It ticks you off? | ||
Yeah. | ||
How so? | ||
A lot of it ran through the hometown. | ||
And the troubles that I got in with it, TMZ, stuff like that, the incidents that happened were petty. | ||
Small... | ||
And if it wasn't in Youngstown, I would have never made news. | ||
Stuff that kind of happens. | ||
Like what kind of shit? | ||
BB guns. | ||
You had a BB gun? | ||
Yeah, I shot a kid. | ||
We were playing around. | ||
I was taking care of him. | ||
And this is the truth of the story. | ||
Taking care of him. | ||
I was putting a big lake in my backyard. | ||
And I got the country boy. | ||
I mean, I went out and rented two excavators and some bobcats and started putting the pond in. | ||
This guy I was helping out, he knows how to run the excavators. | ||
So he needed work. | ||
He had no money. | ||
I was taking care of him and his kids over at the house. | ||
He's working. | ||
So long story short, After about five days, I come home, and he's in the pond or lake just in his underwear playing around. | ||
I grab the BB gun. | ||
I'm joking around with him, you know, because we were shooting targets for a couple days in between working. | ||
I shoot him in the arm. | ||
Forty-two years old. | ||
Forty-one years old at the time, too, so it wasn't a kid. | ||
He gets out. | ||
He's like, ah, you shot me. | ||
And he's crying about it and everything else. | ||
And next thing you know, he's cool, though. | ||
He gets out. | ||
It's on Facebook. | ||
And he's giggling, laughing about it. | ||
And he stays at my house that night. | ||
His kids come over. | ||
I'm feeding them. | ||
We're having cookouts the next day. | ||
And little things that I don't know that I'm glad that I'm not involved in no more. | ||
Or I don't put myself in that situation. | ||
So he stays for two days after that at my house. | ||
And... | ||
His uncle comes there, who worked for the local sheriff's department, and goes, hey, is so-and-so here? | ||
And I said, yeah, he was. | ||
I haven't seen him, no. | ||
And he goes, okay, listen. | ||
He goes, Kelly, I'm coming here to tell you, so that way the news, the media, everything else don't come. | ||
He has a warrant out for his arrest, and tell him, you know, if he comes back, call us. | ||
So, he leaves. | ||
I go walk it through the house, and Brian comes down the steps, and I was like, dude, you gotta get the hell out of here. | ||
I was like, I didn't know anything of this. | ||
You having a warrant, blah, blah, blah. | ||
He goes over and passes out on my couch. | ||
I call his uncle. | ||
Hey, you want him? | ||
He's here. | ||
So he finds out he ends up running out of the house and they catch him, you know, that night or whatever. | ||
They take him in. | ||
He does two months in the county jail, gets out, takes his uniform off, walks over to the sheriff's department and presses charges. | ||
On you? | ||
Yes. | ||
For shooting with a BB gun? | ||
Yes. | ||
And a buddy of mine who was there when it happened was videoing it. | ||
His girlfriend's laughing in the background, you know, when it happened. | ||
It was just a video of it happening. | ||
He sold it to TMZ. And next thing you know, I end up getting served or whatnot. | ||
My attorney calls me also and says, hey, go down, turn yourself in. | ||
You know, it's a federal assault charge. | ||
Jesus, BB guns, a federal assault charge? | ||
Yes, yeah. | ||
That was it. | ||
And again, it was all over money. | ||
It was a drawn-out case. | ||
Supposed to have been beat. | ||
And it turned to that over a BB gun with a guy, and he said it was an assault. | ||
How much was he trying to get from you? | ||
He got nine grand. | ||
And when he filed the civil suit a couple months into this, the criminal charges were supposed to be dropped at that point because the prosecutor and everybody knew that it was all about money. | ||
So they were going to drop the criminal charge. | ||
They never did. | ||
And it goes back in Youngstown. | ||
You know, I was out in the public eye. | ||
And some of the people, they had it out. | ||
They have. | ||
For people to understand how big a star you are in Youngstown. | ||
I mean, I remember at the time, I remember reading stories, seeing news clips. | ||
I mean, Youngstown's not a big place. | ||
And other than Ray Boom Boom Mancini, there's not a whole lot of really famous people, especially fighters that come out of Youngstown. | ||
But you were a fucking giant celebrity in that town. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And that was kind of my bad on that. | ||
That's where I take the fault. | ||
Well, it's probably hard for you to recognize. | ||
You're not even 30 years old. | ||
Yeah. | ||
All this shit is going on. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And it's true. | ||
And I'm not looking for that as an excuse when I say it. | ||
But it is true. | ||
I looked at myself as everybody else. | ||
Right. | ||
I think that was the issue. | ||
You hadn't recognized yet that you're in some weird place where you have to watch what you're doing. | ||
I felt like if I go to the bar and somebody goes, boy, Kelly Powell's been here three days. | ||
He's a lush. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
My argument was, I got every right to be here just like you do. | ||
Matter of fact, I have more of a right. | ||
I'm retired. | ||
I've got my money put away. | ||
You're probably drinking your weekly pay away. | ||
That was my... | ||
Thought process. | ||
Thought process of that. | ||
And it probably wasn't right, you know, because it comes down to is you are a big fish in a little pond and it's a small city. | ||
And I think that by being out there, I brought a lot on myself because of that. | ||
It is what it is. | ||
Unfortunately, as an athlete, you can't do that. | ||
So that happened over a period of time, and the war got around in a lot of anger. | ||
You had some jealous, some angry, some who just didn't like me. | ||
Also, just so much fun for them to gossip. | ||
Yeah, exactly. | ||
Because what else? | ||
Really, I'm not beating up Youngstown. | ||
I love it. | ||
It made me who I am. | ||
But if you really look up Youngstown, there ain't a lot to talk about. | ||
Besides the fact that we do put out the most NFL players per capita. | ||
Really? | ||
Oh, absolutely. | ||
Youngstown does. | ||
Why is that, you think? | ||
I don't know. | ||
Savages. | ||
There's some badass dudes from Youngstown, and it is. | ||
I don't know why. | ||
I mean, even the boxing part of it, if you truly break down five world champs from such a small city in 36 years as it came up. | ||
Who are the other world champs besides Ray Boom and Mancini? | ||
Mancini, Harry Arroyo. | ||
Harry Arroyo actually held the title in the same weight class around the same exact time that Mancini did. | ||
You had Jeff Lampkin, Greg Richardson, and then you had a handful of other guys like Roland Cummings and fighters out there that were making noise out of Youngstown. | ||
A guy, Ken Signorani, who fought Chavez and Camacho out of Youngstown. | ||
But, um, Being there like that, it brought a lot of attention and people wanted. | ||
And there was a lot of angry people. | ||
Was it weird growing up there and then becoming a famous guy there? | ||
Yeah, it is. | ||
Because again, people tell you, hey, when you get to that level, when you win the world title, shit's going to change, man. | ||
And you're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. | ||
You think you know, right? | ||
Like you're going, yeah, I got what you're saying. | ||
And then it happens and you win it. | ||
And it's so true when they say overnight. | ||
Like, you're not you no more. | ||
You know, like, you can't be yourself no more. | ||
It's, everything changes and it comes down to the person. | ||
Even though if you don't want to change and you like living your life the way you did two days ago, unfortunately, you can't. | ||
You know, and it's hard and it's something that you got to learn how to deal with. | ||
And that wasn't my choice, though. | ||
You know what I mean by that? | ||
My choice wasn't to go out and act like a jackaloon. | ||
My choice was kind of just be me, though. | ||
Right. | ||
You just did what you wanted to do. | ||
I did. | ||
And then it just became a big issue because you were a famous guy. | ||
Yes. | ||
And another issue on top of that came, too, was where I could actually take the blame for this. | ||
And I honestly can. | ||
A lot of it came down to—and everybody's different, so I'm speaking for myself— I trained my ass off when I trained. | ||
I was a six, seven hours a day type guy, and that's what got me to throw as many punches as I did a round, and I was in great shape for every fight. | ||
I sacrificed a lot of things. | ||
I gave up a lot, even starting from high school, being an amateur and just turning pro right out of high school. | ||
I missed a lot of things. | ||
My mentality was when I had time, I was going to live. | ||
I was going to live like my friends who were 19, 20, 21, 24. And that was the process of it. | ||
I do believe, though, at a point, especially after I retired, It got a little out of hand. | ||
Absolutely. | ||
I'm not going to be the person to sit here and say it didn't. | ||
It did. | ||
I'm not naive enough to say that. | ||
Well, you know better than anybody, but the rumors were always that you were drinking a lot, and that was affecting your career. | ||
It may have to some point. | ||
I don't think it did. | ||
People say it used the fact that Hopkins beat me, and that was the reason, and that's why I retired so young. | ||
And it wasn't. | ||
It truly wasn't. | ||
Maybe some of the stuff I was doing, especially as I got older, in between fights, the drinking, I think that that may have hurt a little bit. | ||
I don't think it was enough to make any significant changes in my career, to be honest with you. | ||
But, you know, who knows with that? | ||
If I didn't, we'll never know. | ||
Again, but I lived up and do I got anything to regret about it? | ||
No. | ||
Do you still live in Youngstown? | ||
Yeah, on the outside, in the suburbs, you know. | ||
Is it, I mean, it's got to be strange to have grown up there, been a child there, and then become an internationally famous world champion boxer and celebrity and still stay there. | ||
Yeah. | ||
The world changes and you're still Kelly Pavlik. | ||
And I think after I retired, that's where some of the mistakes have come to, where I should have gotten out. | ||
Maybe come out here to California or go to New York. | ||
Come on out, Kelly! | ||
Yeah, right? | ||
We're working on it. | ||
Plenty of room. | ||
Yeah, I just had that last night with my manager, Mark. | ||
What are they talking about you doing out here? | ||
Can you say? | ||
He's throwing around ideas also. | ||
Again, we were talking about what we had talked about earlier with the fight coming back. | ||
We talked about the Dancing with the Stars thing. | ||
That's some ideas. | ||
He's looking into also sponsorships. | ||
You know, again, Mark has got a lot of connects. | ||
He's in that industry. | ||
Well, boxing's in an interesting place right now, and I was really bummed out that HBO canceled their boxing series. | ||
I mean, after how many years? | ||
43 years. | ||
Something crazy like that? | ||
Yeah, 43. They put on some of the all-time great classic fights. | ||
I think Jim Lampley, one of the best commentators of all time. | ||
I loved hearing Roy Jones Jr. do it and Andre Ward. | ||
Max Kellerman was amazing. | ||
I just can't believe that it's over. | ||
I guess it wasn't profitable for them or they just decided to get out of the business. | ||
I really don't understand it. | ||
I don't believe that it's going to be gone for long. | ||
From HBO? Yeah, for some reason. | ||
I think, you know, Lampley still has the fight game on there, and they're doing that. | ||
I heard rumors of maybe Roy Jones taking it over or buying it out, or somebody buying... | ||
The big issue, I think, is what happens to HBO, and Showtime is doing very well right now. | ||
Yes, they're doing great. | ||
I'm not sure if they'll ever fall into the situation that HBO did, but you have these apps coming out now, ESPN +, DAZN, and again, what they just... | ||
I had that signing with Canelo. | ||
How big that was. | ||
The richest athlete. | ||
You know, the biggest contract. | ||
It was like $650 million or something. | ||
I thought it was $365 million. | ||
What was it? | ||
Canelo's? | ||
How much money? | ||
Something. | ||
I think it was $365 million. | ||
But there was also, you know, incentives and everything else with that. | ||
$365 million. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
I knew there was a six in there. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
That's a lot of fucking money. | ||
Yes, it is. | ||
For, I think, 11 fights or whatever it was. | ||
That's crazy. | ||
And so, again, that's where these people are coming to this ESPN. Plus, they can watch these fights now. | ||
Yeah. | ||
On these for $7.99, $9.99. | ||
The Zone has UFC or MMA fight, or I think it's Bellator fights, whatever on there. | ||
It is nice that ESPN is putting on a lot of fights now. | ||
Exactly. | ||
And they also now have a deal with the UFC. So into 2019, now the first UFC event is going to be January 19th, which is TJ Dillashaw versus Henry Cejudo for the flyweight title. | ||
And they're really putting on some great fights on ESPN. It's just exciting to see MMA being recognized by ESPN. But it's exciting to see ESPN put Lomachenko fights on. | ||
Exactly. | ||
Because ESPN used to be kind of more so the prospects. | ||
The Friday Night Fights were the up-and-coming guys. | ||
And they were putting that on. | ||
And that was great for the prospects. | ||
I think they need to actually keep doing that maybe on a different night. | ||
But now they're putting the Lomachenkos and they're putting the world-class fighters on ESPN. Was Terrence Crawford's last fight on ESPN? I believe it was. | ||
Yeah, that's awesome. | ||
That's awesome. | ||
Yeah, and that app, that ESPN Plus, like I'm saying. | ||
So there's more accessibility to that. | ||
And people would rather pay that than... | ||
Order the $69 or $89 or $100 pay-per-view fights. | ||
Right. | ||
$7 a month is nice. | ||
It is. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I mean, with the UFC, the UFC has UFC Fight Pass, and they have events just constantly. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Same sort of deal. | ||
And that's great for that. | ||
It is, because it's an easier outlet for it. | ||
Yeah, and you can watch on your phone on a train. | ||
Exactly. | ||
It's like the world's changing, and now also I love the fact you could stream it from your phone right to your television. | ||
If you've got a smart TV, you can watch it. | ||
Exactly. | ||
I was even thinking about that at my gym, because I know how it is with business and ordering pay-per-view fights. | ||
There was actually a funny story about that in Youngstown with that, too, where everybody thought it was My fault. | ||
But yeah, you could get that. | ||
I could have 40 people there on a big fight night, UFC fight night or a boxing fight night, and I could just put that phone right up to the smart TV and we could watch it on there instead of paying... | ||
Don't say this! | ||
Don't say this right now. | ||
They're going to come get you. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
You're not going to do that. | ||
This is all hypothetical. | ||
This will never happen. | ||
You're not going to do that, right? | ||
I thought it was legal. | ||
Well, the UFC's gone after people in the past for illegally streaming things and then showing them on television. | ||
Oh, well, I thought if you had the app... | ||
I don't know. | ||
I don't know how it works. | ||
To be honest... | ||
I think it's when you're showing it in a business. | ||
Because I know what I was talking about earlier with the Youngstown thing that happened. | ||
It was kind of funny. | ||
It was... | ||
They were getting the fights. | ||
They have pay-per-view fights. | ||
Some of the businesses were illegally getting it. | ||
They all got fined. | ||
There were fines going around. | ||
People were actually coming to me. | ||
I had something to do with it. | ||
They were like, I can't believe you could do that. | ||
You should have to pay us like $3,000 for the fine that we got. | ||
Wow. | ||
You? | ||
Yes. | ||
I started giggling. | ||
Last thing on my mind that I was worried about was who was ordering fights in Youngstown when I'm here in Atlantic City or Vegas right now fighting, getting ready, trying to make weight. | ||
And doing the interviews and the press conference and everything else. | ||
What kind of asshole says that you should have to pay? | ||
Yeah, they kind of came out. | ||
And one, actually, my brother was going to get ads for the program from places. | ||
And they're like, I'm not putting an ad in. | ||
He cost me $3,000. | ||
No, you cost you. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You fucking pirate. | ||
I hate my days. | ||
And I'm sure I'm not just using that with the Youngstown. | ||
That probably would have happened anywhere in a small area. | ||
Well, you know, illegal streaming, if they don't do something about it, man, it would run rampant. | ||
I just don't know what the thing to do that's correct is. | ||
You know, I've seen some outrageous fines. | ||
I don't know, you know. | ||
And as we just, what happened earlier, we don't know what's legal and what's not either anymore with all the different internet stuff and apps that you have with the smart TVs. | ||
With TVs, yeah. | ||
Or can you stream it on your phone and have a bunch of people look over your shoulder? | ||
Yeah. | ||
How does that work? | ||
Or if you have a smart TV. Yeah, like if you have it on your phone and then like 20 of your friends come over and they're behind you. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And you say, hey man, everybody give me a dollar. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You get in trouble for that? | ||
How does that work? | ||
Or that could be a great idea. | ||
It's not the worst idea. | ||
But yeah, how does that work? | ||
Because with Apple TV, anything you're watching, you can watch a YouTube video and you just stream it to that TV with a quick swipe and a press. | ||
Bam. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I think the move for them is to make it easily accessible. | ||
Like, WWE was the first one to figure that out, right? | ||
They figured out how to... | ||
You get, like, a monthly subscription and you get to watch all the events. | ||
And then the UFC did that with Fight Pass and ESPN Plus doing this. | ||
And WWE knows how to make the money, as we can all see. | ||
Yeah, for sure. | ||
You know, I think what's also great is some of these inside stations, you know, local stations and inside putting these fights on also, like they used to do back in the day, you know, the ABC fights. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
And I was a CBS. Why will the sports? | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
Yeah, all that shit. | ||
You know, and doing that again, you know, why wouldn't you? | ||
It's great for the sport and, you know, that's how you get people involved back in it. | ||
You know, it's almost like... | ||
Almost every other generation or every other decade, there's that group of fighters that come out. | ||
You know, like Ali, Frazier, guys like that. | ||
Then you had like the Tyson, Holyfield, Redick Bowe. | ||
But also at that time, it was easy and it was accessible to watch all the time. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Now, you know, it's not. | ||
And even the apps, which I think is great. | ||
You get a lot of guys in their 40s and 50s who don't want to have to watch an app on their TV. So I think if they start bringing back just a little more variety of shows or something. | ||
Well, it seems like, especially with boxing right now, the talent level is extremely high. | ||
I mean, it is with MMA as well, but I mean, with boxing, it seems to be on an upswing. | ||
And it also seems like people are really interested in some of these big rivalries, like Triple G and Canelo. | ||
That was two amazing fights. | ||
I thought the first one was a robbery. | ||
I thought that Triple G won the first one, but the second one... | ||
I hope they don't fight again. | ||
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Really? | |
Yeah. | ||
Why's that? | ||
Because when you get a guy that hits as hard as Triple G does, and you get a guy that's as good as Canelo, and even though they're not getting dropped and they're not getting knocked out, Them type of fights take a lot out of you. | ||
They really do. | ||
And they shared a lot in those two fights. | ||
And we don't know, even right now, if the next fight or the fight after that Canelo starts showing some of the effects from those first two fights. | ||
You think so? | ||
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Yeah. | |
You get a guy that hits... | ||
Two guys that hit that hard and they're in there fighting like that, eventually it does drain you a little bit. | ||
And that will catch up. | ||
I think a third fight will shorten the career of Canelo. | ||
I'm not going to say Triple G because Triple G is my age now and I... I have a feeling that his might be getting short here pretty soon anyways, just due to age. | ||
But Canelo, I mean, those are brutal fights. | ||
They were brutal fights. | ||
Did you think that, some people thought that Triple G won the second fight as well. | ||
I thought it was a much closer fight than the first fight. | ||
But did you think that Canelo or Triple G, I think Canelo showed some improvement, but it's also possible that Triple G might have slowed down a little bit. | ||
I think so. | ||
You know, the first fight I had at 9-3 for Triple G. That's how I scored it. | ||
That sounds about right. | ||
Yeah, and I gave the first three rounds to Canelo, and then I had it every round after for Triple G. This fight, I thought Canelo won. | ||
Close fight, and if you gave it to Triple G, I wouldn't have screamed robbery. | ||
I think Teddy was saying that he thought that Triple G won, but I felt like it's a pretty close fight. | ||
Pretty close fight, but certainly Canelo showed much improvement. | ||
He did, and he fought a better fight. | ||
The first half of the fight, I gave Canelo a lot of rounds because I thought he controlled the fight with the body shots. | ||
Everybody thought Triple G was controlling it with the jab, but the reason why Triple G wasn't using his size and strength and was using his jab was because of the body shots that Canelo was landing. | ||
I mean, they were brutal, and I just thought Canelo dictated the pace of those first couple rounds. | ||
I thought he won enough of the early rounds, and obviously Triple G won most of the second half of the fight. | ||
But I thought it was a little too late, you know, and I had Canelo up by a round or two. | ||
Yeah, those are two fighters that really sort of epitomize what people like to see when they like to see these classic rivalries, right? | ||
Like a guy like Triple G who's just forward pressure, constant, throwing bombs, knockout puncher. | ||
A guy like Canelo who's just one of those classic Mexican fighters that has incredible heart, wants to fight the best of the best, like really takes it... | ||
Like he did in the first fight. | ||
Stay on the ropes with Triple G and let him use that power to beat your organs. | ||
I'm not one to talk. | ||
I kind of like getting in and getting involved myself with guys, especially like Miranda, who... | ||
I personally believe it harder than Triple G. Really? | ||
But that was my strategy. | ||
As we're Canelo, that really wasn't a great strategy. | ||
I didn't lay on the ropes and let Miranda beat me. | ||
Do you think he just didn't know what to expect until he was in there with Triple G? It could have been because everything changes. | ||
I think Mike Tyson said it. | ||
Everybody's got a game plan until they get hit. | ||
He might have got touched, like I said, even with the tension in that Mayweather fight. | ||
The whole brain might have just started going 1,000 miles an hour trying to figure out, okay, this ain't going to probably work tonight with this guy because he's a lot stronger than I expected. | ||
And he was just trying to maybe tire him out. | ||
The only issue is now when you're on the ropes like that and you're getting hit by a guy that hits that hard in the delts, in the elbow, in the forearms, and to the body. | ||
And then you're tightening up and you're tensing up really hard and you're cutting the oxygen off to the blood. | ||
It tires you out quicker and it wears you down, you know, more than what he was doing in the middle of the ring by pop-shotting and counter-punching. | ||
And he could have dictated how fast he wanted, you know, how much he wanted to punch, how hard he wanted to punch. | ||
Yeah, we certainly made some big improvements in that second fight. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Do you really don't want to see them fight a third time? | ||
I truly don't. | ||
I mean, if it happens, I'm going to watch it. | ||
But they're going to fight, right? | ||
I mean, Canelo's obviously going to fight some people, and Triple G's obviously going to continue fighting. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
You know, and again, I don't know how long Triple G's going to fight because, as you mentioned, and I agree with you, I think he's starting to—his age is showing up a little bit with him. | ||
Well, I mean, he got avoided by a lot of people, and we— You know, when he had a pay-per-view a couple years back that only got 150,000 buys, and I remember thinking, that is a damn shame. | ||
It is. | ||
It's a damn shame that people don't realize that this is absolutely one of the best fighters ever. | ||
I was surprised by that, too, because I think he's a lot more popular than what those numbers showed. | ||
I didn't get it. | ||
I don't understand. | ||
I mean, I don't... | ||
Maybe it's because they didn't think the fight was competitive. | ||
I don't know what it was, but it seemed like... | ||
I just think, personally, myself, there's a lot of fights out there for Canelo. | ||
He just went up to 168. I'm not a big fan of that. | ||
Do you think he's too small for 68? | ||
I do, especially if you get in with the right fighter. | ||
I truly do believe that. | ||
How tall is he? | ||
5'10"? | ||
Yeah, 5'9", 5'10". | ||
But, you know, with boxing or, like, football, when you see the height, you always got to take an inch and a half off, too. | ||
Oh, do they lock? | ||
Yeah, me listed 6'3". | ||
I'm right under 6'2", by, like, that much. | ||
So it's kind of like the football program in high school. | ||
Right, right, right. | ||
But Canelo, I think that there's guys out there staying at 68 is kind of dangerous. | ||
I think he's right now talented enough to keep good fights out there. | ||
Yeah, but it's a little dangerous in my opinion. | ||
Who do you think at 68 could cause problems for him? | ||
You got even guys like Zerto, Benavidez. | ||
You know, those are dangerous fights. | ||
Just them two guys right there, I would have to take. | ||
Not so much overall skill-wise, just size and being at that weight. | ||
And, you know, you got guys coming down like B-Vol from 175 to 168. I think that his better days are going to be at 160. Does he have a hard time making 60, or did he just have an opportunity to fight 68 and he took it? | ||
I think it's the trophies. | ||
And I don't blame him for that either. | ||
He had the right fight to go up to 168, so he'll get another weight division under his belt. | ||
Yeah, he was tuning that dude up. | ||
I think that'll be, what, three? | ||
No, he's a three-weight class champ. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And so that looks good on paper when you retire. | ||
Yeah, well... | ||
It does. | ||
I would have done it if I could have, you know, if there was the right fights out there, but... | ||
When he fought Mayweather, Mayweather made him cut down to, what, 52? | ||
Was it something like that? | ||
I think they had a catchweight around that. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That fight was, to me, well, it was a good learning experience for him to be in there with a guy who's as slick as Floyd is, but also a good learning experience that you're not supposed to suck that much weight out of your body. | ||
He didn't have the fire. | ||
Even though you have 24 hours or however long it is to try to rehydrate, that's never enough time to recoup. | ||
So your thing is you're just hoping your opponent's going through the same thing that you are. | ||
That's what it comes down to. | ||
What I do like about boxing that is missing in MMA is more weight classes. | ||
I really think that, and that's one of the things that people have a problem with in boxing. | ||
They think there's too many weight classes. | ||
I don't agree with that. | ||
I think, if anything, there's too many world champions. | ||
I think it's ridiculous that in any organization that one guy could be a WBC world champion, the other guy could be a WA, there's an IBF, there's a WBO. I mean, like, that's crazy. | ||
It's crazy to have that many world champions. | ||
It should be a world champion. | ||
But how do you decide what organization is the real sanctioning body? | ||
Well, you just need one sanctioning body. | ||
I don't know how you would do that either because it's all money. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Oh, they're all so corrupt. | ||
Yeah, it's all money and it's hard to do that. | ||
I see your point on that a little bit. | ||
And then I also look at, like, you got so many guys that are so good. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And boxing is a short window. | ||
So, like, how long can you stay undefeated until you finally get that chance to fight the top guy, the top dog? | ||
And anything can happen in boxing, too. | ||
You know, I kind of like maybe knocking down a three. | ||
But I think when you have the different weight classes, now you got four people. | ||
Just say one person has each belt. | ||
You've got four world champs. | ||
Now you're looking at these four guys, and you can start taking these prospects and start saying, this would be an interesting fight with this guy and this guy. | ||
And then I do believe that they should make happen one undisputed champ. | ||
I believe so, too. | ||
I think that should happen in every weight class. | ||
Yep, they should have a fight off or a box off and the four champions, or maybe that way, keep the prospects in line and have the four champions fight off. | ||
Then you know who's the undisputed champion and then your prospects get their shot. | ||
It just seems weird to have more than one world champion. | ||
You're either the world champ. | ||
It's like, how many guys won the Super Bowl this year? | ||
How many teams? | ||
One. | ||
It should be one. | ||
You can't have multiple world champions. | ||
When Anthony Joshua is walking around as a heavyweight champion, but also Deontay Wilder is walking around as a heavyweight champion, what is this? | ||
Are you the heavyweight champion, or are you the champion of an organization? | ||
That falls into what we were talking about earlier with the Jermaine Taylor thing when he vacated the belts. | ||
In my mind, you won the unified title. | ||
Unified or universal or recognizable middleweight champ. | ||
The ring middleweight title. | ||
Because where does the lineal begin? | ||
When does it not? | ||
And I had the ring title. | ||
Right. | ||
So usually, in most cases, the ring title is undisputed or lineal champ. | ||
So in other words, the champ of that weight class. | ||
Right. | ||
For the most part, you know who is the champion of a weight class. | ||
Well, Ring Magazine's title is almost as valuable as anybody else. | ||
It is. | ||
And that's the one that I really showcase when I show people my case. | ||
Well, it's so classic, too, with the stripes and the... | ||
I think Rocky really did a lot for that belt, too. | ||
unidentified
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Yes! | |
You know what I mean? | ||
I do. | ||
That's true. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Well, it's a classy-looking belt, you know, and everybody else has got the big ones with the leather and the strap. | ||
Like, the Ring Magazine's a nice one. | ||
Yep. | ||
I wanted the belts. | ||
You know, I didn't want to pay the sanctioning fees for all four of the belts, but I still wanted the IBF and the WBA to put in the trophy case. | ||
But, unfortunately, a lot of them fights fell through. | ||
When you were coming up when you were a kid and you were watching boxing, were you a Hagler fan? | ||
I was a Hagler fan, but that's another one that's actually weird with me. | ||
Even having guys like Mancini and Arroyo from Youngstown and guys like that, I never really had this one person that I was like, Or a poster in my bedroom, you know, like Deloy or something. | ||
You never had one guy that, like, you emulated or you were really looked up to? | ||
No, I emulated everybody. | ||
And I think that's what helped me get as far as I did in my career. | ||
I mean, even when I was 16, I could watch a 9-year-old sparring and see him do something cool and hit a guy and I'd be like, damn, you know, I'm going to try that. | ||
That actually might work. | ||
I followed it and I was just a big fan of the sport overall. | ||
Of course I had guys that like Gotti because of his style coming up and De La Hoya. | ||
Sugar Ray Leonard, in my opinion, is probably one of the best fighters pound for pound of all time. | ||
And it's arguable. | ||
I mean, if somebody says Mayweather, I'm not going to say... | ||
He's one of the best for sure. | ||
Yeah, I'm not going to say you're stupid for having a number one. | ||
It's a great debate. | ||
But yeah, so I followed it more as a fan, you know, and I watched, and I took from this person, I took from that person. | ||
We had, as I mentioned, we had some prospects in the amateurs coming up that train in the same gym, and I would kind of copy their style, you know, coming up. | ||
So I was always trying to keep learning. | ||
Like, I even do, and working out now, I find different things that work, you know, and what don't work. | ||
And that's what I did as far as boxing. | ||
I just watched guys. | ||
Here and there, I would copy for like two days, De La Hoya style. | ||
You know, he'd be there with the hands up and picking them off with the hands. | ||
I'd go in sparring. | ||
I didn't try it in a fight. | ||
I did it in sparring. | ||
And I would copy his style a little bit to see how it works or how I could add it to my arsenal. | ||
Yeah, I was just asking about Hagler because he's sort of the quintessential middleweight champion. | ||
There's a few guys that you look back in the day and you look at who were just iconic middleweight champions. | ||
And your guys in your late 40s and 50s, they'll argue with you that he was the best middleweight of all time. | ||
He certainly was one of them. | ||
Yeah, and you'll have your guys that have Hopkins. | ||
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Certainly one of them too. | |
That's what I'm saying. | ||
Even the heavyweights, you got your olders, oh, Muhammad Ali was the best. | ||
Then you have your guys in the early 40s tell you that to Mike Tyson. | ||
So it's kind of like whoever grew up on that. | ||
Me personally, you got to get past that because, again, that becomes biased and everybody's going to kind of go with what they grew up with. | ||
There was a lot of greats. | ||
Sure. | ||
Well, people sleep on Lennox Lewis. | ||
When you talk about the greats, all-time great heavyweight boxers, how the fuck do you not include Lennox Lewis' discussion? | ||
The size. | ||
The size, the power. | ||
But how do you not put Evander Holyfield? | ||
You do. | ||
You have to. | ||
The guy that beat the Tyson, the crazy… Riddick Bowe. | ||
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Yeah. | |
I mean, way smaller than Riddick Bowe, too. | ||
That was a hell of an era of heavyweights right there. | ||
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Crazy. | |
Crazy era. | ||
Yeah, it was the 90s, right? | ||
And those are the ones, when you say heavyweight division, those were the fighters. | ||
But how long ago was that now? | ||
By a long time. | ||
Yeah, 30-some years. | ||
So it don't come around enough. | ||
Well, what I'm hoping is more emerging talent in the heavyweight division will sort of take a little bit of this spotlight that you're seeing now that's going on. | ||
Fury and Wilder and Joshua and a little bit of Ortiz. | ||
I'd like to see more guys get in the mix there and have it be Like it used to be back then, where there are a bunch of really exciting contenders. | ||
And you look forward to these big fights. | ||
Because right now, there's like four guys, five, six guys at most, that are going to fight each other. | ||
Exactly. | ||
And hopefully what it does is it gets these other bigger guys, these athletic athletes and skilled athletes, and hopefully it brings them into the boxing again. | ||
Did I remember this right? | ||
Is David Tua making a comeback? | ||
I hope not. | ||
Seriously. | ||
How old is he? | ||
Shit, he's got to be mid-40s. | ||
Dude, he was 46? | ||
Maybe he's not. | ||
Did I make that up that he's making a comeback? | ||
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I'm looking. | |
He was a fucking monster. | ||
You know, unfortunately, in the heavyweight division, he probably could get away with that at 46. He might be able to. | ||
He was a goddamn monster. | ||
Well, he was short. | ||
He was a hard guy to fight. | ||
He was one of them guys, low to the ground, thick, big legs, no neck. | ||
Brutal power. | ||
Yeah, big left hook. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, he's one of the guys you didn't want to fight, even if you were Lennox Lewis' height. | ||
Remember when he knocked out John Ruiz? | ||
Yeah. | ||
It was brutal. | ||
Yeah, no, he was an animal, man. | ||
And he could take a shot, too. | ||
Remember when he fought Ike Abeabuchi? | ||
He was the only guy to go the distance with Abeabuchi? | ||
That was another big... | ||
He was a scary motherfucker. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And he went to jail for, like, sexual assault or something crazy like that. | ||
He was in jail for a long time. | ||
We were just talking about another guy that kind of reminded me of them, Samuel Peters. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
Don't neck. | ||
Tank. | ||
Just thick. | ||
Yeah, he was my height. | ||
Actually, I trained with him a little bit out at top ranks, Jim, when we were fighting. | ||
He was actually a really cool guy, you know, and he was a big fan of mine, too. | ||
So it was kind of neat to be able to share it out with him and, you know, talk with him before we started training. | ||
That's cool. | ||
That's cool. | ||
I want to say that he's getting out soon. | ||
He was in jail for a long time. | ||
And apparently there was some article that I read a couple of years back that he was planning on making a comeback when he gets released. | ||
But again, he's deep into his 40s as well. | ||
Yeah, and it's hard to make a comeback. | ||
And no matter if it's heavyweight or not, at that level, you know, after being out, I tell people all the time with even young kids that are 21 and 22, when sometimes these promoters freeze their contract or there's a dispute going on and they sit out two years, sometimes... | ||
They may not ever come back fully from that. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
It's true. | ||
Especially at that high of a level, you know, in boxing. | ||
Did Mikey Garcia have a contract dispute for a long time? | ||
Yeah, and I was concerned about that when he came back. | ||
You know, I was concerned about how much damage that time off could have done. | ||
How long was his contract dispute for? | ||
I think it was two years he didn't fight. | ||
Over two years. | ||
For a top-level fighter like him, that's a disastrous event. | ||
It is. | ||
But Mikey, on the other hand, he's a genius in the ring, and he has that going for him. | ||
And he also could fight. | ||
He's been doing it since he was so young and being in a family. | ||
I think the kid came out the womb with boxing gloves on. | ||
There's so many good fights to be made right now. | ||
It's just a really exciting time. | ||
It's just a really, really exciting time, which is another reason why I'm bummed out that HBO got out of the game. | ||
I would like to see HBO come back. | ||
You know, there's talks of it, and I think it would be great for the sport, again, if it came back as big as it did. | ||
Now, don't get me wrong, towards the end, it was kind of hard to watch with some of the fights they had on, in my opinion. | ||
They just weren't interesting. | ||
They weren't big fights. | ||
Do you think that was a funding thing? | ||
Like, they didn't have enough of a budget? | ||
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That, or I think they knew longer that they were on their way out. | |
Yeah, and saved the money. | ||
I don't know how many subscriptions they lost from that. | ||
I don't know if it hurt or what. | ||
But that's why I say if they're keeping the fight game open and they're showing that, I see it coming back. | ||
Especially if Showtime stays with the boxing and doing as big as they are in the box office with the numbers. | ||
I see HBO. I think it would have to come back. | ||
Well, I think with things like Netflix and Amazon Prime, they're making these television shows now that are so popular and they're such high budget, but you get things like Game of Thrones. | ||
It costs so much money to make, but so many people watch it. | ||
I think they're concentrating on those kind of things because they're so profitable. | ||
And I don't think it's the networks anymore that got to worry about shutting down, too, with all these other Zulu and Amazon and Netflix being out. | ||
You know, I think eventually some of the cable companies are going to have to worry. | ||
Yeah, no, I'm sure. | ||
Yeah, it seems like, you know, we're entering into a new era of entertainment. | ||
Yeah, technology and the advancement of it. | ||
You know, again, these apps, people, I think that ESPN Plus had over 7 million-some subscribers when it came out because of the boxing and everything else. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And DAZN does the fights on there and boxing. | ||
So you're going to have these coming out, and people are going to get into it. | ||
And it's changing a lot. | ||
Well, they're doing Bellator fights. | ||
They're doing a lot of fights on DAZN, right? | ||
It's a very exciting time. | ||
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It is. | |
Have you thought about... | ||
You were talking a little bit about commentary. | ||
Have you thought about doing commentary? | ||
I have. | ||
Have you ever done any of it? | ||
No. | ||
No? | ||
No, but I would like to. | ||
Honestly, I would... | ||
I'm not knocking anybody. | ||
I may not be the best talker in the world either, but I listen to some of the guys on there and I'm like, I think I could do that. | ||
Listen, I know you can do it. | ||
You definitely do it. | ||
But to me, it adds a certain element when a real world-class fighter is breaking down situations. | ||
Because you're getting to see it from their perspective of how they would approach it. | ||
It's not just a guy who's a boxing expert. | ||
It's a guy who did it. | ||
Who did it. | ||
Yeah, a guy who was a world champion. | ||
Like, Andre Ward. | ||
Like, when Andre Ward's on, I fucking love that guy as a commentator. | ||
Yeah, and Paulie's good, too. | ||
Paulie's excellent. | ||
Andre and Paulie is phenomenal. | ||
Malignaggi's one of my favorites. | ||
He's excellent. | ||
Damn, that motherfucker talks good. | ||
For all the times he's been hit in the head. | ||
I know, right? | ||
Malignaggi talks so good. | ||
He moves his head a little bit, too, though. | ||
He moves his head a lot. | ||
Yeah, he did. | ||
But he's smart as shit, man. | ||
Yeah, he is. | ||
He's in all aspects of life. | ||
Yeah. | ||
He's doing well for himself, and... | ||
He does the right things. | ||
So, Paul, he's a great person. | ||
I like him. | ||
He's a good buddy of mine. | ||
And, yeah, it is. | ||
You know, I think when the fans like to watch and see, you know, they want to hear from the historian or the guy that's the other commentator who just knows the sport and who can speak well. | ||
They like care on their side of it. | ||
Yes. | ||
But I think at some certain times during a fight, they like to hear from the fighter like, Hey, what the hell is going through that guy's mind? | ||
He just got smashed with that right hand. | ||
Or he got hit with a good body shot. | ||
Why does this keep happening again? | ||
Why is he doing this? | ||
What's going on here? | ||
Or what the fighter thinks should be set in a corner in between rounds. | ||
So I think it's important to have a guy that's been there, done it as a commentator. | ||
Andre Ward is another interesting guy because he's also young. | ||
And also world champion, undefeated, and just decided, you know what? | ||
I'm good. | ||
See ya. | ||
He is right now. | ||
Actually, it's funny, and I'm going to have to talk about it a little bit. | ||
I was covering a fight, the Lomachenko-Perdraza fight, and he comes up to me out of nowhere, and he's like, hey! | ||
Damn, you're getting big. | ||
And he's smiling, he shakes my hand, and he walks down to cover the fight. | ||
And I'm sitting there, and Look at watching the fights, and then I'm getting ready to head out after, you know, the fight's about over, and he comes walking up, and he goes, hey, if they offered you $10 million, would you make a comeback? | ||
I'm like, I couldn't find a reason why I wouldn't. | ||
I don't know. | ||
And he smiled and he walked away and I was going, I'm scratching my head, I'm going, I wonder why, you know, why he would ask me a question like that. | ||
And I seen recently that he's looking at certain fighters as a possible comeback. | ||
Oh, so he's thinking about doing it again. | ||
Yeah, yeah, he is. | ||
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That itch, it's so itchy. | |
Yeah, it's real. | ||
It's so itchy. | ||
I just don't think you're ever going to find anything that's going to recreate the highs of like when you knocked out Jermaine Taylor. | ||
How the fuck could you recreate that high? | ||
You can't. | ||
You can't. | ||
That combination, when you pin them in the corner and put them away, and then you walk away and you realize that you won, holy shit. | ||
And that don't even kick in. | ||
That's all going 100 miles an hour. | ||
You're up on that. | ||
I see the pictures all the time. | ||
Pull that up. | ||
They have me with the hands in the air, and I see all the people. | ||
It was so fast. | ||
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It took me... | |
A while before I could, even though I walked out of my house and I had them up, you know, on the side. | ||
This was before I moved. | ||
I still lived with my parents at the time. | ||
And I did, too. | ||
I had them up at the house, and I'd be leaving to go to the gym or something, and I'd look over at the belts, and I'd go, wow, you know what? | ||
Those are mine. | ||
But it never really kicked in until, like, a little while later, like, those are my fucking belts. | ||
I did that. | ||
I'm the world champion. | ||
Not only do I got one, but I got three of them. | ||
When you were lying in bed that night, You probably had to be going, am I in a fucking dream? | ||
That's what it felt like. | ||
Here it is. | ||
What a fight this was. | ||
Goddamn, this was a fight. | ||
This was one of my all-time favorite middleweight championship fights for sure. | ||
And Jermaine Taylor, man, he was a bad motherfucker. | ||
He was. | ||
And again, a lot of people talked about the handful of fights before that and the tough with smaller guys. | ||
But he was a bronze medalist who beat the man, Bernard Hopkins. | ||
There it is. | ||
Doom. | ||
It's a combination when you put them away, too. | ||
Fucking phenomenal, man. | ||
Phenomenal. | ||
This right here. | ||
When you walked away. | ||
That was all a blur. | ||
I just put my hands up. | ||
Fuck, man. | ||
I mean, that feeling. | ||
Try to describe that. | ||
What is going through your head? | ||
Everything possible for him not to get back up. | ||
I know it sounds funny when people say that, but that's the truth. | ||
My big thing was, if I got somebody hurt, get them out. | ||
Because boxing is dangerous. | ||
And anything can happen. | ||
If they can get back up, they have a chance at knocking you out or beating you. | ||
But when it was over, what does that feel like? | ||
It's hard to explain. | ||
It really is. | ||
You're on cloud nine. | ||
There's nothing that can bring you down. | ||
You went from being a prospect to being a world champion, to being a huge superstar in boxing. | ||
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Yeah. | |
And it's hard to grasp at once. | ||
And it takes time. | ||
And unfortunately, sometimes you get it when it's too late. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
You really grasp it. | ||
And it's just one of them things. | ||
Even I was talking with a guy last night, and he brought up, he was originally from South Korea. | ||
And he was talking about, he goes there all the time, big business guy. | ||
And he says... | ||
They actually studied my fight down there. | ||
Something on how you can get knocked down. | ||
This is more in your field, up your alley. | ||
How you get knocked down and what gets a guy to get back up and recover, the recovery, the endurance, to pretty much have your brains rattle but be able to come back that strong rounds later and knock somebody out. | ||
And for me, the simple answer is, of course, training hard. | ||
Making sure I'm in shape. | ||
But I guess what he's trying to figure out is, like, what's the brainwave? | ||
What's the mindset? | ||
What's the drive that gets you to do that? | ||
What is the endurance of the muscles? | ||
And, you know, that's pretty deep thinking, Lopez. | ||
I think there's a lot there. | ||
There's a lot. | ||
And there's no one—first of all— Every combination that you get hit with is different. | ||
Some combinations you're just not going to get up from. | ||
And some of them you're on the border. | ||
Can you get up? | ||
Can you not get up? | ||
How bad do you want it? | ||
Maybe you think about your daughter. | ||
Maybe you think about your mom. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And you just get this burst of adrenaline. | ||
You're like, fuck this. | ||
I'm getting up. | ||
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Yep. | |
And the referee gives you the count, and you just fight smart, keep your hands up, and keep moving. | ||
The next thing you know, that cardio kicks in, and then you're back. | ||
Look at Tyson Fury against Wilder. | ||
That's the way I looked at it. | ||
That's the simple way of looking at it. | ||
Tyson Fury against Wilder, by all rights, that fight should have been done. | ||
He lands that right hand, and then that left hook, and you see Tyson Fury go down like he got hit in the head with an asteroid. | ||
Boom! | ||
He's just flat on his back. | ||
You're like, holy shit, he knocked him out in the 12th round! | ||
And then... | ||
Everybody thought he did The Undertaker. | ||
Yes! | ||
It's crazy! | ||
The way he sat up. | ||
I've seen all the memes and gifs of him sitting up and they showed The Undertaker doing it. | ||
With that right there, I think a little different from mine, I personally believe that he wasn't hurt that bad. | ||
Really? | ||
I believe that he got dropped and that was legit, but he was laying there taking the eight, nine seconds to recover and he got up. | ||
I don't think he was out because there's... | ||
No real way to be out that cold. | ||
I don't know. | ||
The hand of Jesus. | ||
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The hand of Jesus came down upon him. | |
Man, let's watch that knockdown. | ||
Pull up that knockdown. | ||
I feel like that was one of the most fucking brutal right hand, left hook combinations. | ||
When you were talking about that, as far as what's going through your head, it's crazy because when I got knocked down, it was more of an equilibrium shot. | ||
But I could hear, my legs were gone, but I could hear certain people in the stands, and I knew what was going on, and the first thing that was in my head was, man, you worked way too hard to go out like this. | ||
So it is that drive. | ||
Yeah, here it is right here. | ||
What's crazy is that Wilder, look at this, boom! | ||
I mean, come on, man. | ||
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This dude, he's fucking hurt. | |
He's fucking hurt. | ||
Something happened. | ||
Jesus came down upon him. | ||
That's why I'm saying, I think, I don't know, maybe he was hurt. | ||
I mean, he went down pretty bad. | ||
He went down quick. | ||
Fucking incredible. | ||
And then his ability to recover. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And the fact that... | ||
And he's not the best in shape guy either. | ||
You don't think so? | ||
Well, I mean... | ||
He kept moving for 12 fucking rounds. | ||
Well, yeah, he did do that, but... | ||
To be able to get up that quick? | ||
Well, how is he not the best in shape guy? | ||
I mean, to be six foot... | ||
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That's a fucking crazy knockdown. | |
And then Wilder does the slip throw. | ||
He's in great shape for a heavyweight. | ||
You could put it that way. | ||
I see what you're saying. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Well, no heavyweight is ever going to be in the same kind of shape that, say, a welterweight's going to be in. | ||
Just because you're carrying around so much body weight. | ||
But I was saying from the point of... | ||
Getting up that quick after being dropped and not to be stumbling and falling over. | ||
It's true. | ||
I mean, he just came back and he was fine. | ||
That's why I'm thinking more so like, yeah, he got hurt. | ||
I'm probably wrong on this, but I'm saying like, yeah, he got hurt and he's laying there and he's going, shit, let me just take it. | ||
Let's watch it here. | ||
Here comes that fucking missile. | ||
And then this one. | ||
I mean, come on, son. | ||
Timber. | ||
That is some crazy shit. | ||
They said he hit his head, but he did not. | ||
He did not. | ||
People say his head bounced off the mat. | ||
It never bounced off the mat. | ||
He kept his head up as he was going back, which lets you know that he was conscious. | ||
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But doom and ba-boom. | |
I mean, he got fucking rocked. | ||
I wish they would have had an overview, because you could tell by the eyes also. | ||
Right, right. | ||
Whether or not they're rolled back in his head. | ||
Or to the side. | ||
Cardio is significant. | ||
If you're in great cardio shape, you recover quicker. | ||
You know, there's a bunch of different factors in why you recover quicker. | ||
Your mindset has to play a factor, right? | ||
How bad you want it. | ||
That's what I'm saying. | ||
I mean, no doubt he was hurt from that punch and he went down. | ||
I'm just thinking for that period of time, was he laying there also saying, I'm going to take the full eight, nine to get up? | ||
Or, like you said, did a hand come down and touch him? | ||
Jesus came upon him and rose from the dead. | ||
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Yep. | |
He's just a tough motherfucker, man. | ||
And a good guy, too. | ||
Super fucking smart guy. | ||
Funny. | ||
Yeah, I mean, what a character. | ||
And now, when you were training and you were doing your strength and conditioning, were you like an old school method guy? | ||
Or did you use heart rate monitors and all the new school methods? | ||
No. | ||
I like the functional strength training. | ||
I did a lot of that. | ||
What kind of stuff? | ||
I do sledgehammer and entire pushing... | ||
Matt Brown has a great... | ||
He's got... | ||
What is Matt's company? | ||
Give his company a plug. | ||
I think it's Immortal something, strength and conditioning. | ||
But he's got a great bunch of... | ||
He's got sledgehammers with a rounded head so you don't have to fucking swing it around. | ||
Immortal combat equipment. | ||
Immortal combat equipment. | ||
He's got a great sled, too, that you stack weights on. | ||
And he left a lot of that stuff out there. | ||
The war wagon. | ||
Yeah, the war wagon. | ||
A lot of... | ||
Different grip strength apparatus things like balls that you do chin-ups for those balls on the far left. | ||
You do chin-ups, grip and those things. | ||
He's got some great shit. | ||
Those are sledgehammers, right? | ||
Yeah, pull-ups, dips, pushing trucks. | ||
Man, what else did we get into? | ||
I would go to this place called Iron Man Warehouse. | ||
And it was kind of a nice setup there, too. | ||
And it was more for, like, the gym owner. | ||
I love him to death, and he's crazy. | ||
He truly is, and he's about 48 now, and he can still run. | ||
He runs with the... | ||
Matter of fact, at my real title fight against Taylor at the boardwalk, everybody kept talking about... | ||
Running on a beach, I think the log was like 120 pounds, just running nonstop. | ||
Yeah, real Christian guy, you know, into it, and he does all that. | ||
Just running with a log on his back? | ||
Yeah, he runs all the peace races with that. | ||
Phenomenal shape. | ||
Well, you had a place down in a lot of it was the functional strength training. | ||
You know, I do pull-ups on fire hoses for the gripping and everything else. | ||
That's what I like doing. | ||
I wasn't building muscle, but I was getting strong as hell. | ||
And I was getting also a lot of cardio work involved in that. | ||
But for the most part, it was the strength. | ||
There he is. | ||
Running around with a log. | ||
Here he is. | ||
This motherfucker running around with a log. | ||
That can't be good for your knees. | ||
I wonder how he's walking right now. | ||
Like, right now. | ||
I see guys do screwy shit like that. | ||
I go, okay, you can do that right now. | ||
But let me see what you look like in six months. | ||
Let me call you back. | ||
I'm going to call you back in six months. | ||
He's been doing it for a long time. | ||
I don't know, though, how he does it. | ||
That's so much weight on your joints, to be running with a 120-pound log on your shoulder. | ||
He's a freak of nature. | ||
I mean, what does that show, the Ninja Warrior or whatever? | ||
I truly believe that he could go into that and do very well in that. | ||
I mean he at the Ironman warehouse they have the little balls and he swings from each one up there. | ||
He takes the 45 pound plates and he throws them up in the air and catches them back coming down. | ||
Just crazy things like that and that's where I went to train after the Miranda fight. | ||
I was doing all that shit on my own for the Miranda fight. | ||
And then after the Miranda, he had told me, he goes, Kel, I got this place down here. | ||
Come down and try it out. | ||
And I was doing all that crazy stuff, man. | ||
And it worked. | ||
Again, it was strong. | ||
The only thing that I wish I could have went back with that, now as time goes on and I'm training some athletes at my gym, is we have this machine called a Vertimax PC equipment. | ||
And it's amazing. | ||
I mean, it truly is. | ||
You can emulate, more so than you can with the bands, what you're doing. | ||
If you're a football player, you know, you can come up. | ||
unidentified
|
What is it called? | |
Vertamax? | ||
Vertamax. | ||
See if you can find that. | ||
It's amazing. | ||
What does it look like? | ||
For wrestlers. | ||
It's got bands on your back. | ||
Are these bands? | ||
Like elastic bands? | ||
But as, okay, as, no, they're just straps, okay? | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
With the rubber band, your tension is usually gone at the beginning, and then you have to get to a certain point to get it, as where this has resistance all the way through. | ||
Oh, okay, so it's a pulley system? | ||
Oh, it is a pulley system. | ||
And you can set the tension on it on the back part. | ||
You can pull out and make it a little harder, the tension, but it's unbelievable. | ||
So when you go back down, there's tension all the way through from beginning to end. | ||
It's for that fast twitch muscle, and a lot of wrestlers are using it. | ||
Ooh, I like that. | ||
So I wish they had that because adding that in with the functional strength training could have definitely made me a lot better than I think it could for a lot of athletes. | ||
That seems like you could do everything with that thing. | ||
Yep. | ||
That's amazing. | ||
Well, they have the Raptor also, which is very good. | ||
It's the same concept as that, but you put it up on the fence and you can run out farther and do different things on the Raptor also. | ||
With that thing, could you do like shoulder exercises and stuff with it as well? | ||
You just have to prop it up? | ||
I've been screwing around with it at my gym and I found ways to do flies. | ||
Really? | ||
On putting a little balance boards. | ||
I put that down on it and I get the straps where you can do flies with it. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
Shoulder exercise, core, you know, especially with the Raptor. | ||
You can walk out with that. | ||
What is the Raptor? | ||
It goes on the wall. | ||
It's more for like travel. | ||
See if you find that thing. | ||
So you could put it on the fence at a baseball field and just swing. | ||
You could even do golf swings. | ||
There it is right there. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Vertamax Raptor. | ||
Oh, wow. | ||
Look at that. | ||
Golf swing. | ||
And can you adjust the tension? | ||
Yes. | ||
It's just on the back, so you'll pull it. | ||
They have little black spots that tell you, you know, it goes up to three spots. | ||
That seems like that would be great for punching power as well. | ||
It is. | ||
And the thing is, you don't want too much tension with that. | ||
You know, I try to explain. | ||
I got some people that work with guys at my gym on it, and they train them more like an endurance thing. | ||
And I tell them, you're defeating the purpose. | ||
You know, there's a place and time for strength and endurance, especially a boxer. | ||
A guy's running in the morning. | ||
He's hitting pads at the gym. | ||
I really think that should be focused on the explosion. | ||
Don't go until you're tired. | ||
I want every rep, every movement to have explosion. | ||
Roy Jones Jr. Yeah. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's amazing. | ||
So it's just enough resistance so that everything that you do just gets essential. | ||
And if you put too much resistance, then you're not going to be able to really fire off the fast twitch. | ||
Right, right, right. | ||
Now the only thing I see also that could hurt people is that they do the whole workout with that. | ||
Now what happens is you eventually get tired and fatigued. | ||
And then all your motion is slow. | ||
So now you fall in the habit of that. | ||
I like to work them on it for about 15, 20 minutes. | ||
Take them off and then have them do the same exercises with it after with no resistance. | ||
And then just keep it that day just with the fast twitch muscle, the small muscle training. | ||
And then the next day we go into strength or endurance. | ||
So are you training guys? | ||
I'm right now powerlifting. | ||
Because you own this gym. | ||
Yeah, and I have one box. | ||
What is the name of your gym? | ||
My gym. | ||
It's just called MI gym? | ||
So we had to change the eye because somebody had my gym. | ||
MI gym? | ||
So it's me gym. | ||
Yeah, me gym. | ||
It's me gym. | ||
Come on down to me gym, lad. | ||
In Spanish, it's my. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Or in Italian. | ||
Yeah, no, I'm doing that with them right now. | ||
It's fun working with their strength and conditioning. | ||
I am also going to be doing a boxing gym at the end of the summer, hopefully, in Youngstown. | ||
It's going to happen. | ||
It's just a matter of time. | ||
Now, when you were training and you were fighting, did you have a specific schedule of when you would do strength and conditioning and how many days a week you would run, how many days a week you would do physical exercises? | ||
Yeah, and that's another thing. | ||
As I said earlier, too, you always keep learning. | ||
It worked for me for what I did when I was fighting, and I would totally have changed it now, knowing the stuff that I know and being involved in it and researching. | ||
We used to run Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday three miles, and then take Thursday off, and then Friday and Saturday. | ||
On top of that, I would do my strength and conditioning training, and then I would be at the boxing gym. | ||
That's a lot. | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's a lot on the body, too. | ||
When I went to California, we did Monday, Wednesday, Friday running, and it was only two and a half, three miles. | ||
And then those days in between, we did the strength and conditioning training. | ||
So I didn't have a preference on that. | ||
I didn't care. | ||
The only thing I did say is I didn't want to run early in the morning. | ||
Why is that? | ||
Because... | ||
I didn't get going. | ||
I wasn't one of those guys in the morning, and it happens to people. | ||
If I went and ran too early, I would end up feeling like shit the rest of the day. | ||
Really? | ||
Yeah, just dragging ass. | ||
As where when I went and ran at like 9.30 in the morning, I got my best running, I killed it, and then I felt great the rest of the day. | ||
How much sleep would you make sure you had? | ||
That was a tough one. | ||
I got about seven to eight hours. | ||
Yeah, they say you need eight and you really should try to get ten when you're a professional athlete. | ||
I took my Sundays off and I rested all day Sunday and I kind of ate a good amount of carbs and kind of what I wanted to on Sundays, depending on where the weight was out and how far out we were from the fight. | ||
But I really don't believe in the theory of you've got to wake your guy up at 4 in the morning and make him run. | ||
I don't. | ||
If I was training guys, I want my guy to run out whatever I'm going to get the best run out of. | ||
That's the time I want him to run. | ||
He'll adapt, and especially after he keeps fighting, he'll adapt. | ||
It's more mind over body. | ||
But I think the gym is non-negotiable. | ||
At 3 o'clock I like to train. | ||
And if I was training guys, my gym hours would be between 3 and 7. Why do you like late afternoons? | ||
Because it gets you closer to the fight night. | ||
Especially closer to a fight, I would like actually for my guys to train about 8 o'clock at night, 9 o'clock. | ||
Depending on what they have going on in their personal life. | ||
So you have like a clock. | ||
So your body has like a time that it knows it's going to work. | ||
Yeah, and I didn't do that. | ||
What did you do? | ||
I sparred at four, three. | ||
But if I'm talking about me being a trainer, I would like that for my fighters. | ||
So what you've learned from your career, you just apply it. | ||
The only thing I would really take from it would be the running in the morning. | ||
If my guy wanted to say, hey coach, I'd rather run after the gym tonight. | ||
And I knew that that was going to make a difference in a minute on his miles. | ||
Okay? | ||
Run at night. | ||
Because I want him to get the best run possible. | ||
Right. | ||
You know, that's most important. | ||
Did you run for speed? | ||
Did you do sprints? | ||
Did you do long distance running? | ||
Like, what kind of running did you do? | ||
I did do sprints. | ||
We added. | ||
I wish we could have done more. | ||
But, you know, I was big with the steps, too. | ||
And we have, yeah, Youngstown State University in Youngstown. | ||
And I got one side that's pretty big. | ||
It's steep. | ||
You know, and it goes up. | ||
And I would do that probably about three times at camp. | ||
For a unbeliever, you've got to watch how many times you do that throughout a camp because it builds muscle, especially running that high, doing the steps. | ||
And then when you start cutting the weight and you've got to get down, it's going to be hard to lose that extra pound, which can make a big difference come fight night. | ||
So for a six-, eight-week camp, you would only run it three times? | ||
About three times, yeah. | ||
unidentified
|
Interesting. | |
Then I had sprints on the hills, and I did regular sprints because regular sprints is firing that fast twitch muscle, and it's also hitting that big muscle, and it's building the legs and strength. | ||
um distance was was important but still another big one to me is the pad work you know the training at the gym i'm not a big fan of bag work anybody hitting the punching bag how come because uh you learn how to manipulate the bag and you learn how to uh trick your your trainer and everybody else i could go hit a bag right now and probably do 10 rounds on it you know just because i know how hard to punch it's hard to tell as to where when you're hitting pads i know how hard my guys punch and And I'm giving him the combos and | ||
the numbers. | ||
So he has no time. | ||
unidentified
|
He has to think. | |
He has to concentrate on what you want him to do. | ||
And he's not throwing the punches that he wants. | ||
unidentified
|
Right. | |
You know what I mean? | ||
So it's easier. | ||
I mean, it's harder than hitting the bag. | ||
I think that's a big part of the training. | ||
I would do it with the guys and it makes a big difference overall. | ||
Did you do a lot of drills in terms of movement drills, movement drills with combinations? | ||
Not at home either. | ||
I didn't when I trained in Youngstown. | ||
No? | ||
No. | ||
I learned a lot of that when I went to California. | ||
From Garcia? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Is that one of the reasons why you were saying, man, it was amazing that I could learn so great? | ||
Yeah, because I was cocky. | ||
I'm going, what the fuck are they going to show me after 12 years of being a pro? | ||
He's an awesome trainer. | ||
Yeah, I was cocky when I'm like, I got all these fights and I was a great amateur. | ||
What more can you show me? | ||
And I went out there and I learned. | ||
You can't be taught. | ||
Taking nothing away from Jack and my trainer at home, that guy, he got me ready though. | ||
If you're fighting, I was in shape. | ||
He was like a drill sergeant on that. | ||
Another little thing on that with the running, you know, cement, I think now I would have my guys run on grass, track, even if it's boring. | ||
I don't care if you're bored running, you know, you're going to run around the track. | ||
It's easier on the joints and less demand on the body. | ||
So overall, I mean, there's a lot. | ||
That's why I like it. | ||
That's why I like being involved right now with the strength and conditioning gym. | ||
Because I'm working with people, getting them healthy, helping them out. | ||
And eventually I could add a lot of this to my fighters, you know? | ||
Yeah, there's a long education when it comes to physical fitness. | ||
A long education in understanding how much is too much, when's the right time to do things. | ||
And that's one of the reasons why I was asking you, like... | ||
How did you decide if you were going to do three times over the course of a training camp, you're going to run those stairs? | ||
How did you decide that? | ||
Was that a strength and conditioning coach that decided that? | ||
No, that was me. | ||
You decided it. | ||
Yes, because I didn't want the muscle. | ||
You put some weight on you. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Come time when you're starting to dry out, you're going to wish that you kind of didn't. | ||
But I always was... | ||
Afraid in the back. | ||
I was second guessing my conditioning. | ||
So I always wanted to be strong. | ||
And again, the stuff like that Vertamax, that wasn't out yet. | ||
We had the bands, and we do some of the exercises on that. | ||
I never researched much at that time either. | ||
I was in great shape, and I was strong as a mule. | ||
But there was other things like being athletic. | ||
I started eventually towards the end doing some cross training. | ||
You said you're a big fan of that. | ||
Yeah. | ||
I absolutely am also. | ||
I think becoming a great athlete overall, there's nothing wrong with that. | ||
And it's fun. | ||
It breaks up the monotony of the same training regimen all the time. | ||
Do you remember when they didn't want you to lift weights? | ||
They didn't want boxers to lift weights? | ||
Like before Mackie Shillstone, before he worked with Michael Spinks, when he moved up to heavyweight and fought Larry Holmes. | ||
I mean, remember people were saying like, they don't want... | ||
Boxers to lift weights, that it's going to tighten you up and slow you down. | ||
That was the thought process behind it. | ||
And then from him, and then in particular Holyfield, when Holyfield went from cruiserweight to heavyweight, and he put on a lot of mass, that was Mackie Shilstone too, right? | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
Yeah, I mean, that just changed the game. | ||
Jamie? | ||
That's your guy, but I don't want to make him have to keep searching things. | ||
Oh, he loves it. | ||
If you could put in Kelly Pavlik workouts, training. | ||
We had a guy, too, with weight. | ||
I did do weightlifting. | ||
When I was fighting. | ||
And I do agree with weightlifting and I don't agree with it. | ||
I don't think you should go heavy with the weightlifting. | ||
If you're going to get your strength, I absolutely... | ||
Look how thin you are, man. | ||
Slim bastard. | ||
Yeah, training at Rockies or something like that. | ||
That was California. | ||
Yeah, there you go, that second one. | ||
Yeah, see the lightweight? | ||
Yeah. | ||
We would do hundreds and hundreds of reps. | ||
Just endurance stuff. | ||
Yeah, just burning. | ||
When you look at yourself without all the tattoos, do you go, huh, look at all that blank canvas. | ||
Look at those arms. | ||
But you look at those arms now, you're probably embarrassed. | ||
Those gigantic tree trunks you're packing now. | ||
No, yeah, but those things kick ass. | ||
Those things will fuck your head up. | ||
Yeah, exactly. | ||
I don't know if I have to snap on it now like I had then. | ||
So the weights, stuff like that, I totally agree with because it is great for muscle endurance. | ||
And if you're going to get the strength, I go back to the functional training for that. | ||
I don't think a boxer or a combat... | ||
It might be a little different with UFC guy, MMA fighters. | ||
Because of the wrestling. | ||
The wrestling and everything else. | ||
And that will come down to having somebody that really knows. | ||
Like I said, you never stop learning in it. | ||
But for me, with my guys, yeah, endurance training like that, that's great. | ||
And you could even switch that in with some functional endurance training too. | ||
You know, one thing we used to do at Ironman, stand there and get a heavy chain. | ||
And arms locked out for the front delts and turn it, turn it, you know, for the endurance to it for a period of time. | ||
So there's just a lot of things that you could add in. | ||
And I think, you know, everybody goes, well, you don't overtrain them. | ||
And that's another thing. | ||
Like the body, it's really hard to overtrain. | ||
I mean, the only way you could really overtrain is if you're not getting the right nutrition and you're not getting the right rest, you know. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
Or if you push too hard and you don't give yourself enough recovery time and you push it too close to a fight. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Or if your camp's too long and you don't get enough rest period in between. | ||
That's a big one, the too long a camp. | ||
You know, Tim Sylvia, or not Tim Sylvia, Tim Kennedy, who's a big, who was for one time, at one point, he retired now, but he was one of the top middleweight contenders. | ||
He went through two camps in a row because one of his fights got canceled, rolled right into his camp and then fought, and then had no endurance in his fight. | ||
You could kind of tell that he was drained. | ||
It was just too long. | ||
It was like six or seven months of really being in camp, something along those lines. | ||
And probably in the lines of somewhere, the nutritionist, it could come down on a person like that. | ||
Is he getting enough of the sources? | ||
It's also cutting a lot of weight. | ||
Exactly. | ||
So dehydration, everything else. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Yeah, and it's hard. | ||
I mean, you've got to find if you're going to bring somebody in. | ||
I was fortunate. | ||
My dad, you know, we kind of kicked ass on that. | ||
We had a little science, you know, broken down to a science, and we made weight good, and we were strong. | ||
Did you monitor your heart rate ever? | ||
No. | ||
I didn't. | ||
Just felt how you felt. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
You know, like, did you write down, like, what different kinds of exercises you were doing in workouts, or did you play it all by heart? | ||
Yeah, and I still do that. | ||
I still put that in my, even weightlifting. | ||
Really? | ||
Yeah, I feel like when you write down, you limit yourself. | ||
How so? | ||
Because if I go in, I see guys all the time, not knocking at everybody, but I see them come in with their little notepad, and they have what they got, and I see them go over and they do literally only four sets on the bench, and they write down what they did, and then they go over and do some dumbbells, or same with the squats. | ||
I feel you're limiting yourself. | ||
I mean, you didn't work that muscle To, you know, failure. | ||
And you should most of the time. | ||
Because if not, that becomes maintaining. | ||
You're not breaking down the muscle fibers, you know, and for it to recoup. | ||
I feel, you know, when you go and lift, I'm not saying every exact time you have to kill it. | ||
But when I go in, I want to do either a little bit heavier or more reps than I did last time. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
For me to get to the point where I want to get and it has worked for me. | ||
I do. | ||
I feel like when you write down, the only time I do write things down is if I'm doing a chart. | ||
I'll go through that chart and then when I finish with it, I finish out with so many reps in that same percentile of my PR. You know what I mean? | ||
And I'll go down. | ||
Now, then I have a speed day, an endurance day. | ||
And that's when I rep out and I do sometimes up to 300 reps, you know, on the body part and speed and endurance. | ||
And then before I even do that, I work on, say, if it's bench or squats, I get the bands. | ||
And I have my guys do no more than six reps and it all got to be explosion because that helps in powerlifting for that one rep max, you know, the explosion off. | ||
So it comes down, you know, and that's my theory on it. | ||
A lot of people, you know, do it. | ||
And then you got guys who do write down though. | ||
Do you think there's any benefit in the kind of lifting that you're doing now for a boxer? | ||
I think right now, if you have the time, yeah, it could help. | ||
If you had time in between camps. | ||
Yeah, if you had time to get that big or get that strong for maybe two months of heavy. | ||
But I also think that you need a good period of time of no heavy lifting. | ||
To recover before you start really boxing. | ||
So your body's going to be used to it, muscle memory. | ||
You're not going to lose all that strength because you're not just stopping the power lifting and not doing anything. | ||
It seems like a real guessing game, or at least an experiment. | ||
I wouldn't try it if I was active. | ||
And I had an active fighter. | ||
But yeah, I would like to see somebody try that eventually one day. | ||
You never know. | ||
They're always coming out with something. | ||
They're always debunking some other, you know, you have to do this. | ||
And my favorite thing is where I get in about the training when people say, you can't do this two days a week. | ||
You can't bench or squat. | ||
Look at your guys and Joe. | ||
Oh, they do every day. | ||
Lift weights. | ||
Yeah, lift weights. | ||
And eat shitty food. | ||
They don't have the supplements that we have. | ||
They can't take a protein powder drink and BCAs. | ||
And they're not small. | ||
They're huge. | ||
They're jacked. | ||
They're lifting every day. | ||
So, I don't know. | ||
Well, are you familiar with Pavel Tazzolini? | ||
Yes. | ||
Wasn't it a guy also with the kettlebells? | ||
Yeah. | ||
He's got some interesting thoughts about strength training in particular because he's one of those guys, he believes you should do more rest in between reps, less reps, and you should do it more often. | ||
So instead of like one brutal workout a week where you break your body down and you walk like you're getting fucked in the ass by a rhino for two days, instead of that... | ||
You work out with less repetitions. | ||
Don't go to failure, but do it two or three times a week. | ||
You get more repetitions overall over the end of the week, but you'll be able to recover better, and you never get that full breakdown, but your body gets just as strong or stronger. | ||
I've seen that and actually I was reading on that and I was going to put that into my program. | ||
And I read a lot of them. | ||
I see like Simmons with Westside. | ||
They got some great ideas. | ||
When it comes to lifting weights and powerlifting, there's only so much. | ||
Somebody's got it from somebody. | ||
Do you know what I mean? | ||
Like Westside, they were big with the Russian Olympic team and everything else. | ||
There's only so much you could do. | ||
There's only so many programs you could do where you're not tapping in and copying off this person's... | ||
I think adding that in, there's nothing wrong with that either now. | ||
Now changing it up after a while and shocking that body, I think that actually helps you get stronger and changing the program a little bit. | ||
But, you know, if that works, I don't know. | ||
And that's something that I may try one day because I'm doing powerlifting, but powerlifting ain't going to be my vacation home in Hawaii. | ||
You're just doing the powerlifting for a group? | ||
Yeah, for fun. | ||
You know, it was something that was fun. | ||
And I got guys who I got involved with, a buddy of mine, actually a coach, on, you know, certain days of the week. | ||
We work on the heavy. | ||
Lonnie Atkins, he's great. | ||
He's a... | ||
Six, seven-time world champion, powerlifting, drug-free, you know, federations like RAW and WMPF. And that's what I'm in because I feel like, you know, I'm not knocking the other people that use the steroids and stuff, but for me, I like going the natural route and, you know, it's funner. | ||
Especially if you think about fighting again. | ||
Because if you do, you don't want to fuck up your endocrine system. | ||
Well, that's where I really turned against it also is because of the boxing. | ||
Yeah. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
I don't want to make anybody too mad, but when people use it, I feel like you're taken away, and I do feel like it's cheating. | ||
I tell people in the gym, my gym, you know, there are certain people in there that do it, and they try to come over and tell people how to work out, and it's kind of like, listen, your working out is totally different than this guy's, and what you do to get big is totally different, all because of that reason. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
It is. | ||
It truly is. | ||
Especially powerlifting. | ||
Exactly. | ||
And I got guys right now that are freaks of nature that do it, and you can tell that they're not on it because if they are, then they have to have a long talk with their dealer. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
One of those type things. | ||
But I like doing it because, for me, it's not cheating. | ||
And also, I like the fact of when I hit a plateau... | ||
I look, it's more fun for me to go through and research things and look at like, how do I get out of that? | ||
And what's good nutrition that helps naturally raise this or raise that, you know what I mean? | ||
And different workout routines, like the board work chains, you know, add that all in. | ||
So that's where it comes fun for me also. | ||
Yeah, do you get your blood work done or anything like that? | ||
I did get a blood panel last year. | ||
Just last year, huh? | ||
Yeah. | ||
That's it? | ||
Yeah, and it came back good. | ||
You don't get normal ones, regular ones? | ||
Nah, I'm afraid, though, man. | ||
I'm getting to that age. | ||
I don't want that shit coming back. | ||
unidentified
|
It's bad. | |
You don't want to know? | ||
Yeah. | ||
Hell, if I start feeling it, then I'll go. | ||
No, but you should, too. | ||
I recommend it to everybody and every athlete. | ||
They should. | ||
And eventually, my time is to go back soon, also. | ||
Yeah, I think it's a really important thing. | ||
I think everybody should do it on a regular basis. | ||
I really do. | ||
I know you don't want to know about anything bad, but you do. | ||
No, but you have to. | ||
If there really was something funky going on, and you went to the doctor, and the doctor's like, Kelly, these numbers are bad. | ||
We've got to do some more tests and see what the fuck's happening. | ||
Especially with all these different diets that people are getting on. | ||
I'm seeing horrific things. | ||
I had a brother-in-law from a certain diet, a keto diet. | ||
What happened to him? | ||
Fatty liver, this. | ||
Because he's not, you don't drink. | ||
What? | ||
A keto diet? | ||
That's what I'm hearing. | ||
Well, if you really look at it, I mean, you're eating the fat, all that fat. | ||
Shit's good for you. | ||
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
But if that's all your body got to burn. | ||
What happens with people where it does get dangerous is, first of all, if you have certain genes, certain people it's just not the best diet for. | ||
And it's a lot of trial and error to find out. | ||
But it's also, if you engage in a high-fat content diet, but you also have high-carbohydrate, Which is where a lot of people cheat and fuck up. | ||
That's not good. | ||
That's not good for you. | ||
You've got to get your body into ketosis. | ||
If you don't get your body into ketosis and you're taking this high-level fat and high-level carbs, it's just not a good combination. | ||
You know what I do on it. | ||
If you come off of it, you can't just indulge into the carbs either, right? | ||
Don't you slowly work that back into that? | ||
Your body always knows how to process carbs. | ||
It's more difficult to get your body fat-adapted, but once your body does get fat-adapted, what I've found is I'm not on a ketogenic diet right now, but when I've been on it, I can get back in it pretty quick. | ||
But it takes a while. | ||
The first time I did it, It took a solid two weeks before I felt normal. | ||
For two weeks, I was dragging ass. | ||
It was hard to stick through it. | ||
I didn't want to stick through it. | ||
I'm just going to have a fucking apple and a bowl of pasta and blow this diet off. | ||
But if you get through it, then you feel your body switch over. | ||
When you feel your body switch over, what happens is... | ||
You have more even energy throughout the day, less tired, no crash in the middle of the day. | ||
But I do have to say it took a long time before my workouts felt like I could have the same intensity. | ||
Intensity. | ||
I would die off quicker. | ||
And that's how I look at even some of those, what do you call it, intermittent dietings too? | ||
Intermittent fasting, yeah. | ||
Fasting, yeah. | ||
Like when you're drying out and you're not eating in that period, I wouldn't recommend working out at that time. | ||
Powerlifting or strength training. | ||
Yeah, I think that's a different kind of animal. | ||
Yeah, because now you're tearing down the muscles and everything else. | ||
Maybe some cardio wouldn't hurt. | ||
Listen, that's what I'm saying. | ||
I'm not knocking all of them. | ||
And my brother-in-law, the doctor told him they think that's what it was from. | ||
Now, granted, that could be because he messed up on a diet somewhere along the line, you know, eating. | ||
I had a doctor, a buddy also, that got fatty liver from eating too much of the meat. | ||
And again, that could have been grass-fed or steroid-type meat makes a difference. | ||
I don't even know if that does cause a die. | ||
I'm sure it does. | ||
Yeah, and me personally, I'm not knocking any of it because pretty soon I've got to try some shit myself. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
I gotta start losing weight again. | ||
Well, did you start eating like crazy because of the power lifting? | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
Those guys eat like fucking savages. | ||
And now they're also coming out to where you can eat right and lose weight and still be strong. | ||
Me, yeah, I started eating like that. | ||
And then it really... | ||
I'll tell you where it gets me. | ||
So I was never a real big sweet tooth eater. | ||
I'd eat a piece of cake or a candy bar here and there. | ||
I'd have like total throughout the day one can of pop. | ||
I'd drink a half a can in the morning... | ||
Or an afternoon, then at night. | ||
Pop for people who didn't grow up. | ||
unidentified
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In Ohio. | |
In Ohio. | ||
Oh, yeah. | ||
It's soda. | ||
Okay. | ||
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, you know. | ||
unidentified
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Sorry. | |
You a pop guy? | ||
unidentified
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Columbus, man. | |
Yeah, pop. | ||
There you go. | ||
Ohio in the house. | ||
Yes. | ||
And that's right. | ||
Yeah, we talked about that. | ||
And that's what I would do. | ||
So it wasn't that bad, but it was still enough sugar. | ||
That's a lot of fucking sugar. | ||
Yeah, and then the one meet, I was doing a 220-pound weight class. | ||
I was 232. And my guy was like, you ain't going to make it in six days to get down to 220. And I kind of like, I chuckled at that because I had to make 160 before. | ||
So I got all this fat sitting on me. | ||
You're going to tell me I can't lose that in six days. | ||
I bet. | ||
And this is for powerlifting? | ||
Yeah. | ||
So I got down with that and I was doing it. | ||
I watched what I, I didn't even do hardly any cardio for that. | ||
And I still got down fairly easy to 220. Then, now where I'm falling into this bad habit is I'll have like a piece of cheesecake sitting in the refrigerator. | ||
Okay? | ||
I know and I love cheesecake. | ||
Me too. | ||
That's one of my favorites. | ||
It's a good one. | ||
And it would be two cans of pop left. | ||
Alright? | ||
And my whole thing is I can't start watching because I don't want to say diet. | ||
I start saying watching what I eat. | ||
And I go, I can't do that until it's gone. | ||
I can't have that. | ||
I know. | ||
It's weird. | ||
I'm telling you, I can't start it until it's gone. | ||
But you can't throw it away. | ||
I can't throw it away. | ||
Why can't you throw it away? | ||
Because there's only one piece left and I don't want to do that. | ||
And then the next thing I know, my sister-in-law, who's a hell of a baker, she makes something for the kids or makes me a homemade cheesecake. | ||
And the next thing I know, I'm back into the same thing again. | ||
Now, let me tell you something else that contributes to this. | ||
I think all the years of fighting and having to watch my weight, especially for me to get down to 160, and even when I was fighting at 47 in the amateurs, my life was pretty much running. | ||
It was a job. | ||
It was time. | ||
Somebody was there. | ||
I just couldn't go run. | ||
I had to run it so fast, and I was being timed for it in the distance. | ||
I had to watch what I was eating. | ||
I had people over me watching what I was eating. | ||
And when I retired, I was like, fuck this, man. | ||
I'm free. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
And I sometimes put that in the back of my head. | ||
I shouldn't, but I put it in the back of my head like, man, you deserve this, man. | ||
Screw it. | ||
You did that all these years. | ||
But now it's coming to the point, too, like, You are getting a little older. | ||
You look a little bit like shit other than your arms. | ||
Like, you're going to have to start hitting a treadmill. | ||
unidentified
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You know what I mean? | |
It's one of those type things where... | ||
If you just cut the sugar out, man. | ||
Yeah. | ||
And it works. | ||
And I don't want to hear people say that they can't lose weight. | ||
Now, that will only work for a certain period of time until that, like, levels out. | ||
That's when you start tweaking the calorie intake and everything else. | ||
Right, but you can lose a lot of weight if you just cut out the sugar. | ||
Yeah, you can. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
So that's what I mean. | ||
I don't want to hear people say it's hard. | ||
So I'm eventually, you know, I said when I get home from this trip, because like last night I went out with my buddy and we ate pizzas and stuff like that. | ||
So, you know, I don't have the access to healthy food right now. | ||
Right, while you're on the road? | ||
Yeah. | ||
There's plenty of places in LA you can eat healthy. | ||
I know there is. | ||
How dare you? | ||
How dare you say you can't eat healthy here? | ||
That's the mindset, man. | ||
I know. | ||
Yeah, the mindset. | ||
You know, the thing about a lot of great fighters is they're very impulsive, too. | ||
Yeah. | ||
It's just... | ||
That fuck it, fuck it mentality, that sometimes carries over to eating as well. | ||
Look at a lot of your retired fighters. | ||
Yeah, they blow up. | ||
Again, I keep saying, I'm not bragging or anything, but here I'm fairly decent. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
I think at least you enjoy working out. | ||
I think some guys, they got to a point where they worked out so hard for camps that when it's over, they don't want to do shit. | ||
They're just like, I'm done. | ||
It's over. | ||
No desire. | ||
No drive. | ||
Well, that's why cardio is very rare for me right now. | ||
And, you know, I used to say this too all the time. | ||
After a fight, I have probably two, three weeks off. | ||
And there was a place called Mill Creek Park, and a lot of people go to run and exercise and stuff like that. | ||
And there's a main street that goes past the park, and you see people riding the bike and running. | ||
And I'll never forget, my wife actually started laughing. | ||
I just got done with a fight, and we're driving past Mill Creek Park, and these people are out running. | ||
And I go, what idiots. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
Who gets up and go runs? | ||
That's hilarious. | ||
Chances are, if I didn't have to do it like that, I didn't have somebody hounding me or over me while I was running, chances are I would actually like running and I would like doing cardio and adding that into my training. | ||
But because it was a job for all the mirrors from nine years old to 30 years old, It was like, screw this, man. | ||
I don't want to run. | ||
The only way you'll get me to run is if there's a fire or a big-ass dog behind me. | ||
That's the only way. | ||
Or if I want to run to the buffet table. | ||
I know some people do it every day. | ||
They get up in the morning every day before work, and they'll put in five, six miles every day. | ||
And it's reality. | ||
You have to. | ||
You got to anymore. | ||
Unless you want to be out of shape and miserable, I think it's great to actually start working out. | ||
And even for me, I'm lifting weights and it's fun and it's considered exercising. | ||
And now with what I'm thinking of doing and everything else, I got to start getting into that. | ||
Hitting the bag and everything's fun and I'm hitting the pads and that's cardio. | ||
I mean, that shit's really cardio. | ||
But if you're really thinking about fighting, and you said more than 60%, right? | ||
Yeah. | ||
80%? | ||
I would say between around 70 to 80. That's a lot. | ||
That is. | ||
That is. | ||
But again, and I'm strongly going to say this, there's a lot that goes behind a lot more to think about also. | ||
Because what I don't want is in six months when I say, you know what? | ||
No, I don't want the backlash for it. | ||
Right. | ||
He's fucked up again. | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
One of those. | ||
Unfortunately, that's the way it goes. | ||
It does. | ||
But you gotta not read that shit. | ||
I know, but unfortunately, it really is. | ||
Do you read comments? | ||
I try not to, and you catch them. | ||
And you get them. | ||
I try not to. | ||
It's... | ||
It seems like the boxing world in particular has a lot of fucking haters. | ||
But you know what? | ||
It's nothing like football. | ||
Like, if a fighter loses... | ||
I was watching Barstool Sports Instagram. | ||
They got some fucking guy leaving a football game screaming and yelling. | ||
I'm like, this guy is what I think about when I think of douched out sports fans. | ||
This guy fucking screaming about somebody not being able to make a kick. | ||
You know what I'm talking about? | ||
That guy's going crazy. | ||
It's so funny. | ||
I love it. | ||
I love hearing when I was playing football and when I was in high school, when you're watching these big games, and you'll see it on social, or I'll be at a buddy's house and I see, yeah, well, I would have made that. | ||
Get the fuck out of here. | ||
unidentified
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Right. | |
People love saying stupid shit like that. | ||
Like, how many times has anybody given you boxing advice? | ||
Oh, I have people that don't know the difference between a left hook and a fishing hook. | ||
I swear to God, they don't. | ||
Why didn't you just hit them? | ||
Because. | ||
You should have got up and hit him. | ||
This TMZ material. | ||
No, but I mean, like they're saying to you, why didn't you just hit him? | ||
I don't know. | ||
You know, I've seen that episode that was the funniest. | ||
I think it was on one of your episodes with Charlie Murphy and they were doing the Mike Tyson and like the De La Hoya situation that happened. | ||
Like the guy said he could beat up De La Hoya. | ||
And actually, I wish that could happen on a regular basis. | ||
You know, like call people out on it when you're in front of somebody. | ||
How many times I hear people say like, I could have beat him. | ||
And it's like, why is he sitting on like $25 million and you're over here picking up UPS shipments? | ||
You know what I mean? | ||
Like there's a difference for a reason. | ||
Nobody's knocking what you do, but you shouldn't knock what he's doing. | ||
Well, you're delusional. | ||
You are. | ||
People are delusional. | ||
For whatever reason, especially when it comes to sports and fighting in particular, people just say some unbelievably delusional shit. | ||
I don't know why, and I truly don't, and I don't understand it. | ||
And I never get into the argument long enough to even ask the question. | ||
Well, when was the last time you went on somebody else's page and commented on shit? | ||
I can't tell you. | ||
Yeah, because you're a world champion. | ||
Yeah, and that's another reason. | ||
Hey, listen, you know what? | ||
That's funny, too, because how many of them I want to, right? | ||
How many of the threads in it might involve me? | ||
Because, you know, again, the reason why I have to stay up on it is because that's part of my podcast. | ||
Right. | ||
You know, we're through the social media, so I have to. | ||
And these boxing groups, or even on our own fight, or punchline boxing group, you see the comments, and I'm just going, I'm like, I can't really answer that, though, because I'd look corny as shit if I answer that one. | ||
Right. | ||
You know, and it's hard, and it's frustrating. | ||
It really is. | ||
Yeah. | ||
Well, the interesting world that we live in today, I mean, it's a great time to communicate with people. | ||
It's amazing. | ||
But it's also a great time for douchebags to communicate with you, too. | ||
It is. | ||
Dangerous time, actually, all around. | ||
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
But I think it's cool that you're doing this podcast thing, and I think it's awesome, and I really do hope you do commentary. | ||
As far as you fighting, hey man, if you fight, I'll watch, but if you don't fight, I'll be happy to. | ||
Well, I will definitely keep you in a loop. | ||
Tell me. | ||
Let me know. | ||
I will definitely keep you in a loop on that. | ||
Come back on if you do announce something, something's happening. | ||
I will do that. | ||
Let us know. | ||
And tell people how to get a hold of your podcast. | ||
How can they get it? | ||
My podcast is thepunchline.live. | ||
That's the easiest way to get to it. | ||
Or on YouTube also. | ||
You go to Punchline with Kelly Pavlik and James Dominguez. | ||
And we're also on social media on Tuesdays at 7 o'clock Eastern Time. | ||
So those are easy ways. | ||
Is it on iTunes as well? | ||
No. | ||
No? | ||
No. | ||
And that's where we're trying to go next round. | ||
Get that shit on iTunes. | ||
Jesus Christ. | ||
Hey, listen. | ||
I'm learning. | ||
Yeah, but yeah, punchline.live, and then, you know, or you go to YouTube, The Punchline with Kelly Pavlik and James Dominguez, and that's the way to get to it. | ||
Well, thanks for doing this, brother. | ||
Hey, thanks for having me on. | ||
My pleasure. | ||
I truly, Joe. | ||
It was awesome, man. | ||
I appreciate it, man. | ||
Fun times. |