Atlas

by Teddy Atlas

  Elaine hit me in the side with her elbow. “You hear that?”

  “Yeah, but is that a good thing?”

  “What do you mean? Of course it’s good!”

  “Not if she dances like Sylvester Stallone.”

  “Stop it.”

  The truth is that Twyla really did look sensational. Her muscle tone, her whole aura—I hadn’t realized how different she looked until that moment. Under the lights, she glowed.

  When the performance was over, she got a standing ovation. People were cheering and throwing roses up onstage. I had come prepared, having learned beforehand that it was a tradition to throw flowers up onstage. While Twyla was taking her bows, and the crowd was applauding, and she was looking out at me with this big smile, I walked up, took a pair of boxing gloves out of a bag I had brought with me, and threw them up onstage. People were saying, “Look at that!” I guess you don’t see boxing gloves thrown up on dance stages too often.

  A couple of years later, I was training Simon Brown, who was the welterweight champ, and he was getting ready to make a defense of his title. We were in the locker room before the fight and flowers came. Which was unusual. Don Elbaum, the fight promoter, said, “Teddy, you got flowers. Someone sent you flowers.”

  Of course, it was Twyla.

  I HAD BEGUN MAKING A LITTLE MONEY AT LAST. NOT MUCH, but enough to get by. Enough so that eventually Elaine and I were able to move out of my parents’ basement into an old brick building up on Grymes Hill, above my parents’ street, where we paid three hundred dollars a month for a one-bedroom with dark wood floors. It was while we were in that apartment that Elaine got pregnant and gave birth to our second child, Teddy III, in May of 1985.

  Gradually, my career began to pick up. I started training guys like Tyrone Jackson and Chris Reid, guys who had talent and a future. I hooked up with Reid, the Shamrock Express, through Mickey Duff, a British boxing guy, who was managing him. Duff and his three partners, Jarvis Astaire, Mike Barret, and Terry Lawless, basically ran boxing in London. I considered Mickey one of the five smartest guys in the sport. A wily and successful promoter, he looked like a jovial Irishman and had an Irish name, but in fact he was Jewish. His real name was Monek Prager, his father was a rabbi, and he had been born in Kraków, Poland, in 1929 and owned a kibbutz in Israel.

  Mickey was a lovable rogue who could swim with the piranhas, but he was also a pretty straight shooter—which is to say, he wouldn’t steal you blind. I’d first met him in Catskill when he’d brought a young Frank Bruno to spar with a young Mike Tyson. He was complimentary of my work as a trainer, which was very flattering coming from a guy like him, who’d done everything you could do in boxing, from being in the ring as a fighter and a cornerman to matchmaking and promoting.

  Reid was the first American fighter Mickey had ever managed. He was a quiet, serious kid, with dirty blond hair, blue eyes, and a mustache. You didn’t realize how decent a kid he was until you met him and spent some time with him; his sullenness could be a little off-putting, but it was just protective, it wasn’t who he really was. In fact, he was caring and loyal and had the ability to recognize and appreciate those traits in others; his standoffishness mostly came from being a white kid in a primarily black sport.

  You’d never have guessed Chris was an explosive puncher. Certainly not to look at him. He had those long Irish arms (a shamrock tattooed on the upper part of one), with absolutely no muscle tone. It was a misleading physique. He was a little like a human missile silo: explosive power inside an innocent-looking façade.

  In our years working together at Gleason’s, Chris used to just destroy other fighters in the gym. He was legendary. All the best fighters who came through there, guys from Puerto Rico, guys who had never lost a fight, boom, he knocked them all dead. People walked around saying, “Oh, he’s a monster.” And he was. He could punch like a bastard, and he wasn’t afraid to let loose at the right time. He was a hard worker, too. He listened well. Just to give you an idea of his commitment, every day he would travel in from Little Silver, New Jersey, which is on the Garden State Parkway. He would take the train, four or five hours a day back and forth, and he was never late. Not once in four years. If he hadn’t had a drinking problem, there’s no telling how far he could have gone in boxing.

  I trained Chris to 18–0, with seventeen knockouts, and we thought he was going to get a title shot against Marvin Johnson, who was this great old warrior, a southpaw and a tough son of a bitch, but who was pretty much over the hill by then. We thought we were in line for that, and there was no question in my mind that if we had gotten the fight, Chris would have knocked him out and become champion. He was young and strong and confident. At the last second, though, we didn’t get the fight. Leslie Stewart got it, and Stewart knocked Johnson out in the ninth round.

  Sometimes that’s just the way it goes. A month later we landed Chris a nontitle fight against Fulgencio Obelmejias, who had twice fought Marvin Hagler for the title. We thought it was the right fight for Chris, but we were wrong. The fight was at the Garden. Chris got dropped six times, but the crazy bastard kept getting up, until he got stopped for good in the tenth. Strangely, he was ahead on all the scorecards even after all the knockdowns (that fight actually changed the rules of scoring in New York from a rounds system to a points system, precisely to prevent such a situation).

  In the aftermath of losing out on the title shot and then losing to Obelmejias, Chris started drinking more heavily. Sometimes he’d leave the gym and never even make it home. He’d go to Times Square and wind up drinking in some dive Irish bar all night. A couple of times he came straight to the gym afterward without going home, and when he sweat I could smell the booze. He couldn’t understand how I knew what he’d been doing, but I knew because his sweat stank of booze.

  Part of the problem with him was the Irish thing. He was the Shamrock Express and he had this big Irish following, and they’d play the bagpipes when he came into the ring. It was nice, but it had created a kind of expectation. It taught me something about human psychology: that no matter how you’re perceived, no matter what people see on the outside, what’s inside you can be completely different and probably is. Inside, Chris was unsure of himself; he was afraid that he wasn’t living up to his potential. He drank to hide from that and to have an excuse to lose.

  The sad part is that we got through some of those issues. I helped him get sober. He got control of his life. When an opportunity came up to fight Graciano Rocchigiani, who was the IBF super middleweight champion, we took it. Chris deserved the shot and we gave it to him.

  The fight was in Berlin, and Mickey sent the two of us over to Europe three weeks early so that we could train there and get acclimated to the time change. Now, Mickey wasn’t known for being a lavish spender, and this wasn’t a fight with a big purse for us, so to save money, even though the fight was in Germany, we went to England to train in the Thomas à Becket gym. It was a famous gym, on the second floor over a bar. On the floor above that there were these tiny rooms with no heat that were basically like the rooms in a flophouse. You had to go downstairs to shower or use the bathroom. So that’s where we stayed. Me and Chris in adjoining cells.

  When I talked to Mickey on the phone, he said, “It’s not the Ritz, is it, Teddy?”

  “It’s not even the Itz,” I said.

  “Ha-ha, that’s good, Teddy.” That was the kind of relationship Mickey and I had. He said, “It’ll toughen you up for the fight.”

  The thing was that Mickey and I both felt that, even though there wasn’t the money to do things first-class, going over early still gave Chris his best shot to win. Chris appreciated that. He thanked me. He said, “I know you’re making no money and you have to be away from your family for three weeks in a place that’s not even nice. I know that.”

  “You just concentrate on what we came here to do,” I said.

  We found some space heaters to warm up the rooms a little bit. The only problem was they emitted these
fumes, so one of us would have to remind the other to turn them off before we fell asleep or else we’d get asphyxiated. We’d also use the heaters to dry out the wet workout clothes that we’d washed in the sink downstairs.

  Chris and I were together all the time during those three weeks. We ate together, slept in adjoining rooms, did roadwork together, went to the gym together. All the Brits admired the diligence of our training regimen. At night, we would go out to eat, maybe take a walk around the neighborhood, then head back home. We were in the North End, which was supposed to be a rough area. People warned us about walking at night, but we didn’t care. We walked everywhere, through the parks, down dark streets, everywhere. Sometimes we’d treat ourselves to a movie. We were inseparable for those three weeks. We were on a mission together. We talked about what it meant. I’m not sure we ever said it in so many words, but we both knew it was Chris’s last real chance to salvage his career.

  The bar downstairs from the gym was owned by this guy Gary Davidson, an ex-fighter, who’d turned it into something of a museum. There was all this great boxing memorabilia: Henry Cooper’s trunks from when he fought Ali; a pair of the heavyweight Joe Bugner’s gloves; a facsimile copy of the Marquess of Queensbury’s Rules; all this great stuff. On Fridays and Saturdays, the bar would turn into a discotheque. It got packed and rowdy.

  One Friday night, I walked Chris back after our dinner and I dropped him off at our quarters. I said, “I’m going to take a bit more of a walk.”

  “Okay, Ted. I’ll be upstairs.”

  “Make sure you turn off the heater,” I said. “Don’t want you to suffocate to death a week before the fight.”

  When I got back from my walk, the side door that we usually used to get into the residence part was locked, so I had to go through the bar. The bouncers stopped me. They wanted me to pay the cover charge. I tried to explain the situation, that I was staying upstairs and the side door was locked. The lead bouncer shook his head. He said in a British accent that wasn’t nearly as friendly as Mickey Duff’s, “You’re not getting in without paying, mate.” I tried patiently to make my case, but he wasn’t listening, and one thing led to another and pretty soon we were scuffling.

  The fight moved from the doorway out into the street, and by the time his fellow bouncers joined in, I had given him a pretty good beating. I was still tussling with the other bouncers when the bobbies showed up in a paddy wagon, wearing their funny hats and wielding their nightsticks. I immediately stopped throwing punches, and, truthfully, in part that was because I was looking at this paddy wagon. I had never seen one before and I was thinking, It’s a real paddy wagon, with a little barred window in the back just like in the movies.

  It was clear right away that I was in trouble, that the bobbies assumed that I was the instigator of the fight, and that on top of that I was a Yank. They started trying to maneuver me into the back of the paddy wagon. As much as I was entranced by it, I knew I didn’t want to see it from the inside. I was saying, “I ain’t going in there. I ain’t fucking going in there,” and they were saying, “Yes, you are, you blooming Yank!” Just when it was getting really bad and they were starting to muscle me into the back, the manager from the bar came out. He said, “Leave him alone! He’s in the right!” He explained who I was and what had happened, and he basically told the bobbies that the whole situation was the bouncers’ fault. They let me go.

  It turned out that the manager had no great fondness for the lead bouncer and his crew; nor did any of the bar’s patrons, who had been abused and hassled regularly. They all tried to buy me a drink, but I wasn’t drinking because of Chris.

  “You sure gave him a good shellacking, Teddy,” the manager said.

  The next day, word got around. Chris heard about it, but he didn’t say much more than “You all right?,” which was his way. That night we went out for dinner as usual, and when we got back, around eight o’clock, the bar was starting to get busy. Gary Davidson, the owner, was there, as was the manager. Right away, the manager said, “Teddy, can we talk to you for a minute?”

  Chris’s loyalty kicked in immediately. “Are they back?” He was ready to get into it.

  “Oh, no,” the manager said. “They’re never coming back. They want no part of him, believe me. That’s the thing—it’s not your fault, Teddy, but as a result of what happened we’ve got nobody to work the door tonight.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t intend to create any headaches for you.”

  “No, no. You did us a favor, got rid of that arsehole. It’s just that we were wondering if you could stand in tonight.”

  “Stand in?”

  “Work the door and be our protection.”

  Chris had a big smile on his face. He was shaking his head.

  “We’ll pay you,” the manager said.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “I’m training for a world title,” I said. “I didn’t come here to England to be a bouncer.”

  “We know, Teddy. We know.”

  “So, no, you can’t pay me.” We were standing there by the door and it wasn’t busy yet, but people were starting to show up. The manager was looking at me, this sheepish expression on his face. “Christ. You really can’t get anyone, huh?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  I sighed. “All right. I’ll take the job. But not for any money. Just as a favor.”

  Chris was dying. “Hey, Ted? I’m available. If you need backup.”

  I worked the door that night until two in the morning. It was hilarious. People had heard, and they stopped to chat with me and give me advice. A few guys I had to turn away, but I was friendly with them, and nobody gave me a problem. In fact, some of the tougher-looking guys, who I thought might be a problem, actually stayed outside with me and became my assistants. “Yeah, Teddy, he can’t come in here. You can’t come in here. Don’t you know who this is? This is the Yank boxing trainer who beat the bejesus out of his predecessor.”

  The manager said, “Christ, Teddy, you’re good at this. Can we use you again?”

  The next day, I got a phone call from Mickey Duff. “I understand you’re picking up a few extra shillings. I know you’re underpaid, but I never knew you had to fight people to get their jobs.”

  “Screw you, Mickey.”

  “Maybe I can put you on the undercard against that bouncer.”

  I got a call from Joey Fariello, who had worked as a trainer for Cus before me and was a good buddy. “I thought you were training a guy for a world title,” he said. “Now I hear that you’re working the door at a bar?”

  “How the hell did you hear about it?” I asked.

  Everyone in Gleason’s knew. The boxing community was like that. Word traveled fast. They all wanted to give me crap about it.

  It was good to have that bit of comic relief. In the end, though, it rang hollow, because Chris lost the fight. Chris might have been able to give Graciano a tough time a couple of years earlier, but not now. He had done too much damage to himself with the drinking. Not physically, but psychologically. He was a sensitive kid, and when he got in that ring, he didn’t feel the warrior mentality the way he should have. Instead, he felt like the drunken, no-good guy who had lied to his trainer. He felt like the guy who was throwing up in the subway at four in the morning. Graciano was too good a fighter for Chris to go in against him that way. When Chris lost—I threw in the towel in the eleventh round with his face getting all cut up—it hurt doubly because he felt he’d let me down.

  If he’d won he was going to get $300,000 for a fight against Chris Tiozzo in France. It was all set to go. When he lost, I refused to take my cut of the $15,000. I knew it wasn’t the end for me, but it was for him. That’s why I refused. Back in the States, we met up a few days afterward in the basement of his house. He wanted to talk to me privately, and he wanted to apologize. He was very somber and he was very serious. In the end, he would always take responsibility for his failings.

  “I want to thank you,” he s
aid, “for everything you gave me. You went all out, and you stayed away from your family for all that time, and I appreciate it. I don’t feel like I owe an apology to anyone else. I don’t owe one to Mickey Duff. But you lived it with me. I wasted your effort, and I’m sorry for that.”

  I wanted to give him something, to make him feel better. “The thing that really destroyed you,” I said, “is that you have a conscience. You knew what was right and what was wrong, unlike some other guys, guys you beat in the gym. But having a conscience isn’t necessarily the best thing for a prizefighter. Where it will serve you, long after these other guys have lost their titles, is as a human being and a father.”

  I was looking at him. His face was still puffy and bruised from the fight. “The only thing I ask is that you don’t fight again. Will you make me that promise?”

  “Yeah, if that’s what you think.”

  “If you were supposed to fight, I’d tell you. But I’m telling you you’re not supposed to fight no more.”

  He trusted me. Which says a lot about him, about his loyalty and allegiance. He never fought again. When he had his last kid, Philip, he asked me to be Philip’s godfather. It meant a lot to me because I knew how much thought and care Chris put into a decision like that.

  After boxing, he got a job with the electrical union. Chris knew guys in the Local 3 who loved him, and they got him a job in the union. He stayed with it for a few years, but he never liked it, and he wound up starting a demolition business in Little Silver, New Jersey. He just jumped in, the way he did with everything. He would tell me about it whenever we talked. He told me how he nearly electrocuted himself knocking down a wall. I got mad at him. “Yeah, that would have been a shame,” he said, typically low-key and offhand about it.