by Teddy Atlas
Willem smiled, and I looked over at him and shrugged, like, “What can I say? He’s my son.”
FIRE, NOT FEAR
NOT LONG AFTER I GOT BACK FROM POLAND, IN THE beginning of 1988, I met Sammy “the Bull” Gravano. He was a rising star in the mob, the underboss to John Gotti, and he had a reputation for being a ruthless, stone-cold killer. Playing off the tough-guy image, he started going to Gleason’s and training with Edwin Viruet, an ex–professional fighter who in his prime had once gone fifteen rounds with Roberto Duran, but was now broken down, overweight, and desperate to make whatever money he could make.
I think Sammy was paying Viruet a couple of hundred a week. Every morning Sammy would come in with his driver, Louie Saccenti, and work out and spar with Viruet. Sammy and Louie were an odd pair. Sammy was short and stocky and wore plain gray sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt, and Louie was tall and elegant and wore a double-breasted suit and shoes that shined like mirrors.
I was training Chris Reid at the time, and Sammy, who was a real boxing fan, knew who I was. He followed the sport closely and knew the personalities. We would nod hello at each other, but I never really talked to him. Then one time, Viruet was away or didn’t show up, and Sammy came over to me. He introduced himself and said, “My name’s Sammy,” though obviously I already knew who he was.
“You’re the kind of person,” he said, “from what I understand about you, that you stand up for things. I follow boxing pretty closely and I like the way you handle yourself. I know the stories about you and I respect you. Would you consider training me?”
“No, I couldn’t do that. Edwin trains you and it wouldn’t be right.”
“How about just for today, since he’s not here?”
“Yeah, okay, I guess I could fill in for him just for the day.”
“Good. What’ll I pay you?”
“Nothing. It’s just a favor.”
I wound up training Sammy for the day. It wasn’t a serious training session; I kept it fairly casual. But he liked what we were doing. He was extremely short. Maybe five feet five, and muscular. He had weight lifter’s muscles. Viruet had been teaching him to box from the outside, which was crazy. Gravano had very short arms. In a way it was the perfect con: Viruet made Sammy box like Ali, dancing and staying on the outside, because that way Viruet could stay out of range, and it was easier and less stressful for him. He didn’t have to worry about accidentally getting hit by Sammy, who was pretty strong.
Still, it didn’t make sense, so I spent the session showing Sammy how to slip and get inside. When we were done, he said, “This is the way I should be fighting. This is the right way for me.” He wanted to pay me. I wouldn’t let him. I said, “It was just a favor for one day.”
After that, even though Viruet was still training him, Sammy and I got friendly. He would corner me and ask all sorts of questions.
“What’s the most important thing for a fighter?”
“The most important thing? Discipline.”
“What about hand speed? What about power?”
“Nah. Those things don’t mean nothing if you can’t control yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Control yourself. Make the right decisions.”
I knew we were talking about boxing, and that was certainly how I intended it, but I also realized that he was applying what I was telling him to what he did outside the gym. I can’t pretend I didn’t know that. There was a parallel between boxing and what he did, as far as facing the moment. At the same time, when someone asked me something, I wasn’t going to duck it or avoid it.
“What do you mean by making a choice?” he asked.
“Making a choice whether or not you’re going to quit and make an excuse to get out. Fighters sometimes lie to themselves.” I had no idea how important and relevant this conversation would seem a couple of years later when he flipped. It’s pretty interesting to look back at it in light of what happened.
“What do you mean, ‘lie to themselves’?”
“They sometimes make excuses to get out and not face what they should face.”
He was looking for the same thing that a fighter is looking for: how to deal with pressure and fear.
“Are you saying that the most important thing is for a guy to be tough?” he asked.
“No. Not to be tough. Tough is just a word. To understand what you’re facing, to be in control of yourself, to have the confidence to face what you have to face and not break down under pressure.”
So that was it. That was the real connection between us. He needed advice and counsel, because he was under a lot of pressure, and on some level he thought maybe I could give it to him.
One day not too long after this, my friend Nick Baffi called me up and said, “Teddy, I need to talk to you.”
He came over to the gym and we went and sat at one of the tables by the coffee machine. I knew before he said anything that it was about Gravano. Nick had this friend, Philly, who was with Sammy, and I realized Philly must have said something to him about me and Sammy.
“Be careful with this guy,” Nick said to me. “He’s getting very friendly with you.”
“Nah. We see each other in the gym, that’s all.”
“He’s been talking about you a lot. Asking questions. He’s checked you out.”
“What do you mean, he’s checked me out?”
“He’s made inquiries. He found out about some of your history, that you got in trouble when you were a kid, and a few other things. He knows a little bit about you. He says he likes you, but be careful.”
“All right. But I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about.” I knew that Nick loved me, and that he was just trying to look out for me.
Sammy kept coming to the gym and working with Viruet, and we continued our conversations and got friendlier. One day, he asked me if I worked out. It just so happened that I was looking for a gym where I could do some weight work.
“There’s a place I train,” he said. “I’d be honored if you’d allow me to give you the small gift of a membership.”
“That’s very generous of you, Sammy, but—”
“Why don’t you try it?” he said.
I shrugged.
“It’s called the Narrows Fitness Club. It’s right off the Bay Ridge exit on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. You can see it from the highway. Meet me there tomorrow at ten o’clock and I’ll hook you up with a membership. It’s up to you. If you don’t want to go, don’t go.”
I met him there the next morning. The gym is actually a New York Sports Club now, but back then it was the Narrows Fitness Club. Sammy arranged for me to get a free Gold Membership. It didn’t cost him anything. I guess that’s part of why I let myself accept it. I knew he wasn’t paying.
He had a personal trainer, a guy named John, who began training both of us every morning at ten o’clock. It became a routine. I would go there before going to Gleason’s. This went on for more than a year. We were working with this trainer, and it got very competitive between us. One time, we were doing curls, and Sammy made it a contest of who could do more. I was hurting, but I just kept going. He looked over at me, and he kept going, too. Finally, he had to stop. He said, “Fucking son of a bitch,” and got up and threw the weight at the wall. Then he took the whole freakin’ rack of weights and threw them against the wall, one after the other. There were signs up, saying, “Please replace weights carefully.” Other guys in the gym looked around when they heard the weights crash against the wall, but they saw who it was and quickly went back to what they were doing. They didn’t want him to see them looking at him. Even the owner didn’t dare say anything.
Sammy looked at me as I continued to do curls, and he said to whoever might hear, “This kid’s got some balls, some heart, this little son of a bitch.”
Occasionally, after the workout, we’d get lunch together, and he’d want to continue our discussions.
“This thing about control and discipline,
what is it they’re disciplining?”
“What do you mean, what are they disciplining?”
“All right, controlling. What are they controlling?”
“Fear.”
“You’re saying fighters are afraid?”
“Everyone’s afraid.”
He didn’t like hearing that. He said, “Not me. I ain’t afraid of nothin’.”
“Everybody’s afraid of something.”
Someone else would have been in trouble disagreeing with him that way, but I guess he made more allowances for me.
“Fighters are afraid because there’s a reason to be afraid,” I said. “They can be hurt. They can be killed. So if they’re not going to be defeated by their fear, they have to learn to control it, and use it to help them. It’s like controlling fire.”
“Fire. I like that word,” he said. “Let’s use that word instead of fear.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing.”
“Yeah, I like ‘fire’ better, though. Let’s use that. We all got fire. So how do we control it?”
“The first thing is to understand it.”
“Understand it how?”
“Understand not to ignore it. Not to deny it. Not to hide from it. You need to make yourself aware of it and realize that it doesn’t have to be a weakness. If you’re denying it, you’re doomed to be controlled by it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“If you’re running around saying, ‘I don’t got fear—’”
“Fire!”
“All right, ‘fire.’ If you deny having it, then it can’t help you, and you have to be victim to it. But if you understand that it doesn’t have to be an enemy, that it’s not necessarily a weakness, that it doesn’t necessarily make you yellow, then you’re in a place where you can use it, you can harness it. That’s the difference between champions and the guys that don’t get there. The champions understand that and are truthful with themselves, even when it’s uncomfortable. That enables them to make choices, instead of just having knee-jerk responses.”
Sammy had a hard time digesting a lot of what I was saying to him. It shook him up. He was almost like a kid in a way. Asking big questions, and then, when he heard the answer, going “But why?” He kept needing to hear the answer expanded upon and repeated—and still he didn’t really understand. We had a lot of conversations about the idea of fear—or fire, as he needed to call it. It was funny how the whole essence of what I was talking about was encapsulated by his inability to even utter the word.
For a year, we saw each other nearly every day at the Narrows Club. Besides the weights, Sammy also played handball and racquetball. He was a workout fanatic. I found out he was taking steroids because one day he asked me if I wanted to try them. He said, “Do you want a pop, Bo?” He called everybody Bo. He got that from Gotti, who had picked it up in prison. It was like a derivative of Bro.
“What do you mean, ‘pop’?”
“You know, do some juice.”
“No, I don’t do that.”
“It’s not bad,” he said. “The only bad thing is sometimes you get pimples on your back.” He was wearing a tank top and I noticed that there were pimples all over his back.
“No thanks,” I said.
“All right, Bo.”
He also tried to get me interested in racquetball. He bought me a brand-new racket. I didn’t want it, but he insisted. I said, “I don’t play.”
“You’ll learn how to play,” he said.
I’d watch him occasionally, through the glass wall. A lot of people would watch. Every once in a while, an FBI agent would try to infiltrate the club. They were following him and keeping him under observation all the time. If Sammy or any of his guys thought that a new member of the club was a cop, they’d refer to him as being “British.” That was the code word. One of them would say to Sammy, “That guy’s British.” And Sammy would go, “He’s British? That motherfucker.”
I saw Sammy play racquetball with one of these guys one time. Whenever he got the chance, he’d whack the ball at the guy’s back. Every once in a while, you’d hear this guy yell “Ahhh!” and you knew he’d gotten slammed in the back. In a normal racquetball game, that might happen on rare occasions, but when Sammy played this guy, it happened three or four times in a game. Sammy kept apologizing. “Oh, sorry, you gotta move a little quicker there, Bo.” But by the time the game was over, the guy was all bruised up.
I took Sammy to a few fights at the Garden. We sat in front with his crew of guys. His driver, Louie Saccenti, was always with him. Louie had a job on the docks in the local union. He was a shop steward, then he became a delegate, but he didn’t have to show up too much, I guess because of Sammy. When we were weight training, Louie would just stand there in an expensive overcoat and suit, watching.
I remember Edwin Viruet said to me one day about Sammy and Louie, “You know, this is the opposite of what it looks like.” Viruet was a guy who looked at things purely for what they were.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“It’s a little guy and a big guy,” he said, because Louie was a lot bigger than Sammy. “But the reality is that the little guy is actually the big guy and the big guy is the little guy.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” I agreed, laughing.
“You ever notice, when it comes time for me to be paid? The little guy tells the big guy to pay me, and the big guy pays me.”
He was right. Louie carried around the money. That was the way it worked with them.
SAMMY TREATED HIS SPARRING SESSIONS AT GLEASON’S LIKE they were a big deal. He even asked me to work his corner for him a few times. These weren’t real fights. The guys he sparred knew they had to work easy with him, and he knew that would be the case. He sparred with Renaldo Snipes one time, a guy who had once fought for the heavyweight title, and Sammy acted like it was for real, even though it was all bullshit. While I was putting the gloves on him, tying them up, he said, “I always had more balls than brains.” Which was just the kind of thing that he was expected to say, being a tough guy, but was in fact the opposite of the truth because it wasn’t a real fight and balls had nothing to do with it. I mean, what was there for him to be afraid of?
The funny thing is, he actually was afraid. Even though Snipes would never in a million years let loose and bang with him, Sammy was still afraid. And having to deal with that fear for one round wiped him out. Exhausted him. All Snipes did was put pressure on Sammy. He never hit him. He just pursued him. But the pressure, the idea that he might get hit, even though he knew he wouldn’t, wore Sammy down. He got wild, threw all these haymakers to keep Snipes from advancing, but he couldn’t connect, he wasn’t in control, and it physically wore him out.
There came a day when Sammy took me to lunch at this little café across the street from Gleason’s and proposed we go into business together. He just said, “Listen, me and my partner are thinking about going into boxing.” He never mentioned Gotti’s name. He just said “me and my partner.”
“This isn’t something I would even consider,” he said, “unless I could get into it with a person who knows the business and is somebody I could trust. We’d give you whatever you’d need. I was thinking about seventy-five thousand dollars seed money, two thousand dollars a week in salary to start. Plus, there’s a building I’m looking at in Brooklyn…. What do you think? Would you be interested?”
Once I got over my initial surprise, I said, “Sammy, this isn’t a business you just go into. There’s a lot to it, and if you plunge in and spend a lot of money, you’re just going to lose it. You can’t start at an elite level—”
“Nah, we’ll go right up to that level. Don King would be tickled pink to help me and my partner. To help me and John.” He had finally said the name.
“Fine. I understand you have resources. But I’m telling you, it’s a very fragile business, very shaky in lots of ways. You don’t get into it and just make money. Shows cost money. It costs
money to keep fighters and develop them. It doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a much longer process than you think.”
“Not for us it won’t be.”
“People don’t keep their word.”
“Well, you won’t have that problem no more. I know you’ve had problems before and walked away from things.”
“I’ve made choices. It wasn’t like I couldn’t handle things.”
“I understand that,” he said. “I’m just saying you won’t be walking away from nothing this time. They lie this time, I put them in the trunk.”
“I like to take care of my own problems.”
“That’s why I want someone like you. You’re your own guy. You know the business and I can trust you.”
“I don’t think I’d be interested.”
“Do me a favor,” he said. “Would you at least have dinner with me? I’ve got some friends who all want me to go into the business. I’m not stupid. They want me to go into the business so I can give them jobs, but I ain’t going in unless you go in. Would you at least have dinner with us?”
“I’m telling you right now, I’m not gonna do it.”
“Meet with them. Let them speak. If you still don’t want to do it, say it in front of them. That’s all I ask. It’ll be a nice dinner, and I would appreciate it.”
I agreed to the meeting. It was a big deal, very secret. Sammy said, “Louie will call you an hour before and tell you where it is.”
On the appointed day, Louie called me at seven p.m. and said, “It’s at La Tavola.”
It was a place out in Brooklyn. In Bay Ridge. I drove there, and Sammy pulled up in his tan-colored Lincoln right after I arrived. The valet hustled up to take his car. When we walked in, I looked around the bar and I could see that he had guys placed in different spots at the bar. I could tell they were his guys just by the way they looked.
The owner came running up. The rest of the restaurant fell into a respectful hush. The owner was gushing. “Mr. Gravano, so nice to see you again.” I couldn’t help thinking, Here’s a guy who’s never done anything except kill people, yet he’s being treated like he’s Frank Sinatra.
