Atlas

by Teddy Atlas

  “You understand what’s going on, doncha, Mike?”

  “Yeah. He’s scared to death, and you’re his security blanket. Did anyone tell him that you ain’t gonna be throwing the punches Saturday night, he is?”

  The day of the weigh-in, Michael was waiting for me in his room; we were supposed to shake out, just stretch and loosen up. I was late picking him up, and John Davimos came running up to my room, saying, “Where the hell are you? He’s freakin’ out, asking for you. What are ya leavin’ him alone for?” It reminded me of that book Lonesome Dove, where Augustus, the old Ranger, rescues this girl from the Indians, and after that she won’t let him out of her sight. She’s totally dependent on him, to the point where she falls apart if he’s not there. I didn’t want that happening to Michael. If he wanted me around all the time, it was another kind of weakness, and that wasn’t good.

  I was thinking about that as we headed over to Michael’s room. We walked in and he had all his guys around him. I said, “Okay, we’re not gonna shake out today.”

  “Why not?” Michael said.

  “Because you’re ready.”

  He looked at me as if he weren’t sure what I meant.

  “You’re more ready than anybody I’ve ever trained,” I said. “In fact, I want you to know that I’m going to do something I’ve never done before….”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve gotta go do a live interview with an ABC affiliate from your hometown. Monessen. I’m telling them that you’re going to be the next heavyweight champ of the world. I’m guaranteeing it. You know I never say things I don’t mean. I’m going to go on there and guarantee this. And I’m right, ain’t I?”

  Again, he just looked at me.

  “I’m right, ain’t I?”

  “You’re right,” he said.

  I grabbed his cheeks, looked right in his eyes, and said, “I know I am.”

  A little while later, I went on the air and made the guarantee. I knew his friends from back home would contact him. Sure enough, the calls started coming in. “Michael, you know what your trainer just did? He guaranteed that you will win the title tomorrow night. If you don’t win the title he said it means he’s not a real trainer. Can you believe he said that shit?”

  Boorman asked me about it. He said, “When did you think of that?”

  “When I walked in and saw the look on his face.”

  Later that afternoon, with the fight less than thirty hours away, I said to Boorman, “Let’s take him to a movie.” We got a newspaper to see what was playing. There were movies that had gotten good reviews, love stories and dramatic films that were up for awards, but I said to Boorman, “Let’s find the movie that has the biggest body count.” I don’t remember the name of the movie now, but it was something with Ice-T in it. Slim Jim Jack Fucks Up the ’Hood. Something like that. All I know is that a lot of people in it got whacked. Boorman was sitting next to me, squirming and muttering the whole time, “When is this gonna be over?,” while Michael was behind us with his whole crew, yelling at the screen, “Yeahhh. Fuck this guy up! Cap the motherfucker!” At one point Boorman tried to get up and go out to the lobby, but I grabbed him and said, “No, you’re here to the end. Just like me. You’re not leavin’.”

  After the movie, Michael and his crew went back to his room. Around ten o’clock I went over there and made everyone leave. After they left, I sat in a chair while Michael got ready for bed and brushed his teeth.

  “What are you doin’?” he asked me from the bathroom.

  “I was just gonna tell you a bedtime story.”

  “What?”

  “A bedtime story. About a kid who came to camp not sure of why he came to camp and by the time it was over he knew why, he made up his mind why. He was gonna be the next heavyweight champ of the world. He went to sleep a regular contender and he woke up the champion of the world.”

  Michael came out of the bathroom. He had the toothbrush in his hand and his mouth was full of foam. He just looked at me and smiled a little. We had been through so much together by that point. He just smiled at me and said, “Awright, Teddy,” and we said good night.

  After I left his room, I went down to the lobby of the hotel to give a ticket to my brother Terryl, who I’d just flown out from New York. It was mobbed downstairs, the fight crowd out in full force. As I tried to find him, all these people were coming up to me and wishing me luck and shaking my hand. I was exhausted. I just wanted to get back up to my room.

  I finally found Terryl and gave him his ticket. People were still coming up to me. All of a sudden, one guy shook my hand and it was different. He didn’t say “Good luck,” he said, “Congratulations.” I wasn’t really looking at him at first. But when I did take a look, I recoiled in shock. It was Donnie LaLonde. I let go of his hand like it was contaminated.

  “You piece of shit,” I said. I felt dirty because I’d shaken his hand. “I didn’t know it was you!”

  LaLonde was thrown by my reaction, but he kept plowing ahead. “I just wanted to say congratulations.”

  “Congratulations? Congratulations? Go fuck yourself!”

  “But you’re there. It don’t matter no more, Teddy. You don’t need to be mad no more.”

  I stared at him. I’d completely forgotten about my brother. “You fuckin’ piece of shit. What you did hasn’t changed because of this.” I took a step toward him and he saw the look on my face and backed away.

  “How can you still be angry?” he said. “You’re there! You made it!”

  “I’m there?” I said. Now it wasn’t even about him having the nerve to show his face and think that he could be forgiven, it was about him not understanding. “I ain’t there. We didn’t win yet!”

  “But you made it. Everyone knows.”

  “I ain’t made it! We haven’t won anything!”

  Now you could actually hear his wife or his girlfriend, whoever she was, say to him, “Donnie, let’s get out of here. You tried. Let it go.” She took his hand, pulling him away. He kept looking back, saying, “It don’t matter. You’re there.”

  By then all these people had come between us, not even aware of what was going on, just well-wishers wanting to shake my hand. “Hey, Teddy, good luck.” I was pushing past them, going after him, saying, “You fuck! I didn’t win anything yet! It does matter! I haven’t won anything!” My brother caught up to me and grabbed me by the shoulder. I kept yelling after LaLonde, “It does matter, you piece of shit! It matters!”

  SATURDAY NIGHT. FINALLY. CUS USED TO DESCRIBE THE final days before a fight as being like waiting to go to the electric chair. There’s the dread and anxiety, but at a certain point you also just want to get it over with already. In the dressing room before the fight, I had a list of things I wanted. One of them was a boom box. I wanted Michael to have his gangsta rap music. When we got to the dressing room, there was no boom box, so I sent Flem back to the hotel. “Get that freaking boom box!” I said.

  It was funny, because during camp Michael and I had gotten into arguments about his music, all that “motherfucking bitch slut ho” stuff, which I hated. It amazed me that record companies produced music like that and that people bought it. I tolerated it as long as there were no women or kids around. One time Michael put on one of those tapes when there was a group of kids watching, and I said, “Shut it off. This is a professional place, and I won’t allow it.”

  “Make me,” he said.

  I took the tape out of the boom box and stomped it with my foot. Michael got angry, then went into a sulk. I said, “C’mon, Michael, let’s just do what we’re here to do,” but he kept sulking. Eventually, he put on a Whitney Houston tape instead and did his exercises, but he still wouldn’t talk to me. Finally, after doing a series of sit-ups and push-ups, he said, “So what kind of fuckin’ music do you like?”

  “Similar to this,” I said, nodding at the boom box.

  “Yeah? Who? What’s the name of the band?”

  “Frank Sinatra.” />
  “Man. That’s old-school shit, Teddy.”

  “It’s what I like.”

  “So what’s a good record of his?”

  “‘Summer Wind’ is my favorite, but they’re all good.”

  That night, I went to dinner with Davimos at Sonny Bono’s restaurant. In the middle of dinner, Michael came in, put a paper bag on the table, said, “I’ll see you later,” and walked out. I opened up the bag—it was a freaking tape of “Summer Wind.” I found out later from Flem that Michael had driven all over Palm Springs until he found it.

  The next day when we started our usual exercise routine, I popped in the tape. A lot of the people who had been there the day before and witnessed our argument had come back. When they heard Frank’s voice, they smiled. It was like, “This is funny. This is worth our dollar.”

  Now, on the night of the fight, I was returning the favor: I wanted Michael to have his gangsta rap music. Flem came back with the boom box and I got a tape out. Michael said, “Nah, that’s all right.” I said, “No, no,” and I put it on because I didn’t want him being absorbed by silence. I felt the music would keep him from slipping into the darkness of his thoughts and his fears.

  So the music was playing, and there was a TV on, a monitor in the dressing room showing the preliminary bouts. A couple of the guys said, “Hey, do you want to keep that monitor on?” It was showing the Junior Jones–John Michael Johnson fight. Jones was a big favorite, undefeated world champ, seven-to-one or something like that on the Vegas tote boards.

  I was thinking maybe we shouldn’t have it on; he’s the favorite, just like Holyfield’s the favorite, and if he wins, it might not be good. But in a couple of minutes of watching, I picked up what was going on. I took a gamble. “Leave it on,” I said. “Junior Jones is gonna lose this fight. You wanna know why? Because this is a night of upsets.”

  Meanwhile, a procession of people were coming by the dressing room to say hello to Michael and to me—nobody was allowed in, but they were coming by anyway. I kept popping out of the dressing room to shake their hands and say hello. Then I’d go back. On the monitor, just as I predicted, Junior Jones was losing his fight, and I’d say, “See. It’s in the air. It’s a night of upsets!”

  Six-forty-five. Just one hour before the fight now. Michael had already limbered up a little, done some jumping jacks and stretches. Officials from the Nevada Boxing Commission and a guy from Holyfield’s camp stopped by to watch me wrap Michael’s hands. One of our guys was over in Holyfield’s dressing room watching his trainer wrap Holyfield. That was the protocol.

  The commissioners also brought the gloves over, the ones that we had marked at the weigh-in the previous day. Holyfield, the champion, had gotten first choice of the gloves, as was the custom, after which we had gotten our turn. The brand of glove, Reyes, was negotiated at an earlier meeting. I thought the Reyes glove gave us an edge, because it was a punchers’ glove, a little bit tighter and more streamlined than most other brands (although now, if I had my choice, I’d go with the redesigned Everlast glove). Once we had found a pair that fit Michael properly (which wasn’t easy, because Michael had very large hands), I had signed the inside lip of the glove. These were all normal precautions to ensure that the gloves weren’t switched. It might sound excessive, but in a big-money event, with gambling involved, you couldn’t be too careful.

  So I inspected the fight gloves, plus the backup pair, to make sure my mark was in them, then set about wrapping Michael’s hands. His music was playing. Flem and Wick and some of the other guys were standing around along with the commissioners and a TV cameraman. Michael sat in a chair in the middle of the room, near the table with the medical supplies and tape. I put another chair in front of him, with a rolled-up towel on top of the back for him to lay his forearm across. He extended his right hand. We always wrapped his right hand first because that was his jab hand, the hand that started everything. I took his hand in mine and started winding one of the wraps around it. I said, “This hand’s going to sing all night.”

  It’s very intimate, wrapping a fighter’s hands. You can feel it if there’s tension in his hands, and see in his eyes and demeanor if he’s drifting or if he’s focused. Michael looked good to me. After I finished wrapping and taping his hands, we had thirty-five minutes left before showtime. Michael put on his cup and trunks. I helped him tie the cup on and tape it. After that, he did some more stretching, and then some shadowboxing, enough to work up a little bit of a sweat. With ten minutes to go, I put the gloves on him, taped up the gloves so the laces were secure, then put on the robe. I always did a checklist to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. Did he have his cup? Was he wearing his trunks? That’s not a joke. I’d seen fights where the fighter took off his robe and he was just in his jock; he’d forgotten to put on his trunks.

  I did a checklist with my cut man, too. Made sure we had our End-Swells (flat metal devices used to compress bruises and keep swelling down) and Vaseline in a bucket of ice (you wanted the Vaseline nice and hard so that you could apply it in a thicker layer, rubbing both ways on the eyebrows to make sure that it got under the hair). Various coagulants? Check. Q-tips? Scissors? Adhesive tape? Gauze? Towels? Mouthpiece and backup mouthpiece? Check. Check. Check…

  “It’s time,” somebody said, sticking his head in the door. “It’s time.”

  THERE COMES

  A TIME

  AS WE CAME OUT OF THE TUNNEL THAT LED INTO THE boxing arena, I impulsively decided that we should run into the ring. Not jog, run. There was a camera guy backing up in front of us, and as the lights hit us and the music blasted, I shouted at the camera guy, “You better be moving.” He almost fell over, trying to back up and stay with us as we ran toward the ring. Michael loved it. Loved the running.

  We got in the ring and he was all charged up. We had gone over this moment so many times in training. As the challenger he was going to have to wait for Holyfield, which wasn’t an easy thing. “Michael,” I said, “I want you to think about one thing now: This is the last time you’ll be coming into the ring first. From now on you’ll be coming in second.”

  When Holyfield entered the arena, he had MC Hammer as part of his ring-walk team. I said, “And this is also the last time you’ll see MC Hammer. Because after tonight he’ll be retired. He won’t be doing any ring walks anymore.” I was just talking, but it turned out to be right. His career went into a nosedive. Hammer time was over.

  As they were making the introductions, I could see that Michael was nervous. I thought, I’m not going to disappear on him. I’m gonna show him that I’m right there with him. I’m not going to leave him alone.

  I had these two old-timers in the corner with me, Moe Smith and Ralph Citro, who was a cut man with the Kronk gym for years. I wanted guys who had been around and to whom it meant something to be there, guys that could be counted on. In Moe’s case, he had been around boxing for sixty years, and he’d never been in a heavyweight title fight. I felt that he should be.

  Mills Lane was the referee, which I was happy about. I felt comfortable with him. Like Michael Buffer, the ring announcer who was famous for his trademark “Let’s get ready to rrrruuummmble!,” Mills had his own signature phrase, which he would bark loudly after issuing the ring instructions.

  “Let’s get it onnnn!”

  In the moments before the bell rang to start the fight, I reminded Michael once again that he was going to win this fight with his jab. Our whole plan was predicated on that, because I had noticed, watching tape of Holyfield, that he bounced, and when he bounced he wasn’t set to punch. He had to stop. There was a split second where he was vulnerable. That was when I wanted Michael to catch him with jabs.

  The first round went okay. Basically, when you’re in the first round of a big fight like this, and there’s been all this buildup and hype, you just want to make it through the round, get past the nervousness and realize that it’s just a fight. You also don’t want to get blitzed. You know, where the guy just co
mes at you with everything he’s got before you’re really into the fight or ready to deal with it. We got through the round okay, but the problem I saw right off was that instead of throwing the jab steadily, which was our plan, Michael was looking for one punch. I knew if I didn’t see that jab, then I didn’t have him. I didn’t have his attention. On the other hand, I was also seeing that I was right about Holyfield. That we had gotten him at a good time. That he was vulnerable, and that this was the right night.

  The second round, Michael went out and this time he did what we’d worked on. He threw the jab. He also hooked off the jab, which was another thing we’d worked on in camp. I felt that could be very effective for him, especially because he was a southpaw. But near the end of the round, which he was dominating, he got careless. He threw a big right uppercut, and he posed after he threw it. He stood up too much, didn’t move after he punched, and Holyfield caught him with a short right followed by a left hook that put him down.

  My family was in the arena watching. When Michael hit the canvas, Nicole burst into tears. Elaine had her eyes closed. She couldn’t watch. But little Teddy said, “It’s okay. He’s up. He got up at the count of two. He’s not hurt.”

  One of the questions about Moorer was his chin. He’d gotten knocked down in previous fights but he’d always gotten back up and won. When I saw him go down, after the little jolt of anxiety of whether or not he’d get up, I thought, I need to remind him that every time he’s been on the floor he’s always gone on to win. The other thought I had was that I needed to tell him why he’d gotten knocked down, what his mistake had been, so he could feel good about going back out there. Because the worst thing for a fighter is to go back out there not knowing why he got hit. It’s like sending a guy into a dark room. He doesn’t know what’s there.

  In retrospect, the knockdown was the turning point in the fight, because one of the judges scored it an even round on account of how dominant Michael had been up to that point. We didn’t know it at the time, but that was our heavyweight title right there. That could have been a 10–8 round. A lot of judges would have just counted the knockdown and ignored the rest of the round. But that isn’t what happened; two judges scored it 10–9 for Holyfield and the third judge made it 10–10. Technically, that’s the correct way of scoring a round like that, but still you don’t expect it.