Atlas (32 page)

It wasn't as if there were no repercussions from my encounter with the writer. The whole thing had been videotaped. It was on all the news channels that night. A friend of mine, Mitchell, who owned a couple of gyms, told me how he was in his gym when the news came on TV. They said, “Stay tuned for the big melee at the big fight in Vegas.” Mitchell was watching it with a few friends. When they showed the video clip, he said, “Hey, that's Teddy in the middle of that…and there's Bobby.” They watched Bobby hitting the guy. Mitchell said, “Jesus. I hope his parole officer don't see this.” Bobby hadn't gotten permission from his PO to make the trip.

The MGM management came to the decision that they wanted to remove me from the premises, and there was talk of pressing charges. The Duvas, Davimos, and, most important, Michael stood up and said, “Fine. You won't have a fight tomorrow if Teddy Atlas is not in the corner. Is that what you want?”

The hotel was packed. The fight was sold out. In the end, they backed down and discussed instead kicking out some of my Staten Island guys. When they came and told me, I said, “No. I ain't doing that to my guys. My guys risked themselves for me and I'm not doing that to them.”

“We knew you were going to say that, but do you think maybe you could just keep them in the background a little? We don't want someone coming with a warrant or something.”

I left it up to my guys, except for Bobby. We decided maybe it was a good idea if he wasn't at ringside. I didn't want him to get arrested. Bobby stayed in the back of the arena during the fight.

 

B
OTHA WAS A GUY WHO HAD A SOFT LOOK.
H
E WAS ONE OF
those guys who, no matter what shape he was in, would never look taut or cut. But it was deceiving. It didn't mean what you thought it did. To look at him, you weren't going to be intimidated. His punch wasn't going to scare you, either. But he was a guy who could give you trouble if you took him lightly. He didn't have great talent in any one area, but he was very busy, he threw a lot of punches, and he could keep you off balance. He could out-hustle you. When you factor in that Michael could be lazy—and you had to be honest with yourself when you were looking at your fighter—it spelled trouble. I knew that Michael wasn't lazy, that it was other things. But the bottom line was that sometimes he didn't work hard enough. He let guys steal rounds from him. Some fighters have to get hurt before they come to life. Michael was one of those.

I didn't want Michael to get hurt. At the same time, I was worried that this guy could lull him to sleep and steal the fight. During camp, I'd been afraid to make him watch tape of Botha because he wouldn't see the things he needed to see, he'd just see the obvious things, the awkwardness, the softness.

Sure enough, that was what happened in the fight. Michael almost knocked him out in the third round, but Botha survived—he had a good
chin—and Michael stopped pressing the attack. Meanwhile, Botha kept busy in his awkward way. He wasn't right in Michael's face. He wasn't snapping his head back with jabs and putting a trickle of blood in his mouth. But he started sneaking away with rounds. Each round began with Botha looking thoroughly exhausted, his hands held low like he didn't have the strength to keep them up, yet he kept throwing. By the tenth round, my spies told me that we were actually behind on the cards. It's not supposed to happen, that you know that, but it does. Although when you think about it, what other sport is there where you don't know what the score is?

Anyway, the point was I had to make a move. What should I do? Michael came back to the corner and sat down. I told Mo to give him water, and while that was going on, I walked all the way across the ring and got Mills Lane. I said, “Mills, do me a favor, I need you to come here for a minute.” I really respect Mills. He's an impeccable ref. And I could see with someone else, he probably wouldn't have done it. Even with me, he was a little leery, but he followed me. I got him to the corner. I said to Michael, “See this man?”

Michael looked up, and there was Mills Lane, the highest-profile referee in boxing.

“I've just instructed him—listen to me clearly—to stop this fight after this round if you don't start fighting. You hear me?”

He nodded.

“All right, Mills,” I said, and at that point he knew he had been used. He was, like, fuck, I'm getting the hell out of here.

Michael dropped Botha the next round. The guy barely made it out of the round. I didn't know if it was enough. I thought we might still be behind.

“Listen, Michael,” I said, when he took the stool, “there's a saying. You know the saying, ‘It's in God's hands'? Well, it's not true. It ain't in God's hands. It's in your hands. Your hands! Now you take those two hands and you go out there and you fucking knock this guy out. Don't leave it in anyone else's hands. Not the judges. Not God's. Yours!”

And the next round—the last round of the fight—he went and knocked him out.

I went nuts. I literally jumped over the top rope. I flew into the ring, right into Michael's arms. He caught me. My son told me later that he couldn't believe it. He said, “Dad, I never saw you act that way.” It was
really strange because I had never showed emotion. In the Holyfield fight I didn't show anything. The Foreman fight was what it was. The Schulz fight I was very happy, but not over the top. Not like this. Mike Boorman said, “I didn't think a white man could jump that high.” There was so much that Michael and I had been through, that had built up—and I guess I just finally let it out.

The night wasn't over, though. Because now Tyson was coming into the ring. A lot of people, fight experts, sportswriters, were actually fearful for Holyfield's life. For his life! And we were supposed to fight the winner. Obviously, we were going to watch. But first, we went back to the dressing room. I noticed Michael's face was real swollen. He had gotten hit a lot. I didn't like the way he looked. The whole thing here was my fighter—that was my primary concern. I said, “We're taking him to the hospital.”

There we were, all together, like a family, and we were going to make sure he was okay. It was funny, you could see how much that meant to Michael. As much as he fought and argued and acted out, he admitted to me years later that his happiest times were being with his fight team. Even though it was bought love to a certain extent, there was still genuine love and care. It was a place where he could get things he never got in his life. Love. Care. Discipline.

Me and a few of the guys were about to take him to the hospital to get X-rayed. Meanwhile, little Teddy was still out in the arena, so I told a couple of my other guys, I think it was Maurice and Tank, “Go get my son.” Teddy was sitting in the front row, ringside. He was twelve years old and cute as hell. Maurice and Tank went out there and said, “Your dad wants you to go back to the dressing room.”

“No, I want to stay here and watch the fight with my friends.”

“We've got to take you back. Your dad's going to the hospital with Michael, and we can't leave you out here.”

“I'm with my friends,” Teddy said. “I'm all right.”

At that point, Tank looked at who Teddy was sitting with, and it was Magic Johnson and Babyface. Magic Johnson smiled at Tank and said, “He's cool. We'll watch him. We'll bring him back later.”

Tank and Maurice came back to the locker room empty-handed.

“Where's my son?” I said, starting to get upset with them.

“Ted, don't get mad,” Tank said. “You're not going to believe this, but he's with his friends.”

“His friends! What friends? What are you—”

“Magic Johnson and Babyface.”

“Magic Johnson and Babyface? They're looking out for him?”

“Yeah.”

I shrugged. “All right.”

We left Elaine and Nicole in the locker room with the guards. The Tyson-Holyfield fight was about to start on the closed-circuit monitor. I got in the truck with Michael and Maurice and Tank and Flem and John Davimos and we went to the hospital. I thought Michael's jaw was broken. It was all blown up. He wound up having to get an MRI, but it turned out not to be broken. The whole time we were in the hospital, we were trying to find out about the fight. One of the nurses got something off the radio. Third round and Holyfield was winning.
What?
I mean, following his loss to Michael, Holyfield had fought a terrible fight with Bobby Czyz, he had gotten knocked out by Riddick Bowe, and most people thought he was shot. But he still had character. He wasn't that shot. And the character of the man was too much for Tyson. Fifth round, we got another report. Tyson got knocked down. We were going crazy. Meanwhile, Michael was inside this tube that was making these science-fiction sounds, these
pings
and
doinks.
When he came out, we told him: “Holyfield's kicking the shit out of Tyson!”

We put the radio on in the truck, on the way back to the arena, and we heard, “Fight's over.” Except they didn't say who won right away. Did Tyson catch him with a punch? No. Eleventh-round TKO. Holyfield won. He was a champion again. Unbelievable!

If Tyson had won, we were supposed to fight him for ten million. With Holyfield, we'd get eight. Losing the two million—which would have meant an extra two hundred thousand in my bank account—didn't make me unhappy. It would have been a rough thing for me, if we'd gotten Tyson. I mean, I was getting ready for it a little bit, by bringing my guys to the press conference. And Tyson kind of showed what it would have been like by not even looking at me. We had exchanged one look, though, and I'm sure he could see I was the same guy, that living was very important to me, but that dying the right way was also important. If it had come to pass, if we had wound up fighting him, it would have been a very difficult thing for me to deal with. The truth is, I'm glad it never happened.

A
LL ATHLETES HAVE JOCK SNIFFERS HANGING AROUND
them, guys who try to pal around with them and be part of their world. Michael certainly had his share, especially after he became champion. Roger King, the head of King World Syndications, who'd had a chance to invest in Michael at the beginning of his boxing career and didn't, now started inviting Michael to clubs and gambling resorts, impressing his friends because he had the heavyweight champ in tow. Not only that, but if there was any trouble, he had the champ to protect him. This was the same King who had been sitting behind my family during the Holyfield fight—the big gambler.

I'd met him a couple of times and thought he was a piece of shit. He was a degenerate guy with a terrible reputation. He thought that having all the money in the world exempted him from acting like a human being or showing respect for anyone but himself. He indulged himself in any way that he pleased. He once, after a night of gambling and drinking, threw up at a casino bar and asked an employee to help him procure a prostitute. He would fly Michael to gambling joints in the islands, where he'd lose half a million dollars without blinking. Meanwhile, Michael would lose fifty thousand, trying to keep up—and that money meant much more to him. But Michael was dazzled by King's show-offy excesses.

I wasn't. When he showed up at Michael's dressing room, drunk, with a whole posse of other rich white assholes, I wouldn't let them in. I said, “Unless he's looking to shell out some money for the reconstructive surgery that he's going to need afterward, I advise him to stay outside.” He stayed out.

For the Botha fight, he was sober. He knew I wouldn't let him in otherwise. He had actually gone out of his way to be helpful leading up to the fight, getting us into a smaller hotel than the MGM so we could be away from Tyson and the whole crazy atmosphere. He showed respect by having Davimos ask me if he could come in. I said he could come in and spend one minute if he was sober. He came in and said good luck. Someone said it was a put-down, the way I treated him. But it wasn't. I was just protecting my fighter and the sanctity of the dressing room.

One night I got a phone call. This was after the Botha fight, around the time of the holidays. It was Michael and he was drunk. I could tell because he was slightly giddy. He put Roger King on the phone. Big mistake. Now, Michael's contract was running out with Davimos, and with the Duvas and Kozerski, and King got on with me and basically said, “I'm going to be heading up Michael's new management team. Don't worry, you're still with us, Teddy, but everyone else is gone.” He went on to say we're going to do this and we're going to do that, and I interrupted him. I said, “You're going to do another thing, too. You're going to get another fucking trainer.”

“Well, Teddy, we would never do that.”

“No, no,” I said. “You've just done it.”

“I think you're misunderstanding—”

“I understand perfectly, you piece of shit. You think because you got fucking money that I'm impressed. You think you can take this kid who fucking hardly knows who he is and drink champagne with him and get him all screwed up so he does something like leave the guys who've been with him his whole career, and then you can come to me and think you're doing me some kind of favor? You think I'm still going to want to train him?”

“Teddy, I don't know why you're talking to me this way. Everyone respects you—”

“No, you don't. You don't fucking respect me. You think I'm a piece of shit.”

“No one has ever talked to me this way. I don't understand…we respect you. I'm here with Robert Shapiro, and—”

“He's a piece of shit, too,” I said. Shapiro was one of the lawyers with O. J. Simpson's Dream Team. “All of youse can go fuck yourself,” I said.

He was stunned. He said, “I got on the phone, talked to you respectfully, and—”

“No, you didn't. You got on the phone telling me that you think I'm a piece of shit. Because the second you said you were taking away these guys who've been with him his whole career, who brought me into it, you were insulting me. Forget about what I did. I did my job. But these guys were there way before me. They took risks when nobody thought two things about Michael. They stayed with him through all kinds of shit. Where were you? Now he's a champion for a second time, and you're going to tell me, who you don't even know, that I'm lucky that you're going to keep me on board when you're fucking everyone else? Well, I'd have to be an even bigger piece of shit than you to do that.”

I heard his voice now, but it was fainter, like he was holding the phone away from him, “Michael, I can't talk to this guy.”

Michael got on the phone, all worked up. “Teddy, what are you doing?”

I said, “What are
you
doing?…You think you're going to be disloyal to these people? You think you're just going to walk away from these people and I'm just going to go along with you?”

“But you're my guy. You brought me to a title. You and me can do a lot of things together….”

“I guess I didn't teach you anything, did I, Michael? I thought I did, but I guess I really didn't teach you much, did I?”

“But, Teddy—”

“No, Michael. You either understand what's right or you don't. If you don't know the difference, I don't care how many times you win the title, you ain't no champion.”

I hung up.

A few weeks went by. Everybody knew what was going on, of course. Davimos and all of them thanked me for being loyal.

“I don't know what to say to you, Teddy,” Davimos said. “You need the money more than I do.”

It was true. Davimos had been born rich. Elaine and the kids and I
were still living in the same apartment in Staten Island that we'd been in since before little Teddy had been born.

Unless Michael changed his mind, I was walking away from the Holyfield fight, which was worth $800,000 to me. There was also an interim fight against a young unbeaten heavyweight named Vaughn Bean, which Michael needed to win or it would jeopardize things with Holyfield. But I didn't hear anything from Michael, and at a certain point we didn't know where it was going to go. It was getting closer to the Bean fight, which we had lost control over. I decided to write a letter to him. It was a hard letter. I said tough things, but caring things. Apparently he showed it to a girl that he was with at the time. He asked her what she thought. The girl said, “Whoever wrote this letter is a very unusual person.” What did she mean by that? “Well, he only cares about what's right. And about you. He doesn't care about anything else.”

It was as if he needed someone to tell him. He couldn't recognize that for himself. He needed an excuse. He wound up calling me and coming back. He signed the deal, ensuring that Davimos, Kozerski, and the Duvas would make the money they deserved. For me, however, the worst was just beginning.

Somebody had to pay a price. That was just the dynamic of it. Michael was embarrassed by what he'd done, the side of himself that he'd shown and for which I'd held him accountable. It was complicated but it was also simple. Michael had always wanted it to be about family and love. He had always been testing to make sure that you weren't there just for the money. I'd passed the test, but he hadn't. He'd been exposed because I hadn't gone along with him and sold out to Roger King. It filled him with shame and self-loathing, along with resentment toward me for pointing out his weakness. The result, the only way he could make things right, was by acting so terribly that I would be forced to abuse and punish him. I know it sounds crazy, but I think that was the unconscious logic.
I'm going to be as awful as Teddy thinks I am so that he can feel justified in hating me.
The other thing was that if he was abusive to me and everyone else, then in a way we'd all be selling out by staying. If we were being abused and staying, it must be for the money. It was very twisted.

We started training camp for the Vaughn Bean fight, and it was the
worst, most fucked-up camp I'd ever been involved in. One session, he took off his headgear and threw it at me, and I picked it up and threw it back in his face. Another time, we got into something in his truck, and I smacked him. It got to the point where we were driving in separate cars, never eating together, seeing each other only in the gym. The amazing thing is he still kept his curfew. But it was awful. The whole experience made me feel selfish and small. I sat in my room one night, nearly crying, wondering why I was treating him so badly. I knew that I had to hold myself accountable, that it wasn't all on him, but I couldn't figure a way out of it.

The next day, I took a walk with him after our training session. We went down the road, beyond the hotel.

“Michael, listen, this has gone too far. This isn't good, the way things are with us. I know you made a mistake when you went with these people, and when I wrote you the letter, you realized it. I pointed out some things to you, some flaws in the way you acted, and that made you feel exposed. I understand that you're acting the way you've been acting almost as a kind of protection. You're pushing all this off from what it is. I understand. You think I don't care no more. You think that because you made a decision that was based on money, or appeared to be based on money, and not on loyalty, commitment, and principle, that I've written you off. But you're being a moron. Don't you know anything about me? Don't you know that what we've done together is something that can't be lost or minimized that easily? Don't you understand that just the act of me being here means that I still care about you?”

He stopped and looked at me. I could tell he wanted to get past what was there between us, but that he was struggling with it. There was another thing, I realized, that might be involved. “Maybe you think I care more for Davimos, that I somehow took his side in this,” I said. “That's not why I did what I did. If I made that stand and was willing to risk everything for John, don't you friggin' understand that it would be no less for you? It's always been you that I cared the most about. But I wasn't going to let you do something that I wouldn't let someone do to you. How could you stand here with me and respect me and trust me, if I let that happen to John? Could I be any different for you?”

It didn't matter. He couldn't get out of the place he was in.

“Okay,” I said. “The final thing I'm going to tell you is that I'm going
to do everything I can to keep the title for you, so you can fight for the eight million against Holyfield. I'll do everything I can, and then I'm gone. I will not spend one more second talking to you the way I have had to talk to you for the last few months. I will not flush away everything we've done with this kind of shit. I won't do it.”

We went three more weeks and it didn't get any better. Everyone knew I was going to leave, that this was my last fight with Michael. Boorman almost cried. He begged Michael to talk to me. “Please. He's not kidding around. He's going to leave.” Davimos was trying to get me to hold off making it public, asking me to think about it, to reconsider. “Please, Teddy, wait until after.” They didn't understand. I had spent plenty of time thinking about it. The press couldn't wait to get to me. The first time they put a microphone in front of me, I said, “It's my last fight with Michael Moorer.”

The night of the fight, Michael was so lethargic, even the TV commentators, who knew about his tendencies in that direction, were stunned. His opponent, Vaughn Bean, a turban-wearing black Muslim, was undefeated, but against a string of nobodies. He was small for a heavyweight, and though he had some skills, and an all-star corner that included Joe Frazier, Michael Spinks, and Butch Lewis, he was a guy that Michael should have dominated. The fact was Michael went into the fight in decent shape physically. It was his head that was all messed up.

There was a point in the fight where I knew I had to do something again. I'd had a feeling that I might, and the day before, when Flem had said, “You need anything, boss?,” I had told him, “Yeah, bring a cell phone.” He looked at me, like, what the hell? Anyway, we reached this moment in the fight, and I told Flem that when Michael came back to the corner, I wanted him to hand me the cell phone. Flem was nervous. He didn't know what the hell I was going to do. But as soon as Michael sat on his stool, he handed me the cell phone. I pulled up the antenna and put it to my ear. I said, “Yeah? You've been watching? I don't know. I'll ask him.” I handed the phone back to Flem. “Michael, that was your ex-wife, Bobbi. Your son is home crying. He just heard the commentator on TV say that you don't want to be champion no more, and he's crying. He wants to know why Daddy doesn't want to be heavyweight champ no more.”

Somehow Michael managed to eke out a win. I think he won by a point. If he had lost that fight, he would have missed out on the Holyfield fight and the $8 million payday that went along with it. It was a big thing. A very big thing. That money would have meant a lot to me and my family, too. It would have put me over the top. I wouldn't have a mortgage today. But Michael was stubborn. He couldn't find a way to come back to me. He called me one time, it was getting closer and closer to the fight and having to go to camp, and he called me from a bar, drunk, at three in the morning. He started to say something about wanting me to come back. I told him to call me in the morning when he was sober.

He never called back.

Part of it was that he had beaten Holyfield already. I had helped him defeat that dragon, and he had enough confidence to think that he could do it again, without me. I'll tell you one thing: if it was Tyson he was fighting, he would have called back. I guarantee you that. Michael would not have gotten in the ring with Tyson without me.