Lex Fridman: recommendation

Transcript context

…This is what he said. I remember to this day what he said. That I do remember. I don’t know if it was six or five people, but this I do remember. He said, “They did a good job. You’re going to have a scar the rest of your life.” And he left. Oh, man. They did a good job. You mentioned Cus D’Amato, legendary trainer, and you also mentioned it turned out he really cared about you. In the book, you write about a testimony he gave. I was hoping I could read it because it speaks to your character. It speaks to his. It’s just powerful. The testimony goes, ” Your Honor, I realize you might not know much about me, but I spent my whole life developing young men. As a boxing manager I trained two world champions, heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson and light heavyweight champion Jose Torres. I’ve also helped a lot of other young boys straighten out their lives and build character. I know things about Teddy Atlas this court doesn’t know, things you won’t find on his arrest record. This boy has character. He has loyalty. He’ll hurt himself before he’ll let down a friend. These qualities are rare and they shouldn’t be lost. He’s made mistakes. We’ve all made mistakes, but I’ve come to know this boy, and if we lose him, we’ll be losing someone who could help a lot of people. Please don’t take this young boy’s future away. He could be someone special. Let’s not lose him. Please.” Those are powerful words from a powerful man. What have you learned about life from Mr. Cus D’Amato? He gave me a quote that he drilled into my head. I became his guy. He loved me. I loved him. He said to me, “Teddy, no matter what a man says, it’s what he does in the end that he intended to do all along.” That’s what I learned from Cus. The rest of it is BS. And a lot of people say things. You just have to give them a minute to let them show you eventually what they really meant by it. I also learned from him that everyone’s afraid. Cus, his way of saying it, another great saying, you’ll get a kick out of this, “Anyone who’s in a situation where fear should be prevalent, where fear is actually necessary to survive the situation, anyone who says that they’re not afraid, they’re one of two things. They’re either a liar or they should go to a doctor, find out what the frick’s wrong with them.” He was right about that. We live in a taboo society where that word, to a certain extent, is taboo because it invokes weakness. We are just layers of what we saw and learned since we were kids. We all are. We’re products of those layers. I learned that on my own and through some help. At the end of the day, fear, people will find their way of avoiding that term. So they use the word anxiety, they use the word butterflies, apprehension, a million different words. I find all those other words to be cousins of fear. And fear causes a lot of things in life. It causes a lot of problems and it also solves a lot of problems. Without it, we couldn’t be great if we are great, if we ever have a chance to be great or at least to aspire to be great.…

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