Teddy Atlas: evaluation

Transcript context

…He believed in it. Yeah, he believed that to be a champion, you had to be special, you had to be smart, you had to have character, that you had to be a better person, and that you couldn’t make a champion if you didn’t make him a better person first, and that this could strengthen people. The sport could strengthen people in those ways. So he was married to it. He was old and there was no one in the gym. It was empty. It was above a police station, which was crazy. He needed an heir to the throne. He needed to pass it on to someone. And he saw something, and all of a sudden he saw that my career as a boxer was less important than having me become his heir to the throne and becoming his trainer, his man, his guy, to continue, that we could do a lot more for him and for everyone. Not just for him but for everyone. It was more like to keep it going. It couldn’t die. It couldn’t die. Cus was afraid it would die with him. And he committed his whole life to it. He didn’t get married because of boxing. So he saw me as the little bit of the seed to plant for more things to grow before that plant died. And so all of a sudden he says, “You can’t fight. ” I had people tell me that I could go somewhere else and fight. And I could, but I couldn’t because I’d be disloyal. Loyalty is everything.…

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