Champs
- Year:
- 2015
- 30 min
- 33 Views
1
Every human
being that comes to this planet
has a fight.
The ultimate opponent
is actually truth.
The truth will wean
out everything else.
Fighting for your identity
or for who you are for real
is one of the hardest
things you have to do.
Boxing, I think,
is conquering not
only your opponent,
but yourself.
You've got to
transcend your fear
and reach deep down
to a part of you
that you may not
even know is there.
is something that's undeniable.
There is skill,
there's expertise,
but there's always this
possibility of tremendous loss.
Boxing is just the anticipation.
It's one punch and
it's all over with.
turn a guy into a star.
And being caught
when he's not looking
could turn a star to
a shadow of himself.
Rich kids don't go into boxing.
Boxing is a way
out of the ghetto.
One minute, a boxer is
not getting anything.
The next minute, he's
signing a contract
for millions of dollars.
How do you handle that?
The sport itself,
there's a purity to it.
But the business
might be the most
unsanitized of all businesses.
Boxing is one of those
sports where the toughest
motherfuckers in the world are
letting some guys that couldn't
make it take advantage of them.
It's a reflection of our society
and your ability
to achieve dreams,
but it's also a reflection
of our society and the fact
that we are unquestionably
divided between the haves
and the have nots.
It's not an easy
way to make a living,
and it's the most
But that's the risk you take.
I'm the youngest of
nine in my family.
As you can see, a
black little boy.
Black and came from
people call it the ghetto.
My mother didn't read,
my father didn't read,
and so they were hard workers.
And that was my beginning.
When you live in
a project, people
throw their trash on the ground.
We were the family
that picked the trash
up and put it in the dumpster.
would laugh at us.
My mother said, you know,
you live in this environment.
You don't have to be like that.
Of course, people
had money and they
used their money
in the wrong way.
My mother didn't
buy clothes or toys.
She bought food.
She knew that this is what
we need to be able to live.
My upbringing, it was four
sisters, three brothers.
Coming out of Philadelphia
is a task itself,
especially in the inner
In the morning, we'd get
up to my mother saying, OK.
Get up, get ready for
school, this and that.
You had to ration out two cans
of pork and beans with six kids
and try to mix
other stuff in there
to call it something different.
Mom, it's the same
pork and beans.
it that make it something else.
My father was one of the
guys that got up every day,
did what he had to do.
I never seen him sell
drugs, anything like that,
but I know that he used drugs.
I know that he drank.
So I had the two parent
structure in the house,
but it was a family
where we was tight,
but there were some
things that wasn't
as I would say a
The worst characteristics
is where I stem from.
A lot of drugs.
Tons of violence.
My parents sold women.
They were in the sex
industry and stuff.
That's what they did.
We weren't safe in the house.
We were always vulnerable.
A lot of men sleep with
my sister, beat me.
There was a pattern of
abuse that Mike experienced.
Bullies in the neighborhood
on him, but also Mike
was beaten by his mother.
His father was
pretty much absent.
My mother's very promiscuous.
It was just the way life was.
Everybody I knew had
or their mother's boyfriend.
Nobody was ever with his father.
I don't know that world.
kids with broken homes.
You know, forget poverty.
I don't care how much
money you get, or game.
Forget that.
Poverty hurts and leaves
an everlasting effect,
impression on you.
Poverty has its own
self perpetuating logic.
When you are strapped
for cash and you
need to survive
in the short term,
practices that in the long term
end up preventing you from
taking advantage of all
the opportunities that
may be out there for you.
We came in on the
era where it really
got a little worse, where
nobody had anything.
You couldn't tease me about
because your mother
was on welfare.
Childhood poverty oftentimes
leads to adult poverty, and
So not only are these
worse environments,
but they find it much
harder to escape.
All these ills work together
to create very strong barriers
to upward mobility, and
very hard to still believe
the American dream is out there.
The American dream is something
that we're all proud of, we all
embrace, yet it's a
little bit dangerous.
America may be one of the
richest countries in the world,
but we also have
the largest pockets
of poverty in the
developed countries.
One in five children
in the United States
grows up in poverty.
America has, by far, the
most unequal distribution
of income and wealth
in the developed world.
Yet, the idea of the American
Dream is, in a sense,
what keeps the whole
system running.
I know what it is when people
move away from you because they
think that they're gonna
catch what you got.
poor if they get to know you.
I was just always
searching for something.
I didn't like my
life at home, so I
wanted to have a
family somewhere else.
I tried to find a new family.
People that I hung around
was in the same
situation that I was in.
You went on like you
was going to school,
but in reality, we was in the
area, but not in the classroom.
but not actually in the school.
And eventually, people do
find out, but after a while,
you get lost in the system.
When I went to school, they said
we wasn't gonna be anything.
They said, we're
gonna be statistics.
You're not articulate.
You don't know your ABCs
and the simple stuff.
And my mom always said, so
they read better than you.
Who's the fastest
in your school?
I said fastest at what?
She said, running.
Who run the fastest?
I outran everybody.
My mom says, there's things that
you do better than that person.
I said, but momma, they
don't talk about that.
Your day will come.
My goal wasn't to be the
president of the United States.
My goal was to be the
baddest guy that I can be.
We just basically
looked at school
as being no fun, no action,
and if you do catch us there,
it's gym where we get
to play basketball.
We could just do
things that we thought
was more important than
reading, and writing,
and science, and history.
because people were
kicking my ass.
I just walk around the
school 'til school is over
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"Champs" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Nov. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/champs_5291>.
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