Champs Page #9

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Just ask Atlanta

car dealer Ken Sanders

who took Holyfield

under his wing

when he needed a cosigner for

a car and became his manager.

Ken Sanders wasn't my manager.

I just told people that

because he ran a car

dealership so he

knew about money.

I got into boxing

because all I had

to do what know how to fight.

I didn't know nobody

who know about money.

I don't know nobody who

made a lot of money.

I mean, even

when you hit the Powerball,

the first thing

people will tell you

is, get an accountant

and a lawyer.

Well, boxing is the same

way, but they don't tell you.

That's why most athletes wind

up not having nothing when

all the hard labor and

years in the ring is over.

You ask Mike Tyson,

how you doing, Mike.

He says, just

living today today.

That's what he's doing.

Just living today today.

You can look at people

like Evander Holyfield

that made hundreds of millions

of dollars whose houses went

into foreclosure and who's

struggling right now to get by.

A foreclosure notice

in the local newspaper states

Holyfield defaulted on

a $10 million bank loan.

A strange reversal of

fortune for a champion

believed to have

earned $200 million

during his storied career.

The house that

Holyfield built may soon

become his biggest loss

outside of the ring.

When you get

money, you gotta ask questions.

I never did have

to ask questions,

because I'd never had no money.

What happened to

me is not so much

they stole, but they

did take advantage

of what I didn't know.

They all want

this boxer to make them money.

Once the boxer doesn't

make them any more money,

they're cast aside like rubbish.

You retire with a great record,

and then you'd be sitting on

a stool in your living room,

where do I go from here?

I don't have any skills.

I'm not trained to do anything.

I'm not educated.

I don't have a college degree.

A lot of guys don't have

high school degrees.

It's not at all

uncommon to have even boxers

who had great acclaim

wind up broke,

penniless, as greeters

at a casino in Vegas.

What you don't hear

about is the guy

that fights on ESPN

four times a year,

and after he pays his manager,

and his trainer, and everyone

involved, is still

at the poverty line.

The budgets on ESPN allow

a guy in a main event

to get paid about 15 grand.

Like I said, split

that money off,

train for number of

weeks for that fight,

and you're making... You could

make more money, honestly,

taking a minimum

wage job and working

a little bit of over time.

The minimum salary in

Major League Baseball,

even in minor league

baseball, is livable.

There is no minimum

salary for a fighter.

The top 1% fighters

probably make 99% of money.

Boxing is laissez-faire

capitalism run amok.

There is essentially no

one running the ship.

There's different organizations

that run a piece of it.

There's promoters who go up and

down and control parts of it,

but there are essentially

no regulations.

Boxing is

regulated at the state level.

You have Nevada with

its set of rules,

you have California with its

set of rules, you have New York,

you have New Jersey.

Jurisdictions will have

a different perspective

on a different

matter, and nobody

is on the same

page at all times.

Most people think that we

need a federal commission

to regulate the sport of boxing.

The federal government

tempted to regulate boxing

by the passage of the Ali Act.

It's given some authority

to the federal government

to enforce boxing from

a business perspective.

However, there has not been any

prosecution or implementation

of the Ali Act for a fighter.

Why is it every sport in

America is regulated or has

some type of union

and boxing don't?

In other sports like

baseball, football, tennis,

you have individuals who are

well educated in those sports

to help guide those champions

through their effort

and their time.

If you're an NFL

player, or an NBA player,

or a Major League

Baseball player,

there is at least a core.

You have the team.

You have whatever resources

they have to help you.

You have the league

that has some resources.

Who do we go to?

It's crazy to put your

body and your mind

through this hard way

of making a living

for yourself and your family.

And to wind up with nothing and

not even your health, to me,

is a sin.

We as a country,

are in love with our sports,

but when these two fighters step

into a ring, there is a

level of violence that

is unlike any other

sport in terms

of duration and intensity.

When a fighter receives

a blow that is so severe,

what's going on inside

the head is the brain

is suddenly slammed against

the back of your skull

and then thrown forward

again as the head snaps back.

It's commonly

called a concussion.

It can swell and cause

long term hematomas,

bleeding on the brain,

memory loss, strokes

or aneurysms, or

vessel breakage.

It can cause death depending

on how severe, how acute,

where the brain actually

impacts the skull.

It has happened where a

fighter will leave the ring.

Whether they've won or

lost, they look fine.

They head out to dinner,

everything's wonderful,

and one, to two, to

three days later,

something traumatic happens.

I had a young champion,

a guy named Leavander Johnson.

He was walking out of the ring.

I walked out of

the ring behind him

and I saw he was a little

unsteady on his feet.

He put his arm on

me and I walked

him back to his dressing room.

He was apologizing for losing.

And I'll never forget it.

He sat on a stool,

then he looked at me

and he said, Lou,

I have a headache.

And then he fell forward and he

never regained consciousness.

He died, I think, it was

five, six days later.

Every society, for the most

part, on the face of the Earth

has some primal

need for violence.

It's always there,

that bloodthirstiness.

It's human nature

to be fascinated by violence.

We hear a car wreck, we

go see what happened.

Horror movies.

How's somebody gonna be

eaten alive or torn up?

It's all over the place.

We are just attracted

by confrontation,

by conflict, by controversy.

That's what sells and that's

what boxing tries to sell.

Boxing needs

something that can say, hey,

there is support for a fighter.

The fighter is the one who's

putting his life in danger

to enter that ring and

provide entertainment

to everybody that's there.

However, we have to weigh

the resources we have

with the actual

regulation of the sport.

Over the last year, we

generated about $5.5 million

in tax revenue just

from ticket sales.

The state legislature then

makes an appropriation

to the Athletic Commission,

and that allocation

is about $450,000.

So there's a huge disparity

from a regulative prospective.

I'm concerned

right now about the sport.

People in life have a right

to take risks and a right

to live the lives

they want to live.

Now, that being said, it's

barbaric in a lot of ways

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