The thing that always stands out is just how fucking much Mike knows boxing! I really don't think there's ever been another fighter who knows the sport as well and has seen as many fights. He sounds so excited describing Leonard's KO's over Andy Price and Dave Green.
(croak, whisper): "I can't even talk. You beat Durán, nigga! I love you. You're my life, nigga, you're so beautiful!" Oh dear. These podcasts show that Mike clearly still got emotional issues. Get him back on Zoloft...
Well, you know for a fact you're not gonna hear anything controversial. Even now, Leonard keeps it 100% politically correct.
And.........he adopts this phony concentrated sincerity. Like he's literally forcing the truth out his mouth.
Ray was a very nice guy to me and the other guys in the security detail when I bodyguarded him when he was an analyst for HBO at the old indoor Caesar's Palace Sports Pavilion for the Pernell Whitaker - Azumah Nelson fight. In fact I had hold of his left shoulder/his left side which faced the stands and I took some slaps and scratches on my arm and shoulder meant for him from rabid female fans leaning over the railing to try and touch him. His brother Roger also is a nice fella and we talked about the 1978 National AAU's when he beat the favored Clint Jackson to win it all.
Tyson was known to spend hours and hours at Cus’s house just watching old boxing footage, a lot of grainy black-and-white footage of fights in the first half of the 20th century. There’s one clip with a bunch of them at Cus’s dinner table where a teenage Tyson is talking about Jimmy Slattery and Mickey Walker and Cus seems proud that his protege is this boxing historian. After Tyson beat Holmes, he sort of posed with his hands on his hips, and it was because he had seen an old fighter, I think Battling Nelson, do the same thing.
