Speaker 1: Boxing is a port man's sport, and I found boxing.
Speaker 1: Boxing found me, or we found each other because I'm
Speaker 1: so opposite of what I used to be or what
Speaker 1: I did. I am quiet, shy, almost introverted, but to
Speaker 1: be involved with the sport that demands your respect and
Speaker 1: it's about bravado and what have you. Boxing to me
Speaker 1: was a sense of being calm, being safe because I
Speaker 1: felt safe in the ring more so than I felt
Speaker 1: safer outside the ring. That it kind of brought me
Speaker 1: to the real world. My coach was saying that you
Speaker 1: guys can win the Olympics. That's what most kids need
Speaker 1: to hear. A sense of encouragement, depending where you come from,
Speaker 1: how you were brought up, how you were raised, or
Speaker 1: speaking of confidence to a young kid is powerful because
Speaker 1: now I believe I can do something, and I just
Speaker 1: worked hard, just worked extremely hard every single day. You
Speaker 1: have to believe in yourself. You have to do your
Speaker 1: version of roadwork, which could be going to work earlier.
Speaker 1: The same principles that it required for me to be
Speaker 1: a champion, It's applicable in everyday of life. And my
Speaker 1: philosophy is called power, which is prepare overcome when every
Speaker 1: round it's here, and it's here. I create the fight
Speaker 1: in my hand. I see it, I feel it, I
Speaker 1: taste it. For me. Talk about when I lost my
Speaker 1: first professional fight, which was so devastating, emostly devastating because,
Speaker 1: like as you stated, my friends, my family, they were
Speaker 1: trying to calm me down, although I wasn't quiet. I
Speaker 1: was like hurting side because there was a fight that
Speaker 1: I thought that I should have won. I could have
Speaker 1: won if I had a different game plan. But to
Speaker 1: help you understand why I went the route that I
Speaker 1: did was because Roberto Durand was one of the most
Speaker 1: intimidating fighters ever prior to Mike Tyson. And he cursed
Speaker 1: me out, he cursed my wife out, and he pushed me,
Speaker 1: shut me. He did all those things. He was like
Speaker 1: a bully. He was a bully. He challenged my Manhod,
Speaker 1: he took my Manhu, and I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna beat this guy at his own game. And
Speaker 1: I went to that Irraine and I was fighting in
Speaker 1: total toe, which I should not have done. I mean,
Speaker 1: no one likes to lose, no one. But what makes
Speaker 1: your winner is coming back, is getting up from knockdowns.
Speaker 1: And I lived with that for a few months, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, I can beat this guy.
Speaker 1: So I came back to show Roberto Duran that I
Speaker 1: can come back. So it was good for me. Well.
Speaker 1: I tend to choreograph the fight because in my head
Speaker 1: I was good at breaking you down, and I will
Speaker 1: study tapes of you, watch your pet peeves. I was
Speaker 1: I would understand what makes you take, what makes you up, upset,
Speaker 1: and I will play on those things. All those things
Speaker 1: were just for me, ways of breaking you down. Fundamentally
Speaker 1: break you down, but more so here because if I
Speaker 1: get if I make you miss enough well, and then
Speaker 1: I make you pay for those misses, then you doubt yourself,
Speaker 1: because that's what they call it, the sweet size of boxing. Doubt,
Speaker 1: first and foremost is always, let's say present. Although we
Speaker 1: won't admit it, but we do doubt ourselves. That comes
Speaker 1: into play when you're not sure, be sure what we want,
Speaker 1: but not really sure how to get there. I paused
Speaker 1: give myself timing. And although palls can be five seconds,
Speaker 1: palls can be ten seconds, can be ten minutes, can
Speaker 1: be ten days. You gotta let this thing and this
Speaker 1: thing come together, your heart and your mind. It all
Speaker 1: has to work as a unit, one piece, doing your
Speaker 1: due diligence. To make sure you have all the information,
Speaker 1: because when I do my road work, my roadwork is
Speaker 1: running four or five miles. My road workers also checking
Speaker 1: out and knowing your weak points and strong points. It's
Speaker 1: all those things that makes a winner. Muhammad Ali gave
Speaker 1: me some advice many many years ago. He said, Ray,
Speaker 1: be your own man, but control your own legacy and
Speaker 1: sign your own checks. But I didn't understand what he
Speaker 1: was talking about. But I also wanted to be different
Speaker 1: than most fighters, unfortunately who have fallen on the wayside,
Speaker 1: and that was to create my own legacy and maintain
Speaker 1: And I was able to do that because I had
Speaker 1: good people around me. I had good people who were smart,
Speaker 1: who had morals, who didn't take advantage of me as
Speaker 1: a young kid, a young teenager, a young fighter back
Speaker 1: in the day. This is back in like in the eighties,
Speaker 1: early eighties. I was like twenty five, twenty six, and
Speaker 1: you know, I was on top of the world. I
Speaker 1: had my titles, I had the money, had the thing,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't prepared to do anything else. So now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I meet new friends and all
Speaker 1: those little friends turned me on to something they called cocaine.
Speaker 1: So I became an addict. I became an alcoholic, and
Speaker 1: I did all those things and giving myself no respect,
Speaker 1: and I did that for a couple of years. But
Speaker 1: the thing about it, I thank God. I'm a blessed man.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am one a guy who who have
Speaker 1: good people around him. And also I surrendered myself. If
Speaker 1: you don't come to grips with who you are, you'll
Speaker 1: never be happy. I am the happiness I've ever been
Speaker 1: in my life because now I'm okay in my own skin.
Speaker 1: But I am cool with who I am. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can walk into this room and if no one
Speaker 1: recognized me, it's okay, it's okay. I'm okay with who
Speaker 1: I am. Life is a fight, life is a challenge,
Speaker 1: and everyone is not nice. Everyone is not gonna have morals,
Speaker 1: and some people try to take what you have. I
Speaker 1: mean all of those things, and I just found a
Speaker 1: place recently in the past couple of years that has
Speaker 1: made me the man I am today. I've been ten
Speaker 1: years sober. It was hard for me to say I'm
Speaker 1: an alcoholic because I'm sugar raying in it. When I
Speaker 1: Foally was able to say that my life got better.
Speaker 1: My life got so much better. And I was sexually
Speaker 1: abused as a kid, and I kept it to myself
Speaker 1: for many, many years. It ate it me for so long,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was just me who that happened
Speaker 1: to me, And at certain times of the year or
Speaker 1: time or times of the month it resurfaced. I never
Speaker 1: dealt with it. I always pushed it away. And the
Speaker 1: way I pushed it away was drinking or drugs. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until I faced the reality of what happened to
Speaker 1: me and accepted that and moved on that I became
Speaker 1: a better man, a better father, a better husband. It
Speaker 1: was such a release. And when I talked about the
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, I would get so emotional, really really emotional.
Speaker 1: It's so vivid in my mind. I could smell his breath,
Speaker 1: I could smell his I can smell his body, smell
Speaker 1: you know. It was that real and it is that real.
Speaker 1: It took my life away because I I was never happy.
Speaker 1: As much fame as I had, oh money as I had,
Speaker 1: I was never happy. I drank to be happy. I
Speaker 1: did cocaine a lot of it to be happy. So
Speaker 1: my life for the most part was shut down, was
Speaker 1: blacked out, and people saw me. What they saw was
Speaker 1: an individual who achieved significant stuff. But it wasn't really
Speaker 1: happy because all of a sudden, now I'm saying, who
Speaker 1: likes me for who I am? It was getting to
Speaker 1: that point. My biggest problem. I suppressed things. I would
Speaker 1: never tell you what I just told you today. I
Speaker 1: would keep it to myself. If it's bothering me, if
Speaker 1: you did something wrong, I wouldn't tell you. Of all
Speaker 1: the things. I'm non confrontational. But I found out that
Speaker 1: stress and keeping things inside can can kill you, and
Speaker 1: no I can't. It will kill you. There's no greater
Speaker 1: feeling to me than to give back, to make it,
Speaker 1: to make a difference. It, whether it's a phone call
Speaker 1: to some fan, is wonderful. It's something that you don't
Speaker 1: have to tell me. Twice, I got a call and
Speaker 1: this guy he was given a few months to live,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to speak to me. He wanted to
Speaker 1: say hi, wo Jesus. And it's really resonated. It was
Speaker 1: like I said, I got to call this guy, and
Speaker 1: I did call. I called, I spoke with him about
Speaker 1: an hour and I talked to this guy. I was
Speaker 1: in tears, man, and I just I say, Man, you
Speaker 1: keep fighting, man, he said, He said, Ray, you know
Speaker 1: talking to you right now, man, has given me so
Speaker 1: much more life and so much more carriage. It's just
Speaker 1: little things that you do or you can do that
Speaker 1: makes a difference in someone's life. And I cherished that
Speaker 1: moment and I valued that time with that with that
Speaker 1: young man, I've been blessed in so many ways. It's
Speaker 1: nothing for me to make a phone call, but to him,
Speaker 1: that gave him another another day, another week, another month
Speaker 1: on this earth. It costs nothing to be nice. It
Speaker 1: costs nothing to be nice. What's your definition of the
Speaker 1: life well lived? It's about pursuing and accomplishing your dreams.
Speaker 1: I tell people all the time to dream, to dream
Speaker 1: the dream, because your dreams like your gps towards your success.
Speaker 1: Your dreams are what allows you to see the light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel. It's what gives you motivation, determination,
Speaker 1: and you go for that, and you go for that dream.
Speaker 1: You know, you reach out and you work hard because
Speaker 1: people tell other people what they can't do, so they
Speaker 1: tell you you can't do that, and a lot of times,
Speaker 1: nine times out of ten we believe them, but they're
Speaker 1: telling you what they can't do. Don't let them tell
Speaker 1: you what you can't do. I talk about success, I
Speaker 1: talk about victory. Victory is find in so many ways.
Speaker 1: For me, my victories are my family, my gold medal,
Speaker 1: and my titles. And for other people, your victories can
Speaker 1: be promotion, it could be a new home, it could
Speaker 1: be something simple. No matter how you define victory, you
Speaker 1: just got to go for it. You have to go
Speaker 1: for it and be the fighter. We are fighters, and
Speaker 1: if I know anything about fighting, I know how to win.