Teddy Atlas: Trainer, Ringside Analyst, and now a Podcaster

Published

5 years ago

April 7, 2020

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As a teenager, Teddy Atlas was a troublemaker. One could have predicted that he would grow into a man who would get thrown out of places. And that has proved true. He’s been thrown out of London and thrown out of Australia.

Ah, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Atlas needs no introduction. During a 21-year-career as a ringside analyst with ESPN, his face and distinctive voice became synonymous with boxing. Since leaving that role with the network – not of his own volition – he has transitioned into a podcaster while continuing to bob up now and then as the trainer of an important boxer seeking to elevate his game.

Atlas didn’t quite know what a podcast was when he was approached to do the audio program. Anything “high tech” was never his bag. He still doesn’t e-mail.

Rob Mohr, the founder and partner of a public relations firm called Hit Hard Media, pitched the idea to Teddy. “He said to me, ‘Listen Teddy, I think you have a voice that should be heard and I think there’s an audience out there,’” recalled Atlas. But Teddy would not have come on board if his daughter Nicole, an attorney, hadn’t pushed him to give it a try. (Atlas also has a son, Teddy III, who is the assistant director of college scouting for the Las Vegas Raiders with aspirations of someday becoming an NFL GM).

Mohr serves as the producer of the podcast which is done in a studio in New York. Mohr’s friend Ken Rideout is Teddy’s sidekick on the podcast which is called “THE FIGHT with Teddy Atlas.” Mohr and Rideout, who reside on opposite coasts, New York and California, have a Massachusetts tie and a shared passion for long-distance running. Mohr is one of the world’s top amateur triathletes.

Rideout is a financial advisor. He had no previous connection to boxing, unless one were to count the time that he was a prison guard working alongside Micky Ward. But he has always been a big fan of the sport. “Commenting on boxing is like my dream job,” he says. On the air, Atlas, who has a tendency to ramble, does most of the talking.

Mohr’s assumption was prophetic; there is indeed an audience out there. The podcast has been running a little over a year. As of last week, the episodes had attracted over 10 million views, one million downloads, and 800,000 subscriptions. Atlas’s unfiltered take on all things pugilistic is a welcome respite in a sport saturated with hyperbole and chicanery. Teddy doesn’t care if some of his opinions rile the fat cats at the top of the boxing food chain. We suspect he rather enjoys it.

Before he started talking into a microphone, Teddy Atlas attracted notice as a trainer. A disciple of the late Cus D’Amato, who molded Floyd Patterson and Mike Tyson into world heavyweight champions, Atlas has been associated with 18 world title-holders. He gave up training several years ago, but teaching is in his blood and he would be lured back on several occasions. Most recently, he handled Oleksandr Gvozdyk for three fights beginning with Gvozdyk’s upset of Adonis Stevenson, an 11^th round stoppage that earned the Ukrainian the lineal light heavyweight title.

Atlas didn’t reach out to Gvozdyk. Egis Klimas, Gvozdyk’s promoter, reached out to him. But Atlas wouldn’t give his consent until he got to know the fighter a little better.

“My only qualification was that he had to be a decent person; a person I would like to be around,” says Atlas who had previously applied the same yardstick to Tim Bradley. Before taking on Bradley, who reached out to him, Teddy spent three days with Bradley in Bradley’s hometown of Palm Springs.

Teddy Atlas is a no-nonsense trainer, a hard taskmaster. He concedes that his style isn’t for everyone. But a trainer of Atlas’s stripe would seem to be an especially good fit for a boxer with a reputation for being a slacker. It was inevitable that his name would be linked with former heavyweight champion Andy Ruiz who weighed an ungainly 283 ½ pounds for his rematch with Anthony Joshua.

We broached the subject of him possibly training Ruiz during a long telephone conversation with Atlas on Sunday. He told us what he then told his listeners the next day. Yes, Ruiz’s people had reached out to him and there was one follow-up call, but that was it; they never called back. And he told them that if they wished to explore it further, then Ruiz would have to come to New York so that they could get further acquainted, “so I could see how comfortable I am with the fighter and if he and his team would be comfortable with me.”

Atlas did not reveal that he had these conversations until someone at the other end let the cat out of the bag. However, on Monday’s podcast, he came with a meticulous list of things that Andy Ruiz could do to improve, both inside and outside the ropes. The list had the scent of a job application.

In addition to being a noted trainer and broadcaster, Teddy Atlas is also known as a great philanthropist.

He started the Dr. Theodore A. Atlas Foundation, named for his late father who practiced medicine in Staten Island for 55 years, doing house calls until he was 80 years old, and built two hospitals, the first a 22-bed unit that was eventually purchased by the city and torn down to make way for the Verrazano Bridge and the second a unit roughly three times as large that lasted for 35 years. At these facilities, Dr. Atlas administered to the poor, performing tonsillectomies and delivering babies and such, for free. (There were no HMOs in those days, notes Atlas.)

The Dr. Atlas Foundation, in a nutshell, helps people in need, covering the cost of hospital care, building ramps for the handicapped, and whatnot. Thanksgiving means free turkeys for the poor and Christmas means free toys for the kids. The foundation, notes the well-known New York sportswriter Wallace Matthews, “raises money and puts it directly into the hands of the people who need it, without being funneled through the hands of highly paid fundraisers and publicists.”

The foundation holds an annual dinner. The most recent edition was the twenty-third. At the dinner, sportscaster Bob Ley, the longest tenured employee at ESPN when he retired last June, was presented an award named for the late investigative reporter Jack Newfield. “He was my friend, a gutsy writer who didn’t care about the repercussions,” says Atlas of the man who wrote “Only in America: The Life and Crimes of Don King.” The foundation also honors Newfield by helping to subsidize a scholarship for a journalism student at Hunter College, Jack Newfield’s alma mater.

The annual Dr. Theodore A. Atlas Foundation dinner is held on the Thursday before Thanksgiving. “For whatever reason,” says Atlas, “my dad always took off on Thursdays. In my mind, it was the only day of the week that he could join us (in spirit).”

The foundation also supports youth programs which until recently included three boxing gyms, two on Staten Island and one in Brooklyn. The gyms were formerly run by the Police Athletic League which backed out under pressure from “reformers” who thought that the instructors were teaching kids how to fight rather than how to box.

Teddy balked at keeping the gyms afloat, but reconsidered. “I came to see them as havens,” he says, “as shelters.” But he insisted that certain rules had to be followed. Among them, a boy had to bring his report card to stay enrolled and he had to pull up his pants.

By one measure, these gyms — The Dr. Atlas Cops & Kids Gyms — were enormously successful. Atlas guesses that they produced 100 Golden Gloves champions. Alumni include U.S. Olympian and future light heavyweight champion Marcus Browne, Chris Colbert, currently ranked #1 at 130 pounds by the WBA, and two hot young prospects who were lured out of the amateur ranks by Eddie Hearn: middleweight Nikita “White Chocolate” Abibay and welterweight Reshat Mati.

As these gyms were becoming powerhouses, they lost track of their mission, says Atlas, with the result that Dr. Atlas’s name is no longer attached to them. Asked if he was particularly proud of one of the former attendees, Atlas cited a girl from Brooklyn who was living in a car with her mother when she started attending the Flatbush gym. She is now serving in the U.S. Navy.

Okay, about those instances when Teddy Atlas was 86ed, kicked out the door as if he were toxic:

The first occurred in London at the 2012 Olympics, his fourth for NBC. Some of the scores turned in by the judges were head-scratchers which was nothing new for Olympic boxing. “Corruption was happening right before my eyes,” says Atlas. Referencing a bus that brought Olympic officials to London, he said on the air “they should turn that into a Department of Corrections bus and get them out of here.”

Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu, the Taiwanese architect who was the president of AIBA, the international governing body of amateur boxing, had Atlas and his broadcast partner Bob Papa physically removed from the arena.

The second incident occurred in July of 2017 in Brisbane, Australia, where Atlas worked the welterweight title fight between Manny Pacquiao and Brisbane-native Jeff Horn. The title changed hands when Horn, a massive underdog, won a unanimous decision. The decision didn’t sit well with Atlas whose commentary during the fight was deemed by the locals and others to be very biased toward Horn.

After the fight, there was talk of a rematch with speculation that the fight would go back to Australia. Dean Lonergan, Jeff Horn’s promoter, said that if that were to be the case, then he would demand that ESPN remove Atlas from the broadcasting team. And barring that, he told reporters, “I will lobby the Immigration Minister to not allow Teddy Atlas through our border.”

Ever the cynic, Atlas still believes that the decision favoring Jeff Horn was a “business decision.” And as for being persona non grata in Australia, Atlas quips, “I don’t know if I have been thrown out of better places, but I have never been thrown out of a bigger place.”

“Telling it like it is” was the self-styled catchphrase of the abrasive sportscaster Howard Cosell, a catchphrase that invited a lot of derision. Teddy Atlas tells it like it is and that catchphrase fits him a lot better than it fitted Cosell. You may not always agree with him, but you know the man is genuine.

P.S. – A new podcast normally goes up on Mondays. Check it out.

Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel

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Arne K. Lang

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Usyk Outpoints Fury and Itauma has the “Wow Factor” in Riyadh

Published

1 day ago

December 21, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Usyk Outpoints Fury and Itauma has the “Wow Factor” in Riyadh

Oleksandr Usyk left no doubt that he is the best heavyweight of his generation and one of the greatest boxers of all time with a unanimous decision over Tyson Fury tonight at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. But although the Ukrainian won eight rounds on all three scorecards, this was no runaway. To pirate a line from one of the DAZN talking heads, Fury had his moments in every round but Usyk had more moments.

The early rounds were fought at a faster pace than the first meeting back in May. At the mid-point, the fight was even. The next three rounds – the next five to some observers – were all Usyk who threw more punches and landed the cleaner shots.

Fury won the final round in the eyes of this reporter scoring at home, but by then he needed a knockout to pull the match out of the fire.

The last round was an outstanding climax to an entertaining chess match during which both fighters took turns being the pursuer and the pursued.

An Olympic gold medalist and a unified world champion at cruiserweight and heavyweight, the amazing Usyk improved his ledger to 23-0 (14). His next fight, more than likely, will come against the winner of the Feb. 22 match in Ridayh between Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker which will share the bill with the rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol.

Fury (34-2-1) may fight Anthony Joshua next. Regardless, no one wants a piece of Moses Itauma right now although the kid is only 19 years old.

Moses Itauma

Raised in London by a Nigerian father and a Slovakian mother, Itauma turned heads once again with another “wow” performance. None of his last seven opponents lasted beyond the second round.

His opponent tonight, 34-year-old Australian Demsey McKean, lasted less than two minutes. Itauma, a southpaw with blazing fast hands, had the Aussie on the deck twice during the 117-second skirmish. The first knockdown was the result of a cuffing punch that landed high on the head; the second knockdown was produced by an overhand left. McKean went down hard as his chief cornerman bounded on to the ring apron to halt the massacre.

Photo (c): Mark Robinson

Itauma (12-0, 10 KOs after going 20-0 as an amateur) is the real deal. It was the second straight loss for McKean (22-2) who lasted into the 10^th round against Filip Hrgovic in his last start.

Bohachuk-Davis

In a fight billed as the co-main although it preceded Itauma-McKean, Serhii Bohachuk, an LA-based Ukrainian, stopped Ishmael Davis whose corner pulled him out after six frames.

Both fighters were coming off a loss in fights that were close on the scorecards, Bohachuk falling to Vergil Ortiz Jr in a Las Vegas barnburner and Davis losing to Josh Kelly.

Davis, who took the fight on short notice, subbing for Ismail Madrimov, declined to 13-2. He landed a few good shots but was on the canvas in the second round, compliments of a short left hook, and the relentless Bohachuk (25-2, 24 KOs) eventually wore him down.

Fisher-Allen

In a messy, 10-round bar brawl masquerading as a boxing match, Johnny Fisher, the Romford Bull, won a split decision over British countryman David Allen. Two judges favored Fisher by 95-94 tallies with the dissenter favoring Allen 96-93. When the scores were announced, there was a chorus of boos and those watching at home were outraged.

Allen was a step up in class for Fisher. The Doncaster man had a decent record (23-5-2 heading in) and had been routinely matched tough (his former opponents included Dillian Whyte, Luis “King Kong” Ortiz and three former Olympians). But Allen was fairly considered no more than a journeyman and Fisher (12-0 with 11 KOs, eight in the opening round) was a huge favorite.

In round five, Allen had Fisher on the canvas twice although only one was ruled a true knockdown. From that point, he landed the harder shots and, at the final bell, he fell to canvas shedding tears of joy, convinced that he had won.

He did not win, but he exposed Johnny Fisher as a fighter too slow to compete with elite heavyweights, a British version of the ponderous Russian-Canadian campaigner Arslanbek Makhmudov.

Other Bouts of Note

In a spirited 10-round featherweight match, Scotland’s Lee McGregor, a former European bantamweight champion and stablemate of former unified 140-pound title-holder Josh Taylor, advanced to 15-1-1 (11) with a unanimous decision over Isaac Lowe (25-3-3). The judges had it 96-92 and 97-91 twice.

A cousin and regular houseguest of Tyson Fury, Lowe fought most of the fight with cuts around both eyes and was twice deducted a point for losing his gumshield.

In a fight between super featherweights that could have gone either way, Liverpool southpaw Peter McGrail improved to 11-1 (6) with a 10-round unanimous decision over late sub Rhys Edwards. The judges had it 96-95 and 96-94 twice.

McGrail, a Tokyo Olympian and 2018 Commonwealth Games gold medalist, fought from the third round on with a cut above his right eye, the result of an accidental clash of heads. It was the first loss for Edwards (16-1), a 24-year-old Welshman who has another fight booked in three weeks.

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Fury-Usyk Reignited: Can the Gypsy King Avenge his Lone Defeat?

Published

3 days ago

December 20, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Fury-Usyk Reignited: Can the Gypsy King Avenge his Lone Defeat?

In professional boxing, the heavyweight division, going back to the days of John L. Sullivan, is the straw that stirs the drink. By this measure, the fight on May 18 of this year at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was the biggest prizefight in decades. The winner would emerge as the first undisputed heavyweight champion since 1999 when Lennox Lewis out-pointed Evander Holyfield in their second meeting.

The match did not disappoint. It had several twists and turns.

Usyk did well in the early rounds, but the Gypsy King rattled Usyk with a harsh right hand in the fifth stanza and won rounds five through seven on all three cards. In the ninth, the match turned sharply in favor of the Ukrainian. Fury was saved by the bell after taking a barrage of unanswered punches, the last of which dictated a standing 8-count from referee Mark Nelson. But Fury weathered the storm and with his amazing powers of recuperation had a shade the best of it in the final stanza.

The decision was split: 115-112 and 114-113 for Usyk who became a unified champion in a second weight class; 114-113 for Fury.

That brings us to tomorrow (Saturday, Dec. 21) where Usyk and Fury will renew acquaintances in the same ring where they had their May 18 showdown.

The first fight was a near “pick-‘em” affair with Fury closing a very short favorite at most of the major bookmaking establishments. The Gypsy King would have been a somewhat higher favorite if not for the fact that he was coming off a poor showing against MMA star Francis Ngannou and had a worrisome propensity for getting cut. (A cut above Fury’s right eye in sparring pushed back the fight from its original Feb. 11 date.)

Tomorrow’s sequel, bearing the tagline “Reignited,” finds Usyk a consensus 7/5 favorite although those odds could shorten by post time. (There was no discernible activity after today’s weigh-in where Fury, fully clothed, topped the scales at 281, an increase of 19 pounds over their first meeting.)

Given the politics of boxing, anything “undisputed” is fragile. In June, Usyk abandoned his IBF belt and the organization anointed Daniel Dubois their heavyweight champion based upon Dubois’s eighth-round stoppage of Filip Hrgovic in a bout billed for the IBF interim title. The malodorous WBA, a festering boil on the backside of boxing, now recognizes 43-year-old Kubrat Pulev as its “regular” heavyweight champion.

Another difference between tomorrow’s fight card and the first installment is that the May 18 affair had a much stronger undercard. Two strong pairings were the rematch between cruiserweights Jai Opetaia and Maris Briedis (Opetaia UD 12) and the heavyweight contest between unbeatens Agit Kabayal and Frank Sanchez (Kabayel KO 7).

Tomorrow’s semi-wind-up between Serhii Bohachuk and Ismail Madrimov lost luster when Madrimov came down with bronchitis and had to withdraw. The featherweight contest between Peter McGrail and Dennis McCann fell out when McCann’s VADA test returned an adverse finding. Bohachuk and McGrail remain on the card but against late-sub opponents in matches that are less intriguing.

The focal points of tomorrow’s undercard are the bouts involving undefeated British heavyweights Moses Itauma (10-0, 8 KOs) and Johnny Fisher (12-0, 11 KOs). Both are heavy favorites over their respective opponents but bear watching because they represent the next generation of heavyweight standouts. Fury and Usyk are getting long in the tooth. The Gypsy King is 36; Usyk turns 38 next month.

Bob Arum once said that nobody purchases a pay-per-view for the undercard and, years from now, no one will remember which sanctioning bodies had their fingers in the pie. So, Fury-Usyk II remains a very big deal, although a wee bit less compelling than their first go-around.

Will Tyson Fury avenge his lone defeat? Turki Alalshikh, the Chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority and the unofficial czar of “major league” boxing, certainly hopes so. His Excellency has made known that he stands poised to manufacture a rubber match if Tyson prevails.

We could have already figured this out, but Alalshikh violated one of the protocols of boxing when he came flat out and said so. He effectively made Tyson Fury the “A-side,” no small potatoes considering that the most relevant variable on the checklist when handicapping a fight is, “Who does the promoter need?”

The Uzyk-Fury II fight card will air on DAZN with a suggested list price of $39.99 for U.S. fight fans. The main event is expected to start about 5:45 pm ET / 2:45 pm PT.

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Unheralded Bruno Surace went to Tijuana and Forged the TSS 2024 Upset of the Year

Published

3 days ago

December 19, 2024

Arne K. Lang

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Unheralded Bruno Surace went to Tijuana and Forged the TSS 2024 Upset of the Year

The Dec. 14 fight at Tijuana between Jaime Munguia and Bruno Surace was conceived as a stay-busy fight for Munguia. The scuttlebutt was that Munguia’s promoters, Zanfer and Top Rank, wanted him to have another fight under his belt before thrusting him against Christian Mbilli in a WBC eliminator with the prize for the winner (in theory) a date with Canelo Alvarez.

Munguia came to the fore in May of 2018 at Verona, New York, when he demolished former U.S. Olympian Sadam Ali, conqueror of Miguel Cotto. That earned him the WBO super welterweight title which he successfully defended five times.

Munguia kept winning as he moved up in weight to middleweight and then super middleweight and brought a 43-0 (34) record into his Cinco de Mayo 2024 match with Canelo.

Jaime went the distance with Alvarez and had a few good moments while losing a unanimous decision. He rebounded with a 10th-round stoppage of Canada’s previously undefeated Erik Bazinyan.

There was little reason to think that Munguia would overlook Surace as the Mexican would be fighting in his hometown for the first time since February of 2022 and would want to send the home folks home happy. Moreover, even if Munguia had an off-night, there was no reason to think that the obscure Surace could capitalize. A Frenchman who had never fought outside France, Surace brought a 25-0-2 record and a 22-fight winning streak, but he had only four knockouts to his credit and only eight of his wins had come against opponents with winning records.

It appeared that Munguia would close the show early when he sent the Frenchman to the canvas in the second round with a big left hook. From that point on, Surace fought mostly off his back foot, throwing punches in spurts, whereas the busier Munguia concentrated on chopping him down with body punches. But Surace absorbed those punches well and at the midway point of the fight, behind on the cards but nonplussed, it now looked as if the bout would go the full 10 rounds with Munguia winning a lopsided decision.

Then lightning struck. Out of the blue, Surace connected with an overhand right to the jaw. Munguia went down flat on his back. He rose a fraction-of-a second before the count reached “10,”, but stumbled as he pulled himself upright. His eyes were glazed and referee Juan Jose Ramirez, a local man, waived it off. There was no protest coming from Munguia or his cornermen. The official time was 2:36 of round six.

At major bookmaking establishments, Jaime Munguia was as high as a 35/1 favorite. No world title was at stake, yet this was an upset for the ages.

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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