Original subtitles

[music playing]

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: 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.

[music playing]

RON HOWARD: The heroic nature of boxing

is something that's undeniable.

There is skill, there's expertise,

but there's always this possibility of tremendous loss.

DENZEL WASHINGTON: Boxing is just the anticipation.

It's one punch and it's all over with.

-A lucky punch can turn a guy into a star.

And being caught when he's not looking

could turn a star to a shadow of himself.

[music playing]

-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?

LOU DIBELLA: 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.

LOU DIBELLA: 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 dangerous sport there is.

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.

And people looked and 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 city called North Philly.

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's just got other meats in 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 normal family would be.

-The worst characteristics you could think of black life

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 which routinely would pick

on him, but also Mike was beaten by his mother.

His father was pretty much absent.

MIKE TYSON: My mother's very promiscuous.

It was just the way life was.

Everybody I knew had just their mother at home

or their mother's boyfriend.

Nobody was ever with his father.

I don't know that world.

My whole world is just lost 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,

you start to adopt certain 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 my mother being on welfare

because your mother was on welfare.

JOHN PFAFF: Childhood poverty oftentimes

leads to adult poverty, and you get locked in these ruts.

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.

They think they're gonna get 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.

BERNARD HOPKINS: 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.

We stayed around the school, 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.

MIKE TYSON: I stopped going to school

because people were kicking my ass.

I just walk around the school 'til school is over

because I didn't wanna get my ass kicked.

One day, these guys came around me.

Three or four guys.

They pinned me up against the wall and they say, hey.

Yo.

Got any money?

I said, no.

So the guy says this.

He said, uh, do you wanna fly with us?

And I didn't know him.

It's a kid, 10 or nine.

I'm saying, OK.

So I'm helping these guys to this building.

This is like an abandoned building.

And I see a box, and it's pigeons.

And pigeons are flying.

I said, what the hell.

Now I know there's a place to hang

out with birds and these guys.

So I said, OK.

I'd rather be there than be in school and get bullied.

So I went back to the coop.

I said, need me to do anything for you.

They said, yeah.

And he took me robbing houses.

And-- Whoa.

And he didn't give me much money,

but he bought me clothes.

He bought me clothes.

LARRY SLOMAN: There are a number of reasons, I think,

why he kind of embraced the thug life.

One of which is, if you have a community of people who

are watching your back, then you're going to be protected.

And now he's buying the coolest velour sweatsuits,

and he's buying ski goggles even though he's never been anywhere

near a ski slope, and he's buying the greatest kicks.

So now, status in that environment

is who looks the coolest.

-The role models that I've seen was the people in the street.

The pimps, the number writers, the hustlers.

They had the cars, they had the jewelry,

they had all the things that shine in your face.

As you grow up and you grow up fast,

you get to know what they're doing is not right, but got

them a lot of things and made them live different or better

than every working class person in the streets.

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: That's the situation

for a lot of young people out there.

They could step off the porch with all the values

in the world their mom gave them and dad can give them.

When they step off that porch into that den,

they've got to deal with it accordingly.

You can go out there and turn the other cheek if you want to.

All they're gonna do is hit you in the head

and take that earring too.

So you had to adapt.

Those that adapt well become predators out there themselves.

BERNARD HOPKINS: To me, it wasn't a hard choice.

I was the type of guy had no conscience of value of my life

and repercussions of what I do.

When you think that the value of your life

it's not that much concern on your actions,

then that is a time bomb waiting to blow.

CURTIS JACKSON: Ain't no rules.

You don't get disqualified for busting

a nigga over the head with something.

When you get hurt back, either your fear

consumes you or you become a bit insensitive.

Either you gonna be a punk, or you

gonna start to harden up a little bit following that.

However you handle yourself, you make it clear to people

that you don't have a problem with it.

Matter of fact, make them feel like you want the shit.

-In an environment that I grew up in, which was animal,

which was survival of the fittest, which was do or die,

you have to be strategic.

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: Very few of us

grow up in fear, because we live in this,

and we're taught early we can't be afraid of it.

Whenever we're confronted with an obstacle in the streets

of a physical nature, the first thing we think of

is how to dissect the obstacle.

-My dream started off with a coach

told me I could be the heavyweight champion

of the world.

And I asked him, what was it.

And he said, Muhammad Ali.

He said, do you know Muhammad Ali.

I said, yeah.

And he said, you could be just like that.

First goal was to be the Boys Club champ.

I wanted to be great, because I already know how it feels not

to be great, because I grew up in it.

In one fight, I became the Boys Club champ.

Every year, I would win the tournament.

DALTON CONLEY: Boxing's interesting in that it's

an escape from the violence and poverty

of many American neighborhoods, but you're

escaping through violence itself.

-People who fight fight their way out

of something, whether it's poverty, whether it's jail.

Rich kids don't fight.

Why the fuck would a rich kid fight?

Poor kids fight.

You want to fight your way to a different place.

AL BERNSTEIN: Boxing gives you a chance

to literally fight your way through it.

Boxers succeed based on their own work.

If you keep winning, and you keep succeeding, chances are,

eventually, you're going to get an opportunity.

GEORGE WILLIS: Boxing is the ultimate representation

of the American dream.

It allows someone who came from nothing to achieve greatness.

It's about his talent, his own skill,

and his own determination.

MARK WAHLBERG: Boxing is such a special sport.

I think most people don't choose boxing.

I think boxing chooses them.

Disadvantaged childhood, less fortunate kids

in tough communities.

And we grew up boxing at the Boys Club.

We were able to go there and we had somebody

who cared about us, who wanted to take us off the streets

and give us something to do.

-If you look at the history of boxing over time,

you'll see some of the cultures and ethnicities that

have suffered the most have always

produced the greatest champions.

DALTON CONLEY: Boxing both attracts and preys

upon talent from disadvantaged communities.

And it's almost like you can read a chart of history

of disadvantage, in the United States, at least, of which

groups are struggling to make it and then which groups have made

it when they disappear, really, from the boxing scene.

-Especially in America where you had the immigrants.

You had the Jewish boxers, the Irish boxers,

the Italian American boxers, African American boxers.

Now it's, I would say, predominantly

Hispanic boxers now.

LARRY SLOMAN: There's a certain generation

with Mike, and Evander, and Bernard.

Black kids who were disadvantaged

and saw boxing as a way out.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: I lived in an all black neighborhood

and everybody said white boys couldn't fight.

And that's my first time experiencing that people tell

you lies, because that kid was white and he beat me twice.

I told the coach that I quit.

Told him I didn't want to fight anymore, because I didn't think

you could actually be a champion if you lost.

So I went home told my momma I lost, and I told her I quit.

And she told me something that has impacted my life even now.

She said, son.

Everything is not gonna always go your way.

If you quit, you'll never reach your destination.

She said, what is your destination.

I said, be the heavyweight champion of the world.

Of course, I went back and I finally beat him,

and that fight kind of changed my whole aspect about winning.

MIKE TYSON: I kept getting in trouble with the law.

One particular time, I got in trouble

and I went upstate New York.

I had a reputation as a troublemaker there.

I had to be locked down most of the time.

I couldn't go outside with the rest of the kids.

Weekends, I would see guys go on the other side.

And I would say, what's going on,

because I would see guys coming back,

swollen eyes, busted nose, busted lips.

The most interesting thing about it is that they were happy.

When they would come back, they're all beat up,

but they're happy.

And I would say, what's going on over there.

And they said, Mr. Stewart is boxing with the inmates.

Mr. Stewart is probably 160 pounds, white Irish guy.

I never fought before with gloves on,

but I just knew I could beat Mr. Stewart's white ass.

I just knew I could beat him.

I'm just flaring away, and he had hit me in my stomach,

and I had went down, and I started

throwing up everything I ate for two days.

Just blech.

So I asked him to start teaching me.

He wouldn't teach me unless I started

behaving around the facilities.

And once I made my honor rolls and started doing well

in school, he started teaching me how to box.

-Bobby Stewart immediately saw the potential in Mike,

and Bobby said, if you're serious about this,

I'll take you to see this old guy in Catskill.

-Soon as Cus D'Amato saw me spar,

he was planning my life out for me.

First day he met me.

LARRY SLOMAN: Cus was a kind of gruff guy.

He didn't display any emotion.

At the end of this session, Cus turned to Bobby and said,

this guy's going to be the future heavyweight champion

of the world.

MIKE TYSON: At that time, I was about to be paroled back to New

York, and he didn't want me to go back because he believed

I would get in trouble, I'd get killed.

He asked me would I be interested in staying with him.

And I said, why, sure.

I didn't want to go back to the disgusting, wretched tenements

that we lived in.

This guy had a wonderful like 14 room mansion.

Roses and stuff.

I never saw that stuff.

LARRY SLOMAN: For the beginning of that period,

Mike was still living in two worlds.

While he was in Brownsville, he'd

fall in with his old friends and they'd

go out and start jostling.

Mike's first street mentor, this guy

Barqueem, I think they saw some pictures of Mike

with Cus and with Camille, and they looked, and he said, man.

Mike, these white people.

It looks like they love you.

And Mike said, yeah, yeah.

They love me.

And he goes-- Barqueem says, what are you doing here, man.

If I had white people that loved me,

I wouldn't stick around here.

And everybody in the neighborhood

is telling Mike, go.

Get out of here.

At least 30% of all the families in Brownsville at that time

had no father figures.

DAVID LEONARD: I think when we look at boxing,

we see a number of men who grew up

without a father in the home.

But what's key is, they grew up in circumstances

where the family was redefined.

The trainers became part of this larger extended family.

LARRY SLOMAN: Cus would tell Mike that he was a colossus.

He was a titan.

And he's telling him this and building up his ego

to a person who has absolutely no self esteem.

So it's a very tricky situation.

MICKY WARD: I heard about this heavy weight

that they were saying, this guy is dangerous.

He's from Cus D'Amato's camp and he was trained by Kevin Rooney.

When I finally seen him, I was like, man.

He was like-- He was going through fighters

like a hot knife on butter.

From that moment on, we knew he was special.

BERNARD HOPKINS: North Philly was known for a lot of fighters

back in the '60s, '70s, and in the '80s.

I got introduced to the amateurs, and I had the talent,

I had the skills.

But then as time went on, eventually I

started getting respect as a street fighter

and I shot away from boxing.

Every time I got stabbed, which was more than once, crazy

as it might seem, it gave more stock to who you are.

In 1984, I was put in jail for taking money.

At that time, I blamed the system

for everything, even for my ignorance.

That same year, my brother got in a fight and the guy

pulled a gun out.

He tried to run.

He got shot.

They couldn't find him because he ran down the street,

and when they found him, he was laying across the grass.

So can you imagine my mom?

It had to be hard on her to bury one son

and then get to see me being escorted by the sheriff's

department from prison to view the body

and then go back to prison.

So basically, she lost two sons.

So 1984 was a really challenging year.

[music playing]

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: 1984, Mike and myself,

we were both trying to make the Olympic team.

-There was a big emphasis placed back then,

especially on the idea of your amateur experience

and this Olympic experience.

It was very much a place where your worth

was going to be determined.

Holyfield and Tyson got an early taste

of what the other was about at the Olympics.

-That's when I got a chance to see him train.

I'm one of the guys who kind of prides myself on working hard.

And when I worked in the gym with him

and I'd seen all the things that he would do, I was just amazed.

I was like, god, you know?

Shoot.

17 years old.

He's just a kid, man.

He's the only person in a gym that I

can admit that I worked with.

I didn't think nobody was gonna beat him.

-Mike unfortunately lost to a guy named Henry Tillman.

Didn't make the Olympic team.

He was voted as an alternate.

MIKE TYSON: I went to the Olympic trials.

I didn't make the Olympics, but the experience

in going to the Olympics was just incredible.

Evander Holyfield, he was just very competitive,

because he was just very hungry.

Very hungry fighter.

And he fought.

It reminded me of me.

He was gonna win the most outstanding fight,

I thought, because he was knocking out everybody.

He was beating everybody easily.

ANNOUNCER: Evander Holyfield, United States of America.

Kevin Barry, New Zealand.

Holyfield came into the competition

the unknown American, but he's known now,

and he's only 21 years old.

Look at Holyfield.

He's ready.

He's got the opponent hurt again.

He's ready to put him away.

Even though there's no blood there.

Oh, there it goes.

You saw that.

It was inevitable.

Now wait a minute.

GEORGE WILLIS: Evander launches a lethal hook that drops Barry,

and everybody thinks, OK.

Fight's over.

Move on.

All of a sudden, the referee starts motioning to the judges.

He starts motioning to Evander, and nobody

knows exactly what's going on.

ANNOUNCER: He is going to disqualify Evander Holyfield.

GEORGE WILLIS: He makes the announcement

that Evander is disqualified for hitting after he called stop.

Nobody really heard the referee say stop.

All they saw was Evander drop the guy.

LOU DIBELLA: Holyfield got screwed royally.

He shouldn't have been disqualified against Barry.

It was a joke.

ANNOUNCER: Holyfield in total command of the fight.

And I just don't understand this ruling.

Look at Holyfield's face.

What an untoward development.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: Very conscious.

Controlling.

Controlling the anger.

Controlling the tongue.

I sit there and took it.

Howard Cosell made me bigger than life.

ANNOUNCER: This is unbelievable.

Holyfield holding himself together.

-A raging controversy had reared its ugly head.

Bill Simon, the president of the Los Angeles Olympic Committee

has gotten involved.

It really is a full blown controversy.

GEORGE WILLIS: He wanted that gold medal,

but by responding to it the way he did, not complaining,

showing a lot of grace, he probably

emerged from that Olympics as the most well known

of all those boxers, even the ones

that had won the gold medal.

That became his launching pad was the Olympics, while Mike

had to begin his pro career in obscurity.

MIKE TYSON: Cus got me into thinking

about the great fighters.

And every time I failed, I'd go read about their failures

and how they overcame their failures.

-Mike had a very high skill set, and he

had a profound understanding of boxing and boxing history.

And that's what made him special.

MICKY WARD: When he wanted to know something,

he'd sit there and watch numerous fights of guys

from the '50s, and '40s, and '30s.

He's like a boxing encyclopedia.

MIKE TYSON: What's the difference

between a good fighter and the great fighter?

It's how far they're willing to go

and how much they're willing to endure.

It's the hunger for the world.

You want to be that champion.

GEORGE WILLIS: Once you get to know Mike,

you know he was a very insecure human being and very insecure

fighter, so a lot of that tough guy image and a lot of the talk

and the brashness was basically to hide his own insecurities.

CRAIG JONES: Every time he went in the ring, he was scared.

It wasn't like he just knew he was gonna win.

But Mike also knew, when he looked in that opponent's eye,

he'd seen fear.

MIKE TYSON: Scared as I was fighting,

I realized these guys were more afraid of me

than I was of them, and that's when my whole game started

changing as far as my approach to fighting.

ANNOUNCER: Left hand almost drove

Richardson right through the canvas.

-I'd get all his early fights on ESPN

and he knocked everybody out in the first three second round.

So you looked at it and said wow.

-Anybody that wants to stay in the business for a long period

of time, like myself, I plan on staying in boxing.

I would like to box for at least a good 20 years,

because I love the game.

-You took care of business tonight.

Congratulations, Mike.

-Thank you, very much.

-I studied every fight that Mike fought

and told everybody, be quiet.

I'm watching.

Well, you know, because my whole thing,

I realized that was going to be the toughest fight in my life

if it happened.

This is the guy that I've got to face one day.

BERNARD HOPKINS: In prison, you have

a lot of energy that's bottled up.

From one way or the other, love it, don't love it,

agree to disagree, it has to be released.

After getting in a few fights, I built a reputation on the block

like I was building on the streets.

I was known, don't fight me.

You've got to stab me.

At home, you can hide, but in those institutions,

you have to see these people every day you wake up.

Someone is plotting for that vulnerability.

You gotta meet your fears every day.

Things going through my head was that I'd be dead

before I hit 18, or I'd be in prison all my life,

or that I'd be nothing.

As I got more mature in jail and I started watching

other people, I started saying to myself,

what's wrong with this situation.

I had to stop being ignorant.

I started doing research.

I seen something to me that really woke me up.

Prison is a business.

It's 50, it's $60,000 a year for one inmate.

How can I keep myself from being an employee of this business?

JOHN PFAFF: Oftentimes, the real problem with prison

is this stultifying boredom.

There's mountains of evidence that the supermax prisons where

you're in a cell by yourself 23 hours a day,

they literally drive people insane.

The people who leave are substantially

mentally harmed by the experience.

It's just not what we as humans are designed to handle.

I think that thing that gives you something to do,

to hold on to, can be a very powerful means of getting

yourself through the mind numbing tedium.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: They had an old gym with a ring,

with gloves, with sparring, and Smokey Wilson, AKA Michael

Wilson, continued to say, come on to the gym, man.

Come on to the gym.

Stop fighting on the black or you gonna go in the hole,

or you gonna get stabbed, or this an that.

So, all right, man.

All right, yeah.

I'll go to the gym.

And I sparred with one of the known, respected guys.

I didn't knock him out, but I gave him a boxing lesson.

And Smokey Wilson became my trainer.

I got a chance to get back into what I've deviated from

and used it to my advantage in the penitentiary.

It came to a thing where now, in prison, you bet on each other.

And I'm getting this reputation because now, the block,

the jail was buzzing.

I became the celebrity boxer in a penitentiary.

The boxing program was established

in 38 penitentiaries, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

And so we had boxing tournaments in jail.

In [inaudible], Rockview, Dallas, Graterford, Smithville,

Frackville.

We, on buses, escorted by guard with shot guns

from one prison to another.

I'm beating everybody in every penitentiary,

and I become the middleweight State Penitentiary champion.

I fell back in love with boxing again.

MARK WAHLBERG: Boxing is the sport

which all others aspire to be.

It's you and another guy, and who wants it more,

and who's got the heart, and the will, and the desire,

but it comes down to a lot more than that.

GEORGE WILLIS: The best combat is man against man.

I mean, since Roman times, the gladiators.

It's human nature for people to compete against each other.

AL BERNSTEIN: Sometimes I feel so guilty I'm a boxing fan.

I know on one level, I'm not supposed

to really be enjoying what I'm watching.

And yet on another, I can't control myself.

LOU DIBELLA: We're violent.

We're animals.

Like any other animal, there's a release

of aggression that comes with fighting.

There's a drama to it.

Boxing is theater.

If it's not theater, you're fucking up in presenting it.

MARY J. BLIGE: To be ringside, you're like wow.

This is amazing.

The part for me that stuck was, people

are literally fighting for their lives.

They're fighting for their families.

That's the thing that attracted me.

-It's an ancient, brutal, some would say barbaric sport,

but there's something very interesting

about the individuals who choose to try to perform at that level

and risk what they risk in the ring.

-It's raw.

It's something that appeals to our basic instincts

of survival or battle.

Nobody else is going in there with you.

You can't call timeout.

-It's like having a fight with blood.

A fighter doesn't care who his opponent is.

He my weight?

Bring him.

LOU DIBELLA: It's a different mentality.

They're a different breed.

Fighters know what they have to sacrifice and give

up to try to perfect their game.

A fighter learns from walking through the fire.

ANNOUNCER: Dwight Muhammad Qawi and Evander Holyfield

in their WBA Junior Heavyweight Title fight.

And of course, you remember Holyfield

with the controversial bronze medal

at the Olympic games in Los Angeles.

Since then, 11 successful pro bouts.

Is 11 enough for going up against someone

of the experience of Qawi.

[ding]

The bell rings and this is round one.

ANNOUNCER: And one of Evander's biggest challenges

here is going to be overcoming the psychological barrier

of going 15 rounds for the first time.

LOU DIBELLA: Just keeping your hands up for three minutes

and moving around the ring is tremendous exertion physically.

But running around for 15 rounds, three minutes a round,

throwing punches at a guy who's trying to hurt you, and getting

hit while it's all going on, there's just nothing like it.

ANNOUNCER: Qawi.

Holyfield is going for it.

He doesn't wanna go 15 rounds.

He's only in round three and he's using so much energy.

Qawi breathing very heavily, but he is relentless.

A left and a right combination again.

Boy, that combo has worked well for Holyfield,

but now a big left right left coming back from Qawi.

Holyfield, back against the ropes and sliding away.

Qawi's slipping an awful lot of those punches out.

He missed about 10 consecutive punches.

Qawi got underneath almost every punch from Holyfield

and came back and landed punches of his own.

You saw the smiling shrug.

And that is demoralizing to Evander.

He built up some energy for a flurry

and he got nothing out of it.

Just watching these two go at it,

there's no way that I could imagine this one going 15.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: Whatever I hit him with,

that guy never stopped coming.

ANNOUNCER: Now we're really going

to get to see what kind of shape Evander Holyfield is in.

He's only been to eight rounds once in his career.

Evander Holyfield started this fight very fast.

Won the first round in convincing and impressive

fashion.

But the grabs have gotten closer and closer since then.

Perspiration flying off the face of Holyfield as Qawi gets in.

And he looks a little slower and slower

as this fight moves along.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: When somebody's breathing on you,

and they have the right to hit you just as the right you have

to hit them, they become the toughest thing.

ANNOUNCER: A right left, right left combo to Holyfield!

Holyfield is staggering!

ANNOUNCER: He's gotta be feeling hurt right now!

ANNOUNCER: This is just trench warfare.

Right now, Dwight Qawi is winning it.

ANNOUNCER: The question is, who's

gonna get their second wind first?

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: And just like somebody putting

a mask over your head and put your hands behind your back

and throw you out into the middle of the ocean,

that's how tough this fight was.

ANNOUNCER: Round 11 Evander Holyfield's never gone this far

in his professional career, or in his career period.

Goes for the head, and a big, powerful right,

the likes of which we haven't seen

from Holyfield in a few rounds.

ANNOUNCER: I'm a little bit surprised that Evander has been

able to hang in there as well as he did.

He tired a little bit, but he's come back

and he's very much in the fight.

ANNOUNCER: Qawi's eyes are blood red.

He has taken numerous shots.

ANNOUNCER: Breathing very, very heavily.

Bloody in the mouth.

Evander has a tremendous heart.

It's a burning intensity.

ANNOUNCER: As these two try to chip away and chip

away at the stamina of each other.

ANNOUNCER: Both men showing unbelievable courage

and determination.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: I lost 15 pounds in that fight.

They were talking about my kidneys were messed up.

All I wanted to do is not die.

ANNOUNCER: Holyfield's eyes have that fire.

ANNOUNCER: He is officially a professional fighter.

He can go these 14, and he will be able to go the 15 rounds.

ANNOUNCER: Dwight Muhammad Qawi who yesterday called

Evander Holyfield mediocre would not

be saying that to us right now.

[dinging]

ANNOUNCER: And there's the final bell!

-I didn't die.

I made it to the land, and then they

gave me a bonus by giving me the belt.

ANNOUNCER: For the winner and new junior heavyweight champion

of the world, Evander Holyfield!

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: After that, I was

the light heavyweight champion.

But my goal.

I never forgot it.

My goal was to be the heavyweight champion

of the world.

-Evander Holyfield started as light heavyweight, which

is, you know, kinda like being the vice

president of the United States.

It's-- It's not-- You don't get a lot of attention.

-When you talk about boxing, for most people,

you're talking about the heavyweight division.

The heavyweight champion of the world is an icon.

ANNOUNCER: This is the event of the night.

The WBC championship of the world.

In the blue corner, with 27 wins, no defeats, 25 KOs,

he is the challenger, Mike Tyson!

And in the red corner, he is the WBC heavyweight champion

of the world, Trevor Berbick.

MILLS LANE: Any questions from the challenger or chief second?

-No, we're cool.

-Any question the champion or chief second?

All right, let's get it on!

Come on. ANNOUNCER: All right.

And with the word of Mills Lane, we're ready.

I don't know about you folks, but here at the Hilton Hotel,

there is electricity in the crowd.

Mike Tyson has trained his whole life for this.

And let's watch how quick Tyson will jump on Trevor Berbick.

You get the idea now that Berbick

is showing a little bravado here.

And Tyson clubs him with the left hand.

Look at this!

Combination!

And Berbick ready to go, but he stays on his feet.

Another right hand clips him.

He can't take shots like this very long.

And he gets [inaudible], and he's done!

As he stands right up, the count's

to four, and five, and six, and seven,

and eight, and he says he's OK.

-All right?

ANNOUNCER: Mills Lane let's them continue.

In comes Tyson again.

He knows he can hurt him any time.

Catches him with a right left hook, and he goes down!

He goes down!

He should be able to get up from this.

His legs maybe shot.

They are!

As Trevor Berbick falls back in the ropes,

I don't know if he's gonna be able to continue!

He's got the heart, but his body won't

let him do what his mind wants to.

And he's counted out.

It's all over.

We've got a brand new heavyweight champion

of the world.

Mike Tyson!

MIKE TYSON: That was the most exciting moment of my life.

People patting me on the back and saying, wow, you're great.

I never saw anybody like you before.

It was incredible.

How am I gonna articulate this?

All I did about being the champion and stuff,

this is very serious, since I was 13.

This isn't be like, hey, we're gonna

box and get some trophies, guys.

No.

Our purpose is to win and win in spectacular fashion.

[MUSIC PUBLIC ENEMY, "WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME"]

CURTIS JACKSON: Mike did something special.

He convinced me that no man on the planet could beat him.

You could get up and go to the bathroom,

come back, the fucking fight over.

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: Mike got a bad rep in the sense

that people concentrated on intimidation.

The only way you're intimidated is

because you seen him do something.

When you see somebody knock out 22 other people,

yeah, the 23rd guy may be a little intimidated.

LOU DIBELLA: He was unstoppable force of nature.

I mean, I still in my head have visions of Welcome

to the Terrordome being played where Tyson was walking

into the ring twitching with no socks on,

and the guy standing in the ring looked

like he was shitting his pants.

-Don King told him, every time that you knock somebody

out in the first round, I give you $100,000 in cash.

ANNOUNCER: And he's down again.

ANNOUNCER: He's not going to make it.

It's all over.

MARK WAHLBERG: First big fight I went to was a Tyson fight,

and there was nothing more exciting than that.

-He put on a show.

When the lights came on, Mike just knew, this is my moment.

Everybody's watching me right now.

-It was crazy in there.

Just great energy.

Unbelievable energy.

CRAIG JONES: Every time we'd get home, Mike said, well who came?

How did they look like?

He just wanted to know, what was the crowd like.

And it's hard to explain it to him.

You see Eddie Murphy, you see Donald Trump.

You see so many big people in the audience.

Like, if you was in that front three or four rows,

you were somebody.

-Tyson was superhuman.

He represented our culture.

He represented who we were.

Mike Tyson was a phenom.

Everybody heard about him.

-Mike Tyson represents in the community the American dream,

that anybody can make it if they have the determination.

MIKE TYSON: Cus put me in the mindset

that there's no room for everybody.

I need to suck all the air.

I need to reign with gods.

REPORTER: Do you ever stop to think about money?

MIKE TYSON: The stage of thinking about money

is far gone.

I don't have to worry about that no more.

I'm just having fun.

-They were able to sell Mike Tyson very effectively.

He delivered, of course, because he scored all these knock outs,

and you got this feeling of caged fury.

-In our era, what would boxing have been without Mike Tyson?

Could you say it would've been this exciting?

After Ali, people stopped liking boxing.

It don't bother me to say that I was in the right time,

with Tyson.

That's when the fire came back in the game of boxing.

BERNARD HOPKINS: When Tyson came in the game,

boxing became one of the most popular,

if not the popular sport outside the walls of Graterford.

We used to watch fights on ABC.

We used to watch fights on ESPN.

Alexis Arguello and the fighters that was hot.

And I'm like, yo.

I can beat these guys.

For myself to come out and be paroled to a halfway house,

I said to myself, I gotta make boxing work.

I knew that this is the only thing that I had to gamble.

-Most guys go back when you're in that situation.

When they lock you up when you're like 17,

and you get out when you're like 23, 24,

now you're thrown into the adult world

with no job skills, nothing but a record on your back.

Plus, little guy you seen on your block,

he comes past you in a brand new car with a gold chain

big enough for you to see your reflection in.

That's hard to deal with.

-When you go away, if you come back into the same environment,

around the same circumstances, around the same people

that you're comfortable making these decisions around,

and you have influences that make things easy for you to be

in a bad situation, temptation is great.

It's the same if you're trying not to be involved with drugs.

REPORTER: Because of its low price,

crack permeates the country, especially the inner cities.

-When the crack came into and flooded the streets,

it was just hard to say no.

The crack era affected everybody.

If you lived in that area where they sold it,

you were going to be involved.

-You're looking at your environment

and no one's helping you.

No one's doing anything.

Just feeding you the drugs, feeding you the alcohol,

feeding you the negative comments.

They're doing exactly what was done to you as a child,

so you have to shift and change your environment.

Do something.

Change something.

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: For Bernard to not violate parole

during that era, during that time, was the most impressive

to me.

He dealt with it, he came home, he was able to move forward.

He realized it wasn't the life for him.

He was gonna make sure it wouldn't happen to him.

-How can I beat the system?

I fought.

I worked.

I worked in a kitchen.

I worked on landscaping.

I did roofing.

I found some new people.

Those new people got me into boxing

as far as on the business side.

I was the only fighter to my knowledge

to take a team of trainers and go to Graterford,

and train and use that environment to remind me

where I came from.

AL BERNSTEIN: I think it speaks volumes about Bernard

and how he looks at life that he went back to prison

with his team, looked at the situation, and know,

this is what I do not want to fall back into.

-There were athletes who came along

who had better talent than Bernard.

There were athletes who came along

who had better positions, better situations.

His discipline has set him apart.

ANNOUNCER: And the new IBF middleweight

champion of the world, Barnard Hopkins!

BERNARD HOPKINS: I won my first title in 1994.

From there, I went on to defend the middleweight championship

for 11 years.

ANNOUNCER: Oscar de la Hoya is knocked out

by a left hook to the liver by Bernard Hopkins.

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: Bernard Hopkins

is our Ray Robinson of this era.

Those guys were cut from a different cloth.

The ones who could sustain.

ANNOUNCER: Tonight you have witnessed history.

Boxing's ageless warrior.

Bernard Hopkins!

-He became the oldest fighter to win a world title, at an age 48

when it's almost impossible to imagine a fighter doing this.

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: Bernard walked and kept

that middleweight weight for 20 title defenses.

20 title defenses.

That's gonna be a hard record to break.

-He's just always represented a hungry fighter that's

dedicated and put in a lot of work.

You can just tell he didn't get anything handed to him.

-Bernard Hopkins, to me, is a testament to the fact

that anyone can reshape their thinking,

can reshape their life, and continue

to live that reshaped life.

The Bernard Hopkins that I've known all these years

and the man who resurrected his life

is an absolute pillar of self discipline.

-What saved me was knowing that I can do this, and to be

able to do this in a penitentiary.

Those stages are critical, for me.

To be able to come through that era

and come through that time with the scars,

but I used it to motivate me in a different way.

It took time to get there.

-Bernard Hopkins is very lucky to have boxing

and to capitalize on it.

He had it, and then he took advantage of it.

People who don't have those options, it gets very bleak.

We've cut back on a lot of the educational options,

we've cut back on a lot of the facilities,

we've cut back on time out in the yard.

We've cut back on spots.

BERNARD HOPKINS: Energized inmates

use their energy in the right direction

by going to the boxing circle.

It releases energy that won't be released

on authority or on other inmates.

-Those kinds of programs are no longer

available in today's prisons.

Today's prisons are more about punishment

rather than recognizing the mistakes individuals may have

made and helping them grow from them.

JOHN PFAFF: Sometimes we completely perverse things.

In New York state, at least, the single most popular training

program in prison is barber school.

So you have thousands of men training

to be barbers in prison.

It's actually giving them a job to do while they're in prison,

providing actually a useful skill

they can use on the outside, only

they're not allowed to use it at all.

People on parole, ex-felons, can't be barbers.

Blanket ban for licensing.

Once you get into that system, we're actually setting you up

even more to fail down the line.

They just keep making it tougher and tougher,

and then shaking their heads in disappointment when they fail,

and making it tougher still.

DAVID LEONARD: Activist Angela Davis describes prisons

as this place where we don't make problems

disappear, we make people disappear.

We want to think of ourselves as never making mistakes,

and so when confronted with individuals who make mistakes,

we're forced to look in the mirror.

LOU DIBELLA: Muhammad Ali in his prime

was served by his character.

Mike Tyson didn't have that character.

He had tremendous ferocity, tremendous ability, god given

strength, but the people around him

weren't encouraging him to develop character.

They were enabling him, in a lot of ways, to destroy himself.

GEORGE WILLIS: His only real mentors

were his managers and his trainers.

They weren't really trying to teach him

a lot of social skills other than how to deal with media.

LARRY SLOMAN: People treat you differently when you're famous.

Fame really distorts your own perception of yourself.

-Just think.

Anybody in this planet with 6 billion

people-- 6 billion right?

Anybody in this planet, you could

beat them in a fair fight.

You tell me how that'd feed your ego.

LARRY SLOMAN: He starts buying all

these incredible sports cars.

He buys Bentleys, he buys Rolls Royces,

and he starts buying these mansions,

and of course, it's conspicuous consumption.

He's showing the world, look how far he's come.

MIKE TYSON: My life only existed through accomplishments.

You win this, you get this car.

You when this, you get this.

You win this, you get that.

BERNARD HOPKINS: And you have that much money,

everything's possible.

SPIKE LEE: The media was creating this image,

but Mike was helping them with the image

that he was just a savage, a wild man.

MIKE TYSON: I'll fuck you in your ass, you punk white boy.

I'll eat your asshole alive, you bitch.

I became a megalomaniac.

I thought I was a god.

If you were old enough, you may have seen some of my fights

and some of the things I said to people

or said about myself as some kind of demigod or something.

I'm a tyrannosaurus, man.

I'm a tyrannical titan.

I'm the best ever.

There's never been anybody as ruthless.

That's just the way I was trained

to fight to have that kind of belief system.

-We all heard those stories of people that have had nothing

and then had it all and didn't know how to handle it.

It's one thing to be able to have that drive and that desire

to become a champion, but to stay hungry

when you have that success, it becomes that much harder.

AL BERNSTEIN: We think of him as this monster with huge power.

And he did have power, but Mike Tyson was a small heavyweight

who needed to fight well to be effective.

A Mike Tyson that isn't perfectly conditioned,

and a Mike Tyson that isn't fighting the right style,

he's beatable.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome the challenger,

James Buster Douglas!

AL BERNSTEIN: No one expected Mike

Tyson to lose to Buster Douglas.

The odds were astronomical.

ANNOUNCER: Introducing the undefeated, undisputed

heavyweight champion of the world.

The one and only iron Mike Tyson!

AL BERNSTEIN: It was in Japan, and most news organizations

didn't even send anybody to cover the fight.

-Larry.

What are we about to see?

Another 90 second annihilation of an ill prepared opponent?

-Well, in the important game of expectations,

this fight is over before it begins or soon thereafter.

You have to remember that just nobody believes

anybody can compete with Mike Tyson.

ANNOUNCER: And there, of course, is Evander Holyfield

who has a guarantee of $12 million

to fight Mike Tyson in June.

AL BERNSTEIN: Everyone was looking forward

to Mike Tyson fighting Evander Holyfield.

I watched the Douglas Tyson fight

with Donald Trump and his executives.

They were expecting that Tyson Holyfield

fight to be on one of their properties

and would be a major event for them.

LARRY SLOMAN: Mike went kicking and screaming to Tokyo.

He thought, I knocked out guys that beat Buster Douglas, so

why do I have to train for Buster Douglas.

So he got there and he didn't train.

And he instead enjoyed all the fruits of young Japanese women

there.

GEORGE WILLIS: Buster had nothing to lose,

and he was training his heart out.

Evander saw this and he knew trouble

might be on the horizon.

ANNOUNCER: Douglas is getting Mike Tyson to reach in.

When you reach in, that's what happens.

ANNOUNCER: That's a good right hand, and a good right

uppercut, and two more good rights by Douglas.

I don't think I've ever seen Tyson absorb that kind

of a four or five punch combination

before in his professional career.

And he has swelled up Mike Tyson's eye

and is dominating the fight right now.

AL BERNSTEIN: It was a perfect storm of events.

It was Mike Tyson not taking Buster Douglas as seriously

as he should have, and it was Buster

Douglas preparing himself correctly.

ANNOUNCER: Brawling willingly just

to try to get in the shot that will finish things.

ANNOUNCER: Oh, the uppercut!

ANNOUNCER: What an uppercut by Douglas, and down goes Tyson!

Down goes Tyson.

-Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine!

ANNOUNCER: He's-- Well, it-- It's over!

ANNOUNCER: It's over!

ANNOUNCER: Mike Tyson has been knocked out!

Unbelievable!

LOU DIBELLA: There are a lot of lessons

fighters learn the hard way.

Every fighter comes to know the fact

that this is an unforgiving sport.

ANNOUNCER: And suddenly, Mike Tyson

has been reduced to being another heavyweight champion

who got defeated.

LOU DIBELLA: There's no other sport where

you can rise and fall so quickly.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: When I became the heavyweight champion

of the world for the first time with Buster Douglas,

people hated the fact.

ANNOUNCER: [inaudible] Holyfield-- right

hand stuns Douglas!

ANNOUNCER: Caught him going in!

He is not going to get up.

There goes the heavyweight championship of the world!

ANNOUNCER: Evander Holyfield with a third round knock out!

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: They said, you can't get no credibility.

Man, you still ain't the champ.

You ain't beat Tyson.

REPORTER: An Indiana grand jury has indicted

former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson.

He is charged with raping a woman who

was a contestant in this summer's

Miss Black America pageant.

REPORTER: Within the past hour, the jury

has returned for indictments.

One for rape, two charges of criminal deviant conduct,

and one charge of confinement.

-If I was in here for something that I did, it would be easier,

but just the fact that I'm in here for something I didn't do

and I'm innocent, every day I'm walking

a thin line through hell.

I thought prison was for the rehabilitation

of men or women, so to speak.

That's what I always thought.

That's what they always say.

We send you here and we rehabilitate

you so you won't do it again.

People come out of prison, they come out in worse condition

than they was when they first entered.

ANNOUNCER: In the lackluster heavyweight division, even

without his crown, Tyson is still the man.

Promoters even courted him at the prison,

hoping to share an estimated $100 million payday.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: Waiting for my opportunity

to get a chance to fight him, there's a lot of writers,

in general, that think that really he's the champ.

But realistic, I am the champ.

I have the belt.

REPORTER: Long before dawn, news helicopters

hovered over the state prison, and cameras were ready.

Hundreds of them from around the world.

Tyson issued a written statement.

I'm very happy to be out and on my way home.

I will have more to say later.

GEORGE WILLIS: It was viewed as good versus evil.

The good was Evander.

The good Christian guy who talks about the lord and things

like that, versus Mike, who at that time

was the ex-con convicted rapist.

But Evander was perceived to have no chance against Mike.

When the fight was first announced,

Evander was a 25 to one underdog.

I mean, that's huge odds.

For anybody to be 25 to one is like, they've got to shot.

[ding]

ANNOUNCER: As expected, Mike Tyson comes out fast.

-Don't push, don't push, don't push.

Let's go.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: I'm from the hood too.

I may not act like I'm from there, but I'm from there.

Tyson never did insult me.

But the press did.

They talking about, Tyson gonna kill you.

ANNOUNCER: As we head for the bell.

[dinging]

They continue to go after the bell!

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: Ain't nothing that he

was gonna do that I'm not accustomed to.

ANNOUNCER: No intimidation factor here whatsoever.

-Great!

Step easy.

Back.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: I knew he was gonna be tough,

but I had watched him my whole life.

It was almost like, this is the fight.

ANNOUNCER: The crowd behind Holyfield.

CROWD: (CHANTING) Holyfield!

ANNOUNCER: Chants of Holyfield as the crowd sensing

that Holyfield might have Tyson in trouble.

-Mike just wore down from not being able to hurt Evander,

and that was something that he had never experienced before.

ANNOUNCER: Tyson in trouble!

Tyson's ready to go!

[inaudible] stops the fight, and Holyfield has the win!

ANNOUNCER: I can't believe what I'm seeing.

It's the most unbelievable thing I've

ever been privileged to witness.

BERNARD HOPKINS: It was one of the most

complete fights I ever fought.

AL BERNSTEIN: That was Holyfield's greatest

achievement.

Evander Holyfield ended up being in some of the largest

pay per view matches in the history of the sport,

but it took him a long time to get there.

LOU DIBELLA: Evander Holyfield was not just a good fighter.

He was a great fighter.

He's an underrated heavyweight in my mind.

Very arguably belongs in the top 10 heavyweights of all time

even though he was a little guy.

Started as a cruiser weight.

Tyson.

I don't think he became what he could've been.

DAVID LEONARD: Boxing, as we imagine it,

is driven by a desire to annihilate the opponent.

The focus is on the external.

Looking at what boxers themselves say

is that it's about the internal.

It's about the discipline.

It's about the craft.

That it's not about the opponent.

It's not about the external, but it's about the internal.

It's about self.

MICKY WARD: When you win, everybody wins.

When you lose, you lose alone.

And that's the truth, because you

have to deal with that by yourself.

LOU DIBELLA: There's a large degree to which the fighter

that achieves stardom, super stardom, they

represent the American dream to people.

They, the underdog that makes it.

But I gotta be honest with you, I

think a lot of that's greatly overstated.

Mike Tyson, the biggest athlete by far

of the 1990s, and biggest athlete of the 1990s,

and certainly a super star boxer,

suffered a lot of ups and downs and was never really protected

by the people that surrounded him

for the majority of his career.

MIKE TYSON: My self worth, even when I was a child,

depended on how much I could hurt someone.

And as I got older and I met Cus, that, well,

it continued to be how many people I could knock out,

how fast I could knock them out, how bad I could hurt them.

And so it just stayed on that path.

LOU DIBELLA: The kid doesn't have a normal home environment,

doesn't have a normal support system around him,

and then he's basically trained to be a fighting machine.

His life was crazy.

Tyson was a pit bull.

The ear biting incident was a check out.

Mike was messed up.

I'm sure he'd be the first one to tell you that.

MIKE TYSON: You have to understand, this is just what I

did, seven years of my life, eight years of my life.

My greatest moment was when I stopped boxing.

It was just dark for me.

Boxing got real dark for me.

ANNOUNCER: A stunned crowd here at the MCI Center in Washington

DC as McBride defeats Mike Tyson, who quits on his stool.

-I got an ability to stay in shape,

but I don't got the fighting guys, I don't think, anymore.

REPORTER: When did you recognize that?

At what part of the fight?

-I don't know.

Early into the fight.

I'm just sorry I let everybody down.

I mean, I just don't have this in my heart anymore.

REPORTER: Did you feel as though you

had it coming into the fight?

-No.

I'm just fighting to take care of my bills, basically.

DALTON CONLEY: We know from studies of lottery winners,

of professional athletes, anyone who

comes into a sudden windfall of money,

be careful what you wish for, because that

creates more problems.

You have everybody coming out of the woodwork

to try to get a piece of your action.

REPORTER: Tyson has pulled in an estimated $300 million.

He could have made more if he hadn't

racked up the prison time.

And who knows how much he's lost in lawsuits or to the managers

he claims ripped him off?

The bottom line, Tyson then, $300 million.

Tyson now, chapter 11.

-It's a sport where you can be used.

There's no training about how to handle

yourself outside the ring.

Very few boxers are taught about how to handle their money.

-If you don't have a good team of people around you,

you will kill yourself.

You will crash and burn, because every level of success

you have, you hit a wall that you have to learn more.

LOU DIBELLA: I will always wonder why Mike Tyson didn't

declare bankruptcy years before his tax issues became crushing.

I mean, he clearly was bankrupt.

Why didn't he declare bankruptcy?

Because it was in people's interests to keep his contracts

alive with those he was doing business.

-Days after filing for bankruptcy,

boxer Mike Tyson has filed suit against his former promoter,

Don King.

-Don was-- I mean, he knew everybody.

It's like he was a step ahead of us.

How could you prepare for something like that?

You don't know who's trying to take

from you, who loves you, who likes you.

You don't know if somebody's trying to set you up.

-Even when you play by the rule book,

you find a person that has that same energy that the person had

that was trying to rob you, but they won't even give you

courtesy of pointing a gun at you.

They'll rob you and do it in black and white.

And I seen people do worse things to you

in corporate settings than I seen them do on the street.

Take everything from you.

BERNARD HOPKINS: There are bottom feeders that will attach

themselves with their law license,

with their business savvy to a fighter from Brooklyn, New

York, Philly, or any other place that

don't have really the education.

REPORTER: 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.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: 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.

BERNARD HOPKINS: 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.

REPORTER: 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.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: 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.

AL BERNSTEIN: 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.

LOU DIBELLA: 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.

LARRY SLOMAN: 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.

FRANCISCO AGUILAR: 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.

BERNARD HOPKINS: 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.

MAUREEN SCHAFER: 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.

LOU DIBELLA: 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.

GEORGE WILLIS: 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.

FRANCISCO AGUILAR: 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.

LOU DIBELLA: 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

that there's no standardized health and safety

criteria in the United States.

Think about that.

It's preposterous.

LARRY SLOMAN: It's high time that boxing began to regulate

just like other pro sports like the NFL.

-When there's no checks and balances, there's a problem.

MAUREEN SCHAFER: When you see the people who

come from nothing, who come from less than nothing,

to see them perform and to see them give

such great entertainment is an amazing thing.

But as important as it is for us to celebrate them

at the top of where they are, it's as important

that we figure out how to carry them

when they need us the most.

LOU DIBELLA: There are some great success stories

and some great stories of those who

escape prison, escape the street and make it.

But for every one of those guys, there's a sad story

and there's a story of someone who's exploited,

or a story of someone who loses their health in the long term,

or a story that somebody who becomes a champion

and toils for years, and then winds up

retired with virtually nothing.

It's the American dream and it's the American nightmare.

MIKE TYSON: When I'm over here and I'm looking at the Vegas

strip, I can think about all the trouble I got in over there.

All the drugs I used there.

I never even think about all the great fights I had there.

I just think about all the things

I did there, wasn't really moral.

All I did is knock people out, screw people,

have sex with women, get high on drugs.

When me and my wife first got together,

I was a full blown addict.

My daughter passed away at four years old.

What happened was a tragic accident at home.

That's my lowest point.

When I was at the hospital, I realized

that other people's children were dying too.

And those people, just because I'm famous,

they took out of their way, left their dying children,

their sick children, came over here and prayed with me.

Then I realized, well, hey.

Their baby's dying too.

So what makes you so important that you think you should

be mad and angry, want to kill somebody,

and do-- just do this whole tough guy

stuff because your baby's dying?

Their baby's dying too, and they left

them to come over here and talk to you.

You ain't shit, motherfucker.

You don't care about nobody.

These people left their fucking baby

to talk to your no good fucking ass.

And, um, that's just what it was.

And it's not about me.

The world's bigger than me.

My wife, she stayed by me and said,

we're gonna get through this.

Just kept it very positive.

Constantly positive.

I just wanted to change.

I wanted to break the chain of self bondage

that my mother and father and her mother and father

probably had.

And I wanted it to change with me so my kids wouldn't have

to deal with that same suffering.

I'm so happy to be involved with the recovery world.

I met a bunch of people that were just amazing people.

They didn't quit on me.

They didn't give up on me like the rest

of the people in my life.

It's an ongoing struggle.

The pain never goes away.

I'm never in a situation that I'm so secure that I could

never fall back into that nasty, dirty, disgusting, wretched

individual that I once was.

I never think that guy's gone totally.

It's time now where I have to deal with things

from a serious perspective, and how me and my family

are gonna evolve from that perspective.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: He had to make adjustments.

Adjustment's part of life.

Disappointment.

That's the biggest fight.

You want to see how strong somebody is?

Have them get disappointed.

ANNOUNCER: It's over.

That's it.

It is over.

ANNOUNCER: That's it.

ANNOUNCER: Evander Holyfield has never been knocked out,

and Riddick Bowe is the one to do it.

ANNOUNCER: If I was Holyfield or any of his team members,

I'd really have to reevaluate if he's fit to continue to fight.

With all the health problems and the heart conditions,

is Evander Holyfield just completely done?

We don't know.

BERNARD HOPKINS: My mother passed

before I fought Mike Tyson.

My brother passed before I fought Riddick Bowe.

I had a lot of tragedy in my family and stuff.

So, you know, you have to put them behind.

ANNOUNCER: And the continuing life

in the ring of Evander Holyfield.

Don't count me out yet, he says.

And tonight, with some new gas in the tank.

LOU DIBELLA: Evander Holyfield was an all time great.

But Evander didn't understand that the shell life

of a fighter is limited.

ANNOUNCER: We may be seeing the end of an era.

And I think they throw in the towel.

LOU DIBELLA: I think he was forced to fight way too long.

Fights at the end of his career are for virtually no money.

GEORGE WILLIS: Evander is very confident in what he believes.

His stubbornness can be his greatest

asset and his greatest liability.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: I didn't get into boxing for money.

I got into boxing because I wanted to be the very best.

I'm the only person who's been the heavyweight champion

of the world five times, because I got that many opportunities.

Everybody's gonna get off the path,

but the point is to get back on it.

Forgive yourself and get back on.

REPORTER: Evander Holyfield has faced plenty of opponents

in the ring, but nothing like this.

Together with his friend and financier Yank Barry,

they plan to deliver food aid and help

resettle Syrian refugees in a home

supplied by Barry's charity.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: Yank Barry used

my likeness to draw the people.

I was on my last leg, but this man gave me an opportunity

to fight back these people who were

taking my memorabilia and all this.

He did it himself.

GEORGE WILLIS: I think Evander has come to that realization

that he needs to be Evander Holyfield and not necessarily

Evander Holyfield, four time heavyweight champion

of the world.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: If it wasn't for that Boys

Club and other people who had money who sponsored me

as a kid, I wouldn't be who I am.

The work that I'm doing now with Global Village,

that's what life is really about.

I go to Heaven, they ain't gonna be asking me,

how many times you became the heavyweight champion

of the world.

He's gonna ask, what did you do for the people.

The reason why you exist in the world is to help somebody.

Not just for yourself.

-One of my best friends was Muhammad Ali.

Muhammad's health started failing

and I had to pick a new goodwill ambassador.

It was Evander.

And Evander brought in Mike.

-He brought-- You bought him in?

-Yep.

-Evander Holyfield has been very gracious with Mike.

Mike bit a portion of his ear off.

that takes a lot of compassion, a lot of love in your heart,

to forgive someone.

-If you forgive, then you'll have peace.

You won't have people fighting each other all the time.

That's what makes the world go around is people forgive.

-What did you think when Evander called you and said,

I want you to get involved in this project.

-Well, it's not like I was doing anything, of course.

You know?

I said, hey, um, yeah.

OK.

-Well, Mike always talked about that he never

wanted to be involved in the sport again.

But now that he's resurrected himself,

you see him going back to boxing,

establishing his own promotional company to not only help

the young boxers develop into good boxers,

but to help them not make some of the bad choices

that he made.

LOU DIBELLA: I was very critical of Mike.

I'm happy to see him at a place where

I think he's much more at peace, and at a better

place in his life than I've ever seen him.

The Mike Tyson that's there right

now is an honest guy trying to do the best he can

to be happy and live a good life.

GEORGE WILLIS: His core love of boxing stems from the amateurs.

That's when it was all about the love of the game.

It wasn't so much about money.

And that's when boxing and the sport is at its purest.

AL BERNSTEIN: It's the adversity that you face as a boxer that

really brings out the true champion.

Bernard, and Mike, and Evander, all of them

have faced that kind of adversity.

Inside the ring, to be sure, but outside the ring as well.

And I don't think we can measure the arc of some of these people

until we see them go through the adversities.

And when they do, it takes a lot to come back from it.

The one thing that I think keeps them coming back,

both in the boxing ring and in life,

is the fact that boxers have perseverance.

-I'm on a different mission now that some ain't gonna like.

And they shouldn't.

What I would like to do in my second half of life

is to raise what they would perceive

to be hell amongst the people that want to keep

a society of prey to exist so they can take advantage

of the backs, and blood, and tears of a fighter.

-We need to start thinking about things in the long term,

and I think some of that responsibility

falls on those that interact with the fighters on a more day

to day basis.

There's one particular fighter that has really stepped out

in front, and that's Bernard Hopkins.

BERNARD HOPKINS: Being a part of Golden Boy Promotion, what

I want to do is to take every fighter that comes through me.

You've got to have your own account.

You've got to have your own attorney.

You've got to know what the business is about.

-This was the sport of kings.

This sport changed history, man.

This sport had more to do with the advancement

of the civil rights movement than any other sport.

From Jack Johnson to Joe Lewis to Muhammad Ali.

This is a sport that is ingrained in the fabric

of this country.

I think that a resurgence is possible,

but there has to be some changes made.

NAAZIM RICHARDSON: The ultimate opponent for a fighter

is truth.

If he can be truthful with himself,

if he can look at his limitations and then

work on them.

If he can understand what he does well and then enhance it.

But he has to deal in truth.

-When you lose, you can only blame yourself.

Go back and just look at what you did wrong.

It's the ones that know how to lose, and make yourself better,

and come back.

That's boxing.

BERNARD HOPKINS: In boxing, you have to have challenges,

and you use those challenges to take it to a different level.

I'm a fighter.

I'm that type of guy that could've been anything else

in my life if I chose to be that.

We all have talent in us.

You just gotta find it.

EVANDER HOLYFIELD: Everybody's tested in one way or another.

It ain't easy.

Your priorities gotta be lined up.

I have just as many distractions as somebody else.

but I really wanted to be great.

Victory is how you're able to inspire

people to want to be better.

MIKE TYSON: This all comes down to family,

love, and forgiveness, and respect.

Bridging the gaps between who I am and who I want to be.

I'll find different ways of becoming

more conscious about myself.

Human beings think a lot of themselves, you know.

To think that we'll be that privileged to see

the end of the world.

I don't think we're gonna have that privilege.

I know there's things that have been bad,

but you have to look at all the good that's happening out here.

I see a new birth in the world.

I see people respecting people more.

We have to evolve.

This is a great world, and it's the best deal

we ever got in our life, you know.

Life itself.

We got it for nothing.

Look at all we got in return.

[music playing]