The Gloves

THE OLD LION

Hey, you the stranger said, I want to fight. Come on.

I don’t know, I said, glancing over at Milton.

What’s the matter? the stranger said. You won’t spar black guys? Let’s go.

Well, what do you weigh? I stalled.

The stranger approached and glared into my face. The wide sclera riming his eyes made them wild, and his stare focused a little past my head.

What do you weigh? he said, still staring at some point past me. He was a black man of average height, broad through the shoulders and chest.

I’m one twenty-five.

I’m one thirty, he said. Let’s go.

I looked to Milton for help with this scary black man. Bored with the game, the man shoved past me and began to work the floor.

Do you know who that is? Milton whispered as we watched the man spank the double-end bag.

I shook my head.

That’s Curtis Summit.

I shrugged. The name Curtis Summit meant nothing to me. I studied him again; he looked a hell of a lot bigger than 130 pounds.

That guy’s not one thirty is he, Milt? I asked after Curtis left (after demanding sparring from me for the next day on his way out). I prayed that he wasn’t.

No, Milton scoffed, he’s a middleweight.

Is he a pro?

Yeah, he used to be a contender but now … I think he’s a little punch-drunk. He says he’s going to be training here, but I don’t know. There’s something a little off about him. And he’s trying to make a comeback.

How old is he?

Thirty … eight?

And he’s making a comeback?

Yeah. He thinks he has one last shot in him. I was going to put him in with Efrain, but … a hard right from one of these kids and …

I didn’t credit Milton’s sudden humanitarian impulse, but there certainly did seem to be something “off” about the old man.

Over the next few weeks I saw, and heard, much more of Curtis Summit.

Milton, you fucking albino, why are your guys hiding from me? I talk too much? I bet you won’t do much talking with my left nut in your mouth. Your guys spend a lot of time hiding in the bathroom, Milton. What the hell are they doing in there? I’m going to knock them out, one in every round, stretch them out on the ground, one after the other. I’m gonna leave you with an empty gym, Milton.

He grinned a fixed white-toothed smile. I wondered about this man, who shoved me every time he passed by, who shoved everybody, Stella included, and gave his wild-eyed glare.

Man, I’m tired of listening to this gangsta shit, he said, flinging the DMX CD to the floor. He put on a tape of early eighties funk and Florida hip-hop, music that dated him.

Now that’s more like it. He nodded approvingly. Hey, Einstein [to me]! You ever hear this good stuff. Probably not. You probably listen to that cracker-ass James Taylor shit.

I’ve heard this, Curtis, I said. I’m almost as old as you. Almost.

Suck a fat one, boy. You ain’t going to live to get as old as me, Einstein. If you get in the ring with me now, this’ll be your last day in the world. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of your mama tonight. Hey, Stella. Stella! I’m gonna bring some Chicago girls in here to kick your ass.

I’m ready, Stella said. Bring ’em on.

Or up in Victor’s face.

C’mon, kid, let’s go.

I got to warm up first, Vic muttered.

How you gonna warm up, you gonna do some Jane Fonda aerobics? Let’s go.

No way, nigga.

Nigga? Nigga? Curtis glared around the gym, then back at Vic. How come you got to call that in front of all these white folks? You got no call to talk to me like that in front of these crackers.

Vic shifted uncomfortably, not knowing if he was required to respond, fight, run, if this man was joking, punch-drunk, insane.

In one of his fights, Julian said, Curtis knocked the guy out, and then, when he was lying on the ground, Curtis got down too and started wiggling around.

Julian chortled.

That must have been a big fight for him to do that, Milton said.

That was Igor Pedrozza, Curtis shouted, Thirty-two fights, thirty knockouts. You beat somebody like that, then come to me. Then you’re a boxer.

The intensity that we recoiled from.

When my time came to move with the old man, he took it as lightly as I did with some of Milton’s girls, letting me throw until my arms flopped, complimenting me when I caught him solid, cuffing me to keep me at a distance. My fists glanced off granite as he smiled. Afterward he worked pads with Milton. Screaming at him after a few minutes, always volatile.

I want you to respect me, Milton. You got to show me respect in here.

I do respect you.

You got me moving only one way. You got to show me more respect.

It’s only the first round. We’ll get there.

Afterward in admiration, Milton said, That old man can still move, huh? When he was in with you, he was jumping around like a jackrabbit.

Curtis shoved me into the doorway as he left for the night.

Next time we spar, I’m going to knock you out. Cold and dead.

Then I’m not going to spar you, I said.

I want to come see you fight, kid, he said. You’re scrappy.

The Supreme Team gathered around the television in the studio, a tape of Mark Breland fighting Aaron Davis for the title in 1990, long and lank Breland, chin suspect after his boxing decades (Davis knocked him down with an early jab. A jab). Breland pulled away in the late rounds on technique and the advantage of his elongated arms. By the ninth round, Davis’s face was wrecked, bleeding, his eyes closed by swollen tissue. The doctor examined him between rounds, let the fight continue. We gathered closer, the moment coming. Breland missed with a jab, and Davis caught him dead with a wild right hand, lucky punch, as he could barely see, and Breland dropped. The falling body, orgasmic flash, we rewound, rewound, “Oh, shit!” On the canvas, Breland’s eyes were closed.

You know, Milton said, Curtis fought Davis in the fight before this. He beat him, but he got robbed on the decision. I mean, he clearly beat him.

Would he have beat Breland? someone asked.

Oh, yeah, he would have beat Mark Breland. No question.

This guy thinks he can get in with the top champions, Milton told the middleweights, with Trinidad and De La Hoya. He can’t handle that kind of competition. I want you guys to knock him around and send him into retirement for good. You’ll be doing him a favor.

I’m just here for a month or two, Curtis told me. This is just for me to start to get sharp again. This ain’t serious. When I start getting into top form, I’m gonna go over to Gleason’s and take a step up. See what’s out there.

Milton pushed his cubs against the old lion. Over a month of daily workouts Curtis grew hard; the little belly he brought to the gym transferred to his chest and forged into an iron plate. Fast on the double-end bag, short punches, a brawler.

It’s a head thing, Milton told his fighters. You can’t let him intimidate you. That’s what he did to Vic. He got into his head. He pushed him around. You got to stand up to him. Don’t give him that advantage.

That motherfucker’s so dirty! Will complained, voice cracking.

Will doesn’t want to get back in with him. Milton smiled. The last time they sparred, Curtis hit him in the kidneys and behind the head.

That guy is corny! Will shouted. I can’t believe his shit!

Will seemed truly aggrieved.

He’s trying to impose his will on you, Milton said. That’s his whole game. You can’t let him.

At thirty-eight, Curtis was old enough to have fathered most of the fighters in the gym. Over time I began to appreciate that underneath the bluster, Curtis was a kind and gentle man (if “gentle” is an appropriate term for someone who tells you to suck on his left nut every five minutes). The relationships began to shift, for all of Milton’s talk of knocking him into retirement. The younger fighters questioned him about his travels, career, the game he’d been in for almost two decades. He offered advice on everything from management to ring strategy.

In a fight, Curtis told Will, I’ll be telling a guy, “When you go back to your corner, your people are gonna tell you what to do. But you ain’t gonna do it. I ain’t gonna let you do it.” It’s all mental in there.

He just doesn’t give a shit, no matter who you are, Julian said. That’s the thing I really respect about Curtis. He’ll say shit to anyone.

And no more talk from Milton of beating the old man into retirement. That would take a little more than we could give.

The banter edged into play as we tried to see what would come out of Curtis next.

I want to film you sparring Will, I told him, get it on tape.

Me sparring this guy? Curtis made a disdainful gesture. That’ll be a short film. I’ll knock him out so fast it’ll be a white screen.

You ain’t knocking anybody out, old-timer, Will said.

Oh, yeah? I’ll bet you twenty dollars I’ll knock you out in three rounds.

He pulled a bill from his pocket.

We can put it right up on the corner of the ropes.

And then what will you do? Will asked.

Then I’m gonna piss in your face, that’s what I’m gonna do. You’ll be so out of it you won’t even notice. You better have a bucket around.

And then what? asked Will, who seemed delighted by Curtis’s display.

Then I’m gonna put another twenty up there and do it again. You out of all the guys in here because of how your man, the albino, been talking about you.

You know what I’m gonna do to you? Will said.

You ain’t gonna do nothing! You couldn’t hit me if I closed my eyes.

Curtis’s cell phone message featured the announcer, Michael Buffer, intoning his famous phrase: “Let’s get ready to rumble! Tonight’s main event features WBC Intercontinental Champion Curtis ‘Rude Dog’ [sound of hound baying] Summit!”

I met Curtis at the health club where he taught a boxing class. The club was a few blocks away from Revolution and was everything Revolution aspired to: big, shiny new and packed with limber bodies (and the occasional crone trying to will herself twenty-five with makeup and corsets). Curtis met me in the lobby, invigorated by his class, wild eyes locked down behind his visor shades.

Nice setup you got here, Curtis, I said.

It’s all right, he said. I owe this to Stephan, though. I was substituting for him on the night he was hurt in the ring.

You mean Stephan Johnson, the boxer who died?

Yeah, man. Stephan was my really good friend.

No kidding.

Curtis told me about Stephan.

We used to, like, go down to Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach, it’s a place where you just want to go to have fun. But we was down there doing sparring sessions with Pernell Whitaker, Meldrick Taylor. I ended up not boxing, but he was doing all the boxing. And on the weekends we had free time to ourselves. And Stephan … he loved to hang out in clubs, he loved to have fun. He seemed like a good brother, ’cause I never had no brothers. So when I left, I didn’t tell him I left New York. I just went back to Joliet, right outside of Chicago. When I decided to come back, he had the same number. And I called him and told him that I’m in town. So he returned my call. “Yo, Curtis,” he said, “I just wanted to tell you, I missed you, man. I’m glad to see you back.” And I would have never expected to hear him say that. So we got together, and I told him that I love boxing, but I’m looking to do something else. And he said, “Why don’t you come hang out with me, man?” He said, “I teach boxing aerobics.” And I’m like, “That faggot stuff?” See what I’m saying? This is how I’m looking at it, you know? So when I went there, I seen his class. I mean he had a nice group of people that followed him. He had maybe fifteen peoples in his class. And it was amazing how he would just take all this talent that he had and share it with a lot of people that wanted to come in and work out. So I was taking a look at it, but I still wasn’t feeling the energy was right. When they go in the health club, people just want to work out and show off their bodies … You know, it’s nothing like a boxing gym. When you go in a boxing gym, people are preparing themselves mentally and physically to go and fight. But when I saw him, showing them different moves and combinations, they was really into it. And they do mitts and pads and all that. So I went a couple of times. But what really impressed me about the job was one day when I went there with him and he picked up his paycheck.

I laughed.

You know? He said, “Man, look.” He said, “Let me show you what I make.” His check was what changed my mind into really coming into the game. I said, “Stephan, you making that type of money?” He said, “Curtis, you can do it.” And ever since then, that was when I went on ahead and got involved in it, ’cause it shows that it pays good. To do what you love to do.

So Stephan was telling me about this fight he had coming up. He said, “Why don’t you come to my class a couple of more times so I can let the supervisors know you? And so the people that do my class will recognize you?” I said okay. So Wednesday came around, he was getting ready to fight on Friday. I saw him at Gleason’s Gym. And he was skipping rope, and I was talking to him, you know? While he’s skipping rope, skipping rope. But he looked like he was swollen. He looked bigger than one hundred fifty-four pounds, like he weighed one seventy or something. Man, Stephan looked big. While I was talking to him, he wasn’t paying me no mind. So I’m figuring that maybe he’s in the zone and just letting me, you know, cool out. But I was talking to him loud, and he wasn’t paying me no mind. So what was I supposed to do? Before I walked away, I said, “Man, I’ll just see you when you get back. Just call me.” So he fought that Friday. When Saturday came, I called him, I said, “You ain’t made it in.” You know, his machine came on. So Sunday I called him, he still didn’t pick up, so I cussed him out. I said, “Man, why are you doing this?” I said, “I heard you got knocked out. So what you get knocked out? Give me a call when you get back.” Then a friend of mines called me and told me that he was in the hospital. So I called his house and talked to his mom on the phone. I made plans to go down there the following Saturday to see him. When I called that Wednesday, Bonnie, his fiancée, answered the phone and said, “Miss Johnson is not here right now, but why don’t you call back?” I said, “Well, listen, just tell her I’m coming down and I’ll be down this weekend.” She said, “Curtis, I don’t think that would be a good idea ‘cause she got some of her relatives coming down to see Stephan.” I said, “Okay, so just tell her that I’ll call her back.” So it surprised me she called me back. And she was like, “Curtis, I asked some of my peoples to come on down and see Stephan, and I know you guys are good friends, but I cannot have you come down right now. Why don’t you try next week?” I said, “Cool, I’ll do that.” So I was driving with a buddy of mine in Queens, I’m in his truck. He said, “You know your friend Stephan died?” I said, “He died?” I said, “I just talked to his mom.” He said, “Naw.” So we was riding, and he pulled over and started talking to a friend of his, and his friend had the newspaper, the news article about Stephan’s death. So he brought it out and I read it. Oh, man, I cried, I was crushed. Like me and him used to talk, that’s how we was, the last time, you know, we was on the train, talking, just having fun, talking about how we gonna make a comeback. He was making a comeback, and I’m trying to, you know, position myself back into the boxing world. Stephan was a good friend, man. I’m not saying it because he passed away, but, you know, literally, I been knowing him since 1990. I met him toward the end of ’89. We became very good friends. His death crushed me, because I always said to him … Of all the fighters I’ve known in the world, he’s the only one that I was really, really, really close to. You know, we boxed together and we just hung out. Stephan was a true fighter; he was a true warrior.

Curtis Summit was born and raised in Joliet, Illinois, the only boy among eight children. His father worked for the railroad; his mother for Caterpillar, the construction machine company. Not long after Curtis graduated from high school, he joined the army. He had never boxed a minute in his life, but stationed in Korea, he joined the boxing team on a whim. He was almost twenty-one. When Curtis won his first two fights by KO and his first eight fights, he realized that he had a talent for the sport.

I was just natural strong, Curtis says. I was really powerful. And I was winning. I was winning jackets; I was winning trophies; I was winning medals. I won a lot of things. Boxing.

When Curtis returned to the United States, he was stationed in Colorado Springs. With no training, he entered the Regional Golden Gloves and made it to the finals. Soon afterward he won the all-army Force-Com boxing tournament, earning him a berth at the 1984 Olympic Trials. Curtis had been boxing less than two years.

Now, I’m in the Olympic Trials. I’m in Colorado Springs, Olympic training center. Everybody was very supportive towards me, ‘cause Mark Breland was favored to win the ’84 Olympic Games anyway. But now he had to face up in the trials. He was in my weight class. And he was like six feet tall. Tall motherfucker. He was in my … I was in his weight division. I was in his weight division because he ruled that division. Keep in mind, we was in the box-offs. The box-offs, whoever win goes to the Olympics. And Pernell Whitaker was there too. Whitaker was one thirty at the time. He was real light then. And Evander Holyfield, one seventy-five, you know? Tyson was there. Everybody was there. A good class, man. Real good. So they were like, “Oh, you Curtis Summit? You know Pernell there?” Pernell said, “We heard a lot about you, man.” I said, “Damn, I seen you fight on TV before.” But he was real cool and nonchalant about himself, you know? He said, “You know, you got to fight a tough guy. Mark Breland’s my man. I been knowing Mark. You beat him, you going to the Olympics.” So, in the tournament, boom, boom, I’m beating guys, you know. Guys were like, “This kid is tough.” Now, I had one more fight to get by, to get to Mark Breland to fight for the finals for the box-offs to go to the Olympics. The kid I fought … I completely forgot his name, but he’s from Washington, D.C. Before we fought … I had a girlfriend, living in Colorado Springs. They had me stay at the Olympic training center ‘cause they didn’t want nobody to leave. But we made phone calls. So I’m talking to my girl, you know? She was from Fort Wayne, Indiana. And she lived in Colorado Springs. She said, “Listen.” She said, “What time you all gotta go to bed?” I said, “We got to go to bed about nine.” I said, “The only thing they do is come check our rooms. And once they check our rooms, shit. You know, you can go to sleep or stay up.” She said, “When they check your room, why don’t you see if you can sneak out?” I said, “What?” She said, “Yeah, ’cause I want to make love to you.” And she’s getting horny. So I said, “Damn!” I said, “But I got a big contest tomorrow.” She said, “Come on, Curtis. Please.” So she was like being real … persistent, on getting me to leave, you know? So finally, I did. So they came, they checked the room. Virgil Hill was my roommate. Virgil Hill, he was the light heavyweight champion. Do you remember when Rodell Jones, Jr., hit that guy with a body shot, knocked him out for the light heavyweight title? Yeah. Virgil Hill was my roommate. So I told him, I said, “My girl want me to come.” He said, “Curtis, you’re getting ready to fight in the finals of the tournament tomorrow. Are you sure you want to do that?” I said, “Yeah, man.” But I was young, naive. I wanted to fuck, man, I didn’t give a shit. You know? I said, “I’m gonna win. I’m gonna beat him. I’m gonna beat this guy.” So, I climbed over the fence. She was right there. She picked me up; we took off. The next morning I go running back onto the camp like I had left that morning and come running back. The security guard said, “Hey, man, I didn’t see you leaving here earlier.” I said, “Yeah, you probably didn’t see what I did. I’m sorry.” He said, “Okay, go ahead.” I go back to the room. Virgil said, “Man, I didn’t think you were going to stay out all night.” So me and the girl were up fucking all night.

So the fight came around. She was there. Everybody was there. Everybody wanted to see me and this guy fight, because the winner between me and him was gonna fight Mark Breland. He beat me. You know? He beat me. He beat me on decision. He beat me ‘cause I wasn’t really physically, nor … mentally I felt I was ready, but physically I felt that I really wasn’t there. ’Cause I got tired. My girl, man, she kept me up all through the night. So, even now, as I’m telling you, I’m thinking she might’ve did that shit on purpose. You know? I’m thinking she did it on purpose. Because I had took her to a few fights. And when I beat the guy, she would always say, “What do you need to do to lose?” At the time I didn’t know how people were. That’s what they call player haters now. Back then I think that’s how she was towards me. Because I see that what I was doing, it was keeping me away from her. And she wasn’t enjoying that. My career was like, in the army and in boxing. And she saw that I was attracted to boxing more than I was to her. When I was like, “Yo, I got to go fight, Florence, so I’m leaving town,” she’d try to get me to stay. I said, “I’m not staying! I got to go for two or three days.” And she used to be real mad; she used to fight with me. I’m like, “Damn! Why is she acting like that?” She was young too, you know? She was just a young girl. But I didn’t know, and she used to act really crazy when I’d go to the fights. “Flo, why are you acting like that? You know that I box. Why you be acting like that?”

So after the fight, I called my mother. I was crying. She said, “I can’t believe you didn’t go and knock that other kid out!” Everybody was talking that, you know? They said, “How could you let that other guy beat you?” I was crying. I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, he fought Mark Breland in the finals, and Mark beat him on a split decision. I know if I would not have did what I did, I probably would have beat him, and beat the shit out of Mark. But it didn’t happen. I thought I learned from that. But no, I did not. That was my last amateur fight.

After the trials and all that, I just stayed in Colorado Springs. I went to work for some newspaper company. I was a printer. I really didn’t have no one to really help me out as far as making a decision about turning pro. I wasn’t training. I wasn’t doing anything. And out of the clear blue sky I had got a letter in the mail. This guy was interested in me and wanted me to come out to his camp and train to turn pro. His name was Ben Getty. He was from North Carolina. Fayetteville, North Carolina. Now who the fuck is this guy? He said, “I seen you in the Olympic Trials. I congratulate you on your fine victories to where you made it.” He said, “Listen, if you ever think about turning pro, give me a call, you hear? I got room and board for you, food, whatever you need.” I never got back in contact with him, but about a month later he wrote me again. You know? What the fuck is this guy doing? Anyway, I called the guy; he said, “Listen.” He said, “Curtis, you know, I been reading up on you, I been trying to do some checking up on you.” So I ended up finally going to see him. And that’s why I started my pro career in Fayetteville, North Carolina. I went over there. I won eleven fights in a row before I lost my first fight. I fought a kid from Connecticut, and I beat him, but they took the fight from me. Clearly, I beat him. A month later he fought Mark Breland on ABC Wide World of Sports, ’cause they was bringing Mark up after the Olympics, and Mark knocked him out. But they didn’t want to fight me. They said whoever won between me and him was going to fight Mark Breland. I clearly beat him, but they avoided me. They avoided me. Big time. That fight was in Atlantic City.

So that decision upset me, for a minute. But you keep in mind that I was still growing in this game, and I was still young, not really knowing. Now I know a lot. I know a lot. I always tell motherfuckers, “Listen, you better watch your ass. ’Cause people will get you. They don’t care.” They more vicious now than they were back then. One day I fought Tyrone Trice. At that time I was like … thirteen and one. When I was going to fight Tyrone Trice in Detroit, Motor City, he was with Emmanuel Stewart. He was real hot back then. And he just fought Simon Brown. He fought Marlon Starling. Marlon Starling beat him. So Ben Getty said, “Listen. You gonna fight Tyrone Trice.” And I said, “Cool. Let’s do it.”

During the process of that fight—we’s in Detroit now, I had my family up—it started raining. The fight was set to be outside. So we waited, we waited, we waited. But to go back at the weigh-ins … I think the fight was going to be at a hundred and fifty pounds. Okay? Between ‘forty-seven and ’fifty-four. But Tyrone came in at one eighty. One hundred and eighty. They was giving me thirty-five hundred to fight that guy. Now they said they were going to give me five hundred dollars more if I took this fight ’cause of him being that much overweight. Ben told me it was five hundred. But actually they was giving Ben fif teen hundred dollars for me to fight that guy. Because I wasn’t going to fight. They wanted to do everything in their power to make sure that that fight was gonna take off. Rain or not. There was TV and everything. They wanted it to death. So Ben said he was going to give me five hundred dollars more. Actually he kept a thousand. In his pocket. And I didn’t know it. But I know it now; that’s why I’m telling you this. So I went ahead and agreed with the fight: “Fuck it, I’ll do it.” So they gave me … what? Four thousand. Straight.

For the fight, we had to come outside. They put plastic on our boots. Plastic. It came way up here. They gave us a plank to walk on to the boxing ring. I guess they had a big tarp over the ring. The ring was outside in the summertime. They took the plastics off. The canvas was still wet. So, during the fight, I was so upset about what was taking place, I went out there and I started launching at him. Winging at him. Here I am struggling to make one fifty, you know? He was real big. I was just mad. So I go out there and I lunge, throwing all wild, falling on the canvas that was already wet. I’m slipping, I’m falling, referee counted, “One … two.” I said, “What the fuck are you doing? I just slipped, you know?” I looked at my corner and shit. Now I’m even more furious about what’s going on. I’m swinging again. I mean, he’s running, he’s bouncing. I’m swinging. Boom. I go down again. The referee, “One … two.” I’m cussing, “What the fuck are you all about?” Screaming. He just kept on ticking. “One … two …” Now I’m really furious. I’m going at him, swinging again. One time I swing, he just stepped back, he threw a little punch. Wasn’t no punch to make me go down. I was slipping anyway. I went down. The referee called the fight to a halt. Man, people started throwing shit in the ring; they started cussing and everything. There was going to be a riot there ’cause they know it was bullshit. So whatever took place, the referee was a part of it. He had to have been. So they stopped the fight, you know? Wasn’t nothing wrong with me, wasn’t nothing wrong with the kid Tyrone. The only thing that was wrong, it was a bad night, and bad weather, and they was bad. So they gave him the fight.

Anyway, that was my last fight with Ben Getty. Because later on that night me and him talked. And he told me, clearly, he said, “I’m gonna tell you something. I’m not here to try to hurt you. I just took a gamble with you. I just wanted to let you know that I really do care about you, and you one of the best fighters that I ever had. But I took some extra money from the promoters for this fight to bring you here.” He said, “If you would have won that fight, it would have been a lot that could have happened for us. But being that you didn’t win it, a lot of things are going to go down.” I said, “Why the fuck did you do that, man?” He said, “Well, I was taking a gamble with you. In life, you gotta take a gamble. Actually, they gave you the money, the extra money, to fight. That’s good.” He said, “It’s up to you if you want to stay and fight for me.” I said, “Well, I don’t think I’m gonna stay with you.” My family wanted to kill that motherfucker. My family was gonna beat his ass, ‘cause they knew something was wrong. Anyway, we talked on the train going back from Detroit to North Carolina. When we got back, his wife came and got us. Now I saved his wife’s father who was dying. I rushed him to the hospital; he was having a heart attack or something. I took him to the hospital. Anyway, when she came for us in the car, she asked Ben, she said, “Ben, why did you do that?” So, I just hear her saying that. Next thing I know, her and Ben got into a big argument. And Ben kept saying something about a thousand dollars. He said, “I only took an extra thousand dollars.” So I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, a thousand dollars, you know? The guy gave him fifteen hundred. And he kept a thousand and gave me five. But she said, “Out of all the fighters, why Curtis Summit?” She said, “Curtis is like family to us. Why did you treat him like that?” ’Cause I’m nice anyway, you know? I’m cool. I feel that I’m a nice guy. I can be mean as hell too, I don’t give a fuck, but I can be funny. And I can be nice. So, when we got back to his home, Ben said, “Well, I know you heard what took place.” I said, “What’s up with that thousand dollars?” He said, “I kept a thousand extra.” I said, “Go and get my money.” He said, “Well, I don’t have the money. He’s supposed to be sending me some money.” I said, “Well, I’m gonna leave.” So I packed my belongings and I left and I went back to my place, my hometown, Joliet.

And Ben Getty, what he did, he did not only beat me, but he beat hisself. He beat me and many other peoples. He had a contract with Russell Phelps, who is one of the top promoters for Top Rank Boxing, right now. At the time Russell Phelps wasn’t with Top Rank. Russell Phelps was just doing his own show in Philly. On Broadway at the Blue Horizon. He was running that. I guess him and Ben had a deal about young fighters that Ben was going to bring down to fight. Now, I’m just now finding this out some years back. But it was something that I think that he took a big gamble on, and in taking that gamble, he lost out. But Ben was looking out for nobody but for Ben. He was looking out for Ben to make things happen for Ben. Now by him taking that fight with me in Detroit, Motor City, against Tyrone Trice, one of the hottest prospects in the world at that time, was unbearable. Why would he want to take that gamble, and why did he take the chance? Did he feel comfortable with me? Or did he just want to take the money under the table? What happened? I believe two reasons. He felt comfortable with me, and he took the money under the table.

After leaving Ben, I was out of the boxing picture. Actually, I was doing a lot of sparring sessions. Sessions with Mark Breland and Idris Coreyne. But I really wasn’t doing it. They was just having me there, just in case somebody fall out. They was paying me, you know, just to stay there. Because I was giving their fighters a good perspective. You know, you go into a good boxing gym, you see all the potentials. You got to figure out what’s going to make you better. Even with champions. Champions want good sparring partners around. That’s gonna mentally prepare them … and also enhance them to continue working out. But you know, I got tired doing certain things. So I went home.

Back in Joliet, I started looking at boxing magazines and calling people, and that’s how I met a couple of ’em. Two old guys from Port Chester, New York. I saw their advertisement, their boxing business, in the boxing book. And I called them. Jimmy Santangelo and Mike Caparhino. They said, “Listen, we get you out here, we give you room and board,” you know? This was going to be my last ship.

They moved me out here, and I had two bad fights with them. First fight I had, I fought Kevin Pompey, from upstate New York. When I fought Kevin Pompey, he was a hot tamale. I never heard of him, but everybody knew he was hot then. I hadn’t fought in almost three years. And then I come right back in, I trained for, like, maybe two or three months, they put me in with a guy like that. In Albany, his hometown. So we went the distance. They gave him the decision. Then, three months later, I fought another guy from New York, another world-class contender. And he beat me. They gave him the decision. So I lost two back-to-back fights. These guys were putting me in some bad fights. I wasn’t at all ready for that competition. Then they told me that they wanted me to fight this guy named Aaron Davis. So I really got in shape when I found out I was going to fight him.

Now my record was fifteen and four. So they said, “Listen, fight this guy named Aaron Davis. You beat Aaron Davis, and you can fight Mark Breland for the world title.” So they was handing me money. Not much. I said, “Let me give it a shot.” I got in great, great shape for this. Notorious good shape. I felt that I really beat him. Even though they gave him the win. The president of ABC Wide World of Sports came to me and said, “We feel that you beat this guy. You beat Aaron Davis. If we get the contract discharged from Aaron Davis, will you fight Mark Breland?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll fight Mark Breland.” So they ended up calling me and told me they could not close the contract with Mark Breland/Aaron Davis because they were already signed to it. The fight was going to be on ABC Wide World of Sports. Right before that fight, they highlighted his last performance fight against me. They highlighted how I was beating him. I was at home; my mom, everybody saw the fight; they said, “Wow. It’s for real.” I said, “Yeah.” So he ended up knocking Mark out with a lucky punch. He hit him with one lucky punch. Listen. Even before Davis fought Breland, I was in Tampa, Florida, training with Mark, you know. We was in Tampa, Florida, I’m boxing him. And I hit him with a left hook, and he went down. I was so happy. Here’s a guy, he’s a gold medal winner, he’s very well respected in the boxing world. So when I hit him, he went down to two knees. I was really happy, but I didn’t jump around the ring, “Yeah, yeah, yeah!” We was just a sparring session. So Mark’s trainer, Joe Fariello, bless his soul, he was like, “Marrrkkk. Marrrkkk. Are you all right?” So Mark stood up, shook his legs out. Joe said, “Walk around the ring.” So Mark walked around the ring. Joe said, “Curtis, come here.” He said, “You think you can do that again?” I said, “Watch me.” True story, you know? So, we waited about five minutes; he made Mark feel better. He said, “Okay, we gonna work on a round.” The guy who was helping me out, he said, “Man, you can hit Mark with the same combination. You can hit him with the same punch.” Anyway, he was trying to set me up with this right hand. I was in my guard, and he was jabbing real strong. And I noticed what he was trying to do ’cause I could feel the jab when it gets stronger. So, he’d try to hit my right arm real strong and open it up so his right hand could come in here. That was his game. He had a big right hand. And he had such a tremendous reach. And he had powerful legs. So he stepped in, and he hit my arm real hard, so I would open up and he could follow his right hand up, boom! But I caught it, and as soon as I felt his right hand, bam! It was like a flicking light. He went down again. Joe said, “Marrrkkk. Marrrkkk. Are you all right?” So he says, “Curtis, that’s it. No more sparring.”

Later on that night Mark had asked me to come to his room. I went to his room, and Mark said, “Curtis.” He said, “What did you hit me with?” I said, “You don’t remember?” He said, “I don’t have a clue.” I said, “Well, I noticed you was trying to set me up. If you had caught me, you would have probably knocked my spark out. So what I had to do, I had to capitalize on what you was doing, to make what works for me.” Then, as I was explaining to him, his trainer busted in the door. “Curtis, come on, Curtis, come on. Mark, don’t try and be here talking. No, no, no.” Mark was training for a world title. He was going to fight Marlon Starling. So Joe said, “Curtis, come to my bedroom,” right? I said okay, and I went in his room. He gave me some money. He said, “Here’s your money.” I said, “What’s this for?” He said, “This is for sparring.” He said, “We can’t use you no more.” I said, “Why?” He said, “Curtis, Mark is getting ready to fight for a world championship title. You’re not giving him no confidence.” He said, “Curtis, we’re gonna send you off tomorrow, you gotta go.” He said, “I’m gonna have to send you away because you’re going around, you’re knocking Mark out. You can’t do that, Curtis. This guy is getting ready to fight a world championship fight. What is it look like, we training this guy and you knocking him out?” He told me I’m not giving Mark no confidence. If I’m not giving Mark no confidence, he don’t need to box me. I ain’t gonna let Mark be hitting me. Hell, no. I’m not no Everlast.

So the next day, whisshh, they flew me out. So cute, smooth, you know? But I was coming back, ’cause the guy that owned the place told me he’d like for me to stay because of Honeykin. Lowell Honeykin was gonna train and was looking for a sparring partner. So they flew me back. I’m cool, you know? At that time he was paying me three hundred dollars a week. So now I’m boxing Lowell Honeykin. I’m just whacking him away. Boom! Boom! He’s from London. I’m just whacking him up. They stopped me from sparring with him. They brought some guy in, he had to have been about sixty years old. You laugh, but it’s true. And the guy was no bigger than you. And here was Lowell Honeykin, he was a welterweight, beating up this guy about sixty years old. You know? So, that there showed me a lot. I can’t understand, with the talent and with the power and strength that I had, why I couldn’t get anyone behind me that was talented enough to get me a world championship fight. Even though I didn’t have a household name, with their help, I could have become a household name.

Before the Pedrozza fight, I was down in the Duvas’ camp, training with Meldrick Taylor so that he could prepare himself for Aaron Davis. I was hitting him, he was running around the ring, like Joe Frazier was against George Foreman. You know that fight? Knocked him down six times. So Lou Duva told me, he said, “Curtis.” He said, “We’re gonna keep you in the camp because you’re fighting Igor Pedrozza. He’s with us. We’re trying to dishonor his contract because his wife’s giving us a lot of problems.” He said, “I’d like for you to knock this guy out.” I said, “Lou, I don’t care what you like. I’m going to do it because I’m gonna do it. I’m not doing it for you.” This was before the Igor Pedrozza fight. I told you they stopped me from boxing Meldrick Taylor because I was knocking him around the ring. I’m hitting, he’s running. So, you know, I started boxing Steve Little. Steve Little, he became champion of the world at one hundred sixty-five pounds, a middleweight. You know, I’m boxing these big old guys.

Well, I fought Igor Pedrozza, and I knocked him out. So now I was very frustrated, ’cause Lou Duva called me up the next day. Called me up the next day, asked me to have breakfast. At breakfast, he showed me the newspaper. He said, “Curtis, read this article.” So I read the article; the article stated something like, “Even though Curtis Summit and Igor Pedrozza wasn’t the main event fight of last night on HBO it should’ve been.” They said the fight of the night was Curtis and Igor Pedrozza. Curtis Summit knocking out Pedrozza in the tenth round. I mean, they had pictures, highlights, all that, you know? So Duva said, “Listen, people been asking me how you would match up with Meldrick Taylor.” Man, I’ve been beating the shit out of Meldrick Taylor in sparring sessions. Duva said, “But your people want seventy-five thousand dollars to let you out of your contract, and we don’t think you’re worth that.” Well, how do you think I felt then?

After the Igor Pedrozza fight, I was the man nobody wanted to fight. And I didn’t have good enough management to make those fights. I took these guys to the state athletic office in Manhattan; Randy Gordon was the commissioner at that time. I said nothing was happening. First they gave me bad fights; then I couldn’t get a fight in the USA. So he said, “Curtis, are you complaining that the problem you have is that you’re not getting any fights?” I said, “I’m not getting no fights. They put me in bullshit fights.” So he said, “Don King is looking for somebody to fight Julio Cesar Chavez, and Chavez is moving up from one forty to one forty-seven.” They said, “Would you be willing to fight him?” I said, “Call him.” So they called the matchmaker for Don King, we had a loudspeaker on. Randy Gordon was my witness, he was right there. Al Brickman was Don King’s matchmaker. Randy said, “This is Randy Gordon from the New York State Athletic Commission. Now listen, are you guys still looking for someone to fight Julio Cesar Chavez at one hundred forty-seven pounds?” And he said, “Yeah, we are.” He said, “Well, we have a guy here by the name of Curtis Summit, and right now his managers, they can’t get him fights. Would you be willing to fight him?” Al said, “Well, how much the guy weigh?” He said, “The guy weigh one hundred forty-seven pounds. And he got his record fifteen and four.” Al said, “Okay, cool, we’ll call you right back.” Within ten minutes they called back. Al Brickman said, “Randy, is that that guy who knocked out Igor Pedrozza?” He was talking like this on the phone. Randy said, “Yeah, we’re talking about this guy.” He said, “Randy, don’t ever call me unless you know that we got a for-sure win on our hands. No, we don’t want that fight.” He just hung up the phone. And I just looked at Randy. I said, “Wow.” So my managers said, “See, we can’t get him no fights.” So I’m mad, I’m frustrated, I’m crying. My man, I’m crying.

You know, it was so much I went through. I came up with every legitimate reason so I could dishonor my contract with them. So, when they finally made a decision about what was going to happen between me and my manager? Man, they gonna tell me they … have not found enough evidence to think that I should leave them. I looked at Randy Gordon. After all I went through, I done tore his office up. I’m throwing books, I’m throwing furniture and I’m cussing him out. And you know, he tried to stand up with me. He tried to show his manhood because of his position. I mean, we was nose to nose. I said, “I’ll beat your ass, man.” I mean, I’m cussing at him like that. I said, “You know boxing as well as I do. How are you going to sit there and tell me that you think these guys are still capable of having a contract with me?” So this guy pulled me to the side. He said, “Curtis, listen.” He said, “What’s gonna end up happening, you gonna go to jail here.” He said, “You cannot be doing that to the commissioner. You cannot be going around threatening nobody.” He said, “The best thing for you to do is just to try to go to Europe. Stay in Europe until your contract run out.”

My problem with my management was, they wasn’t protecting me. You know what I’m saying? When you’re under contract with someone, they should try to protect you. I had no protection. They wasn’t feeding me no financial establishment. They wasn’t doing nothing. Only time I was making money with them was when they asked me to go somewhere and spar with somebody. And I couldn’t even do that. But after I knocked out Igor Pedrozza, they wanted to walk around like they the man. And they never was. They didn’t even train me for that fight. When I fought Igor Pedrozza, I was in Virginia Beach training down there with the Duvas. So the guys I had a contract with didn’t have nobody down there. They wasn’t calling me; they didn’t ask if I needed anything, ask me how my training was going. They followed up on nothing. So when I get to the fight, and I beat Pedrozza so bad, they want to walk around like, “Yeah, that’s my fighter. Yeah, I did that.” Man, you didn’t do jack. You better get on out of here. I ended up going back to my hometown of Joliet. ’Cause I almost went to jail here. I almost hurt my manager, Mike Caparhino, he’s an old, old, old guy. In Joliet, I got a phone call asking me if I wanted to go to Europe and box with a guy named Jaybell Daly. So I said, “You know what? I don’t care.”

When I first got to Paris, they put me in this hotel. I wanted to leave the same night. ’Cause I didn’t understand not one word they were saying. How do I eat? I don’t know nothing. So they just took me to a hotel; they just set me there. Nobody showed me around or anything. I’m sitting there going mad as hell and shit. So the next day they called me. They said, “Curtis, you got somebody on the phone.” It was this girl, you know, speaking English. So I said, “Oh, you speak English?” I said, “Listen, I’m hungry. They got McDonald’s breakfast? Order me some food up here.” She said, “Okay, okay.” I’m mad. So they brought me some food up. I said, “Well, later on I’m gonna be hungry again.” I said, “Tell me what the hell am I doing over here? What’s going on?” She said, “Okay, don’t worry. You gonna see this fight tonight, and we’re gonna take you to this place called Ram [Rhiems]. Ram is outside of Paris.” I said, “Why I’m going there?” She said, “You’re gonna box this guy.” I said, “Okay. They paying?” “Yeah, they paying.” I said, “They got American food?” “Yeah, American food.” You know? So I went to the fight. I ended up … I jumped in the car with this guy, we ride for like two hours. I don’t know where the hell I’m going, it’s at night. I’m looking … I’m not seeing nothing but big cows and shit. I’m looking at this brother, he ain’t even speak no English. “What the fuck did you say?” And he takes me to his house, he’s from … some country. Black guy. So I go into the house. I see bambinos running around. I see his wife; he’s married, you know? They put me in a room. They had no English TV; they had Pac-Man games. I was just sitting in the room playing Pac-Man. It was so awful. I was in the lost Twilight Zone. I didn’t know where I was at, who I could call for nine-one-one, what the shit have I got myself into? I’m sitting here in this dude’s house; his wife don’t speak no English; his kids run around farting all day.

So someone called for me, the only thing they could say was “Telephone, telephone, telephone.” So the girl on the phone, she said, “How’s everything?” I said, “Somebody better get me the fuck out of here. Where the hell have you got me at? The wife don’t speak English; the husband don’t speak English. What am I supposed to do here?” She said, “You’re supposed to box with him. Tomorrow you’re gonna go running with him.” You know how we’d conversate? They had this little thing, whatever I say in English, it translates into French. You type it up, so whatever he say in French, you type in, and it translate into English. [Mimes typing.] “What’s up? How’s it going? Any honeys over here? Where’s the honeys? Stupid motherfucker. S-T-U-P-I-D.”

The only thing we had in common, man, is that we were fighters. The first time we sparred—this kid could punch, right?—first time we sparred, boom, he hit me, I went, “Ooh, shit.” Right? So I’m whacking his ass. A news reporter was there. They had some article and shit. Natalie read it; she could speak English. She said, “What are you doing to that guy up there?” I said, “Sheeit, what are you talking about?” “Well, in the newspaper they say you beating him up.” I said, “That’s what it says?” I was like, “That’s why he hasn’t been talking to me and shit.” ’Cause he used to always type letters with me. He ain’t typing shit now with me, you know? But we became good friends. He showed me around the countryside, everything.

My first fight in Europe, I fought on TV. I fought a guy, he just fought a kid for a world title. But I knocked him out in the third round. So that night, after the fight, we all went to this big hotel room, and they had a big TV screen, and they showed my picture. They showed my fight, and everybody was coming by, taking pictures and shaking my hand. They asked me, “What’s going on? Why are you in Europe?” So I explained to them I was under contract and I’m trying to stay until my contract ran out. They said, “Give us the phone number.” Two days later, they called the United States and talked to the peoples here. They said, “Listen, we got Curtis Summit over here, and we understand he’s under contract with you guys. He’s going to stay here two years until his contract lay out. He’s fighting. Unless you want to negotiate. Seventy-five hundred.” They sent them a check for seven thousand five hundred dollars for my contract. Seven thousand five hundred! And if they had let me go six months earlier, I could have been with Lou Duva.

So, I ended up staying in Europe. I captured my first title. I won a WBC International title over there. I defended that twice. When I went out, they pointed at me, “Curtiiisss, Curtiiiss, Curtiiisss.” It was a hell of an experience. So, I stayed, like, two years over there. They treated me like one of their own, like one of their champions. But I was homesick, man. You know, I just couldn’t call my buddy, “Hey, man, come and pick me up.” I couldn’t call nobody. I ain’t know nobody. I ain’t know how to dial a number. If I dial an operator, zero, what could I say? “Oui, oui, ah, beeg beeetch.” I didn’t know nothing. I was so lost in Paris, man. They was ashamed. They said, “How much French you learn how to speak?” I said, “You go to McDonald’s, I think I know how to get some french fries.” It was terrible. I used to set around at the table, every single night everybody speaking French. I’m just daydreaming, “What is America like? What’s happening in America?” You know, but I survived it. I weathered the storm.

This is a funny story about the kind of thing that happened to me over there. One time I was gonna fight in Paris. So whenever I see an American, God, I be happy, because somebody speaking English that I can relate to. I saw a brother, man, so me and this brother was talking. Black guy, you know? I said, “Yo, what’s up, man?” He said, “What’s going on?” I said, “Where are you from?” He says, “Washington, D.C.” I said, “Yeah? I got friends in Washington. Washington’s cool.” He said, “Where are you from?” I said, “Outside of Chicago.” He said, “Yeah? What you doing here?” I said, “I don’t know, man, I’m gonna be fighting.” He said, “Me too.” I said, “Who are you fighting?” He said, “Man, I’m fighting some kid. Man, I’m just gonna tear his ass.” Now, keep in mind, right, I’m just an American to him, like he’s an American, you know? He thinks he’s fighting a Frenchman guy. So he said, “Listen, you know, this guy’s in Paris, he’s not a really good fighter.” He said, “You know, he’s trying to make a comeback. I’m gonna surprise them. I’m gonna bust his ass; I’m gonna make the promoters and matchmakers lose they job and shit.” So, I’m nodding, “Yeah, do it, yo, yeah.” I said, “Who is this guy?” He said, “I don’t know, some fucking guy named Curtis Summit.” I said, “Curtis Summit don’t sound like a Frenchman name.” And he was telling me this, right? He had this adventure in his mind, what he was gonna do to this guy, which was me. I said, “Have you met this guy?” He said, “No, but I heard that he’s trying to make a comeback, and I’m gonna bust—” I said, “Well, let me tell you something, man, that’s me.” And he said, “Aw, no, that’s you.” So he was just laughing and shit. So that night we’re in the ring and I knocked him out. I knocked him out cold. So, when he got up, he said, “Man, I wish you a lot of luck, man. You’re a nice guy. ’Cause you could have given me a hard time when I was talking all that shit.”

I was in Italy. I went to London. I went to Russia. I went to the Ukraine. I went to Cannes. I went everywhere. I had to really settle myself mentally, to understand that boxing was my goal to be here, so I must accept everything that comes along with that. I mentally prepared myself for that very strongly. ’Cause I could’ve … I could’ve cried every night. Fuck that! And I was on TV over there, I was in newspapers. I mean, I would go places and I wouldn’t have to pay. They just pay it, you know? I’d go in at the mall, I’d buy clothes. Anything. Leather. And I just … you know, take it and go. Sheeit. I was like a baby. I was pulling shit out! They told me I had to slow down, though. You know, I got all kind of leather over there and shit. I was picking up sweaters and shoes. Shit was free. In the mall too. It was funny, man, you know? So it was a hell of an experience for me.

Every time I fought, I fought tough guys, but I was winning. I was winning a lot of fights, making money, I got back in the world’s ratings. I was going to fight Julio Cesar Vasquez for the championship, the WBA championship, in Argentina. Now when I won the WBC International title in London, I defended it in Guadeloupe about a month later. The kid I fought was from Argentina. He was being managed and promoted by the same guys that was managing and promoting Julio Cesar Vasquez. So that fight was going to determine who would fight Vasquez for the world championship. Now I go back to Paris, they set me down in the business room. They said, “Curtis, listen. We have decided to let you fight Julio Cesar Vasquez for the title.” I said, “Okay, where’s it going to be?” They said, “You’re going to fight him in Argentina.” I said, “Argentina? That’s where he’s from.” They said yes. I said, “Well, how much you guys planning on paying for the world championship title?” They said, ‘”Ah, don’t worry about that. You gonna have enough money, you be all right.” They said, “But right now we are setting you up to go back to the USA, upstate New York, to go up to the mountains and train.” I said, “Okay.” So two days go by. I said, “Well, how much I’m fighting for?” They said, “Don’t worry about it, you know, it’s gonna be okay.” So I’m asking this girl named Natalie, she was really helping me out a lot. She could speak English, and she was French. I said, “Now, you better let me know how much they’re going to pay me for the world championship.” I made fifteen thousand for my WBC International title. It’s a bullshit title. Okay? Now, when I flew back, they gave me ten thousand dollars. I put five thousand dollars in one shoe, five thousand dollars in the other. So I’m flying back to New York with ten thousand in my shoes, you know, dawg? I get to the airport; a good friend of mines, Gary Carrieri, picked me up; we go to upstate New York. He was my sparring partner. So I’m paying my sparring partners three hundred dollars a week. I’m paying for the food and rent up there. So we was somewhere … I forget, Catskills, Villa Roma, something.

So when I get there, they call me. First day, they say, “How is it?” I said, “It’s okay.” I said, “How much are you guys going to pay me?” They said, “We’ll let you know in two days.” I said, “Well, two days, okay.” ’Cause I wanted to know so I could start feeling content about my training, since I’m satisfied with the pay. Originally, I was supposed to have been getting paid to box Jaybell. They never paid me. They said, “Curtis, we just let you fight and we pay you.” But you know that don’t work. I was supposed to get paid twice: for boxing and getting paid a salary. So all the time I stayed over there, they never paid me. Every time I fought, I fought for like five thousand, seven thousand. Which is just pocket money.

Another day go by, they call. They still have no answer on my money. So I was speaking to Natalie, I said, “Natalie, let me know how much. I want to know so I can train right.” She go and call me the next day. She said, “Curtis.” She said, “You not gonna like what I’m gonna tell you.” I said, “Okay. Pretend I’m not liking you now.” She said, “They want to give you ten thousand dollars to fight Julio Cesar Vasquez.” “They want to give me ten thousand dollars to fight for the championship title of the world in Argentina?” I said. “No. Ain’t no way in hell I’m gonna do that. I can make seven thousand dollars for ten rounds here.” I said to them, “If you can’t come up with a better offer, then I don’t want to do it.” Man, listen, they didn’t want to change their minds. That was their way of saying no to me. They don’t want me to fight. If they had wanted me to fight, they would have given me … twenty-five thousand dollars is actually the start-up, the minimum pay. Twenty-five thousand, you know, to fight in the championship, depending on who you are. So they came way below that. You know, if they would have said twenty-five Gs, cool, I would have went there and fought. The thing about Argentina, if I would have ended up knocking that kid out, who’s to say I would have survived walking out of there? Nobody. And of course, I would have never won a close decision. But hypothetically speaking, man, if I would have beat the guy, I would have got killed over there probably. ’Cause they rough over there. Let me tell you something—when I used to sit in Paris, I used to watch the news that take place over there. They show the news from London to Argentina. Man, listen, those fools would be fighting over soccer. I mean, killing each other. Let me tell you something: They love their athletes over there. You may not be listening, but … They will kill you for they champions. They will kill you. Literally.

So I came back to the USA and I hooked up with this guy, okay? My first fight I had when I came back, I lost. It was on pay-per-view. Then, my second fight, I beat Emmet Linton. I beat Emmet Linton on ESPN for the USBA. Left-handed guy. He’s ranked number two now. Eight months later I fought Aaron Harlins on USA. I beat him. I had this manager named Lou Nidle. Lou Nidle. He has his own, what’s it called? His place where, you know, you fix cars. Repair shop, that’s what he had. He sucked, you know? Then I came back. I left, came back, went with a couple of other guys. I had some bad losses and shit.

I asked Curtis what Stephan’s death meant to him as an older fighter making a comeback.

I didn’t really know about the problem Stephan had in Canada, Curtis said deliberately. I know that he got stopped in the fight, but I didn’t know what translated behind that. I didn’t know there was a real serious problem. Because in my last fight … I got stopped in my last fight. Actually, I got stopped because I got notorious tired. I tell you, I was taking medication for my elbow that didn’t show up on tests when you take it. And during the course of the fight, like, maybe after the first three rounds of the fight, I was totally in control. But after that I just got tired. I couldn’t move. My legs got weak. The medicine I was taking wasn’t even prescribed for me. It was someone else’s medicine. The guy, he weighed like two hundred and fifty pounds. So the heavy dose he was taking—he was having the same problem I was having with his elbow—I was taking that. But it was too much in the dose for me. Luckily, nothing really, you know, happened except that I got stopped.

I think about what happened to Stephan, but … I do not let it play with me mentally. Because in life a lot of people die for unnecessary causes. But he died for something he loved doing. I’m not saying that’s how life should be. But he didn’t get shot up, he didn’t get run over. I’m like this, man: When I pass away, I’d rather let it happen in the ring. I would rather go out that way than having some knucklehead robbing me or get run over by a truck or get into a freak fall or something in the city of Manhattan. Of course, I think if they can project a fighter having problems, he should not be fighting. No one should be fighting if he got a problem.

You know, people say, “Why don’t you just walk away?” Boxing is like sex, man. How can you walk away from sex in your life? How are you going to sit there and say that you don’t want to make love to your wife no more? Or it’s the same as saying, you walk away from your kids, you can’t love your kids no more. Or walk away from someone you love. You know? You can’t do that. But eventually it’s gonna happen. As of now, I’m thirty-eight years old. In the gym I’m feeling better than I have ever done before. Two days ago I beat the shit out of this guy. Beat his ass in the gym. So I’m hoping that that will not affect me getting good work at Gleason’s. ’Cause everybody hated me and cheered this guy. I don’t why they were cheering him. This guy weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds. I was destroying him. But yet they was cheering him, trying to get him to come on and feel better and box with me. And the more they was cheering him on, the worse he was getting his ass kicked. I beat the best out of the best in the world, man. I used to beat Meldrick Taylor real bad. Mark Breland, forget about it, I beat the shit out of his ass. I remember Lou Duva saying, “Curtis, none of these guys don’t want to box you.”

You get used in boxing. You get used like a hooker on the street. They use you until your last breath is gone. Gone. Completely. I mean, they don’t care. They care enough where they can highlight you for certain things. But once that highlighting is gone, they pretend that they don’t know you at all. But they stuff is still strong because they made money off you and they can always get another fish out of the sea. You have to be strong to continue on afterwards, you know. Like I said, boxing is a brutal, brutal sport. It’s brutal, not in the ring but outside. Boxing is beautiful. But the people are knuckleheads. The friction that you got to deal with is terrible. And I was blessed, man, to be here for my man Stephan to show me another way of life beside boxing. And I been enhancing myself with boxing aerobics. Like I said, I thought it was a faggot thing. To me it looked homo, man. But once you really get involved in it, you see the people are really serious about it. Hell, I just want to get paid. ’Cause I feel that my talent is strong enough to carry me as far as anyone else. If I do have another fight, I’m gonna put Stephan’s picture on my trunks. I’ve got his picture.

Curtis Summit’s story is one of the many stories of everything wrong with boxing. The first times we talked of his career, I took his bitterness lightly. Not that I didn’t think he was telling the truth, but I thought that the truth he told was small t truth. So he fought Aaron Davis and beat him but didn’t get the decision? So he suffered from corrupt officiating, poor management, his own bad decisions? As my brother used to wearily say of his clients at the public defender’s office, “Even when they admit they’re guilty, there’s always a reason.” My attitude toward Curtis changed only when I saw the videotape documenting his best fights. I saw the Aaron Davis match, a nationally televised fight that everyone expected Curtis to lose (he had been brought in as “tune-up” to prepare Davis for his coming title match with Mark Breland). Everyone, that is, except Curtis, who dominated, mugging to the crowd and laughing when Davis tried to flurry him against the ropes. Yet since Davis already had a contract to fight Mark Breland for the title “signed, sealed and delivered,” as Curtis says, the judges ringside went blind and gave Davis a decision (the judges in professional boxing are employees of the sanctioning organizations WBO, WBF and IBF, which in turn are allied with major promoters like Don King and Bob Arum). The only honest mistake in that fight was that made by the matchmaker who underrated Curtis, evaluating him on his age and record (going into the fight, Curtis knew that he needed a knockout to win). I saw his KO of Igor Pedrozza, the top-ranked contender in his weight class, a victory that should have guaranteed him a title shot. I saw him beat Emmet Linton, still a top-ranked professional today, and I saw him in the rings of Germany, France and England.

Curtis’s blessing and curse in boxing were in not peaking until he was thirty years old, unusual for a sport in which many professionals are finished by their mid-twenties. His late start and years off meant that his skills lagged behind those of the top fighters of his era. It also meant that any potential investor assumed he was looking at a fighter past his prime. Yet one reason why Curtis was able to flourish as long as he did (along with his disciplined training and enormous physical vitality) was his late start. Unlike rivals boxing from age nine, seven, four (unlike Stephan Johnson, who had boxed from childhood), Curtis was over twenty before he began absorbing punishment.

The fact that Curtis did not receive the title shor he deserved will come as a surprise only to those unfamiliar with boxing. Unlike other sports, professional boxing does not feature elimination tournaments or a just ratings system. At the moment three major boxing organizations award “world” championships in seventeen different weight classes. Each organization mandates that the champion fight a top-ranked challenger within a certain time frame. However, the rankings have more to do with a fighter’s representation than his accomplishments. Curtis did not receive a title shot because he didn’t have management powerful enough to make it for him (since titles generate income, titleholders naturally wish to hold them as long as they can. They will accept real challenges only if forced to).

A few spectacular knockouts aside, Curtis did not possess a single devastating punch, the expressway to celebrity in professional boxing. Against his highest-caliber opponents—Pedrozza, Linton, Davis—he faced men who had faster hands and more boxing polish. He defeated them through willpower; he beat them down psychologically as well as physically (one reason he made such an excellent example for the Supreme Team middleweights). Yet the force of his will may finally destroy his health. Curtis’s body has already suffered from boxing; his crooked stare is due, I think, to damage to one eye, and his sinuses require constant draining. His brain seems fine. No question, Curtis should retire, even if there is a chance of his receiving a title shot (and there isn’t). There’s no shame in it, he’s almost forty, but he cannot accept that he may permanently injure himself. He cannot accept the fact that he will be forever denied the title he deserved. The same willpower that made Curtis one of the top fighters of his generation is the force that may cripple or kill him.