A Front-Row Seat with the Sportswriters Who Sat There
Sit down with host Todd Jones and other sportswriters who knew the greatest athletes and coaches, and experienced first-hand some of the biggest sports moments in the past 50 years. They’ll share stories behind the stories -- some they’ve only told to each other.
Tim Smith: “That’s a two-mile cookie.”
Details always caught the eye of Timothy Smith during his three decades as a sportswriter. Small moments often revealed bigger things about his subjects. Tim recounts how the discipline of Evander Holyfield fueled the fighter’s confidence and warrior mentality. Oh, and hear what Holyfield shared with Tim about why he knew he’d beat Mike Tyson. Tim tells us about experiencing the wild range of Tyson’s emotions, and what it was like to spend three hours with Muhammad Ali. The Champ levitated. Seriously. Hear what it was like in the Bahamas when Orlando Hernandez came ashore after El Duque fled Cuba. Eggs were involved. And let Tim tell you about the babysitting skills of Sam Wyche . . . and much more.
Smith spent the bulk of his sportswriting career in New York City. As a columnist at the New York Daily News from 2000 until 2013, he wrote about boxing, the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball, with an emphasis on the Big Apple’s pro teams. During that time, Smith also regularly appeared on Daily News Live, a roundtable TV sports talk show on SportsNet New York. Tim was a sports reporter for the New York Times from 1990 until 2000. He covered the New York Jets as a beat, as well as the NFL. He also covered professional boxing for The Times.
Before heading to New York, Smith worked at the Cincinnati Enquirer from 1987 until 1990. He served as a beat reporter covering the Cincinnati Bengals, and he also wrote about Ohio State football, Kentucky basketball and professional boxing. His career began at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where Smith first worked while earning a journalism degree from the University of Georgia in 1982.
Smith is the Vice President of Communications for Haymon Sports, a boxing management company that is home of the Premier Boxing Champions series. He is also the author of the book “Lou Duva – A Fighting Life” about the career of the Hall of Fame trainer and manager who built the boxing promotion empire Main Events. Duva worked with 19 world champions – including Holyfield and Lennox Lewis – and in the corners of title fights on six continents over 50 years.
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[00:00:01.330] - Todd Jones
Hey, Tim, welcome to the show. It's been such a long time that we have talked. And I was thinking about the first time we met that's in the way back, machine, my man way back.
[00:00:12.850] - Tim Smith
Yeah. So far. It so long ago. I can't remember, because when I came to Cincinnati, my wife was pregnant with my oldest daughter, and we moved from Atlanta.
[00:00:52.430] - Todd Jones
My memory is that I was so young, I had more hair and less of a gut.
[00:01:01.430] - Tim Smith
That'S always a good member.
[00:01:03.890] - Todd Jones
So we met in those days in the late 80s. And I'm sorry, the late 80s. And then you went on to New York, where really, you spent the bulk of your career at The New York Times and the New York Daily News. And as we unfold the show, I wanted to just ask you in general, when you think back to your career, almost a quarter century in New York, what was it like to be a sports rider in New York City, the media capital of the world?
[00:01:29.810] - Tim Smith
Well, when I left Cincinnati to come to New York, this is what I always thought that New York was just particularly with sports. And it was just this cut throat incredible. I'm going sink. I had so much reputation and fear coming into that setting. And then I went to cover the New York Jets, and I had been covering the Cincinnati Bengals. And I had been working. My competition at The Cincinnati Post was a great Jack Brennan, right. And so Jack and I always I don't know if you remember the old Wiley Coyote cartoon, but there was the thing about the sheepdog would clock in every day.
[00:02:22.070] - Tim Smith
And Wiley Coyote would clock in every day. And they would spend the whole day like trying to beat the hell out of each other. Oh, yeah. So Jack and I would spend the day just in the corners whispering to people. And then without the Internet, you would have to wait until the next day and pick up the paper to find out what all the whispering was about. Right. But we clocked in every day. We did our own thing, and he beat me. I beat him just hand to hand combat every day.
[00:02:57.470] - Tim Smith
And I thought, this is going to be useful when I get to New York, because now I'm competing not only with one person. I'm competing with all these other newspapers and all this kind of stuff. So I was a little nervous coming to New York and coming to that setting. But when I got to the Jets, I found the environment was completely different, that there was almost like a I don't know. There was like, all the guys worked together, and I'm like, what are you doing?
[00:03:31.290] - Tim Smith
They'd be like, hey, who talked to Eric McMillan? Somebody having Eric McMillan quotes. I'll trade you Eric McMillan quotes for Ken O'Brien quotes because I didn't talk to Ken O'Brien. I'm sitting in the room and I'm going like, they're like, nine guy reporters in there, and they're swapping quotes between.
[00:03:49.890] - Todd Jones
Yeah, what is this, right?
[00:03:51.150] - Tim Smith
Yeah.
[00:03:51.870] - Todd Jones
This is a cutthroat.
[00:03:53.070] - Tim Smith
New York media. Really? Yeah. This is a cutthroat New York media. But somebody explained to me like, they got sort of tired of, like their bosses yelling at them every morning going, Why didn't you have this or you weren't working hard enough. So they decided to just, like, on some of the stories to just share information. And I was like, I ain't shared nothing, man.
[00:07:19.930] - Tim Smith
I would just do my own thing.
[00:07:23.170] - Todd Jones
That's really interesting, because, like you said, you would think it would be the opposite.
[00:07:27.250] - Tim Smith
Yes. You would think all these guys would be out there just, like, trying to beat each other over their heads with whatever they could get. And that was like my first experience of coming into New York. And then once I did that, I was like, you know what this is going to be if you just use your journalistic skills, this is going to be a pretty decent set up because you have those guys like you said, they just had that attitude. But, yeah, I learned from that in terms of covering a beat, that you always got to be like, your own man and do your own thing.
[00:08:07.010] - Todd Jones
Well, that's what I learned, too, because when I met you, I was right out of College in the late 80s, and I was Jack Brennan's backup guy on the beat. And, hell, I didn't even think I was allowed to talk to you, Tim. But what I found, though, is that you were a very nice guy. So, yeah, we got to know each other and became friends. But you're right. It was a different type of atmosphere, and I think a lot of that had to do with it was a smaller city, but almost in a weird way, more attention on that one thing.
[00:08:41.430] - Todd Jones
Then you had a morning paper and an afternoon paper. And there weren't a bunch of pro teams during football season. It was the Bengals, and so people were into it and let's get after it.
[00:08:56.430] - Tim Smith
But I started thinking about that. That's probably one of the last cities that I could think of other than, like, major cities that had an afternoon, a morning and an afternoon paper. Right. It was such a weird kind of dynamic that late in the game because mostly all the papers that sort of combined and everything.
[00:09:16.650] - Todd Jones
And you also had such a team, a very talented team in the Bengals of those days with a lot of great talkers. A lot of guys who went on to do media careers.
[00:09:27.750] - Tim Smith
Really, Collinsworth is still doing it. Yeah.
[00:09:31.410] - Todd Jones
Chris Collinsworth, Boomersias and Solomon Wilcott. You had all these guys, and it was a great locker room. So for a young guy like me to walk in, it was really eye opening to like, this is what the business is like. And then you had a head coach like Sam Weiss. And Sam would meet you like, three times a day. He didn't care. And he was talking and training camp. His room was down the hall from you at Wilmington College. He just got knocked on Sam's door in the evening.
[00:10:01.110] - Tim Smith
And he filled your notebook.
[00:10:02.310] - Todd Jones
He'd fill your notebook every day. Incredible.
[00:10:53.370] - Todd Jones
I was thinking a lot about Sam when he passed a couple of years ago. Such a brilliant offense of mind and just a different character. We covered a lot of coaches in our careers, but covering Sam to me, was so unique. What do you recall about covering Sam? Other than the fact that he liked to talk?
[00:11:16.170] - Tim Smith
remember one Saturday morning I had my two daughters and one was like a toddler. And the other one was not too far from a toddler. She might have been three. And so I went to the walkthrough because nothing ever happens at a walkthrough, except except on this day they were playing like Tampa Bay, and I'm trying to remember the defensive End's name.
[00:11:58.090] - Tim Smith
The first name was Jim. But anyway, Jim scowl. Yeah, they traded him to Tampa Bay. I'm there with my two kids. And I said to Sam, I said, Sam, I got to go in and talk to Jim. Can you watch my kids? And Sam said, no problem. He's like, I got a daughter. No problem. He said, Bring him to the office and sit the little one here in this chair and put the other one here. And he said, You're not going to be long. So just sit him here.
[00:12:37.730] - Tim Smith
He said, I'll watch him. No problem. Right. So I go. And I said, Well, I said, I'm going to take the baby. I said, Just watch the toddler. I said, I'm going to take the baby with me. So I'm standing there. Jim scowl is, like, in tears. I balancing a baby. I'm trying to take notes. He's like, crest falling because the Bengals are a good team. Tampa sucked, and he was getting traded. Right. So I'm balancing the child and I'm taking notes. And Jim is just like, he must think he's in a Felini movie because here's a guy talking to him with a baby at like, the worst point of his career at this point.
[00:13:14.750] - Todd Jones
Meanwhile, Sam is watching your other show.
[00:13:16.610] - Tim Smith
And Sam, I'm thinking, what the heck is Sam doing? So I come out of the locker room and I don't know if you remember, like, that little trailer thing they had.
[00:13:25.790] - Todd Jones
But there was literally a trailer, right?
[00:13:27.890] - Tim Smith
Yeah. It was literally a trailer. But there was that long hallway with the coach's offices and stuff. And Sam had an office. So I leave the locker room and I see my kid just like, running down the hallway, and she's just giggling and laughing and everything. And she's just bouncing off the walls and running and just running through the hallways and everything. And I'm like, So I go to Sam and Sam. I said, Why is this child, like, so energetic? And he's like, oh, we just been eating candy.
[00:14:01.290] - Tim Smith
And I was like, Her mother doesn't give her kid. She's on a sugar high, man. My kid, all this candy to keep her quiet. While.
[00:14:13.590] - Todd Jones
That was probably the end of Sam's babysitting career.
[00:17:18.350] - Todd Jones
One other thing about Sam was that he was such a complex guy, that there were things about him that weren't good, too, in terms of I mean, you were at the game in Seattle in 1090, and after they lost to the Seahawks, he barred Denise Tom from USA Today from entering the locker room. What are you doing, dude?
[00:17:42.050] - Tim Smith
And I didn't understand that because it didn't really fit into who the man was. I mean, he would always tell the story about how he room with one of the first gay players. What is the guy's name, Jerry Smith or something with the Washington Red team? He room with one of the first gay players. He was like, such an open minded guy that it was hard for me to reconcile a guy who was so innovative and openminded and progressive in his thinking with being just the caveman and the Neanderthal when it came to this issue.
[00:18:21.770] - Tim Smith
And I remember when Denise came back to the press box and she was saying, Sam Weiss locked me out of the dressing room, and I said to her, I said, It must have been a security guy. And she said, no, it was Sam himself because the security guy said that Sam had given the order not to let any women in the locker room. And I was like, no, I couldn't have been Sam, and I couldn't recycle. So I called the hotel and I got Sam on the phone at the hotel.
[00:18:59.310] - Tim Smith
And Sam is going through all this stuff that we don't conduct business in the nude and the Supreme Court, they're not naked when they render these decisions. And I got a responsibility to the wives of these athletes not to have them being naked in front of other women. And I'm like, Where is this coming from? Right?
[00:19:19.530] - Todd Jones
Where Sam? I mean, seriously.
[00:19:21.330] - Tim Smith
Yeah. So I said to him, and this is the only time that I have ever done this in my entire career. And I said, Sam, you don't want to say this. You don't want to do this because I knew that the Commissioner was coming into town. I knew Tag Libo was coming into town to talk about to meet with some business leaders in Seattle, like, the very next day. And I said, Sam, you don't want to do this. He's like, yes, I do. He's like, I want to be on the record.
[00:19:51.270] - Tim Smith
I said, Sam, I said, for the second time, you don't want to do this. And he says, yeah, I do want to do this because it's something that needs to be said. And if I don't say it, then who's going to say it? And I said, okay, it's your funeral. So I wrote the story. And the weird thing was the story didn't run in the Cincinnati inquiry because it was after deadline when I got the story. But I gave the quotes to a reporter from the La Times, and he credited me with getting Sam, which was a weird kind of thing because the story wasn't in the Cincinnati inquire.
[00:20:30.210] - Tim Smith
But the very next day, the Commissioner came down so hard on Sam because Sam embarrassed the Commissioner embarrassed the League. And here's the Commissioner speaking to business leaders in Seattle. And he's got this coach that's completely out of step with the way things should be done.
[00:20:50.310] - Todd Jones
And it was only two weeks after Lisa Olsen had been harassed in the New England players locked around.
[00:20:56.970] - Tim Smith
Yeah, the timing of it. And I still remember Sam doing his weekly press conference because they stayed in Seattle because they were going to go down to La to play the Rams the next week. So they decided to stay in Seattle. And I still remember Sam doing his Wednesday press conference in a loincloth Jesus at an indoor pool at the hotel. And he's like, yeah, you're going to say I'm a caveman. I'm going to dress like a caveman. Yeah.
[00:21:30.910] - Todd Jones
Well, there was obviously never a dull moment with Sam. Well, Tim, after you left Sam, you did go to The New York Times, and you started out there covering the J-E-T-S. Jets, Jets, Jets. So your time in the NFL when you think about it, what did you like about covering the NFL?
[00:23:02.330] - Tim Smith
That the main thing that I like. And to this day, it's still the thing that sort of propels me as a fan of the sport is I like the players. I agree. I like the players, and I form my relationship more with the players and their agents in terms of just players, movement and stuff. And I would always side with the players against the League. But because I worked at the New York Times, they couldn't take too much of an adversarial relationship with me because they needed the New York Times.
[00:23:41.250] - Tim Smith
But I was always on the player side.
[00:23:44.130] - Todd Jones
I always felt like they played such a violent game that their careers could end at any moment, that there was almost a humility to them that you wouldn't expect from these big Broly guys, even if they weren't road scholars. They went to College and were exposed to other things on a campus. And it just gave them a different perspective. That's my memory of dealing with NFL players.
[00:24:08.370] - Tim Smith
It gave them a different perspective, and it allowed them to have a level of communication skills that perhaps some athletes like baseball players. I think baseball players because of the way that they have to come up through Class A and riding on a bus and having sort of that insular lifestyle where they're only dealing with their teammates and everything. And they don't really deal in the smaller towns. They're not dealing with a lot of press. They really can't maneuver through those kinds of relationships so well. But with football players, I always felt like I could build a relationship with a football player.
[00:26:13.530] - Tim Smith
But my thing about covering the League was I like the players more than I like the League itself. Yeah, I agree, because the League is a Corporation. It's a business, and the Commissioner is beholding to the individual owners of the teams and their business conflicts with the workers in so many different ways. I always thought one of the biggest oxymorons was a team doctor. Yeah. Right.
[00:26:49.070] - Todd Jones
He gets paid by the club, right.
[00:26:50.870] - Tim Smith
He gets paid by the club to put you back out. If you went to your regular position and you had this injury, your regular primary care doctor would be like, no, go home and rest. No, you're not going to be running around and getting hit by a 260 pound man on Sunday.
[00:27:06.950] - Todd Jones
Oh, I remember Bruce Kazerki alignment, offense, alignment at the Cincinnati Bengals. He once told me he explained the injury report to me. He said, if it says probable, you're playing, if it says doubtful, you're probable. And if it says out, you're probably going to play. He was sort of joking, but not really. They're the Gladiators, right?
[00:27:30.870] - Tim Smith
Yeah.
[00:27:32.310] - Todd Jones
Well, you wrote about much more than just the NFL in your time in New York. I mean, as a columnist at the New York Daily News, you wrote about everything, the pro teams, NBA, Major League Baseball. There's a baseball story I wanted to ask you about. Tim, I think you once mentioned that you got sent to the Bahamas to write about Alduque. Is that right?
[00:28:02.310] - Tim Smith
Yeah. So I got sent to Miami to cover the Orange Bowl. And I covered the Orange Bowl for one day. That was photo date. And then I got a call from the editor that said, hey, this baseball player, this Cuban baseball player was just rescued from an atoll near the Bahamas, and he's in a Bahamian detention center. Can you get down to the Bahamas and track the story down and find this guy and I'm like, wait a minute. I don't know anything about the Bahamas. I don't know where the detention center is.
[00:28:41.370] - Tim Smith
He's like, yeah, just go down there and report the story. And I was like.
[00:28:46.050] - Todd Jones
Okay, just another day at the office.
[00:28:48.090] - Tim Smith
Just another day at the office. So I get on a plane and I just happened to be at the airport. They sent a photographer along, somebody that spoke Spanish. And so they sent me with a photographer. And when I got to the Bahamas, I landed at the airport. And there was a reporter from the Miami Herald there that I knew from covering football. Armando Silgero, right. He was there. So he said, Well, why don't we just ride together to this detention center and you're looking for Orlando Hernandez?
[00:29:27.690] - Tim Smith
The picture, Orlando Hernandez, L Duke, along with, like, five other people, gets in his makeshift raft and tries to escape Cuba and ends up on an atoll outside the Bahamas for, like, three days. So we get to the detention center, the taxi and we tell the taxi, look, there's money in it. But you just got to wait for us until we figure out where we have to go from this point. And this is like, one of those bad movies where as soon as you get out of the taxi, it just speeds off.
[00:30:14.250] - Tim Smith
And so we go up to the gate, I mean, to the fence and we don't see him. So this guy comes over and he says because he saw the photographer with the camera.
[00:30:49.710] - Tim Smith
He says, Are you guys looking for the baseball player? And we're like, yeah, and he's here and we go, okay, good. Where is he? He says he's in that building over there. So we go, okay. We're just going to stake this place out. So they bring them out of the building and they put him in a van and the van leaves. We're there with no way to get to follow the van or know where it's going. Yeah.
[00:31:20.790] - Todd Jones
Because the taxi guy bolted.
[00:31:22.350] - Tim Smith
The taxi guy bolted. Right. So we asked the guy at the fence. He said, Well, they're taking him to the government offices downtown where they're going to try to figure out what to do with them and process them. So we were like, okay, now we know where he went. Now how do we get there? So this old woman drives by, so we flag her down and we go, Ma'am, if you don't mind, because this place is in the middle of nowhere. Ma'am, if you don't mind, can you take us to this government center downtown, and she's like, Well, I came out here to visit my son, but she's like, I think that God put me here to do you guys a favor.
[00:32:10.770] - Tim Smith
So, yeah, I'll take you. So we're like, thank God.
[00:32:14.970] - Todd Jones
Yeah, an angel.
[00:32:16.230] - Tim Smith
Yeah, exactly. Right. And she has on the back seat of the car. She has, like, dozens of eggs. I don't know how many eggs there were, but they were stacked in these little crates and everything. And she's, like, just put the eggs in there. Be careful. Put the eggs in the trunk. I don't need any of them broken. So we carefully put the eggs in the trunk, and the photographer is like, Well, ma'am, I got all this gear. You mind if I put my gear in the trunk?
[00:32:42.450] - Tim Smith
But I'll make sure that the eggs aren't broken. She's like, yeah, no problem. So the photographer puts all of his gear in the trunk. We pile into the car. So she takes us to the center. That's fine with me. So she drops us off, and she points out where the center is. The photographer reaches into the trunk to get his equipment. Every single egg is busted.
[00:33:29.050] - Todd Jones
Scrambled, scrambled.
[00:33:30.730] - Tim Smith
Every egg in the trunk is scrambled. So we're like, oh, Geez, we just ruined this woman's. So we're like, we can't the woman's, like, she won't take any money because she says, God sent her to help us out. So we throw, like, $50 in the trunk with a busted egg, so she won't curse us out whenever she gets where she's going with these eggs.
[00:33:52.250] - Todd Jones
By the way, how did you put that on your expense account?
[00:33:55.010] - Tim Smith
Yeah. $50 a busted egg. Okay. You don't expense that. You leave that alone.
[00:34:01.550] - Todd Jones
I thought that was a dinner.
[00:34:42.410] - Todd Jones
So did you get to talk to Hernandez at some point?
[00:34:45.350] - Tim Smith
We got the press conference. So we go in and it's like him and like, four other people and they start telling the story. But they're telling the story in Spanish. And I don't understand the word of Spanish. So the photographer is standing next to me and he's translating.
[00:35:20.450] - Todd Jones
He's got egg all over his equipment and he's translating, and he's translating.
[00:35:24.770] - Tim Smith
And it's very emotional. L Duke is crying and talking about how God saved them. And if the ship had to come by, they had run out of food. There was no fresh water. And they were catching rainwater and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, this is a great story. I wish I could hear it in the original language to try to capture some of this. I captured the emotion, but the language. So when we were there, this guy, this baseball agent shows up and we see him, like, passing out money to some of the officials.
[00:36:05.210] - Tim Smith
And so we go, okay, this isn't going to take long. This guy's going to be free pretty soon. But we don't know where he's going to go. And so the agent is like, Well, he can't come to America, because if he comes to America, then his baseball rights become open to everybody. Everybody can sort of draft them or whatever he can draft or whatever he said. But if he goes to Costa Rica, he could just make a deal directly with the Yankees.
[00:36:38.170] - Todd Jones
So the Yankees, Yankees were making sure he's heading to Costa Rica.
[00:36:41.410] - Tim Smith
The Yankees were pulling the strings to make sure that he goes to Costa Rica. So he ends up going to Costa Rica. He ends up siding with the Yankees and becoming Gal Duke.
[00:36:50.710] - Todd Jones
Well, the story. And then the story ends up being a little question, right. There are 10 hours on this raft. Eight guys from Cuba, they're swimming, they're Sharks. And then you're like, later, it's like, Did that really happen?
[00:37:07.090] - Tim Smith
No, they plucked this guy. He left you. But somebody plucked him out of the water all the way to wherever and dumped him. This is just perfectly what I think. I think the guy got plucked out of the water. Somebody just happened to come by the A toll, and it happened to be near the Bahamas. And then they took him to the Bahamas. And then they worked this whole thing out to get him to Costa Rica.
[00:37:31.990] - Todd Jones
I think the Yankees had some guy, George Costanza come up with a story about Sharks and swimming and 10 hours.
[00:37:40.870] - Tim Smith
Yeah. And opening your mouth for Ray water.
[00:37:53.230] - Todd Jones
Hey, truth always reminds me of the great boxing promoter, Bob Arum, who once said yesterday, I was lying today. I'm telling the truth.
[00:38:02.230] - Tim Smith
Absolutely. Yes.
[00:38:05.530] - Todd Jones
Well, I'll tell you what, there's one thing that's true about boxing is that once those guys climb in that ring, that's the true moment. That's the truth. And boxing has been such a huge part of your sports riding career.
[00:38:17.950] - Tim Smith
Tim.
[00:38:20.170] - Todd Jones
Three decades plus of writing about sports. You spent many nights either in gyms or at prize fights. How did you originally get into covering boxing?
[00:38:32.770] - Tim Smith
Well, I worked at the Atlanta Jones Constitution in the mid Eighties. And right after Evan Holyfield came out of the Olympics in ay four in the La Games, they needed somebody to cover his career. And they were going around the newsroom and saying, who knows anything about boxing or who likes boxing. And I mean, I have been following the sport since I was, like, twelve years old. The moment in the sport that sort of captured my imagination was when Ali came to came to the Atlanta Civic Center to fight Jerry Quarry.
[00:39:12.470] - Tim Smith
I followed that story. I mean, I was twelve years old. I was, like, in the 7th or the 8th grade. I followed that story. I was fascinated by this guy coming off this suspension and getting back in the ring.
[00:39:25.010] - Todd Jones
Yeah, that was right.
[00:39:28.490] - Tim Smith
And it was just such a fascinating story that I fell in love with the story. I fell in love with Ali and then just watching him in the ring after that, I just sort of fell in love with the sport.
[00:39:42.590] - Todd Jones
There was also something about writing in boxing, too, right?
[00:39:45.830] - Tim Smith
Yes.
[00:39:46.190] - Todd Jones
It lends itself to it, right.
[00:39:47.570] - Tim Smith
It lends itself the drama of what goes on in the ring and just the passion and the heart and the determination and just the ability to be able to describe what happens in the ring and the emotions and everything. It sort of just lends itself to all of those elements that you need for a great story. Yeah.
[00:40:15.590] - Todd Jones
And there's characters. I mean, there's these people that show up. They're just dropped out of some kind of, like storyline and fed to you. I mean, think about a guy like Louduva, right? A guy that you wrote a book with Luduva fighting life. The guy spent seven decades in boxing as an iconic manager and trainer.
[00:40:34.850] - Tim Smith
You couldn't create Lou Duva if you go into Central casting and said, Give me the old grizzled veteran boxing guy with the twisted nose. And really, basically, you would have the Burgess Meredith from Rocky He'll Kill You, Dead Rock. Yeah, basically. And people look at that and they think that's the caricature. But it's not that's what old school boxing traders were. That guy.
[00:41:16.510] - Todd Jones
Well, Duba signed a lot of those guys from that great 84 Olympic team, Whittaker Breelin, Melder, Taylor, Tyrell, Biggs and Hallfield.
[00:41:29.630] - Tim Smith
I think they had of that class. I think they ended up signing eight of the guys from that boxing team. I think there were, like, twelve guys on the team, and I think they ended up signing, like, eight of the twelve.
[00:41:41.030] - Todd Jones
So you're in Atlanta and Hollerfield is the guy. He's one of the guys signing one of the guys. So you became like, a hollerfield writer, right.
[00:41:49.550] - Tim Smith
I became the Holy field rider, by extension, the boxing writer at some point. Then I'm covering all of boxing by virtue of Holyfield, and it sort of happened the same way when I went to Cincinnati, I'm covering all the boxing by virtue of Erin Prior, right.
[00:42:15.390] - Tim Smith
Yeah. But that was the start of my boxing writing career. And still, to this day, one of the greatest boxing matches I've ever witnessed live was Yvander Holyfield and Dwight Mohammed Kawhi in the undisputed Cruiserweight Championship fight at the O'amni Arena in Atlanta.
[00:42:48.790] - Todd Jones
All right, well, tell us about it.
[00:42:54.230] - Tim Smith
It was basically a war of attrition. It was a brutal back and forth. It was one of the last 15 round fights. They eliminated 15 round fights like the next year. After that, I've never seen two men give or take as much punishment as I saw that afternoon. And it was almost like Thrilla and Manila type level of drama. It's like you didn't know who was getting the best of whoever. And Holyfield ended up winning a majority decision. That's how close the fight was. Holyfield ended up winning a majority decision.
[00:43:38.810] - Tim Smith
And after the fight, he had to go to the hospital because his kidneys were on the verge of shutting down. He had lost so much body fluid from sweating and getting hit in the kidneys so much that he ended up in the hospital and they had to replenish his fluids and keep his kidneys from shutting down. Oh, my. He could have died. He could have died.
[00:44:04.790] - Todd Jones
Unfortunately, that has happened obviously, over the years in boxing, and that could have happened that very day.
[00:44:10.490] - Tim Smith
That could have happened that very day. And that's when I knew that it takes a very special kind of athlete to do this, first of all, and it's counterintuitive. It doesn't make any sense at all, because most athletes in a sport, they get themselves in peak physical condition to perform at their very best to carry out whatever athletic responsibilities they have on the field. But none of them go into the contest knowing that they're not going to come out of the contest the same way that they went in, and none of them go in with the at least in the back of their mind that there's a possibility they could die.
[00:44:52.970] - Tim Smith
Maybe race car drivers think that there's a possibility that I could get in a crash and die. But boxers that's at the forefront of every boxer knows that they're not going to come out the same way that they got that they went in. Yeah.
[00:45:09.530] - Todd Jones
Unfortunately, look how many end up, right?
[00:45:12.530] - Tim Smith
And a lot of them end up, and they take it. That's why from a business standpoint, you want these guys to make as much money as they possibly can and then walk away, get out before it's too late. Just get in, make your money and get out.
[00:45:28.730] - Todd Jones
Well, you saw Hollerfield that day in an unbelievable fight. And then after being cruiserweight champ, he moves up to become the heavyweight champ when he beat Douglas in 1990. And Holefield is like, what the only four time heavyweight we're talking about, a special breed of fighter. What do you remember about Hollerfield? Covering him? What sticks in your crawl about him as a person and him as a fighter.
[00:46:02.250] - Tim Smith
He was flawed. On some level. He was a flawed guy. He had, like, 15 million kids. And I remember Lou Duva once said that. And he was supposed to have all these Christian values and everything. And Lou Duva once said that there was only one command that he couldn't keep of the ten Commandments. And that was, thou shalt not commit adultery. But he was probably one of the single most disciplined athletes that I have ever encountered in all of my years of coverage. Floyd Mayweather is probably up there with Yvonne wholly feel in terms of being disciplined.
[00:46:50.830] - Tim Smith
And I remember being at a Press conference. And Evanger Holyfield, there was this humongous chocolate chip cookie. And Evan Delefield was a heavyweight. And I pointed to the cookie, and I said, Man, you could eat that. I said, You're not like these smaller guys that can't eat these cookies.
[00:47:13.750] - Todd Jones
Hold on a second. Only a sports rider would notice the cookie.
[00:47:16.930] - Tim Smith
Of course, it was a great cookie. I don't want to sound like your former President where he talked about a piece of chocolate cake. But this was an impressive chocolate chip.
[00:47:26.890] - Todd Jones
I can picture it right now.
[00:47:29.230] - Tim Smith
This cookie must have been about six inches in diameter, and it was loaded with, like, tremendous chocolate chips. It was like, the most impressive chocolate chip cookie I've ever seen.
[00:47:39.190] - Todd Jones
Sounds like a sewer plate.
[00:47:40.210] - Tim Smith
You could eat. Yes, it was like a manhole cup.
[00:47:42.850] - Todd Jones
So that Cookie's sitting there in front of Hollyfield, what happened?
[00:47:45.490] - Tim Smith
Yeah. And I said to him, I said, Unlike these smaller guys, got to make weight. You're heavy weight. You could eat that cookie. And he looks at me and he goes, you know why I'm not eating that cookie. And I said, no, why? He said, that's a two mile cookie. Two mile cookie. What are you talking about? He said, if I ate that cookie, I would have to run 2 miles to burn that cookie off. And he said, It's not worth it for me to eat that cookie and have to run an extra 2 miles to burn it off.
[00:48:18.190] - Tim Smith
Wow. He was one of the most dedicated guys that I just dedicated to his body. And like, keeping his body in great shape. And he never kind of like you.
[00:48:27.850] - Todd Jones
And I. Yeah. Did you eat that cookie, by the way? Hell, yeah.
[00:48:36.010] - Tim Smith
And I did run 4 miles afterwards.
[00:48:38.170] - Todd Jones
I don't even like to drive 4 miles. I run 4 miles. Give me that cookie.
[00:48:42.190] - Tim Smith
But that was the thing that sort of struck me that this guy was completely disciplined in his athletic life. But on some levels, outside of that, not so disciplined.
[00:48:52.630] - Todd Jones
How did that discipline pay off in the type of fighter Hallefield was once he got into the ring?
[00:49:12.430] - Tim Smith
Well, I think it just sort of fed into his confidence and his warrior mentality that he knew that he was in great shape, and he knew that he didn't have very many physical limitations when he got into the ring. And so he was willing to push beyond whatever it was that was in front of him, whether that was pain, whether it was exhaustion, whatever it was, he was always willing to push beyond that limit. And he was always the smaller heavyweight. When he got into the ring, everybody was always much bigger than him.
[00:49:47.230] - Tim Smith
And I think that his discipline sort of fuel that confidence that I'm going to go in. I'm going to be the David, they're going to be the Goliath, and I'm going to go in, and I'm going to beat these bigger guys that I just have the confidence in my own abilities. I have the confidence in my own training. I have the confidence in my own discipline that I'm going to be able to do that. And I think that fueled him to go to the mat with all these big guys.
[00:50:17.830] - Todd Jones
Do you have a favorite holefield fight that you covered Besides the one you mentioned when he was? I'm talking about the heavyweight fights.
[00:50:25.630] - Tim Smith
The heavyweight fights, probably the first title fight.
[00:50:41.950] - Tim Smith
This is Fight of the Year. Yeah. The bite fight was the result of the first one because no one thought that he would be able to beat Mike Tyson. But long before he fought Tyson, that he had a mental edge against Tyson. And it happened that they were in the same Olympic class, and they were in the same Olympic training facility. And I think it was in Colorado Springs. And Tyson was a bully. And Holyfield tells the story about how he walks into a ring to the Rec room.
[00:51:31.170] - Tim Smith
And Tyson is bullying some other boxers in the Rec room to, just, like, take over the Games and do all this stuff. Annie Van der Holyfield stood up to Mike Tyson and Mike Tyson backed down, and he said, I knew at that point if we ever fought, I was going to beat him because he said he was a bully. And I know if I press the situation, he's going to back down.
[00:51:57.090] - Todd Jones
He proved him right.
[00:51:59.370] - Tim Smith
And he said that that was the knowledge that he had. And that was the knowledge that a lot of people didn't have when they made him like this incredible, incredibly long odds that he couldn't beat this fierce Mike Tyson. He knew that he could. And he went in the ring, and he beat the guy. He bullied the bully.
[00:52:24.690] - Todd Jones
When you think about Tyson, what comes to mind in your years of covering him.
[00:52:33.910] - Tim Smith
Really just a vulnerable kid. And I still think that there's just some vulnerability still there. And I think that obviously, I'm not going to play amateur psychiatrist and put this guy on a couch or anything like that. But his whole persona was put forth to try to hide his weaknesses and his fears.
[00:53:01.630] - Todd Jones
The whole thing with wearing the black trunks, no rows, the intimidation.
[00:53:06.010] - Tim Smith
The whole thing was all about. I'm going to show you that I'm better than you. You're going to be scared of me so that whatever fear I have inside doesn't come out. He used his own fear as a weapon to try to make other people afraid of him, to build himself up. And I still remember there was an incident between me and him. I was like, the only American reporter that had gone over to England to cover his fight against this British guy, Julius Francis. And he wasn't going to talk to any reporters or anything.
[00:53:52.790] - Tim Smith
But because I came over from America and he knew me, he agreed to do an interview with me, and I never will forget it. It was in a ballroom in a Grovener hotel in London, and we had a long conversation. It was like a 45 minutes chat. We had a long conversation. And at the end of the conversation, as a reporter, you just try to get out of a conversation on an upbeat note. So I asked him, I said, Have you ever what did you do in London?
[00:54:26.930] - Tim Smith
That was fun. Did you have any fun while you were here? Did you see any sites? And he said, yeah, I saw Big Ben. And he said, I went to Madame Tussou's Wax Museum. And I said to him, I said, Well, it's a famous Museum. Do they have any figures of you in there? And he said, no, he said, no, they don't. But if they did, it would probably be in the Chamber of Horrors. Everybody in the room laughed, including Tyson. And I laughed. And I was like, Well, thanks, Mike, for the time.
[00:54:56.570] - Tim Smith
And I'm getting ready to walk away. And he grabs me by the arm, and I can still see it to this day. Grabs me by the arm, and he's drinking a bottle of water, and he sets the water down. He grabs me by the arm, and he says, I want to tell you something. I was like, okay, Mike, he said, I want to tell you how people treat me. And he said, I was going through the Museum in Hollywood on Hollywood and vine, he said, Then I was in there with my wife.
[00:55:26.810] - Tim Smith
And he said, I was going through a Museum. And then he said, they took me to the Chamber of Horrors, and they had me in the Chamber of Horrors with all these terrible people. Hannibal Lecter, the creature from the Black Lagoon. And I'm standing there and he said, look how people humiliate me. He said, People always want to call me pain. And he starts to choke up like he's about to cry. And so I'm like, okay, I'm feeling a little sympathy. 20 seconds later, he's going, People are always.
[00:56:01.190] - Tim Smith
And he starts to get angry. He's like, People are always trying to make me feel pain. He said, That's why I only want to make people feel pain. I want to hurt people, make people feel pain. He said, I bet you're one of those people who want to cause me pain. And I'm like, Mike, no, I'm not one of those people. He said, I bet you are. But he said, I want you to feel the same pain that I do. And I hope you feel all the pain that I have inside of me.
[00:56:29.870] - Tim Smith
I hope terrible things happen to you. I hope your kids get sick, and I hope they die. Where did this come from? And then the PR guy goes, okay, interview is over, and I'm like the interview was over when I tried to walk out and grab and pull him back. But he went on like an emotional roller coaster. He went from nearly on the verge of tears to calming down to building this rage and this anger to lashing out at me. It was the most incredible thing that I've ever experienced in an interview in terms of just the roller coaster of emotions in about 90 seconds.
[00:57:10.650] - Tim Smith
Wow. And he still remembered that. And I remember when he was doing his Broadway one man Broadway play with I think Mike Lee produced. They were at the Neederlander Theater in New York. And I went to the press conference, and I saw Mike and I interviewed Mike, and I knew him, and we knew each other. And I wouldn't say we were closed. But again, he grabbed me, like, after the interview, he grabbed me and he pulled me aside. And he said, you know what, Tim? He said something that's always bothered me.
[00:57:48.550] - Tim Smith
He said, What I did to you in England that time in London, he said, you remember it? I said, yeah, Mike, I remember. He said, I got to ask you to forgive me for what I did. And I said, Mike, I forgot about it as soon as it happened. He said, no, he said, you shouldn't have forgot about it was a horrible thing that I said. He said, I still remember what I said. It was a horrible thing that I said. He said, I wish I had never said it.
[00:58:10.690] - Tim Smith
He said, Can you find it in your heart to forgive me for that? And I said, yeah, Mike, I forgive you. I forgive you for it. He said, thank you. I appreciate you. Forgive me for that. So there's like this as he got older and where he is now, he's very self aware now, but he's still like, I don't want to say crazy, because again, that's a clinical diagnosis. But there's still something that's not right with him. And he has been diagnosed with bipolar and all this other stuff.
[00:58:42.010] - Tim Smith
But the self awareness that he has now that he would come up to me after all these years. And just like, apologize, that struck me because I had forgotten all about it. But apparently it still bothered him. Wow. So the next opportunity he had to say it, he said it to me. It takes a special person to come back and apologize for something that bothers him, whether it bothers you or not. But at least he was willing to make amends and everything.
[00:59:20.030] - Todd Jones
As an African American yourself, did you see something in him and really other fighters, too, from a different perspective than a white rider like myself?
[00:59:30.170] - Tim Smith
I think so. I have more sympathy and empathy for them for coming out of where they came from and carrying that kind of baggage. And then knowing that it didn't matter what level they attained, they could still walk into a store and be followed by store security because they were black, or there would be people that would cross the street at night to avoid crossing with them because they were black because they were perceived as a threat. So I think I had more of an empathy for them, even though they had attained a level of financial security and success that the average American can't even dream of.
[01:00:26.250] - Tim Smith
But they were still going to be regardless of where they went in this country, they were still going to be a black man in America and all the baggage that comes with that. So I could connect with them on that level. And even though you don't have conversations with that, even though you don't necessarily articulate that there is a level of understanding that a white reporter wouldn't have a black athlete. But I will say this. It doesn't give you any more of an end with them than it does any other reporter.
[01:01:06.130] - Tim Smith
But there is an understanding. But I think as a black reporter, as an African American sports reporter, I think that athletes want you to give them the benefit of the doubt. But as a journalist, you have to be true to the craft. You have to be true to objectivity. You can't give them the benefit of the doubt when they are in the wrong or when they do something that's not right. You can't do that. And sometimes on that level, they feel like there's a betrayal on your part for not giving them a slide or whatever.
[01:01:40.630] - Tim Smith
And that's the duality of being a black sports reporter or a black sports writer is that you still have to do your job and you still have to do it at the best and highest standards. Even when you're covering, you have to cover all athletes the same. You can't make that distinction. But you do have an empathetic feeling for black athletes because you know what they deal with is African American men, and you know where they came from for the most part, you know where they came from.
[01:02:09.790] - Todd Jones
And I think that perspective is so important and not just boxing, but all sports coverage all sorts.
[01:02:14.890] - Tim Smith
I remember once when I was covering the Bengals and I had gone up. I was coming back from the training camp, and Reggie Williams sped and over took me on the highway. I think it was like 71 or whatever. I can't remember what highway was. He spent and overtook me and waved me off the side of the road. And I parked at some restaurant or something, and he came up to me and he said, You're the first African American reporter that I've ever dealt with, and he didn't ask for any special favorite.
[01:02:59.070] - Tim Smith
He didn't ask for any special favorite. But he said, I just wanted to acknowledge that I'm so happy that you're in this role, that you're doing this because I've never encountered an African American reporter on a daily basis at any of the stops along the way.
[01:03:17.190] - Todd Jones
That's really interesting that he wanted to voice that to you.
[01:03:21.030] - Tim Smith
Yeah. But he was also going to later run for city Council. Reggie was the ultimate politician. I'm not saying he was working some angle, but he probably was. But it was interesting that he expressed that. And no other athlete at that point had ever expressed that to me, whatever happens in your career, I hope you stick with it because it's very important that we, as athletes, see people that look like us in the press.
[01:03:57.350] - Todd Jones
And he's right.
[01:03:59.090] - Tim Smith
And he's right. And he's very much correct in that.
[01:04:07.590] - Todd Jones
Well, I think about the conversations like that with Reggie, the conversation you had with Mike Tyson, and you think about the years that you spent writing about sports and the opportunities you had to have those types of conversations. And I think it does give you an insight into something that goes way beyond Twitter and social media and what we see on TikTok. It's sometimes the moments that aren't necessarily part of the story that give us a greater understanding about where these guys, where these athletes, where these coaches were coming from and that gets back to the type of access that we were able to get back in those days.
[01:06:09.850] - Todd Jones
Well, it's certainly not like the day when you got to spend 3 hours with the most famous athlete of the last, what, 60, 70 years? Muhammad Ali, that type of access, right?
[01:06:25.570] - Tim Smith
It's unbelievable. And access that he granted and that he invited Greg Noble, the sports editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer. They were having a card signing. And it was still one of the most eclectic card signings I've ever been to because it was Billy Martin, Johnny Bench. And I think that Oscar Robertson was there. But it was Mohammed. Ali was a huge card signing at Riverfront Colosseum.
[01:07:01.730] - Todd Jones
Those are some big names.
[01:07:03.230] - Tim Smith
And so Greg says, Go down and see if you can talk to Ali because Ali was the onset of, like, Parkinson's. And so I went down and I didn't pay because I was a reporter, local reporter. And so I went down and I cycled up to Ali while he was signing some autographs. And I said, I'd like to interview you and talk to you. And he says, Well, I'm working right now. But if you come by my hotel room tomorrow morning at 07:00, I'll give you all the time you need.
[01:07:34.850] - Tim Smith
And I'm thinking, this guy is setting me up. Man, I'm going to go knock on this guy's hotel room. Some drunk is going to open the door and punch me in the face. So I go to the hotel and it's like some airport hotel near the Cincinnati airport. It was in Kentucky. And so I go and I knock on the door and Ali comes to the door. And he is larger than life. Basically, I'm about the same height. I mean, he's like, six, two. I'm 61.
[01:08:08.250] - Tim Smith
But I felt like I was looking up at this monumental figure when he came to the door and 07:00 in the morning. He's fully dressed. He's got all, like, nice shirts, slacks and everything, dress, shoes. And he said, Come in and it's like a sweet. So we're in one part of the sweet. He's like, my kids are sleeping in the other room, so we have to be a little bit quiet. I was like, okay.
[01:08:32.010] - Todd Jones
Well, Sam Weiss watching the kids.
[01:08:38.110] - Tim Smith
That's a great one. So for the next 3 hours, so weird. For the next 3 hours, I talked to ODI about everything. You name it. We talked about it fighting Fraser at Madison Square Garden. We talked about being suspended for the three years being a conscientious objector, and I still can't find this thing. He tried to convert me to Islam. He signed, like, a little Islamic track for me, gave it to me, and did all of his magic tricks, the cricket behind the year, the coin from behind, the year.
[01:09:20.450] - Tim Smith
He even levitated. And to this day, I don't know how he did it, but he said, Take this piece of paper and slide it under my feet. He said, I'm going to be off the ground. And I literally slid a piece of paper under his feet. He was not touching the ground. He was not touching the ground. Todd, when I tell you the guy wasn't touching the ground, I slid the piece of paper under his feet and it wasn't heels to toe thing. It was like, literally.
[01:09:45.770] - Tim Smith
He's like, no, because you're not going to believe he's like, slide it from side to side.
[01:09:50.570] - Todd Jones
Come on.
[01:09:52.610] - Tim Smith
It was the weirdest thing. So, like, midway during the interview, this is the wackiest part. Midway through the interview I'm talking toiley and he falls asleep. I mean, just like, falls asleep, just starts, nods out and he's sitting there. He's, like, nodding and I'm going, like, okay, what do I do? Do I get up and leave? All right. Am I going to do the creepy thing and sit here and watch and sleep? Do I just sit here silently look at my notes or whatever.
[01:10:22.430] - Todd Jones
So what happened?
[01:10:23.990] - Tim Smith
I did the creepy thing. I sat there and watch all you sleep. I'm like, I can't leave. I can try to wake him up, but he woke up when he woke up. He was refreshed. He was great at that point. His voice was softer, but he wasn't showing any signs of other than nodding out. He wasn't showing any signs of the Parkinson's having a major effect on him or anything. He did his Ali shuffle. He told me that he would beat Ali. He told me that he would beat Mike Tyson, and it wouldn't take him as long as it would take him to be Sunny listed.
[01:11:09.990] - Tim Smith
I was like, wow, really? He said, yeah, he said. He's very fast. He's strong, he said, but I'm faster and I'm stronger and I'm like, okay, whatever you say, Mr. Ali.
[01:11:18.810] - Todd Jones
Hey, man. He levitates. I'm not betting against the great.
[01:11:21.450] - Tim Smith
Yeah, I'm not betting against a guy who can get up off the ground.
[01:11:24.810] - Todd Jones
Well, Tim, those are the kind of moments that I'm sure you treasure from your career as a sports writer. And I know that readers and sports fans were lucky to have reporters such as yourself who got that type of access and were able to tell the type of stories behind the scenes. And I really enjoyed this time catching up with you and feel very fortunate about the stories you're able to share with us. And I want to thank you very much.
[01:11:50.850] - Tim Smith
No, thank you for having me. Todd, I think what you're doing is very good and just trying to make sure that this legacy lives on and the people that you're talking to, because I think in terms of sports journalism, we're heading in a direction that is not going to be anything like when we came along. So I'm glad you're storing these.
[01:12:20.190] - Todd Jones
Well, thank you. I'm going to send you some chocolate chip cookies just for saying that I need a four mile cookie. All right, Tim, you take care.
[01:12:29.850] - Tim Smith
Okay, Todd. Thank you.
[01:12:34.090] - Todd Jones
Stay on, Tim.
[01:12:35.350] - Tim Smith
Stay on. I'm not going.
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