Crime in Sports - #257 - Smokin' & Cursin' & Drinkin' & Murderin' - The Unforgivableness of Willie "The Cannon" Shannon
Episode Date: May 25, 2021This week, we tell a story of perseverance. Sort of. A young man is sent to prison at 15, but turns his life around, after finding boxing. It's downright inspirational... until the guy starts... committing untold horrors upon the unsuspecting population. He is sent back to prison for what we think is the worst thing he could've done, until DNA solves a cold case, and we find out what REALLY is the worst thing he could have done! Be sent to adult prison at 15, fight your way up the boxing ranks, and then be the monster that keeps people up at night with Willie "The Cannon" Shannon!! Check us out, every Tuesday! We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!! Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!! Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsportscrimeinsports@gmail.comfacebook.com/Crimeinsportsinstagram.com/smalltownmurder See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the app today. Discover all the best in audiobooks, podcasts, and originals featuring authentic Canadian voices and celebrity talent like Brendan Fraser and Luke Kirby's latest sci-fi adventure, The Downloaded.
A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. Queen of the courtroom is back. How did I know that? I have crystal ball in my head. New cases.
Leave her alone.
So, uh...
This is not a so.
This is a period.
Classic Judy.
It's streaming.
You can say anything.
It's an all-new season.
Judy Justice.
Only on Freebie. Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports!
Yay!
Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.
My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host.
I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you folks so much for joining us, an immense amount for joining us today.
We are thrilled to be here on another crazy episode of Crime and Sports.
And this one is insane.
You have to, don't tune out halfway through it.
You need to hear bell to bell on this one.
And it's just absolutely fucking bonkers.
One of the worst people we've ever had on Crime and Sports.
And that's saying something.
When we deal with the Buck Zoomhoffs and OJ and things like that, we've had some bad people.
This guy ranks up top ten.
He could be. He's an early nominee for scumbag of the year. I haven't even done the episode of the episode yet. So I think
this is good stuff. Before we get to that, though, quickly want to thank everybody for your reviews
this week. They do help. So that purple icon, give us five stars on Apple podcast. We don't know why,
but just do it because it helps. Head over to shutupandgivememurder.com
right now. You'll get lots of things there.
Number one, merch. We have tons of merchandise,
shirts and shoes
and things and you name it,
bags and there's all sorts
of stuff there. So check that out for both
Crime and Sports and Small Town Murder.
And if you're not listening to Small Town Murder,
you're really, you're blowing it is what you're
doing because... The boat's drifting.
It's drifting away.
You can grab on, damn it.
Grab onto the rope and pull yourself on because, wow, has it been nuts over there.
So if you like crazy stories, that's a place you need to be, Small Town Murder.
Check all of that out there.
And especially, especially check out live shows.
We have live shows all through 2022 and there's tickets available there
shut up and give me murder.com i've never been more excited i honestly can't wait to get back
on the road that's going to be fun to see everybody again actually that'll be a good
time to not just we're talking we always talk into a void every week and then we go
do these live shows and it's like oh there's human beings and it's good it's a good rhythm
those are faces james it's been taken so yeah it's going to be nice to be back out there again patreon oh boy do you want
to sign up for patreon if you haven't already i don't know what you're waiting for but do that
patreon.com slash crime and sports this week first of all we had personal ads last week which were
awesome and richard ramirez's childhood this week we have for the crime and
sports bonus and you'll have access to all the bonuses for both shows and everything and you
know it all goes together that's it uh we have backstage wrestler fights from throughout history
so this is actual wrestlers fighting each other because they're angry at each other so this happens
a lot oh boy and they're so fun too because like these guys are you know a lot of times they're angry at each other so this happens a lot oh boy and they're so fun too because
like these guys are you know a lot of times they're vicious a lot of times they come up with
these elaborate things to get to get each other and have these like feuds you know not actually
in the ring like outside there it's crazy shit so we'll get into all that tons of them the ones
you've heard of you know brett michaels and brett michaels wow sean michaels and
brett hart wrestling around you got that the the bulldogs and the rougeaus those old-timey ones
you name it it's going to be there check that out lots of fun and then small town murders will be
brett michaels is a big wrestling fight imagine him hair extensions and rock and republic jeans
flying everywhere i mean but sean michaels was really like the wrestling version of Bret Michaels back then anyway.
So that's okay.
But a great wrestler still.
We'll get into all that.
I wish it was Bret.
That would have been hilarious.
I'd love to watch Bret Hart pummel Bret Michaels.
That would be amazing.
Just work him over with that look on his face.
Yeah.
And then the small town murder one will be we're going to go
back into the archives here into the newspapers and find a bunch of old-timey murders and those
are always just the funniest craziest shit we've ever done so that's always fun patreon.com slash
crime and sports all of that and you will be a producer so you will definitely get a shout out
at the end of the show jimmy will mispronounce your name brutally while trying as artist to get it right.
Absolutely.
And if you just want to be a producer and have good karma, you can do that as well over at PayPal using our email address, crimeandsportsatgmail.com.
Right.
That said, oh, boy.
We're into the brain damage sports this week, Jimmy.
Yeah.
Brain damage again, which are always obviously fun. Yeah. Brain damage sports this week, Jimmy. Yeah. Brain damage again, which are always obviously fun.
Yeah.
Brain damage sports.
We got the 70s and early 80s mixed into this.
We have cold case action.
Oh, this is going to be a wild one.
Let's get right into it.
All right.
Willie Lee Shannon.
Never heard of him, right?
Willie Shannon.
Willie Shannon.
Willie the Cannon Shannonannon as a matter of
fact it's a good one is his boxing name it's a hell of it's a hell of a nickname yeah you
boxing names either have to be kind of clever play on words which is fun or just uh or rhyming or if
you're a badass enough you can it can just be threatening yeah if you're like mike tyson you're
iron mike tyson it doesn't rhyme it
doesn't it's no play on words it's just he'll fuck you up that's the only states the obvious
just states what happened what's going to happen to you so uh yeah willie the canon shannon and
what a weird interesting kind of a this guy is like almost like a ronFleur story. Yeah. Where he,
his,
it all starts very late because of an early incident and shit like that. So it's a really,
really odd story.
Let's get into him here.
And no one's ever,
this is a story that you're going to hear and go,
how the fuck did I not hear the story a hundred times?
This should be a story that you hear a lot.
Like,
I don't know how this isn't,
doesn't have like a 30 for 30 or something.
It's insanity.
I don't know.
I never heard of it before I researched this guy.
I didn't know a goddamn thing about this.
He's a cruiserweight, light heavyweight,
but he also dabbles in the heavyweight realm.
So he's about 185 always when he fights that,
which is just a terrible weight to be as a boxer.
It's pretty much the worst weight you can be because nobody gives a shit about cruiserweights.
They care about middleweights, and they care about welterweights, and they care about heavyweights,
but that cruiserweight is just a stepping stone up.
You know what I mean?
Like it's just you got a Vanderholy field was a cruiserweight for a while and then said,
well, if I want to be anything, I have to be a heavyweight.
Right.
So then he moved up to the heavyweight ranks, you know, so not a good place to be.
But he is.
His dream was to be the heavyweight champion.
That was thought he thought he could do it anyway.
Yeah.
Put on a couple pounds.
Maybe he's born November 10th, 1953.
He is born down in Florida and he's raised in Palmetto, Florida.
It's on the east side, isn't it?
I believe so.
I'm not sure.
But it's rough going as a kid, apparently, for young Willie here.
He is the home he's raised in, and this isn't a mansion or anything.
This isn't like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's house or anything you know this isn't isn't like uh
the fresh prince of bel-air's house or anything like that it's not uncle phil's house this is
probably a small concrete block you know two cockroaches are cockroaches why did i emphasize
cockroaches it's a fancier cockroach cockroaches are palmetto bugs james that's what they are
yeah so it's being from anywhere that's palmetto you're you're from cockroach florida that's what
this is the belly of the beast is what you're saying to me here this is not good where it all
comes from this is like arachnophobia ground zero here just crawling for there's a big hole in the
middle of palmetto florida where it's just
all the world's roaches are just constantly pouring out of
the cockroaches well in this probably cockroach infested home that he grew up in sure he shared
this home with his mom and i believe a stepfather from time to time and
about 20 other kids holy shit so we're talking 20 plus people in a small home growing and these are
all mom's kids these are brothers no no this this is some of mom's kids some of like a stepdad's
kids some of like a sister you know an aunt that died and her kids and some of like it's it's a hodgepodge of different, you know, different people with somebody has a bad situation.
So they got their kids for a while.
It's one of those deals.
So there's just a shitload of kids in there, which I mean, that's tough right there.
Anyway, I mean, fuck, man.
They always say he's kind of skinny growing up and it's like, well, yeah, there's 20 kids in the house.
Who the hell?
Cockroaches.
They're eating cockroaches, Jimmy.
Who the hell can feed 20 kids in a legitimate fashion?
I mean, I do fine in terms of I eat, but I don't know that I could feed 20 kids.
That's a lot of kids.
Yeah.
That's what I mean.
I mean, dude, think about it. That's a lot of kids. Yeah. That's what I mean. That's I mean, dude, think about that.
That's a lot of food.
You have to tell them, go forage.
I don't know what to tell you.
I can't feed all of you.
There's too many of you.
I can't feed an entire classroom every day.
You better catch dinner somewhere.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I get him a pole early and just be like, there you go.
There's water around here.
I don't know what to tell you.
There's shit to catch.
So he went to Lincoln High in Palmetto, which was I don't know if I mean, this is post segregation.
So it's not probably the law.
But he but actually late 60s of things.
Who knows?
Things were still in the works of being desegregated, so I'm not sure.
But it was an all-black high school that he went to, Lincoln High in Palmetto.
And they said, everybody around said he was tall and thin and quiet and detached.
Said he just wasn't real engaged.
They said he projected a tough image and kind of kept to himself yeah
some people were afraid of him because he didn't you know talk a lot and shit like that so yeah
quiet people you got to look out for yeah and uh one guy here the uh the high school coach i'm not
sure of what sport here uh he's like probably multiple sports as a lot of coaches did back in
the day especially if the school didn't have a lot of money.
Back in the day.
Shit.
Ninety nine.
James, when I was in school, our football coach was a basketball coach.
Wow.
And the wrestling coach.
How could he purport to have expertise in more than one sport?
Honestly, I don't think he had expertise.
I think he was just one of the only males on campus.
He was just willing to show up.
Yeah, he was willing to show up. Yeah.
He was willing to show up and he hadn't molested anybody.
So they're like, that's the guy.
Is it $200 a month extra?
I'll do it.
Yeah.
That's yeah. I think back then did you'd be like, okay, so this guy's like a, he teaches gym and he
coaches three sports.
That's a deal.
Hire him.
Yeah.
He'll do everything.
So he is a driver's ed teacher and then three-sport coach.
That's funny.
Yeah, I had a – it's funny what the coach has taught.
Like, were they just wanting a coach and got a teaching license to do that,
or were they teachers that were, like, found an affinity for coaching?
Loved football and beer.
Yeah.
Like, our baseball coach was, like, the health teacher.
Yeah.
And he really didn't do much he should
you know like literally he'd either teach that day or he'd just do keep his head down and write
things and never say a word to you the whole class and you could you could do anything you
want and it wouldn't disturb him and then no idea what he's even writing could be working on a novel
three days a week one week he we do stuff three days the next week we do nothing it was like one of those deals so i'm not sure like what his story
was was that his dream to be a teacher or did he just like coaching baseball like i'm not sure what
happened so uh this guy he says about uh our about the canon here he says quote he was a skinny little nobody trying to make a name for himself jesus
skinny little nobody it's fucking he was a child for christ's sake that's cold-blooded
how dare he not fill out and have something going on in his life when he's fucking sophomore
with 20 kids at home sharing a room with him it's a little piece of shit you little asshole you little fucking loser that's
what you are mister skinny little nobody you little cockroach that was the palmetto cockroaches i
believe they were lincoln i cockroach yeah like i tried to hire him as a mascot but he said he
wasn't interested so i said fuck you you skinny little nobody. That's so mean.
He went on to say, quote, Willie was too thin to play football, too slow for basketball, but he did play a little softball.
We used to spar a little around the school, and he seemed to like that.
Played a little softball?
A little softball, I guess, in gym class.
Was there a men's softball team?
I don't know.
I've never heard of a, I'm sure it exists somewhere.
I'm sure it exists.
I've never heard of it anyway.
So I don't know if that was just in gym class or something.
He liked to pee.
He was bad at all the other sports, so he just played with the girls?
Is that what it is?
Well, I mean, but the girls who are good at softball would mow him down if he wasn't any good at baseball.
You have to be good.
They're good at softball.
Like, if you're not, they'll kick your ass.
So I don't know what's up with that.
Yeah, I don't know what his goddamn deal is.
He also said, quote, we didn't have any trouble from him at school.
Just after school is when the trouble started.
Oh, all right.
So that's the problem with Willie here.
He doesn't like school
no he says he remembered feeling unhappy and bored in school and you know like a kid in school
yeah like a teenager i don't remember any day i was in school when i didn't feel unhappy and bored
ever do you the happiest people at school are pretty fucking angry it's there yeah that's what
i mean even the happiest ones at school if you said hey you know we used to have like if there
was a giant snowstorm coming like they'd send us home early hey there's a snowstorm coming we have
to leave it'd be like yay i get to get the fuck out of here no matter how much you like school
and well you do at it your room is better you
know what i'm saying it's just better anywhere else i'm jacked to be there totally so yeah
unhappy and bored but you just got to kind of persevere through that but he did not each and
neither did i i'm not saying you know i understand but he dropped out at 15 which is a little early
that's a little early to drop out i would say you know he it's too
much you know if you're 17 18 and it's not working out you know it's not working but at 15 you can
still turn it around yeah there's still i mean that's 10th grade or or earlier right you could
be a freshman still at 15 yeah oh yeah absolutely yeah it depends on where your birthday falls
november i'm not sure how the scheduling works but do i give him that held back a grade am i mad at him for not trying
harder or do i give him all that credit for figuring out that this sucks before he's like
oh no this isn't gonna work at all he figured it out at a young age now that's i i wish i would
have thought of that you know what i mean because
i had very little value come out of the last couple years of high school for me honestly i
didn't do anything with it i didn't it wasn't like i i learned much so you know i gotta say
the only benefit i have from it is that when i when i when i check that little box on a job
application where it says highest grade of education i clicked the
earliest one it doesn't say some high school it says high school and then other stuff to happen
you know what i mean and i the only benefit is that i got a box to check yeah that's true i just
lie and check it because i'm not going to explain it to them what happened that's what i would do
so i'm sure they don't check that anyway that That's what I mean. They're not going to go that deep.
That's like saying I have shoes.
You know what I mean?
They'd be like, I don't know.
I doubt he has shoes at home.
Yeah, he probably has shoes that he's wearing, I'm sure.
That's something that they just take for granted.
Yeah, you probably graduated from high school.
You're not an idiot like me.
So going forward, anybody listening, if you have not finished high school, just click you finished high school.'re not an idiot like me so going going forward anybody listening if you have
not finished high school just click you finished high school they're not gonna matter it's not like
you're writing down i have a phd in whatever the fuck i'm applying for they'll check that probably
you should probably try though you should probably try even though i've said repeatedly that if i knew
how my life would turn out exactly and what I'd be doing with myself I
would have tried even less because oh I'm not saying if you're in high school drop out no no
try harder yeah try harder but if you're in your senior year and you're like two years worth of
credits away from it maybe that's not for you maybe look into a trade or something at that
point because that's what I was thinking I'm like well this isn't working I got to figure something
else out or any job you apply for just click high school or just click
double it doesn't matter check there you go now you're a high school graduate congratulations
so um he apparently after he drops out at 15 he kind of willie kind of uh disappears for a while he doesn't really he's just kind of around
but he doesn't kind of uh his old friends don't really know where he's what he's doing anymore
and shit like that like he just it's strange but it's not like he went like to another town to work
for the railroad or something he's just he's just fucking off yeah and uh basically if if anybody
said who mentioned him it was because he was in some kind
of trouble at that point it was oh willie's being this and willie's doing that willie's fucking up
he uh and willie says about that quote you know how it is when you're 16 and riding around in a
car with friends looking for something to do he says well that was me riding around hell yeah
that's he said he's just riding around with his friends looking for something to do it's uh 1969 riding around in
the car with friends grace this is grace we have achieved grace here at 18 minutes i believe
we're about into the show but that's this is grace at this point which wasn't really that great of a pre-grace, if I'm being honest with you.
His climb to grace included sharing a room with 20 people and dropping out when he was 15.
But still, this is grace if you think about the rest of his life.
Well, if you think about what happened on July 4th, 1969.
So this is like 4th of July, 1969.
This is pretty iconic shit right here you know this is baseball's everything to america it's awesome this is a big deal here so uh willie and and two of his
friends were riding around in a car it's florida 4th of july yeah steamy florida in july i mean
we've been february and july was hell on earth so or've been, February and July was hell on earth.
So, or February in Florida was hell on earth.
So I have July horrible.
So riding around,
it gets to be later at night.
Maybe after some fireworks or some shit like that.
Oh my God, I just realized you're right.
I still have spots on my forehead
from Florida in February.
In February.
Sunspots forever.
Those are now mine.
Mid-February.
Mid-February sunspots.
Thanks, Florida.
You fuck.
It's hard.
And you live in Arizona, which is four feet from the sun.
Skin cancer capital of the world.
And I can't deal with Florida February.
That's nuts.
Gross down there.
So it gets to be late at night.
Like I said, maybe post fireworks.
I'm not sure.
They're driving around.
One of the friends has a gun on him, which is not a good thing here.
And turns out they go to a gas station and rob and assault a gas station attendant in Oniko, Florida.
It's a KO gas station.
Yeah.
And they get caught for that.
Two weeks later, they all get arrested for it.
Wow.
So, yeah, they rob him.
They beat this guy up a bit.
Oh, my God.
And then Willie is also convicted.
At the same time he gets fuck he gets arrested they also tie
him to another uh action where he's convicted of robbing and beating a woman in bradenton
he's 15 by the way right years old at this point this is why you stay in school this is yeah if
the choices are you know boring science class and this sit through it and look out the window.
I don't know what to tell you, but figure it out.
So, yeah, he ends up being arrested for this, and he gets sentenced to, this isn't like a probation slap on the wrist thing.
You, young man, may fuck off.
He gets sentenced to 15 years in prison.
At 15 years old? Yeah 15 years old yeah sentences he gets
sentenced when he's 16 so oh my 16 years old even still 16 you're still doing all this life over
again behind bars that's yeah essentially whatever you've just done let's double that up there you
go you're gonna do that but do it in jail an And adult jail they're going to send him to, which is crazy.
He's 15 years old, and I don't think it's probably going to be a lot of lessons to him.
If you want to keep him away from older criminals is what I'm getting at.
But I think at that point they look at it as, well, if you're doing armed robberies at this point, you might be past the point of saving.
But if you're 15 and the kid's the other kids were driving so that means they're
older so it means he's being influenced by older kids too you know you don't like that 15 year
olds are fucking stupid there's 15 year old boys are dumb as fuck they're so stupid how many 15
year olds did you know though that had they got caught for the things that you know they did
they'd be in prison for an unbelievable amount
of time you know what i mean i know a lot at least 15 20 kids yeah i was gonna say probably
should have been in jail oh plenty yeah oh absolutely plenty jesus christ you heard if
you've listened to the fishkill new york small town murder episode i mean it's just plenty of
these kids and and uh yeah but they but they just didn't get caught.
Luckily, this guy got caught.
But we don't know if I doubt this is the first robbery they've done.
If, you know, normally you don't get caught or if they're so clumsy at it, they got caught on the first try.
I'm not sure.
But it's not like now where they'd be like, oh, pull the surveillance video and then we'll check all their cell phones and match them to the towers in the area.
Like you had to have like a witness or fingerprints or something to you know whatever i mean if they
left the person alive they probably picked them out of the lineup i'm sure but who knows uh so
he goes to prison then he admits that they did it it's not like he says that they you know this is a
this is a you know false whatever he says that's we did it. I'm an idiot. So there's that anyway.
He says, quote, my mother and sister were the only people who never once gave up on me.
They stuck with me the whole time I was in prison.
So he said everybody else abandoned him.
Friends, family, the rest of the 19 kids in the house.
Nobody except for his sister.
They wrote to him.
They had to drive all because he gets ends up.
And I want to say that I have the number here somewhere, but it's like 15 different institutions.
He does time in.
They ship them.
Yeah, they ship them all over the place.
So they have to drive all over to see him, which is, you know, that's a,
it's a lot.
It's taxing.
Yeah.
For an older,
an older woman who's got this many kids to look after and everything else, and they don't have a lot of money.
It's a lot.
Just the gas money would be a lot here.
This is the mid-'70s, too.
I'm sorry, the 60s, but then we go into the 70s.
He's still there.
He says, quote, when I was young, I came up rough.
I caught a lot of hell in this town.
When I was in prison, only two people came to see me my
mom and my sister my own brother said quote let the n-word rot oh my except obviously he yeah he
expressed it hard hard r and all so that's what his brother said a black guy probably said it
like a clan rally yeah just because he's mad at his brother. Just because he's got disdain for his actions.
No shit.
So his first few months in jail, he said that he would smoke and drink and do all sorts of bad shit.
He called it, quote, smoking and cursing and drinking and doing everything bad.
Having a great time.
Having a good old time.
Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds like a goddamn country song is what it sounds like.
Smoking and cursing and drinking and doing everything bad that I could do.
Smoking and cursing and drinking and doing nothing but bad.
That's a sweet Friday night for me in 2003.
That's how we do. That's what I mean. That's a hell of a night for me in 2003 how we do that's what i mean that's a hell
of a night right there yeah it's not bad so he ended up um realizing that that wasn't really
getting him anywhere in jail and he was getting you know infractions and he knew he was gonna
have to stay in jail longer if he didn't he wants to get out he's a young guy he wants parole
eventually here doesn't want to do the whole 15.
I wouldn't imagine.
So he started looking for shit that was more positive and he ended up finding the Nation of Islam.
Okay. And he joins the Nation of Islam and kind of steers him away from trouble.
And then he goes and, you know.
That may be the only religion that oftentimes when people find it, they figure shit out.
religion that oftentimes when people find it they figure shit out well like in jail it's a the nation of islam guys in prison are their own thing you know what i'm saying so like and they don't
fuck around basically they have their own shit going on but they don't like they're not in the
mix with a lot of other shit so it's a if it's a it's that's a good one to stay out of trouble in
because like the people that are in your group will pull you in and be like, don't fucking do that.
Blah, blah, blah. Because you're like, you know, in the flock or whatever.
I don't know how that stuff is, what it is in jail.
In jail, it seems to be better off than.
Yeah.
Then other religions.
I'm not sure but i mean you see guys too that they find the hardcore
christian groups in jail where the guys are not like you know they stopped eating people's faces
and now they're praying to jesus or whatever which you know what hey if that keeps you from
shanking your fucking cellmate once a month then great i don't care yeah pray to whoever you want
and enjoy yourself so uh he said it just it got to the time that um you know he needed to do something and he
says quote there were times i wanted to kill commit suicide and murder you'd have to change
flip the order flip flop on that order that's you're gonna have to murder then suicide yeah
you can't do one and then the other. That track is a one direction thing.
Yeah.
He wanted to kill, period, suicide, murder, right?
That's what he said.
No, he said wanted to kill, comma, it's written here, commit suicide and murder.
Well, I mean, you could delete either kill or murder.
Yeah.
Kill, commit suicide, then murder people again after that.
I've killed this guy.
Now I'm going to murder him because I've now killed myself.
He's a little confused.
Speaking like a real college dropout or high school dropout.
Speaking like, yeah, someone who dropped out at 15.
He says, quote, anything for attention.
I wanted a big name and boxing helped me subscribe to that okay so he finds boxing in prison as somewhere to unleash his aggression and something that he enjoyed good for physical
keeping him in physical shape and maybe something to do yeah to keep his shit out of his you know
out of uh doing bad shit he says quote my prison experiences got me started in boxing
the first fight i lost by one point to Joe Bogans of Tampa,
who many boxing experts considered
to be a top boxing candidate
if he ever left prison.
The only human to ever beat me is now dead.
All of my fights are dedicated to Joe.
This was after Joe died, apparently.
I don't think he killed him.
It sounds like he killed him, doesn't it?
It sounds like,
I killed the man,
but now I'm dedicating all of my fights to him.
And this song.
Smoking and cursing and drinking and doing everything bad.
And this song.
All my fights.
Welcome to Wednesday night at the vikipsi steakhouse
that is an inside joke everyone that you don't know but it's it's pretty fucking hilarious if
you were one of the four people who were there it was very very funny smoking and cursing and drinking and doing everything bad
that's our first single jimmy tell them about the poughkeepsie steakhouse experience
it's so funny okay there's a place in new york jimmy was out here we were recording uh
now i'm out there but last time when he was out here we were were recording. Now I'm out there. But last time when he was out here, we were recording.
Or out there.
I said here.
I'm sitting in the desert.
And I go, he was out here.
I'm used to being out here.
So I put James in his place recording.
And we went to this place.
Yeah, it was a few miles away.
And we were like, yeah, that's not too, too far or whatever from where we were at the time.
After we were done recording, we were hanging out somewhere. And we somewhere we're like yeah we'll stop at this little place it looks nice
and so we stop in it's a wednesday it is so we're like it'll be empty it'll be dead fucking parking
lot is packed a couple high rollers like us they'll be happy to have us oh they're gonna be
three a couple of rollers a couple of high roller we're gonna order pepsis we're gonna go what's your cheapest bottle of wine
we'll have half of one of those we'll have a glass of it
the parking lot's packed first of all we're like what the fuck is happening right so as we're
pulling in i'm driving the the there's a truck pulling out of a parking
spot in front of us and it's a big long Dodge Ram full-size truck full like a big extended cab
long bed the whole deal someone used it to work it looks like this guy's backing out and when you
back out there's a car behind him so you have to cut it so you turn to be able to get out and i'm
like what the fuck is this guy doing?
What's he doing?
He just backed.
And he needed to go the other way because it's one fucking lane.
You need to go the other way.
You're sitting in the driver's seat going, nope, nope.
I said, nope, that's not going to work.
Nope, nope, nope.
As I'm saying that, he keeps backing up and smashes into a black Mustang, just plows into the bumper of it.
And then I'm like, oh, my God. Right. up and smashes into a black mustang just plows into the bumper of it and then like oh my god
right and it's one of those plastic bumpers that snaps back into place when you when you hit it
but i mean he fucking popped this car to where it rocked it and he like stops and looks for oh
shit all right well there's a goddamn car there and he pulls forward and then he sits there for about five minutes.
Sat in that truck
for five, ten minutes
waiting for us to leave.
Trying to sober up, I assume.
I don't know what he was doing in there.
So we parked
and we just watched him
to see what he would do
and then he pulled out
and drove away.
And he left.
And he left
and we're like, okay.
And then I got his license plate number
but then I'm with you so I subscribed to Mind Your Own Fucking Business, and I promptly forgot his license plate number.
None of my business.
And to be fair, the car that it hit had a bunch of scratches on it and shit.
It was beat to shit.
We said, this person's not going to notice that for a while.
They might go, what happened to my butt? I must have hit something. That's what they're going to shit. We said, this person's not going to notice that. No. For like a while. They might go, what happened to my butt?
I must have hit something.
That's what they're going to say.
They're never going to fucking notice it.
So it's not like it was a pristine car and they're going to go, oh my God, my baby.
It didn't change anything about that vehicle.
No.
So we cracked up laughing, obviously.
We drag ourselves into the place.
And you can hear this ear splitting like a live, like just like a constant, like taking care of business beat.
Just constant.
Like it's that's it's like a repeat of like taking care of business and like, you know, magic carpet ride.
It's it's all it's going on in there.
It's something from the Marshall Tucker band.
I'm not sure.
Spirit in the sky.
Awful.
Just some shit going on we're like
what is happening in here we walk in it's way louder inside and there's a host that comes up
to us and he's about i don't know 21 maybe yeah a vest and he he's got his brow is furrowed he's
just like he's got a wrinkly forehead he's not happy about what's going on. How many? And we're like, hold on.
Calm down.
How long does this happen for?
It's about 7.30, by the way, at this point.
He goes, I don't know, at least 10.
And we went, holy 10.
Are you fucking kidding me?
Is there like an upstairs where we can get away from this shit?
And he just shook his head.
Oh, no.
I would be up there. Yeah, I would be up there yeah i would be up there
but we're like we can't eat with this he goes oh i don't blame you yeah this is terrible
he goes oh i don't blame you this is terrible so we're like yeah we're gonna go somewhere else
and he's like yeah totally understandable right on guys have a good one thanks it was i would too
i would too yeah I would, too.
That's what he said.
If I wasn't stuck here working, I would, too.
So this is so bad, it causes your employees to wish to flee.
This is in the middle of a shift. And it is just a carousel, evidently, that James found out.
Oh, it is every Wednesday, and it's bandy-okey.
So I was like, well, that place is out on a Wednesday.
A carousel of mid-40s to late-50s men who really wish they could have been rock stars.
They're rocking it now.
Yeah, they're like, we got a big gig this weekend, so we got to warm up with this.
Come on, everybody.
One, two, three.
Taking care of business.
Everybody, one, two, three, taking care of business.
Fuck!
No, no.
How many times do you think people want to hear taking care of business?
Just play the soundtrack to every fucking car show in America.
Yeah, that's all it is.
It's like, we got a big car show.
There's a boat show this weekend.
Let's look alive, guys.
Come on, God damn it.
Look alive.
Fucking things ain't going to sell themselves.
What do you think?
The pretty girls are going to sell it?
No.
It's me and you playing Bachman Turner Overdrive fucking over and over again, buddy. That's the only way someone's going to buy a 30-foot fishing trawler.
I don't know what the fuck they're buying.
Unbelievable.
Anyway, so that's where he would play that song.
That's where that would be played is what I'm getting at.
Wednesday night at the Gibson Steakhouse.
Oh, boy.
But the food's good there.
That's what I'm told.
I'll find out one day avoid wednesdays and uh avoid
wednesdays and uh try the steaks they're good so anyway he says uh this well i'll say the end of
the thing here all of his fights are dedicated to the man who it sounds like he murdered but he
didn't uh there yeah so he says yeah this is a quote from him quote yeah
just like ali so i started to box started to become an athlete just like ali you know that's
okay it gave me something to do and something to work for i don't follow those teachings so much
anymore but it was good for me at the time so he became like a lapsed nation member but he said like
just like ali got through his you know stuff with it he said that helped him um so he lost the first
fight like we said and then he says now he fought a shitload of amateurs in prison and he and he
fought a little bit amateur when he got out at this point this this interview is from later on
when he's been boxing but he only had like 10 professional fights when this interview happened he's claiming that at
this point he's had 201 fights oh in and out of prison and uh that he only lost that first one
okay to to dead joe yeah so and so are they are they sanctioned or not all sanctioned
these are sanctioned i guess he was at the at the Lake Correctional Institution in Claremont in February 1976, and he started boxing, and he was trying to put some weight on.
He only weighed 150 pounds.
He's like 6'4", too, by the way.
Oh, my God. light for 6'4 because you've seen if you've seen me i'm not a right you know a a husky person and
i'm 190 now 90 95 pounds and i'm 6'4 so 150 is really skinny sick that's that's like snoop dog
you know night early 90s skinny right where you're like damn somebody feed him fuck let's go taylor
swift is soaring high her every move captured in the news cycle
and devoured by her devoted fans.
She's broken billboard records
and made Grammys history,
not to mention becoming a billionaire
in the process.
But along the way,
Taylor has had to wage war,
first by taking on a very powerful,
very famous manager, Scooter Braun,
and then by going up against
the biggest live events company,
Ticketmaster. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery Show Business Wars. We go deep into some
of the biggest corporate rivalries of all time, and in our latest season, Taylor Swift will shake
up not only the music business, but Hollywood and the NFL. Follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.
The wait is over.
So far, you're not losing.
The only thing you're losing is my patience.
Quickly, I see that.
Bing!
The queen of the courtroom is back.
I didn't do anything.
You wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you in the face.
I see he's not intimidated by anything.
I can fix that.
New cases.
She wanted to fight me.
Leave her.
A-long.
Okay, so, um...
This is not a so.
This is a period.
Classic Judy.
Did you sleep with her?
Yes, Your Honor.
You married his cousin.
His brother. That's not him her? Yes, Your Honor. You married his cousin. His brother.
That's not him.
Yes, ma'am.
I would make a beeline for the door.
The Emmy Award winning series returns.
How did I know that?
I have a crystal ball in my head.
It's an all new season.
It's streaming.
You can say anything.
Judy Justice.
Only on Freebie.
What's going on so uh he uh he says this is captain lee johnson who's the recreational director at the prison he said quote willie was a model inmate he was the kind of guy you could talk to he spent
many hours training he was faithful to his routine so there you go
they even impressed that guy he said in the ring willie was a cat he was a good sportsman too but
i don't ever remember him losing i don't know how he would take defeat so he doesn't know if he'd be
a sore sport sport or not i don't know or sore what was the word i was a loser sore loser not
sore sport i was like sport loser uh but he did know that he took boxing
seriously and willie kept saying when he gets out of jail he's going to be a professional boxer
which is hard because he doesn't know when he's going to get out of jail and how old he's going
to be so it's hard to start like 30 being like i'm going to be a boxer now right it's a weird
thing to do kind of no guys have been boxing for almost 20 years already by
now yeah well your your your peak was three years ago so i don't know how i don't do that so uh
the director there of the recreational department he has a favor to because he liked willie he
contacted solomon mctier who is a fight manager,
uh,
based in Florida and told him about this guy.
He said,
I got this guy in jail.
He's going to get out one of these days and he wants to box.
And,
uh,
so maybe you want to come take a look at him.
Solomon came in,
took a look at the,
at Willie.
And he,
uh,
he told Willie that he would,
uh,
he told Willie to quote,
uh,
or he promised Willie quote,
do the,
uh,
that I'll quote, do the best I can to help you when you get out
if it's your desire to be a champion.
So that's what he said.
Yeah.
Willie says, you know what?
This, I think, this is an in their own words here, I think.
Terrific.
What do you say?
Let's give them an in their own words here.
Why not?
Willie gets to speak, damn it. In their own words, quote,
you show me somebody who never made a mistake
and I'll show you a person who never tried anything.
I made mistakes when I was a kid,
but I wasn't afraid to try things,
even if they was wrong,
even if they was the wrong things.
In prison, I had a lot of time to get myself together
to decide to be something, to do something.
So that's what he says there. In prison, he had the time to get myself together, to decide to be something, to do something. So that's what he says there.
In prison, he had the time to get it together.
I made mistakes.
I wasn't afraid to try things.
Trying armed robbery, though, that's the thing.
It's a different try.
It's okay to be afraid to try armed robbery.
That's okay.
It's a different kind of try.
Nobody will fault you for it.
Yeah, no one's going to go, I don't know, man.
Put some effort in.
You know, I think you could take it down without getting caught.
Right.
So you found it eBay.
Have you ever tried armed robbery?
Wear a hat, pull it down low.
Be aware of the cameras.
What the fuck, man?
So, yeah, he was spent time in 13 different prison camps throughout Florida, like we said.
And he is released on November 1st, 1977. He spent time in 13 different prison camps throughout Florida, like we said.
And he is released on November 1st, 1977.
So he's 25 years old at that point, just 10 days shy of his 26th birthday.
He's got nine to 10 years in prison at this point.
Yeah, he did nine years in prison.
Wow.
So yeah, that's his life. So he's almost 26. He's 6'4". He's about 180 pounds at this point. Wow. So, yeah, that's his life. So he he's almost 26.
He's 6'4". He's about
180 pounds at this point. Great.
And he decides that he's going to
win the world heavyweight title. That's his
decision. That's his thing. Yeah, I'm going to be
26 years old. I haven't boxed professionally
at all. I think I'll win the world title. I only need
about 20 to 40 more pounds.
That's all. And I'm fine. And I'm in. I can do it.
I'm in. Yeah.
And if I'm like the best boxer going like a Vander Holyfield was, I can win at 205. But more than likely not, because guys will just pummel me that way 250.
Right.
So he said that he wanted to be just like Muhammad Ali and be the champ.
And he contacted the manager that we talked about, Solomon.
And he started training and fighting.
And he actually won a Golden Gloves tournament in Miami in 1978.
And then he decides to turn pro.
So 1978 now.
So he's pushing, you know, Christ, he's getting up there in age.
So he said that he did it and he was ready to go.
He says, quote, everybody knows I was locked up.
They locked up my body but freed my mind.
Being in prison preserved me for a long time.
Yeah.
He's saying he's all preserved, ready to go.
And he starts out his pro debut September 15th, 1977.
Here he is ready to go.
So 77, I'm sorry, with the Golden Globes tournament.
He fights at the National Guard Arena in Daytona Beach.
Yeah.
Oh, boy.
So this is right.
I think they clear the ring out and have to set up shit for the boat show the next day when you're done.
Probably.
Right.
Take care of business is still echoing in those halls.
You can hear it.
Definitely.
The guys are still disassembling their equipment.
So he fights George the Moonport Mauler Holden.
So there he is.
Moonport Mauler.
The guy's got three words for his fucking nickname?
Apparently Moonport is one word.
Okay, it's a place.
It's a place, yeah.
I think in Florida, I would imagine.
Too many syllables.
I don't know what it is.
Moonport Mauler.
It's too much.
It's more syllables.
Moonport Mauler is four syllables.
George Holden is three.
So his nickname has more syllables than his goddamn regular name.
That's not a nickname.
That's an extended name.
Yeah.
So he's a 15, 32, and three career fighter.
So a journeyman.
Yeah.
Mid-level, but a lot of experience, though.
That's 50 fights.
That's no joke there.level but a lot of experience though that's you know 50 fights that's no joke there's a lot that's a lot this five this goes all four rounds and it's a unanimous decision win
for willie all right wins his first fight by decision and after this he just knocks the shit
out of people just knocks people the fuck out so a journeyman knew how to not get knocked out in
four rounds by a rookie but but other people don't.
October 7th, 1977, just a couple weeks later in St. Augustine, Florida, he fights Doug Farrell, who this is his pro debut and his pro finale as well. So it's his debut and his last hurrah in the same night.
Well, that's a lot of champagne corks to pop there when you start and finish all at once
you got a lot of celebrating to do you know it's a lot so this is a knockout in the first round for
the cannon here uh two and oh for willie september 25th 77 or i'm sorry um was it october 25th 77
orlando sports arena he orlando sports stadium in orlando yeah he fights willie goodman who's two 25th, 77 Orlando Sports Arena. He Orlando Sports Stadium in Orlando.
He fights Willie Goodman, who's two and seven coming into this fight.
Battle of the Willies.
Oh, boy.
His career.
Five, 24 and one.
Oh, my.
Five wins.
24 losses. That is a rough record.
It's a couple of willies.
It's a real sword fight.
This is a real sword fight here.
There's going to be smoking and cruising and drinking uh this is a tko win for willie our willie cannon not willie other willie uh round two
three and oh for the cannon shannon here november 17th 1977 in gainesville florida he's just doing
a tour of every puke stained fucking college town that they have here.
Gainesville is a college town, isn't it?
Gainesville, yeah.
Is that University of Florida?
I think that's University because Tallahassee is a state, I think.
So this is versus Charles Banks, who's 0-1 coming into this fight.
And his career record is he finishes all up at 0-2.
So he has a very long storied career here.
This is a TKO win in round one.
So he knocked the desire to box right out of this fucking man.
You see that a lot.
You're like, well, that wasn't what I expected.
I'm done.
0-1 could be a fluke.
I mean, you dropped your arm and you got drilled.
0-2, you're bad at this.
Yeah, decision.
That could happen, something like that.
But this, no.
0-2, I got to go.
And if you especially TKO round one, he just got bum-rushed.
That was that.
So 4-0 for Willie the Cannon Shannon.
He says, Willie says, quote,
When you're fighting hard is when you're coming up and trying to improve your status.
In the beginning, we were fighting anybody for $100, $200, $500, depending on the opponent's reputation.
That's this era here that he's fighting for $100.
He's fighting once, twice a month for $100, $200.
And, yeah, just trying to.
Just beating the shit out of yourself.
Yeah. Well, he's winning first round knockouts here for the last couple. So he's beat the shit out of yourself yeah well he's winning first
round knockouts here the last couple so he's beating the shit out of other people but in the
end you're gonna beat the shit out of yourself too not everybody's gonna go down that fast
like again uh january 17th 78 he fights the moon port mauler again and we know he's tough yeah and
um he knocks holden down in the fourth round, actually.
But he ends up going the distance again.
But the cannon wins a unanimous decision.
So it's 5-0 for Willie.
April 10, 1978.
This is at the Other Place Nightclub in Jacksonville.
The look on your face right now when i said that i said every word i said
jimmy got like he twisted his face contorted it but not the facial expression didn't get like
progressively more horrified it was different different facial expressions it was like oh
like you had a i looked like i look like when when when tom in tom and jerry it's the cat right he's the cat no
tom cat when he gets every time he gets like some poison he grabs his throat and then makes like 12
different faces yeah his eyes pop out then his tongue comes out his tail goes fucking stiff yeah
that's what he said other place my club and then you're like, ah, that was when like your eyeballs came out attached
to the cords.
It's poison.
Oh, God, it's poison.
It's in Jacksonville.
No.
The other place nightclub.
The other place in Jacksonville.
Jacksonville.
Imagine what the floor of that place looks like
what the place looks like never mind that the bar top fuck the floor
the bar top has semen on it this is disgusting right
this is not good i think i first sat here here, threw up, and came. Why?
At the same time?
What is this?
Oh, God.
So he fights at the other place nightclub.
He fights Rocky Stevens.
Yeah.
Now, do you think that's his real name, Jimmy?
It is.
It's definitely his name.
His real name is Steven Edward Chadwick.
What?
He's like, well, that doesn't sound very tough.
I'll go by Rocky Stevens.
That sounds tougher, right?
Uh-huh.
Stephen Edward Chadwick.
He's got to keep his name in it.
He's got to keep it going.
He's 5-0, though, coming in.
Really?
So this is 5-0 versus 5-0 right here. This is a contender.
Yeah.
Good fight, except Rocky Stevens' career record is 6-27.
Oh, no.
Something happened during this fight that ruined him forever, basically.
And I think it's that.
Jesus Christ.
Did Willie bite his leg off?
Well, he knocked him out in the first round, so I think maybe that was it.
Destroyed his confidence and, you know, probably was never the same.
And his frontal lobe.
Yeah, probably gave him a little brain damage.
Never the same guy again.
Wow.
6-0 for Willie, though.
He's rolling right along.
Rocky, not such a great life.
He drools when he smiles now, so that's a problem.
Forevermore.
Forevermore.
May 23, 1978, at the Orlando Sports Stadium, he fights Alvin the Blonde Bomber Domini.
Hell yeah.
He's the Blonde Bomber.
Jesus.
These are fucking bad nicknames, man.
The Blonde Bomber.
Rocky Stevens.
He's 1-0 coming in, though, so he's ready to have a big career.
But he finishes that big career 11-13, so it doesn't go how he expected.
This goes into the second round, but Willie knocks him out 25 seconds into the second round.
So that's that.
7-0 for Willie.
July 27, 78 in Palatka, Florida.
This is a small place that actually I have a small town murder from there.
Really?
Yeah.
So this is some trash right here, boy.
This is, Oh, boy.
I don't even know how to I don't even know how to describe Palatka, Florida to you.
But it's interesting.
And especially back then, because Florida, like you can make fun of Florida all you want now.
But like the 70s, that shit was still just like a hickey swap.
Also, it wasn't you know, it wasn't like all suburbs.
It was a lot of like sticks and that shit
was weird back then yeah then he fights willie goodman again for some reason really i think he
made a statement about will with willie he knocked him out in the second round that's gonna be a
trilogy about this i guess man i don't know fight two let's go sword fight two two and ten willie
like i think i can take him this time yeah and. And again, Willie, our Willie, Willie the Cannon, knocks him out in the second round.
So, like, that's twice now.
Second round.
Can we not do this anymore?
Stop coming around, Willie.
Leave me alone.
Jesus.
Eight and oh for Willie the Cannon.
Shannon, August 8th, 78, Orlando Sports Stadium.
He fights Walter Santamore, who's 12 and three coming in.
Oh. So, promising.
Finishes his career, though,
20-23. Not as promising.
So, this TKO
round two for Willie the Cannon Shannon.
9-0. This is fucking
wild. This criminal can fight.
He can fucking fight, I'm telling you.
So, here we go.
September 3rd, 1978.
Orlando Sports Stadium versus Tom Nixon, and not Nixon with an X.
Nixon CK.
CKS.
Weird.
I've never.
I don't know if I've ever seen Nixon spelled like that.
I've seen Dixon spelled like that.
Dixon.
Yeah.
A bunch of times.
But not Nixon.
Two and three record coming in for this guy.
Finishes his career three and five.
So a real legend in the sport here um
this is a tko in the second round for uh willie the cannon making him 10 and 0 now nixon knocked
him down in the second round oh actually first time so first time and he says later on he's
talking to some kids and uh willie the says, quote, Nixon knocked me down, and everyone but Solomon and me thought it was it.
But I got up, and I hit him and knocked him out.
That's it.
So he tells a group of kids that who are very excited to hear it.
He likes to hang out at this point, and he's trying to give back and talk to some kids now, maybe keep them out of the troubled path that he went down is what he says here he goes uh he's at the bradenton boxing club which is uh apparently on ninth west or uh ninth
street west between a liquor store and an empty vacant lot and an empty vacant storefront that's
where a boxing gym should be though yeah that's like a good place for a boxing gym you need to
if it's there i assume it has gotten people the fuck out of here and that's what i yeah that's like a good place for a boxing gym you need to if it's there i assume
it has gotten people the fuck out of here and that's what i mean that's what it's for yeah if
you've seen there's boxing gyms in phoenix that i've gone to with the guy i knew that were that
are like they produce champions and they're in the worst places and it's a fucking dump and it's like
yeah five champions came from here in the last 10 years. You're like, whoa, holy shit.
If your appointment to train is too late, you better be tough.
Yeah.
Because when you leave here, it's going to be dark.
Dude, it was summertime, and there was like maybe seven-year-olds, maybe seven-year-olds
doing push-ups on their knuckles outside on the uh on the hard dirt you know how in arizona
that's scrapey that's like sandpaper that dirt is that the summer on roosevelt and seventh ave that
one i i did i'm not gonna say where it was it wasn't that one was a different one but that was
scary too this was south phoenix so it was yeah it was south of the river bottom it was the hood
yeah it was but it was yeah it was interesting so anyway uh he uh uh yeah yeah, but it was interesting. So anyway, it was quite the interesting building
because it didn't look like it was going to stand much longer.
That was the main problem with it.
I think it was going to fall if anybody hit a heavy bag too hard.
So yeah, he's there and hanging out there.
This gym opens in the evening for whoever pays $5 a month to use it.
Wow.
It costs $5 a month, and you can come there whenever you want.
In the evenings, it's usually kids and boxers.
It's like a boxing gym, so obviously.
A lot of the kids are between 8 and 16, and a lot of them are fuck-ups.
They're trying to stay off the streets doing this.
It's like The wire, basically.
Right.
This is like Dennis Wise's joint.
He's trying to keep some kids off the street.
And yeah, the guy says all he cares about is that the kids don't do anything like that while he's at.
Well, they're at the club.
Otherwise, he doesn't care about the background, doesn't give a shit what they've done, whatever.
So that's good.
shit what they've done whatever so that's good uh the boxers are also guys are early they're like you know early 20s aspiring boxers who are you know truck drivers and bricklayers and shit like
that that are coming in um he uh um there's a lot of people there though when willie would come by
to stop and box they said everybody would stop and watch him because his punches sounded different and there's a difference between a contender and uh you know a wannabe it's just that there's a
it's a difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it you know what i mean it's just a when
you throw it's different if i threw you uh if i had you catch me and i was just pitching at you
there would be no pop in that glove james it's a different it's it just sounds different
you can hear a pop and what's that what the fuck was that baseball coaches can hear a yeah can hear
a glove and be interested in somebody that's the thing and it's the same thing in boxing you can
you can watch someone in a heavy bag and go oh yeah that's that's different than most people
this fancy yeah yeah look at all this fancy shit that's that's why okay i'll say it now
that's why jake paul beat a good mma fighter yeah because mma fighters aren't concerned about hands
as much as other shit and that's that's that's not even an insult to mma fighters because if that
guy's been fighting for years mma he's it's training your body and your mind is trained to
do certain things in sports that's
why people don't do well transferring to different sports generally because it's muscle memory of
what you're doing so if you're a guy and even just whatever if you're an mma fighter you're used to
having to watch people's legs their feet that they're going to die for you and all that kind
of shit so a hit movement might distract you and get you punched in the fucking face because you're
more concerned with a guy's kick or with the way he you know does whatever the way he comes in and
tries to fucking i don't know grapple you or some shit same reason that floyd mayweather destroyed
conor mcgregor and it wasn't that's what i mean that's what i'm saying and that that's a big deal
so jake paul can keep fighting you know i don't know uh tiny players tiny basketball
players i don't know why that's supposed to here's a guy much smaller than me with no boxing
experience why isn't it impressive that i beat him up no it's not it's not impressive at all
very very unimpressive and your brother is going to get destroyed by mayweather too
and and the mma guy that's a quote professional fighter, but he's not a boxer.
That's not a professional boxer.
And anybody who, you could take
a guy, and Mayweather's old
and tiny. This guy outweighs him by 50 pounds.
So, I mean, who knows? Maybe if he gets a lucky punch in,
he'll be able to knock him out. He will not get a lucky punch in.
That's what I mean.
No one's been able to hit Mayweather for 25
years. The best in the business.
We've seen, Manny Pacquiao couldn't fucking hit this guy.
You know what I mean?
So how the hell is this?
I mean, if the ref lets him bum rush him and hold him in the back of the head and wallop him, I don't know how the hell.
But if Logan gets to hold him with his left hand by the neck, he still won't be able to punch him.
No, because he'll be on the other side of the ring before he knows it where'd he go he'll be able to bob and weave in
his fist so i would say anybody like any of these fighters that we just talked about the guys like
oh he ended up 11 and 13 that guy he would kick the shit out of both the Pauls at the same time. They could switch during rounds. They could
fucking come at the same time.
He would kick the
shit out of either one of them. A man
who gets punched in the
face for a little... That's the other thing, too. The jaw,
the fucking chin of a pro
boxer, especially a heavyweight
or a cruiserweight pro boxer,
you could hit that guy with a fucking cinderblock
and he's going to stand there and look at you
because they're just used to getting punched in the face.
Logan Paul better bring a gun if he wants to.
That's the only way he's going to win.
That's what I mean.
The first time he hits somebody with all they have
and the guy doesn't budge, he's going to go,
oh shit, I'm in deep trouble.
Now he's going to hit me.
I can't do that over and over again.
What do I do back when he hits me it's not
this isn't working so anyway that's my that's my take on that shit anyway so um yeah he would do
all this shit and train and everybody would stop and watch december 12th 1978 orlando sports stadium
he fights elton armstrong who's two and three coming in, two and six in his career. So not a good fighter.
TKO in round one, 11 and 0 for Willie.
But, I mean, this is a lot of tomato cans here.
This is not a lot of good fighters he's been fighting, honestly.
Next fight, February 22, 1979, at the Jansen Beach Ice Arena in Portland, Oregon.
Oh, he got out of state, huh?
Yeah, he ends up moving up to Oregon to train for a while.
And he almost gets a fight with Muhammad Ali because of it, as a matter of fact.
Really?
We'll talk about.
He was in the running for a fight where they were actually negotiating with a TV network for it and everything.
In the 70s?
Yeah, 1980.
Wow.
And Ali was making a comeback here.
So he fights John Klein. He needs a nickname. Yeah, 1980. Wow. Ali was making a comeback here. So he fights John Klein.
He needs a nickname, John Klein.
John Klein is 0-2 coming in and 0-5 for his career.
Not a good thing for John Klein.
This is a knockout in round four, though.
So John Klein held on anyway.
That gave him hope to fight a couple more fights and lose those.
He's 12-0 now, Willie the Cannon Shannon, and he's doing very well.
And now he's saying that he's going to – his manager wants him to concentrate,
wants him to move away from his girlfriend and his mother.
He's got a girlfriend named Kathy.
Move away from Kathy. Move away from your mother. No distractions, and you're going to go and fight mother. He's got a girlfriend named Kathy. Move away from Kathy.
Move away from your mother.
No distractions, and you're going to go and fight, and that's it.
That's how he ends up getting out of Bradenton.
And Willie says, quote, you know what I want to do?
After I win the title, I want to come back to Bradenton
and open up a gym for kids here.
There's going to be a big parade when I come back.
Keep that in mind, by the way. Big
parade, he expects, when he comes back. It's a different kind of parade he gets later on.
This is more flashing lights than most parades, I would say. So we'll talk about that. He went
there. His mother, I guess, when he went to visit his mother, there was a reporter there. His mother
was hanging out at the Bradenton senior center and uh because all of her
friends wanted to meet Willie because he's he's moving up in the world here his mother's name is
uh Lou Hester Lou Hester first one word yeah first name Lou Hester Lou Hester it's like a coach
yeah football coach Lou Hester from Ohio State Lou lou hester university of wisconsin nice to meet you
we got a great recruit class this year i feel like the offensive line is the best it's been
in honestly probably a decade at least since i've been here it's the best offensive line we got we
got the uh blue chip quarterback i think we're ready to make a run at the rose bowl we got six
kids out alabama because they just want to come perform for Coach Lou Hester.
They just love Lou Hester.
Lou Hester.
Nobody recruits like Lou Hester.
If Lou Hester gets in your living room, you're coming to his school.
That's all there is to it.
All six of these kids wanted to go to Alabama.
Alabama wanted them.
Then they heard that Lou Hester wanted them.
They came to Wisconsin.
That's it.
He came over.
He brought a crock pot with a bunch of chili in it.
He just knows how to win people over.
It's his famous Lou Hester chili and it's delicious and then also he performed a song smoking cruising and drinking and doing everything bad people are like this fucking guy
has talent i want to play for him he like, now I'll break out my steel guitar.
That's for my next trip home.
Lou Hester.
Lou Hester.
Hey, coach.
So he walked into the senior center and said, hey, coach, how's it going?
Yeah.
And all the elderly women liked him.
And they all said, you know, oh, they were all very excited. The old ladies were excited to see him, and his mother was all proud.
Of course.
He said, quote, I know you all have been hearing about me, and I'm glad to meet all of you.
My mama told me you all were praying for me while I was in the ring in Orlando, and I appreciate it.
I won, you know.
It worked.
That's it.
He says later on to the reporter that's with him quote
i've always liked older people why there's a bunch of old ladies who live where i do in eustace
and they all say they're glad to have a boxer around to defend them keep in mind that he's
going to defend all ladies like the batman yeah that's what he said he tells the old ladies that
then he says anyway uh y'all keep praying and i'll keep winning and they all clapped what he said. And he tells the old lady that. And then he says, anyway, y'all keep praying and I'll keep winning.
And they all clapped.
And he said, you know, I have to say that all the women are like, he's so nice.
He loves his mother so much.
And what a nice boy.
The one woman said, you've got a fine boy.
Lou Hester screamed out to her and they were clapping for him and everything.
So he's the success story that's come from nothing yeah to script he is
john goodman in raising arizona just plunging his face through the mud and fucking extracting
himself from the muck and the shit to be he wants to be the world champion so let's see if he can do
it march 13th 1979 he's got an exhibition fight on some small card.
It's just to tune up with headgear and shit on some small card somewhere.
And he was supposed to fight against a guy named Steve Moyer, and Steve Moyer didn't show up.
What?
He went out there, he had his headgear on, and then the other guy never came out.
That's what happened.
Can you get fired from boxing for that? mean i don't know show as yeah i don't know if you have who you call if there's a
supervisor you need to contact for this and uh you can have your friend punch you in right i don't
know how it works uh but uh anyway what he did was he just basically shadow boxed in the ring for a
while he went out to work anyway. With headgear on.
And the crowd booed the fuck out of him for doing it.
They thought there was going to be a fight.
So a thousand people booed the shit out of him while he sparred in the ring.
And with no one.
That's not a good look.
Yeah.
You just go, all right, well, I can do this in the dressing room.
Right.
I don't need a ring to fucking just pretend.
So, yeah, he moves to portland here in april of 1979 um he's there and uh he watches he goes to portland and uh he basically he had a man
another manager named mike morton as a fight manager and he goes to watch Willie, and he says Willie has promise,
and he signs him to a five-year contract.
So it's a contract with Solomon also, so it's all of them mixed in there because he's the
trainer, and then this guy's the manager.
So they take him out to Portland, and this is away from all his family and all of that.
Solomon says, we weren't getting any fights in Florida, which we can attest to.
They were all tomato cans.
Nobody was any good.
So I contacted Mike Morton, a personal friend of mine for 20 years.
You follow?
He asked the guy, you follow?
I think the reporter probably followed.
It's confusing, yeah.
Yeah, I've known the guy for 20 years.
You follow?
Yeah, I mean, that's a lot.
Hold on a minute. Is that this many many and he starts taking his socks off yeah hold on let me get
my sock off wait i only have two hands is it this many yes okay i follow that
then i guess i follow fuck it he says out west where morton is they got the fights they got
him in portland so um yeah he said quote willie is now a four-figure fighter oh so he's making
over a grand for a fight four-figure fighter uh he splits the prize money evenly with the
boxer by the way so willie only gets half of his money. That seems unfair.
Yeah, a 50-50 split is pretty fucked.
That's not right.
One guy's getting punched in the head.
I don't care how much promoting you're doing.
I'm getting punched in the face.
This is crazy.
I could literally die doing this.
You can't die promoting me. Don King wasn't taking half, right?
He was probably taking more than half
from guys like Tyson and the real fucking rich guys.
But on paper, he wasn't.
But in the end, that's what he'd end up doing after he put in all of his horse shit costs
and all that sort of thing.
And he, he basically said, well, movie studios do this.
Why can't I, you know, there's the old famous stories of these blockbuster movies that were
number one for 10 weeks and they still haven't showed a profit, you know?
So that's to keep people from getting their money on the backend.
The guy, the Mike Reese is a Simpsons writer who's been there since the beginning and he has one percent of the simpsons and they every every fucking quarter he gets a profit statement
saying that they've never made any money the simpsons literally he's never gotten a diamond
back end the simpsons has never made a dollar in profit on anything.
Merch all that shit.
Video games.
It's so much.
According to Fox, they've never made a dollar.
So there's that.
Fucking awesome.
Good for you, Matt Groening.
Yeah.
Now, he says part of Morton's half is recycled into willie's life he says that he
pays for his apartment his trainer his vitamins and his trips home so there's that now whatever
remains after those expenses he said he splits with solomon that's how that works so uh he says
from there there's a lot of fights in california vegas is close it's a good place to be now the
morton says i can't do the fighting for Willie, but I can back him.
They like him out here.
They know him by a different name.
Willie the Cannon Shannon.
This is when he starts getting that.
He said, I intend to make his record 25-0.
There you go.
He says that he expects Willie to fight in a televised match sometime this year, possibly for $30,000.
Possibly.
Possibly. That's what30,000. Possibly. Possibly.
That's what he's saying.
All right.
Willie's getting ready to go out and fight one fight here,
and he's got a funny quote here.
He says, when I get into that ring, it's wartime.
I don't want a long night, but if it happens, I'll deal with it.
I don't want a long one.
You can't be nice in the ring.
You've got to realize you're going to hurt someone.
Then he says, sure, I'm nervous.
He said, ain't you?
Hey, did you hear my new name, Willie Shotgun Shannon?
Oh.
He was calling himself Shotgun, which to me is not nearly as threatening as a cannon.
No.
People have survived being shot with a shotgun.
If I shot you with a cannon, you would not survive it.
Right.
It's a, you know, I mean mean i'd rather be a cannon than a shotgun
that's what i'm getting at and it rhymes shannon the cannon briggs sounds fucking horrifying it
sounds really horrifying yeah it does that's exactly right i guess they stole it from this guy
maybe he did look at that so uh his next fight here at the jansen beach ice arena portland oregon
he fights this is a great name, Jim Ingram.
You know what his nickname is?
The Ingrown?
Beam.
Jim Beam Ingram.
Oh, fantastic.
That's his name.
Yeah.
He's taking a shot. I'm just an old drunk.
I don't care.
He fights for dinner.
That's his fucking name.
And he's a journeyman, 9'5 and 2 coming in,
finishes his career 12-16-2.
But he'd kick either one of the Paul's asses or both.
This goes all 10 rounds, which this is the first time Willie's gone 10,
so that shows he's got some stamina too.
Unanimous decision win for Willie as well.
So he's 13-0.
Look at Willie here.
Win for Willie as well.
Good.
So he's 13 and 0.
Look at Willie here.
This fight boosts him up to Ring Magazine's number eight heavyweight boxer in the United States.
Oh.
He is now a contender for the heavyweight title.
Number eight.
Number eight.
He made $1,000 for the fight.
So he was very excited for that as well.
That was a $1,000 fight.
Not bad.
He says, quote, I'm training all the time now.
I'm preparing myself for anything, anything that comes my way.
He doesn't care.
He he does fights, promotions.
He'll do exhibitions.
He recently gave a boxing demonstration and a talk at an Oregon juvenile home where he said, quote, they got some super kids who liked me.
He's real happy there.
He likes doing that kind of shit. He says he likes to go to Bradenton every once in a while.
He misses his family and friends.
But, you know, he said, quote, if I'd have stayed in Florida, I'd be doing the same things
I was doing before.
I can't help my family from there.
I needed to get away and go with a new opportunity.
But he says someday when he's champion, he'll return to Bradenton and collect his parade.
All right.
He'll collect his parade and he'll give a and he'll build a juvenile recreation center.
He said, quote, something we never had here when I was a kid.
It's easier for me to return home now that I know I don't have to stay here, which is hilarious.
That's the greatest quote ever. It's easier for me to return home now that I know I don't have to stay here which is hilarious that's the greatest quote ever yeah
it's easier for me to return home now that i know i don't have to stay here
i think a lot of people have thought that exact thought but i can go back to when i know it's
feasible for me to just get the fuck out whenever i want absolutely totally i think how many people
have thought that but didn't put it in such succinct language you know yeah he really nailed
it if you don't know when crystal pepsi was discontinued what was in al capone's vault or How many people have thought that but didn't put it in such succinct language? You know? Yeah. He really nailed it.
If you don't know when Crystal Pepsi was discontinued, what was in Al Capone's vault, or which famous
meteorologist is Lenny Kravitz's second cousin, then you haven't spent enough time on Wikipedia.
But that's okay.
I am here for you.
I'm Darcy Carden, and I'm inviting you to listen to my new podcast, WikiHole, from Smartless Media.
Discover the craziest rabbit holes on Wikipedia
with me and my funny friends
as we bring the cyber frontier
directly to your tympanic membrane.
And if you listen to my podcast,
you'd learn that that's the science-y term for eardrum.
We embark on a hyperlink rollercoaster
as we start out on a Wikipedia page
and go from link to link to link to link,
careening through trivia,
oddities, and unexpected connections until we collectively shout, how the hell did we get here?
Follow WikiHole on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to WikiHole ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
He said, quote, my manager told me to come back home to go to the places where I used to be. or on Apple Podcasts. He says at this point, the hardest thing is time. That's his worst opponent because, you know, he's getting older and he's got to rush through this.
And I spent 10 years of my good fighting time in the fucking joint.
In the joint.
He's got his girlfriend, Kathy, by his side.
He's got a perfect record.
Yeah.
Sparkling.
Grace, too.
He graced it up again?
Grace also, let's just say here. Okay comma t-o-o or just two either one
grace two yeah here we go um by the way during this time i was looking i found this article
in the paper in the bradenton paper there and i also found it very funny because right next
to this article they had the list of the top Billboard singles and albums.
The top 10 from May 20th, 1979.
Oh, my.
We need to talk about this shit.
So just for a moment.
What could they possibly be?
Number one.
You don't know the number one song?
In 79?
May of 79, Jimmy.
Is it a Stone song?
No.
It is Peaches and Herb, Reunited.
What? And it feels so
good. That's the number one
song?
That's the number one song.
Top Billboard single that week.
Wow. Number two,
Hot Stuff, Donna Summer.
Yeah.
Some hot stuff, man.
Oh my god. Number three, baby, this evening.
Oh, my God.
Number three.
Yeah.
The Village People in the Navy.
Song about sucking dick on a boat.
Number three.
That is fantastic.
That is awesome.
Number four, Stumbling In, Suzy Quatro and Chris Norman.
Nope. I don't know who that is, actually. I know who Suzy Quatro and Chris Norman. Nope.
I don't know who that is, actually.
I know who Suzy Quatro is, but I don't know that song.
I don't know that song at all.
Number five, Good Night Tonight by Wings.
I don't know if that's the Wings, Paul McCartney and the Wings, or I don't know what that is.
Bee Gees, Love You Inside Out, number six.
The Jacksons, I assume, whatever remaining.
Oh, God, I forgot how fucking long Disco held on.
Oh, it was on for a while here.
And Jacksons, I believe this is post-Jackson 5 after Michael was doing his own thing.
So this is like the four remaining Jacksons.
Shake Your Body, here.
Michael's would have been different.
It would have been Show Me Your Butthole.
That's a different song.
Stare at that peter pan cut out oh number eight share uh take me home by share oh number nine he's the greatest dancer by sister sledge so more disco and then number 10
blondie with heart of glass so something fucking decent to
round it out yeah and the the top albums i'll go through very quick breakfast in america by super
tramp the number one album super tramp number one number two too hot peaches and herb baby
they got that number one a hot single man number three bad company. Desolation Angels. Hell yeah. They sing Drinking and Cruising and Smoking, I believe.
They probably do.
Minute by Minute by the Doobie Brothers, number four.
The Bee Gees are number five.
Van Halen 2, number six.
Okay.
The Bee Gees and Van Halen being back-to-back in a chart is just so strange.
It's a very strange time.
We Are Family over here sister sledge
i got all my sisters and me yeah um number eight village people go west
uh blondie number nine and then donna summer with uh bad girls what a weird time in american
history music it's such a mix it's it's. It's where disco's ending and we're picking up that fucking 80s rock shit.
It's about to happen.
Yeah.
Van Halen's huge.
New Wave is there, too, in there a little bit.
And then there's Van Halen, which is a whole different thing.
They're all kind of just mixed together like a weird dice hand.
That's weird.
It's like you got dealt a strange hand in Go Fish. And you're like, do you have any village people?
Yes.
Weird.
Okay.
Sure.
Why not?
So he fights July 26th, 1979 at the Jansen Beach Ice Arena in Portland.
He fights Charlie Polite.
What?
I don't know if his name's Polite or something, but it's P-O-L-I-T-E.
Polite.
It's not a good name for that sounds like
a tv show host for a kid's show yeah charlie polite i'm gonna i'm not gonna molest your kids
nice to see you and welcome to blues clues i'm charlie polite charlie polite charlie polite
weighs 220 how willie is willie's 185 charlie's a big boy yeah he's fighting heavyweights now. He's just a legit heavyweight, and Willie is not.
So, but Charlie Polite is 18, 37, and 3 coming into this fight.
He's so polite, he had let his opponents win twice as many as he did.
That's very polite.
And this is Charlie's last fight, because he was so polite, he wanted to make room for others on these cards to be able to play.
He's been opening a lot of doors for people, James.
That's what makes him so polite. So no no after you no no you hit me
so this is a ko in the fourth round over charlie polite 14 and 0 for willie the cannon shannon
and uh during this fight though he breaks his hand is the problem um he's this becomes a problem for
him he fractures his right hand and breaks
his right hand all the time now good this everybody says all of his sparring partners
say this affects his psyche in the ring because they said he doesn't hit as hard yeah he's it's
like that you know when a basketball player blows out their acl the first few times they go to dunk
they're they're not pushing off quite as hard because they don't want it to happen again so
they're doing some layups for a while.
It's yeah, it's one of those here.
So a lot of people say he doesn't say it, but a lot of his sparring partners say he kind of lost some of his spunk after that.
It wasn't the same kind of guy.
Wasn't as reckless and, you know, going after you.
So he said, quote, My right hand snapped when I knocked him down the first time in the first round.
He said my hand was hurting from the first on, but I wasn't about to quit. I'll soak it in ice overnight
and if the swelling doesn't go down,
I'll have it x-rayed in the morning. And then
it was broken. So there's
that. He's still fighting again
two months later, September 30th,
1979. That's not healed.
Not at all. He's fighting
at the Sahara Hotel and Casino
in Las Vegas here and uh he fights
leroy caldwell who's uh uh 211 pounds by the way willie weighs in at 187 for this fight so
and that's him that's as much as he was gonna weigh because he's not like you know trimming
down to make weight he's trying to be as heavy as he can yeah this guy 22 21 and 5 coming in mediocre
willie gets knocked down in the eighth round in this fight actually but it goes all 10 and he
gets a unanimous decision it was pretty comfortable on all the cards bringing him to 15 and 0 this
fight he broke his hand during the fight again and during this fight uh he breaks his hand sylvester stallone is
there and sylvester stallone comes into the ring afterwards yeah and uh in front of some reporter
says that he broke his hand and then went the whole distance to win the fight he goes this guy's
the real rocky right here oh my god so he's gonna use that for the rest of his fucking life how many
times has sylvester said that to people though every boxer he's ever encountered i thought the same thing he's got to be so i know pal you're
the real rocky like don't beat me up i'm five foot four so you're the real rocky yeah okay
you know what i mean i'm tiny and rich please don't hit me you're the real rocky yeah great
you're the real rocky yeah great hey you're the real rocky you know i you know i i think about it i'm just an actor you know you're the real rocky i think so i promise you sylvester nobody thinks
you're the real rocky no no well maybe i'll find a place for you in the movie you know like
guy preliminary fighters or something maybe you're a sparring guy
maybe like someone i'm like you know like he hits me too hard while we're sparring you know i don't
know something like that he's a tiny meltdown and beat you senseless in the ring and then everybody
in the papers says rocky goes crazy rocky's had turned into a real dick beats up his sparring partners
now i won't eat you for real and i you know i don't want to you know get a real rocky and
everything the script you know yeah willie says quote i'm very very cool in the ring i take my
time the man who hits and moves away lives to fight another day that That's his little rhyme that he's come up with. The man who hits and moves away
lives to fight another day.
All right.
I submitted that to Dr. Seuss,
but I haven't heard back yet.
We'll see.
It's a book called Throttle on Pop.
I don't know.
It's called Pummel Pop.
I'm not sure.
He says,
I've got my speed. I'm putting on weight boxing is a
smart man's game you've got to know when and where and what to move i'm not trying to catch up i'm
trying to catch on the wheels are in motion okay what the fuck are you talking about he's just
slobbering words right now it's like a dusty roads promo like that's it i don't know what
he's saying but i think it sounded cool. Right.
It's really weird. So February 24th,
1980, the Tropicana
Hotel and Casino in fabulous
Las Vegas. Here he is again.
He fights again Jim
Beam Ingram. Why?
I don't know. I don't get it.
TKO's him in the third round.
He's 16-0, so there's that.
Right after that, he announces he's a ring announcer for a small boxing card in Florida.
Some little tiny thing here.
I mean, it gives credence to you know what you're talking about.
Yeah, that's, I mean, people, and he's like a local kind of half-assed celebrity at this point.
I guess the card is delayed a bunch and like he's just left in the
ring to wait for the the boxers to come out okay so he just starts like talking shit in the ring
and having fun and doing all this shit here um it's it's pretty fucking funny he says quote uh
they are not sure oh that's it both the guys okay there was two fights that were supposed to happen yeah
an opponent didn't show up in both fights so i guess i have the ones that show up fight the two
that showed up boxed an exhibition because it wasn't a signed match for whatever so they just
boxed an exhibition and uh shannon over the microphone of the pa is talking and he says
quote they're not trying to ko each other um shit like that he says and then one guy and he says, quote, they're not trying to KO each other.
Shit like that.
He says.
And then one guy lost.
He says, no one who steps in this ring is a loser.
Everybody.
A winner never quits and a quitter never wins.
He's just like saying shit into the microphone.
He just reads those posters in every office in America.
Yeah.
Hang in there, everybody.
And then he says at one point, quote, I don't know what we do without police i don't know where that comes from i don't know i've made
no sense and then he said quote i'm the best cruiserweight in the world i'm 18 and oh and
ready to go first of all he was 16 and oh at this time but i'm 18 i don't know 18 and oh sounded
better than six they sound the same yeah The 0 is the rhyming part.
That's what's important.
Yeah, 16 and 18, there's really, the only difference is whether or not you can fuck them.
Yeah.
Other than that, there's nothing.
In terms of wins, not much.
Not a lot.
Not a lot more in years.
18 and 0, ready to go.
And he says that he's supposed to fight leon spinks coming up
which never happens but he's supposed to fight uh leon spinks and he said quote in round three
there won't be no one but me oh my god i just want him to retire and and promote for people
and just do this shit this is great wouldn't it be fun
yeah oh my god that would be amazing uh one little uh he's in bradenton sparring and a reporter's
there and i guess he uh he's fighting some young sparring partner and uh he's screaming at the guy
saying go on and hit me and he's like giving his chin to this kid yeah he wants to be punched and
the kid stood there and uh the cannon picked up his fists and he said that he he said quote the
cannon picked up his fists and courage and aimed three quick punches for shannon's for shannon's
face um he said uh uh what did he say here uh he said shannon dodged most of his sparring partners
punches after 10 minutes the kid was too tired to go on and he said uh shannon joked quote maybe next time i'll beat you and the
kid said no thank you mr shannon i guess he just got beat up for a while so he says that he returned
home so he'll never forget that and he said ali told me now he's talking about ali ali told me
if you ever forget where you come from then you will never get where you're going.
He said it before, but then didn't say it was from Ali.
Now he's added that Ali told him that.
He said those were Ali's words of wisdom.
Great.
Yeah.
He said, quote, everybody said I could never make it, but my punch power is great and I train real hard.
Sylvester Stallone said I'm the real Rocky.
Sylvester and I are good friends.
I'm sure he calls him up and they have lunch together.
Just because one time in a ring he's like, hey, you're the real Rocky.
And then he like stumbled off.
He loves talking about the famous people he's met.
He thinks he's a big shot now.
That's the thing.
He wants to be a celebrity and he wants to do all this.
But you haven't won anything yet.
You don't have a championship.
You're not Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad Ali was Muhammad Ali before he was fucking doing that shit.
You know what I mean?
Like he won a gold medal.
He was kicking on Sonny Liston's ass and he did a lot.
He says that his record speaks for himself.
He said, who else in the world has a better record than mine?
I'm not afraid of nobody.
Nobody can get in Willie Shannon's way except, who do you think, Jimmy?
Willie Shannon.
Willie Shannon.
That's right.
Now he's also speaking of himself in the third person.
Of course.
In one paragraph, he mentioned two celebrity friends and referred to himself in the third person.
He's losing his fucking mind.
Yeah.
Losing his fucking mind.
He said one of the reasons he came back to Bradenton was to, quote, settle some contract problems.
Oh, boy.
He says, I want more money.
My contract now is split 50-50, and they pay all the expenses, my car, my rent.
But there's no money out front.
I want a contract out front.
One morning I might walk outside and fall in a hole, and I won't have any money to fall back on.
I think they will give me what I want.
So, yeah.
They said that he doesn't want to be rich, though, he said.
No?
No.
He said he actively doesn't want to be rich.
He said, quote, richness is a problem.
Let's hear his philosophy on economics.
I'd love to know what he thinks is the problem with being comfortable.
He said, richness is a problem.
A big problem with this country is that money divides people from the natural things in life.
I want to be in the middle where I can mingle.
Okay, that's fair.
He said that he's had a few problems here and there, but other than that, he's fine.
He says, quote, I have girl problems and I'm constantly going through it now.
He says, quote, I have girl problems and I'm constantly going through it now. He said, Stargell and Parker, Willie Stargell and Dave Parker, Pittsburgh Pirates World Series champions at that point.
Look out for me and tell me what to expect.
Every he's just the who's put Rocky's big right now.
Muhammad Ali is the greatest.
And these two guys just won the World Series.
So I'll reference them as well.
Listen, James, I don't know what to tell you, because sometimes Pitt and Clooney give me
really great advice, and I gotta credit it.
That's true.
I don't want to act like I came up with it.
Pitt and Clooney did it.
Chappelle's always calling me, telling me, you know, that shit's funny.
Now, let me tell you, I think that you're doing it always.
It happens, like, all the time.
I'm like, dude, I'm busy, man.
What the fuck, bro?
I'm trying to put this show together.
Like, don't you have your own stuff to do? on man i started shaving my head james because pitt and
clooney told me that it makes the bald spot look less makes it not look as bad so that's why they're
wise men they know what they're talking about so they they look out for him tell him what to expect
he says he says it turns me off to know at one time when i didn't have 50 cents that now i have a lot of
friends my only friends now are the ones who were there when i only had 50 cents except for dave
parker and willie stargell and muhammad ali and sylvester stallone because they weren't there when
he only had 50 cents that's a good point he says these two super famous guys look out for me but
my only friends are the people that were there when i had nothing what the fuck are you talking about you fucking idiot so he says he doesn't care who he fights
but he says he wants the the chance to box muhammad ali and beat him and that would be
great he said quote call him bro he sounds like your friends that's i mean he's giving you all
this wisdom right he's maybe you could beat sylvester stallone and i don't know how good
that'll do you in your career but I think people will be impressed by it.
He says, quote, I'd knock Ali out.
Ali is gone.
And now it's time for something greater to come along.
And that is me.
Wait.
Greater than Ali.
Yeah.
He said, Ali is gone.
First, I'd knock Ali out.
Ali is gone.
And now it is time for something greater to come along.
And that something
is me he thinks he's not just the replacement for Ali you know but at the next yeah the the
new prototype Ali 2.0 is is a guy from cockroach Florida yep and then he's gonna try to talk shit
to him here too after it with a rhyme but's going to talk shit to Muhammad Ali with a rhyme.
All right.
Okay.
He said, quote, this is my saying for Ali.
I tap danced on quicksand and never sunk.
If he fights me, then people will think he's drunk.
That's what he comes up with.
Not exactly float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
It's not.
But, yeah, not exactly the same thing.
Ali was going to fight him, probably, and then was like, did you hear that bullshit ass rhyme
he put out there?
I'm not fighting that dumb motherfucker.
Fuck him.
He can come up with some better material before I fight him.
He only got one bar, James.
I'm the damn champ.
This is some bullshit.
I'm not fighting this guy.
So he says he can do it.
He said, quote, there's no limitation.
I do what I want to do.
The beat goes on.
He's turned into a completely different kind of guy first everyone was saying how humble he was and they loved that
now it's all about my celebrity friends it's at this point where there is an ali fight in the
works ali wants to make a comeback and this is one of the guys they're talking about there's a few
different ones uh one of the proposals here was about to
about to be aired on cbs television on a network on friday night big you know deal the proposal was
for uh ali to receive 1.5 million dollars oh and for shannon to get a hundred or a hundred thousand
dollars which i mean they're not tuning in to watch Willie Shannon.
They're tuning in to watch Muhammad Ali.
If you beat Muhammad Ali, then you get a million dollars.
But, you know, next time.
But you have to beat him.
But he didn't like that.
That was the offer that Ali wanted.
But CBS countered with $1 million as a total fight bid purse.
So there was that.
Muhammad Ali would be paying Willie Shannon out of that.
That didn't really work out.
So then ABC came in, another network, and was willing to take it.
Muhammad Ali offered them a fight purse of $1,150,000.
And Shannon would get $75,000 out of that.
So that was that.
It never ended up coming to fruition here.
Never happened.
So instead, April 20th, 1980, he's at the Cumberland County Civic Center.
Hell yeah.
Instead of fighting Muhammad Ali.
But it's still in the works.
It could happen.
It's just not going to happen right then on TV.
But it's still, that's the guy here.
So what is it?
Cumberland Farms.
Cumberland Farms.
He's at there.
Yeah.
Cumberland County Civic Center and Farms.
That's in Portland.
He's fighting Dwayne Bonds here.
He's a nine, six and one fighter coming in career 15, 16 and two.
career 15 16 and 2 and this fight goes to the ninth round where it is stopped and willie loses in a tko loss oh shit he broke his hand in the second round and bond bonds was a 215 pound
heavyweight yeah so you gotta have punching power to stop a guy that big this guy was a real heavy
weight and he just leaned on him and fucked his ass up.
Over time, there is differing accounts of how it stopped, whether it was stopped because
of a cut that Cannon had or whether it was stopped because he was knocked down three
times and it was the knockdown rule.
Three knockdown rules in effect.
We don't know which one, but either way, he got the shit stomped out of him in the ninth
round.
So it sounds like.
Yeah.
one but either way he got the shit stomped out of him in the ninth round and yeah and if this lowers his record to 16 and one and um you know he said that he only he had fractured his right
hand in training but he didn't want to cancel the fight because he felt he had quote an obligation
to bonds yeah responsibilities that's what it is he said quote i broke my hand in the second round
and the pain was so bad by the eighth round, I had to come out.
My manager said not to damage my hand for life.
So they stopped the fight that way.
Maybe he didn't come out for the ninth round.
Maybe that's what happened.
There's a third option here I wasn't aware of.
He said in the sixth round, I hit him with a left hook that almost knocked him out, but I couldn't do it with one hand.
So he wants to win
the cruiserweight title now he said because now ali won't fucking fight him because that fight is
well he's not undefeated anymore yeah so it's not the undefeated up-and-comer versus the coming back
ali now it's just some guy who just lost some fight to some guy you've never heard of versus
muhammad ali so that's not as not as lucrative here. But May 21st, 1980, big old fluff piece, fluffy as can be in the Bradenton Herald, where I
get all my news.
Yeah.
Now it's called, quote, Shannon is now helping others.
So he is ready to go.
He says that growing up as an impoverished kid in Bradenton, he was always in trouble.
He said those memories will never fade, and it makes him want to help the other kids.
And now he's got a whole program he's setting up here.
He said, right now, I'm working with migrant kids, kids that are not going to school.
Why are they not going to school?
Well, they're migrants.
I don't care.
So?
They've got to go somewhere.
They're not allowed?
I don't know.
I don't know. What? What do they not allowed i don't know i don't know what what
what do they just put them hold on a second they're kids right if there's kids they gotta
be in some kind of school right that's the way it should be or right i i don't i don't know
yeah so are they registered in this country and like you know they're migrants right so
they've got i don't they came across with like documents and such right who i don't know what's happening here i
don't know what the laws were in 1980 either i'm very concerned for these kids especially when you
hear what's going on what they're doing instead of being in school um i'll tell you here okay
right now i'm working with migrant kids kids that that are not going to school. We, talking about he and Henry Lawrence, an offensive guard for the Oakland Raiders, rubbing some elbows, try to work closely with the kids.
That's how I came up.
I picked tomatoes.
He said they have these kids picking tomatoes.
They have migrant children working fields.
they have migrant children working fields that that's that's uh and not and not going to school right well it's it's child labor like also like you can't just not so you don't need to speak
english just pick that goddamn tomato and we'll get going on what the fuck are you talking about
never mind math i don't know what the hell kind of pro this will help you in life.
Maybe.
Maybe, you know, James, maybe that's his job, too.
And he said he's working with them.
So there's co-workers.
Maybe.
He said that Shannon.
Oh, my God.
Willie and Lawrence, the offensive lineman, said they were having trouble, quote, having trouble with the migrants picking the wrong tomatoes okay but the
presence of the canon has righted a wrong he said oh my god if this line is just not okay
quote i am the field boss over the kids field boss over the kids who aren't in school what the fuck is happening
what year is this nobody had any more questions than this
oh my god then the next okay i'm i'm the field boss over the kids i watch over them and make
sure they pick the right tomatoes i check them out okay what the fuck are you doing
quality control of their of their child labor are there
books there is someone like teaching over a loudspeaker as their what is happening this is
not okay um he said the kids enjoy it i am a good influence for them i show them books and pictures
of myself as a professional boxer god damn it i expect them as i show them books and teach them
how to read and shit and he's like i show them pictures of myself as a professional aren't i
great my friend sylvester stallone and dave parker and willie stargell and muhammad ali think i'm
wonderful pick the heirlooms no no wrong one fucking dumb migrant kids jesus christ the orange
ones god damn it oh man he said and they like it they're
inspired they have to pretend to like it you're their field boss what are they supposed to say
jesus the first day um he reported to the to here he said the tomato fields only had a few
migrant kids there he said the next day the fields were packed. All the kids came there to
see him and the other guy. He said the kids were all there in the fields. Henry and I plan to travel
with migrant workers. I plan to do something for myself and my people, not black people,
but people who have minds that are mentally level with progress. I deal with people who
are trying to survive. I love people. He loves people,immy he's a people person keep that in mind here because
this is a we have a shot i know it's gone a while without crime we have a shocking shocking amount
of crime coming up very shortly here in a short amount of time he says that he uses his own method
of psychology on the migrant kids i don't like any of these phrasings this is really uncomfortable
he says that uh some of the
kids approached him asking if he would purchase some of their candy and he began to talk to them
about school they're picking what the he said the only way i would buy their candy is if they look
forward to their graduations these kids are only eight and nine years old but it's good for them
they're eight and nine years old, but it's good for them.
They're eight and nine years old working in a fucking tomato field,
not going to school.
Right.
This is disturbing.
Looking forward to one day being successful.
Yeah, with my tomato picking skills.
I'm going to really climb to the top of the ladder with that.
He said while working with the kids,
he's had time to reflect on his past
and take a look at the future.
He says that it was a mistake to come back so soon after his first broken hand, which is what we said.
He said, though, experience is the best teacher.
That's all.
But he's telling the kids it's okay.
He's making speeches about his own boxing.
He's like Dennis Reynolds from Always Sunny, like lecturing people about himself.
He said everything is super.
When you lose once, the other boxers say that, whoa, that N-word is vulnerable and they want to fight you.
Jesus, that was just right in the paper.
And I was like, hey, oh, watch out for that.
They really say that?
Yeah.
He said, quote, the N-word is vulnerable and they want to fight you.
When you are winning, they don't want to fight.
It will be easier to get fights after this
loss. He says, right here in
Manatee County, people give me more room.
People in Las Vegas love athletes.
They're celebrities. But regardless of how
hard you hit me, I will get up. And I
tell that to the kids. So he
tells that to the kids. And June
9th, 1981, he's at the Showboat
Hotel and Casino in Vegas where he
fights Lee Rocky Berkey.
How many guys from this
era were starting to go by Rocky? This is too much.
It was Rockies before that, and Rocky
Marciano and shit, but then everyone's
Rocky now. He's 13
and 7 coming in, 15 and 14
for his career. This fight goes to the
8th round, but it's a TKO win
for Willie here, 17 and
1. August 11th, 1981. Showboat CasKO win for Willie here. 17-1. August 11, 1981.
Showboat Casino in Vegas.
He fights Marvin Carmel.
So the Carmel man here.
38-3 coming in.
No joke.
And this is for the USA Nevada State Cruiserweight title.
There you go.
This is it right here.
And it goes to the third round where uh willie
is knocked out by the carmel by marvin carmel here and that brings his record to 17 and 2
now there's some disputes in different sites i go by boxer rec uh but there's some disputes there is
others other sites that say he had a fight after this yeah but i don't know if it was an exhibition
or not because that's the the the thing whether he was in an exhibition a fight that he won and then
there's also varying reports of a draw somewhere in the middle of his career as well so some sites
have him at 18 2 and 1 and and some have him at 17 and 2 we have him at 17 and 2 using boxer rec because that's been pretty reliable for me always so anyway um he uh he this was a crazy fight because one of the trainers one of carmel's
trainers uh had a disagreement i'm sorry it's not carmel it's camel arvin camel i miss i wrote it
down wrong camel um this guy said that Camel didn't pay him regularly enough.
So two weeks before the fight, this guy left Camel's corner and joined Shannon the Cannon's corner here.
So this was kind of a grudge match for that.
And Marvin Camel said, quote, together they plotted strategy on how to beat Marvin Camel.
By the way, that's Marvin Camel saying that.
There wasn't enough
time for Carl to do too much. He
might have gotten Shannon to change strategy.
In order to beat me, a fighter has to start
strong in the first and get to me early.
I can beat anyone
if the fight goes 10 or 12 or 15
rounds.
Shannon was
predicting a, I'm sorry,
Camel was predicting a seventh round knockout and it didn't go that long.
He,
Camel said,
quote,
he was pretty sharp and applying the pressure.
I was doing too much bobbing and weaving.
Fred Harbeck gets real nervous and he was all upset because I wasn't throwing
enough punches and I did realize I should do more.
So then he knocked him out with a left hook.
So that's that.
It's at this point that he becomes a weird guy.
Okay.
At one point, we'll talk about later, he's supposed to have another fight, but he gets arrested before the weigh-in.
Okay.
It's a weird thing.
At one point, he showed up uninvited to a wedding party, like a prominent guy's wedding party.
It's crashing.
Oh, it's famous.
That's why.
It's a big elaborate wedding reception thrown by a local businessman and boxing judge as well,
Joe Swessel, for one of his daughters.
So he's throwing a wedding party for his daughters.
The event has 2,000 guests.
Wow.
That's how elaborate this is.
Have you ever been to a wedding with 2 000 people at it
never that's got to be that would be a half a million dollars now put that on that's awesome
that's insane um so yeah they said uh they're doing all this shit he comes in which is amazing
in a oversized blue leisure suit fuck yeah yeah. Looking like fucking sexual chocolate
from coming to America and shit.
He comes in wearing that
with eight known area prostitutes as his dates.
Awesome.
That's who he brings with him.
Doesn't buy him like dresses,
doesn't pretty woman him up at all.
Let's go to the polo match.
He's just like, excuse me, I want a date, up at all let's go to the polo match he's just like excuse me yeah i want a date hop in let's go where are we going prominent
businessman's daughter's wedding reception where else would we be going you're dressed perfect for
a very nice evening yeah he pulled up like a utility van and piled up like how did he get
them all there all eight of them so i like that corset get in yeah corset and fishnets perfect
that's gonna work for uninvited by the way wow uninvited just showed up and uh yeah eight of
them that was that eight eight yeah eight one two three four 7, 8. Eight prostitutes are here. That's my daughter's wedding reception.
Ladies of the night.
Wonderful.
Not good.
I want it.
That's an evening I actually kind of want.
It's pretty fun just to see the looks on everyone's faces as you walk in in a leisure suit with four women on each arm.
Clearly I'm not going to fuck eight women.
That's crazy.
We can do that. Maybe Willie.ie i don't know he is the canon
we'd have no idea incredible so uh he's everyone else thinks of him as like a weird guy but he also
has someone who likes to teach the kids um some of the kids remember some weird shit going on
though around his house and stuff like that and that comes to light
especially in september of 1983 when um a wow he is arrested for sexually assaulting a 15 year old
girl oh willie willie willie we were on your side you were just fun and goofy and we were happy you
were out of prison but this is i like i rhyming, Willie, that hires eight women.
Yeah, that's much better.
This one, he didn't hire anybody.
He sexually assaulted her after he threatened her with a knife with gang rape.
Oh, my God.
He said, I will cut you and have you gang raped if you don't let me rape you, is what he said, basically.
And then knife point attacked her after that. A 15-year-old girl. have you gang raped if you don't let me rape you is what he said basically um and then then uh knife
point attacked her after that a 15 year old girl 15 is that one of the ones he works with i don't
think so i think it was a neighbor actually oh it's not better but no no not at all but at least
it wasn't it's someone in his care that's if that is worse is somebody it's worse yeah it's because you can't that kid
can't avoid there your parents might have dropped you off with that kid if it's just somebody on the
street that he like wrestled into a car at least that's random if this is a kid who was served
yeah yeah groom parents for trust to have this kid also that you might be right that is worse
rather than just sandusky them yeah it's easy to gain the trust of a child it's tough to gain the
trust of an adult and's tough to gain the trust
of an adult and then steal the child from them that's much harder absolutely so that's that's
different uh this teenage girl this 15 year old said that oh man willie offered to drive her home
from a neighbor's apartment on august 29th uh 1983 he stopped at several stores to purchase beer and then drove to a friend's apartment where he assaulted her rather than taking her home.
So, yeah, July 13th, 1985.
This is still going on.
Now there's more charges against him from more women.
Oh, yeah.
1985, he goes to trial.
They hold off on the trial
because there's more shit coming out.
He pleads innocent to charges
that he sexually assaulted a woman
in a city park restroom in 1983.
He takes the stand in his own defense,
and he testified that he broke up with this woman
the night of the attack,
and that's why she's saying this, because this never happened.
He's charged with sexual assault, kidnapping and battery.
In this particular case, she testified that he grabbed her by the neck and dragged her into a park restroom and raped her.
Gross.
Fucking terrible.
He grabbed her around, carried her into a city park restroom, assaulted her there.
She says, quote, because they were saying, well, why didn't you just go away?
They actually said that to her.
And she said, quote, I could not get away.
How could you get away from someone who has you around the neck?
Which is pretty rough testimony.
Yeah.
By the way, this in the newspaper that I found this in, I'm going to show you this, Jim.
Let me turn the screen towards you.
This is under the title of Sports Quote.
Yeah.
What?
A Las Vegas, Nevada woman testifying that pro boxer raped her in a public park restroom.
Sports Quote.
Read the quote.
Sports Quote.
I could not get away.
How could you get away from someone who has you around the neck and then rapes you in a park bathroom that's not a sports quote nothing to do with sports no just
because he's been paid to punch someone in the face at one point in his life does not make that
a sports quote i'm sorry absolutely does not a sports quote is uh starks to john Johnson and two. And for two.
So he, though, says he's innocent on all these charges,
takes a stand in his own defense and does all that kind of shit.
The jury finds him guilty on one of the counts.
Not guilty.
At first, there's a mistrial on the second count.
They can't come to.
He's guilty of the 15-year-old.
Fuck it.
He's done with that one.
But the one with the woman he had been in a relationship with at some point.
Oh, the sports quote.
The sports quote.
Yeah.
That was a mistrial.
And then on the second trial, the jury acquits him of that.
Wow.
But he is still found to have kidnapped and knife point raped a 15 year old. So, God, we got him on one.
He's in pretty deep shit, let's just say here, just to say the least.
So, wow, this is this is fucking crazy.
He is sentenced to you, sir, may fuck off 30 years in prison.
Oh, my 30 years for kidnapping and beating her uh he must serve at
least five years before he's eligible for parole which isn't a lot but also he has that previous
thing so you know i don't know if he'd be the guy coming out on the first round of paroles here
probably not so uh no he's not because he actually uh is uh he actually goes to prison and remains there from 1983 when he's arrested all the way until 1998.
Wow, 15 years.
He does 15 years for this.
Yeah, half the time was 50%.
So he's released from prison in 1998.
He returns to Florida and he lays low, obviously.
Doesn't want anybody to know he's there probably
it's got to be that's you know then again no anyone i was going to say that's embarrassing but
it's if you're a person who would rape a 15 year old at knife point i don't know how much shame you
have yeah there's that's not it's not it's not as embarrassing as it is to you and i no i yeah
that's what i mean we'd be like oh my god this he's probably got a different set of moral standards maybe than we do so he gets out of
prison in 1998 like we said by 2001 he's arrested again yeah this time much less of crimes here this
is for forgery and petty theft so but you would think if you got out of prison for the horrible
thing you did you would never ever ever ever, never want to do anything illegal ever fucking again.
Oh, crime's in your rear view.
It's way in your rear view.
You just had a horrible time and everything like that.
And you're lucky you're a goddamn pro boxer if you went to jail for knife point raping a 15-year-old girl.
Probably saved your ass being a pro boxer.
People didn't kick the shit out of you on a daily fucking basis.
So he's arrested for that.
And he's in his house.
You'd think people like there'd be pitchforks and torches coming for this asshole.
You know what I mean?
But instead, there isn't pitchforks and torches.
There's only one man.
One man who's hunted him down and wants to have a talk with him.
And it's Andrew Theron, ice cream company marketing expert and financial crimes avenger.
And he says.
How is it you come to arrive here?
What are you doing?
Nah, nah, look at you.
Oh, you know what?
I got to tell you something, guy.
I'm going to tell you one thing right now.
You got a wife?
Yeah.
If so, you know, she deserves it at this point, pal.
Listen.
Hey, you know what?
Yeah, I'll drag her into a city restroom.
I'll rape her.
I don't care.
That's why I'm going to rape your wife, pal.
That's what I do here.
I'm avenging a 15-year-old girl.
That's the only way I know how to.
How about this?
You know what? It's not your wife's fault. It's not her fault. Maybe she's avenging a 15-year-old girl. That's the only way I know how to. How about this? You know what?
It's not your wife's fault.
It's not her fault.
Maybe she's a nice girl.
I don't know what the hell she's doing.
But I tell you what.
I'm going to rape you instead.
Come on.
Let's go.
Pony up, pal.
Yeah, that's right.
No, I tracked you down, so it doesn't even matter.
I'm, uh, yeah.
No, I'm not afraid.
I'm not afraid.
Boxer?
What are you, a boxer?
Get the fuck out of here with your boxing.
With your boxing.
I don't want to hear you boxing.
No.
I'm going to.
No.
Pull him down.
Let's go, pal.
I'm going to have at it with you.
I'm going to box you.
I'm going to box your butthole, and then we're going to see how you like that.
I'm going to get your man box.
Let's go with your man box.
Let's go.
Let's do it.
And then poof.
In a poof of ice cream and phone records, he's gone.
And he is a very confused and scared man at this point.
Real Andrew's pissed because Tucker got that fine reduced.
It's gone.
Oh, I know.
No, I would be.
If I'm Tucker, I'm excited at one point, and then I'm like, oh, no.
I got to worry about Theron's revenge now.
This is just going to piss him off. Theron's revenge now this is just gonna piss him off
Theron's pretty fucking mad
if I heard that judgment
got off the phone I'd be like yes
and then I'd think for a second and go and shut all my
blinds and shut them all
he's coming
okay so 2010 comes
along and
there's something that comes up
in 2010
and to understand this you have to go all the way back to May of 1981 Yeah. And there's something that comes up from in 2010. Yeah.
And to understand this, you have to go all the way back to May of 1981.
Oh, no.
I don't know what happens.
In May of 1981, there's a young lady who is a senior in high school.
Yeah.
Jamie Walker's her name.
She's 18 years old.
Very pretty, well-loved, most popular girl in school, basically.
This is her mother says, quote, her mother, quote,
she was the first black prom queen and the first black homecoming queen at her school.
So, yeah, she said that's this is her.
She showed pictures of her sweet 16 party.
She said she was an executive on the council at Clark High School.
She was the head cheerleader as well.
She said, quote, I used to hear her at three in the morning practicing her cheerleading, and she would tell me, Mama, I'm going to be the best.
So she ready.
Okay.
Yeah.
So she's an achiever, though.
This girl.
Very well liked.
Very pretty.
though this girl very well liked very pretty um by the way this article i found that has a lot of great information was written by a guy named george knapp uh very very in in-depth reporting where the
guy interviewed a lot of people and really went in depth on this shit so definitely deserves credit
for that so uh her mother says quote she was very religious read read her Bible, leader of the NAACP youth.
She would help the less popular kids, too.
Girls told me afterward that Jamie used to meet them in the bathroom to help them fix
their hair and makeup and such.
Oh, that's so sweet.
Yeah.
She'd be like fucking makeovers for these chicks before that would be considered insulting.
Right.
You know, that was when they'd be like, oh, thank you.
Right.
Whereas now they say, you know know i want to i'm trying to
look terrible right if they want to look terrible so i don't know whatever you can look however you
want i don't give a fuck so anyway um she'd help the less popular kids try to hook themselves up
though so that's very nice may 8th 1981 she's out on a date that night and uh she returns home
to her you know her house here and And it's a primarily black neighborhood.
It's a nice neighborhood, too.
Her family is known as kind of royalty in this area.
Her grandmother, Sarah Ann Knight Pretty, was a prominent civil rights leader
and was like during the 60s in this area.
So they're well known.
Also, Eleanor was active in the civil rights movement,
served on a bunch of civic boards and all that sort of shit.
So they're well known.
People know her.
Her father's name is James Walker,
and he owned and operated a big bar and restaurant in the area that everybody knew.
It's called the People's Choice at the time.
And so they're a good, prominent family.
They do well.
They make good money.
They are known for their civic activities.
And the kids are achievers and they try hard.
And it's a good family, basically.
It's a goddamn good family.
So she went out, like we said, Friday night, came home, was home all night.
And then in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 9th, she was gone.
Now, she's 18 years old, so they're like, oh, maybe she went outside.
Maybe she went somewhere.
You know, that's normal for an 18-year-old.
In 81, kids did a lot of shit.
Yeah, they were allowed to go outside and shit.
Like, you know, remember the Goonies?
That was 85, and you were allowed to go in an underground tunnel and make friends with a mutant and fight mafia people.
That was fine.
At the end, the parents were like, oh, so happy you're okay.
Not, what the fuck?
Yeah.
Sure, you can have that mutant.
Not a single parent goes, where have you been?
Yeah, what the shit?
And the ones with sloth or whatever, they're like, sure, you can keep the mutant.
No problem.
You ever try to get a dog when you're a kid, Jimmy?
How'd that go over?
How many times did you take a stray home and your parents are like, what the fuck?
You showed it where we live?
Oh, my God.
It's never going to go.
It's going to keep coming back.
You didn't give it food, did you?
Oh, Jesus.
He fed the fucking thing.
It's never leaving.
Meanwhile, these people are like, it likes baby great bring it home great bring a six foot three 240 pound developmentally
challenged man home and we'll take care of him forever now that's great beautiful just eats baby
roots sign him up oh it's baby worth so it's baby roots so his health is probably phenomenal as well
this is going great this thing's gonna cost to cost me copays. No shit.
So Jamie, though, takes off.
This is not the Goonies.
She takes off.
She left without putting her shoes on, is what her parents noticed, which was a strange thing that she didn't believe she would do.
And the mother believes that someone Jamie knew must have talked her into the opening the door.
That's what her original thought was, because she didn't get why she would open the door.
But she was gone.
She said, I don't know.
Maybe she left with one of her friends.
It was an emergency, whatever.
But there's no cell phones, no way to get a hold of her.
Until a few hours later, when James Walker is at the nightclub, you know, working, doing paperwork and shit, he gets a phone call from a male voice that James Walker said sounded like a black male voice.
And he said, this vote, this voice on the phone demanded seventy five thousand dollars cash for Jamie's safe return.
They actually said, we have your daughter was the way the phone call started. Quote, I've got your daughter and i'm not kidding because we've gone too far to turn around
is what the kidnapper says which is um scary yeah then at the end of the call
the kidnappers put jamie on the phone with her dad actually um and to show that she's okay yeah
and that they actually have her and jamie said
quote daddy they're not kidding give them what they want that's what she said yeah and then that
was it they hung up um they also they they instructed him to not call the police because
they're being watched and if he calls the police they're going to kill her that's what they said so
um family members uh went there they didn't call
the cops they actually were trying to get the money to ransom the problem was the banks are
closed it's a saturday so the banks were closed and they couldn't get the money they couldn't
get any money they couldn't that'd be amazing you can just go to the bank and be like can i have
seventy five thousand dollars of my money yeah right can i have uh what do we need so you know i'll make it 80 because i'm gonna stop at the store on the way can i have 75 so yeah he says that um the the uh he told
basically to try to buy time he said i don't have the money the banks are closed the caller said
why don't you sell your mercedes so the caller knew he had a mercedes new to call him at the nightclub all that sort of shit so uh when they went to look at over the house basically look
over the crime scene and destroy evidence and stomp over the fucking crime scene like elephants
because if someone's kidnapped from a house you want to preserve that and let the cops do their
business but they just don't want to call the cops. So they investigate themselves. And they found the back door was a jar and that items were knocked over in her room as well.
And they had fingerprints that didn't match anybody that they had on the system.
So but they didn't belong to her and they didn't belong to the family members.
Yeah.
So that's that's an issue here.
So they end up calling back the kidnappers, calling back.
And this is a different voice.
He said sounded like a young black guy again.
He said that Eleanor's they suggest at this point that Eleanor's then boyfriend, because her parents are divorced, Eleanor's boyfriend might have some money.
So they really know this family here maybe he has
money they call a third time later on and place this is to jamie's brother okay uh they also let
jamie talk to her brother for a minute saying she's okay and then um the kidnappers say something
very odd they say that jamie was the wrong girl and that she had been taken by mistake and would be returned at the end.
They say that, which is a strange thing.
Very weird.
They say that her boyfriend was the guy who was supposed to be taken.
Okay.
So they broke in and took her.
That doesn't make any sense.
So family members, like we said, they found all this shit.
So family members, like we said, they found all this shit. At first they follow the kidnappers instructions, but then Eleanor phones a family friend who works at the DA's office.
And he said, you have to call.
You have to do it.
And he contacts the Metro police and they are notified.
And a huge frantic search begins after this.
I mean, she's fucking homecoming queen, man.
It's getting you're getting there's going to be some attention on this.
So on May 10th, 1981, Sunday morning, she's been missing for about 30 hours at this point.
At this point, three Marine Marines assigned to Nellis Air Force Base were there were walking around in the desert I guess
they arrived at a bridge that spans
a wash on North Shore Road
and they found
something down there they find
Jamie's body down there
47 feet below
at the bottom of a wash
splayed atop jagged rocks
basically she got dumped off
thrown off the bridge onto jagged rocks right basically she got dumped off the bridge thrown off the bridge
onto jagged rocks uh someone had tossed her off the bridge which uh which crushed her skull and
uh completely you know i mean it's terrible it's a 50 foot drop onto jagged rocks you're not
surviving that her face jaw and skull were all fractured and broken apart uh she had other broken bones and lacerations terrible shit here um
terrible terrible shit obviously this is uh very disturbing so um they're they are very much
wanting to solve this i mean this is all hands on deck as they call it this is a red ball this is
everybody on unlimited funds over time we got to solve solve this. You know, she's on TV,
on the news constantly. Here's her picture.
There's a lot of fucking people who are
pissed off about this here. The guy
who wrote this that I told you about,
this is his first weekend working
as a part-time reporter at
KLAS Channel 8. It's his first
week. Oh my God, and Nap draws this one?
Jesus. And this is the
first murder victim he's ever seen
and he's got an 18 year old a mangled 18 year old girl on the rocks he talks about here
he talked about the detectives one of them that day was dave hatch who he described as a quote
grizzled veteran hardened by dozens of dead bodies and sometimes gruesome corpses he'd seen over the
years and uh that guy dave hatch said that this got to him, though.
Yeah.
She was such a young, nice person who didn't didn't do any of this.
Wasn't she wasn't like mixed up with the wrong crowd.
You know what I mean?
She wasn't like trying to sell coke on the side.
She's just a nice girl going to school and trying to help people and have a nice future.
So he said, quote, She was a good kid, just a beautiful little soul.
She was well known and very popular.
And someone takes her and murders her.
What caused her death is nothing.
She did.
She is a true victim.
Very true.
I would say here.
I said, I think the suspects were trying to throw her in the water, which is over the
bridge.
He said it was dark.
They could hear the water running.
They didn't think the body would be found.
They probably thought they could still get their money,
but it didn't work out that way for them.
So in the weeks that followed,
people were pissed off,
especially the black community was pissed off saying,
what the fuck?
You can't find who killed this fucking girl.
This is ridiculous.
They said that articles in the sun said the Las Vegas sun alleged the cops didn't start looking for her until 10 hours after the initial call.
So that's what they said.
The case file reveals that one of the things that was bad was that there was a persistent rumor that the members that members of the Walker family were heavily involved in drug trafficking.
Never proven that allegation, but that was a rumor around and they dispute it.
They say it's not true, but that was a big rumor.
And that made the cops kind of go down a couple of wrong alleys first in trying to find her.
According to the homicide detective here, Lieutenant John Connor, John Connor is Sarah
Connor's husband.
It was the first ever case.
The guy from Terminator also.
That was the kid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was John Connor.
Yeah.
There you go.
It was the first.
He says it's the first ever case of a kidnap, kidnapping for ransom of an African-American
in the state of Nevada.
First ever.
I find that hard to believe, but I guess it's, I don't know.
He would know.
He's an homicide detective.
An 81.
Ever.
Wow.
That's wild.
Isn't that wild?
Yeah.
Several thousand people attended Jamie's funeral.
That's how popular she was.
Fundraisers were held to raise money for a reward.
The whole deal.
raise money for a reward uh the whole deal um she uh the bad part is what wasn't reported but the police knew and they kept under wraps was that she was also raped pretty viciously before
she was murdered as well this was not an ease she didn't just get thrown over the bridge but
she was alive when she got thrown off the bridge oh no her cause of death was the fractured skull from the rocks so they did horrible things to her
and then fucking threw her away like garbage over a bridge and onto some jagged rocks awful
that's fucking horrendous is what that is that's just it's beyond fucking words man that's just
wow how do you do that how do you fucking do that i can't imagine uh but they do get
one thing out of this thing that they've been sitting on a small semen sample was retrieved
from her underwear and was saved for decades in the vault so they have this dna there um they
didn't have the technology to do anything with it at that point other than type it basically. Right. They didn't even know what they've got.
No.
Um, so basically they said that, uh, later on as time goes by, cause they don't make any arrests for years and years and years.
So, uh, as time goes by, they said it seemed that a lot of the time that the police look like they were dragging their feet.
It's actually that there was a lot of things to look at.
They said the detectives looked at some 55 potential suspects.
55's a lot.
Conducted interviews, tons of them.
Staged about a dozen lineups.
Ordered a lot of polygraph exams and all that sort of shit.
They said they had too many suspects and it took a long time to sift through them.
Plus, when someone who is young, beloved, popular, tips are pouring in all the time.
And none of them go anywhere.
You have to check them all out.
And some of them do go somewhere, go the wrong area.
And then we're over here looking all over this shit.
You wasted three days.
Right.
For nothing.
And, yeah, Jamie's mother, Eleanor, wrote her own detailed memos about everyone who may have known anything about Jamie's death, complete with her own suspicions and background tidbits.
She had like a like a guidebook of the suspects of like this guy.
He did this. I'm suspicious of him because of this and that.
Like she was like, I'll fucking find that. I'll do it myself.
I'll just do my own homicide investigation.
They are they're on the police file file, dozens and dozens of pages.
She gave the names of several people, but her attention from the beginning was on her number one suspect, Willie the Cannon Shannon.
Really?
Yeah.
He lived a couple doors down from their home, from the Walker home in Las Vegas, and reportedly had been asking questions about Jamie,
even though they didn't know each other, really.
Shannon had reported,
everybody said he had an eye for young girls, obviously,
and a reputation for often having his way with them.
Post-prison, not what he went to jail for.
Yeah.
Shannon, now they talk to Shannon here. He's questioned, actually, like in the days after Jamie's Walker's after the body's discovered. And he denies any involvement in her kidnapping and says that he had been training for boxing when she disappeared and doesn't know what the hell you're talking about.
fingerprints found at the scene did not match Shannon's prints on file as well.
So there's that. Now, he told detectives that he heard, I heard, that Eleanor Walker's boyfriend had burned someone on a drug deal.
That's what I heard.
Yeah, he said, but the Walker family denied being involved with narcotics at the time.
Why would he know that?'s what i mean that's
what i heard around the neighborhood i know everybody's business and then later on in his
statement he referred to jamie because they're saying did you know her he referred to her as
quote a snooty bitch oh who wouldn't talk to him you know because you're an old dirtbag boxer and
not a fucking not old but you're not 18 in high school
or whatever also a convicted uh spent time a lot of time felon yeah and you're it's i mean for
it's anyway so mom didn't like him at all eleanor didn't like him from fucking jump here she says
quote the first time i met him at the club at the club that the father owned shannon told me he
always looked out for my
daughter because there's a lot of weirdos around later i was thinking he was the biggest weirdo of
all i had a weird feeling right away about him he came to my house the day she was kidnapped because
he said uh he wanted to sign some insurance papers she sold insurance uh the mother here
all of a sudden he said he had to run an errand and got up and just left.
That was the day of the kidnapping.
So that's weird.
He stopped over just to see what was going on in the house.
Jamie's brother, James, the one who got the phone call from one of the kidnappers, he had received boxing lessons from Willie.
What?
Actually, and spent time at the house.
What?
Actually, and spent time at the house.
And in an interview, James said that Shannon routinely frightened neighborhood girls into doing things they didn't want to do.
Oh, my God.
Girls, not women.
Oh, no.
Quote, he would take young girls to his house, and he had these big dogs.
He would threaten the girls with the dogs, like sick them, and he would say, if you tell anyone what I made you do, I'm going to get you.
Oh, my God.
So this is what he was doing after he served 15 years for doing this.
Jesus.
He got out and do that and did that.
Then this is Gala Walker Thornton, who's Jamie's cousin.
She says, quote, Jamie was afraid of Shannon.
There's a lot of girls in the community that we knew that we grew up with in that that we grew up in that we're afraid of him and think he will always be a predator and will always be a risk to any young person or young girl that's near him.
Sure. I would say he likes young girls and he's willing to do what it takes to get them to do things to him.
It's fucking disgusting.
girls and he's willing to do what it takes to get them to do things to him or it's fucking disgusting um so the detectives looked hard at willie but um because eleanor kept insisting he
was the killer and also they felt that he lied to them about minor details during the interviews
but they didn't have enough evidence to charge anybody and time goes by now 1990 a former inmate
that he was jailed with claimed that willie to the murder of Jamie Walker to him while in prison.
Admitted.
He's admitted.
Yeah.
He says that this inmate says that he never had received payment from the Walkers for a heroin sale.
That was what he told the inmate.
Detectives believe that his statement about Eleanor walker's boyfriend burning someone on a
drug deal indicates that he was the person that was burned that's what the that's what the affidavit
of the warrant says that that's what this came to they think that he was in a deal with the
boyfriend and he got burned so he took it out by killing the girl wow or holding her for ransom
and then killing her when he realized
it wasn't going to work so that's what they're saying um police say that in 86 or 87 he admitted
to an inmate james phillips that he was cheated out of 27 000 in a heroin deal with a member of
the walker family and like i said the family denies all part of this so um 2004 they still haven't caught anybody for this jamie's mom here eleanor
says quote i feel like i'm letting my daughter down if i don't find out what happens she said
i need a way to tie these loose ends together she's like a that's brutal man she's trying to
solve the thing herself she says that she's have to vegas has no money jesus that's the thing she
said it's i think still think about her every day and she weeps on the interview
and this poor woman, Jesus Christ, she's been through so much in 2005.
It's the 24th anniversary of Jamie's death.
I don't know why they decided to do something on the 24th anniversary, but better late than
never.
So Dave Hatch, the homicide detective, was in semi-retirement but working cold cases.
A lot of times that's what they do when homicide detectives want to retire.
They say, tell you what, stick around.
I know you don't want the rigors of that schedule, but stick around and do another five years to get to your next pension bump and just do it just looking through cold cases.
Look through these boxes.
Yeah, they would know how to do it.
So he said, quote, the answer is right here in those files.
The person who did it is right there, and all we need is a little help from the public.
This is what he said to a reporter.
He also acknowledged that Shannon's name was at the top of his suspect list and all that sort of thing.
He said that everyone who's looked through the files said that Shannon's on their list as well.
New leads came in.
Nothing, nothing solid.
Ten cold case detectives worked on this case and all of them took a personal interest in it because of how innocent the victim was here.
So also in the file, though, they find new information about the inmate who'd served with Shannon and told him about the involvement and all that sort of thing. And also, Jamie James Walker, the brother who took boxing lessons from him and got
the phone call, he ended up in jail at one point and he picked up the same information. He heard
through the grapevine that that guy killed your sister, by the way. So there's that. 2010 comes up, Jimmy.
2010. Think about that.
Eleanor's getting sicker and sicker
and older and sicker here, so she's not
going to last much longer. 29
years post the murder.
Post the murder. Yeah, she's hospitalized
all the time. But
at this point, Metro, the Metro
Police Department for Vegas, receives a
$500,000 grant that allows it to conduct advanced DNA tests on cold cases.
Right.
They need that.
Otherwise, it's not in the budget to do that.
There's fresh murders they got to solve.
So that shit's not in the budget for advanced expensive DNA testing.
So this includes Jamie's case falls under that.
Now, they had a difficult time getting DNA from Shannon.
But at one point, the Florida parole officer inadvertently tipped him off about one of the plans.
He fucked up and said something he shouldn't have said because they had a plan to get his DNA.
Like they were going to take a soda can or some shit from the parole office.
And he found out about it and they couldn't get it.
However, eventually they got his DNA somehow.
They snagged it.
Good.
And the re they do it.
They test it with the results of the underwear and they find out it is
Willie Shannon's DNA on the underwear.
Yup.
Um,
that's right.
Uh,
so December of 2010,
29 and a half years later,
he's finally arrested for this shit.
Wow.
Think about that.
He fucking was boxing after that still.
Yeah, a lot.
That's disgusting.
He's finally arrested.
Also, police suspect that he's the ringleader of the kidnapping, but there's at least two other people that participated because they made those other phone calls.
Yeah, right.
So they don't know anything about that.
Eleanor said she knew it the whole time.
She said she knew it was someone who grins and speaks and says hello, but knows what
happens to Jamie.
That's what she said.
She says, I knew it was someone who we knew.
Now, yeah, the odds are it was definitely him after the DNA.
They find that there's no doubt about it.
He enters a plea of not guilty.
You know, he's not going to admit to that here.
Police believe there's two additional suspects because they found fingerprints that don't match Shannon's in there and all that, like we said.
So that's the perpetrator.
But they never match.
They can't match him to anybody.
Whoever it is, isn't in the system.
Whether or not they kidnapped him and helped him with that.
Who gives a shit?
It doesn't appear as though they put anything inside her.
You know what I mean?
That's that's the one that did it.
That's and he's the neighbor.
So it would have been his idea.
All that shit.
The police said, quote, we tried to get a confession out of him, but he wasn't cooperative.
I think he thought he'd gotten away with it.
Yeah, it's been almost 30 years.
He'd served time and everything else.
Then they also said, quote, this is after prison.
He said, quote, I find it hard to believe that he straightened up after he left here.
My assumption is he continued.
He may not have been caught for any of those, though.
There's more.
You don't do that you don't brazenly break into a 18 year old's house like that and drag
them away and kidnap them and rape them and throw them over a fucking bridge and call their dad for
ransom man dude that's ballsy you just don't stop doing what you're doing after that that's
certainly been done before yeah and we know that he he held the one at knife point that was later that was 83
those other ones so he had already done this so he's capable of anything those women are lucky
to be alive oh my god the ones in 83 held a knife point dragged into a bathroom they're lucky to
fucking be alive i mean jesus christ um the cold case detective here says initially he was named
a suspect back then there just wasn't sufficient evidence to prove it.
It just took a long time to get this physical evidence so we could confirm it.
DNA technology evidence advanced enough to be us to be able to assist us.
So the problem is there's a lot of delays in the trial and all this type of shit.
The trial is rescheduled for years, three and a half years.
This goes on for
uh all this shit eleanor getting sicker and sicker and sicker obviously um the day she's supposed to
give her deposition she dies oh jesus eleanor never got to speak her piece in court about the
whole thing so that's sad that's very fucking sad um really bad. One of the guys, isn't that terrible?
I'm so upset.
You're going to get more upset, don't worry.
One of the guys who used to box with him says, quote, it's sad to hear.
A lot of people looked up to him and admired him as a fighter.
He said he was so nice.
He was so eager to learn.
He had what I thought was a huge heart in and out of the ring.
So his current neighbors in Florida don't believe believe it they don't think it's true current neighbors in florida
ellenton florida is where idiots live who don't believe in dna um he says that the neighbors were
surprised one guy one neighbor uh what's his name he didn't want to be identified willie's a great
guy hard working he's been a good neighbor.
Better than most.
I loaned him my lawnmower and he brings it back filled with gas.
Oh, so, I mean, that obviously means that he shouldn't be sent to prison for murder.
I mean, you know, what the fuck?
He brings it with gas in it, Jimmy.
He's a good guy, obviously.
Not guilty.
He doesn't rape my gas.
He's a very nice guy.
There's no jizz in there.
It's just fucking, it's just gas.
Another guy, Tommy Daly, he fucking gives his name.
He lives a few doors down from Shannon.
He said, that's shocking.
I've never really met him, but he's always waved when I saw him and I would wave back.
I have a hard time believing someone that nice could do something like that.
He waved.
A guy what?
What?
He said that his sons, oh, Tammy Daly, her sons, I'm sorry, had visited the last week
before the arrest, had visited Willie Shannon, and he fixed the chains on their bikes.
Okay.
She had just sent her children over there a week prior to that.
Rather than going, oh, my God, I'm horrified.
Right.
She says, I don't think that's true.
He didn't rape my kids.
Whoa.
I never talked to him about his past, but he was always so friendly.
It makes me think maybe he's changed.
Maybe he's got his life together now.
So they're like, he's nice now.
Right.
So what if he raped a homecoming queen and threw her over a fucking bridge?
What are you talking about?
I don't give a shit.
How nice you are.
Listen, my kids went over there and he fixed their tires and chains and shit.
A guy that rapes and throws kids off of cliffs would clearly tell you I rape and throw kids off cliffs.
Completely.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
Threatening people.
Fucking disgusting.
T.J. Maluski. Oh, this poor kid. He's only 15 years old at the time. He's older now, but he's a student at the Manatee County School of the Arts. His parents live across the street from him, from Shannon. He says, I just talked to him the other day. He said he was taking out the trash and I just offered to take it to the curb for him he said thank you he was a good guy what a nice kid by the way yeah that's 15 year old offer to take the can out for a neighbor that's a nice fucking kid but um yeah anyway he's wrong but
still nice kid now jamie's family they allege that there's got to be other victims that are
just afraid to come forward other ones that he's raped and who knows, ones that were murdered.
Who the hell knows?
Or just weren't tried to get ransom out of, just disposed of.
Think about this, Jimmy.
What's the group of people that people kill when they want to kill someone and get away with it because they don't think it's a society?
Prostitutes.
Does he know any of those?
Has he ever been around?
At least eight of them.
A lot of them.
That's right.
You know what I'm saying?
At least Ocho.
Yeah.
In Vegas?
Right.
Who knows what's in the deserts out there?
It's fucking crazy.
So, oh, man.
They say that.
Eleanor says that before that, she said that she needed to stay strong before she died. She said
30 years of people telling me to give up
to the point that I had to cut some of these people
off. It's hope and trust more than anything
that I trust in God to bring this person
to justice.
Gayla Walker said, like I said, he was
afraid. She was afraid of Shannon.
And so, I mean,
this is a fucking disaster. I feel terrible
for these people. I really do. This is I mean, this is a fucking disaster. I feel terrible for these people.
I really do.
This is, I mean, 30 years they had to fucking not know and have that over their heads.
It's awful.
How do you not have empathy for these people, right?
I mean, I feel bad for all of them, Jimmy, but not nearly as bad as I feel for Willie Shannon. Oh, my God.
International captain and investor in the greater Phoenix area.
What?
He's on the steps of a Learjet, is his picture.
William Shannon, freelance journalist at the New York Times.
Oh, boy.
He's a fucking...
I'm not that guy.
I swear I don't rape kids and throw them over bridges.
William Shannon, president of the Shannon Corporation in Sudbury, Massachusetts.
William Shannon, teaching assistant at Houston ISD.
Nope, nope, nope.
William Shannon, museum curator in Belleville, Illinois.
Jesus.
William Shannon, senior data analyst at Storable.
And finally, Willie Shannon, chief operating officer at IM3NY in New York City.
Wow.
CEO.
There you go.
CEO, baby.
Yeah, COO.
Sorry.
You were right.
2013, like we said, Eleanor passes away right before she's going to give her deposition.
She was 70 years old.
give her deposition. She was 70 years old. So they said that there's a lot of her information and depositions from the past that might be able to get put into trial here. Her sister as well,
apparently, still lives in Atlanta and had traveled there a lot. So she knew a lot of
she had a lot of her information she said my sister
prayed that justice would prevail and that is my hope also so um yeah uh 2014 the trial is going
to start for murder here so this is the real deal uh uh so he's going into that 2015 it finally is
going to happen and right before the trial he's offered a plea deal and what
is it he's offered a plea deal what is it and uh it's an alford plea and he says no really no i want
to go to trial okay they said that uh yep shannon's lawyer mace yampolsky, said the deal the prosecutors wanted was an Alford deal.
But he said, quote, there's no way he's going to admit anything.
There's no way this deal will go down if he has to.
He just couldn't admit to something he didn't do.
Mace really thinks they've got nothing.
Yeah, he said that this deal would have given him a sentence of 15 years, by the way, 15 years.
And now if they go to trial, he could face a death penalty.
Right.
That's how that works.
But at the same time, they're saying that 34, 33, 34 years, it's hard to convict somebody.
All you literally all you have is the DNA.
You know, if he comes up and goes yeah you know i used to talk to her
and she came over my house and we got it on and then she left and i don't know what the fuck
happened and there's reasonable doubt for that you know what do you say so it's really difficult
so um uh a bunch of family members came to court they all had justice for jamie shirts on good
very a lot of support from the family and all sorts of shit like that so he wouldn't take
the deal and the district attorney of clark county says we thought there would be closure today but
mr shannon said no so they're the ones that are going to continue to suffer talking about the
family with the justice for jamie shirts on um so uh he his her sister eleanor sister renee
says eleanor wouldn't have wanted to see a plea bargain.
She says, quote, in my heart of hearts, I think she would have been devastated and sick to her stomach.
So, yeah.
They also said, though, the DA says it's also a 30-year-old case, more than 30 years.
When you have that length of time that passes between the crime and prosecution, it doesn't exactly help the prosecution.
It doesn't.
Witnesses die.
Things degrade.
Evidence gets lost.
It's not good here.
Now, they said that the trial is going to be in March.
The family said they'll all be there every single day with their T-shirts on and, you
know, all that shit.
The defense attorney, I guess, Macy Yempolsky, is a good attorney.
He's one of the best in town, the reporter says.
And they said they're going to take the deal.
The thing is, they're going to do it.
There's still a substantial cash reward.
I think it's to this day a substantial cash reward for anyone with information about any of the other suspects in this case.
If you know who the other two guys are, because they never find them.
They never find out.
Willie doesn't tell on them.
Nothing happens.
So they said at least one of them's out there.
January 2016.
Finally, he's been in custody for almost six years now.
He pleads.
Finally takes a deal.
The equivalent of it's an it's an Alford plea here to second degree murder to avoid the trial.
So he won't.
That doesn't admit guilt,
but concedes that the prosecutors could prove their case.
That's an Alfred plea here.
Prosecutors said it would have been difficult, obviously, to get him,
so they're happy about that.
They also alleged he had co-conspirators,
but he won't talk on that either.
So he won't say anything.
He's silent during sentencing and everything.
So March of 2016 is sentencing.
He's, you know, 64 years old standing there.
Not 64, 60.
What is he?
Three years old standing there.
And they all have their justice for Jamie shirts on.
And the judge gives him you, sir, may fuck off 15 years.
What?
15 years.
That's the deal.
For second degree murder?
Yeah. And because the plea fell under the 1981 law, because that's when the crime occurred, he receives credit for his five years in custody and will be eligible eligible for parole pretty soon after he goes
to prison holy shit so 2017 is his first parole hearing he got sentenced in 2000 fucking 16 right
uh 2017 nevada parole board rejects his request to be released however a few months later, he is given parole and set free. Holy shit.
He returned to his family in Florida, he said.
The D.A. said, quote, well, we were informed.
I got a letter two days.
This is the family.
I got a letter two days after they let him out.
And so that was very offensive.
And just I struggled with this intensely my whole life, but especially as an adult.
Yeah, this this is fucking ridiculous.
So he's on the streets, man.
Wow.
This guy's on the street.
He's on the street.
Yeah.
And Jamie, on the other hand, Jamie Jarmel Walker is buried at the Palm Downtown Cemetery in Las Vegas in a mausoleum thing.
So he's hanging out fine.
She's dead.
My God.
Countless other people people what the fuck who the fuck knows what
happened with other people and other young girls how many there are because we know of a few how
many more are there jimmy the brother knew of girls he threatened and went how many how many
did he rape how many did he kill how old is he now he's in his 60s now he's probably with 66 67 oh my god i mean man served
prison time for rape and murder and he's free and he's free separately i don't even know what
to say about this shit man so as a not very old man no no this is no yeah he's still fucking spry
and he's a boxer so so he's still strong.
He can still, who knows?
I'm sorry, but I'm not.
If I'm a young girl, if I have a young girl in my family and I'm in his neighborhood.
I don't feel safe.
I don't, she's carrying a fucking box cutter everywhere she goes.
I mean, this is not okay, man.
Fuck that shit.
Holy hell, man.
Where the fuck?
That, that's Willie Shannon, everybody. Where's that? That's Willie Shannon,
everybody.
Willie the Cannon Shannon.
Good luck sleeping tonight.
Yeah.
Florida.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
Especially Florida.
So that's that.
If you were
fascinated by that story as
much as I was, let us all
know. Let the world know.
Tell us all about it.
Get on Apple podcast. That purple icon. Give know tell us all about it get on Apple podcast that
purple icon give us five stars say some shit on there because that's how they count and it helps
drive you up the charts which is very helpful for us so people can find the show in addition to that
you definitely want to follow us on social media we're at crime and sports on Twitter and Facebook
at small town murder on Instagram that way you can get all the updates on everything new, like all the new live shows
and all the rescheduled dates of live shows,
which you can find all over ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com.
Right.
You can find all the live shows,
all the rescheduled 2022 dates,
those few at the end of 2021 that are there.
Get your tickets right now
because we can't wait to get our asses on the goddamn road
and have some fun.
Can't wait to see you.
Going to be good shit there there so do all that patreon.com slash crime and sports is so good we have you get access first of all for five dollars and above you get access to
all of the patreon bonus right not only small town murders but crime and sports as well and
they're rarely about sports they're mostly about craziness and crime and wacky shit and comedy so you get access to all that the whole back catalog of it everything
and uh and you get a shout out at the end of the show jimmy will mispronounce your name terribly
like we're going to do in a couple minutes here to honor you obviously um but the episodes this
week that you're going to get to see or listen to holy shit we got some good ones we have first of all the we have backstage wrestler fights we're going to talk about wrestlers fighting and also
wrestlers that got like fought whole bars and wrestlers that got their asses kicked by whole
bars we'll get into all of it it's going to be a lot of fun just wrestling shenanigans that's
always a lot of fucking fun so we'll get into that shit it's going to be great and for the small town murder one we are going to dip into the newspaper archives
and find some good old-timey murders because those like late 1800s early 1900s murders are always the
craziest shit we've ever heard they're always nuts they're never anywhere near normal so we're
going to check all that out i'm very excited for it and you should be to patreon.com slash crime and sports and if you just want to have a shout out and have excellent
karma and our undying love and affection you can do it very easily over at paypal just use our
email address crime in sports at gmail.com to make a one-time donation and we will be oh so grateful
for the rest of our lives that said i said all that and now I need to hear
the list of the people who would never, ever, ever drag us from our rooms
and toss us over the side of a bridge after assaulting us in any way,
especially sexually.
Jimmy, hit me with those names.
Well, this week's executive producers are Damon Stevens, Jordan Bennett,
Simon Shedd got a new job, and he had a birthday this week.
Good for you, Simon.
Happy birthday, Simon.
He's the best.
Good for you guys.
Thank you.
They're awesome people.
Thank you.
Other executives this week are Ann Fountain, Amanda Powers, Connor Thomas, Christy Burrows,
and she donated every possible way that you can.
Thank you so much, Christy.
Thank you so much.
Eric Crabtree,in mcalexander
darren wiferich i think yes darren did i say darren i don't even know what i said
darren whose wife is rich yes uh other producers this week are james martyr jennifer stevens carl
kershner peyton meadows my little buddy jalen truss uh he messaged us on paypal because i was
like i i don't want to they i said they lost their
grandparent because i didn't know what was what to say and then realized i don't have to uh assume
a gender because they is fine but jaylen wrote to make sure that i understand jaylen is a boy
so now we know okay so now we know that we didn't know yeah i got all that i think it's just because
we made a mistake and we were like, is that?
Who knows?
And then we were like, well, shit, we just gave them that.
We just gave them a gender, so I don't know.
Thank you, Jaylen.
You're a good kid.
Hang in there.
Keep being amazing.
Also, Liz Vasquez, Alejandro, Alejandro, Alejandro Martinez.
That's a, isn't that a, who sings that?
I don't know.
It doesn't matter.
Navigators usa chapter
110 uh terror and ford embaldies richard johnson uh donated memory of fawn lebowitz and uh it was
his birthday and i called him on instagram and he didn't answer i think it was his birthday i don't
know somebody just wanted me to call him lebowitz what does that name sound fawn lebowitz i don't
know is that is that a joke someone is that an ojawn Leibowitz. I don't know. Is that a joke somewhere? Is that in OJ's?
Is that one of Nicole Brown's friends or something?
Don't look at me.
I haven't got a clue.
I think it might be.
I'll look it up while you're doing these.
All right.
Mike Kuehling, Maria Rasper, Megan Blank, Kelsey Kautz, I think, Regina Phipps, Baron
Ashikonzi, Ashkonzi, Ashkenazi, what?
Ashkenazi?
Ashkenazi?
Yeah.
There's an Australian pervert dirt bike
rider with that last name I hope it's not him maybe it's better I don't know
also Thomas Smith Sam McHale Jude Kendall Alexi Knapp Matt Britt got a new liver and Maggie gifted
him the CIS live show in the hospital thank you Maggie that was very nice awesome and hang in
there Matt I hope you fucking rock that liver out good for you hell yeah also christy kelly lost her pup baxter
and he was a good boy and she's very hurt about it obviously uh april april dunning's friend
megan noosh had a birthday happy birthday megan or megan noosh i don't know if that's
janice hill also jean-Léon Magnato.
Raj rerun Dwayne and their mentor Shirley.
Yes.
The What's Happening crew.
I love it.
Thank you. Rear Admiral Jack Mehoff, of course.
Well done.
Avon Merger.
Susanna Platt.
Juan Epstein's fro.
Michael Haugsma.
What?
That might be me typing wrong.
DeVitas Marascovas,
Jesus Christ.
DeForest Bloom had a birthday.
Happy birthday, DeForest.
Ashley Veo, Eric Curtis, Julie Maynard
Standard, Tessa Hupp,
Nick Nurenberg, E.W.
Calivari, Amelia Wilson,
Matt Hutchinson, Telly
Hickey, Elizabeth Greenup, Kayla
Moore, Kayla, that's kayla
more uh amanda amanda amanda amanda amanda amanda jeremy amanda really okay isabella and also amanda
holy or holly isabella quintana corinne corinne lamar lamar ryan miller shasky fuck uh christina rock
heather uh yarborough yarborough yes uh nita moore abigail sheets gino falk jim mccormick
clay campbell tiffany cunningham amy with no last name kel nelvelelvel, Andrew Marist, Kimberly Easton, Roger Ekberg, Jordan C., Taylor Johnson, Christy Simmons, David Fuller, Amanda Wegman.
I love Amanda. That's my favorite name.
Manderfield, Michelle Bork, Skylar Stewart, Alana Abel, Heidi Johnson, Justin Killingbeck,
Craig O'Mahoney, Andreas, James Rhodes, James Blue, Michael Phaeton, Michelle Mazuris, Nick Libicap, fuck these last names this week, Andrew Temple, Jennifer Shantz, Taylor Kenschmerich,
Heather Gilliam, Jessica Collins, Daniela Rios, Ashley Milton, Mark Spears, Rachel Farmer, Kyle Hopkins, Julie with no last name, Unionize Your Workplace, Rory Douglas Cobb, Mary Borge, Susanna Beagle, Bianca Arano, Laurel Fay, Michaela DeJager, Debbie Ard, Bailey Freer.
Stop it.
The wheels are coming off, everybody.
Frederick Keefe, Laura Chadwick, Alina, Alina, Alina, Mitchell, Natalia Buxo-Berg, Bergy,
Amanda Barden, Brooks R., Tab Evans, Mark Connelly, Patrick Roseberry, Mary Sider, Liz Wilcox, Jennifer Dalton, Victoria Bollick S. Brad, Nicole Carlson, Ace2014508.
That might be their social.
I'm not sure.
Jacqueline Cuscuna, Jolene Loritz, Kate Ciccone, Tink with no last name, Natalie with no last name kyle biercey bierce uh cindy
moreau lee searcy doc doc strand doc strange yeah no okay justin weir brooke hudson uh what's that
there's no i don't know for sure to be honest with you brooke hudson travis parker say again
i seem confused i I'm very confused.
Every week, this is a fucking nightmare.
Brooke Hudson, Travis Parker, Samantha, Samantha Michelle, Erica Morris, Shelby Topham,
Trin Gozier, Rosa Lee, Tammy Altman, Galactic Commander and Baby Girl,
Catherine Campbell, Melissa Hawkins, Samantha with no last name,
Drew Dibble, Diddle?
It's Diddle. My Christ.
That is tough. Fred Mercado,
Christina Kapitsa,
Charlie Bourne,
Brandon Koch,
Marcy Goodfellow, Kim Phillip,
Jessica Rowe, Alyssa Rizzo,
Emily Rowe,
Laura Marshall, I think that's Marshall, Travis, nope, that's
Trisha, Trisha Raya, Melissa V. Stotsky, Christopher Stalin, Kelly Flaherty, Tiffany Kaiser, Joe
McNeary, oh boy, McNeary, Kate Cohane, and greg terry dowdy savannah with no last name amy
montgomery what is it i'm just laughing arena sorry arena streelitz donna farron dandy dandy
drew lavelle uh shay beaten joey kirch, Lauren with no last name, Ryan Unrow, Connor
Thomas, Madison East, Douglas Jamison, Randy, Michelle Allen, Tyler Tharp, Amanda Foltz.
Yep.
Aislinn Partington, Heather Ling, Davey McCrory, John Welty, Devin Lee, Dean with no last name,
Kayla Lacey, Jocelyn Sabori, and Rick Parando.
And obviously all of our other patrons.
You guys are truly amazing.
Thank you for what you do.
Thank you so much, everybody, for everything that you do.
You're amazing.
You are amazing, honestly.
Everything you do for us is, you're all in everything, honestly.
You guys are our, you people are our rising sun, so we appreciate it.
All the warmth and the photosynthesis cannot
be done without you so thank you so much for that taking care of my children has never felt better
uh doing it this way because uh the other way was so much so much worse uh putting up with
seeing people that don't give a fuck about me people these people care about us james it's
bananas wild i don't know why but they do and i And I'm impressed by it. So just thank you for everything
and thank you for giving a shit. What if they wanted
to give a shit about you on social media?
You can find me at WismanSucks
on Twitter and Instagram. What about you?
You can find me. I'm
at JimmyP is funny. You know how to look people up.
Just Google us and Google the show. You'll find
us, goddammit. Do all that.
Yeah, we'll chat. We'll hang. Do all
that shit. keep coming back
every week that was a wild ass story i'm telling you that was that was crazy that's one of those
where that should be a known story right that shouldn't be like like i don't even know about
it that shouldn't be like that at minimum the people in his neighborhood should know
right no no shit really no we fuck i thought he was fine yeah maybe you should have known that
don't wave anyway that said keep coming back and and seeing us, because we won't go away.
Live from the Crime and Sports studios, we will see you next week.
Bye.
Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts.
Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.