Crime in Sports - #47 - Cocaine Plus Brain Damage Equals Gunplay - The Stubbornness of Clifford Etienne
Episode Date: December 20, 2016This week, we present of story of promise, stupidity, redemption, and complete disaster. In that order. He was a promising high school athlete, turned prison boxing champ, who had a pay per v...iew fight with Mike Tyson, and several of the worst charges we've seen. No amount of success could keep him from destroying his life, and nearly killing several others during a maniacal, cocaine fueled get away attempt, and earning a prison sentence that could most easily be measured in lifetimes. This is a wild tale, filled with silliness, and human tragedy. Happy Holidays!Take a hostage to a soybean farm, get knocked out by Mike Tyson, and paint a beautiful picture with Clifford Etienne!!Check us out, every Tuesday. We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman New episodes every Tuesday!!Please subscribe, rate, and review!Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!Head to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Crime in Sports!For merchandise: crimeinsports.threadless.comCheck out James and Jimmie's other show: Small Town Murder Follow us on social media!Facebook: facebook.com/crimeinsportsInstagram: instagram.com/smalltownmurderTwitter: twitter.com/MurderSmall Contact the show: crimeinsports@gmail.comDonate on Patreon: patreon.com/crimeinsportsPayPal: paypal.me/crimeinsports 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)
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free right now.
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
Looking for inspiration? Craving something new?
When you visit Audible, there are endless ways to ignite your imagination.
With over 750,000 titles, including bestsellers, there's a listen for every type of listener.
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.
The Queen of the Courtroom is back.
How did I know that? i have crystal ball in my head
new cases leave her a long 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 back to Crime and Sports.
Yay!
Oh, Jimmy, yay.
Yay indeed, bro.
Way more than yay.
What the fuck are we doing?
My name is James Petrigallo.
I'm here with my co-host.
I'm Jimmy Wissman, and we don't fucking belong here.
Oh, man.
We are in a real big boy studio today, finally.
This is fucking real.
Yes.
We've gone from, and we're going to post pictures on our social media.
You can see our evolution of studios.
And this one is by far the nicest.
Boy, oh boy, is it a fucking.
This is amazing.
Evolution doesn't even describe it.
It's great.
Thank you, 98KUPD in Phoenix for letting us use your studio.
Yeah, Hubbard Broadcasting.
Hubbard Broadcasting.
This is the shit.
And everything.
Yeah, we have some good big announcements coming with that, but never mind that stuff
for right now.
That's all house cleaning.
We'll do that at the end.
Wow, do we have a story tonight, Jimmy.
Unbelievable.
This guy is as crazy as they come.
Is it as crazy as how great your voice sounds right now?
Yeah, you're sounding crisp yourself, Jimmy.
Very crisp.
I'm telling you, this guy is normally we have the thing where they have it all.
Right. And then they lose it all. Right. This is a great story because this is losing it all first before anything.
Oh, great. Having it all. Yeah. Throwing it away as quickly as possible. It's beautiful.
It's a story made for us. It's amazing. Before we get to that, just want to thank everyone for their iTunes reviews this week. Oh, my goodness.
Can't tell you how huge that is for us, the iTunes reviews.
Honestly, it helps us move up the charts.
It helps us get sponsors.
It helps us get to where we are right now.
We're in the studio because you guys take 30 seconds and sign in and do it, and it can only help.
So please, we beg you, give us five stars.
Tell us your following instructions or some sort of inside jargon that you want to give us.
It doesn't matter.
We're up for it.
Please do that for us.
Without further ado. Listen, right out of the gate, can we really quickly just say.
Oh, we have a big thank you.
We have to give out.
Oh, yeah.
We'll do that at the end.
I just want to say rest in peace, fucking Craig Sager, man.
Yes.
Brutal.
It is a tough one.
But the one thing I enjoyed about the silver lining is there? Is there one? There's a silver lining in a frosty-haired douchebag.
Skip Bayless tweeted about him.
Yeah.
And everyone, rather than be like, yeah, I know, that's terrible, they all just said,
well, thanks, you idiot.
I wish it was you.
He was a good reporter.
I'm like, you, you shitbag.
People just savaged him.
And I'm like, thank you, people.
Something awesome I learned today is that Skip Bayless is a fucking junior.
Oh, it's perfect.
It's perfect.
The crime and sports movement, we all know what a junior means, and it fits.
Fingers crossed.
I would have thought he was a junior the whole time.
Horrible shit happens to that dick.
Oh, he's a douchebag.
Hope you guys enjoyed last week with a pile of crazy, known as Larry Bethea.
Good grief.
That was a sad story, wasn't it?
It ended so terribly, too.
It ended so sadly.
It's like, God, that's sad.
He just gave up.
He just gave up.
And it was a fitting end, I guess.
But it was also, you know, good.
I just, I was like, that's it.
That's all I got.
Also, too, I want to say, it says in the story, and everybody kept saying he went to that
people, spoiler alert if you haven't listened to last week, Larry Bethea.
But at the end, he goes to a boarding house and it was to see a friend, but I don't think it
was to see the friend.
Everybody said that was like where you get crack.
Yeah.
So I think he robbed the place, did some, you know, smoke some crack and then went outside
and did what he did.
We won't tell you what he did.
Listen to last week if you haven't, but it's wild.
Get into it.
Get into it.
But before we, let's, let's dispatch with all of that.
Let's not ruin that anymore.
Let's move on to this one.
Let's dispatch with this because, oh my goodness, we have a story tonight.
It's a boxer.
So fighters are always fun.
They're always fun.
You know, when you mix, when you mix, you know, aggression and cocaine and brain damage
and you mix it all up together, you swirl it, you get quite the pastel of something.
So tonight.
It's a lovely color swatch.
It really is.
Tonight we have Clifford Atien.
All right.
But full name, Clifford Joseph Atien Jr.
He is a junior, folks.
And I didn't even know.
I didn't find out he was a junior until the end of my research when I found court documents.
And I was like, he's a junior.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Etienne sounds French.
Oh, yeah, he's a Creole type of guy.
He's from Louisiana.
He's born in Lafayette, Louisiana.
March 9th, 1972.
He's a big boy.
He's a big boy. He's a big fella. He grows up large
6'2", 222 when he's
at his peak of his fighting.
That's what he ends up with.
Growing up, I don't have a whole lot about
his family life because it's just not out there.
I know his parents are Clifford Joseph
ATN Sr. and his mother is
Emily ATN and we'll get to her poor
long-suffering self later on.
Oh no.
Mom has a tough life too. Well, no. This poor woman, man.
Mom has a tough life, too.
Well, it's not that she has a tough life.
It's that this person is her son, and she has to deal with the consequences of that.
That is tough, yeah.
I mean, growing up, great athlete all around.
He's a big guy.
He's very athletic, as we'll see.
And he was a great athlete in high school, and he was, this is amazing that I found also here.
He was a wrestler and he was also a football player.
Wrestling, I found.
Contact right away.
Oh, yeah.
He wants to fight, basically.
But he had no boxing at a young age.
He did not start boxing young like James Butler, you know, outside kicking the door of a fast food establishment.
Because it tossed him out.
Yeah.
He's outside kicking and someone comes by and goes, you should use that aggression in the ring.
What?
Insane.
So someone, he could have used some hand, this guy.
But February 12th and 13th, 1988, I found the record sheet from the Louisiana High School Athletic Association State Wrestling Tournament.
All right.
Yes, patreon.com slash crime sports.
That's not hard, Not easy to find.
In this, Clifford came in third place in the 210-pound heavyweight class.
Really?
So not too shabby.
That's the state tournament.
Right away.
He's third place.
He's the third best heavyweight in the state, I guess you could say.
So that's good right away.
I mean, not too shabby.
And it goes into, he's at St. Martinsville High School in New Iberia, Louisiana, which
I guess is outside of Baton Rouge, is what I've been led to believe.
We're in Old Iberia.
Old Iberia.
Coming from Old Iberia.
Old Iberia sounds like a not good place.
That sounds like a place where you would get your head cut off.
There's concentration camps and shit.
Camps and warlords.
A lot of warlords there, I picture.
Lots of forced sex.
If we drop in, like, last year's Super Bowl losers T-shirt that says they won, the warlords will take them all, I feel like, and make the kids do diamond mining for a T-shirt.
Right.
You know.
They stopped dropping them there because it caused conflict.
Exactly.
For a world champion Patriots Super Bowl shirt from last year.
Ridiculous.
So, yeah, he's at St. Martinsville.
He's an excellent football player.
And third place in wrestling, like we said, state tournament.
That's pretty good.
That's not bad.
But football seemed to be where he was at because by his junior year, not even his senior year,
by his junior year, he's being recruited by major colleges.
Basically everyone in the conference that's huge.
LSU, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas A&M.
Wow.
Yeah, this isn't like Alabama A&T or any horseshit like that.
This is like major top 25 programs are recruiting him heavily in his junior year.
So he's got a great future ahead of him, don't you think?
Yeah.
Guys, right now.
Absolutely.
Clifford ATN, the future is sky's the limit for this guy.
That guy's going to be a fullback at minimum.
Absolutely.
Probably in the NFL, Hall of Famer.
I assume later on he'll be speaking to kids.
I can't wait to hear it.
He's going to be a big corporate speaker.
Probably get a job at ESPN on the air.
Maybe he'll replace Craig Sager.
They could use an anchor.
They need a guy.
They need a guy.
But he has a little bit of trouble early on. He catches a sn a guy. But he has a little bit of trouble early on.
He catches a snag.
Of course he has a little bit of trouble early on.
This is the summer before his senior year.
This is after his junior year.
This is a hot shit athlete.
Literally a hot shit athlete.
Very recruited.
I mean, he's the big man on campus, basically.
I mean, how many people that you knew in high school were being recruited by ten major colleges?
One.
That's what I mean.
There's like one kid in the school that's doing that.
And he ended up playing in the NFL for three, four seasons, and he's gone.
And that's a success.
Right.
And that's huge.
If he ever kills anybody, let me know, because I'll go up his ass with a microscope.
Please, let me know.
And I could interview you, get some backstory.
You could go back in your yearbook and really dig some shit up here on this guy.
I'll tell you about all the whores he banged in high school.
Definitely.
That's good.
So Clifford in his senior year here, or before his senior year, over the summer, and it's
a hot Louisiana summer, too.
Imagine that.
I'm just picturing that, the stickiness of it.
See, I couldn't do anything bad down there.
If you put me in Louisiana, in Arizona, for six, seven months out of the year, I'm not
doing anything.
I'm barely going outside.
I don't want to.
Yeah, I don't want to move.
You know, recording is a lot to ask.
And I'm glad we do comedy because it's indoors.
Thank God.
I'm a pussy in the heat.
I'm just picturing a summer of Louisiana heat and that suffocating humidity.
It can't smell good in any of those towns.
Bugs everywhere.
Oh, they're horrible.
I would assume the bugs would really be the thing
that would drive everybody crazy, too.
I can't believe people live there just because of the gators.
There's swamps everywhere.
That's the thing, too.
It's sad when you can't even, like,
you have to watch the ground and the air.
Right.
There's mosquitoes coming that are the size of your head,
and don't step over there,
because there's poisonous water moccasins and shit.
You're going to lose a leg.
And a gator popping out to eat you.
But if you go down the street, there's chicks with their titties out for beads.
Of course, yeah.
That's what's keeping people there.
That's what it is.
Come back once a year, people.
What are you doing?
Free titties.
Free titties.
Free titties, everybody.
All of our female listeners, I'm sorry for the free titties comment.
Right.
That's probably their tourism advertisement, though, just free titties and booze.
Come buy overpriced booze and see chicks that have had way too much of it show you their
titties.
Well, Clifford and his friends, Clifford and his friends on this day, I wish they would
have gone to try to find some free titties to look at because it would have been better
for them and everyone else involved because instead, Clifford and four of his friends go to a Lafayette, Louisiana shopping
mall and they begin to hold up several of the customers with a gun and rob them.
A couple of them, particularly, he apparently, Clifford and his friends took someone, took
two people. First of all, when they were, took someone, took two people.
First of all, when they were robbing someone, they shot a guy in the arm.
They did this at gunpoint.
They brought weapons.
This is gunpoint robbery.
This is a real fucking robbery.
Didn't get a blowjob from him, luckily, but no gunpoint blowjob.
But he did rob these people blind.
I've been robbed at gunpoint.
I think I've told that on this program before.
It is fucking terrifying.
And this guy actually shot the person also,
which makes it worse.
And somebody got wounded.
Okay, now they shoot one guy,
and then they take two other people
and take them to a remote soybean farm.
Of course he did.
If someone takes you at gunpoint to a soybean farm...
I can't even find one right now.
I have no idea where those are.
That's the point.
Bad shit's happening at the soybean farm.
That's the thing, yeah.
You don't even know where one is because no one wants you to know because they're doing horrible things on the soybean farm.
Let me tell you something.
I've never been happier to not know where a soybean farm is.
Apparently, people on a soybean farm are taking men out there, two of them, two people, forcing
them to strip at gunpoint and then stealing.
They ended up getting about $1,000 and a gold watch.
Oh, my God.
That was what they got out of this whole thing.
Jesus.
That's what we're dealing with here.
Wow.
And, yeah, so that's a hardcore offense.
That's not fucking around.
That's not what a ride it is.
They didn't go around and steal a couple of cars.
I'm okay with that.
I'm not okay with it, but that's like kind of kids being kids.
I get like douchebag kids being kids.
Poured sugar in a cop's gas tank, whatever.
Something.
That's funny. Something ridiculous.
That's hysterical.
This is not funny what they do. No.
Somebody got wounded and people lost shit.
Oh yeah. Someone was shot.
Right. And those people are traumatized.
And God forbid, what about the
poor soybean farmer?
He's got to clean up blood. He's like, ah, there's blood
on the beans again? Fuck. Every time
I go in the house, I come out, there's people taking people, stripping them
down and taking their products from them.
I don't understand this.
So for this, he's 17 years old at the time.
First time offender.
Has no criminal record.
You know, star athlete being recruited by tons of people.
What do you think?
Leniency?
No, try that motherfucker as an adult, please.
So do you think maybe they're going to give him a lenient
sentence on it? He's given
40 years in prison.
Holy shit. That should be the
end of this episode. And thank you
everyone for listening to Crime and Sports.
Our shortest episode ever. We do about
13 minutes and we're out the door.
Thank you. 40 years. And he should be still
in jail. Instead, no, but he gets
40. You, sir, may fuck right off.
No kidding.
You, son, may fuck off, 17-year-old.
17.
You, child, may go to your room for 40 years.
For 40 fucking years.
He is sent to the Dixon Correctional Facility, which does not sound like a nice place at all.
I like that you just stumbled and said dick.
I'm going to do that.
I wanted to say Dixie because it's down south.
Dixon Correctional Facility.
He's depressed when he gets there.
Surprise.
Shocking, right?
You're 17.
You're facing more than twice your life already.
40 years.
That's a long time.
And also, too, think about it's not just like, because a lot of times if it was like a kid
that was just on the street and he had nothing that really going for him anyway, and he'd
be like, shit, now I'm in prison.
A lot of my friends are in prison.
It's kind of a cyclical thing.
And it's whatever.
But this guy, literally a year from then, would have been going off to play major college football.
At LSU, maybe.
Be on TV and be a star and maybe go to the NFL or whatever.
Or just end up having a good job in the community with boosters helping you and alumni and silver-haired middle-aged white men as far as the eye can see.
I'm sure over the next four years, one of those SEC teams made it to a fucking bowl
game.
You know they did.
He had the full line of silver-haired middle-aged white men waiting for him.
Waiting for him.
They were right there, lined up with their hands, just money out, going, please come
and-
Come run with us.
Nope.
Threw it away.
Unbelievable.
Got to flush that right down the toilet.
But the good news is, for the career
that he's gonna do, he's got 40
years to train for it.
40 years to train for it. Well, we'll find out what
happens here. He's depressed.
He drowns his sorrow in food,
is how he puts it. What? Drowns his sorrow
in food. Eats like a pig. Shitty southern prison food?
Now, I'm wondering, listen to what he eats
here. Now, I'm wondering how the hell he
acquired all this in prison.
First of all, like old Emily ATN, his mom must have really been like hitting the old commissary up or something.
Because this is not standard issue prison chow here.
He says he would have three or four, three or four, quote, Scooby-Doo sandwiches before bed every night.
What?
He called them Scooby-Doo.
If anybody's ever seen Scooby-Doo sandwich, it's like a sandwich that's as long as your torso,
and Scooby's jaw would unhinge like a snake,
and it would all go in at once.
Oh, so he's eating subs?
So he's eating giant sandwiches.
On these sandwiches is, this is his formula
for a Scooby-Doo prison sandwich.
It's hard to sleep in prison.
You know, you got to have three or four.
You have to have the amount of protein
that this has to knock you right out.
These sandwiches consist
of tuna, oysters,
fish steaks,
sardines,
pickles, onions,
and potato chips. He's not fucking in prison,
that's for sure. All on Wonder Bread.
Crams that in two
pieces of Wonder Bread. Doesn't even make like a club
out of it. He just goes right with the two pieces.
That's a man that's trying to keep from getting raped.
That's what's going on.
I was going to say, that is possibly the formula for having the worst fucking breath you could ever imagine.
Coming out of both ends.
It can't smell good ever.
Sardines, pickles.
I better put some onion on there.
I need that.
No lettuce or tomato on it at all.
He says, quote, that's filler.
That's what he would say.
That's filler.
Or vitamins, as they're also known, other than just protein.
Vitamins.
That's hysterical.
So on this diet, as you can imagine, he balloons up to 290 pounds.
Because that's a lot.
You're taking in, that's a lot of calories.
And like I said, a lot of protein to be taking in at night and then going to sleep on that.
Going right to sleep.
Going right to bed. All right, done. Going to bed. right done going to bed like you gotta wake up in the morning and blow
that shit out I was gonna say the the toilets the plumbing must have been really really rugged
down there you know really sturdy has that that rocket that rocket water that comes out to flush
out it has to come on down Louisiana we got the, Louisiana. We got the sturdiest toilets in any prison system in America.
Come on down now.
We got you.
If you're going to commit, commit here.
You want to eat 45 pounds of fish every night and blow out a turd the size of your elbow socket?
45 pounds of fish.
You come on down to Louisiana where you can do it.
Now, he's a big, fat pig at this point.
He's bloated.
He's like 18 years old, bloated, fat,
eating Scooby-Doo sandwiches in prison for 40 years.
What a mess, right?
What do you do?
You start sparring.
Fucking A.
You start working out.
First he started sparring just to lose weight
and get in shape, basically.
Wasn't really taking it all that seriously.
Soon begins training after that, though,
and fighting, actually.
He's getting serious about boxing.
Now, he fights in three round bouts.
That's how they do this at first.
There are the prison boxing system is a weird thing because you might be thinking he's in prison.
How is he boxing? Right.
Prison at the time in the 80s.
This was when the prison boxing programs were all waning.
It was a big deal in the 70s and it was a big thing.
And psychologists and even the warden would say,
wardens would all say, like, this is great.
The boxing is great for these criminals because
it gives them something to do. Right. And it
gives them, it teaches them discipline.
And it just, you have to be there. But then.
You have to be there every day. You have to do that. But you're also
teaching them to be violent. Right. You're training warriors.
But part of it is, if you're bad, you
don't get to box. So that's part of it, too.
It's a trustee thing, basically.
So you can train for one good prison riot.
Yes, exactly.
Oh, you're going to be the star of that riot.
Let me tell you something.
You're going to be right in the middle.
Fuck, you're going to be standing there, arms raised with people around you with torches going,
yes, king, king.
You're the man at that point.
King, right before you go to solitaire.
Absolutely.
But Louisiana kept the boxing program, because I believe it's still going on.
They kept it way past everybody else.
At this point, all the other states were dropping their programs through the late 80s and early 90s.
But he luckily, for him, was in this.
How the hell did you find that?
That's fascinating.
You know when prison bouts stopped?
I know that New York and Connecticut around 1992 stopped.
Yeah, I read up on all this shit.
That's fascinating.
This is what I mean.
I'm just trying to, just to get him in prison, I'm like, well, I should find out why they're boxing in prison.
So that's an hour and a half where I'm reading up on the history of prison boxing.
And I literally am reading quotes from wardens in 1975.
Well, I don't need this in my life.
That's amazing.
It makes for a better story.
So fuck it.
Let's do it. Anyway, at this point, too in my life. That's amazing. It makes for a better story, so fuck it. Let's do it.
Anyway, at this point, too, he converts to Muslim.
Always bad.
Did he change his name?
No, no, no.
He kept his name, but he converts to being a Muslim, which, as we know, it doesn't matter
what fucking religion it is.
Don't find religion, athletes.
It's bad.
Bad things are going to happen.
Bad things.
Now, you figure for this guy, it already happened.
This could only be good.
No, not so much.
We'll find out.
Let's see.
What do you think, guys?
Everything okay?
He's going to come out a nice Muslim guy and be world heavyweight champion.
And right now he's, you know, like a boxing analyst for HBO.
Is that what's going on?
He could have, though.
You know what I mean?
So many opportunities already have showed their face for him, and he's still constantly
fucking it up.
No opportunity is too good or too big to flush down that prison toilet, Jimmy.
Remember, rocket power in those prison toilets.
He'll flush it right down.
You can't stop this man.
It takes 40 pounds of fish fucking sandwich.
You cannot stop him.
Take all opportunity that you can squander.
Let's go.
He wins.
He wins.
Now, there's a ton of articles that say that he won 30 fights in prison, all 30
fights.
But I found some from what I feel, some actual people who are like from the Police Athletic
Association that trained them, that trained these guys that said he won 23 of his first
24 fights in jail.
So that's great.
That's pretty impressive.
That's pretty badass.
The he's a member of the gunslingers boxing team, which I guess is the best boxing team in Louisiana,
apparently, in the prison system.
Gunslingers?
Gunslingers.
You'd think they'd go, you know what?
You can't use names with weapons in them.
Pick something else.
How about, that's the reason you're here, sir.
I'd make themselves, I'd make them call him the kitty cat.
You're in prison.
You're getting a box.
Fuck you.
You're the pussy queers.
Who cares?
Like, sorry.
Deal with it.
And you guys are the cocksuckers.
And let's fight each other.
You don't like it?
Fucking back to gen pop with you.
Yeah, enjoy.
Take out your aggression in the ring then.
Exactly.
It's perfect.
Hate your name all you want, but that's what you get.
That's a great idea.
The warden should have drawn a line and said, I will name all of you.
And it's going to be incredibly insulting.
They're all going to be shitty nicknames.
If you piss me off, I'm changing it to something worse.
Something way worse.
Something way worse.
And give me time.
I'll find them.
You're going to be the pink ladies like in Greece.
That's what I'm going to call you.
You're Rizzo and you're Frenchie and you're Sandra Dee.
Done.
Move on, assholes.
A bunch of big, huge guys all pissed off.
I don't want to be Frenchie.
I wanted to be Sandra Dee. Fuck, huge guys all pissed off. I don't want to be Frenchie. I wanted to be Sandra T.
Fuck, man.
She's pretty.
Unbelievable.
By the way, why does Sandy in Grease take her shoes off at Thunder Road?
What the fuck is she doing?
What is she doing, Jeremy?
In the canal?
She's in a fucking canal.
She's in a filthy canal in L.A.
And she sits down away from everyone else like a weirdo.
You've all seen this shit. I'm sorry. Got anyone who hasn't seen it? I apologize. It'll be done in L.A. And she sits down away from everyone else like a weirdo. You've all seen this shit.
I'm sorry.
Anyone who hasn't seen it, I apologize.
It'll be done in a second here.
She takes off her fucking keds.
She takes off her fucking keds and puts them next to her.
She's sitting there in white socks in a filthy L.A. dirty canal.
In the L.A. river.
The L.A. river is filthy.
Looking.
And it makes no sense, too, because at the end of the scene, the girl's like, oh, come
on, come to my house.
And she's like, OK, hold on.
She has to go back and put her shoes back on. So it makes no sense for character or the end of the scene the girl's like oh come on come to my house and she's like okay hold on she has to go back and put her shoes back on so it makes no sense for character
or production or expediency it's the stupidest fucking thing i've ever seen in my life
jesus christ get your heads out of your asses no wonder why your husband fucking ran away she's an
asshole okay oh that's right he did her real husband in real life disappeared on his own he's
like i take her everywhere she goes she takes her shoes off in a filthy situation we're in a
restaurant she's got her shoes off for some reason.
Like, hey, baby, can you put them back on?
That's hilarious.
Jesus Christ.
Your toes are gnarled.
Put them fucking back on.
So anyway, Clifford is taught to fight by the director of the Baton Rouge Police Athletic League named Billy Roth.
He is his original silver-haired, middle-aged white man.
And we'll get into what he does to really earn that title.
He teaches him to box at first, which is fine.
That's okay.
You're not necessarily a silver-haired, middle-aged white man for that.
Right.
But as Clifford gets better, Roth tells a sports agent about him,
a guy named Eddie Saper.
I don't know how you say that, but Eddie Saper.
Listen to these two shady things, okay?
First of all, we all know New Orleans is a shady city.
Oh, my God.
It's as corrupt as it gets.
There's voodoo and shit.
Yeah, but I mean, like, politically, corruption there is deep.
That's where Bobby Jindale was, right?
Yeah, he was the governor of Louisiana.
But it's in the fiber, the corruption down there.
So it's unreal.
The sports agent, this guy, Eddie Sapier, is a sports agent and a New Orleans city councilman.
Oh, my God.
Like, holy shit, can you get more of a scumbag than him?
The ultimate silver-haired middle-aged white man.
Can you find anything else that you can fuck around in and benefit yourself?
Wow, can you imagine the things he's doing, boy? aged white man. Can you find anything else that you can fuck around in and benefit yourself? Wow.
Can you imagine the things he's doing, boy?
Oh, man.
So anyway, Clifford wins a state prison boxing championship.
He is the king of fuck ups in Louisiana.
I am king fuck up, I guess.
And he's still in prison.
He's still in prison.
He wins that.
Meanwhile, this guy's got an agent looking at him.
He's in prison for 40 years.
Yeah.
I mean, that's so like, I don't know why they're doing that.
Probably because, you know, maybe Eddie Sapir has a couple of connections around it.
You betcha.
Exactly.
So we have an in their own words about how he got his nickname, Clifford.
Should we find out his nickname first?
I'd love to hear it.
His nickname is the Black Rhino.
Oh, Jesus.
Clifford the Black Rhino.
Okay.
Which is like Clifford the White Dog. The Big Red Dog. Yeah, he's Clifford the Dumb Black rhino. Oh, Jesus. Clifford the black rhino. Okay. Which is like Clifford the white dog.
The big red dog.
Yeah, he's Clifford the dumb black rhino.
He is, I don't fucking know.
He's not the big red dog.
He's a dumb, he's a fucking idiot.
We'll get into later.
That's hilarious.
Let's get an in their own words on how that nickname came about.
Okay.
All right.
In their own words, quote, a guy I was incarcerated with, Terry Dominick, came up with a nickname on how I fight.
I told him all I know is how to all I know how to do is keep on coming.
And he said I was like a rhino.
I told him there are black rhinos.
He did not believe me.
So he went to the library and I looked it up.
What color do you think they were?
The fuck?
Some people use the library for like to get a law degree.
He's like, I swear there's black rhinos.
That's what they're prison. He's like, I swear there's black rhinos. That's what
they're doing. That's hilarious. They're arguing.
They're using the library to solve
arguments and gain nicknames.
There's no Google in prison in the 80s, so they're like,
fuck it. This would have been a two-second argument
outside of prison nowadays.
Yeah, black rhino. Here's a picture of it.
What color do you think they were?
I think they're some rhinos. I don't know
what the fuck color rhinos are. I thought they were all
black. I thought they were gray. They're dark grayish
black. They're super black.
I guess. I guess there's ones that are specifically black.
Like ebony horns. I don't know.
There's very few white ones left. That's what I
do know. I think it's like under
10. There might be like 5.
It's very, very few.
Something like that. Good lord. We better keep an eye on them.
They're going to drop dead. They're very threatened, and they need to make them start fucking.
I guess so.
They're like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Keep her alive.
Keep her alive.
The whole thing will fall apart.
Put it on an IV drip.
So, Sapir's clients included Billy Martin back in the day, the old crazy Yankee manager
who was fired 14 times.
Billy Martin, just look him up.
He's the craziest son of a bitch ever.
Billy Martin's such a great guy, because as a manager, he was a lunatic and he would kick dirt on people.
He tried to fight Reggie Jackson in the locker room.
It's a shenanigans right in the dugout.
You can't fight.
Reggie Jackson's a big guy.
Billy Martin's like he was literally like a little white guy, five foot six hundred
thirty five pound alcoholic.
He was like 60 years old.
That's what he was.
He's known as an alcoholic.
That paints the picture so much better. He's sitting there shaking
with his hand and Reggie's trying to kill him and
Nelson Howard's holding Reggie Jackson back and he's like
I'm going to kill this son of a bitch and he's still
trying to get at Reggie Jackson. He's crazy.
That's so good. He started a giant
brawl at the Copacabana in like 1960.
That's the big guy. Billy Martin was
the guy that threw the first punch and started that.
He's the guy where if there's a giant brawl and he was present, it was him that started it.
He's the guy.
So this is the type of high quality individual that he, and I love Billy Martin, but this
is the type of guy that Eddie Sapier hangs around with.
I don't care how many stories there are about him.
They could be the worst fucking things in the world.
The guy, he's a legend and he's amazing because of it.
I'd hang out with him just to watch that shit. He was hired and then fired and then rehired again in the world. The guy is, he's a legend and he's amazing because of it. I'd hang out with him just to watch that shit.
He was hired and then fired and then rehired again in the same season.
By the same, that's never, he's the only guy I've ever seen with that.
Look up Yankee manager history out there, guys.
Just look up Yankee manager history.
You're going to be like, oh my God, they had four managers some years.
What the fuck's going on?
He's amazing.
So anyway, Sapir hooks up with a retired New Orleans
cop named Les Bonanno
to help with the promotion of the fights.
These fights, because they do
basically what they do in prison.
These guys get paid to fight in prison.
They get paid to train. That's their job
because it's open
to the public and people come in and watch
and they pay a few bucks and so they're making the prison
money. So literally these guys, their job is to train from eight to five.
That's their job.
They get up, train to box.
You get paid.
That's your job rather than breaking rocks out in the yard.
Because this is, as we'll see later on, people get sentenced to hard labor down there.
This isn't like, you know, go hang out in your room and watch TV.
This is a hardcore prison.
This is like some shit from the 30s where you'd be like, oh, I'm glad he escaped from that chain gang.
This is where they are.
It's a legit southern prison.
It's a legit southern prison.
So Les Bonanno and Sapir form a company to promote fights called Rhino Promotions.
So they are just latching.
They are just hanging on to him.
They are silver-haired, middle-aged, just please take us with you.
They're just hanging on to him.
They are silver-haired, middle-aged.
Just please take us with you.
Now, shockingly, now that he has the backing of powerful people, an ex-cop, a councilman,
a famous agent, these guys, all of a sudden here, all of a sudden in the late 90s, 1998,
his sentence gets reduced from 40 years to 10 years.
What?
They say, you've had enough, son.
You come over here.
You've had enough. We're going to let you go now with good behavior.
And he's given some sort of program to to let go like first time violent people.
That's what they they say later on.
They phrase it under.
But I couldn't find any record of that program going on.
And I looked, believe me, but I don't know.
That's what they're saying.
I think that they decided to make up a program to get this guy out of jail.
It sounds like this shit sounds corrupt as fuck to me.
That's incredible.
Completely corrupt.
Yeah, it's incredible.
We have it in their own words on prison from Mr. Clifford, ATN.
In their own words, quote,
that was the biggest fight of my life.
You go through things as a kid.
Sometimes people learn.
Sometimes they do not.
I was just running with the wrong crowd.
So we're doing that.
We're having another I was just running with the wrong crowd.
So you would think he's just running with the wrong crowd. So you would think, he's just running with
the wrong crowd. Now he's got something going on
for him. He's out. I'm good now.
I'm good now. So good. Wrong crowd.
I'm out. Wrong crowd.
You know, when I run with the wrong crowd, I usually
shoot people, make them strip naked and take
the gold botch from them. That's what I do.
But, you know, hey, to each their own. When I run with the
wrong crowd, I have to listen to shitty jokes.
Yes, yeah. You have to listen to terrible premises.
Not even jokes, because they're not hashed.
They're not fleshed out, Jimmy.
They're just a premise, basically.
I have to listen to shitty ideas and try to pretend like, yeah, that's going to be good one day.
Oh, my God.
So he gets out of prison, and because, obviously, he was taken out of prison to fight, he goes directly to the ring, pretty much.
And he's in the next, like, two weeks later, he's in the ring.
Well, he's already trained up.
Oh, he's ready.
He's got 30 fights.
He's ready to go.
First fight, December 3rd, 1998.
So he never thought he was getting out by 1998.
I mean, think about that.
As a fat kid eating Scooby-Doo sandwiches, he must have been like, this has been a dream.
He still had 30 years to go.
Yeah, he still had 30 years.
He'd still be in now.
Today, he would still be in. That's crazy. No, if he did his whole years. He'd still be in now. Today, he would still be in.
That's crazy.
No, if he did his whole time, he would still be in now.
That's so wild.
He makes his pro debut against John Randall at Casino Magic, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, this is-
Bay St. Louis.
I have no fucking idea where that is.
It's Casino Magic.
Seems like they probably, it's like out in the water in their house, like a riverboat,
basically.
We can gamble out here.
Sounds like it was on the fucking Lido deck.
Yeah, yeah. Loser gets
pushed over. Let's go, guys.
Loser jumps in with the fucking gators.
Unbelievable. Yeah, this is probably
gators, I'm sure. Clifford wins this easily
first round knockout and obviously they're going to
set up tomato cans for him off the bat.
And I'm going to get into exactly the level of tomato
can that they do for him.
But it's hardcore.
Now, on his first fight, we have another in their own words here.
He's a talker, too.
Really?
I love the boxers are always being interviewed because it's not a team sport.
No.
So they don't just go, well, we're just trying real hard and we'll go out there the next week.
They're just asked shit about, so are you afraid of this guy?
And they have to be like, no, I'll kill him.
I'll rip his head off.
I'm not afraid of anybody.
I am the Lord and Savior.
There's no cookie cutter answer to anything because there's no coach that you're beholden
to.
You're just you and you go fucking spout your mind.
And the crazier thing you say, the more people watch.
The more you're going to draw.
That's the other thing.
You're encouraged.
In football, they're like, don't say anything crazy.
It goes on the opponent's locker room and they all want to kill you.
And they all post that on a fucking cork board.
And they all sit there huddling around it talking about, this guy's talking shit.
Exactly.
The boxing, you have to say this shit.
And both sides know it.
He's going to say that he wants to fucking find my mother dead in a ravine.
And she's going to say that he wants to eat my children.
And then we'll meet in the middle and we'll all go, okay, good.
We both made $3 million.
Moving on.
Let's go to the next one.
Exactly.
Hey, good.
Everyone showed up.
Good.
Thank you for talking.
Thank you for saying such horrible things about my mother.
I really appreciate that, because honestly, this building would not be full without it.
My unborn children, I can't wait to have them, because now they have money to go to private schools because of your mouth.
Absolutely.
So we have, here's his in their own words on learning to box.
In their own words, quote, I knew I could fight and I trained hard.
If I could do that in prison while being oppressed, I knew it would give me an edge in society.
Yeah.
Being oppressed.
You shot a guy and stole shit.
That's not oppression.
So oppressed.
That's not oppression.
You're the oppressor, sir.
You're literally.
You're oppressing the fuck out of people.
People were telling, you were telling someone to strip down at gunpoint.
That's oppression.
I don't think the guy you shot in the arm wanted to go have a bullet removed from him
that night at the emergency room.
That's oppression.
You are sort of just getting what you asked for at this point.
You're kind of a dickhole.
And you're very lucky.
You're a lucky dickhole at this point.
Because you should still be in prison.
And instead, people actually give a shit about what you have to say.
He is out fighting, man.
Because what was the first one was December 3rd, 1998.
His next fight is December 11th.
Holy shit.
Eight days later.
My God.
The swelling hasn't even gone down.
That's unheard of.
He first round knockout.
And who knows?
This guy was probably 62 years old.
And he came out and pushed him over and raised his hand up.
Kicked over his cane and he fell down.
That's it.
Done.
That's all you have to do.
So his second fight on December 11th
is in Marksville, Louisiana. Another
raging metropolis. Madison
Square Garden, eat your fucking heart out.
This is against a man named Kurt Render.
Who? Kurt Render.
Yeah. Render him useless.
Render him a first round TKO.
Render him the shit kicked out of him
in less than three minutes. Render him
on a stretcher. Render his ass kicked. Mark Render is the shit kicked out of him in less than three minutes. Render him on a stretcher.
Render his ass kicked.
Mark Render, is that what he said?
Kurt Render.
Kurt Render.
With a C, in case anybody wants to look it up.
Good luck, because there's nothing on these motherfuckers.
And I'll tell you exactly how much there's nothing on these guys.
Fantastic.
So that's the end of 98.
He's got two fights in already.
1999, he fights 10 times over the course of 99.
Wow.
That's almost once a month, which is a lot. That's a lot of fighting right there. All wins, too. I mean, he fights 10 times over the course of 99. Wow. That's almost once a month, which is a lot.
That's a lot of fighting right there.
All wins, too.
I mean, he's doing great.
And he's fighting in these glamorous locations such as Casino Magic, like we talked about.
99.
I was 18 years old.
I don't think I fucked 10 times in 1999.
He fought more than I fucked.
That's awesome.
That's incredible.
I don't know if that's sad.
Believe me, it's a very sad admission that I just made.
Well, guess what, Jimmy?
You have way less brain damage than him.
So you know what?
Who wins now?
I guess emotional distress and some fucking lots of calluses on my hand because of it.
But you're here and you're losing.
Him and I probably have the same amount of calluses because of it.
Do you think this show would be good if Clifford ATN was sitting across from me right now?
Would that be a fun show?
Hey, Clifford, this happened.
He'd be chasing me down the hall with his shit.
He'd be like, nah, man.
I got to, you know.
He wouldn't even be able to put sentences together.
We'll get into it.
We'll get into his deal here.
He wouldn't even remember my name.
No.
He'd be like, I don't know what you're doing, white guy.
But, you know, that's a nice hat.
Black rhino.
Let me see that watch.
Uh-oh.
Fuck. So he see that watch. Uh-oh. Fuck.
So he fights 10 times, like I said, places like Casino Magic, the Mikosuki Indian Gaming
Resort.
Oh, boy.
And the Treasure Chest Casino.
Oh, my God.
All in exciting locales like Kenner, Louisiana, which is the Paris of the South, I hear.
Why not?
The clientele must be super classy. Oh, God. You know South I hear. You know, why not?
The clientele must be super classy.
Oh, God, you know it. Jesus.
You don't even need a shirt to gamble in there.
Like, that's all right.
Come on in there.
Come on in.
Bring your government check.
Sandra Dee, you don't need to put your shoes back on.
Come on in here, honey.
That's all right.
Get your canal dirt on in here.
Jesus Christ.
The LA River probably is still cleaner than that place.
Oh, it probably is.
Yeah.
Even at the tables.
Garbage on the tables.
Food scraps and shit.
Just wipe that aside and put your shit down.
Put your feet up there, Sandy.
It'll clean it.
Take your shoes off before you put your feet on there.
We're not animals out here.
Come on now.
This is Kenner, Louisiana.
This is the Monte Carlo of the Gulf region.
You understand?
Have some crawfish. Cool. Sounds good, actually. I'll take some crawfish. Monte Carlo of the Gulf region. You understand?
Have some crawfish.
Oh, that sounds good, actually.
I'll take some crawfish.
So September 17, 1999, he has a fight in Vegas, actually.
His first fight in Vegas.
All right. It's not at the MGM or anything.
It's at the All-American Sports Park in Vegas.
I thought you were going to say a fucking VFW or some shit.
He's branched out away from Louisiana, so let's give him credit for that.
This is another first round TKO of Darrell Morgan.
And you know what?
These guys' names don't even matter.
Let's get another one.
February 26, 2000 at the Grand Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi against James Jones.
Clifford is knocked down for the first time as a pro in this fight.
Oh, shit.
Knocked down in the first round, but he was fighting a complete tomato can
and had no problem coming back and knocking him out in the second round with a TKO.
So that's sad.
That's where he's at at this point, doing that.
He's just in a string of tomato cans.
March 18, 2000, he beats Harold Sconears by unanimous decision.
He goes 10 rounds with this guy who doesn't even have a Wikipedia link.
Hilarious.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He's now 15-0.
Of his first 15 opponents, not one had a Wikipedia link.
Oh, Jesus.
Not one.
Do we even know they exist?
These things could be in his imagination.
This could have come from someone.
But literally, well, multiple sources, but still.
Not one had a, think about that.
Not one was like 20 and 25 and a half-assed journeyman that got nothing.
Just don't care.
None of these guys.
He may or may not have fought them.
I can't even get records for these guys.
It's fucking ridiculous.
So June 30, 2000, he's 15-0.
This is his first big fight.
His first big fight.
He comes into Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He fights Lamont Brewster.
Now, he's a good fighter, Lamont Brewster.
He ends up being 35-6 with 30 knockouts in his career.
He beat Vladimir Klitschko.
At one point, yeah, he was a long-time
heavyweight champ, the big Russian guy. He beat him
by TKO in 2004.
Beat Andrew Gulotta in the first round.
He was another big heavyweight contender in 2005.
Later on, this Lamont Brewster
is 23 and 0 coming into this fight.
Wow. So this is
one of these where this isn't a tomato, Cam.
It could go either way, buddy.
You actually have to fight somebody good now if you want to move up.
We're going to test your minerals today.
Absolutely.
So the fight is also for a title.
It's for the vacant IBA continental heavyweight title.
It's a shit title, but it's a title, goddammit.
You can take pictures with a belt.
That's exciting.
I want to take a picture with a belt.
He wins a 10-round unanimous decision. It's the first opponent with a link, so That's exciting. I want to take a picture with a belt. He wins a 10-round unanimous
decision. It's the first opponent with a link.
So that's good. I could actually find
out shit about him. This brings him to 16-0
and that's a big, big, big fight for him.
Things start picking up for him huge now.
Really big. Not at
this fight. I'm going to tell you about another fight here.
Not here.
Where it is, this is
the dumpiest casino place we've heard of here.
September 9th, 2000 at the Mountaineer Casino Racetrack and Resort in Chester, West Virginia.
Fucking a haven of gambling.
You can actually gamble.
You don't even need to bring money.
You can just bring handfuls of coal and they'll just give you chips for that.
Literally.
Just coal right from the mine with your hat on and they'll just give you chips.
They have a conversion rate.
With your light on your helmet.
Yeah.
I picture this like Deadwood.
They just come in with sacks of gold and plunk it on the table
and I'd like to cash out in chips and get me a whore and a steak.
And a whore.
And a whore.
I'd like chips and a whore, please.
And a room.
That's what I feel like.
Anyway, this is the deal.
But he fights Cliff Kozer. Now, Cliff Kozer. That's what I feel like. Anyway, this is the deal. But he fights
Cliff Kozer.
Cliff Kozer, you might have actually seen him.
His nickname is the Black Bull, by the way.
This is the Black Bull versus the Black Rhino
here. This is top-notch zoo animal
face-off here. I like this.
Now we're into something here.
This Cliff Kozer played
Mike Tyson in the HBO movie
Don King Only in America, which was actually a decent movie.
It was a good movie.
Actually, that movie won Ving Rhames a Golden Globe Award for Don King for portraying him.
And Kozer was 25 and 2 coming into the fight, two draws.
So that was his career.
Yeah, that's him coming into the fight.
The fight is for the vacant NABF heavyweight title.
So this is another fight.
This Kozer was big shit, and he was in a movie now,
so this was like getting him up the line.
Clifford wins in a third-round TKO.
So handles him.
No problem.
No kidding.
Not even a decision.
No problem.
Goes to 18-0.
Kozer ended up having a sad end to his career, by the way.
That movie was the
downfall for him. He had the movie, and
then he went right in the shitter.
Just directly into the shitter, right
down a Baton Rouge prison toilet.
He ends up being 26,
22, and 2
in his career. He came into that fight
25 and 2. 20 wins, 5
losses. He ends up with 26 wins, 22
losses. He went 1 and 22 over the rest of his career.
Lost his 6-22.
Or 6-17.
I thought you said he was 25-0.
He was 20 wins, 5 losses, 2 draws coming in.
I'm on board now.
And he lost his last 10 fights of his career.
My God.
I think that's when they're like, okay, double digits in a row.
Time to hang it up, buddy.
Unlike that other guy,
the Strickland guy,
like 275 losses or something.
So many losses.
That guy's amazing.
I wish he would kill somebody
because I really want to do an episode of him.
The depression must be insanity.
Yeah.
Now, this fight is a huge deal
because this fight airs on KO Nation on HBO.
This is a new show where they basically, they do a lot of behind-the-scenes things.
You get to know these young boxers, and then they show the fights.
So it's kind of like the 24-7, but for unknown people back in the day.
And so Clifford becomes hugely popular on this show
because no one else has a story like him.
He's only been out of jail for a year, a year and a half.
And he's a new champion.
Yeah, he's doing really well.
I mean, he's a shit low level.
He's not one of the main.
He's got a title.
He's up and coming.
He's going to be on HBO.
He's going to be on something.
So, yeah, no, he's he's got a title.
He's doing well.
But he's on TV.
He's got national exposure.
Yeah, this is fantastic for him.
I mean, things are good.
Look, things are looking up in late 2000.
Don't you think?
Yeah, he's married.
He has a wife named Tiffany.
Oh, that's a woman that'll spend time with him.
This is great. Tiffany. OK. OK. Has a daughter wife named Tiffany. Oh, that's sweet. He gets a woman that'll spend time with him. Tiffany. This is great. Tiffany. Okay. Okay. Has a daughter
in late 2000. Oh, he's got a family? Jack O'Lea with an apostrophe E. Really? J-A-C-O-L
apostrophe E. Okay. Jack O'Lea. I don't know what the fuck that is. What the fuck is that?
Jack O'Lea. That's fucking terrifying. That is a terrifying name. That's an awful name.
That's fucking your child forever. You're name. That's an awful name. That's really fucking your child forever.
You're fucking him up good with that one.
Everywhere they go, they're going to say, could you pronounce that, please?
What is that?
Maybe in Louisiana, though.
Maybe that's a common.
I have no idea.
It's probably something Creole or something.
I don't know.
Louisiana is a whole different culture.
People from outside the U.S., it's a completely different culture down there.
They don't want to be part of your culture.
They think of themselves as a separate entity from the rest of the world. And it kind of is, different culture down there. They don't want to be part of your culture. They think of themselves as a separate entity from the rest of the world.
And it kind of is, too, down there.
And they combine names, too, in early 2000.
You remember that?
Yeah.
So that whole fucking trend where they were like, my name's Andrew Mann or some shit like that.
Yeah, they just stick an apostrophe on the end.
You take your grandma's name and his grandma's name and you jam the fucking names together.
That's terrible.
Yeah.
Why do that to your kid?
Because you're an asshole.
Well, he is an asshole.
Late 2000, he's named Ring Magazine's 2000 Fighter to Watch.
Wow.
In the year 2000.
So, I mean, like I said, he's really popular.
He's on TV.
People are digging him.
His first appearance, they built him up with this storyline.
And then he actually goes
and knocks the shit out of the guy that he needed to knock out.
Impressive performance.
Puts him on the map.
Absolutely.
Now he's getting national attention.
He signs early 2001.
Before his next fight, he signs a very lucrative contract with Showtime Network.
No kidding.
Yes, to have a few fights with them.
Awesome.
These are set out.
He's going to make about a million dollars a fight.
A million dollars a fight.
That's more money than I make, man.
Scooby-Doo sandwiches, prison, robbing people, a million dollars a fight.
He's fucking shot somebody before.
We are approaching the mountaintop.
I can't wait.
You know what that means, Jimmy.
You know what the mountaintop means.
It just means there is a crash that's twice as hard coming right behind it.
So stay tuned.
The higher you go, the more it hurts when you hit the ground.
Oh, baby, and he hits the ground hard,
as we're going to find out here.
But yeah, he signs his lucrative contract.
He is gaining notice in the heavyweight division, basically.
Lennox Lewis is the champion at this time.
We all remember Lennox Lewis.
Six foot five, well-spoken Englishman
that looked like he had dreads and stuff. It's incredible to listen to him talk. He really foot five, well-spoken Englishman that looked like he had dreads and stuff.
It's incredible to listen to him talk.
He really is very well-spoken, Dan.
It's beautiful.
Basically, there's not a person in America that's that well-spoken.
No.
None.
There are none.
We have none.
And he looks as hard as a prison shit.
A great fighter, too.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Just technically perfect.
Just a great jab.
He was just one of those guys.
He looked like he was a proper Englishman all around.
The way he spoke, he was trained properly, and he stuck with it.
He even did commercials that was like making fun of how proper he was.
Oh, yeah, yeah, because it was hilarious because he sounded so proper.
It wasn't even like cockney or anything.
It was just like, I am the queen.
He grew up in the fucking, what do you call that?
The queen is my label.
What do you call that? Palace. Palace my label. What do you call that?
Palace.
Palace.
Fucking palace.
I'll call it a castle.
What the fuck?
It's a castle.
You have a fucking kings and queens and shit, guys.
What the fuck do I know?
You know where my reference point for that is?
Disney.
So, I don't know what to tell you.
Sorry.
Disney castle.
Update your governmental structure.
I don't know what to tell you.
Sorry.
You blue blooded worshiping fucks. Cocksuckers. We love you. You sons of know what to tell you. Sorry. You blue blooded. Sorry, UK.
Cocksuckers.
We love you.
You sons of bitches.
We love you so much.
So Lennox Lewis is champ at this point.
And his trainer, Emmanuel Stewart, you might have seen.
He's a boxing analyst.
He's on all the shows.
He sounds punch drunk as fuck, basically.
He says that of ATN, he says, quote, he's not just the most dangerous heavyweight contender today.
He's the one I'm most concerned about.
Prison disciplined him to never be intimidated or quit.
So he's on the radar of the champ.
That's hot shit at this point.
From me.
The guy that's the top of everything knows who you are.
Yeah.
And his trainers are worried about you.
Right.
Going, that's the guy I don't really want my guy fighting.
Because if I have a proper Englishman, this guy's like a raw dog prison, you know, dropping
prison deuces every morning.
This is tough.
So we have Clifford, and in their own words, on his general fighting style, in their own
words, quote, from the opening bell, I keep charging, charging.
No matter what I get hit with, I keep coming.
The only way to stop me is to kill me.
Wow.
That's some confidence kill me. Wow. That's one way of putting it.
Yeah. The only way to stop you is to kill you
or, well, we'll see later on how you can stop
people. Well, prison bars stopped you for 10
years, sir. Yeah.
Not from fighting. Right. At this point,
I was like, shit, I'll do it. Just keep fighting. Fuck it.
It's all good. I don't need to do anything. As long as
I keep fighting, I'm fine.
So, March 23rd,
2001, he comes into this fight at 19 and 0.
The fight is at the Texas Station Casino in Vegas, which is not, again, one of the tops.
Texas Station.
That's not on the strip, though, is it?
It's probably a little off the strip.
I'm not sure.
It's one of those shit ones that's like walk up.
Fucking sands down the road.
Not even.
The ones that are like the, what the hell is that one?
I don't even remember.
But there's a bunch of like basically storefronts in their casinos.
It's probably one of those.
Storefronts.
That's what they look.
I don't know how else to describe it, but a storefront.
Just like a walk in.
It's a terror.
Expect to walk in and see the shawarma man there.
Instead you got to.
Sign say close.
I want room for 39 a night.
That's what the sign says.
Sign say open.
Fine.
You come in. Put your bun table. Come. Sign say open. I want room for 39 a night. That's what the sign says. Signs say open. You come in, put your bun table.
Come.
Signs say open.
You want shawarma?
I make for you.
It's okay.
Okay.
That's enough shawarma man for today.
So he fights Frey Akendo.
Akendo is also 19-0 coming into this fight.
So they're both 19-0.
So someone is not going to be 20-0 when this is done.
Akendo actually has a really good career, too.
He ends up 37-8 in his career, 24 knockouts.
Good fighter.
At this point, they're both 19-0.
Clifford is knocked down seven times in this fight.
You ain't going to win a unanimous.
You better knock him out.
Seven.
All by right hands.
Basically all overhand right hands.
Every time, I don't know, he found the opening.
It's one of those things.
They were probably watching film on him, and they found this one thing where they're like,
he's susceptible to that.
And they found out how susceptible he was to it.
He drops that left.
Hammer that right.
Man, so yeah, he dropped seven times.
Three times in the first round.
Once in the second round.
Once in the third.
Once in the seventh.
And once in the eighth.
Three times in the first round.
In the first round.
He's lucky it didn't get stopped right there. No doubt. So finally, by the eighth round, the ref's like, okay, and once in the eighth. Three times in the first round. In the first round. He's lucky it didn't get stopped
right there. So finally, by the eighth round,
the ref's like, okay, enough of this horse shit.
This is fucking ridiculous. Are you kidding me?
So, yeah, three times in the
first round. That's amazing. Frey ends
up winning. Frey Akendo ends up winning in an eighth round
TKO. The ref finally says, okay, that's
enough. We're stopping this. It's 19-1
for Clifford now. Yeah. Okay.
The ref's like, Clifford's got kids. Clifford's got kids. Okay, enough. Mine is a kid. We're stopping this. It's 19 and one for Clifford now. Yeah. Okay. It's like Clifford's got kids.
We can't leave.
Yeah.
Let's go.
Okay.
Enough.
Mine is a dad.
Jacoby's got her.
Whatever the hell.
Jacoby.
Jacoby.
I don't know.
Jacoby.
Little, little fucking Jacoby.
Little girl that's going to go by Jay her whole life.
Oh, definitely.
Come here, Jay.
So after this fight, when a boxer loses a fight like this, then you set up no-link opponents, as we're going to call them from now on.
That's what I call any boxer who's a tomato can that you set up to beat up
to fight a better guy, that's a no-link opponent.
That's what we got now.
He has two first-round knockouts in these next five fights.
December 8, 2001, he wins the vacant IBA America's Heavyweight title against Dan Ward, no link, in Biloxi for the second round knockout.
So he runs his record up to 24-1, so he sounds a little more impressive, I think, is the point of it.
Good for him.
Why not?
Now we get into one of his famous fights, June 27th, 2000.
And the boxing will be over very soon.
And there's some very interesting stuff in the boxing that we're going to hear that adds
to the crazy train.
Mike Tyson's involved.
You'll see.
Hold on.
Yes.
So June 27th, 2002 at the New Orleans Arena in New Orleans.
It's now the Smoothie King Center.
I think it's where the Pelicans play.
They hold 17,000.
So I assume that's probably the basketball arena.
He fights the South African
Francois Botha. Now, Francois
Botha, if you remember, fought Mike Tyson. Tyson tried
to break his arm. That's a famous fight.
Botha's a good, he's a tough journeyman
fighter. He's the one that took, he went down
easy with Tyson, right? And he got the
Little Caesar's ad
with the... No, no, that's Peter McNeil.
He was the first fight Tyson had out of prison.
He was a big, dumb white guy.
Both was a little bit bigger though, right?
But McNeil was huge.
McNeil was huge.
Both is like a – kind of a dirty, blonde-haired guy.
Like a big blockhead.
He looks European.
He's South African, but he looks – he doesn't look American.
He looks European or some sort.
He looks like he'd be scumming it up on like a beach somewhere with like a, you know,
someone who's like peripherally royalty.
You know what I mean? Like some broad who's like,
you know, hey, my third cousin's
the queen's fucking ass wiper
or something. That's what he looks like.
Anyway, both it comes in 44
4-1 into the fight.
So he's been around. You're not going to get
anything over on this guy. No, this ain't an easy one.
His losses were to Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson, and last fight he lost to Klitschko.
So all of his losses are quality opponents.
My goodness.
He doesn't lose a surprise.
He loses against the best.
But he fights them.
He's a tough guy, both.
Clifford goes down in both the fifth and the sixth rounds, but this is an absolute, just a war.
These guys are just, for heavyweights, you don't see guys punch each other like this.
It's like a Rocky movie.
They're beating the shit out of each other these two.
It's awesome.
Fight goes the distance and ends in a draw.
So all of that for nothing.
Who wins?
The both of you.
Nobody.
The both of you.
Take that.
Not any of you.
I got a both a reference in there.
Take that shit.
That was so shitty, I didn't even fucking get it at first. God damn you. I got a both a reference in there. Take that shit. That was so shitty I didn't even fucking get it at first.
God damn you.
Who wins? Nobody. Who loses? The both
of you. I love this new studio. This is
amazing but I cannot reach
to reach over and physically
punch Jimmy right in his nutsack.
I can't do it and it's driving me nuts
right now so wish him evil
please everyone out there wish him evil, please.
Everyone out there, wish him evil.
Wish his unmaking ass evil.
This brings Clifford to 24-4-1.
Now, November 22, 2002, a few months later, here's when shit gets interesting.
Terrific.
There's a fight announced between Clifford and Mike Tyson.
It's announced. It's planned. It's planned, and Clifford and Mike Tyson. It's announced.
It's planned.
It's planned, and this was crazy Tyson.
This was like the top piece of- This is ear-munching Tyson?
This is post-ear-munching Tyson, but when he's even crazier, even crazier.
Tyson is coming off the loss to Lennox Lewis before that.
Okay.
So he is scheduling a man who he thinks he can pound into the earth, basically, as we know.
It's his Dan Ward or Kurt Render or whoever the fuck those guys are.
This is his no-link guy.
This is his no-link guy, but he can't have a no-link fight.
He's got, because it's got to sound-
That one's Mike Tyson.
Well, it's on pay-per-view, so you have to have somebody that you can go, well, he's
a decent fighter.
He just fought both and blah, blah, blah.
So anyway, this fight is set to be in Memphis, Tennessee at the Pyramid on February 22nd.
Also, too, it's a Showtime event, Showtime the Network.
There's a Jay-Z concert beforehand that's part of the package,
so it's a big deal.
This is a big, like, you know, Mike Tyson going to get back on the comeback trail
after he lost to Lewis, blah, blah, blah.
Tyson said about this fight, they asked him, you know,
how does he feel about this fight coming up?
He said, quote, I feel good.
I'm just very happy.
I'm tired of being stupid.
All right.
Okay, good.
We're glad you're tired of being stupid.
Like I said, it's to be on Showtime on pay-per-view.
Clifford is reportedly to receive $1 million for this fight.
So this is the one.
This is his big payday.
This is more than he's made in all of his previous fights combined.
He's taking the line.
He's taking the payday that everybody was always offered
just on the street. Would you take
a million dollars for Mike Tyson? Yeah.
He's going to fucking do it. He's like, fuck yeah.
He's not even joking.
So yeah, he hires Buddy McGirt as his
trainer, who we've discussed in the past. He's a top
level trainer. He's the guy you bring in when you really want
to get your shit together and fight a championship
fight. He gets your ass kicked by
one of the best ever.
Now, January 2003, it's announced that Tanya Harding will be making her boxing debut on the undercard of this fight.
I remember this fight.
Yeah.
So this is just white trash persona fight.
Her fight to her opponent is, if you don't remember Tanya Harding, she is the Olympic
figure skater who clubbed the other Olympic figure skater and had her cry, that one, and
made the other one a big Disney star.
So she should be sending.
She should be thankful.
She should be sending Tanya Harding fruit baskets and fucking cards and Christmas cards.
Tanya probably needs it now because she's probably starving.
The one article I read about her leading up to this fight was like, we show up, former Olympic hopeful.
She was like waiting for her ride, like her husband or her boyfriend to pick her up.
She had, she was smoking a cigarette with her ice skates over her shoulder, you know,
like people do, holding a cigarette in one can and a hubcap in the other.
Hilarious.
Don't know where, they never said where the hubcap was too, but the fact that she stands,
you don't even need an introduction.
If someone's standing there with a cigarette and a hubcap, that's white trash, period.
Done.
You found them.
Where'd you get the hubcap?
We got to stop by the scrapyard on the way.
Oh, I was trying to unload it for a couple bucks.
We're going to try to get a pack of cigarettes.
Her opponent is Samantha Browning, who is from rural northeast Mississippi.
She's just, I mean, they pulled her right. She lived underground.
Probably they pulled her out of under her brother.
They pulled her out from the mud like John Goodman in Raising Arizona.
She was like, I'm going to fight Tanya Harding.
This lady, she can't even find sparring partners.
She's in such a rural area.
So she spars with her complete bum husband, who's a 13 and three boxer.
Yeah, he's a 13 and three record. Yeah. He has a 13 and 3 record.
So that's who she's fighting, her husband.
That's not necessarily sparring.
That's just every day probably.
When I read it at first, I really thought they were being sarcastic.
Like, she practiced by fighting with her husband because her husband kicks her ass.
But then I read further, I was like, oh, no, he's a boxer.
And they actually boxed in the ring.
Like, literally, I thought that's what they were making, like a domestic violence.
Like, he, he, he, she gets her ass kicked every day.
Isn't that funny? I was like, this is kind of weird. This is were making, like a domestic violence. Like, hee, hee, hee, she gets her ass kicked every day. Isn't that funny?
I was like, this is kind of weird.
This is kind of dark for a fucking article about boxing.
I don't know.
That's for us, but not for them.
That's hysterical.
So Harding loses a split decision in that fight.
Now, on this fight, on the Tyson fight, they're just asking Clifford how he feels about it, going into it.
You're fighting Mike Tyson, who, goddammit, I mean, you should know who Mike Tyson is.
But Mike Tyson is the baddest son of a bitch ever to step into a boxing ring.
I don't care what anybody says, and I've talked to a lot of people and boxing people and old
guys and everything else.
I look at boxers like this.
We're going to take a crime detour for about 30 seconds here.
I look at boxers like this.
Boxers are, when they say, oh, who was better, this guy or this guy?
I say, you take them both.
You don't say, well, Muhammad Ali was better because he had, you know,
60 fights. You take them both
at their prime, what their
best fight was, and if they fought then,
who's better? That's the way I look at it.
If you take Mike Tyson, the night he
knocked out Michael Spinks, there is not
a human being that's ever lived that would have
beat him that night. Ever. I don't give a
shit. Muhammad Ali, Joe goddamn
Frazier, George Foreman, they could team up together
and Tyson would fuck them all up.
I swear to God. You couldn't do
the rope-a-dope like Ali did with Foreman
when he went against the ropes. Tyson would knock you over
with arm punches. He would knock your ass down
with that. He'd drill you in the ribs and it's over.
Yeah, exactly. He hits so hard.
You leaning against the ropes is just opening yourself
for a solid shot. Absolutely.
Especially from that little fuck.
Yes.
It's always been my dream to see Mike Tyson, even at this advanced age and craziness and everything else, go beat the best UFC fighter they have in 30 seconds.
I would love to fucking see that because he still could.
He still could.
You could tie his left hand behind his back and he would still fuck up whoever they have to offer with ease.
With ease.
Probably end their career with a four-ounce glove punched ease, with ease, probably end their career
with a four ounce glove punch to their head.
Possibly end their life.
That's what I mean.
Possibly crack their skull.
Let's see here.
Now we have, here's the in their own words on this.
In their own words, quote, you all know how I fight.
I love to fight.
I love to rumble.
That's my thing.
It is going to be a very interesting fight.
I'm going to shock a lot of people.
The only thing I fear is God.
I do not fear anybody.
He made a mistake by picking me. He should have gotten someone who doesn't pose a threat. Oh my God. He's talking shit to Mike Tyson at this point. He's crazy. He's trying to
draw a crowd, I suppose, but fuck that. You've already got Tyson. The crowd will be there. Calm
down. Shut your mouth. I would take a different approach to it. You're just going to make Tyson
hungry and mean. I'd buy his mom a car or some shit. He's going to
really like me. Never mind some
food to his room. I'd be like, yeah, I bought
his mom a brand new Jaguar.
Tyson sending them six-foot fish
sandwiches. Oh, God.
Loving it. Like, ooh, I'm going to be dropping a
deuce on a real toilet tomorrow. Even a metal
tin one from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana
prison. So Tyson,
February 16, 2003, it's a week before the fight.
Tyson has the flu all week.
Oh?
He's got the flu.
He's receiving antibiotic shot.
This is also days after he got the tattoo on his face.
Oh, wow.
He got the tattoo on his face a week and a half before he's supposed to fight a professional
boxing match.
Like, what the fuck are you doing?
That's how little fucking credence he lended to this man and how serious he took him.
I can be, my face can be healing from a fresh tattoo and still fight him.
It's almost like he forgot.
Like, he was like, oh, yeah, shit.
Oh, fuck, I got a tattoo.
I got a fight next week.
Damn it.
Shit.
Like, that's nothing.
And we're going to find out exactly how lightly he takes this fight.
Okay.
He's supposed to fly to Memphis two days from this day here.
But his trainer, Freddie Roach, said that the trainer, Freddie Roach, isn't going to travel with him for the fight.
He says, quote, Mike is not prepared to fight.
He's worked only two days this week.
If he goes into a fight unprepared, which I feel he is, I will advise him not to fight.
It is in his best interest not to fight.
If he loses to a guy like Etienne, it's over.
So it's like if you lose to this shitbag because you're not training,
your career's over. Your comeback's
fucked. No one's going to pay to watch you fight anymore.
No one knows who this guy is. You got beat up
by a South African. Come on. What are we doing here?
You've got a fresh black tribal all over your face.
You've got a tattoo on your face. I think that right there.
He said, what the fuck? Is he going to get a tattoo on his
fucking face? I'd love to see Freddie Roach's face
when he showed up to train with that shit on his head.
Yeah, you know, he's like, what are you doing?
What did you—you have a scab on your face.
I just see him do the mother thing where he licked his thumb and went up and started rubbing it.
Like, that'll come right off, right?
Like, he's got a fucking magic marker on him.
Hilarious.
Roach said that Tyson only sparred for about 40 rounds for the whole fight.
Wow.
Which is insane.
That's nothing.
That's nothing to spar for 40 rounds for the whole fight. Wow. Which is insane. That's nothing. That's nothing to spar for 40 rounds.
Showtime executive Gary Shaw flies to go see Mike Tyson, shows up at his mansion, and Tyson wouldn't see them.
Hilarious.
This is a guy who's signing it.
Tyson made $5 million for this fight he's scheduled to make.
This is a guy signing a $5 million check to a guy who's in huge financial trouble.
And wants nothing to do with you.
And he said, no, not coming out.
Shaw, they asked Shaw, like, what happened?
Shaw said, quote, he was in his room sick.
He's still under the weather.
Like, it's OK.
You know, hey, he didn't ditch me.
Or he's rubbing Bassett Trayson on a tattoo.
Whatever.
Same thing.
He's just nursing it.
There's already 10,000 tickets sold for this event.
So shit's like, they're going, oh, it's a week away.
What's going on here? He's in bed still. There's 10,000 tickets sold. He's. So shit's like they're going, it's a week away. What's going on here?
He's in bed still.
There's 10,000 tickets sold.
He's got fucking writing all over his face.
We got issues here.
Roach says he'll be the only way he'll be in Tyson's corner is if he approves of Mike's, quote, mental state.
Roach is not even about the training.
He's like, you're fucking crazy.
You got a tattoo a week and a half ago.
I don't know where your head's at.
I'm not going to show up, fly all the way there and do all this for nothing.
I'm going to be a jackass about it.
He also says, quote, if he's really sick with the flu, then how could he possibly fight?
Exactly.
And also Tyson is saying he's bothered by back pain.
He's saying he's all messed up.
He hasn't been able to jump rope.
And you'll hear what he says is wrong with his back a little later, which is hilarious.
and you'll hear what he says is wrong with his back a little later, which is hilarious.
He has no form of anything of like, this doesn't make sense.
That doesn't happen in his brain.
Things come out and then he just looks at you like, I'm fucking serious.
If you don't believe me, I'll rip your head off.
And you just have like professional reporters being like, okay. Like bobblehead dolls just sitting there shaking.
Yes, yes, yes.
Absolutely.
So Tyson on February 17th, the next day, like bobblehead dolls just sitting there shaking. Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. So Tyson, on February 17th,
the next day,
Tyson's supposed to fly to Memphis.
He misses his flight to Memphis.
Of course he did.
He does not fly in.
His manager, Shelley Finkel, said,
quote, unless he wakes up
and feels 100% better,
most likely we're going to have to postpone,
which with each passing hour,
it looks less likely.
My gut feeling is it won't happen.
Wow.
So they're saying the fight's
not going to even go on at this point. So,
imagine poor Etienne's like, this is my
fucking payday. I need to be backing out.
So, Showtime says the fight
and the Jay-Z concert are still officially
on. All systems go.
I don't know what he's talking about.
Tyson, the 18th, the next day,
Tyson says the fight is officially off.
Says, I'm not fighting. I can't fight.
Later on in the day, changes his mind.
Now I'm fighting again.
This is the mental state.
I think Freddie Roach didn't make this trip.
He's like, okay, I'm out.
That's enough of this shit for me.
Changes his mind.
His manager Finkel said, quote, he said he felt a lot better.
And after he ran three and a half miles, he said he was ready to fight.
He just rallied.
He rallied.
He's fine now.
He's good now.
It's like he has a hangover.
He's like, I'm not doing shit today.
And then he ralphs and then has a bloody Mary and he's like, I could jog 10 miles.
Let's go.
I can do this.
Let's do it.
Now you get a couple of big coughs, hocks, a loony.
I'd be like, yeah, I feel better now.
I took a very runny shit.
Let's go fight.
So now fight's on, right?
Fight's on.
So now Clifford says, fuck you.
I'm not fighting.
Jesus Christ.
He says, I don't want to fight you.
That's like four days from now. Imagine the poor
people at Showtime. They're like, guys, can somebody
fucking agree to fight in a few days? We have 10,000
tickets out. Can you guys fucking figure
it out? Pay-per-view buys. Clifford says
some of his training staff already left,
and according to him, the fight's still off. So I don't know.
He's like, I don't know what the fuck Tyson's talking about.
My guy's left, and as far as I knew, it was off.
No one told me shit.
So Showtime executive Jay Larkin said of Clifford, quote, I hear that Etienne pulled out because he'd been training.
Because he had broken training, had a good time, and then his head wasn't in the fight anymore.
So he's got a hangover.
He's basically saying, Tyson said, I'm not fighting.
So he said, fuck it.
I'm going out. Just eating an ice cream sundae and drinking a 12-pack. He's basically saying, Tyson said, I'm not fighting. So he said, fuck it. I'm going out.
He's eating an ice cream sundae and drinking a 12-pack.
Where's the Patron?
Let's do it.
He's hungover.
He's like, I'm not fighting now.
Fuck fighting.
Freddie Roach said, quote, about whether it'll go on or not.
He said, quote, it's hard for me to believe that Etienne is going to pass up the biggest payday of his fight career.
He's got a point.
He's got a good point.
He's got his head in the game.
Somebody does.
Now, Clifford, on the whole mess here,
we have an in their own words, quote,
my people and I got to the airport
when the promoter met us and said,
no fight.
Mike didn't board the plane,
but you can stay the week for free.
I wake up, put the tube on SportsCenter,
and someone says that the fight is back on.
No one told or asked me anything,
so I said, since it's all about Tyson, let him fight himself.
Jay Larkin from Showtime told me I deserve that money and he was right.
So I went out there and I got it.
So he's saying, fuck it.
He decided to fight.
Yeah.
And the fight does go on.
Good.
Good.
Fuck.
February 22nd.
This is killing me.
February 22nd.
I told them.
That's my birthday.
That is a happy birthday.
This was a mess. Tonya Harding got beat up on thatnd. I told that. That's my birthday. That is a happy birthday. This was a mess.
Tonya Harding got beat up on that day.
I remember it, though.
I remember watching this fight, but I don't remember them fighting.
I remember Tonya Harding fighting.
Well, you're not going to remember much about it because it was fast.
Let's get into how fast it was.
Maybe that's why I don't remember it.
Yeah, it was blink and you miss it.
Okay, go on.
Go ahead.
Peeing would make you miss the fight.
Literally.
If you went to pee, fights out.
That's what happened. Clifford comes in
24-1-1. Like I said, 17
knockouts. He's at the Pyramid in Memphis.
Mike Tyson. By the way, you know what Mike Tyson's
middle name is?
I do know it. Do you? I do know it.
I don't know why I can't recall it at the
moment. It's a fucked up name, right? It makes him sound so much
less tough. Yeah, like Melvin or some shit?
Gerard. Gerard. Gerard, that's it. Gerard, which is
the softest name ever.
It's the softest name ever. It's a very polite
fucking Englishman name. It's soft around the edges.
The G and the D, it's very soft. Like Depardieu.
Yeah, it's very soft around the edges.
It's very, I drink
warm milk to go to bed.
Yes. So Tyson's
49-4 coming into the
fight. 43 knockouts, as we all know, Mike Tyson will knock your ass out. He4 coming into the fight. 43 knockouts.
As we all know, Mike Tyson will knock your ass out.
He's coming off the eighth round knockout loss to Lennox Lewis.
Fresh face tattoo.
Ready to fight.
Clifford, the fight starts.
Clifford looks overmatched from right off the bat.
He comes in.
He's jumpy.
You can tell he's like, you see this time.
If you watch, there's a YouTube compilation of Mike Tyson's knockouts.
And basically you can watch his first 20 fights in about seven minutes, basically, because that's how fast they were.
You see it repeatedly.
It's a thing that you only see in the ring with him.
Normally guys come in and they bounce and they have rhythm.
Guys come in and they're like, they're jerky, they're jerky.
They're taking weird punches.
They're frightened of getting hit.
Literally, they're like, one punch and it's over.
Fuck.
It's how I would imagine myself if I stood in a ring across from that fucking little bull.
If I fought Mike Tyson, I would absolutely be exactly like he looked, except probably running through the crowd.
Going home.
At one point, he felt the breeze of a Tyson uppercut.
This is in the first 10 seconds of the fight.
Tyson misses an uppercut.
And you see Atiyah's like, oh, shit.
And he just grabs onto him like, oh, God, no, don't hit me again.
And they get their feet tangled up and they tumble into the corner and fall into the ropes on the floor.
It's a mess.
It looks like shit.
It looks like, I don't even know, it's not what a boxing match looks like.
There's no grace to it.
He's so scared he makes Tyson look uncoordinated. That's what it is because he's just falling into him. It's not what a boxing match looks like. There's no grace to it. He's so scared he makes Tyson look uncoordinated.
That's what it is because he's just falling into him.
It's ridiculous.
So he's completely overmatched.
Timeouts called for a second while Tyson gets his shit together from being knocked down.
The announcer says Etienne wants to make sure to establish that he's not afraid of Tyson.
And he attacks him.
Huge mistake.
Every time you ever see a Tyson fight where the guy's like, I got to show him I'm not
afraid of him, and they go out swinging, they're knocked out in less than two minutes.
So fast.
It's exactly what Peter McNeely did.
It's exactly, every time you see it.
Did this go with a body blow?
Carl LaTruth Williams.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This was a, this was a, so anyway, yeah, it's a mistake.
He comes in, he misses, he comes in, Mike misses him with a left hook, Tyson does, and
Etienne kind of ducks it, but doesn't duck it in a smooth way like you see a boxer coming in and out.
He ducks it like, oh, shit, and kind of falls to the side.
Like taking cover?
Yeah, he kind of goes behind Tyson's left arm.
And Tyson turns around with all his weight and just levels him with a right.
I mean, fucking rocks him right in the cheek.
I mean, he goes down hard.
Awesome.
When he goes down, I don't know if you guys have seen this.
He goes down, his knee is caught behind him, his foot.
And he goes down and his foot twists around and his whole leg is like, it looks like his leg snapped in half.
Yeah.
When he goes down.
And you could tell, like, Jesus, even if he was fine from his head, he's not going to be able to fight after he just did that to his knee.
He goes down.
He is basically like his eyes are closed for the first eight seconds of the count.
He's just laying with his arms out and his eyes closed like he's sleeping, knocked out
cold.
He's just dreaming of a million dollars.
Yeah.
He starts to get up on nine.
So he was basically like, I ain't getting up.
Yeah.
That was scary.
I have a million dollars now.
That's all I needed to do to have it.
I'm not beating this guy.
I'm not going to take another one of those punches.
No, and Tyson was stiff, too.
He was out of practice.
He was stiff.
That was the sad thing.
The knockout comes in 49 seconds.
Yeesh.
Less than a minute.
24-2-1 for Clifford at this point.
It's probably 42 seconds longer than I could go.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, never mind. I was going to say maybe I can outrun him, but no, he just ran three and a half Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I don't know. Well, never mind.
I was going to say maybe I can outrun him, but no, he just ran three and a half miles.
I don't even, I can't run.
I'd drop dead if I ran three and a half miles.
I could have fought him two days earlier when he was shitting and puking at the same time
and he'd still kick my ass.
I guarantee it.
Oh, God damn it.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
He could kick your ass while he was taking a shit.
He could have just diarrhea coming out of him and he'd be able to grab you and pummel you, no problem, from the toilet.
So Tyson comes over, helps him up, as always.
Tyson always looks like he's your best friend after he knocks the shit out of you.
After the fight, Clifford talks in Tyson's ear for a second,
and Jim Gray asks him, what did Clifford say to you?
And Tyson goes, well, Clifford told him that Tyson, quote,
needed to stop bullshitting and be serious.
He said, you're not serious.
That's why you're out here playing around.
And Tyson went, you know what?
And he's right.
He's right.
I do need to get serious.
He was like, that's my brother.
And he went all this thing.
He's like, yeah.
They asked him, why weren't you going to fight?
Why did you decide to fight?
And he was like, we both need money.
And this is how we need to make a living off each other.
And this whole bullshit, man.
It was just insane.
He also said that he had a broken back during the fight.
That I remember.
Yeah, he said he had a broken bone, and Jim Gray was like, okay, how'd you do that?
And he was like, in a motorcycle accident.
And he was like, all right.
He was just like, I don't know where to go from there.
Just this weird silence. That's one of the craziest answers to any post-athletic event ever.
Just, I have a broken back.
I have a broken back.
What the fuck?
And he said it real casually.
Can I have a broken back?
And he was like, back up to that.
Slow down.
What was that?
Broken back.
Tyson, at this point, reveals that he does 2,500 sit-ups a day.
Holy shit.
Oh, my God. That's why he's Iron Mike Tyson.500 sit-ups a day. Holy shit. Oh, my God.
That's why he's Iron Mike Tyson.
That would take me all day.
Says he really wasn't ready to fight.
Said he was sick, and he was just, you know,
he's like, I was happy that I could win,
and blah, blah, blah.
Next night, he's arrested at a New York City hotel
for getting a big melee.
Mike Tyson.
So he's not going to stop being stupid quite yet.
Next, after Tyson, his next six fights for Etienne are against non-link opponents.
Nobody's non-linkers.
Six of them.
Six of them.
Wins five of the six, loses one of them.
Wow.
March 27, 2004, he fights Gilbert Martinez to an eight-round draw.
That's what happened.
He didn't lose one.
It was a draw at Caesars Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, that's getting classy again.
That's a town? Apparently, yeah.
Stateline? Yeah, Caesars Tahoe.
It's probably outside Tahoe.
Whatever. After six fights
with that, he is 29-2
and 2 with 20 knockouts.
The sixth fight, you could tell, November
2004, you could tell he was slipping. He went down
in the first round versus a guy named Kenny
Craven, who's a non-linker.
And he won because Craven had a cut
over his left eye, so they stopped the fight in the second
round. So, I mean, he's not even
beating the tomato cans anymore.
It's February 23rd,
2002 is the next day. I see a big
article in the Tuscaloosa News
from Alabama. Yeah. Newspaper
about Clifford getting beat by
Tyson, and that was interesting.
And I was really into the article,
but I was distracted.
The wait is over.
So far, you're not losing.
The only thing you're losing is my patience.
Quickly, I see that.
Ding!
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 alone.
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.
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.
You can say anything.
Judy Justice, only on Freebie.
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 sciency 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. If only he would have. It would have helped him a lot, too. It's bad to have that on your record.
This is in 2004.
Louisiana Governor Mike Foster denies the pardon for ATN for the teenage robbery, citing the violence used in the crime.
Yeah.
It's like he didn't just go in and take something from behind the register.
He shot a guy and took people to a fucking soybean farm.
That is bad intent.
That's terrible.
He ruined people's lives.
He did.
If you take someone to a soybean farm at gunpoint, there's nothing good can come from that.
Their life is fucked forever.
They're going to remember that for as long as they live.
They're not going to pull up and go, oh, are you harvesting soybeans and you're going to give me something to take home with me?
Is that what we're doing here?
Is this like strawberry picking?
What are we doing?
Are we cutting edamame tonight?
Hey, edamame time.
So January 21st, 2005 at the Reliance Center in Houston.
It's a big venue.
He fights Calvin Brock, who is 23-0 coming into the fight.
Is that where the Houston Rockets play?
That is where the Reliance Center, I think, is where.
Yeah, I believe it is now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Calvin Brock here, because it's Reliance Stadium is where the Texans play.
That's what confused me there.
This Calvin Brock's 23-0 coming in.
And he finished up his career nasty, too.
31-2 with 23 knockouts.
So not bad at all.
Clifford loses horribly to him in TKO third round.
He's knocked down once in the second and twice in the third.
And the ref finally just waves it off.
That's enough of that shit.
And we're going to find out maybe why he's going down so easily here.
He's now 29-3-2 in his career.
It's not going well.
After the fight, his trainer, Buddy McGirt, legendary boxing trainer,
tells Clifford to see a neurologist because he thought he was suffering from some neurological problems.
He said, quote, I talked to him afterward and I told him that I thought there was something medically wrong
because whenever he got hit anywhere on top of his head, he went down.
I suggested that he retire and he didn't want to hear it.
So he's saying you probably have some kind of brain issue.
This guy's been around a lot of fighters and a lot of brain issues.
So you went down.
You would be the man to listen to from a right from Tyson.
Yeah.
You should get your brain.
You should probably.
Anytime Mike Tyson punches you, you should probably get that checked out.
I would imagine.
Just run it through there.
Run me through. Run me through.
Run me through once or twice.
McGirt, at this point, says he will not train Clifford anymore.
He said, I don't think you're medically sound to fight.
His trainer won't clear him.
He said, I'm not going to let, I don't want it to be on me.
I saw a big interview.
He said, look, if he gets in the ring and a fighter gets hurt because I was training him,
he said, that's on me at that point.
He goes, I'm not going to be a part of that.
If he wants to do it on his own, he's a grown man.
I can't stop him.
If they'll let him fight, if the commissions will let him fight, but I'm not going to be
a part of it.
I don't need your death on my fucking conscience.
That's what he said.
He said, if something happens to him in the ring, I feel personally responsible for that,
and I don't need that shit.
I don't fucking blame him.
Wasn't there a fighter in the 50s that died in the ring?
A bunch of them.
There's been a bunch. But there was like a big fight, and the fucking trainer was held accountable for it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, no, it happens.
These guys.
And he holds himself accountable for it still, I imagine.
I would think so.
This guy, he knows better.
He's seen it happen before to other people.
He said, not to me, motherfucker.
Not happening.
The ref should have stopped that shit, too.
Yeah.
The particular fight he's thinking of.
Oh, I'm sorry.
The one I'm thinking of, it was so bad.
I remember the Korean guy
dying in the ring in the
80s.
I watched that fight.
I feel like this was a
black guy.
50s.
Yeah.
I feel like this was a
black guy.
It happens so many times.
So many times.
We'll do that one day.
We'll do death in boxing.
Oh, my God.
Death in the ring.
All right.
No, it's not really crime,
but maybe we'll do a side.
That's a fucking crime,
man.
We'll do like a Patreon bonus episode on that or something.
I'm into that.
Now, on boxing and his future and just everything about his life and future, Clifford here has
an in their own words, in their own words, quote, I'm a country boy.
I could stop boxing right now and that would be it.
I wouldn't even worry about it.
So he's saying like, hey, I can stop boxing.
No problem.
Well, what are you going to do?
I have brain damage and I don't want to, but I'm going to stop.
So May 14th, 2005, he fights in Germany now at the, let's butcher the fuck out of this
thing.
Ober Franken Hall.
I got that part right.
The Ober Franken Hall in Beiruth, Baren, Germany.
I don't think I butchered that.
I'm sure it was terrible, but I think I got the hall right anyway.
I think that's pretty good for an American. It's not bad. I don't know shit
about German. I'm Italian. I know
there's no German in my family. I know
nothing about it. This is
versus Nikolai Valyuv.
It's value with a V
on the end of it. You fucked that one up a little
worse. Yeah, this one. He's Russian,
this guy. He is a monster.
He's seven foot tall, 300 pounds. He's a little like 3'10", seven foot tall. He's Russian, this guy. He is a monster. He's seven foot tall, 300 pounds.
What?
He's like 3'10", seven foot tall.
Why would they match them up?
He's a fucking monster.
That's the heavyweight division.
What the fuck?
There's nothing above heavyweight.
So everything from 200 pounds up to too fat to leave your house, that's all heavyweight.
It's all fine.
Up until you need to get a helicopter to pull you from your own home, cut a hole in your
roof with the jaws of life.
This guy's got 10 inches on him.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, basically.
On height alone.
He's probably got a foot reach on him.
Skills-wise, he's obviously a 7-foot-tall, 300-pound guy.
Not exactly the most skilled, but he's a monster.
How do you fight this guy?
He comes in 40-0, old Nikolai.
I can imagine.
Yeah, 40-0.
He ends his career 50-2 total.
So he's an ass kicker.
He's a beast.
This is for the WBA Intercontinental Heavyweight title.
I can't help but hear Intercontinental Heavyweight title and think of the Honky Tonk Man.
It's ridiculous.
Or Shawn Michaels or something.
The belt goes from chin to knees.
Yeah, yeah.
ridiculous or Shawn Michaels or something.
The belt goes from chin to knees.
Yeah, yeah.
So, ATN is knocked down twice in the third round and then just stays
down in the third round. He's like, the second time,
I don't need to get up and fight this beast. I think he's
figured out now where once I'm down
and I'm losing, I'm just going to collect my check
and go home. There really is nothing.
He's not going to be heavyweight champ. He's not an up-and-comer.
He's just trying to survive at this point, I feel
like. And he's got other problems that he might need money for,
which we're going to get into in a moment.
This is the last of the boxing.
Terrific.
He's 29-4-2 ending this fight.
Really?
Clifford, that's what he does.
And we have a quote on this fight.
It's a pretty good record.
It's not a bad record.
It's pretty good.
I mean, most of the guys he fought are non-links.
Right.
So out of those 24 wins, he had like four wins that were actual opponents of any kind of quality that anyone thought was going anywhere or doing anything at all.
Right.
Yeah.
So on this fight, he says, quote, about Nikolai, quote, he's strong.
Being 300 plus pounds, he's got to be.
Once he hit me on the chin, no problem.
But when he hit me in the back of the head, it felt like whiplash.
Anyone who saw that fight could see that he wasn't on my level
in boxing ability, which is true.
But who cares? He's a giant.
You're fighting a redwood.
You're fighting a giant. And the guy, if you
look at him, look him up. I can't
wait to. Value with a V on the end.
Look his picture up. He looks
like a monster from a movie.
He looks like he's got special effects
makeup on, but he doesn't. We'll post
it on social media, but it's insane.
Now, this fight here,
that was the end of this. Now,
he's scheduled to fight again
at some point. Oh my God. He's a monster,
isn't he, Jimmy? What the fuck?
He looks like a special effects master. I'm not
fighting that. His face is all
pockmarked. And he's seven foot tall,
300 pounds. He's a monster.
He is very hardscrabble.
Yeah, he looks like a giant you'd climb a beanstalk and then run from.
That's what he looks like.
He is hardscrabble personified.
That is a Russian hardscrabble.
Russian hardscrabble son of a bitch.
That man drinks like toilet made vodka.
Oh, God.
With every meal.
He loves it.
Toilet made.
He pours it on his cereal.
I would like my
wine to be made in his Scooby-Doo
sandwich aftermath.
That's what I'd like. That's what he's like. I don't care because I'm
tough. Sounds delicious. I am tough.
So, he's got a fight scheduled later
in the year, but he doesn't get to that fight
because he has an incident
here. This is the big one. What a day he
has here. August 10th, 2005 is his big day.
At this time, this day, a woman named Lydia Key is working the 5 to 7 p.m. shift
at the Ready Cash Payday Loan Store on the corner of Florida Boulevard
and Acadian Thruway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Okay, right away, this is not good.
If I'm introducing a character that has nothing to do with any of this.
Those are some facts that only are in a police report.
You got it.
Court documents, Jimmy.
Patreon.com slash driving sports.
She has, she is working the five to seven shift.
Like I said, she has her four children all there as well.
They are in another room in the back room where the safe is watching TV.
All right. They're in the back room where the safe is watching TV. All right.
They're in the back room, door closed.
That's how she makes her living.
So that's, yeah, she's got to go in.
Brings her kids to work.
Who knows if it's a family-owned business.
That part I could not find.
I couldn't find out who owned the joint. I like to think that she's got a tough life and she's a good mom and just brings her kids with her to work.
She's like, you come with me.
I'm not leaving you at home to go out on the streets and end up robbing people and taking them to a soybean farm.
So that's good.
Her kids won't do that.
I don't need you kicking fast food doors and being roped along with some silver-haired,
middle-aged white man.
Speaking of door kicking.
Yeah?
Speaking of door kicking, at 6.
Good.
That's perfect.
You set me right up.
I love it.
At 6.35 p.m., Clifford enters the store wearing a mask and pointing a gun.
Oh, Jesus.
Never good.
No.
When you're working in a place with lots of cash and you see someone come in with a mask and a gun, you know you're in deep shit at this point.
That was when I knew that it was in my robbery.
That's when I knew I was going to be scarred for a while.
Yeah, there's problems here now.
Then they pull out duct tape and duct tape my hands and feet together.
That's when it got real.
Well, this lady here, he's pointing the gun.
He's demanding that this Lydia Key woman open up the back room door right fucking now and get that safe out.
Let's go.
That's where my kids are.
She pretends to not be able to open the door for a second.
So you think he's patient?
He's going to fucking wait?
Fuck.
No, no, no, no, no.
And we'll find out why he's very impatient in a minute.
But he fires his gun into the door and kicks it off the hinges after that.
So he's like Butler on, you know, personified.
And the kids are on the other side?
The kids, luckily, before the gunshot had scurried out the back door of here.
Good kids.
They heard the whole thing.
They heard all the motherfuckers going on.
They heard the ruckus, and they were like, oh, shit, we better, and I'm sure, give me
the fucking money, give me the fucking money.
They were like, ah, we should get out of here.
This is where the safe is.
Let's go.
Maybe where the safe is, there's usually monitors.
Maybe they saw through a camera.
That's true, too.
A man with a ski mask and a nine millimeter pointed at his mom.
Let's get the hell out of here, guys.
Let's get the fuck out.
So Key ends up giving him all the money in the drawer, all the money orders and the checks
from the safe.
She's just, take whatever you want.
Get the fuck out of here.
He ends up with $1,977 dollars. One thousand nine hundred seventy seven dollars
in stolen money. He runs out of the store out front. He runs out also behind him. You
know, a second. She waits a second for him to clear. And then she runs out also because
across the street she can see a Baton Rouge police officer at the Exxon station directly
across the street. It's convenient. I have a map in my head of this whole area.
So it's Officer Neil Porter is over there and he sees her panicking and waving.
And so he runs over and says, what's going on at this point, too?
I guess she had sounded the alarm, too.
And so there's radio call going out.
So puts that together.
Radio call plus panicking lady.
I should talk to her first.
So he goes up to her, deals with her.
Plus panicking lady.
I should talk to her first.
So he goes up to her, deals with her.
Officer Porter, as he crosses the street, he sees Clifford going into the back parking lot of this building.
Okay. Okay.
Behind the store.
He yells to Clifford and identifies himself.
Clifford fucking takes off.
He's gone.
Clifford takes off.
Several other officers join the chase because they were coming from the radio call.
So they get out and they start running after him.
Clifford runs through a wooded area and pops out in a strip mall and runs up to a gray car parked outside of the Beauty Giant store over here.
And the car is owned by a woman named Phyllis Carter.
She had left her two kids in the car while she ran inside for one second.
Oh, he's such an asshole.
Her kids are 12 and 6.
Okay.
Carter's 12-year-old son picks it up at this point.
He says that Clifford entered the car with his gun in his hand, saw that the keys weren't in the ignition, and popped right back out.
Like, he hopped in.
His ass hit the seat.
They weren't there.
He got right back out again.
They were like, oh, shit.
What the hell happened?
Scared them pretty good, I bet.
As Clifford exits the car, Jesus Christ, man, this is like, there's dumb shit, and then
there's dumb shit.
Did he drop his money on the seat?
No, what he does is even stupider.
Okay.
As he exits the car, he sees officers Barron Bryant and Richard Gill coming at him.
Clifford raises his gun and pulls the fucking trigger.
No way.
Luckily for all involved, including him, the gun is jammed and it does not fire.
But he tries twice to shoot these cops.
Oh, my God.
He is trying to murder police officers in the commission of a robbery.
Out of your fucking mind.
Crazy.
What are you fucking doing, dude?
You were boxing three months ago.
What is fucking wrong with you?
Like, get your head out of your ass.
And by the way, you've got some stamina right now, sir.
You could have used this against Tyson or anybody else.
He was training for his next fight.
This is how he trains.
He runs from police.
Fuck skipping rope.
So the gun jams.
So he keeps running.
And the cops duck for a second.
He keeps running.
He spots a gold Pontiac Grand Am.
Great car.
Now, when you drive a Grand Am, you never expect to be carjacked.
You're like, I'm safe from that.
No one wants this kind of shit.
I'll be lucky if I get to my destination.
Yeah, never mind you and yours.
Shit.
Well, I mean, that's the best car to have.
Yeah, go ahead.
Take it.
Good luck with it, asshole.
Please take it.
It stalls a lot.
You really got to finesse the brake to stop.
Just a warning.
Good luck.
You got to manually shift the automatic transmission.
Oh, Jesus.
That's the worst.
I've seen cars like that.
The guy in high school I knew had one of those.
It's scary.
So he pulls the driver, Alex Griffin, out of the car at gunpoint.
No blowjob again, thankfully, for Alex.
And he says, get the fuck out of the vehicle.
So he jumps out of the vehicle.
He's at gunpoint.
Griffin then tells ATN that his fiance's two children are in the car.
Please don't take it.
They're in there.
Clifford gets in anyway.
Yeah.
Pushes the guy out of the way.
Doesn't give a fuck.
The keys are in it and it was running at the time.
The car was running.
That's why he said, that's my car.
Definitely got keys in it.
He slams it in reverse and guns it as fast as he can go in reverse.
Backs up for like 60 or 50 or 60 feet before hitting a curb.
Boom.
It stalls the car out because it's a grand dam.
It's a grand dam.
Jesus Christ.
They call it a god damn.
That's what everybody calls it.
It's a hunk of shit, so obviously that stalls out after it hits a curb.
Not a good escape vehicle.
Never steal a grand dam.
Crime and sports rule number 15B.
We'll make that an addendum to another rule.
While you're doing that, don't ever move home or drive a Grand Am in your escape car.
This is what happens when you find religion in prison.
That's exactly right.
This is what happens.
This is what comes from it, Jimmy.
Damn it.
Stop it.
Stop finding religion in prison.
So police surround the vehicle at this point because they can because now he's dazed and confused.
And there's kids probably everywhere in the car. He spilled a juice box yeah they come in guns blazing he's lucky he didn't
get shot he tried to shoot two of them if there wasn't two kids in the car they probably would
have lit that fucking thing up like a christmas tree i would imagine if there wasn't two kids in
it that was probably it's gonna look bad if we shoot these children so let's try and get him out
of the car first uh but he's being held at this point at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on $70,000 bond,
which I don't think is nearly enough for armed robbery, kidnapping, and fucking trying to kill cops.
And I'll get into the full list of charges because they are deep and heavy.
Boxing trainer McGirt, his buddy McGirt here, had something to say about this.
So they're asking people, what do you think about this?
He says, quote, it had to be financially driven.
That's the only thing I could come up with.
I just couldn't picture him doing anything like that.
Then when they told me about the carjacking, it really surprised me.
I was like, what the hell is he thinking?
I just couldn't imagine doing anything to harm the kids because he's great with kids.
Well, he's got one.
But I mean, he just doesn't give a
fuck. That's what it is. He doesn't care at
all for anything. Obviously,
he's going to kill cops. He's
trying to kill cops. Yeah, they're like, oh, the kids. How about
trying to fire his gun at two cops that
were just trying to do their fucking jobs? That's insanity.
And like I said, these cops had
restraint because they didn't shoot at him. Yeah, that's
that in 2016
that happened. No, no, you're going down. Yeah, that's in 2016. That ain't happening.
No, no.
You're getting shot. He's going down.
Yeah.
So they call up the press is interested in the story, obviously.
Oh, yeah.
They call up.
I remember Eddie Sapier, the scumbag agent slash New Orleans councilman there.
They call his office to get some sort of because he's his agent and get some sort of clarification.
Calls are not returned.
But a receptionist in the office told the paper that he's no
longer represented by them anymore.
They're just like, I don't know where Eddie is.
Never heard of him.
Clifford is not our guy anymore.
Oh, no, he was this morning, but now he's not.
I don't think he knows yet, but he can infer, I think.
I think so.
Also to August 13th, 2005, there's an article called Etienne's mother, Etienne's mother wonders if drugs are cause of crime.
Gee.
You too?
You think?
There was a really good sister article to it called Grizzly Bear's Wonder.
Grizzly Bear's mother wonders if son shits in woods.
So there was also one of those.
So it's, you know, they're just going for obvious.
And then the other one, nuns wondering if Pope's hat is funny.
That's what's that.
Exactly.
She, Jesus.
Emily here, his mother, Emily Etienne, this poor woman says, quote, somebody needs to check him for drugs or something in his system or whatever, because anybody who knows him
knows this doesn't sound like him.
Like, yeah, he probably has drugs.
That doesn't matter.
He still tried to shoot a cop.
Still did it.
It's like, well, he had drugs, so it's okay.
It's fine.
He was doing too much.
Oh, that makes sense.
It was the drugs.
So she also said that he was supposed to fight soon and that she was planning on attending the fight.
And she said, I'm still in a fog.
Something's up.
Something is wrong.
Like she thinks they set him up or something.
Oh, Emily.
So now he's ruined his mother's life now.
He's got all this.
He's fucking sitting in a jail cell.
He was fighting Mike Tyson.
He was on pay-per-view following Jay-Z.
Right.
He was following Jay-Z.
Not just.
No.
He wasn't opening for Jay-Z.
He was a fucking headliner.
He was a headliner.
Jay-Z was opening for him.
Unbelievably, he made a million dollars.
He's got a wife, a kid.
Things are going well.
He's got a top trainer, an agent that represented a drunken old alcoholic bar fight guy.
Everything's going well now.
He's sitting in a prison cell.
He doesn't know what to do.
And the cell opens up.
And who is it?
It's the Mexican pimp with his guns blazing.
And he pours a drink for each of them.
And he says...
How is it you've come to arrive here?
That sounds so good on this.
How is it you've come to be here?
Why?
Why?
Why you come?
Why you are here?
Why you are here now?
Things go so well, and you end up with me. Have a drink Why you are here? Why you are here now? Things go so well.
And you end up with me.
Have a drink for you.
Why?
You're so good at Spanish.
Pufsa.
And a puff of smoke happens and he's gone.
That's what happens with the Mexican pimp.
He goes up in just a cloud of smoke.
Yeah, he's gone.
Charmin man, he's got a look.
He's got a business to run.
Mexican pimp, he's not taking a shit. Cartel members disappear.
Out of there.
So at the trial, Clifford pleads not guilty by reason of insanity.
No shit.
Okay, I'll buy that.
That's pretty fucking insane.
After this story, if the jury heard it, they might go, yeah, you know what?
Yeah, I think so.
You raised a gun to a police officer.
The only reason you didn't kill him is because it jammed.
That's fucking insanity.
You tried hard.
He pleads not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming brain damage
suffered in his boxing career.
This is great.
A, quote, sanity commission
was convened to find out whether
Clifford was competent to stand trial.
Tell me you don't want to have a
sanity commission at your fucking disposal.
Just like anybody
you run across before the sanity commission with you.
That's amazing. I want to have a sanity commission with you. Like, that's amazing.
I want to have a sanity commission every time I fight with my wife.
Oh, Jesus.
They said you're insane, you dumb woman.
I told you.
To the commission with us.
Oh, yeah.
I didn't say that.
Told you I was right.
We're going to the commission.
He is originally charged with 10 counts total here.
They end up dropping one of the counts, which is possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
For some reason, they drop that.
But the other nine stand.
The other nine are as follows.
This is a good one.
There's a lot.
Quote, illegal use of a weapon.
Two counts of armed robbery with a firearm.
Attempted carjacking.
Two counts of attempted first degree murder.
Attempted second degree murder. And two counts of attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, and two counts of second-degree kidnapping.
That's a fucking list of charges that we want.
But that attempted murder is the fucking biggie.
That's the biggie.
That's the one.
And he, oof, wait till you see this now.
Two of them.
Yeah, two of them.
Yeah, two cops trying to shoot two of them.
So you try to shoot two of them.
His team files a motion in early in early part of the year of 2006 to for a change of venue because they don't want apparently the same day this happened.
A Baton Rouge police officer was shot on duty.
So they know the prosecutors are planning on bringing that up as a reason why the police were so on top of the shit because they were like, why were they there?
That was like one of the I don't know what the hell defense that could possibly amount.
But what are they there for to enforce the law?
Yeah.
It doesn't matter.
Motions withdrawn on February 23rd, 2006. I guess they decided they weren't going to win.
ATN defense on February 28th, 2006.
The defense is denied extra time for more medical examination.
They wanted to run all sorts of CAT scans and all this shit.
And they went, no, on with the trial.
He tried to shoot two cops. Fucking moving moving on i like their fucking gumption they're
not fucking around yeah that's what i'm saying now griffin the guy with the gold grand dame there
said that when he told clifford there were kids in the car he said quote clifford looked at he
said that clifford looked at him but quote he looked high or something and he fucking was um
he uh he's just jacked up on adrenaline because he was robbing a check.
That's true.
And he's running from police officers.
And he's got cops on his fucking heels.
He tried to shoot cops.
He said he hesitated for a moment before he got in the car after he told them about the kids.
That is how he ends up getting convicted of the kidnapping charges because he had time to think about it.
He says, I didn't know the kids were in the car.
And his testimony says, I told him the kids were in the car.
Then he hesitated.
So it's like he processed that thing, got in the car.
So they said, go fuck yourself.
Basically, at that point, Clifford does not testify at trial, probably for the best.
Right.
The only real defense mounted besides his brother in law, he tried to put on the stand
like just a couple of people that were whatever.
Since the brain damage thing was ruled out already, they called a drug rehabilitation expert in James Mocanico.
And he testified that he believed that Clifford was in a, quote, cocaine-induced psychosis during crimes.
What?
That's what they called what Stanley Wilson did.
It's called being stoned, bro.
Yeah.
Cocaine-induced psychosis.
In other words, dust zombie.
I was on a bunch of coke and I robbed some shit.
That's what that means.
And because I wanted more coke.
Unbelievable.
He was on that much coke.
He wouldn't have robbed them because he wouldn't have needed more coke right there.
So I figure he wasn't that high.
He would have been sitting on a bathtub sweating profusely with bubbles popping off his face.
Exactly.
So March 23rd, 2006, the jury rejects this argument that he didn't know what he was doing due to cocaine and brain damage.
That's his argument.
Between the cocaine and the brain damage, who can tell what they're doing?
That's some kind of cocktail.
Mix that shit up.
Cocaine and brain damage.
Ooh, that's tasty.
It's got a fruity flavor.
It's not too strong on the backside.
I like it.
It's pretty good.
He's convicted on all nine counts.
Assistant District Attorney Prem
Burns said that Clifford faces at least 64 years in prison. He said, quote, he really had a second
chance and he blew it because he is one of the few young offenders who were released early on
something as serious as armed robbery. No doubt. Yeah. And he blew it. Now, here is the sentencing.
The sentencing comes down June 24th, 2006. I'm guessing retarded cocaine wasn't a good enough defense.
No, it wasn't.
It wasn't.
Pudding brain, cocaine pudding brain wasn't enough.
Pudding brain sprinkled with cocaine sugar was not enough for some reason.
Here is his sentencing.
Count one.
We're going to do it by count by count because it's interesting.
Yeah, I had the I found the court documents and was all up their ass about this here.
Count one, two years hard labor concurrent with any other sentence.
Count two, 50 years hard labor without possibility of parole or probation
and an extra five years for the fact that there was a firearm involved in the offense,
making that 55 years no parole.
Hard labor. Count three, 10 that 55 years, no parole, hard labor.
Count three, 10 years, hard labor, no parole.
Count four, 20 years, hard labor.
Oh my God.
Count five, five years, hard labor.
Count six, five years, hard labor, no parole.
Count seven, 50 years, hard labor, no parole.
Extra five for the gun, 55 again.
Oh my God.
Count eight, 10 years, hard labor.
Count nine, another 10 years, hard labor for good again. Oh, my God. Count eight, 10 years hard labor. Count nine, another 10 years hard labor for good fucking measure.
Oh, my God.
Or a grand total of 160 years.
Oh, my God.
160 years.
You, sir, may fuck off forever for generations.
He got a North Korean prison sentence.
My great-great-grandson will be able to come in and tell you to fuck off because you'll still be here eating your Scooby-Doo sandwiches.
Holy shit.
That is insane.
That's a lot of time.
That's the most anybody's gotten as far as years go.
It's not just life without parole that we've covered.
Keith Wright was 135.
He's fucking kicking his ass now.
Good job.
Salute, cocksucker.
And it's hard labor. It's hard labor. It's hard kicking his ass now. Good job. Salute, cocksucker. And it's hard labor. It's hard labor.
It's hard labor. That's
fucking the worst. I can't even
imagine. We'll find out what hard labor turns into
for him in a second. But prosecutor Prem
Burns said, quote, we had expected a significant
sentence, but the judge exceeded my hopes.
Thank you. It's an extra
hundred years. I wanted 60. That's awesome.
He's celebrating it.
He's celebrating.
Shit, thank you.
Exceeded my eye.
I picture him with a cake in front of him with candles on it.
160 of them.
This is great.
Fucking party hat on.
Defense attorney Jim Holtz said, quote, his family is dealing with it pretty hard, to
be honest with you.
Well, no shit, you think?
Poor him.
Apparently, too high isn't a defense.
I got too high.
Oh, that's okay then.
Never mind. You're good. Too high, not't a defense. I got too high. Oh, that's okay then. Never mind.
You're good.
Too high.
Not a good defense.
Everyone out there, if you're charged of a crime, too high, not going to work.
Not going to happen.
Let's see here.
So he's back in prison now.
He's stuck in prison forever and a day.
In prison, we have it in their own words about him in prison.
They asked him whether he keeps in shape, what he does in there.
He said, quote, yeah, I work out.
They asked him whether he keeps in shape, what he does in there.
He said, quote, yeah, I work out.
I had gotten up to about 330 pounds, being that I was in a cell almost 24 hours per day.
Now I'm at about 265 pounds.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
So interesting here.
So he's in prison.
Again, he's lucky with this.
April 6, 2013, his sentence is reduced.
What?
Don't worry.
Not much.
It's reduced from 160 years to a slightly less comical amount of 105 years.
I'm so close.
It's still 100 years. You're still never going to do it.
If it's 100 and anything,
just fuck it. Who cares?
I wouldn't even have filed that. Who cares?
I'm dead by then. Why am I going to take
55 years off of this? What does it matter?
He's in prison. His mom's still
thinking something's wrong. His daughter doesn't
have a kid. Fucking Mike Tyson and
his shit opponent, people who bought that pay-per-view,
were highly disappointed. His drug dealers
aren't making any money off him anymore.
Lydia Keys, his four kids are scared shitless
like that grandam is fucked up
beyond repair. There's still a man with a bullet
wound in him. I feel bad for all these
people, Jimmy. I really, really do.
But not nearly as bad as
I feel. Get out of here. You found people
with this name. Jimmy, do you doubt
me? Patreon.com slash
Crime and Sports.
Hook us up. This is hysterical.
Clifford Etienne, who works for Spirit
Airlines in Miami, Fort Lauderdale.
I don't feel bad for you. Your airline sucks.
Fuck you. Fuck you.
I hope people confuse you for them all I don't feel bad for you. Fuck you. I hope you're fucking. I hope people confuse you for him all the time.
And people spit on you, you asshole.
I hope you have to announce this is your captain speaking.
Clifford Etienne.
Fuck him.
Fuck you and fuck this airline.
He's taken off the plane.
Also, Clifford Etienne, a behavioral analyst in North Las Vegas, Nevada.
He has five stars on healthgrades.com.
I saw he also does. I found his Facebook page.
He also does like, hangs out at a bunch of like poetry jams and shit with someone with
his last name, another Etienne.
I think like his wife does poetry or some shit like that.
I don't know, but check him out there.
He's a bit of a dork.
He's a bit of a dork.
Now, what is Clifford?
What has Clifford been up to in prison?
Yeah.
Well, we find out with an article called Xbox or Cliffer Clifford ATN, killing prison time by painting.
Oh, jeez.
He turned into an artist.
Oh, God.
So he's got to learn something when he's in prison.
I'll give him that.
Also, too, he went to college last time he was in prison.
He graduated from Southern University or something in prison.
Anyway, yeah, he's a painter.
They talk to Lynn O'Shea, this woman who is his silver haired middle aged white woman.
I feel like if you listen to what she says here, who says, quote, she, quote, handles his business affairs.
What the fuck kind of business affairs is a man who's in jail for centuries have selling his paintings for soups for soup?
Yeah. Well, for what? Cans of fucking oysters and fish cakes or whatever he said he ate.
It's ridiculous.
So she says, quote, he's amazing.
He took painting serious inside.
And after he earned trustee status, he was actually able to become the warden's artist and sleep in his paint room.
They kept him away from all the drama in Gen Pop.
The warden's artist.
Listen, he's amazing for a lot of reasons.
That's not one of them.
What kind of a pussy warden is an artist?
This is my personal artist.
What is he, a fucking 18th century president?
You know, said 19th century president.
I'm commissioning this painting of me.
And where did he find this bitch that thinks so highly of him?
Because I need somebody like her.
Apparently, his paintings sell very well.
Really?
She says the city of New Orleans bought one that hangs in a district police department.
Taxpayer money?
In a district police department it hangs.
They kind of look like distorted, just black people doing shit, basically.
They're good paintings.
Looks like a retarded guy on cocaine did it?
Kind of, yeah.
You can see the brain damage.
I think that's where his style comes from.
He's a good painter of a portrait, but then that brain
damage puts some style on it, a little warp
and it makes it art. That's how it works.
O'Shea said
also to, well, let's see here.
You can find his art on
FineArtAmerica.com.
He has art for sale. A website called
Fine Art. You can email him through that
site. There is an email the artist
link. I would love to. You can email him and I don't know if that goes to him or to somebody else. Listen, he can't get out. I'll email that motherfucker. You can email him through that site. There is an email the artist link. I would love to.
You can email him.
And I don't know if that goes to him or to somebody else.
Listen, he can't get out.
I'll email that motherfucker.
You should email him.
Hi.
Problem here is in October 2015, before this, because he's not painting right now, he is
recovering.
Let's get a quote from her and then I'll tell you what happened.
She says, O'Shea, the silver hair middle-aged white woman said, quote, things slowed down
after the attack.
He used to make all of his own canvas and stuff to paint on, but now he's locked down.
I'm hoping some friends from his past life as a boxer can help him out.
Now, what happened was, and this is brutal, in October 2015, Etienne was attacked in the
painting room by two inmates.
He was stabbed more than 20 times.
Holy shit.
With a pair of scissors.
Oh, my God. And was kicked repeatedly in the times with a pair of scissors and was kicked repeatedly
in the head because that's what he needs is more
fucking brain damage. And he says that's
bad for him. It's not doing any damage.
Tyson's punch didn't hurt you. He suffers
a punctured lung and a bunch of other
ailments out of this. A bunch of other punctures too.
Yeah, he's transferred to a different prison
to get him out of there and everything.
So there goes his art now. So who
knows if he's going to pick that back up,
but fineartamerica.com, you can check it out.
Now, if you cannot get enough of Clifford ATN,
you can get on ebay.com, obviously,
you can get a Mike Tyson vs. ATN laminated press pass credential
from the night of the big fight.
You can get it.
It's $25 plus $5.95 shipping.
That's a deal. You can own a piece5.95 shipping. That's a deal.
You can own a piece of history, guys.
That's a deal.
Amazing.
And Jesus, that is Clifford ATN in a big, fat nutshell.
In a fucking, in a steel barred cage.
Wow, exactly.
In a steel barred cage shitting protein bricks into his prison toilet on a morning basis.
Protein bricks.
Wow.
There's probably more protein in his shit than a Clif Bar.
Absolutely.
That is crazy.
He's a mess, this guy.
I mean, you had it, and what were you doing?
And I like how his mother says,
anybody who knows him knows that's not like him.
It actually is.
He did it once before.
It's exactly like him.
It's exactly like him.
Like, exactly.
He had a gun.
He robbed someone.
He tried to shoot at people.
That's exactly what he did.
He got super lucky, and then he blew it again. And then he blew it because he's on a lot of cocaine. Yeah. So, yeah, no cocaine. Don't move home. He robbed someone. He tried to shoot at people. That's exactly what he did. He got super lucky, and then he blew it again.
And then he blew it because he's on a lot of cocaine.
Yeah.
So, yeah, no cocaine.
Don't move home.
Don't convert.
And do not use a Grand Am as a getaway car.
These are the lessons of today.
Unfucking real, man.
So we're going to get to shout-outs here in a second.
Yeah, man.
Before we do that, I just want to say, please, please, if you haven't done it yet, if you're
a new listener, even an old listener, get on iTunes. It takes 30 seconds. Sign in. Give us a review, please, please, if you haven't done it yet, if you're a new listener, even an old listener, get on iTunes.
It takes 30 seconds.
Sign in.
Give us a review, please.
It helps us so much on the business end of things.
It really, really does wonders for us.
And it's the thing to do if you want to help us out.
Give us five stars.
Tell us you're following instructions or whatever kind of crazy inside joke you want to have.
And also, too, we want to thank especially some Patreon people that you have and some
other people like that that were really cool to us. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports, we want to thank especially some Patreon people that you have and some other
people like that that were really cool to us. Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. If you want
to support us, give us a few bucks. Like I said, this show isn't free to make and it's free for
you guys, obviously. We want it to be free. But if you feel in your heart you want to give us a
few bucks, if you enjoy the show, please do. It helps us immensely to make it a better show. I
actually found some things on a site that I paid for to get access to articles with
Patreon money.
So, I mean, the show is better for it.
So you're helping the show.
You're helping the content that you're listening to.
Absolutely.
And now, before we get into the shout outs, just want to tell you, if you want to get
shouted out or all that, iTunes reviews are great.
Patreon also, too.
Just social media.
If you want to hit us up on Twitter at Crime and Sports, Instagram at Crime and Sports,
Crime and Sports at gmail.com, facebook.com slash Crime and Sports, and you can be like
one of these fine people that Jimmy's going to talk about.
Brandon Griffith and Tenkan Dan.
I don't know Tenkan Dan's real name.
Tenkan Dan.
We should look it up, honestly, because Tenkan Dan did the most amazing thing today.
This guy, seriously, he's an Australian guy,
and he emailed us this morning asking for PayPal information. Yeah, because he doesn't like Patreon.
He doesn't like Patreon, which is fine.
And he sent us $200 Australian dollars.
That's fucking incredible.
Honestly, I almost cried from how sweet it was,
like that somebody was that nice to him
and that the show meant that much to
them.
Thank you, man.
So much, really, from the bottom of our hearts.
We appreciate it.
You guys are amazing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Chris Fenlon, Bobby Williams, Will Judkins, Erica Hogan, at South Carolina.
I don't know what the fuck that is, but HLS the second is his name.
Rob Bridgewater or Bridwater? Bridewater?
Whatever.
We'll go with Bride.
Patrick O.
Ebenezer Smile is probably my favorite name on Twitter.
And thank you for the Patreon.
If you get a woman named Ebenezer to give you money, you've done something.
You've done some shit.
You've done some shit.
That's good.
You've moved mountains.
Yeah, I love that shit.
Thank you, Ebenezer.
I like it.
She's like, I ain't taking no shit from no man.
I ain't giving nobody nothing.
I work for my money. Motherfuck you. Andrew Bailey. I love that shit. Thank you, Ebony. I like it. She's like, I ain't taking no shit from no man. I ain't giving nobody nothing. I work for my money.
Motherfuck you.
Andrew Bailey.
I love you.
Gilly Young or Jilly Young?
I don't know how to pronounce her.
She's cool.
She's from the UK.
She's a sweetheart, too.
Thank you.
Joe McGarry.
LaWanna Sharone.
I believe she has something super professional going on because you can't friend her on Facebook.
She looks professional in her picture.
She's in a business suit.
It's very like realtor or some sort of public office.
Yeah, I feel like she's a big shot, I feel like.
Thank you.
And Kevin Day.
And then a very special shout out to my friend Dan Cummins, who's a, he wouldn't think he's
a famous comedian, but people know who he is.
Pretty fucking good comment.
He's one of my favorite people in general.
He's just a wonderful guy.
He's got a podcast called Time Suck.
Listen to it.
It's fucking great.
But he's been instrumental in telling us, like, giving us real positive feedback and stuff.
So thanks, Dan, for all the texts late night.
You're a fucking, you're a great man.
Most of all, somebody we really got to thank are two people, actually.
Most of all, we have to thank.
Number one, we have to thank Jimmy Taylor.
Jimmy Taylor down at Hubbard Media.
Forget this studio and this that's going on right now.
He has been up people's asses, forcing us on people.
And he has been our cheerleader and really our silver-haired middle-aged white man.
So thank you, Jimmy Taylor.
He's not silver-haired or middle-aged, but he is white, and he's a great fucking guy.
Thank you, Jimmy. And I also have to thank
Sarah Hunt, who is our social media person
who does all our marketing and she
sets all the stuff up and talks to
Blue Apron and these people and pretty
much makes it so we can dick around and have fun.
And she does all the business stuff and all the not
fun stuff. And she's the best and we couldn't
do it without her. So thank you. And she takes care of Frankie,
man. And she takes care of Frankie, the crime and sports
dog. So we love her. But if you want to get takes care of Frankie, man. And she takes care of Frankie, the crime and sports dog, so we love her. But
if you want to get a hold of us, you want to give them your social
media? Yeah, at WismanSucks, W-H-I-S-M-A-N
sucks on
Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.
And I've been getting fun little
snaps from like
Kerrigan Bro, that guy sent
some snaps in the middle of the night. That's funny.
It's not gay that we're sending us videos,
right? And I said, it's super duper gay.
As gay as saying super duper.
It's super gay.
Did you thank Wedbetter this week, too?
No, no.
Wedbetter, Busby, Monge.
Guys, you guys are so fucking amazing.
Mark Busby sent us awesome t-shirts.
He made Jimmy a gunpoint blowjob t-shirt, and he got me a New Jersey General's Doug
Flutie shirt, which is amazing.
Thank you, Busby.
Thank you, thank you. And Jay, Wedbetter, goddammit, we love you for always Flutie shirt, which is amazing. Thank you, Busby. Thank you.
Thank you.
And Jay Wedbetter, God damn it, we love you for always tweeting us at people.
You're amazing.
And you've just been forcing.
You're our Jimmy Taylor of the East Coast.
And we love you.
God damn it.
You don't know how much that means to us.
Thank you so much for doing that.
And thank you guys for listening and getting us this fucking amazing studio.
This is great.
This is incredible.
We love it, man.
We're so happy.
It's all you guys. Like we said, from the beginning, we were like, hey, if anyone's going man. We're so happy. It's all you guys.
Like we said,
from the beginning,
we were like,
hey, if anyone's going to listen,
it's going to be because of you guys.
And now we're sitting
in the most amazing place
because of you guys, man.
The crime and sports movement.
Thank you guys so much.
From the new to first time
in the new studio.
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.
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's 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.