The Gman is my pick, somewhere along the line a young naive child’s heart went cold under the weight of poverty he was defined by the abuse of his alcoholic farther and artificial rivalry with his brother this child’s heart just couldn’t be pieced back together. he fought under the street lights with one of the only people who understood him, while the man who tortured his soul stood by admiring his arrogant work deciding on which was the better prospect and so he became an emotionless killer not unlike the dogs he kept company with Gerald never had a heart kind enough to change him so an angry man forlorn to charity and affection was born from it...
Throughout his childhood, Tyson lived in and around neighborhoods with a high rate of crime. According to an interview in Details, his first fight was with a bigger youth who had pulled the head off one of Tyson's pigeons. Tyson was repeatedly caught committing petty crimes and fighting those who ridiculed his high-pitched voice and lisp. By the age of 13, he had been arrested 38 times. He ended up at the Tryon School for Boys in Johnstown, New York. Tyson's emerging boxing ability was discovered there by Bobby Stewart, a juvenile detention center counselor and former boxer. Stewart considered Tyson to be an outstanding fighter and trained him for a few months before introducing him to Cus D'Amato. Tyson dropped out of high school as a junior. He would be awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Central State University in 1989.
Jake Lamotta was forced by his own father to fight other neighborhood kids for money. Jake's father would use the money to pay the rent. Sonny Liston worked picking cotton as a very young boy and was severely beaten by his own father. When the family mule died, his father told him he was the new mule. These are just two examples. Unfortunately, this sport is littered with broken men that were abused as children.
Matthew Saad Muhammad. His mother died when he was very young, his aunt who raised him, made his brother take him far away & leave him (pretty much for dead) when he was 5 & he was then taken in by catholic social services.
This. Literally dropped him off on a street as a child and abandoned him. Wasn’t his last name Franklin because he was found on Franklin Street?
Most boxers had this life. It's what make them hard enough to deal with the pain and suffering of the boxing ring, so Mccellean wasn't alone in that type of childhood. But their are just as many happy stories where the sport of boxing has actually saved individuals from that type of environment abuse and poverty. The list would go on almost forever of men saved by boxing. Even stories like mine, the discipline of the sport gave me the strength to avoid the pitfalls and disadvantages of a terrible childhood. It's one of the reasons for my success today.
Kassim Ouma has to be up there, kidnapped by a guerrilla warfare unit when he was 6 (? may have age wrong). Can't do his story justice so I'll just post the doc. This content is protected