Announcement

**paul750** · 05-20-2009, 02:17 PM

Hey Sean, not to be arrogant or egotistical, but as an amateur, all these cats like Morrison, Mercer, they looked up to me. So, as a pro, I think that Tommy still felt that he had something to prove. He didn’t have to take the fight. Bill Cayton was offered the fight by Seth Abraham and HBO, and he said no. But Tommy insisted. I guess he had something to prove. And Stan Hoffman, who was my manager at the time, said ‘Mike, we’re fighting Morrison.’ And I was like ‘Okay, when? Just line it up.’

SN: As for the fight itself, Morrison seemed to land a left hook to the back of your neck…

MB: (interrupting) No, no, no, it landed on my right temple, and I was out.

SN: So you were stunned?

MB: No, I was out. I was out. But once again, the biggest factor in me winning that fight was me being prepared because I was knocked out. I learned a very, very important lesson. Because whenever you fight someone, Sean, and you don’t respect them, or you disregard the fact that they have two hands and the guy weighs 229 pounds, and the guy has experience…I fought for 18 years…so, if I throw a right hand, and I can throw a right hand blindfolded, if it hits you right, it can hurt you. Because there is technique involved, there’s leverage, there’s distance, and timing. Morrison discounted all of that because of his ego. Once again, the most important factor to me was losing to Jerry Jones, because any man that has two hands can hurt me. So, in the back of my mind, I had three things planned. If and when Tommy hurt me, and I figured he would eventually hurt me, and I planned for it, but the first thing I would do if I got hurt is grab him. He was too strong for that ****. The second thing I would do is move around the ring, but the ring was a freakin’ phone booth. So where am I going to move? Two steps and I’m against the ropes. The third option I employed, even in training camp, was parrying, keeping my hands up, and blocking Tommy’s shots. And eventually, an opening would present itself.

Of course, during a fight, it’s automatic, because you work on it during training camp. Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, my trainer, had a mantra, and excuse my French, the mantra was: Make this mother****er throw punches! And eventually, he’s going to give you something, and Tommy, I watched this guy’s fights religiously…every time he got someone in trouble, be it Joe Hipp, be it the Russian (Yuri Vaulin), or Carl ‘The Truth’ Williams, he would stop and hold his breath momentarily. By doing that, he became stiff. Do you follow me? It’s like a bamboo tree blowing in the wind. If the tree tries to fight against the wind, it will snap in half. But, if the tree goes with the wind, it can absorb the force of the wind…within reason. Does that make sense to you?

SN: Absolutely, and I’ve never looked at that fight that way.

MB: I did. (Laughs) Let me tell you something. For two months I ate, slept and drank Morrison. Essentially, I had a hard-on for him, you know what I’m saying? I resented the fact, and as a fighter you use everything to motivate you, and I resented the fact that Tommy was like our modern rendition of ‘The Great White Hope’. And I resented that ****. Why play to that ****, you know what I mean? If you’re going to play to that, I’m going to use it. That was giving me ammunition. And no way in the world was he going to beat me. I was willing to die that night. And, we should all be careful what we wish for, because in the next fight I almost died.

SN: Was the counter right you hit Morrison with something you had worked on in training or was it just something instinctual?

MB: It was instinctual, but once again, as an amateur I was known as having a complete arsenal. A guy can become a great pro if he has guidance and someone watching his back as a pro. If you’re a great amateur, you can be a great pro. There’s no difference. It’s just a matter of settling down, pacing yourself and having the proper people to pull the right strings for you. It’s not like Tommy Morrison was the perfect guy for me, but that night, nobody was beating me. If Mike Tyson was in the ring with me that night, October 29, 1993, and I fought the Tyson who just fought Michael Spinks, he’s not beating me, because I would have found a way to win. It’s like a starving lion. I honored my craft. I was scared, because I didn’t want to lose. I didn’t want to just be known as the guy who won five national championships and lost to Ray Mercer in the Trials. I didn’t want to be an asterisk, a sidebar. That fight essentially changed my life. I knew that on paper, they were discounting me, meaning the HBO bigwigs, the boardroom guys, they were overlooking me, as was Tommy and Tommy’s camp. But it served me well. I have to underscore again, that fighting and losing to Jerry Jones was preparation for Morrison, because no way in the world would I have been as aware as I was that night if I didn’t know what it was like to lose. I knew what it was to go into a ring the favorite, and not respect the power and not respect the two hands of my opponent.

SN: What was the aftermath of that fight like for you, having just won the WBO world heavyweight championship?

MB: You know what? About ten minutes after the whole fight, I wouldn’t call the aftermath a celebration, it was more a realization of potential. I wasn’t celebrating anything. For me, it was like okay, I realized my potential, for this moment, I’m joining my peers. No one can take this from me. No one. Larry Merchant basically said that amateur boxing has no realm, like being discussed on HBO. If that’s a fact, why do Shelly Finkel and Bob Arum and Don King send their talent scouts to amateur fights? They’re looking for potential gold mines. A good amateur boxer is, potentially, a future star.

Back to the question, about ten minutes after the fight, I’m sitting there in the corner, by myself, and the press is coming in and interviewing Stan and everyone, and I’m just taking it all in. To say it was anticlimactic is a gross understatement. I was depressed, because I was like ‘Now what?’ If this was what it was like to win the heavyweight championship, or even a portion of it, damn. That’s it? But, maybe, I’m sensitive enough to know that, as a fighter, you’re never really fighting for yourself. Like Roy Jones, he was never really fighting for himself. My dad and I had, have a tumultuous relationship, and he saw me fighting, so I guess indirectly me winning that championship was like me saying to him, and to myself, ‘See, I am good enough.’ But now what?

SN: Was there ever any talk of a rematch with Morrison, following that fight? Because Morrison went on to say in pre-fight pieces after that fight that he looked at tapes of you and thought ‘this is a guy who couldn’t beat me with a ball bat.’ Did you ever hear that?

MB: No…(laughs)…Goddamn. (laughs)

SN: Oops.

MB: It’s all good. It’s water under the bridge now. But, to get beat that decisively…you know, like Jerry Jones, on paper, wasn’t in my same orbit. Jerry Jones didn’t have the distinguished amateur career that Michael Bentt had, but Jerry Jones knocked Michael Bentt out in one round. And Jones, prior to him fighting me, did you ever hear of him?

SN: No, I hadn’t.

MB: No, exactly. So, I think that Tommy’s problem was that he was in denial, and that is probably the toughest thing for a fighter to admit, that a guy has his number. Now in truth, if we fought again, would I have knocked him out in the first round…who knows? But, I know that the cat who fought Morrison on October 29, wasn’t losing to him. Tommy wasn’t going to outbox me, because I could take his shot. That left hook to the temple…whooo…was a brick. My resolve though, my mojo, if you will, said, “no, **** that.” There were no talks of a rematch to me. Maybe my manager entertained some talks, but my thing was capitalizing and building momentum, and then have a homecoming fight against Herbie Hide. If I was managing a guy in who was in my position, I would go the route that my manager Stan Hoffman initiated, fighting guys overseas. I wouldn’t have fought Herbie Hide at that point, though. Fights are won and lost in training camp.

**paul750** · 05-20-2009, 02:19 PM

In my training camp, like three weeks before the fight, I got, essentially knocked out, by a guy named King Ipitan. I was sparring with him for like a week and I was hammering the guy, and he threw a right hand and it blacked me out. I get rushed to the hospital. Well, first of all, I got out of the ring, after finishing the round, and I hit the speed bag and I collapse. I go to Doctor Robert Boyd’s office and got admitted to the hospital for like a week. And Dr. Boyd says, you know, you’re not going to fight. So, I assured him I wouldn’t fight. So we had to devise a plan because we didn’t want to just blow it off like that. We said, look, we’ll travel to England, and Eddie Mustafa Muhammad was going to arrive late to the training camp in London. We were going to go through the paces in England, and I started feeling good. Eddie comes and says, ‘Michael, you can’t fight.’ I said, ‘you know what, Eddie? I’m fighting.’ I’m a fighter, you know? Let’s go. Now I’m not saying Herbie Hide wouldn’t give me problems on my best night. I’m not that arrogant. Rid**** Bowe said that the hardest puncher he ever faced was Herbie Hide. The boy can crack, man. He nearly killed me.

SN: Well, it looked like Herbie Hide had Bowe’s number for the first two rounds, but then he almost had an anxiety attack.

MB: No, he had a right hand attack. (Laughs) Rid**** Bowe just put that right hand on him, you know what I mean? It seemed like the fact that Herbie’s punches weren’t doing the damage that they did to me or his previous opponents kind of, maybe, unnerved him, coupled with the other right hands that Rid**** was bouncing off his head. I’m not saying that if I had fought Herbie at 100%, he wouldn’t have beaten me. I’m saying, I would not have nearly gotten killed. In retrospect, that’s the one thing that I’m really ambivalent about with boxing. Boxers, like Tommy Morrison, he’s a soldier, a warrior. And I love him for that. The fact that he can’t admit defeat, I respect that. But who is going to save the Tommy Morrisons and Michael Bentts from themselves? I shouldn’t have fought against Herbie Hide. You know, King Ipitan is still fighting. When I came out here five years ago, he auditioned for the role of George Foreman in the movie Ali, and the guy was walking on his heels then. About a year and a half ago I’m at a fight, just some rinky-dink fight, some little Hollywood smoker, and the guy comes in walking on his heels and gets knocked out by some creampuff. So who’s going to save the King Ipitans, the Michael Bentts, the Tommy Morrisons, from themselves, man? That night, the guys who were responsible for my welfare, had my blood on their hands. I could have died, man. I could have died.

**paul750** · 05-20-2009, 02:21 PM

In part one of this two part interview, Michael Bentt discussed his rise through the amateur and professional heavyweight ranks, including his two WBO heavyweight title fights against Tommy Morrison and Herbie Hide. Here, our discussion continues as Michael talks more about his fight with Hide, the injury he sustained, whether fighters should be retired against their will, his writing and acting, and the current state of the heavyweight division.

SN: Do you remember anything about that fight itself with Hide?

MB: The last thing I remember from the whole experience is eating pasta with my brother and a couple of guys from my group in the hotel lobby. The next thing I recall is seeing a light, like a headlight. I realized that it was Dr. John Sutcliffe, who was my neurosurgeon, and it was his penlight flashing over my eyes. So, there was a period of like 98 hours that is just a blank. I have probably watched the fight twice in ten years. The first time was just prior to coming out here to L.A. It helped me get in touch with a real sensitive place. I was playing Sonny Liston in the Ali film, and you can�t really play Liston without going through some kind of emotional pain, or that�s the way I thought. So I popped the tape in, and I felt liberated, oddly enough. Because, I took a ****ing shellacking. I don�t know how I survived. The last series of shots that Herbie hits me with, he hits me with two right hands. The first right hand made my right leg come out from under me.

SN: Yes, I recall you went down with your body at what seemed almost a ninety degree angle.

MB: Exactly. The second right hand renders my left leg useless, and I flopped down face first. If you look at the tape, when I fall, my face hits the canvas. I bounced up like an inch or two off the canvas twice. I felt liberated watching that, because that was a nightmare that nearly cost me my life, but I survived.

SN: What injuries did you suffer?

MB: The medical terminology was a subdural hematoma. The British refer to it as �bleeding on the brain? I had minimal bleeding, but my brain was concussed. I had massive swelling. Prior to them going in and doing brain surgery, the swelling went down. I had the same doctor that Gerald McClellan would have later. I had some complications on the plane ride home, and they thought it might be related to some blood deficiency. They though maybe I was anemic. The bottom line is, I was anemic to Herbie Hide�s punches. Herbie Hide may have beaten me, but if you rewind to three weeks prior to that fight, there was no way I should have fought that fight. In retrospect, it changed my life, because had I won that fight I�d probably still be fighting. I had a relatively young career at that point.

SN: I completely understand that, and I have a question for you on that topic, Michael. Take the case of Evander Holyfield, where the New York State Athletic Commission banned him from fighting. Do you think that was a fair decision?

MB: Absolutely. Absolutely, sure. If I�m a pilot, for Southwest Airlines, and my reflexes and my coordination is impaired, I�m going to be asked to step down, no? So, why the hell shouldn�t a commission that governs the sport have the same kind of power? Of course, Holyfield is going to be in denial. His job, as a fighter, is to deny pain. ****, that�s his job. Who is going to safeguard his future brain cells? He�s not going to. The people who are now training him aren�t going to. They want that fast buck, because he�s still a draw. Unfortunately, this guy is going to end up like friggin?Martin Rivera. It�s a goddamn shame. It�s tragic.

SN: It really is, Michael, but you have people on the other side of the fence saying that you can�t tell a fighter when to stop, that the fighter is the only one who can make that decision.

MB: That�s bull****. By design, if I�m fighting Holyfield, my job is to render that man unconscious. At the end of the day, sure people say �he�s entitled to make a living? Look, boxing is not a living, it�s life and death. Holyfield knows the score, but we pay people to make responsible decisions. Just like the Commissioner in New York, Stevens, he made a great decision. He cut him off.

**paul750** · 05-20-2009, 02:22 PM

SN: Switching gears, you�ve done some writing and some acting since your last fight. First let�s get to the writing. How did you get involved in writing and what was the experience like?

MB: Actually it was fulfilling, because as a fighter we fight we want to be seen and heard. Boxing gave me a platform, and when boxing was no longer a part of my life, I had to find a new platform, because I have something to say. I was doing boxing commentary overseas. Stan Hoffman had several Dutch fighters, and I would train some of the guys and also do English translation over in Holland. Eventually, I went back to school and enrolled in a journalism class. I wrote for the school newspaper, and that got the ball rolling. Michael Katz ran a few pieces that I had published in my school newspaper in the Daily News: a piece on Mark Breland, one on the Holyfield-Tyson upset. I left school after about a year and a half or two years because I ran out of money, and went back to New York. Then I met Bert Sugar at a press conference one night, and he said he�d like me to write some stuff for his new magazine called Fight Game. The first thing I wrote was a profile on Michael Grant, and then I wrote a piece that actually changed my life called �Anatomy of Knockout? which detailed the whole Morrison experience, the Herbie Hide experience, the first time I got knocked out as an amateur against this guy named Ronald Turner. He weighed like 225 and I weighed 184, and he knocked me the **** out in the second round. Only time I ever got knocked out as an amateur. It�s just going to that dark place and it wasn�t fun, but Bert said �Mike, this is a piece that only you can write.?And I bared my soul in that piece. Ron Shelton, who was a director and a huge fight fan, read that piece and called and said �If you can act at all, come out to L.A. and read for this movie as Sonny Liston.?br />
SN: Recall what the experience of making the Ali movie was like.

MB: It was surreal. Here I was, I have an expertise which is why I was hired. Michael Mann wanted to hire all boxers to make the experience for Will as visceral and authentic as possible. Will Smith learned how to fight for real, so you had to be careful with him. My motto was �if you make a mistake as Ali, I�m going to make you pay as Liston.?It was as simple as that. It was like going to an acting school for me, being around guys like Michael Mann, Jon Voight, Will Smith, Jamie Foxx and Jeffrey Wright. ****, I�m just an aspiring actor. Oddly enough, the boxer�s approach and the actor�s approach is so similar. In boxing we have to arm ourselves with this armor of invincibility and fearlessness, and the actor has to be bold enough to drop the curtain and let people in. They are both in a place in their lives that is challenging and scary, and it�s like, sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it because it�s so ****ing hard. Same way with boxing. Nothing over the past decade has given me more gratification than nailing a character, though. Sometimes I fall on my face, and that�s cool, because I�m learning.

SN: Most boxing fans are aware that you were in Ali, and you also had an appearance in Million Dollar Baby, but I�d like you to tell us about your stage work, most notably as Othello.

MB: They say that an actor, particularly an African American actor, you have to scale the mountain of the Moor. Honestly, I don�t feel like I really, really nailed it in one series of performances, but I think the closest I got to nailing it was in my third performance. There�s years and years involved in getting that character. I think that and Hamlet were probably Shakespeare�s most challenging roles. Othello is so majestic and reigns so supreme and falls from such a high perch, which makes it all the more tragic. Othello is Mike Tyson, Othello is Sonny Liston. For me, the challenge was just to identify with the words. I used the words to remind of things, like having an argument with my father, or when Mickey Duff tried to embarrass me in front of a crowd of people. You have to pull from your experiences and personalize it. The experience of playing Othello was overwhelming at times, but very gratifying ultimately. Ron Shelton paid me a great compliment. He said, �You know, Mike, you�re the only person to win the heavyweight championship AND play Othello.?I was like, damn. (Laughs) I�ll take it. There�s more work to do though. I�d love to do it again.

SN: How far do you hope or expect your acting to take you?

MB: (Laughs) Well, Hollywood is the beacon of the film world. If I was living in the West End or Birmingham, England, or Ortego Bay, Jamaica I�d be acting. I�m not acting to be a star, I just want to be proficient at it and have the respect of my peers. As a fighter, that�s all I really wanted to have, to have guys like Roy Jones say �that was a great fight? As an actor, you�d like to have Denzel Washington or Ben Kingsley say �Hey Mike, you nailed that performance? Of course I want to feed my family, and there�s that aspect as well. This thing is a discipline and when Michael Mann or Ron Shelton says �action? they�re not paying you because you are an ex-boxer. You have to know your ****. I�m in it for the long run. It may not come for 5, or 10, or 15 years, but I�m going to keep growing and keep digging and keep challenging myself as an actor, and keep trying to feed my family as an actor.

You know what, Sean? There�s a film that I produced, it�s called �Broken? The website is . Check out the stuff there. It�s a short film, about this Latino fighter and I have a role in it as well in addition to being one of the producers.

SN: I�ll do that, and I�ll encourage all of our readers to do the same. Back to boxing, in the present, the heavyweight division is obviously in a sad state. When you look at things as they are, do you have any regrets that you could not continue your career after the Hide fight?

MB: You know what? When I was training with Will Smith, James Toney, Al Cole and Charles Shufford back in 2000 for six months for our roles in Ali, I was thinking, you know, I�m sparring with these cats and I�m handling these guys. So I had an inkling to entertain making some phone calls, but I remember something Georgie Benton told me. In my estimation, Eddie Futch is head and shoulders above a lot of guys who are now �trainers? but in my estimation the most insightful guy and the man who had the biggest influence on me was Georgie Benton. When the whole Ali experience wrapped and I was contemplating making a phone call, Georgie said �Mike, never ever dishonor or humiliate yourself by fighting again.?I never got that until maybe five years ago. Because I can�t fight again. Even though I sustained a horrible injury almost 12 years ago, and I probably shouldn�t fight again competitively, some commission or some state that has no commission might say �Michael Bentt can fight? and that�s a goddamn shame. So that sticks with me.

**paul750** · 05-20-2009, 02:23 PM

Ive been divided myself, though, man. One side says, �I�m done, I�ve got nothing more to prove.?Sometimes I go to the gym and guys are like �Mike, you should make a comeback,?and I tell them �hey, my man, check it out, I�ve got nothing to prove. My championship belt is under my bed collecting dust, and it�ll stay there.?I�m happy with that. And my five national championships will go down in the annals of amateur boxing. People refer to me as the most accomplished amateur never to make an Olympic team, I�ll take that. That�s not bad. And I think if I�m going to recite Mr. Shakespeare�s words, I need my brain cells, baby. (Laughs) You know what I mean? I don�t want to be mumbling.

SN: I can understand that. Is there anyone out there now, though, especially in light of VItali Klitschko�s retirement, who is capable of becoming a dominant champion?

MB: (Sighs) A dominant champion in the same vein as a Holyfield, or Lewis or Tyson�no. No one really jumps out at me. Each guy has a fault. Essentially, the most talented guy out there in the heavyweight division and the most talented guy to come along in a long time, doesn�t trust himself. He�s a frontrunner, as Georgie Benton would say. And I think you know who I�m talking about.

SN: Wladimir Klitschko?

MB: Yes sir. I have never seen a heavyweight throw a left hook off of a jab like he does. I�m like �Goddamn!?Guys who I came up with in Bed-Stuy Boxing Club in Brooklyn, like Mark Breland, he was probably the most�I�ll go out on a limb here. Aside from Howard Davis and Ray Leonard, who were the glamour boys, I don�t think you can have a composite of an amateur fighter more perfect than Mark Breland. He was tall, lanky, his left hook off a jab was a mother****er, and George Washington who trained Mark, called the jab, hook, and right hand the cherry tree special because guys would just get chopped down. I never saw a big man throw it as fluidly as Wladimir does.

SN: And I don�t think I�ve heard anyone put it better than you just did when you said he does not trust himself.

MB: No, he doesn�t. We saw that when he fought the cat from Nigeria�Samuel Peter. That is the poster child for a guy who is strong, tough, but no talent. None. Sure, if you put him in with Jeremy Williams, he�ll knock him out every time they fight, because Jeremy Williams never had a heavyweight chin. He was a talented fighter, and he had a heavyweight punch but not a heavyweight chin. But Sam Peter is just raw, he�s crude, you know what I mean? Everyone is hopping on his bandwagon because, you know, he�s from Nigeria, and I guess everyone is trying to paint him in the same mold as Ike Ibeabuchi. Ike Ibeabuchi was a bad mother****er. He�s the kind of cat that I would?Laughs)�that I would NOT fight. If I had a heavyweight, if I was a manager of a heavyweight, that�s the kind of mother****er we would fight for 50 million dollars! You don�t **** with him for less than that! Ike had a complete arsenal; movement, defense, had a granite chin. Sam Peter is one-dimensional. He�s a poor man�s Mike Tyson. I�m going off here. (Laughs)

SN: Well I�ve just got one more thing here, and I�m sure I�m not the first person to tell you this, but you are obviously a very intelligent and articulate person, and you mentioned earlier doing commentary overseas, is television commentary something else you might be interested in doing?

MB: Nooo. Honestly, I did a couple of spots for HBO, a thing where they were kicking off KO Nation. Oscar De La Hoya was supposed to fly in and do the first test broadcast with Fran Charles. Oscar, for some reason, didn�t make it. I got a call from a buddy, my son�s godfather, Arthur Curry, who is the HBO Vice President of Talent. He gave me a call and suggested I come and read for it. I auditioned and I ended up doing the blow-by-blow with Fran Charles the night of the Junior Jones-Paul Ingle fight and the main event was Lewis-Grant at the Garden. I called it as I saw it, and I don�t know whether they thought I was savvy enough or if I was too honest, but I basically slammed Michael Grant, who was being groomed as the next heir apparent. Even though Grant lost, I think they still had hopes that Lewis was fading out and Mike would somehow reclaim his luster. To make a long story short, I didn�t get anymore phone calls from HBO. I did some things for Cedric Kushner�s Heavyweight Explosion, some things overseas with BBC, and I would love to do some commentary for BBC. I have an affinity for their style of broadcasting, and also being born in London, I have an affinity for that part of the world. If someone said �Mike, come on board, do some commentary? I�d explore it, but I�m not going to go looking for it.

SN: Is there anything else you�d like to add to this, Mike?

MB: I think we�ve done a pretty thorough job. (Laughs) I do want to say this, though, and I said this earlier, but it tends to be misconstrued. I�m not apologizing for it, but I said I resented Morrison for the Great White Hope brouhaha, but as a fighter, we have to use anything and everything that is going to motivate us. That night, what I used to motivate me, it�s some really, really dark **** in my personal history and in the history of this country. When you step into the ring with that kind of venom, it�s kind of hard to walk out of the ring a loser. All I am is a product of my past and what I hope to be in the future.

SN: Thanks so much for your time, Mike. It was great talking to you.

MB: My pleasure.

* Taken from doghouseboxing.com

**paul750** · 05-21-2009, 11:16 AM

We saw that when he fought the cat from Nigeria Samuel Peter. That is the poster child for a guy who is strong, tough, but no talent. None. Sure, if you put him in with Jeremy Williams, he'll knock him out every time they fight, because Jeremy Williams never had a heavyweight chin. He was a talented fighter, and he had a heavyweight punch but not a heavyweight chin. But Sam Peter is just raw, he's crude, you know what I mean? Everyone is hopping on his bandwagon because, you know, he's from Nigeria, and I guess everyone is trying to paint him in the same mold as Ike Ibeabuchi. Ike Ibeabuchi was a bad mother****er. He's the kind of cat that I would?Laughs)that I would NOT fight. If I had a heavyweight, if I was a manager of a heavyweight, that's the kind of mother****er we would fight for 50 million dollars! You don't **** with him for less than that! Ike had a complete arsenal; movement, defense, had a granite chin. Sam Peter is one-dimensional. He's a poor man's Mike Tyson. I'm going off here. (Laughs)

Wise words there from Bentt.