Radio Rahim: Sparring, Not Fighting, Destroy Fighters

What is the status of Adonis Stevenson? Did he recover? Yeah, he's recovered. Is he okay now? I mean, he's not his former self, but he is certainly living a good life. Because I know that was one of the more recent superstar guys that wound up having a significant brain injury. He survived and didn't succumb to those injuries, but it's life changing. This guy will never be the Adonis Stevenson he was before the fight. He's always going to now, for the rest of his life, deal with those injuries and have challenges in a way that is a result of boxing. Have you seen him? Is there videos of him talking about it or anything? Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen him talk about it in depth, but we've seen him. His motor skills are coming back. He's smiling. He's able to speak. So it's not like Jerome McClellan? No. The Jerome McClellan fight, it's interesting, it's kind of in many ways changed Roy Jones Jr.'s thoughts on the sport. He never wanted to turn out like that, but then Roy gets older and he's still fighting. Fighting people deep into his 40s. You're like, this is crazy. This is the same guy that after Jerome McClellan got hurt said he would never want to go out like that. He's fighting like young badasses in Russia and shit. But if you still think you can do it, it's hard to stop doing it. It's easy for me to say, hey man, that was your last fight. Let's take it easy. Look at Bernard, right? He's the best example. Fought into his 50s. He had a style that was crafty enough to have some longevity in it without taking that kind of damage. Roy, it'll embarrass you. But he's still there in front of you, which is what's the embarrassing part. So if your motor skills slow down, if your reflexes slow down, you're going to get hit. You're going to get knocked out. You're going to get fucked up. But what he told me in an interview, and it might be one of those moments when I was talking to a guy and he said something that was like, I thought I should have known until I heard it. And then I was like, oh, I can't believe I didn't realize that. He said, it's not the fights that destroy you. It's the gym that destroys you. It's the sparring. Oh, yeah. Those are the rounds that destroy fighters. Oh, yeah. And it's like the hundreds and hundreds of rounds to thousands of rounds that you're fighting that nobody sees that you're not getting paid for. You're taking that punishment, headgear or not. That's what you're seeing at the end of a fighter's career. Do you remember it? Was it Danny Jacobs Jr.? Who was it that someone? No. No, it wasn't him. No, it wasn't Danny Jacobs. It was someone else. Someone that said that they stopped sparring. Oh, yeah. Who the fuck was it? Well, he was fighting Kovalev, and that was Anthony Yard. That's right. That's right. Right. And after he stops sparring, he said he never sparred. Yeah. Yeah. And no one believes him. And then anyone who does is like, well, you probably should have been sparring. Yeah. He looked great in moments in that fight. Like, was it like the eighth round where he had Kovalev and deep shit? Yeah, man. That was a crazy thing. Like, his philosophy, if I remember correctly, Yard's philosophy was, if you don't get hit at all in training, you will be so much fresher when you get to the ring. So he was doing just ridiculous mitt work and bag work and drills, and he already knew how to box. So his idea was that he will have some sort of advantage. And he was a really fairly green guy, right, in terms of like world class competition. Oh, yeah. I mean, this was the first really big fight. Yeah, but really physically talented and just built like a brick shit house. And still is all those things. Yes. But I think the rub is that you do have to spar. Right. You know, you have to feel shots that no trainer that I've ever had this discussion with, and right after the fight, plenty of people wanted to talk about it. They didn't hear anybody be like, yeah, that made sense. No, it's just part of it. You find that a little bit in MMA now. Donald Cerrone was doing that for a while. He wasn't sparring at all. He was just doing pad work and just doing wrestling drills and stuff like that. Kickboxing drills. Yeah. Listen, if pad work and like a really good workout could make you world champion, I'd be like three time world champion by now. It's not it. Sparring is a reality check. Yeah, you know what I mean? You need it. Otherwise, you're just like doing aerobics. Yeah, you need to be tuned in to movement to people and also to danger to be able to exist and to be able to fire under pressure. You have to take shots. You have to absorb those, keep your eyes open. Like all of these things, you can't download them. Yeah. You can't simulate them. But you can only do that so many times. That's the other thing. It's like there's only so many times you can survive it, you know, and gym wars are real. They take a toll on people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I wish that we could shoot that show still because... People wouldn't let you. They won't like... No, everybody... They hide things now. Yeah, everybody thinks that they got like... They all have stories, right? The secret. Yeah. Like there's a story that Klitschko knocked out Deontay in training. Like someone, Dylan Weil was talking about that recently, you know. And I don't make much of that because I think it's unfair. I am one of these guys like, yeah, what happens in the gym stays in here. I'm in there with a camera and it's a set up thing. Well, then, okay, we know what's going on. Right. But the point of sparring is that you're working on shit. Right. You're trying things. You're like, you know, you have weaknesses and you're going to like, lean on trying to, you know... You're opening up your game. You're opening up and you're trusting the guy that you're sparring with to help you work on those things and like catch you if you're slipping. Yeah. So then if the guy catches you when you're slipping, then a month later, he's like, yeah, I caught that motherfucking slipper. So like, yeah, I was trying to pain you to do, man. Like, what are you talking about? I flew you in. Yeah. So I try not to make much of that.