Welcome to the fight with Teddy Atlas. I'm Ken Rideout joined as always by my

partner and good friend the great Teddy Atlas. Today is question number two as part of our Q&A series

that we've just recently kicked off.

So we've been soliciting questions from the listeners and audience and today we've got a really good one from

Gerardo and he sent in a little bit of background to set up his question so if

you'll appease me here I'm gonna read his exact email and then I'll set up the question.

So Gerardo writes,

Teddy, I read your book a long time ago and it resonated with me the idea that if you

compromise your integrity even once you allow your fears to get the better of you

those things those things can own you for the rest of your life I didn't know when I was reading it how true it was going to be for me, but for some reason it stuck with me.

Long story short, I ran from a lot of things that made a lot of poor choices and at the age of 34 I'm revisiting some of those things that I ran from

walking through those fears being accountable for the first time in my life it's hard but I know the

alternative that scares me more than anything.

I grew up poor and my father passed away when I was 10.

My mom raised me and my sister with the help of my grandmother in a one bedroom in Newark.

I always felt a little uneasy as a kid. I didn't have the words for what I felt back then, but I would just get these feelings of uneasiness, especially around guys I thought were tough in my neighborhood. My uncle was a pro fighter, four-rounders, so I got

involved in boxing at a young age and I fell in love. I'm sure everyone says that they were

quote good, but in my case I received a lot of extra

attention from the coaches and was one of only a few guys in my gym that were

ever taken to travel from place to place for sparring. Anyway in my first

amateur fight I choked I'm not saying I

performed bad or got outworked I choked. I couldn't throw punches if I if I

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