“I stopped competing in the amateurs about the same time I began getting high—fifteen—sixteen. However, that is not to say that boxing left my life—oh no. As an outside boxer, and not a power hitter, boxing helped me adapt to weapons—the knife in particular.

“You don’t want to beat somebody down seriously over something minor. Either a knife or gun comes out or a comeback is planned with third party help. So in defending yourself, the value of boxing is in being able to take that first sneak shot, stay cool, get off at an angle, and lay down enough fire to get you out of there. In the street, if you’re going to war, it’s not an empty hand thing. Fists only get you but so far.

“Perhaps the manner in which boxing served me best when I lived among the drug dealers of the Village of Tall Trees, was the second Tyson Holyfield fight. I’m taking bets with these guys—keep telling them, ‘Tyson is great, but if Holyfield gets into the seventh it’s all over; it’s his fight from there on out. You might say Evander made me a lot of money over time.

“But of course, if you want to be winning bets against dudes who carry guns and really don’t have a lot of money—I mean everything they own is right there in their pocket; it’s not like a crack dealer has an account in the Cayman Islands—then you need to keep it civil. Knowing full well that I would make back all of the money I spent on the pay-per-view, I invited every drug dealer in the Village of Tall Trees to come watch the fights at my place—and they did.

“I just thought it was the right thing to do. What I didn’t count on was the effect it would have. I was waiting at the door to my apartment, holding it open for these crack dealers like its opening night for a big show. Each one of them stops and ditches their dope in the bushes, or wherever, then comes up to the door and hands me their gun. I’m stunned. I’m like, ‘Really guys, your okay with this, with me having all the guns?’

“They all insisted that they were just making their due respects, as they were guests in my house. The boxing, as an institution beloved of gangsters, did its part to keep me among the living.”