I must say that boxing is not the self-defense panacea that people think. Sure, I one 37 fights and never got hurt. I was a tall welterweight who stuck the jab in your face and got away. Some of the guys I decisioned easily in boxing were definitely dudes I would not want to fight in an alley. Mostly boxing keeps you out of trouble, until you stop going to the gym and start getting high, and get involved with all of that.

The main thing that boxing taught me was to cheat. Like my trainer would have me fight the first round as an orthodox fighter. So this dude does not know who I am and spends a round chasing this shitty orthodox fighter around. He comes out in the second round with a battle plan, and there I am, a pretty well-schooled southpaw and his game plan goes out the window. By the time he is adjusting early in the third round I’m pulling away. So boxing taught me the necessary duplicity to survive in the stoned zone.

Once you have begun living the criminal life, taking care of serious business is always a matter of more than fists. I would not want anyone to now I used to box for fear they’d be that much more ready to shoot or stab me.

Boxing—as a form of fighting—really only came into play or me with people I was close to. There was my best friend—my roommate. We were angry at each other and he put up his hands and began swinging at me. I let him hit me on the forehead, timed him, and then blasted the body. I didn’t want to knock him out or damage him. But after boxing against really fit fighters, you forget that the normal person can’t take body shots. I also forget he was asthmatic! I was like, Eddy, where’s your inhaler—don’t die on me dude, hang in there!

Then there are the women that think they can fight, and want to beat you up. I was living with this girl who was a body builder. Hell, she had bigger arms than me—looked bigger than me. But they don’t realize the difference. Of course, I’m not going to hit her. She swings on me and I clinch, and then slide around and slip on the full nelson. In the mean time the neighbors have called the cops. I was really worried about how they were going to act. But she was being so unreasonable that it helped my cause. When I told the cops that I slipped the nelson on her they were congratulatory. The one cop says, “Really, man, you used the nelson? Way to go—that’s the best thing for women who are trying to hit you!”