The legendary sports commentator tells tales of his career beginnings with Muhammad Ali, his intimate friendship with Mike Tyson and more.
Our Way with yours truly Paul Anka and my buddy Skip Bronson, is a production of iHeartRadio. Hi, folks, this is Paul Anka.
And my name is Skip Bronson.
We've been friends for decades and we've decided to let you in on our late night phone calls by starting a new podcast, and.
Welcome to Our Way. We'd like you to meet some real good friends of ours.
Your leaders in entertainment and.
Sports, innovators in business and technology, and even a sitting president or two.
Join us as we ask the questions they've not been asked before, tell it like it is, and even sing a song or two.
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Well, it was a great life with Holly from the start in nineteen seventy seven up until his passing, obviously, but a great public life with him as well, having been able to do all those interviews and have such close proximity and to just learned so much from him, see how he treated people, have so much fun with all the magic tricks that he did, and just a lifetime of experiences. And I love him, I'm grateful to him. I'll never forget him. You'd just always being a special thing in my heart that you know. It was like hitting the lottery.
How was dinner? Dinner was great?
And thanks for calling me just before I decided to close my eyes.
You closing your eyes. That could have it at any moment in twenty four hours, your early bird. You know what.
I can never nap. You know, I always admire people who can nap. They can take a power nap and they wake up and they're refreshed. I literally can never nap, can't sleep on a plane, can't nap.
I'm there, I'm there with you. But you will as you get older. Watch you hate you, don't haties. I want to get older. That's part of the layer. You know what I realized my last birthday. I didn't think that getting older came so fast, very pissed off. How you like it? Football man, we're getting there, aren't we? Yeah?
I know, getting getting ready. We had before his preseason in the works, and you and I are gonna talk to getting our pits from James Carville on one end, and then your guys in Vegas on the other end, and we're gonna figure out what to do and we're gonna bust them.
There's our guests coming up, mister sportsman Jim Gray.
How excited he's interviewed everybody. I mean, he's had a long career in his mid sixties. We not only football and sports and all of that look good and deella, he said Armstrong John Glenn Garba Chev. I mean he's mixed the pot up. I can't wait because you have so many stories, you know, with Ali, and he has some rather amazing Ali stories. So to be fun for the two of you to sort of banter a little bit about the great Muhammad Ali Andy and then Mike Tyson. Yeah, and Tyson fifty eight years old and still going at it. He has that big exhibition fight coming up with Jake Paul.
Yeah.
They think that's going to set records in terms of you know, the number one's watch it. So, you know, I want to get his take on what they're like away from sports. It's I mean, we know what Ali accomplished, we know what Tyson did, and the irony of it is they're two totally different people, but there are I believe some similarities as well. So I think to talk to him about the human side of these guys will be fun. And he just came back from the Olympics, so he'll be able to talk, like to hear his take on how he thinks they did in pair is in terms of staging it and everything house and talk about that.
Yeah, he is absolutely everywhere. So I'm looking forward to it. I think would be very informal. He's a smart guy and he's he's an icon and what he does.
He wrote a best selling book, Talking to Goats, Yeah, and Tyson's all over the first chapter. And then of course he and Tom Brady have this podcast that's that's done very well, so he certainly knows this business. There's so much to talk to him about from one end of the spectrum to the other, so that it'd be an interesting interview. It'd be hard to hard to hold him to an hour, because we've been able to keep everybody to an hour.
But you know, it never happens with us, very rarely, doesn't. We have more than enough good stuff, good problem to have. But I'm looking forward to it. So, were you itching to get back on the road. Yeah, you know, busy. We're doing the dock promotion. Now, where is that gonna burst appear in the Toronto Film Festival. Yeah, we're premiering in there at a big theater. When is that September? Oh, that's so oh wow. Yeah, that's right around the corner. So I'm looking forward to that. And then I start. I had to road October, November and January and then Florida and februarymast. You know, I love getting out there. I just it's my rest period. When I'm on that stage. Nothing bothers you on, no phone calls, nothing. He's doing what you love. I know you love it. And then getting back to the dock because you know you showed it to me. You know, I've seen segments of it. Jesus, it's really good. I have to say, it's really a good documentary. Thank you a lot of it. Since I said that you it's going to work in progress, morphing it. You know, it's the first time I'm sick of looking at myself and those things. But well, we're gonna finish it up and you know, we'll see what happens. It was good. It was a lot of fun, good people working with it, and it was cathartic to say the least. Right right, all right, my boy, all right, brother, all my boy, get some sleep and dianks talk and I lived Eadie and we'll see you next week have our usual break bread session. Talk to you.
So there's the man right there, there he is. Man.
Are you doing, Jim?
Oh?
Great, good to see you, Paul Skipper? How hard you pal?
I'm all right.
Well we got you on the other side of the fence. Man, you and Brak you're usually wrapping it up pretty good. Now you're gonna get nailed today.
Nicely.
How you doing, I'm doing great? Thank you. Where are you today?
I'm in Los Angeles. Skippy is about twelve miles away.
And where are you in the palace?
Eight? Oh?
So you're a neighbor to all of us.
Local local, Yes, sir, Do.
You remember the first time we met? Because I do. I mean, you've had such an amazing.
Career and you've I met you.
You've went, that's right, Steve Win's office next time. Do you remember Yellowstone?
Yep?
Sure.
Do they look like I'm not paying attention, mister Eka.
No, No, You're always paying attention. I've seen you on both sides of the battle and the ring with some of those animals.
Well, Jim and I have known each other forty years. Sorry to hear that The thing that's funny is our producer Jordan, who's not on today but whenever we have a guest, of course, and you've got your own podcast, so you know, talking to you about how to run a podcast sort of funny. But he, you know, always sends us some questions like these are topics that you should talk about whatever. And I'm lait of myself because this is one of the only podcasts that we've done so far where I don't even have to look at the questions because I've got so much history with you. It's just so many funny things. But I think at one thing out of the way quickly. My daughter Bella wanted me to remind you that you took us to the Floyd Mayweather birthday party and they had tigers and the giant ice carvings and the whole and what an extravagnswer that was.
You're the Staples Center in that in that hotel.
Hilarious she saw.
She said, yeah, they have tigers here walking around, and.
Bella, without a doubt, not even in the.
Entire building I'm talking about.
There were thousands of people, really something. It was a hell of a party, a lot of fun I.
Hear this guy's a prankster just like us.
Skip.
He is not like you. I've heard about you.
Oh yeah, all True told.
Me something the ones that you did it. Steve told me of one you did too.
Steve, one of twelve. But I want to hear about Jim, so I want to hear what he does. I want to see if he's up on my Did you ever pull anything on Skip?
I don't think so.
But one thing he did pull which wasn't a prank, and it's one of our favorite stories that we have together. As our mutual friend, the late Mel Simon was very important in both of our lives. And of course Jim and I we wrestle over who's closer to herb Simon between the two of us. But Mel was such a kook, and he was such a golf fanatic. And you know, Paul, some billionaires they'd build their own nine hole golf course at their home. Others built an eighteen whole golf course. Well, Mel built a twenty seven whole golf course his property in Indianapolis, and Jim and I went there to play it. And we went in the garage and Jim said, seen anything like this? I said, never in my life, and I've been a golfer all my life.
I've never seen it like this.
He had more sets of clubs, Paul in this garage than they have at the Roger Dunn Golf Superstory. You've never seen anything like it. And two days after we played mel what there?
You know? Went out to play golf and he calls me up and goes.
Yeah, your trench and right, what about?
He stalled like clubs? I said, what what are you talking like? He's stalled like clubs?
My clubs.
I had a set of Yanak sirns, and they're gone. He must have taken him. I said, what are you crazy? The last he's got his own golf clubs. What does he need your clubs for? And by the way, you've got thousands of golf clubs. How would you even know? He was just one of the great characters.
There must have been seven hundred golf clubs in there. And by the way, Skip had given me a set of Yannis, but I don't travel with them to Indianapolis. During the NBA Finals, out there and Larry walked through the fence, he had the same fence line playing with this golf. Skip calls me, he says, did you take those golf clubs back to Los Angeles? I said, Skip, I have not checked a bag for the last twenty two years on the airlines, and the last one I checked they're still looking for. So no, without without question, I do not have this man's golf clubs, and I think.
They're on the golf cart.
I just left Dennis Washington. He's got an island up in British Columbia called Stuart Island, and I've known him in Phyllis for years. So we go up to the island and he's got a nine hole golf course. Trent Jones, I said, Dennis, how the hell did you do this? He said, I just blasted my way through everything. He blasted this island. It's unbelievable what he's done with this ninety acres and in the middle of it, he's got this nine hold. It's just amazing, amazing. I think Callaway helped them with it, and they did some kind of a documentary, but I've never seen anything like it. Well, you know, Dennis, he does it right, Skip, He's a good guy. You must know, Kevin, right, Jim.
Yeah, sure, I've been to Dennis's house a couple times. And Kevin. Kevin's so much fun. He's truly that guy's had everything that can happen in life. He's experienced nine times.
I was there with him from the age eight on when I met that family. I almost raised those two kids. I got him into Sherwood out here, which was a task.
But the question is have you been able to keep him in?
Sure?
I didn't even want to go there, but there were something those two they're great, they're great kids.
He lives on Riviera, and we got him in Riviera on the condition, on the condition that he overlooks let me see what is that. I think it's the seventh hole or the eighth hole, one of those two. I'm not sure. Seventh hole. And he last this music and they said to him, you know, we can hear the music in the clubhouse, so you might want to consider turning that down at least, you know, maybe seven hours of the day. So Kevin turned off music and he's a member.
Now Lee's up to some good stuff. Now you do it very well. You know, you've you've you've interviewed so many people. Man, you've got an amazing career. But this guy behind me, I don't know if you can see the picture of Ali up there, I mean you and I know he's probably the most recognizable human on the planet at one point. And he used to come to my dressing room at Caesar's, and the side of him that I saw on I know that you saw was just amazing to be in his company. Forget about how smart he was. And you know, I'd go to dinner parties and he'd be sitting there and somebody'd be blabbing on for about twenty thirty minutes. He lift his head up, go yeah, right, Japan was out of line, and we did the right thing. I mean, he'd make one comment, right, Jim, and then go back into listening. But he'd come into my dressing rooms gift, and you know he loved music. He loved music. And you can imagine listen all of us in life, and Jim, you can attest to this. You meet that one person and it's like you can't even open your mouth. And it's happened to me a couple of times, and he was one of them. But he'd come in the dressing room at Caesar's and he said, hey, Polly, you know I love that lonely boy. I'm just a lonely boy. And I had to listen to three minutes of lonely boy and I could never tell him it wasn't the best version. But what a guy. But give me some stuff on him, because you probably have more than I did. You ever know when he was with the there's a company out of Australia, Jim that really looked after him. They made boxes and he did a lot of work for them. Yeah, they made the Pratt family. Is that ring a bell?
No?
No, But I knew him quite well and got to travel. But you know, you just kind of stopped me in my tracks with that. You know, I've been lucky to, you know, do all these interviews and meet all these people and last ten presidents of the United States, and Ali was my first interview. And I'll tell you that in a second. But only one time in my life did I meet somebody where I got goosebumps. I couldn't talk and I was just so so amazed. I was with the late Gary Shandling, who was a dear friend, and we were in a restaurant Tuscano, and we were eating dinner and I still get chills telling this. Carol Burnett and Carol Burnett came in and came over to the table, and there was my whole childhood right there in front of me. And I watched her. Obviously, we watched the Jackie Gleeson Show, and there were some other big stars, but like Carol Burnett was Saturday night to me. My parents would go out, I'd have a babysitter, and my brothers would be there. We looked forward to seeing her and Tim Conway and just all those folks come on. And there she was right in front of me. And about two minutes into it, Gary said, Jim, this is the first time I've seen you can't say anything. And my wife friend was with me and Skip and Paul I said, you know what, I'm speechless because that's just how great you are. And she was so nice. She put her arm around me. She sat there and talked. That was it. It wasn't you know. Sounds silly to say, but it wasn't President Bush or Nelson Mandela or Muhammad Ali. I literally could not talk when I saw cal Burnett. And so when I wrote my book Talking to Goats, I had several people do some voiceovers. So I called her on a whim having just met her that one time I got her number and she was in Santa barber and I said, would you read this last chapter? It's about you. The final portion of my book is about you and meeting you. And she did it, and she sang, I'm so glad we had this time together. And I just thought, Wow. And you just never know who's going to impact you in that way. And Skip, I'm sure you've had it. And Paul, you've met everybody in your life, but Carol Burnett and I just would have never ever thought that, you know, having interviewed Borbachoufsen so many of these folks, this is the one where I was going to be so stupefied. I was just so enamored. And guess what she lived up to it all.
She exceeded what was in my head. I had that happen to me because of you. I had that experience because Jim had arranged for Steve Whinn and his great friend Julie is serving and I had to go to the Masters to watch the tournament one year, and he arranged for us to be up in the tower right by the fifteenth Green that overlooks the fifteenth Green. Paul the par five and the sixteenth team the par three, and Jim was, you know, of course, working the tournament, and we were up, way up in the air in this tower, and Steve Wynn, who as we know, you know, had challenges with his eyes, was having difficulty, you know, really seeing what we were seeing, of course, but he would say to me once in a while, he'd say, who's coming up now? And I'd say Ray Floyd, and Steve would yell out, Raymond, Hey, Ray, it's Steve Wynn in the middle of the masters, right, And everybody is like, oh my god, what's going on with this?
Are you kidding me?
I mean, you know, this is hallowed ground, and he's yelling out the names of these people. So make a long story short, the next day, Jim arranged for us to watch the tournament inside the broadcast truck, whereas you both know, they have like forty monitors and you're in this very dark space and the only light is coming from the monitors. And as we're looking at the at the monitors and we're sitting there and it's surreal for me that I'm with doctor j Right, He's on one side of me, and there's a person sitting to my right. But it's so dark in here you can't make out anybody's face or anything. And I figured I want to be in here for the next four hours. So she just introduced myself. So I just took my hand and I put it over and stuck it out, and I put my hand down and said, Hi, I'm Skip Bronson, and the guy said, Hi, Mickey Mantle. I just literally understand. I grew up in Hertford, Connecticut, big Yankees fan. Mickey Mantle was my idol. I had Mickey Mantle plastered in my pictures of him in my room, and everything was about my old essence was about Mickey Mantle. And now all of a sudden, I mean, I to your point, Paul, I was you know, Ahamed Ahamad Ahameda.
It was just.
Unbelievable and he was great. And then you know, when when it was over. Of course we have time later we'll tell the story about Steve trying to direct the Master's golf tournament.
Like, oh, I want to ask you a question. I know it's my nature. I want to ask you a question. Has that ever happened to you when somebody has met you and they just became in such awe that they couldn't they didn't know what to do.
Vice versus all I'd remember, you know, I don't. I can't really recall anyone with that kind of posturing. To me, it happened also with Sophia Lauren and Elizabeth Taylor. But no, no, I've done it. I mean recently a couple of years ago with Putin. But you know, as much as he was only in awe in the way that Jim. You know, these guys are on a whole political vibe, and they treat businessmen and politicians with a certain kind of restraint. But when they meet celebrity, and a lot of guys, you know, a lot of the guys with money that I've met, because they're only interested in me because of celebrity, but they act differently. And to see Putin, who had heard so much about open up and have this great smile and gracious output to you one. You know, all most of these guys love my way. You know, we're all narcissistic in one way or egotistical, but my way, for somehow has blessed me with a neclectic rat of fans. And my way to him was like everything, And when I sang it to him. You could see the kind of unusual glow in his face. And then we went to the Ermitage Museum and in Russia, and he was treating me very much like I was with you know, a coach at the great football team, like Eddie de Bartolo, you know, our dear friend Eddie. We all love Eddie. The only instance where I saw it was with him. I was and you know, he sat down and he played Fats Domino's Blueberry Hill at the piano. I couldn't fuck and believe it put singer Bloberry Hill almost is English.
Not good.
But I didn't tell him that. He had a few people around him and it would be what you assume it would be in terms of the atmosphere. It wasn't good, and we all got through it, but it was just an experience with everyone I've met all over the world too. Finally, and I've been over there a few times to really get the vibe of what's going on there, and you walk away understanding a lot of things. But as I said to me, it was Sophia Lauren and Elizabeth Taylor. And that's a whole other story, but let's talk about you can you tap into Ali a little more. I loved him. I mean, I just thought he was an amazing, amazing human being, and I'm a big fan of his.
So I was seventeen years old and nineteen seventy seven, and I was a sports interned for the ABC Bureau ABC station in Denver, and I was a freshman in college, and they were converting Skip and Paul from film to video tape. So all of the union guys took the buyout. They didn't want to learn a new craft. So I became a videotape editor at seventeen years of age, graduated from an internship very quickly, and they were paying me fifteen thousand dollars. Fifteen thousand dollars to me in nineteen seventy seven was more money than I thought I'd have the rest of my life, because I bought a car for two thousand dollars, a gold Toyota Corolla, and then I would buy a keg of beer for everybody in the dorm on my haull on Friday nights. And I still had and I still would have twelve eight hundred dollars left at the end of the year. This was a lot of money. So I was a videotape editor. What happened was I would come into the station early to edit the sports videotape. And I was there at seven am one morning and in come running the bureau assignment editor station assignment editor. Her name was Sue Two's and she said, you know something about sports? She were the sports intern. I said yeah. She said, Muhammad Ali's at two hours early at Stapleton International Airport, go interview. Well, I was dressed worse than this. I had jeans and a T shirt on. You know, it wasn't dressed very well. I was in a cubicle edited booth. Cubicles were very very small, and so I was in there and I was getting ready for the Broncos draft and I was editing something with Their coach at the time was a man named Red Miller. He took him to their first Super Bowl. So she came running in. He said, Stapleton International Airport, go interview. I'd never done an interview before in my life. I never thought about doing an interview before in my life. I'd watch Howard Cosell and I'd watch all of these guys. But you know, so now, back then there's no cell phones, there's no beepers if the reporter wasn't available at seven am, if they're in the shower, if they're eating breakfast, if they're out for a run. There was nobody there, so I was the only one in the station. So I went out there and there was Ali. There was about twenty people in the room, and I asked my first question and he said, you're doing this interview you don't even shape and everybody started to laugh. Well that really relaxed me, and you know, it was funny. By the third or fourth question, he said, you sound like the local Howard Cosell, and that was the nicest compliment I'd added in my life. So he gave me forty five minutes, forty five.
Minute, forty five minutes wow.
Getting ready to fight Leon Spinks in their first fight, and that he was upset. Then after that he was going to fight a man named Lyle l Alzado in Denver who was at Denver Bronco in an exhibition. Well that's why he had come through Denver and he was early. So we did forty five minutes and we talked about everything and it went great, and I came back to the station to edit myself out because they're not going to put me on the news. I'm seventeen years old. I've never done it. So I was just editing myself out. The head of the bureau, the head of the station, a man named Roger Ogden, came into the booths, and Roger didn't even know my name. And he looked at this tape for forty five minutes and he said, play that again. So we looked at it for an hour and a half and he got up and he said, Jim, you and this videotape are going on the air. It's barely adequate. Barely adequate. So somehow, some way, Paul and Skip when I got into the Boxing Hall of Fame forty years later and then into the Basketball Hall of Fame forty two years later, I said, somehow barely ended up here. So they took that tape and put it on the air. And back in the days, ABC stations were all connected by cable, by cabling AT and T and so forth, and they put this on ABC and then they had df ABC daily electronic feed where the stations would connect and send their best in. Well, there was a man by the name you remember, Frank Reynolds, he anchored World News Tonight, and Frank Reynolds saw Ali having fun with a seventeen year old young kid, so he put it on World News Tonight. Ali saw that when he got to Houston, his next stop, and saw how much fun had got in the reaction that had got and so then he had me come interview and before and after each of his remaining fights for the rest of his career. Don King saw it, Bob Aaron saw it. So they hired me as a very young man, and that was the start of my career. It was all because of Ali. And make a long story short, Ali let me do his last interview ever on television. The last time he ever spoke to the public was in two thousand and four. Was his last television interview. I called Lannie and Muhammad, and we took Muhammad with Mary Lourettin, who revolutionized women's sports with her nineteen eighty four performance, Ray Leonard, who pattered his whole life sugar Ray Leonard, after Ali, and Carl Lewis, who to this day is still the most decorated track and field athlete in the history of the Olympics, and the four of us went up to the Stanford Pool four nights before Michael Phelps left for Athens Grease. He had not won a medal yet and he didn't feel that he belonged on the show. He is now the most decorated athlete in the history of the Olympics with I believe twenty three gold medals and twenty nine medals overall. And so now they play that show back every year. But that was the last show that Ali ever did. And in the final segment of the show, we had these torches flown in. Ali had lit the torch obviously in Atlanta. We had the torches flown in from Athens, and Ali got up and said, and these were the last words he ever uttered in public on television. He said, I'm the greatest, You're the latest. Go win all those medals. It's up to you. And he handed the torch to Michael Phelps.
Great story.
So it was a great life with Ali from the start in nineteen seventy seven up until his passing, obviously, but a great public life with him as well, having been able to do all those interviews and have such close proximity and to just learn so much from him, see how he treated people, have so much fun with all the magic tricks that he did, and just a lifetime of experiences. And I love him. I'm grateful to him. I'll never forget him. I love Lonnie and it just always be a special thing in my heart that it was like hitting the lottery, but literally was like hitting the lottery one and one hundred million chants of the circumstance and the confluence of events that would take place to intertwine this web was just the luckiest thing ever.
I'm surrounded with memorabilia for these past sixty some years, and you know, like behind me, I treasured this picture with Bobby Hull Gretzky or right behind it all signed right, and I've got all over there, some big hockey nut. You must have all kinds of stuff. What's the most precious, what's the most meaningful piece of memorability? Because we live in that world today from baseball cards, I mean, it's such a big business today, and I'm always curious who the collectors are. What do you have that means a lot to you?
Well, I have so much, believe it or not. Last time I saw you was at the Fountain Blue Hotel. That's right. And when Jeffrey and Donnie Sofer opened it up in Las Vegas, beautiful, beautiful facility, and Tom Brady and myself for opening up a museum called the Hall of Excellence. Going to open up just after the first of the year, and it's going to have all the great sports memorabilia in our country's history, in the world's history, all of Tom's rings and jerseys, all the stuff that I've collected over the years, gloves that Ali gave me from his fight, his last Rowe Jordan's shoes from his first championship, and it's all going into the Fountain Blue Hotel called the Hall of Excellence, the gim and fran Gray tom Brady Family Collection Hall of Excellence, and really really proud of this. But what we've done, Tom calls it the Smithsonian of Sports Memorabilia. What we've done is get all of this stuff out of people's safe deposit boxes, out of people's warehouses, all the stuff that people you know, are selling at auction, and we're going to display in the hotel. Kids will be free and we're going to try and inspire the next generation. So we have some things for everybody. We have Simone Biles first Gold Medal Leotard. We have a trophy from everything that is competed for in life, Paul, everything that you can think of is competed for in life. We have Clint Eastwood's Academy Award, Oprah Winfrey's Medal of Freedom. We have Ernie els Claric Jug, Tom Weiskoff's Claret Jug. We have Jack Nicholas's Master's Trophy. We have Adam Silver gave us the O'Brien Trophy, Bill Belichick's Lombardi Trophy, you name it, we have it in their. Pete Sampras has given us as Wimbledon Trophy, his US Open Trophy, the Wimbledon dish from Steffi Graff and Andre Agassi, the Aces Championship trophy from Las Vegas. You name it, we've got it in here. And justin Timberlake's first Grammy. So what we're trying to do is allow everybody to come in. We have the Triple Crown horse Racing from Augie Phipps and from the Churchill Downs winning colors. So if you come in here, you're gonna see something and you're going to be inspired by somebody. Jordan's shoes from his first championship Jordan's first pair of air Jordan's Babe roots bat from his calt shot. So we have the first all from Tiger Woods winning the Masters. So when you say what do I have, that's a favorite. All of these things were given to me over the course of years, and then we have on loan from many of these athletes to participate. We have the torch. We just got the torch from Janet Evans who lit all these torch that very famous scene. Janet Evans one of the great great swimmers in history of the swimming gold medalist obviously in Atlanta and Barcelona, and she has agreed to loan it to us. We have something for everybody. Katie Lidnecki, Katie Lidecki sent us when she just broke the championship, but the World World Championships. She sent us her goggle and cap, the USA cap and the whole thing. So it's really got to be something. And obviously Tom has seven rings and all of his jerseys.
And did Peter Arnell have anything to do with putting.
It all together?
Oh yes, Peter. Peter been spectacular. Peter just been great. Peter designed building and in charge of our design for the Hall of excellence. He is, you know, found you know all the folks with the bulletproof glass and beautiful marble that you know decorates the entire fountain blue. So Peter's been great, Jeffrey Sulfer has been terrific in everything, and we're just really looking forward to it. And you know, there's fifty million view or fifty million visitors that come to Las Vegas, and a lot of them come to that convention center. You know, we're going to give somebody something to come and see and it's a shared experience, whether you're a grandfather with a son, or whether you're just a fan of a team, or whether we're gonna have rotating exhibits. We're going to have. The Basketball Hall of Fame is helping us. Obviously, the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio has been great and giving us the stuff that we'll be able to rotate in to keep things fresh. FIFA out of Switzerland, the World Cup coming, we'll have a lot of great soccer items and what they call football obviously. The golf, the World Golf Hall of Fame, which just moved to Pinehurst in the USGA will also have the US Open trophy from the USGA. So we're going to have just things that rotate. And and Peter has been, Peter's been just Peter's a genius. There's nobody like Peter Arnell.
No, he is unbelievable what he's done now.
He set this whole thing up in motion. He works with Tom, he works with with me, and he's been with the hotel. And I love Peter and I can't They can't tell you how great the folks over at the Fountain Blue have been. Jeffrey Sofer, Maurice, all the folks over there, Jessica, they're just terrific. Mike Pappus, well, we.
Wish him well.
And I know you Starles there, you opened the hotel and you've had a long association with them as well.
Well.
I've known the family for a long time and I opened it with Justin and I wish him well. You know, it's a tough racket and I'm putting a casino in a casino hotel, and I think it's going to do very well. It's a nice property and Arnail's doing a great job with it.
In nineteen eighty four, Gary Hallberg and I won the Greater Hertford Open golf tournament. I have the trophy, but something tells me it won't make the cut if I were to send that over.
That's very funny.
Totally true, but pivoting back to all ages for a second. So he was also a prankster, right, he used to Did he ever prank you ever?
Oh?
My god, yeah, yep, one time. Do you guys remember a little Joe? And he used to have law Familia on Cannon, Yes, And it was a great Italian restaurant and it was pretty notable for its food because the food was great, but it was also known because every night Dean Martin would be in there basically many times by himself, and you sit by himself and very friendly to everybody, but he'd be in there. So anyway, so he'd been sitting by himself. Then he had a cocktail in front of him obviously, and so anyway, So my dad would come to Los Angeles quite frequently, and so we were going to Law Familiar and Ali was in town and I said, Mom, would please come buy it and have dinner with us. I want you to spend some time and meet my dad after all these years, and so he said sure, Great, he was willing to do it. So we went to dinner and we ate, and Ali didn't show up, and nobody had cell phones or anything back then, so that he didn't call the restaurantor anything. He got busy and my dad was disappointed. But we finally decided where we're going to go. So we went out and left. I went to hand the guy the valet thing, and I gave him a ten dollar bill. Ten dollar bill at nineteen eighty three was pretty good thing to hand the guy. You know, it was probably three dollars to part the cars I gave you got ten bucks. A black guy with a hat on a mustache. You can do better than that, Tim Gray that looked up.
I was just standing on.
My name was would you to do better than that? How was the man going to make a living? It was Ali. Ali had been the late, so he was waiting for us outside. He had a fake mustache. He always had to fake mustache, I don't want to say always, but he'd have one dash and he had a pair of glasses on that were his. And he took the valet's hat and so anyway, he cranked me and my dad and so we ended up standing out there for about twenty or thirty minutes, and all Lee, to his credit, everybody who came out, he went and got their car, and every time he got there or when it was done, he would take off the hat and take off the mustache. He said, why you want to treat the champ like that? Why you want to do why do you want to do a man like that? Every one of them just about fell down. It really, it just kind of spoke to just the human that he was. One time we were riding after I had done the interview, he asked me to go on a part of his barnt storming with him. And he was driving from Atlanta to Columbia, South Carolina, And so we did the press conference in Atlanta, and we got into a car and we went through Augusta and we stopped and he did a press conference there and Augusta, and we kept riding in the car and I was good BUNDEENI was Ali was in the front seat and this was a big Cadillac with the top down, and in the back seat was Howard Bigham and then me and Howard. They had taught how to run a film camera, but he was basically a folk You know he was a great photographer. So we're riding by right along the border of Georgia and Carolina, and we have to get off to get some gas, and we get off and as we get off, we look down off the side of the road there's a bunch of kids playing basketball on dirt, not on pavement, on dirt. And actually the basket, guys, the basket was a peach barrel nailed to a tree and they were shooting a basketball into no backboard. So alisis to Bandini, Jim Gray watched this. Let's drive down here. So we drive down there in this big white, big Cadillac with the thing down wooded area in the middle of nowhere. I mean, there's no buildings around, no anything, nothing, but there's maybe fifteen kids, shirts and skins playing basketball, all black kids. We drive down, nobody pays any attention. Ali gets out of the car. Howard turn on that camera, and Howard turns on the camera. The ball a few minutes later rolls out to Ali and he picks it up. It only hadn't noticed him up until that time. They just kept playing. Picks up the ball and one of the kids without his shirt on, comes running over looks at Oli holding his ball, and you ever seen those You ever seen those cartoons where the eye is like with the toothpicks and it goes straight up and the eye is just getting wider and wider and wider and wider and wider, and he reaches out and he touches them kind of light. Jesuys Ali. It's Ali. And all these kids came running over fifteen kids when we started Skippy. Fifteen kids, fifteen in the middle of nowhere, Ali shooting baskets with them. Nobody has any pens, nobody has any cameras, can't get any autograshket. But he'shooting baskets with them, and Howard's recording it, and all this fifteen kids turns into twenty twenty, turns into fifty, fifty, turns into one hundred. Now you can hear the mountains literally moving. This is in the middle of nowhere. You can hear they're coming down. Almost unimaginable how many people showed up pretty soon. There were chickens out on the court. People were coming and their dogs. Turns into about five literally five six hundred people in the middle of nowhere. Ali finally says, and they had pens, and he signed the autographs, and he tapped every kid on the head, and he shook every hand, and he hugged every grandma and he did everything. And you're wondering, where are all these people? Anyway, that's the magnetism that he had. And he was great with him. At about two hours there, we were late to Columbia. By the time we left, it was like one of those helicopters leaving Saigon. You know, you literally there were people hanging on the trunk, on the hood. The whole thing was a little scary because you didn't want somebody to get hurt. That's how like they didn't want him to leave. And how much adulation and love and and just the magnetism and the graciousness and the gregariousness of him, and he loved it and we all loved it, and it was just it was just an amazing thing to see. So we drive away and he's soaking wet, you know, it's hot and everything. It says, you know, he you know, he's in a nice clothes because he's doing press conferences, so you know, they had to get some clothes out and he changed and so forth. He says, who else do you think can do that, Jim Gray, you think that'll make your program?
I called you by your first and last name always right then? As always?
You know, I defy to disagree with this, but if he walked down the street with Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney, he would still get the number one position. That's how loved this guy was. How did you Brady hook up on a podcast?
How did that happen?
So?
I been doing the Monday night football on Westwood One for a long time. My partner at that time was Don Shula, and we had Mike Ditka was my other partner, and so we would do the pregame and halftime segments. So Don wanted to retire, and so I was at Riviera, a golf course, and when I finished hitting golf balls, they said, hey, your buddy Tom Brady is over with his son. He was with his two or three year old son Jack, over on the tennis court. So I walked over and just said hi. I had interviewed Tom numerous times, covered his games, worked at NBC, and broadcast his Super Bowls on the radio. So we just started talking for a few minutes. And he was still a month or two away from going to training camp, and he said, are you're going to be doing the show this year? I said yeah. I said, matter of fact, coach Schula wants to retire. Would you be interested in picking up his spot? And he says, what does it entail? And I said, well, it's every Monday night. I'm going to have to do it eight or nine minutes in the pre game and seven or eight minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes at the halftime. He said, let me think about that, and I had had his numbers, so he said to get in touch with me. So he got back in touch with me a few days later and he said, Tuck to Steve Dubit, my agent, and so I talked to Dubit and we hooked up and that was about two thousand and nine ten, maybe two thousand and nine or ten, and so we've just continued to do it.
When did the actual podcast start.
Well, it was a radio show and then we moved. When we moved from Westwood One to Serious XM, we went to an hour show instead of doing the pregame and a halftime, and that showed to this day still kind of acts as a sort of a pregame it's on Mad Dog Sports Radio at six o'clock. Then it goes over to NFL Radio at six thirty, and it goes from six thirty to seven thirty before the national coverage on Westwood One picks up with the game. So we moved over there. This is our this is be four years ago. We moved. And so when we we're a radio show, you guys, and the radio show converts, the content converts to a podcast, and so it's the same content that goes out over NFL Radio and matt Dog Sports Radio. It's just that there's the ability to download it on Apple and Pandora and Spotify and everything else. And you know, Tom Tom is so popular and you know, he's quoted like the president. So everything that he says, you know, people pick up and people here, and he has a tremendous following. So the podcast, even though the material comes out on Monday night, you know, people downloaded for the rest of the week. And so, you know, it's been been a lot of fun. And he's he's a better human being than he ever was a quarterback. And he's just been a pleasure to be with and to work with and to have in our lives and as a friend and truly truly love it. I really love him. And Larry's been fantastic Larry Fitzgerald, So we we've all been together for a long time.
You and Paul have so many different all these stories, but what about the public persona of a guy like Mike Tyson versus who he really is? Like I know him a little bit, you know, you know him intimately, But any similarities with Ali in terms of personality and the way in terms of the way, you know, the way they are in their private lives versus I remember, I'll just throw out one thing. When I was in Las Vegas and you know, working with Steve when and went to a number of the Tyson fights, there was always a you know, big party afterwards.
He was so menacing.
I mean, he was so different than than Ali.
Ali was just you know, beautiful.
Oddser you know, Tisse would come come charging out of the corner right just like an animal, I mean literally like an animal, and he was so fierce and after he'd have his posse with him and he coded the after party. He was the only guy I ever saw in that kind of an environment where it was just scary to even see him. He was just a frightening kind of person. But I'm just curious in his real in his personal life, where you also, you know, interacted with him.
How did you find him?
You know, I love Mike and know Mike since he was a very very young man, and been all over the world with him in countless instances. And his life has been a roller coaster. I mean, it's uh and it you know, you just there's been a volatility to it. And he's the most honest athlete I've ever been involved with. He's dear friends. He takes his own medicine. Paul takes his own medicine. He doesn't blame anybody for any of his errors, for any of his vaults, for any of the things that he's done wrong. He doesn't hide behind the trainer, doesn't hide behind the promoter, doesn't blame anybody for what he does wrong. And that's he takes accountability and responsibility. Who does that? Which one named them? Where are they? Where in public life do we have that?
Now?
You cannot condone a lot of the hideous behavior and bad acts that he's done by the same token, he is truly trying to be better tomorrow than he was yesterday, and he truly thousands of acts of kindness that he does not want publicity for and is not looking to be pat on his head and told good man, good job. That's not how he runs his life. And you know, I just have tremendous admiration for him. I respect him. You know, it's an interesting thing. I just have this here. This is not meant to be a plug toward me or anything. But I interviewed this man after he bit another man's ear off. Every instance you can have, every instance you can have, I've seen him. And so I let two people read their chapters when I wrote my book, because I wanted to make sure that what I was saying they were okay with and that it didn't overstep something personal, something personal. Mike Tyson wrote me a letter when he was in jail. A five page letter came to my house when he was in the Indiana State Youth Peditentiary. I don't know how he had my address, because we were not socially acquainted. We were professionally acquainted. So I got this letter handwritten, and I still have it to this day. And I got to page three and he said, and it says and I'm quoting it, mister Gray. They will kill my number tomorrow. Kill my number is prison jargon for saying they'll let me out of jail and kill the number of days that I have left and my number as an inmate. Cool will kill my number tomorrow if I will admit to this rape. But I will never admit to something I didn't do. I did not rape this woman, so I will stay here in jail rather than admit it. Next paragraph, however, there are four or five other things that I've done throughout the course of my life that are worse than what I'm accused. So therefore I feel I'm at the right place at this time.
Good good stuff.
Fast forward now and he gets out of jail, and I show up outside the penitentiary. Don King's walking him out a little spera coron. All kinds of people are around waiting for him, and they have the big black jacket hang up over and I said, Don, we gonna do this interview. Dodd says, Mike, we're talking to Jim. Yep, we're talking to Jim. So we sit down and we do the interview. Mike has his lawyer and I say, Mike, I got this letter from you is live on the Today Show. Okay, live on the Today Show, and then I'm going to be on Dayline on NBC. I'm worth NBC at the time. And I say, Mike, you sent me this letter. Is this a private letter or is this a public letter? If it's private, I won't mention it. It's public, I'd like to mention it. If you're okay with go ahead, mister de graying anything is fine, not a problem. So I've read that portion. I say this live on TV. Said Mike, what are the four or five other things that you've done that were worse than what you were accused? What were they? He looks at me, looks over at his lawyer, looks back at me, with no warning that this was coming, and he says, it's probably best not to discuss this on national television because I don't know the statue of limitations. However, what I wrote you was true, powerful, powerful. I've been with him. I've been with him for a long time, and on the back of the book he wrote this, Jim interviewed me. After my prolific fights, we were a sensational duo. Out of the ring. Jim became my most trusted friend. He's there no matter what and never afraid to give it to me straight, as he does in this book, Jim talks to goats because it takes a goat to noa goat. So if you want the truth, ask Mike Eisen. Mike Heyson will tell you the truth, even when it's at his own peril. And that's just a very very rare and so I would do anything I could try and help Mike. And I think Kiki's wife has just been sensational for him, and I wish him well. That doesn't mean that he won't have another bad moment, because he's capable of it at any time, and he recognizes that. But it's really he's been you know, the guy who read a thousand books. You know anybody who's read a thousand books? You know anybody, right, Jackman Mao. And they's race all in the same breath, as well as the tenants of the Red Book. I don't know many people. I don't know any other people like that.
But on that note, a lot of people that I've met that are a great man, they were all readers. I defy you think of all the great smart people you've met and ultimately you'll find they were all great readers.
They read, read, read, and read knowledge.
Oh, I was going to call you actually ask you this question. So it's funny that I get a chance to do it with my best buddy over here. This exhibition that's something I can call it, that he's about to have with one of the Paul brothers. How do you first of all, how do you feel about that? And you know, people think these are totally rigged, you know, they're totally staged. What do you think about this upcoming fight?
I think it's entertainment. And I think Mike's fifty eight years old. And I did his fight against Roy Jones Junior during COVID and there were like six people allowed in the Staples Center and we did that broadcast and I did it with Marl Ronalo did the play by play, and Snoop Dogg was one of the commentators, and you know, and that I believe that had like two point five million buys, which is so far ahead and the way of anything that anybody does in the pay per view business. And Mike Tyson at the time, so this is whenever COVID was twenty twenty one, I guess three or four years ago, and nobody comes near. Nobody comes near those numbers. So the public has a fascination with him. They want to see it, They want to tell their kids about it, they want to bring their kids. The kids want to come and Jake Paul, for whatever the reason, has captured the public's fancy in some fashion, whether he's you know, whether they hate him or they love him. He's got, however, many twenty five thirty billion I don't know how many millions of followers on YouTube. He has dedicated himself in a lot of ways to becoming a fighter. Now he hasn't fought the competition that people would like to see him fight, but he's become representative of somebody who at least is putting in the work and attempting to do this in a fashion that kind uphold his name and be competitive. So I don't have any problem with this. I don't like people who make judgments on people. You know, we live in Los Angeles, all of us. If we're going to start making judgments on people, we're not going to have anybody to talk to. So as long as what you're doing conformance with the law, like, I'm happy Mike can go out and make millions and millions of dollars at this age fighting, I don't want him to get hurt. I hope he doesn't get hurt, but I don't think at any point in anybody's life, being fifty eight years old or when he was sixteen years old, I don't think you will want to be hit by Mike Tyson. So I believe he can defend himself and he can protect himself. So I'm happy he can make the money. And you know they're going to sell out this at and T Stadium. Jerry Jones didn't put this in there because he didn't think anybody was coming Netflix with However, several hundreds of millions of viewers around the world isn't paying for this because they don't think anybody's going to watch it. It'll be the most viewed fight, It'll be one of the most viewed events. And Michael be in good shape. He's training and I've been to see him training and he's you know that he had the problem with his ulcer. He's getting back in shape and he's in great chairs.
So you had to pick a winner, would you make a prediction.
I'm picking Mike Tyson. I'm not betting against Mike Tyson. Let me ask you a question. Did they tell Michaelidgelo not to pain anymore? Did they tell Frank sin to don't show up at the arena when he couldn't remember all the words all the time, but everybody wanted to see him and his voice was still magnificent. You know, they tell all these people what to do with their lives. They're so busy telling everybody what to do, how to do it, why to do it, what they should be doing. But it's not their lives. So what's the You know, this is what he was to do, and he got a license to do it. The State of Texts said, okay, come fight.
From my friend Paul's benefit, you know herb Simon, our wonderful friend. I told him that you were going to be on our podcast that Paul and Eric said about having you on, and he said, you have to be sure that you get him to tell the Hank Aaron story. So ifpe don't mind, hippete indulgus.
Can I plug the book again? Even though Ary was talking to go Hank was a dear friend. And Ike put something on the back of his cover here too. If I can find it. I know Jim Gray the man. He stood up for me with tremendous integrity and principle. He suffered the consequences for doing what was right on my behalf and for others, for a just cause. Integrity is what matters. And I will never forget his honor and honesty. So here's what happened. It's a sad state of affairs that this happens. I was with my wife and my in laws and we went to a restaurant on the river down in New York, on the Hudson River. And it's one of those fool food places, you know, where the guy's standing there with the towel over his arm and you know, he's got a bow tie on and the you know, tuxedo and all this nonsense. And we walk into this place and we sit down, you know, my in laws and everybody's happy. It's a famous place. Pretty empty, but it's a famous place. So you know, we get to go and you know, you see all the lights across the river and so forth.
Go in there.
And when we walk in, there's Billy and Hank Aaron sitting on a bench. And so why did interview Hank before new hike. So I walked over and said, helloone. My father in law big baseball fan and mother in law love love baseball, you know, baseball was was the America's pastime. And SO introduced him and we spoke for four or five minutes and everybody was happy, and we go sit down. About twenty or thirty minutes later, I started looking around. Where's Hank sitting? You know, it's just kind of naturally, you know, you're gazing around, and where's Hank. Where he is We'll send him a drink or something, still sitting on the bench. So I walk over to Hank. I say, you guys waiting for something? She said, no, we're just we're just waiting to be seated. You're not waiting for you to No, we're just waiting to be seated. I walk over to this made or d and then the guy with the towel and all the bullshit, you know, like important guy. I say to him, Mom, Joe Namath been to the restaurant. Oh yeah, Joe comes in all the time. I says, it's the table right away, no wherever he wants. Said now about Joe Demajia, Oh Joe Joe, Yeah, absolutely, and I go through a couple others and I said, huh, forget about who he is. He happens to be the home run King. But why is this man sitting over here waiting for a table in a fucking empty restaurant? In an empty restaurant? Why are these two people sitting there waiting for a table? But we're going to get to that. You're going to get to him, I said, the restaurant's empty. Where when are you going to get to that? Give him a table, let's go. So they walk him in, they sit him down, and they don't sit him in the front road. They said him liking rows four, not on the river, and they got like nine empty tables. I said, what's wrong with this table? So it was just a despicable thing. I said, Hank Coola, we should go, you know this, let's let's let's let's get out of this. Well, he didn't want to make a scene and everything, and I told my family, I said, let's go. We're bad enough, We've paid whatever it was. We all got out of there. So I went and I told my bosses at CBS what had gone on. I was working at CBS Sports at the time, and I said, you know, I'd like to do an interview with Hank on how he suffered over the years because Hank was not permitted in baseball at the time. He wasn't a manager, he didn't have a front office job permitted the row word, but nobody found a job for him. We went and did the story and put this on the air, and Hank said the baseball in effect had blackballdom because he was black, and it was racist. And these were all Hags words based on what I'd seen in the restaurant. The story was not about the restaurant. The story was about why he couldn't get a job. And you know, this is an affable, amiable gentleman, Hey, gar Like, if you have a problem with Hagaron, you better look at yourself. So there's you know, nothing in his character would indicate that this man should not be doing whatever he wants in baseball. And he's the home run King. And this is now sixteen seventeen years after the exploits of what he had done by breaking vap roots record. CBS had just taken over baseball from NBC, and I was scheduled to do the World Series. Jack Buckin, Tim McCarver. We ran the story on the air, and he criticized baseball, and he spoke about racism and baseball. And my boss at the time was man named Ted Shaker, who ran the executive producer of CBS Sports. Story runs and then on Monday, I get a call. Story runs on Saturday. Monday, I get a call, called me into the office. He sits me down. He says, why did we put this story on the air. This is a horrible story about baseball. Should have never gone on the air. Fay Vincent and the Commissioner's office and not screaming hollering at us. How could we treat them as partners like that, calling baseball racist. I said, we don't call baseball races. Hank Aaron related his story. We told Hank Aaron's story, and you approved the story. You watched it before it went on the air. So now you're calling me in after went on the air, and you're mad at me, mad at me for putting something that you approved going on the air. Was a good story on Saturday. It was a good story when we shot it. And now because baseball's upset somehow, this isn't a good story. This isn't an accurate this isn't a truthful story. I said, I said, what are you mad at me? He says, because you led a horse to water and you made him drink. I said, I didn't live, need him anywhere. This is the life he lives. Make a long story short. They took me off the World series. They benched me for doing and reassigned and replaced me for telling Hank Aaron's story that was a truthful story about how he had been disparaged and disregarded and not treated with the proper respect, and that race was at it at the core of it. And so Hank and I became very good friends ever since then. And you know, it was another very just fortunate out of a very unfortunate circumstance at a restaurant, and in telling his story became a very fortunate thing for me that I was able to know him in the way that I got to know him and spend time with him, in the amount of time that I got to spend with him, and truly loved hankin so to think that that was going on in nineteen ninety one, you never know. And the tremendous, tremendous onslaught of hatred that he experienced for breaking Baby Brutes record was just really it was sad. It was sad, but he handled himself so so beautifully, and so you know, I know it had to hurt, and I know he suffered, So it was it was it was to see the dignity that he had been stripped of and be maintained by him internally and to face what he had to face externally was was remarkable.
The lack of respect of which we all want, you.
Know, decency, respect, common courtesy. So and he never forgot it, and that heartened me because you know, you just try and we all just try and do what's what's right. This was, this was wrong that he was being treated like that. So why would you want to see anybody treated like that, let alone a national international treasure and hero. What is going on here?
Yeah?
It's so eclectic and you've had such a meaningful life. I mean you look at everybody from Nelson Mandela and Neil Armstrong, on and on, all the sports figures, all kinds of amazing people. Is there anyone left done your bucket list that I like to interview? Yeah, it's not over for you. You're still doing it.
Really, I don't sit here and say I've missed any you know, so I don't. But there is one guy i'd like to talk to, and we got to meet him, Brandon. I'd like to meet the pope and interview the Pope. Here's a man who spends his entire existence if you take the religion out of it, because I'm not religious and I don't follow any of those tenets and so forth, but who really wants what's best for the world, what's best for his following, for humankind, men, women, black, white, Asian, Muslim, Jewish, everything, and who else dedicates themselves to that? And the institution I understand, has a lot of issues. There's a lot of controversies. There's all kinds of things that go on with a variety of very important things. But I think he'd be just an interesting person too. But I would want to interview him about sports and the importance of sports.
Had a lot of soccer out of them.
What's the most important sport around the world to use?
Well, I think soccer is coming on. I think football's probably lost its luster. I think baseball we love it, we know where it sits. But I don't think it's the sexiest sport anymore.
Far and away soccer, and it's side away. Argentina is on top of the world now with pulling the world up. But I don't but if it was just you know, no, I really don't sit here and say, boy, I wish I could, you know, I have a one on one with with whoever.
Yeah, so theoretically you would have loved to admit any of the popes.
No, I didn't want to meet the last one.
I didn't.
I didn't he didn't think he Pope Benedict didn't interest me. Pope John Paul came to Philadelphia. I thought you would have been really interesting. I'm not a I don't know anything about the history of popes. I'm not, but I mean just I just like the fact that they ded it. I'd also like to I'd like to interview President she because because I'd like to know what those folks think about sports and the systemic doping and what they've done and you know, just all kinds of issues. How the two thousand and eight Olympics catapulted that country into the world, and you know, then they've had them back there again for the Winter Olympics, which really didn't fit, but they've had it, so he'd be interesting too. And it's not because these people with political figures. It's because I think that sports can be used for good, for parent times and for future generations. I've made a great, great living interviewing all these people who've had all these tremendous achievements, who have inspired people across the world to go out and have greater performances than the ones that they've had. So I think that sports can be used for good. And I worked with a man named Bud Greenspan. You were probably friends with him, Paul.
Yeah, Bud was.
A brilliant man and he was one of my first jobs. And you know, we always thought that leaving of his films, would you know, Jesse Owen's Returns to Berlin, the Last African Runner, the Will M rout Alph Story, all those incredible Billy Fist first to Pilot. You know, it was a Bob s Letler in Aleesia and he was shut down in World War But he always felt that if he could leave these films, people across the world would see them with wonderment of how those folks achieved all of this, and that they could go out and do it themselves or do it better. So I always kind of thought, you know, that was really noble and really good. And I've had that life in sports. No, I've got to talk to Ali and Phelps and Brady and Lebron and Jordan and all these folks over and over and over and over again, and just seeing the dedication of Tiger and the myopicness of Floyd Mayweather and Mike Tyson and how you know, it just didn't matter to Serena Williams. She was going to figure out a way to win, you know, and to be able to do that. So I think that there's benefit in glorifying those who have had this commitment to excellence. Perhaps those two people, those two people could help with the closure. And obviously I'm never going to talk to president She and I would say it's probably a long shot to get to the Pope.
But in keeping Umi ask a question, what was your takeaway from the current Olympics, which was amazing to walked away from it saying, I think these athletes, with everything they put into it, how amazing they are in their dedication. I think they should be paid for what they're doing. I think there's so much money made anyway, because we're living in a world of where it's all about the money. There seems to be a lot of money made from the Olympics for businessmen, and I think these kids should be paid.
What's your take on that, Well, I think they're all professionals now anyway. But I look at it differently. I'm more idealistic. I think the money is available for Siman Bios. I don't think she's going to do very well for the rest of her life. And for you know, all the others, Katie Ldecki, the American basketball team. Obviously, they're all mull time millionaires as it is. But I look at it in a different way. I think that these Olympics brought the world closer in the world together for sure, and I think that Paris and the French did an amazing job. It was almost perfect. I was there, my wife, friend and I we were there for twelve days. There was not one thing that you could find fault with. The traffic was gone, the venues were beautiful, the performances were fantastic, the organization and security was off the charts great. And I just think that when you can have whatever it was one hundred and eighty or two hundred and six countries come together in peace and coexistence and inspire the youth around the world and old people who can't get out of their chairs for seventeen days, sixteen days of glory. And yes there's going to be cheaters, and yes there's going to be controversy, and yes this judge didn't get it right and screwed up the whole thing with gymnastics. Okay, those things do occur, and those things are really unfortunate human they're human errors. But I just think that the Olympics, and yes, the IOC, and maybe all of these folks are profiteering and so forth, and the cities are left behind with all these venues and many of them have gone broke in the past, and you know, and so forth. But I just look at it in the fashion, Paul is when I hear and I see everybody having a good time, and they loved being at beach volleyball. Nobody watches beach volleyball, and they love being at the pool, and you can't name four people in that pool tomorrow, and all these other sports. I went to ping pong, and it's fascinating to see these folks from China, in North Korea and all these places playing this thing, and they're bad in this thing. Why you can't even keep your eye on it fast enough? Let alone think how they react. And you go see Rafa Nadal, who's gotten literally hundreds of millions of dollars going back out to Roland Garrams to play Djokovic, who's crying. Who's crying because he won a gold medal after four or five attempts of not that means something. So it's not I don't want to be disagreeing with you. It's but that's to me, not about money. It's not. It's got nothing to do with money. It's got everything to do with There for the grace of God, go iy and here we are showing the world the glory of our times. And there's something that that that no amount can take the place of that.
I saw.
I saw Scottie Scheffler with a gold medal. He's crying. He didn't cry when he won in the US Open. Yeah, I don't think he cried when fred Ridley and these folks put the green jacket on it. Now they'll want that honor and that tradition for the rest of their lives. He wasn't crying. So there's meaning behind this, no matter whether you're the last African runner to finish the marathon three hours after everybody's gone home with a broken kneecap, because your country saw fit to send you there, not to start the race, but to finish the race. So I think there's I think there's a there's just tremendous merit to all of this that we all benefit from enjoy watching. And I was sorry to see the Olympics end. And the world needs this going on with all the strife and conflict everywhere and everybody addling each other, be it you know, overseas, or political nature here or whatever. It's just I just think it's good. So let the institutions profiteer, let it stay alive, let it keep going, because this is good for all of us.
Did you miss Russia?
I miss their athletes, except for the people who are in the systemic doping. No, we don't miss that. We don't miss any of that. But do I miss the next Olga Corbett?
Yeah?
Of course, because I want to see her and I want to see who that next man is who can do something great. Do I miss the people who are cheating? No, I don't miss that at all. Do I think that something that somebody over there who has nothing to do with the Ukrainian War being punished because that's where he was born. And now, just like when President Carter said, we're not going to Moscow for the Olympics because you think that's going to stop them from going into Afghanistan. Yeah, I felt sorry for Carl Lewis. Yeah, I felt sorry for all those athletes. Forget about Carl Lewis, that's a bad example, because he went on and participated in four Olympics. More, I feel sorry for the ones who only had nineteen eighty. So, yeah, do I miss I'm not sitting here crying about it, But I would have missed seeing somebody who would have come on to a world stage, who might have given us a performance and who might have introduced themselves to us that we would never forget.
So we've kept you for more than an hour. We told you it was going to be an hour.
I'm happy that you joined this podcast. I'm honored that you asked me to come on. I obviously love you Skipper and Paul. You've been just tremendous in the little time that we spent together. I've enjoyed over the years, and you've just been tremended.
And by the way, nobody, I'm going to sound like Bill Walt, nobody ever wrote a better song than My Way. That was long of the world, so much so that they sang that and I don't know who sang it at the end of the Olympics, and she was fantastic.
But of you, And every time I hear that, I think of you. And it's not what somebody does one time, it's what sustains. And that has sustained. I don't know how long that's been, around sixty or seventy years. And they play it every day, all day everywhere, with your voice, with Frank's voice, with the lady in France's voice. Everybody's taking a crack at it. Olgos Presley, somebody sent me a tape of him the other day. It was unbelievable.
And one other thing we met also again because we it's always been in the strangest of timing. On the streets of San Francisco. We were going down to a shopping center. I ran right into you in San Francisco. Do you remember that I do?
That was a long time ago. It sure was? That was it twenty five years ago?
I remember Joy?
Okay, there you go.
Well I loved I loved being on here and thanks. You know Skip, Skip some miracle. You know there is a personal the planet that Skip broughtson does it?
No, he doesn't know the pope, but he'll get there.
You do. The Pope, Well, I don't know him yet. Let's put it down.
It's always yet with Skip.
Tell him that story about somebody said you were a name dropper. This is one of the funniest things I ever heard.
Yip a name dropper?
Are you kidding? Like Frank Sinatra Tolby, don't be a name dropper? Right?
Everybody knows Skip and everybody loves Skip.
Thank you, He's amazing. Do you guys know You guys know Rudy Durant, don't you? Oh sure, Rudy's Rudy's beautiful guy. I think Rudy's ninety three or ninety four years old. And Rudy coined a phrase that's really really interesting. He said, friendship is a serious business.
I've learned a lot about friendship from Paul.
To tell you the truth, I mean that sincerely, because you know, there are acquaintances and then they're friends. It's wonderful to be acquainted with so many people, but they have good friends like you guys, means a lot to me, I can.
Tell you that. So thanks thanks to both of you for that, Thanks for having me see around.
All right here, Reggie Jackson's calling right here, Hey, Reggie, Reggie, I'm good. You know the great all Aika he's on. I'm dis finished his podcast. Say hello, Paul, that's Reggie Jackson.
Reggie, Oh, how you doing?
You know, you know I leave?
I know, yeah, you live like two doors. Well that was about twenty acres of trees. There were no streets. I was up on one yell and you were around the corner, right, Jack speaking Carmel.
I used to go for little walks and walk by your house.
I don't walk by that your old house every other day. Oh where do you live now?
I'm down I'm down in Los Angeles? Okay, you're still up there, obviously, right, Reggie. But great property. I loved living up there. You know, all my kids left and went to college and I was left with you know, my wife and I and you know, it was a huge property, twenty acres and we had our last child and we moved down to La But I loved it up there. I'm glad you're still up there because it's really a beautiful place to bring kids up and to enjoys.
It is yonder full, the weather is so green, and then you can you can hide, you know, you can be a celebrity and red there comfortably.
Yeah. And I went up there like in the early eighties and I looked at Pebble Beach and I just went, nah, just not for me. And I said, anything available, And the realtor said, there's an empty piece, but there's no road. And we went up this dirt road for about a few miles and I got to the top and it was just trees, nothing, And I said how much And she told me. I said, I'll take it. So for the next two years, I was just blowing up everything. And I put a road in and you know the area. I don't think there's more than six homes up there, is there?
Oh?
No, the errors at least home every five to ten acres.
Yeah, her wealth, he can shie old.
Great memories up there, a great memories.
All right, skipping, skipping, Paul, Thank you guys. Thanks second, just hanging us on, Thank You, Ray, Thanks Skipping, Thanks.
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