"The following is an unedited chapter dealing with several of my fights...letting fans know just what we boxers go through before, during and after a fight"

By "Iceman" John Scully

One guy that I sparred with who was a good fighter was Charles 'The Hatchet' Brewer, the IBF Super middleweight World Champion. I traveled to Philly for a few fights to train with Charles. I boxed with him quite a bit for his fight with Herol Graham. I was boxing southpaw like Graham and I found that Boxing and moving with Charles was the best way to deal with him. He is a much better inside fighter than he is when you box and move with him. I also sparred with him when I was training for a fight with Drake Thadzi (IBO title fight). Thadzi would be a tough opponent as he had just come away with a 12 round decision over James 'Lights Out' Toney not that long ago. (James was obviously weak from making the weight and I know this because I talked with him at the weigh-in before that fight and before he got on the scale he was a zombie. Even one of the kids I was with from my gym asked me 'What's wrong with him, he looks retarded." It was weird. We got there and I went up to James and he looked at me and I will never forget the way his face looked and the way he looked at me. He looked near death. He looked so out of it. In the beginning of the fight JT looked pretty good but Thadzi's constant pressure and his unusual strength for a 175 pounder wore James down. The last two rounds saw Thadzi all over him on his way to winning the 12 round decision. As I would soon find out, James Toney would not be the last guy to go into a fight Drake feeling the terrible effects of weight loss.)

When I think back on it, going by myself to train in Philadelphia for this fight was just another mistake in training for that fight. I thought I would benefit from getting good work with Charles in preparation for my fight with Thadzi but I was there in Philly alone. My trainer was back in Hartford so I was pretty much doing everything on my own. Charles is a hard guy to really get to know. He wasn't overly friendly. Not a bad guy, just not real verbal with me. One thing that I didn't think was too cool and, really, it was kind of stupid, was his habit of making noise when you hit him with a good shot...kind of a whining sound he makes to say, in effect, that your punch had no effect on him. Like he wanted to give the impression that he was toying with you or something. That would be all well and good if not for the fact that Charles wears one of those full faced 'Darth Vader' sparring masks that has a bar going across your face so that your sparring partners gloves never even touch the skin of your face. Sometimes guys with broken noses or cuts will wear this but Charles wears it all the time. I on the other hand do not. So when I am sparring with Charles and I hit him with a good shot and he makes that condescending little noise of his to show that I didn't faze him, well, I had to kind of laugh at that when here I am not wearing anything but a regular issue sparring head gear. That's like guys that wear the body suit protector around their midsection then when you hit them in the body they act like they have abs of steel. Still, even with the full face headgear on, it wasn't enough to stop Eric Harding from dropping Brewer with a left hand a few days before I got there. I wasn't there that day but I heard he didn't make that little noise of his that day.

Anyway, about 10 days before my fight with Thadzi, a fight I had TERRIBLE trouble making weight for, Charles hit me with an uppercut right on the nose that immediately caused blood to flow. We boxed one more round and then I finished up and went back to the Hotel. That night, all through dinner, my nose bled constantly. It was kind of funny, me sitting in the lobby of one of the nicest hotels in Philly ( the Wyndham / Franklin plaza ) eating dinner among all these well dressed people trying to stop the blood from pouring out of my nose. The next day I went back and tried to spar again but the blood kept coming so I stopped sparring and went back to Hartford. My first day back I went to a gym in Manchster and boxed 10 rounds with a cruiserweight named Shane Braithwaite and another pro named Steve Mangene. In about the 3rd round I got hit in the nose with a little jab and the blood again began to flow. I kept going and finished the 10 rounds. That was at 6:30 pm. My nose bled for the next 7 hours so badly that it looked like thick, wet, silly string-like blood (found out it was 'coagulation') was coming out of my nose. I finally couldn't take it anymore and went to the emergency room where the doctor told me at that I had a broken blood vessel in my nose. I lost so much blood that at one point I tried to walk to the sink and half way there I almost lost consciousness. I remember crawling back to the bed and when I couldn't make it back on the bed, I put my face on the bed and let my feet and knees touch the floor. I was nauseous. My face was in a pool of blood and I didn't care. I thought I might be seconds from passing out. I don't remember how I got back on the bed but I do remember that there was blood all over the bed and walls of that room. It reminded me of a horror movie where a guy, Jason or Michael Meyers, comes in and leaves his victims blood splattered all over the walls. What they did eventually was, they took a stick with gauze on it and shoved it up my nose so far that I said, seriously, to the Doctor "Doc !! I think you are hitting my brain!! He assured me he wasn't and pulled the stick out, leaving the medicated gauze in there. That ended my training for the fight. A few days before the fight I had the gauze removed. And that is what I went into the fight like. Add that to the fact that I had come down from 205 to 183 and a half one day before the fight and you have here a man (me) that should have been anywhere but in a Boxing ring.

The following is the copied transcript from notes I took all during this time as I was training for the fight. This is what my impressions were at the time:

Training camp: July 1998
Charles Brewer- Antoine Byrd
Philadelphia , Pa.

July 12. Drove to Philadelphia . 215 miles. Checked in to Wyndham Plaza. On ESPN tonight Scott Lopeck, the guy I beat in December, scored a TKO victory.

July 13. Didn't run today. Ran hard yesterday up the mountain in Simsbury so I need to rest my legs. I will start tomorrow.

Sparred 5 rounds with IBF World Champion Charles Brewer. It was good sparring. My muscles, my arms, are a little tired and beat down. He is good sparring, keeps me on my Ps and Q's and alert. For this camp with him, just like last time, I am required to box him southpaw. I would rather box him right handed, though. I feel much more comfortable boxing him right handed and I would no doubt be landing jabs and right hands on him from what I see but he is fighting Byrd so I have to work southpaw.

Charles likes to talk a little bit in sparring, a little cocky. That's OK, though. We got into it a little bit but I like that.

July 14. Ran up the ROCKY steps 15 times. Sparred 5 with Charles today. He was sharper than me today and my body feels tired. My arms are weary. Augie, (Brewer's trainer, noticed it) asked me what was wrong. He said for the last camp with Brewer I "got Brewer in the best shape he has ever been in." but this time I am not looking as loose and fluid and strong. I told him that last time I sparred Charles I was not training for a fight so my muscles were not weak and I was relaxed. Now I have my own big fight coming up and I am running everyday and training, too, so my body is weaker than usual. I need to show Charles what I have before I leave here.

Did crunches, sauna and whirlpool back at the hotel.

July 15. Sparred 4 with Brewer. Today was my best day so far. I was looser and sharper but in the 4th he hit me with a good left uppercut and my nose started bleeding a lot so we stopped at the end of the round. I worked out after anyway. I am more elusive as a righty and I want to box that way but I cant for this camp. I will come back tomorrow and spar with the full face headgear on like he does, with the face bar, to protect my nose.

Ate good dinner back at the hotel but my nose is bleeding still.

July 16th. Went for good run at 7:30 a.m. including 5 times up the ROCKY steps. Did 210 crunches. We took the day off from sparring but I worked out hard in the hot gym. Good rounds on the heavy bag.

July 17th. Sparred 3 with Brewer. My nose is very sore. Even with the full face head gear I can feel it. My nose is too sensitive. We ended up working lightly. Went for a run, did ROCKY steps. I ate dinner and drove back to Connecticut. No sense in staying. No sparring for me now.

July 18. Back in CT, I decided I need the work. Sparred 10 rounds in Manchester with Braithwaite and Mangene. My nose started bleeding bad early on but I need the work bad so I kept going for 10. My nose ran profusely. Went home after and it was still running. Walked around the neighborhood in the dark. thick and dark chunks of blood are coming out. (Note- I learned later on that this is called 'coagulation') Tried to go to sleep but couldn't. Ended up going to Emergency Room at 2 am (on the 19th) to see what they could do. The Doctor said I have a broken blood vessel way up in my nose. He tried to stop it with medication but the blood is running too hard and it is running the medication back out so he took this stick, like a tongue depressor kind of, and wrapped it in gauze that was soaked in medication. Then he pushed the stick way up in my nose and pulled it out, leaving the gauze packed up in there. So that's it, my sparring is over for this fight. I don't think I should fight now. At about 5 am I tried to get to the sink and I ended up on the floor. George Cruz came to the hospital at about 6 a.m. or so, I'm not sure. This doesn't look good. We'll see when this pack comes out in 10 days.

(This was 12 days before my fight with Drake Thadzi. No way in this world I should have fought under these conditions)

So, of course, I wasn't as enthused at this time about the fight as I had been when it was first signed. This deep into the training and getting so close to the fight and having everything going wrong as it had several time before in my career made me kind of turned off about the whole game. When I was an amateur and a younger pro I used to love every aspect of this sport. I loved going to the press conferences , for example. Getting up and talking in front of all the media about the fight and what it would be like. Having my opponent talk, etc. By the time we got to the press conference for the fight with Thadzi, though, I was not having fun with it anymore. At that time in my life I was seeing boxing in a very different light. When it came time for me to speak and answer questions I got up to the mic and waited. Inevitably someone asked that same old question "How do you feel for this fight, John? Do you have any predictions?" Now, I wouldn't say I exploded but a lot came out of me that they didn't expect. I said "You know, I have been coming to these press conferences for so long and I have seen so many of them on TV. You ask me that question and what do you guys expect me to say. Do you think one of us is ever going to come up here and say "Well, you know, Bob, I haven't been feeling too good lately. I have got pulled muscles. Had the flu for a week. Hardly got any sparring. I think I will probably lose this fight in baaaaaad fashion."

I don't think that was the answer they expected. But I continued.

"I don't know why we even have these press conferences. You all come out here and me and this guy sitting here, (Thadzi) just like every fighter in the world, are going to tell you the same things we always do. Whatever sounds good"

I just want to thank the promoter for having me on such a great show.

It is an honor to be here.

I am really looking forward to this fight

I am in the best shape of my life.

I am ready to win

And then , just like that, it was over. I answered a couple more questions and left. I remember leaving the San Juan Center afterwards and once I got out of the parking lot and made it to the next corner I sat at the light thinking about the fight and about how I was feeling physically and mentally at the time. I thought about Drake sitting there at the Press Conference a few feet away from me. Now, I am not one to usually curse and swear, very rarely in fact. But the more I thought about him and this fight and the way I was feeling the angrier I got. I thought about my nose being hurt and the trouble with losing the weight that I had been having. I knew I could beat this guy and I knew it would be a great victory but I also came to the realization that, once again, I was going to be entering the ring in less than peak condition. Just before the light turned and I drove off, out of frustration, I yelled out the words that they probably heard 2 blocks ago at the gym."

"F*** Drake Thadzi!!!"

I have went into several fights in my career that I knew I was not ready for Hindsight is always 20/20 and, in this case, if I could do it all over again I would not have fought. I wouldn't have cared about my chance to fight on TV and the money and the pleasing of people. I wouldn't have cared that I didn't want people to think I was afraid to fight. I was Sooooo skinny the day before the weigh-in that I guessed that I was going to weigh-in at about 171 pounds. I had not checked my weight for this fight even one time. As Otis Grant tells me, I am a "scale-a-phobic." It was true. I had become so accustomed to having trouble with my weight and being so discouraged when I would be heavy that I just decided to train hard, eat as well as possible and if I made the weight then I made it. If I trained as hard as I had and had sacrificed as much as I had and was still heavy then what could I do???? Only things that would hurt me so I decided I would just rather not know. Anyway, I was confident that I would make the weight because a few days earlier I was in the gym and when I took my shirt off Sammy's eyes got real big and he said very loudly "Wow, Scully!! Look how thin your arms are!! You must weigh like 165!! "

Sounded good to me.

Before I headed up to Boston for the weigh-in I stopped at the gym to check my weight. When it showed 183 1/2 I couldn't believe it !!!!! That meant to fight I would have to lose another 8 and a half pounds on top of all the weight I had already lost. On top of me not training because a few days ago I was laying in a pool of my own blood in the hospital with a broken blood vessel in my nose. My trainer at the time told me "Do the best you can do." Well, from my amateur days I knew what 'my best' was going to be. I drove to Boston and checked into the hotel, went right to the shower and turned on the hot water, blocked the door with a towel, put albolene all over myself and sat there on the toilet chewing gum and spitting the saliva into the shower. I did that all night and didn't eat or drink a single bite or drop until my weight was 174 pounds. In my heart of hearts I knew I was a dead man. The thing that sealed it was when Danny Sheehan, who hadn't seen me in weeks, came to my room about 30 minutes before the weigh in. I was under the covers while we talked. When I got up, in my underwear, to go to the bathroom he literally GASPED. I said What's wrong? He said "oh, nothing." But I knew. Later on, after the fight, he told me "Man, I couldn't believe it. You were skinny. And your skin was GREEN"

(I am also a strong believer that people that don't box and don't know anything about boxing i.e. friends, family, girlfriends etc. should not be around that much in the days leading up to the fight. Especially at the weigh-in and ESPECIALLY in the dressing room before the fight. It never fails. They will almost always, unknowingly, say something stupid. On the way back to the hotel from the weigh-in I was walking with the Whitley twins, their father in-law and a few other people. The father in law is not a boxing person, just a guy that wanted to tag along and be around the weigh-in etc. Now, I already knew I was not ready for this fight and I was at the point we fighters get to where we are trying to convince ourselves we look better and feel better than we really do. So one of the twins asks me, as boxers often do before a fight, "How you feeling?"

I said "Oh, good. I feel good." And the father in law has to jump in with his opinion. "Good? Good?" he asked. "You look like death warmed over."

He was right but the fact that he even said that to a fighter before the fight proves my point that people that don't know boxing shouldn't be around you before you fight. A boxer would understand what to say and what NOT to say to a guy at times like that.)

I once had a story on-line about me that was called the 'Green Mile.' I called the wait in the dressing room 'being like walking the Green Mile, the walk to the death chamber.' My own Green Mile started the day of the Thadzi fight before I headed to the dressing room. I was in my hotel room at about 7 PM trying to persuade myself to go home. I didn't have to be to the arena early like everybody else because I was the main event so I was in the hotel by myself. So many thoughts rushed through my mind. I actually at one point got up and started to pack, saying to myself that I will just get in my car and drive home. Walk in at about fight time with my father sitting on the couch wondering how his son who is supposed to be on TV in 10 minutes is standing in our living room, two hours away from the arena. It was all hitting me at once. I knew in my heart and mind that I wasn't ready for this fight. I was going to be walking myself to my own execution. I paced the room trying to convince myself to go home. I must have looked crazy, standing up, sitting down, standing up, sitting down. I knew I shouldn't fight but I am a fighter and I did what every fighter in the world does: I convinced myself to fight.

(As a side note to that fight. Sitting ringside at the fight was Thadzi's stablemate, Marvelous Marvin Hagler. I remember as a kid coming up I used to watch Hagler on TV and thought he was really Great. I still do, of course. I saw him in the lobby of the hotel the day of the fight. He stood next to me as he was checking in and I remember looking down at him and being kind of surprised at how small he was in person. Crazy as it sounds, all I could think as I looked at him was "I could reach this little dude with a right hand." I think most boxers do that in one way or another. They meet up with other boxers, even in casual situations, and automatically 'size each other up')

Anyway, during the fight I was miserable. My only hope, considering all that I had been through and my state of mind that night, was to wait until the last two rounds and try to come on strong and maybe catch him by surprise and stop him. I figured I would just let him work and work and throw punches and catch them on my gloves and hope for a miracle finish on my behalf. Hagler was sitting in the first row and for the whole fight he just kept yelling instructions to Drake and saying "that's it, good, good.' whenever Drake would do something good. I remember specifically thinking 'Man, this guy used to be someone I looked up to. Now he is here trying to help his man beat me!! His voice gradually got to me, he has this (that night at least) irritating voice, and for three rounds straight I spent a good part of the 3 minutes thinking one thing : "At the end of this round I am going to walk over to the side of the ring Hagler is on, lean down over the ropes, and say 'You should have tried that SPIT when Sugar Ray was pounding on you!!! After the 6th or 7th round I actually headed towards him with the specific intention doing it. I remember thinking that I wasn't having a good night at all and at least I will be able to come out of this fight having had SOME fun. I actually started walking towards him, thinking that I don't care what he says or thinks after I embarrass him on National TV. I pictured him coming to the ring and trying to get me in anger!! Just as I got to the part of the ring where he was my trainer said something, I don't recall what, and it just all happened so fast. I ended up turning and going to my corner. Looking back, I wish I would have done it. I REALLY do.

I can't say that Drake really caught me with any punches that were significant. He never hurt me at all in the fight. Never dazed me. I kept my hands up and just let him throw punches. I was thinking all the while how to get myself to throw punches, to ignore the fact that I wasn't ready for the fight. It was a constant battle within my head. I knew I wasn't ready. I wanted to quit boxing and I wanted to go home. I didn't want to run anymore. Certainly didn't want to diet anymore. The sacrifice, the not eating, was what I really hated. I only hoped that I could get lucky later in the fight and land a big shot that would turn the fight around. I was fatigued and my body was weak. Mostly though my mind was weak. I was in no shape to fight or to put up a real mental struggle. There are two weapons that a boxer uses to fight. His body and his mind. Boxing is maybe 80 percent mental and 20 percent physical and on this night I was out of ammo in both of those guns. I wanted it to all be over so I could get on with not training anymore, not losing weight anymore. That's where my mind was. The only thing was I was in the middle of a fight and I could never bring myself to actually quit in a fight. I also knew that I was not going to get KO'd. My chin is great and I am durable. I am cagey and a good defensive fighter and I know how to get through even the worst of times. I could have boxed 50 rounds like that if I it was scheduled for that long.

The fight went into the 7th round and I was down by a mile on the scorecards. It must have been frustrating for Drake, too, to have me in there with him and I wasn't giving him any real openings to take advantage of. He must have been as perplexed as anyone about what was happening in there on this night. Late in the round the fight was going pretty much as it had for the whole night. Drake got me on the ropes where I felt comfortable and he unloaded a group of punches that landed on my arms and gloves. Nothing special or particularly strong. All of a sudden the referee, a guy I have known since I was a kid named Matt Mullaney, jumped in and ended the bout. I didn't realize immediately what was going on. I wasn't hit with anything that I wasn't hit with earlier on in the fight. I certainly wasn't hurt. The crowd didn't either. It was written after the fight that people in the crowd didn't have any idea why the fight was halted. I immediately began jumping up and down, screaming "No, No, come on! No!!" It was the most energy I exhibited the whole night. It wasn't like I felt Matt had 'stolen the chance of victory' from me or anything like that. He stated after the fight something to the effect that "I have known John since he was in the Golden Gloves in Holyoke where I had refereed several of his bouts. It was obvious to me that something was very wrong with him tonight and there was no reason to let him keep getting hit without throwing enough punches back." I could see his point in that regard. He knew it was not 'me' in there. I know he was looking out for me. Matt is the ref that jumped up behind me on the ring apron during the 1988 Lowell Brawl with Joey DeGrandis ten years earlier, crying, trying to physically restrain me from going out into the crowd to continue the fight with Joey. He was actually crying, telling me "John, please. Please! These kids are crazy, they have knives on them. Don't do it, please!" I guess I can look back now and see that he was doing a commendable job on both nights with one goal in mind: Looking out for the safety of the fighter.

My only reason for the outburst was that, like Ali did 18 years earlier, I got 'stopped.' The record books would not say that I was dehydrated from losing too much weight. It wouldn't say that I had been forced to lose 8 and a half pounds just before the weigh-in. It wouldn't say that I had been forced to stop training before the fight because of a broken blood vessel in my nose that required a hospital stay. It would just say that I was 'stopped.' I hated that. In my eyes, just like with Ali against Holmes in 1980, there is an asterisk next to that result.

Immediately after the fight, I assume because of the bizarre manner in which I fought that night, I was interviewed on the air by ESPN's Al Bernstein wanting to know, basically, why I fought like I did. That's when all the years of frustration and anger over my battles with weight and performance came rushing out of me. "I am sick of this. I am tired of losing weight. Losing to guys I shouldn't lose to. So I retire from my boxing right here and now," I told Bernstein and the National TV audience. "I don't want to go through this ever again." And, just like that, my last ever performance as a boxer on ESPN was over. It was the best I felt all night. Saying those words to the National audience and Al Bernstein was something that I had felt inside of me for along time. I grew to really dislike the grind of training. Mostly I hated the grind of training and the sacrifice that saw me still end up having to lose last minute weight.

After the fight in the dressing room the newspaper reporters got the same reply from me when the inquired about my nonperformance. "I am tired of this. I can't do what I want to do because I am always losing weight. It's too much for me. I hate this. I am going to retire. I'm sick of feeling like this!!!"

One of them asked "So you are saying you retire?

"No, you didn't hear me right. I said I quit!!!"

To add injury to frustration, fatigue and irritation I went back to the hotel with something from the fight that I would take home with me for another week. Enjoying quitting boxing was going to have to wait just a bit longer.

I went to the hotel after the fight and my back was stinging. I had been on the ropes a lot in the fight and figured I had some rope burn. It was very hard to sleep and I had to lie face down and lay still before I could doze off. I got up the next morning and headed back to Connecticut. I never bothered to look at my back in the hotel mirror.

I got in my car and when I leaned back in the drivers seat I felt some stinging on my back. Uncomfortable but I didn't think too much of it. I was probably still dehydrated, etc., and was just looking to get home with no delays. I drove the 2 hours to my house and pulled in the driveway. It was still summer time and it was hot and muggy out. When I started to get out of the car I felt more intense burning on my back than I did earlier. After I got out of the car I realized that my shirt was stuck to my back. Apparently my back rope burns were a little more severe than I originally thought and they were still raw. During the fight the night before I had spent a lot of time with my back to the ropes and when Drake would hit me on the arms and shoulders the force of the punches would push my weakened body along the ropes so that I was basically having my back constantly rubbed raw by the velvet ropes. By the time I got back home the fluid from the open wound was dried upon my shirt and, in effect, the fabric from the shirt was stuck to my back like it was glued there. I went inside and called my trainer and told him the situation. He told me to get in the shower and get my back cleaned up and he would come by and see what he could do. I got the shower water running and before I got in It occurred to me that I couldn't get my shirt off without tearing it away from the skin. Not wanting to feel that kind of pain I figured I would wet the shirt in the shower and maybe it would loosen itself from the skin on my back. I did that and, while still in the shower, I cut the shirt up the front with scissors and figured the shirt would just kind of melt away from my body. I was wrong. In my hurry to get this nightmare over with I didn't take into account what would happen to shirt when it was soaked in water. The weight of this cotton shirt increased dramatically. I used scissors to cut it straight up the front and when I began to ease it off my shoulders the laws of gravity kicked in and, in a flash, this heavy water soaked shirt tore away from where it was stuck like glue to my back and fell with a Plop to the shower floor. I hesitated like a deer in the headlights for a second, letting the realization of what had just happened sink in to my brain, before I let out a scream that I am pretty sure the people in Boston heard 100 miles away (If you want, picture me as MaCauley Culkin as the kid in "Home Alone" that slaps the after shave on his face and looks at himself in the mirror before letting out his yell. Then multiply that by 5). This fight was going to stay with me for at least a week this time.

By the time my trainer got there my back was ripped raw and I was in pain. He had to have me may down on my dining room table while he poured hydrogen peroxide all over my back to kill the germs and reduce the chance of infection. After dabbing at it with a dry towel he poured Gold Bond medicated powder all over the wound that was the size of a small pizza. It took a solid seven days for my back to heal up well enough that I could sit down with my back against something and not feel totally uncomfortable. The only comfort I had whatsoever after such a dismal fight and it's after affect was that I knew in my mind that I would never have to lose all that weight and go through so much misery again. At that time, I didn't care if I ever even saw the inside of another Boxing gym again.

[back to top]