I remember looking down at my phone and they dismissed Ike after 13 minutes. So basically, like, “You’re imagining this, I’m not going to talk about it.” Normally those interviews go half an hour. And finally Ike in his little girl voice said, “What cut?” It was bizarre. And the whole room just, like, froze, like nobody said anything. And I remember the HBO meeting where they interview the fighters, Larry Merchant, his first question was, “We heard there was an incident at the gym, you started training, and you suffered a cut, has that affected your training at all?” And Ike just sat there and didn’t move and didn’t say anything for literally like 10 seconds. And he showed up, and he was wearing sunglasses the whole time, and he wasn’t speaking to anybody. So he attacked Ezra.īottjer: We actually paid Raymond Anis to come in as a standby because we didn’t even know if Ike was going to show up and fight. We didn’t even know if he was going to show up for the fight because his only day of sparring, he had worked with Ezra Sellers, and Ike had suffered a small cut during sparring, and they stopped the sparring, and in the locker room where the gym was, Ezra was getting dressed, and he put a wedding ring on his finger, and Ike saw the ring, and he goes, “Hey, you cut me with that ring.” Which of course makes no sense because (a) they have boxing gloves on, and (b) Ezra wasn’t even wearing the ring. And Ike comes back onto the phone as the president, and the trainer explains that there’s a staff meeting downstairs, we can’t get started unless the president is there, we have many important things to discuss but he has to approve everything, and Ike said, “I’ll be right down.” That’s how we got him to the weigh-in.īottjer: When he fought Byrd, he didn’t spar. So his trainer called him up and said - it’s like a comedy scene - he’s like, “I need to speak to the president.” And Ike had answered the phone, he’s the only one in his room, and Ike said, “Hold on a moment,” he puts the phone down like he’s going to get the president. We have no idea why, he just wouldn’t come out. And Billy Lyons, the commissioner, said, “If your guy doesn’t get down here he’s not gonna fight.” He refused to come out of his room. And they’re coming in through the air conditioning system.” So in typical Cedric Kushner fashion, he said, “Ma’am, turn off the air conditioning.”īottjer: He refused to come to the weigh-in. And she said, “Ike’s not going to fight, there are evil spirits in the hotel. Now, you’re a television executive and you hear Ike’s not going to fight, and you’re sitting in the room, so you get rather concerned. DiBella: I’ll never forget, I was with Cedric, we were doing a Boxing After Dark, and Ibeabuchi’s mother was staying at the hotel with him, she said, “Ike’s not going to fight.” She called Cedric’s room, I happened to be there.
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