Teddy Atlas earned his money on Saturday night.
The legendary boxing trainer was in Timothy Bradley’s corner for the WBO welterweight title fight at the weekend and made all the difference.
Bradley looked to be fading just a tad in the seventh round of his title defence against Brandon Rios and Atlas was having absolutely none of it as he dropped some motivational bombs on his fighter.
“Fifteen minutes. Can you be strong for fifteen minutes? CAN YOU?
“Listen, your concentration’s weaving a little bit. Pick it up! PICK IT UP!
“Don’t pull straight out. Bend your knees, be strong on the inside and go around him. Let’s control the outside.
“Look, the fire’s coming. Are you ready for the fire?
“We’re firemen. WE ARE FIREMEN! The heat doesn’t bother us. We live in the heat. We train in the heat.
“It tells us that we’re ready. We’re at our home. We’re where we’re supposed to be!
“Flames don’t intimidate us. What do we do? We control the flames! WE CONTROL THEM! We move the flames where we want to and then we extinguish them.”
The pep-talk clearly did the job as Bradley went on to finish Rios in the ninth round after a succession of body shots finally took their toll and Bam Bam hit the deck to retain his belt.
We might actually make the speech our alarm clock tone because if the default iPhone music can’t get us out of bed, Teddy Atlas sure as hell will.
