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00:00So your favorite fight, all the years that you've covered, what was your favorite fight?
00:06Well, if you're talking one that I was at ringside, you know, Corrales-Castillo, there's no doubt.
00:11I mean, that was a fight where, you know, you knew going in it was going to be a great
00:16fight.
00:17And somehow it exceeds expectations in terms of how good it was.
00:21And then the ending was just crazy off the hook.
00:24That fight, for people who don't remember, was a lightweight title fight in boxing in 2005.
00:31Diego Corrales died two years to the day later in a motorcycle accident in Las Vegas, right in the view
00:38of Mandalay Bay, where the fight was held.
00:41And in the 10th round, it was a great fight through nine rounds.
00:45In the 10th round, Corrales gets knocked down twice, Dan.
00:48He goes down the first time.
00:50He looks really bad.
00:51He gets up the second time.
00:52He spits out the mouthpiece.
00:54That's usually a sign that the fighter doesn't want to go on.
00:57They bring him over to the corner, and the trainer cleans his mouthpiece off and says, you better do something
01:03now, pal.
01:04And he walks out, and boom, he hits Castillo.
01:08And Castillo goes into the robes, and Corrales jumps on him and finishes him in just this crazy turnaround.
01:14And that has to be one of the all-time great fights, the best I saw in person.
01:21Absolutely.
01:21Your favorite fighter, who would that have been over these years that you've covered?
01:27You know, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard would be the two, right?
01:31I mean, Muhammad Ali, I was never fortunate enough to cover an Ali fight.
01:35I first covered boxing in 79.
01:39Small little shows.
01:41But, you know, I didn't cover an Ali fight.
01:44He retired.
01:44His last fight was in 81, and that's just when I was really starting to cover the championship fights and
01:50things like that.
01:51So I didn't get to cover Ali, but I met him.
01:54I interviewed him a number of times, was around him a lot.
01:58And so, you know, it has to be Ali, right?
02:00He inspired me to love boxing and love sports, really.
02:06Ali was such a big factor in my life.
02:08And then, you know, Sugar Ray Leonard, too.
02:10I mean, Sugar Ray Leonard just, I think, was the guy who had the pressure and won the gold medal
02:14in the Olympics, was America's darling.
02:16You know, you're not as old as me, but, you know, in the 70s and early 80s, he was everywhere
02:21in terms of commercials.
02:22It wasn't just boxing.
02:24You know, everywhere you went, you saw Sugar Ray Leonard.
02:26And so he also played, you know, a big role.
02:29And the cool thing for me is on the day in June when I'm being inducted in the Hall of
02:34Fame, he is going to be the grand marshal of the parade.
02:37Wow, that's going to be dope here.
02:40You know, I lived in Vegas, and this was during a time when I really started to get to know
02:45you a lot better.
02:46Those Tyson fights.
02:48I mean, Kevin, do you think you'll ever see anything like that again, how one man can just take over
02:54a city like that with all that money, the Vegas Strip?
02:58Do you think you'll ever see anybody again ever do that in what Mike Tyson did and how he galvanized
03:04that town?
03:06I think you're going to see somebody else come along and be big like Tyson was.
03:10I don't think you'll ever see somebody in the way.
03:13Like, think about this, Dan.
03:15You know, 25 years basically after he was done as an elite competitor, he comes back to fight, and they
03:22draw 130 million people to watch the fight on Netflix.
03:25That just tells you the popularity he had, right, and the impact that he made.
03:32And people thought the fight was fixed with Jake Paul.
03:36And this is the funny thing.
03:38This is why.
03:38Because Tyson was so powerful and so dominant in his time that people just could not believe that at 59
03:46years old, he couldn't blow out a 27-year-old guy, right?
03:49And it was like I wrote before the fight exactly how the fight would go.
03:54And if you go onto my website, KevinIoli.com, I have the archive still up there.
03:58You can see my pre-fight where I described exactly how the fight would be, and Tyson wouldn't be able
04:05to do anything.
04:06And so when people were saying the fight was fixed, I'm like, Dan, no, this fight was not fixed.
04:11It was predictable.
04:12He's 59 years old fighting in each – Jake Paul's not a good boxer, but he's in shape, and he's
04:1827, or was 27 at that point.
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