Crime in Sports - #300 - Kill Me Twice, Shame On Me - The Recurrentness of Ron Lyle

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

This week, we tell one of the most incredible stories, in history. Not just sports. He grew up with 18 brothers & sisters, in a good family, but he took to the streets, being convicted of murder, before any thought of a sports career took place. His rise from teenaged murderer, to fighting Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight title is remarkable. But not as remarkable as the fact that he wasn't done getting arrested. Fights with his wives, resulting in gunplay, and falls from second story windows, and even another murder charge! It' shard to believe, but it's all real!Be convicted of murder, before your 21st birthday, somehow rise to the top of your sport, then try your hardest to end up right back in prison with Ron Lyle!! Check us out, every Tuesday! We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!!  Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman  Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail]  Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com  Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports [e-mail] facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurderSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Discover all the best in audiobooks, podcasts, and originals featuring authentic Canadian voices and celebrity talent, like Brendan Fraser and Luke Kirby's latest sci-fi adventure, The Downloaded. A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. on the Mr. Ballin Podcast, now available wherever you get your podcasts, you'll hear strange, dark, and mysterious stories about inexplicable encounters, shocking disappearances, true crime cases, and everything in between. So go listen to Mr. Ballin Podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports! Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.

My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. And thank you for joining us for episode 300, which this is so cool. We're very excited. It's obviously a milestone episode. So the story for today is a milestone story. It's one of the craziest, could only happen on Crime and Sports. It's one of these where you're going to go, how the hell is there not like eight movies about this story? It's insane.

Giving you everything. 300 episodes. We never thought when we started this, what is it, six years ago now that we- Over, right? I never thought we'd have 300 criminal athletes i go i will probably get about 200 episodes out of this and somehow we've got more than 300 listeners we're there you go that too we're still going strong we still have a ton of stories left to tell so not over yet episode 300 we're very excited thank you for joining us thank you for

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and years and her kind of dark she's uh she was a trainer and she would get the female wrestlers jobs and a lot of accusations that jobs wrestling weren't the only job she was getting these young ladies and they were being used in all sorts of ways and she would take a lot of money from them these are the accusations and we'll go over the whole thing and kind of find out about it yeah her name has kind of gone like up and down and up and down where she's been. She's not considered. She got me. She was one of the first women to be me too. So we'll talk about that sort of deal here. Fabulous Moolah.

Then for a small town murder, we are going to talk about Jeffrey Dahmer and certain aspects of it. You know how we always like to do with like a serial killer that's very famous. We like to find some weird stuff. like a serial killer that's very famous. We like to find some weird stuff. And there's some very specific things that made Jeffrey Dahmer's whole crime murder career possible. And there's very specific things. And we're going to talk about those very specific things from a couple of

different books. Very interesting. And it'll be crazy, of course, because it's Dahmer. So check that out. Patreon.com slash crime and sports. And, of course, you're going to get a shout out at the end of the show. Clearly. And also, if you want to just make a donation and get your shout out, go to PayPal.

Use our email address. Crime and sports at Gmail dot com. Let's do it. Three hundred, baby. Let's get it on. All right. You've never heard of this guy. I'm sure you never have.

No, because other than crime and sports and finding the story a couple years ago and being like oh that's a good one i gotta save that one other than that i didn't know much about this guy either and i'm a boxing fan so it's strange brain damage sports oh baby this is a wild story ron david lyle never heard of him oh yeah i've got i've got his i got his uh entrance robe hanging in my closet signed right i believe yeah yeah because he did your bar mitzvah that one year yeah yeah when you were at the bedpost yeah jimmy was only jewish for one year for his 13th year he was one day he had a bar mitzvah it was beautiful he learned the whole talmud and the every he really went through everything but then he converted something about circumcision and then i was like i'm out of here yeah that was good he sung hava nagil and

they ran around the room and he said i don't think i'm jewish anymore but ron lyle performed at this bar mitzvah that jimmy had very impressive he did he shadow boxed it was an impressive display everybody liked he brought in a speed bag it was impressive so he's's born February 12th, 1941. Oh, an elderly fella. An older guy here. Born in Dayton, Ohio. This, oof, what a childhood, man. He was born, his parents are William and Nellie Lyle of Dayton.

His father is a steel mill employee and a minister. Oh, fuck. So that's a tough, that's a hard man right there you bet in 40s ohio minister steel worker jesus christ a strong his grip the grip on that man could just break you probably grab your forearm oh god dad please you can't put that in a can he'd have to be tough and they'd all have to be tough because ron our guy here ron lyle is the third child of 19 children stop that 19 children watch your mouth can you no imagine no no don't wanna nelly my goodness nelly lyle is oh that is unbelievable holy forget being a parent of that because obviously no no absolutely not it's a military child in that oh yes to get ice cream

is a military operation you have to draw up plans you have you need like three separate cars it's a it's a fucking thing you know what i mean yeah it's a big deal. The word flank is used in their day descriptions. We're definitely going to swing around the left flank like a gate drawer. We're going to go back and forth. Their family is a queue in any restaurant. You know what I mean? The whole family. That's crazy.

You can't just pop in a restaurant with 20 people. You have to fucking, because 19 kids and mom and dad. 21. That's crazy. You can't just pop in a restaurant with 20 people. You have to fucking, because 19 kids and mom and dad, you have to, you need a reservation because they have to break down like half the restaurant for you. Every time you go out, it's like a whole christening. Table for 21, please. What? Say again? We don't make those.

What are you talking about? Did you say table for one? I'm sorry you're so alone. No, no, no, no. I am the least alone of anybody at home they just have that giant table that putin sits at you know what i mean alone at the end except they fill it up yeah a lot of people so anyway obviously it's going to be nobody can afford that many kids i mean unless you're very very wealthy no one can afford that many kids and keep them all right you know in perfect condition even at even at even elon musk cannot

afford to have 21 kids because you don't have enough time in the day to be a good parent to all of them no one can afford the emotional cost of that first of all just the emotional and the physical toll about the money you've got yeah then there's the money part as well whereas so if you're a if you're a steel worker and a minister i assume you're tired at the end of the day and then your house is full of children like an entire classroom worth of children of all different ages that have different problems and needs and holy at that point he needs the ministry to to keep himself from murdering people in that house. I just picture, you know how in steel mills in movies they have those just big vats of lava? Just big vats of-

The big boiling molten steel. Head dive right into the molten steel. I'm going in, I swear to God. I would cannonball in that motherfucker. Bye. But then again, you'd be excited to be at work. This is great. What are you talking about?

This is hard work. Fuck that. Nobody goes to the Bahamas and shoots themselves. No, exactly. So now they're a black family. And from what Ron says, they're steeped in a lot of traditional kind of black culture. But his mother is white and his father claims to be mostly Native American. So that's the other thing.

So it's strange. When you look at Ron, he just looks like you just go, oh, there's a black guy. You wouldn't even think like any of that. I mean, not that it matters. Obviously, everybody's different shades and all that sort of thing. But he doesn't like um i don't know it's just not like you his parents if you put them together you doesn't look like they'd make ron but they did and it's amazing so anyway there you go so there's dad look mostly native american i have i mean i don't know but as i didn't see a picture of his dad but i know his mom's white, so that's different there. I don't know.

Either way, though, whatever. That's their family, and that's what they're doing here. So I guess after the Depression, that's how long ago this is. We're talking post-Depression. Work was hard to find. They were married, William and Nellie, in the late 30s. Jesus Christ. Ronnie is their third child, like we said.

They were living with Nellie, his mother's parents at that point. And William was helping helping make ends meet by working at a brothel. What? So, yeah, the steelworking minister was also working at a brothel slash casino on the side. Like, OK, it's like a bar guy at night. Yeah. He's probably a big, strong guy. He's a steel worker.

Who knows what he's doing? A dealer? He's not selling his ass in the brothel? I don't think he was one of the selections. Here we have a mill worker named William. How's that? You don't like Tabitha? Well, can I interest you in William?

Let me take my car hearts down and let me show you what I got to work with here. Hold on. I got my steel toes on, so let me slip them so I can yeah these are duck lined come here quite the same hold on a minute Jesus Christ long day at the mill sorry I apologize Jesus damn boots so his father um was like I said a preacher who had tried to build his own church. When I say not build up a congregation, I'm talking with bricks. He tried to, over time, build a church as he could,

like brick by brick, essentially. So, yeah, both of Nellie's parents were happy that he was at least working. You were finding work where you can find work. So by 1946, the couple already had six children good lord six um there by the way don't worry about it this isn't a ken clay so this is all real by the way this is this is all real and after you might be a little itchy after a couple weeks ago but trust me this is all real yeah i'm like an abused wife right now every time you start a story i flinch yeah i was like oh god jesus so they're uh their

oldest because this next part i didn't want it to sound made up this next part uh their oldest child a daughter named barbara died of rheumatic fever at that point yeah which sounds terrible um so william ended up uh joy ended up really getting into religion at this point and this is when he left his job and began his ministry in holiness church which is a pentecostal denomination oh that was even stricter than the church that nelly's family went to which he thought was way too strict when he was working at the brothel in the casino so now he's now he's getting real fire and brimstone and shit here and um they said that uh at that point they said he would demand behavior that was the opposite of the brothel casino it's like where did this come from all of a sudden remember when you were there yeah what

the fuck he became a successful minister there um he was appointed one of 25 ministers in the ohio district state council at one point here so he was uh you know he's a respected guy after a while here and um then a few months later he had a dream jimmy oh william had a dream that begins a family tradition it's a vision, really. And he explains it. He told Nellie about the vision that came to him. OK. And he said, this is a vision.

Nellie, I saw it. I said, I'm coming to a city near a mountain and I'm building a church there. I saw it in my mind. It was a city near a mountain. It's not Dayton. We know that there's no fucking Ohio's pretty flat. Yeah. Ain't shit there.

City near a mountain. And I see myself building a church. He said. And he's no fucking Ohio's pretty flat. Ain't shit there. City near a mountain and I see myself building a church. He said and he said I have to do it. He believed that in this vision he knew from the vision that God wanted him to quote find them, teach them, guide them, and save them.

Welcome to Colorado. That's what he's going to do here. Well, you know where they moved? Denver. I knew it. Yeah. There you go. I was going to say, they looked at Utah and went, already full of people doing that. Too many. What's close by?

Denver. We're moving to Denver. The Broncos are pretty decent. Salt Lake, all fucked out. All fucked out. The Broncos will be good when they get them in a few years. That's awesome. They moved right there, huh?

They moved to denver eventually here so um within a few months the the message in the dream was confirmed by two church leaders who agreed that pastor lyle was chosen by god they go you know what we thought about it and you're right you were chosen by god you need to start a church in denver colorado so do that they said go there start your church from scratch just build a church and get people enjoy have fun do it in the spring and summer because it's about to get cold as fuck that's no shit well they move the fucked up part is they move they have seven kids now so they move in 1949 ronnie's eight they have seven kids so you had a vision and you're gonna pack up seven kids and move them a thousand miles away over a vision

that is ballsy oh man imagine okay imagine you're married you have seven children you go home and you go i had a vision first of all your wife be like that vision better be of getting a vasectomy first of all your vision better be of a doctor cutting your nutsack open and tying some shit together because this is crazy i had a vision you get up and make breakfast for everybody in this motherfucking house i'm tired i had a vision that all of us you the kid we're gonna pack everybody up we're gonna move a thousand miles oh no away from your parents away from the family and all the people that can help us with seven kids. We're going to pack everybody up. We're going to move a thousand miles. Oh, no. Away from your parents. Away from the family and all the people that can help us with seven kids. And we're going to set up shop and build a church from scratch.

That's the vision. How many wives are going to go, let's do it. When do you want to leave? They go, are you out of your fucking mind? Start taking apart the bed now? Yeah. We'll start getting boxes. I'll go to the supermarket and see what they have.

Are we hiring movers? What are we doing? Are we doing this ourselves? God damn it. I hate packing the moving truck. So they do it. They leave Dayton behind. They took a bus to Denver.

Seven kids on a bus from Dayton to Denver. I mean, the good news is that's a third of the bus. But you stop at one of their stops and you never get back on again if you're one of those parents. Where'd dad go? I don't fucking know. We can't hold the bus up any longer. He said he's walking back. I guess he'll catch the next one.

Oh, no, no. You wouldn't tell anybody. You'd just say you're going to the bathroom and never come back. You don't want to make a scene. I'm getting the fuck out of here. Quickly. I don't want anybody to follow me. He might have someone go take me with you.

No, I can't. So they relocated to Denver. He's about nine, ten years old. His father gets a job as a sandblaster at the Buckley Air Force Base. So gets a good job right away. They grow up on the northeast side of the city, which was where the housing projects were. It was a black neighborhood over there. His older brother said that the way that he thought of the kids as in sets, basically.

Like he got this group of kids that are this age and this group. And that group watched that group type of thing is how they would do it. He called them all sets sets which is funny um they said the uh this area was curtis park and five point districts is where he was from which they said was dangerous and not a place where you'd want to be walking around after dark type of place there um they said that from the beginning though everybody would call on william and neie in the whole neighborhood for help. They were the enforcers, the helpers, the helpers. They do anything.

If a family was if somebody didn't have food or somebody got arrested or needed something, somebody was sick, they would come over and help and bring food and talk to this person and go to the cops and say, he's a really a good boy. And he comes to church and, you know, he tried to help out. They were like the he was like the kind of the town kind of like the neighborhood minister so even if the people who weren't religious they would still you know weren't a part of his church here the block patriarch yeah that sort of thing yeah that's kind of how he was which i mean with that many kids you're like fuck it who else wants help whatever he can father us all fine i'll send you to college too whatever i don't care anymore. What's the difference? I am going to die like this.

So Ronnie ended up getting a paper route when he was young to make some money. His mother was good at collecting a lot of shit for charity and everything like that. His sister, Ron's sister, said mom was a jewel. She loved everyone in the neighborhood and would feed anyone who was hungry. That's just how they were. So, um, William was the head of the neighborhood is what they all called him. He was like the mayor of the neighborhood and he ran the church that he founded in Curtis park.

He was a minister and held three other jobs at the time as well. So yeah, one of his jobs, he always had like a custodian job somewhere because he could do that at night and the spare time. He could squeeze that in like Jesus Christ. It's fucking crazy. They said, though, even with all the extra jobs, money was tight. And there's so many kids. They said there was always enough food and always like there was always enough basics but it was the food where they described pinto beans pigs feet and pigs tails and scraps

and sometimes on sundays once in a while they'd have chicken but it wasn't common so you know beef was out of the question that was just too expensive so i'm not kidding so um they said that uh one of the brothers said he remembers hauling huge bags of sugar and other bulk items from the store. And they said that they all had to take cod liver oil twice a day every day because that would keep them healthy. And they couldn't afford. Their mother would say, we can't afford to get sick. Can't afford to take anybody to the doctor. Everything's real tenuous and anything breaks, we're fucked we're teetering everybody drink your cod everybody be careful

but there's enough though like they clothes were from the goodwill and hand-me-downs and shit like that but everybody was together surplus but we're taken care of exactly which is what you do when you have that many kids so his parents were hustling this is after you know started in the depression went through world war ii the whole deal um they had a bunch of they were talking about a bunch of different cars they had they had one car that was an old ford they had to stop every six blocks to put more water in the radiator somebody would have to jump out and put more in because it would just that's a broken car yeah um he said he and ronnie this is the brother and ronnie had to get out and push it uphill and then jump in when it caught speed also that'll make you strong though if you've been pushing the family ford up a hill for a long time that's pretty cool so by 13 ronnie

is 5 11 and everybody said he's like the biggest, most athletic kid in the neighborhood. Awesome. He's the neighborhood Lex Luger. He set the third grade high jump record. Listen to the Lex Luger episode if you haven't. What a fucking jerk off. So good God. So he started to be active. He said he would be active from the time he woke up to the time he went to bed. He did nothing but he'd work, and'd do his paper route and he'd play sports

and he'd do all this type of shit and hang out with his friends as well. He said he had a bunch of friends that he hung out with from the time they were little up through junior high school. His one friend said, We would go to the Epworth Recreation Center on 31st between Arapahoe and Lawrence, just a short walk from the projects. We played basketball and messed around and talked to girls.

Ron was the best at all three. Okay. So, yeah, he's good. And Ron's a smooth motherfucker, too. Ron's a handsome cat. He's a real, like, smooth cat. He's handsome. He's good.

He's, in that era especially, like, man, he was going to pull some tail just in how smooth he was. He's going to do very well with the ladies. So they said that he would – basketball was his big thing. He said, quote, when he was a kid, he said, I want to be a basketball player. I wanted to be just like Bill Russell. So that's all he was about, basketball, basketball, basketball.

He gets a job as a caddy on a golf course, which is interesting. I didn't know there was many golf courses in Denver. I guess there is. There is. It's a very rich area. Yeah. This was some country club. He got a job.

His older brother worked there, and then once he was old enough to work there, his brother got him in there, too, as a caddy. Brilliant. brother worked there and then once he was old enough to work there his brother got him in there too as a caddy he said that um he figured that you know extra money would help out at home and they figured it's nights and it's weekends so it might help keep him out of trouble too because he's running around on the street and uh the one of the the caddy master bill connelly which i'm just picturing caddy shack that's all i can picture He's the caddy master. He assigns you your people. He took an interest in the Lyle brothers. He's the Chevy Chase in Caddyshack. That's what he is.

Yeah. Let me tell you. No, he's the groundskeeper. No, no, no. No, no. Chevy Chase is like a member. He doesn't work with the caddies. I'm thinking.

He's the one that is like the guru to the caddies, though. But is it Brian Doyle Murray, like kind of the caddy master? Yeah. He's the one that is the boss of giving their sheets and such caddy master that's what we're talking about but not the best caddy ever we're talking about chevy tastes had nothing to do with the caddies from a paycheck caddy master is the best caddy ever that's what they are that's a job here though i think we're talking about i don't think we're talking about the Chevy. Or Caddyshack is based on this. Caddyshack is based on the life of

Ron Lyle. And we never knew it. And we just hoped that it should have been called Caddymaster and they changed it to Caddyshack. We just didn't know. You should get credit for this. Well, this guy would he would assign, he's the guy

who did the assignments, would he would assign he's the guy who did the assignment. So he would he would assign the like important people toward the brothers because they were OK. They were good at they were just impressive kids and good caddies. So Bill went out with the then governor, Dan Thornton, a few times and was picked to be his special caddy so uh he would sometimes even carry double bags for double pay and uh ronnie caddied for a couple of very wealthy businessmen and uh later on he ended up caddying for gerald phipps who owned the broncos from 61 to 81 okay yeah yeah he did a good deal here And they worked out a deal so the boys could play for free up to 36 holes on Mondays. That was part of their pay.

Oh, that's awesome. So, yeah, they started doing that. But he got fired, and we'll talk about how. It's pretty funny. I would go out in a blazing fashion if they're making me carry two fucking bags 18 holes. Oh, I'm throwing every club individually. That's going in one of the fucking ponds i promise you i'm putting a ball down i'm firing them at the fucking lunch club there at the 19th hole there

you know whatever as soon as the golf cart was invented the caddy should go the fuck away because that is just it's just slavery well you're being paid it's a job but it's a very i get it it's a deme get it i get it for like teenagers it's almost like a job you'd give like your little brother you know but not pay him but they're paying yeah you know they're that's what it seems like to me like it's paying them or not these adults are making somebody drag their shit around yeah well that's work work is dragging someone else's shit around what what shit do people want to drag around? But it looks like slavery.

I guess, yeah. I don't know. I don't like it at all. Yeah, yeah. No, it looks bad. It's weird that everybody just walks away and whenever you see it, they're not part of the group.

You'd think it would be like, all right, come on this way. So, you need to be talking. They stick a club in a bag, then talk to their friend and walk away and then this guy's like gathering all the shit behind them like what what the hell is this about what a weird dynamic that's going on very demeaning it's not it definitely does it does but i mean what is it better than that's better than i worked at taco bell i would much rather you stick a fucking club in my bag and walk away, and then I walk with

some clubs and have to scrub a bean pan any fucking day of the week. It's not a bad point. Any day of the week. Well, I'm wearing a dumb shit visor that's with Taco Bell on it. No, fuck that. But then if I hand the wrong club and they hit it, they fucking duff it somewhere, then it's my fault? I didn't hit the fucking ball, you

asshole. People complain about a burrito. That's my issue now, you know? It's bad stuff. If you hit a bad shot, that's my fault? You choke on the burrito that I made, now that's my fault? You didn't chew it, you fucking idiot. I don't know a lot about golf,

but I would hope that you wouldn't't like in a professional setting where people are supposed to know clubs and angles and shit you would probably yell at your caddy but i hope that there's not a lot of people depending on a 14 year old caddy for to pick the right one to pick the club and what angle they should hit it at and then get mad at them for being wrong like what the hell experience does he have saying downward to the right i meant down to the left yeah and you hit it left and then it rolls down the fucking hill it's not my fault not my fault open your fucking eyes one morning they're on the front nine and a guy named cl patterson

who's a businessman he knocked his ball into the creek so uh this is a creek then it irrigates the golf course at the same time one of those so patterson this is terrible tells, then it irrigates the golf course at the same time, one of those. So Patterson, this is terrible, tells Ronnie to get the ball out of the creek. No. No. You tell somebody to get the ball out of the creek, fucking put it on the side. There. It's there now. What are you talking about?

Go get the ball. What is it, made of platinum? What kind of ball are you hitting? Who gives a shit? Go get my Titleist. If you're hitting a ball that's so expensive or valuable to you on this course that is your fucking fault well this is like makes me think of blazing saddles damn near lost a 400 hand cart like fuck are you talking about well you said the person in there because they're less important

than the golf ball what are we doing here so he uh tells him to do it ron says no yeah shakes his head if i ain't fucking going in there. So the guy says go in there. And he said I don't want to go in there. But he's supposed to they said go in there. Just wait into the creek. Reach around. Find and bring me back the ball. He said quote

no I won't. I don't want to get wet. Yeah. So the guy told him you will get my ball. Which is what? Fuck dude that's that's not what this is i'm going over pretending like i'm getting it and then i'm just dumping his clubs in the creek and walking away there you go bye now you get wet motherfucker all your clubs are wet anyway so if you want them then here's where they are that's a whole fucking bag in it too that's it plunk that's what i mean i I'll throw the whole fucking bag in it, too.

That's it. Plunk. That's what I mean. I just take the bag off, throw it in the creek, and walk away. There you go. Bye. I didn't wade in there. I just threw it.

I hope that's okay. Have a good one. I tried to get it with the bag. It slipped. Sorry. He said no. So he said, you will get my ball. At which point, Ronnie grabbed the man's golf bag and threw it 20 feet into the creek.

So he did exactly. Yes, he did. I love it so much. I knew he did that. I had to get it. It's so amazing that he did that. It's exactly what you're supposed to do. He said his regret, though, was that ended his opportunity to bring home.

He was making good money in tips and stuff, and now he has less money to bring home. So he was a little upset about that, but he thought he did the right thing. If you don't know when Crystal Pepsi was discontinued, what was in Al Capone's vault, or which famous meteorologist is Lenny Kravitz's second cousin, then you haven't spent enough time on Wikipedia. But that's okay. I am here for you. I'm Darcy Carden, and I'm inviting you to listen to my new podcast, WikiHole, from Smartless Media. Discover the craziest rabbit holes on Wikipedia with me and my funny friends as we bring the cyber frontier directly to your tympanic membrane. And if you listen to my podcast, you'd learn that that's the sciency term for eardrum. We embark on a hyperlink rollercoaster as we start out on a Wikipedia page and go from link to link to link to link, careening through trivia, oddities and unexpected connections until we collectively shout, how the hell did we get here?

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He's beginning to become a bit of a delinquent, too, on the streets here. Because all of his friends think of him as tough and tougher than them, even though he insists otherwise. He said, I wasn't tougher, though. We were all tough, he says. He says they started going into neighborhood houses to, quote, swipe nickel and dime stuff. In other words, burglary is what they're discussing. Yeah, that's the idea. Essentially that.

Going into neighborhood houses to swipe nickel and dime stuff is breaking and entering burglary it's there's a lot of things to that's more than breaking and entering right that is burglary that's burglary they're stealing yeah that's not good there's probably b&e attached to it absolutely how do you get in otherwise i mean they're not just walking in uh ronnie was always in the middle of it he said he said he didn't consider what they were doing actually break-ins until the cops called it that when they were caught one time you're doing break he was like i never really thought of it like that i thought it was kind

of just kids fucking around you know what you're right that's exactly what we did i didn't realize it we've been doing crime everybody that's not good sorry about that shit you guys were awful i forgot hey we're we are actual criminals now shit so they were caught they were released to their parents though first offense they're little it's 1954 or some shit who cares boys will be boys so yeah 1957 or something i don't know there's greasers with cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves walking around there's a lot to worry about right now so they uh r Ronnie continued to, he had a problem in school with reading. Later on it comes out that he's dyslexic and shit, but back then they were just like, well, he's dumb as shit.

Next one. That's what they did back then with kids. If they had trouble reading, they were like. He read God is Dog and now he is out of this class. He don't read well. We'll put him aside. Maybe he can tinker with something and figure out how to do that because he's never going to be smart rather than learn a trade son

yep right yeah so most of his grades were failing grades and um by the by his sophomore year he decides to drop out so he decides he's done he's struggling in school and he's said even when he tried he had a hard time and he couldn't do it. So he dropped out along with a couple of friends of his. And they continued their delinquencies. They would break in, burglarize places, all that sort of thing. He did get arrested for stealing a pocket full of bubble gum as well from a store. Pocket full?

Full. He filled his pockets with gum. Handfuls of bazooka. I was just going to say, so many comics for later. He was upset. He just wanted the comics. I hated when I'd get like three pieces

and two of them had the same one. God damn it. That's the worst. You're like, you fucking bad. I wanted to read this unfunny shit. God damn it. Never been anything funny in a bazooka comic ever. Thoughtfully bankrupt fucks. You make me read this horse shit.

Thanks a lot. And it's the same horse shit? I already read this horse shit. It's like gum family circle. Thanks a lot. Unfunny horse shit. So Ronnie ends up spending a couple of months in Juvenile Hall, actually. Oh.

He actually goes to juvie there. He says that he remembers his mother crying in court. And then when he was released to she said he said, quote, she always told us that she had to raise up the child in the way he should go. And when he's older, he won't depart. He said, but for a long time, that didn't work out with me. I've always been sorry for what I put her through. But in the end, she knows I won't depart. That's what he got juvie for gum and slapped on the wrist for breaking into people's fucking

because that was his first offense they were like oh these kids need a lab they sent him home to the parents tell them what they're doing is wrong and then once they catch him for the fourth time they're like i don't care what the fuck you're stealing you're going in i'm arresting you it was the you you like to steal shit clearly obviously so uh he ends up he rebelled against his fucking upbringing his religious upbringing he says he didn't but what he was doing was not really i don't i don't think that was in the pentecostal teachings probably probably in the book under things not to do but shit probably um he said i always respected my parents and i feared god i was just like a lot of kids caught up in the excitement you know all the excitement that

crime is it's very exciting this and it is it's exciting to steal shit and run the streets with your friends that's exciting what's exciting is your friends thinking you're cooler than you yeah it's fun you're a kid it's not really the crime isn't it when the crime is exciting you get fucking help yeah that's bad you're you're a problem uh he i guess just doing it with his friends he said sometimes you have to stray to find your way oh boy i hope he meant to rhyme that that would make it even cooler he said uh later on when he's a boxer they said what's your greatest opponent and he said the toughest guy i ever fought was my father and i never got to throw a punch he said uh he has mixed feelings about his father he said kids always resent their parents but for

me the resentment was respect you know what i mean my father had all the power and i wanted to take control of my own life. But both my parents knew me. They always knew me. They knew I didn't want to hurt anyone. Okay. He said, yeah, that sounds like double talk, Ron. Yeah.

He then said about his behavior, the problem was I got out of the backyard and into the alley. Once I'd seen the alley, they couldn't get backyard and into the alley once i'd seen the alley they couldn't get me back into the yard that makes sense though that i can see him and his friends here this is insane him and his friends decided this summer or this fall after they dropped out of school and everything they decided to be train hobos is that right i didn't make this up by the way but you think train hobos that sounds like some shit no this is real you've gone too far james but this is why you can never tell if something's fake because there's crazier stories than anything i've ever told you that are

real he decided that they wanted to learn how to hop a freight and tick and they took three different trips to just wherever the fuck the freight was going they didn't even know where it was going that's what is great about the west side of the i guess the east part of the country too it's really this country the trains really do run fucking everywhere oh yeah they're going all over they were still using them to get goods into into town fuck yeah colorado has denver and colorado springs have a giant train station so many tracks wide that trains just go fucking everywhere we used to play basketball with the dude that did every city is that yeah every makes sense yeah yeah they all

have it's crazy there was a homeless guy that used to play at the park with us that uh was just in town for a couple of months and then he would disappear this guy who used to play at the park with you used to play basketball with us oh basketball okay he used to play with me in the sandbox no i was like what are you talking to play with you what are you playing with a homeless man he used to play basketball okay that's different yeah anybody can play basketball that's what's great about basketball yeah even homeless guys hey come on in we need we need a fifth let's go he smelled terrible smelled terrible, but boy, was he good. Let's go, Hobo Joe. Move your ass.

What do you play? Two, three? Fucking line up, fucker. See that guy up. Let's go. It's like a 25-year-old black guy that called him soup kitchen. Take three, four of those jackets off and go out and play out by the three, please. There you go.

It's because the guy used to just rain threes on him the whole game. So he'd go, come in the box, soup kitchen. I'll sit back here. That's funny. Oh, man. So, yeah, anyway, they took all these trips. They went to one year, they went to Gary, Indiana. Ended up there.

Then they went to Chicago, where they ended up having to call ronnie's aunt birdie to get them because they got yeah because that's too far from home too far we went too far we've gone too far this is a fucking great lake we are too far your bindles are only so big you know that's the problem you can only put so much in your stick bindle and it's a difficult time that's crazy far he said the first the one time the train happened to be headed toward Great Falls, Montana, he said. And the way he put it, quote, a hobo down by the train yards taught them the basics. He showed us how to spike the doors on freight cars. He said we should always set up more than one car in case we saw some bad guys already settled in when the train started to move.

So, yeah, you don't want to be on the people on the train with them. By the time they arrived in Great Falls two days later, they were hungry. They ate all their food. All they had was a bindle, literally. And they started to feel cold and it's snowing outside. And Ronnie lost a shoe jumping onto the train car back in Denver and so he was fucked basically. So they ended up hanging around out there for two days until the police picked them

up and called their parents in Denver. The shoe looks like Polly Walnuts. He's just like coming back from the pine forest there chasing the Russian guy. That's what they're doing. Yeah, he's just like, we found a one-shoed child, said he belongs to you, like a thousand miles from where you live. We're in Montana. Explain that shit. That's what having too many children will do.

You can lose track of children. Who knows? And they are on the other side of the country in a train. I'm sure one of the other kids has an eye on them. What do we know? You haven't seen your kid in a week and you didn't know? No. William told the cop who called Ronnie, called to hold Ronnie overnight just to teach him a lesson.

Yeah. Keep him there. Keep him there for a night. Teach him a lesson. Ronnie said he was so happy though because the cell was warm and they had food and he was starving and he had one shoe so he was thrilled to be in jail he's thrilled about it so then the boys started doing some more crime here they started as as ronnie puts it quote going jacking yeah which is uh not from people though just from stores

they one one person would distract the store clerk while the other would steal whatever they could fucking stuff into their pants, basically. So Ronnie was arrested a couple times more for this. Hauled before judges. Sentenced to juvenile hall for short time periods a couple more times. So he's in and out of juvie for a while here. time so he's in and out of juvie for a while here yeah um shortly after he's released for one of these times he is caught with a friend of his in plain sight of a police officer attempting a purse snatching not good um not good um finally this is when william and nelly the parents are like we don't know what the fuck to do with him anymore he's snatching purses it's one thing if he's doing

dumb kid shit this is a purse snatcher is the lowest form of anybody on the street like you're stealing purses what the fuck is wrong with you stealing from the man is one thing but you're not even stealing from a man you're stealing from a woman that's you need what do you need a purse with like kingpin what are you what are you a little girl you, a little girl? You need a purse? And he throws the coffee in his face. So that's the lowest it gets, though. The judge told his parents that he needed to get Ronnie's attention, and he didn't know how to do that without incarceration. And dad agreed. Dad said, I can't keep my foot on his neck all the time to the judge. And the judge said that he regretted sending a 16 year old from a good home away.

But he sentences him and his friend Roy to you. Young men may fuck off 18 months in the Buena Vista correctional facility. A year and a half. Year and a half. Yeah, this is it's gotten violent now. Purse snatching. You could hurt somebody. That's a different story.

That's not stealing gum from the store. So's a serious sentence yeah it's that's really serious so it's the only colorado state reform school but what uh buena vista was but it's known for punishment and not any form of coddling they said back in the day here yeah he um he said he still remembers his number back then uh one four nine four eight and uh he said he still remembers his number back then, 14948. And he said him and his friends watched each other's backs, and they did it behind bars, and they wanted to get out of there. While in juvie, he said he learned some basic stuff. He called it kind of the rules of the road here while you're in jail. Number one, and we've said it for years years and it's our number one rule as well

mind your own business it's the only rule that works as well on the outside as in jail as in on mars is under fucking ground as wherever the fuck you mind yeah god damn fucking own business that's it that's rule one two three four and five and then there's a couple after that too he said that uh everybody thought he was a tough guy by the way because he's a big tough guy he's a strong looking like you know thick kind of a guy he uh but he also said that he he began to apply a personal thing here. He said, if you get hit, it's your own fault. That's how it works.

Don't get hit. He said in Buena Vista, I started to learn self-discipline is what he started to figure out. So back on the street, 1959, he's 17. He goes, you know, back right back to what he was doing home in the streets and does his thing. His brother Bill was headed to college. So this is a good family he's the fuck up that's the thing like everyone else it's doing great two more brothers had come along and they have another karen who was the youngest at the time was on the way his mom was pregnant so they're just pouring out kids but ronnie didn't know what to do um He said he couldn't live up to his brother's accomplishments and reputation, his brother Bill.

So instead, Ronnie had a little gang, he called it, basically. Ronnie called it his, quote, Zulu tribe. That's what he called it, which was his little group of friends. And he kept inviting Bill to be a part of it, his brother William. And William said, no, I'm going to college. I don't want to be a part of it, his brother William, and William said, no, I'm going to college. I don't want to be a part of it. That a boy. And their dad called them, quote, that bunch stirring up trouble.

That's what dad called it. Zulu warriors. Tribe. So that's what he called it, Zulu tribe. So basketball here. Ronnie is playing a lot of pickup games, a lot of shit like that. He loves sports. He likes baseball, football, basketball, boxing, everything.

He remembers he said basketball was his best game. When he gets out at 17, he tries out for a semi-pro team called the Boston All-Stars in the area. And he makes the team. And they begin. They travel to small towns. And basically, they make their expenses. They don't really make any money. It's just a kind of a it's a semi-pro team so that's what you get but people liked him he's got a lot of enthusiasm he's a hot he hustles too on the court he's one

of those guys and he's six foot three so he's a big you know tall guy big stocky tall guy he was a starting power forward by the middle of the season. And he says he wished he could have been a better student in school so he could have played more sports. He said that was the main thing. But he said school quitting it was his biggest regret. He said if I had my life to live over

again, one thing I'd change is I'd finish high school. That was his big thing. But instead he got associated with violent gangs and this is what happens now yeah um and what ends up happening there's a bit of a problem here um he says that um he's not trying to make any excuses for his behavior he writes there's a book that he wrote here about him and uh he says that that he just, his friends try to stick up for him though. One of his friends said,

quote, it was hard for Ronnie to say no to his friends. Uh, they'd also say he was so big, they wouldn't leave him alone. If they needed help with someone, they'd say they needed his help and he'd always calling Ronnie. Yeah.

Um, so he says that, uh, quote, if is, uh, if, if,

uh, if is a crooked word that, Oh, if is a crooked word that never, oh, what is that? If is a crooked word. If is a crooked, oh, it's if. I thought it was it. I have my fucking eyes. It is a crooked word that will never be straightened is the way he puts it. And he said if frogs had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass when he hops also. So he's like, no regrets is what he says.

What am I supposed to do if frogs had wings he wouldn't bump his ass when he squats when he hops when he hops you know one of those he'd have wings he wouldn't have to hop too so there's also that yeah so they said that there was a group uh of kids he said they all naturally looked up to ronnie for protection because he was tough. And he always said he would try diplomacy first, but then he'd have to fight. He quoted his mother, quote, what's wrong with people in the world today is they don't know how to show respect. He said if that didn't work, then he would try to instill fear in people so they wouldn't fight. And he said, I tried to scare their disrespect out of them. He said, though, but if that didn't work, he'd have to fight.

That was that. So 1960, there's a rivalry and kind of two groups of kids here that are kind of rival, not really organized gangs, but kind of little loosely affiliated gangs of kids that are fighting with each other. And one guy, one of his friends, recalls the other guys as, quote, very tough and very mean. There was one guy named Douglas Flash Bird, and he was known for beating other kids with, like, objects, like a rock or a stick, or he would, like, beat people up with shit. He always had a weapon? Brass knuckles, whatever was lying around. Yeah, he just always beat people.

brass knuckles, whatever was lying around. Yeah, he just always beat people. So Ronnie would try to, he said that they tried to, he tried to make a peace with this guy, and nobody fought, nobody attacked each other for a few months, but in the end, it all fell apart,

and they started fighting. And one day, there was a fight involving these two groups ron says quote i was bitter because it seemed like life was for the other guys to enjoy i was brought up in a ghetto jungle and learned a lot from it i had to come down a lot of hard roads and i benefited that's his explanation of why he fought this fight here i don't know yeah okay so anyway this is this is just a street fight not like a boxing match no no this is like a rumble in the they're having like a like a like a fucking greasers and socia's style we're meeting at the park you know chains and bottles but no blades type of shit like they're gonna have a rumble of 1960 rumble this is crazy crazy. So after lunch, May 16th, 1961, one of the teachers at manual high

school where he used to go looked out of the window of the science classroom toward the park across the street. And he said, he's staring out the window and, uh, there he sees, uh, a bunch of guys over there. Um see a bunch of kids chasing another guy. It's a big melee over going on there. So he says pretty soon the whole class was standing up and watching what was going on in the park. They must have had 10 or 12 guys, older guys running around down there. And I kept thinking we were outnumbered because one of the kids in his group is still in school and he's in class watching this. This is him.

He said, I wanted to go out and help. But then we all started to see what was happening. because one of the kids in his group is still in school and he's in class watching this. This is him. He said, I wanted to go out and help, but then we all started to see what was happening. Ronnie was out in front, and our guys were beating up their guys. It was something. So Ronnie leading the way in a big gang fight here. So he's kicking some ass.

So he also, this kid in the class, explains that after all the guys had left the park, a police car arrived. He said he got a bad feeling that something more was going to happen. A couple hours later, he said he got on a bus with his teammates and headed toward a track meet. And he said, just then, two carloads of our guys drove up to the bus and somebody yelled out, we got a rumble. Another rumble. Get off the bus? Yeah. Come on. We got a rumble. Get off your team bus. You know, we got a rumble another rumble get off the bus yeah come on we got a rumble get off your team bus you know get on we got another team get you got another game today uh-huh so he said the the

coach here wouldn't let him off the bus this kid uh so he said we took off uh for the meet when i got home after 5 30 i walked back to the projects and my mother's boyfriend met me at the door and he said where were you this afternoon i looked me at the door. And he said, where were you this afternoon? I looked up at the television screen and there it was, the whole thing. The park and an alley behind Roy Tyler's house. And they were talking about a shooting. Somebody had shot

Flash Bird. This guy was known for knocking people around with lead pipes and tire irons and even a jackhammer. I knew something really bad had happened quote just about all of our guys had guns by then you could buy a 22 caliber pistol on the street for 15 those days later when i found out the police were holding all of them and wouldn't let them go until somebody confessed i knew ronnie would take the fall i just knew it did the kid die so well here's what happened the first fight at the park initial

fight rumble apparently ronnie and them came out on top yeah then it reconstituted a couple hours later everybody regrouped and that's when he said we got a rumble and then it was much your guns it was a much bigger rumble. Yes, Flash Bird died. He died. Holy shit. Yeah, no, he died. He was shot four times with a.22. Oh, no, that'll do us.

Pretty close range, yeah. So Ron says that he remembers everything about that day. He says that the friends in the park were with him, were Connor Hill, Bo Peet. Bo Peet? Like Bo Peep? Really? Bo Peet.

B-E-A-U. Bo. One letter away. P-E-A-T. That is ridiculous. One letter away from being a shepherd. A female shepherd. That is awesome.

How much did he get made fun of in a neighborhood? Every day. You're in a gang. Your name is Peeps you know peeps and bo peeps and that's what you you are you'll get feet oh man lbp you know he gets your name philip tyson or dawson i'm sorry roy tyler gerald wade and sunny boy tyler and he said quote the whole thing was about a girl this is over a girl jimmy this is crazy to be kidding me he said, quote, the whole thing was about a girl. This is over a girl, Jimmy. This is crazy to be kidding me. He said, quote, we were minding our own business, just hanging around like

we usually did in a park across from Manuel High School. This dude named Poncho thought Connor had taken his girlfriend and he brought a bunch of friends to help beat him up. It wasn't about drugs or money and we weren't about a gang. It was about girl it was just groups of kids i mean they weren't like you know hey you're you're selling dope on our corner this was just a bunch of friends a man died yeah so um yeah here we go uh he says quote well naturally we had to help connor out when a bunch of guys jumped him we did a pretty good job too we were just there to help Connor out when a bunch of guys jumped him. We did a pretty good job too. We were just there to help. You know what I mean? Pretty soon they started running out of the park and we grabbed a couple of cars and chased him for a few minutes, then headed back to Roy's place.

When we got to Roy's, we found out his sister Sue was there and that made a big difference because after those guys picked up Flash Bird, they came back in cars and had guns. Once I saw this guy beat a kid almost to death for refusing to give up his lunch money that's flash bird he's talking about flash was one mean guy they drove through the alley and started shooting into roy's house they could have hit sue you know so he's saying it was god yeah so he then says um let's see let's do let's give him an in their own words since he's trying to get himself out of a murder beef here. Let's see what he has to say.

In their own words, quote, So we followed them. Flash was driving. He stopped in the alley. I went over to the driver's side. I told him, get out of the car. He opened the door. He was swinging a big lead pipe.

The shooting started. Flash ran down the alley i chased him but he got away we saw the police coming we went back to roy's the cops came and took us all in end quote that's his well his story is bird got away he skipped no well the shooting started he ran down the alley i chased him Don't know what happened. So the story is he skipped a lot of it. We'll put it that way. Yeah. He skipped the biggest part of it. Really. In his story, nobody dies. Well, it would be like if you told a story of a football game and you talked about the warm ups and then the postgame celebration. But you just failed to say who won the game or what happened in the middle of it. You forgot. The shooting is the that's your meat. That's your plot. in the middle of it you forgot the shooting is the that's your meat that's your plot you skipped over that part with the shooting started end of sentence and then moving on so bird anyway was 21 years old and um lyle said that he was being attacked with a lead pipe and he also said he wasn't the one that pulled the trigger but then he said he wouldn't say who'd pull the trigger so

that's the way it worked um he said that it wasn't even his girl that they were fighting over but a girl who was the friend of the boy that was killed like we talked about there he said there was this argument between a friend of mine and the other fellow bird's a fellow i like that and soon the other fellow had five other boys with him and they began following us around. It didn't bother me at first, but after they followed us to one place and then to my uncle's house, it did. It started getting on my nerves a little. He said that the other boys had weapons, so he went and got his 22 from his uncle. That's what happened. He said when Lyle and his friend left his uncle's house, the other boys said, follow us. Being kids, we did. They had a truck and we had a car and when they pulled up in the alley

this other fellow got out of the truck and i got out of the car nothing was said nothing had to be we knew there was going to be a fight fight lasted 10 to 15 minutes he said my god that's a long for you can't fight for 15 minutes no that's like that's five fucking rounds of boxing you know long that is fighting with no break. That's so much. You had to stop and have a cigarette in the middle of that. Hold on, hold on. Let's all... Somebody...

Who's got Gatorade? Somebody got... Somebody got in the clutch on the grass and they rested there for a minute, for sure. You had to. Just don't stop. Nope. We'll just... Let's both rest.

I said what I said. I said it. That's right. So Lyle says the other Lyle had a pipe or a bird had a pipe and was trying to hit him with it. Anyway, four shots from the.22 rang out. He said he was trying to hit me with the pipe. If I was trying to do that to him, I would think he would do the same thing to me. So, in other words, self-defense is what he's saying here.

The other boy turned and ran. He said he saw him run. He didn't even think he hit him with the gun, but the guy died in the hospital later that day. So yeah, that's what happens here. He admitted to the police firing at least three shots at point blank range at two victims, but hitting Bird. And he didn't even know he hit Bird.

They jail Ron along with seven other men for the shooting. uh, at two victims, uh, but hitting bird. And he didn't even know he hit bird. Uh, they jail Ron along with seven other men for the shooting. Um, the, he gives a written statement. Lyle took them to look for the weapon, which he said he hid in the five points area. And,

uh, he, uh, Burge died from 22 caliber bullet wounds rather than shotgun wounds. As they first thought, they thought it was pellets, but it was just.22 rounds. Small like that. All in the same spot. Yeah, exactly.

He's point blank. So, I mean, you're not going to. They said another guy suffered a minor head wound and he was treated and released. So, when he goes to court here, he goes to court at first. He's tried for first-degree murder at 17 right and the first trial ends in a mistrial what it ends in a mistrial there was a juror this is fucking crazy one of the jurors on this it's a death penalty case here one of the jurors ends up being jailed 30 days and fined $500 for discussing the case.

Okay. The guy was Carl McClung, who was a transportation company dock worker. And he's convicted of contempt of court after a probe of the chambers of the whole thing. City councilman testified, all this type of shit. And the judge went to the bench and declared a mistrial after this because the juror was doing some silly shit that he got held in contempt for during the trial so the new trial comes and it's the information is he admitted to shooting bird three times and then chasing him down an alley afterwards um benjamin hall who's

a 21 year old at the time, said he was sitting next to Bird in the front seat of the pickup truck when he saw Lyle pump the bullets through the window. Bird didn't even get out yet. He just stuck the gun in and shot him through the fucking window as soon as he pulled up. Holy shit. Hall said he wasn't struck by the bullets there, but he saw it.

He said the shooting climaxed a continuing dispute that started a fight at noon at the high school, like we told you all of that. He said that Byrd attempted several times that day to curb a Mercury sedan driven by Lyle. They were, like, bumping into each other on the road and shit, which is insane. Jesus, what is going on in the 50s, 1961? Hall said there was no conversation before Lyle came up to the trunk and fired at Bird. Bird got out of the truck

and ran down the alley, and Lyle ran after him also. Bird outran this guy because Lyle came back and said, you tell Flash Bird if I ever see him again, I will kill him, is what he then told his friend. So 90 minutes later, Bird died of the wounds, of his four gunshot wounds, or three, I'm sorry.

Larry Williams, he testified that he was seated on the right of Hall in the truck's front seat and was struck in the back of the head by a bullet. So he identified lyle as the man who shot him and uh who shot his friend but he said he couldn't tell if lyle's gun was the one who shot him i don't know who shot me but i'm believable saw who shot him so yeah this is fucking crazy man so in closing here uh the probation officers uh describe bird as a quote uh this is the they're trying this is the defense trying to say that he had to shoot Byrd because Byrd's a bad guy. This is Byrd's probation report.

Quote, he's a belligerent individual who was quite prone to hit with any weapon available and could be counted upon to really bruise an opponent. and could be counted upon to really bruise an opponent. Now, Lyle, on the other hand, was considered to have good habits and come from a family in which the father was a part-time minister and has brothers in college and shit like that. The wait is over. So far, you're not losing. The only thing you're losing is my patience. Quickly, I see that.

Ding! The queen of the courtroom is back. I didn't do anything. You wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you in the face. I see he's not intimidated by anything. I can fix that. New cases.

She wanted to fight me. Leave her alone. Okay, so, um... This is not a so. This is a period. Classic Judy. Did you sleep with her? Yes, Your Honor.

You married his cousin. His brother. That's not him. Yes, ma'am. I would make a beeline for the door. The Emmy Award-winning series returns. How did I know that? I have a crystal ball in my head. It's an all-new season.

It's streaming. You can say anything. Judy Justice. Only on Freebie. The judge said there were several factors working against Lyle from the evidence. He

failed to avoid the showdown with Bird, refused to call the police although the he was allegedly in fear of his life as he said for self-defense and he made a specific trip to borrow a gun over an uncle's objection right before it happened so the jury rejects the claim of self-defense the judge says you took the law into your own hands. He is found guilty of murder. What? Guilty of murder. He is sentenced to, you, sir, you young man, he's 17, may fuck off 15 to 25 years.

He's 19 at this point. Yeah, 15 to 25 for murder. He's lucky it wasn't worse yeah i think it ended up being second degree in the end possibly that they convicted him on he said it hurts i wasn't trying to kill anybody um he he says don't ask who did the shooting ever since the trial i've never talked about it and i never will he said we were uh we were all in it together i was involved um he said that he could have received a softer sentence if he revealed the real killer, but he said, quote, but where do you live after that? It's a good point.

That's a good point. Where do you go? Where do you go? So, yeah, he said that he knows. He doesn't remember that day. He said it fades from his memory. He said he doesn't remember. He just remembers him and his friends were at the police station for hours he remembered being told they'd all stay

in jail until somebody confessed but he doesn't remember when he decided to tell him that he did it basically there he said that he remembers being locked up but he doesn't know how long he was even sitting there before the public defender showed up he He sat there. He waited more than a year for trial, too. He sat in jail for almost a year. Yeah. Waiting for that. Then the mistrial happened. So then he had to wait a little while longer.

So he says that one of his friends says, I know Ron didn't pull the trigger and I know that he would never roll over on a friend. Never. That's what it said. But there's witnesses that said he did. So who knows? So the family here, they say the sentence was terrible. And his big brother said that he always loved and respected and admired him. And now he's going to prison.

How could that be? This is ridiculous. He doesn't understand it. His sister said that. What are we going to do without his protection on the street? She said, without Ron, we knew now we would be meat to eat. Jesus. I'll bet you didn't know Denver was so hardscrabble, did you?

Apparently not. This neighborhood's fucking hard, man. Yeah. So his brother said he was most concerned about their mother. Quote, she was devastated. Ronnie was close to her in a way none of the rest of us were. And yeah, they said how. But then the one sister said she's hurt because how could he do this to us?

We need him. And he fucked up here so bad here. And it's terrible. So he goes to prison. And this is real prison now. This isn't Buena Vista. He said that he tried to apply the lessons that he learned in Buena Vista to adult prison. Mind your business, that one?

He said that it was a little bit different, though, here. He's in Cannon City jail or prison, and they called it Old Max was the place that he was in old max i guess the old maximum security building the conditions were so bad that in 1977 this is 15 years after you know after he gets there a guy named fidel ramos sued the state and charged that the department of corrections was inflicting cruel and unusual punishment on its inmates, and the federal judge agreed. And they ended up having to make all these changes. It was a bad place, but Ron Lyle had already been there. So they said that that case was the case that led to the modernization of Colorado prisons.

Wow. Old Max was a – he said this is a former legal director for the Colorado ACLU. People forget that Old Max was a hellhole. Cells were 28 square feet and people were locked down in them for long periods of time. Sewage came up the pipes. The food was often inedible. Violence was rampant. The stronger inmates really ran the prison.

Twelve. Twenty eight square feet. That's a bed. Ten by two and a half. That's so small. Oh oh my god a cot with like two feet at the end with a toilet so there's nowhere to like do anything you can't even shit that's brutal um so during this time that ron's in here they said murders were so frequent and commonplace that it was not even like not even thought of another guy got killed they said the worst

method back then that they used to do was somebody would fashion a quote gas bomb and throw it into a cell burning the victim alive oh my god that is the most horrifying thing i've ever heard in my life someone's sitting on their little tiny cell and you throw a gas bomb that spreads and burns them alive in their bed it's very easy to burn 28 square feet very easy boom uh some cheap uh you know government issue blanket that i'm sure is flammable as shit and yeah i bet you're right not great so he said that was really the the hard one that was brutal that people would do that obviously um he said that was really the hard one. That was brutal that people would do that, obviously. He said that Ron found himself, because he's a big guy, constantly challenged by people who were tough people. And he said it was hard.

He said most of the prisoners were, he said they were black or Mexican, most of them. But he said that they didn't get along at all. And he said even other, there wasn't like even, like the races themselves fought each other, but they also didn't get along with among their own. There was no like unity of like, okay, all the black guys are going to stay together and all the, there wasn't any of that.

They're fighting everybody and themselves. He said that you were just as likely to be tripped or pushed by a black guy or a Mexican guy as a white one. There was no rhyme or reason. Just everybody was crazy in there. He said that within weeks of getting there, he found himself locked up in solitary confinement for fighting. He would be locked up in lockdown with all the other inmates for no other reason than an administrative measure as well. They just do big lockdowns to do like practice things. The prisoners were often kept in their cells between 22 and 23 hours a day without congregate

dining, exercise, work opportunities or religious services at this place. That's brutal. God, that's that sounds horrific. And when you do it on your own, like in your own house, it feels great. But that's because you can leave anytime. Anytime you want. There's a fridge. 22 hours alone sounds amazing.

Until you are forced to do it. Right. If I have Hulu in a refrigerator, you don't need to talk to me. I'm good. But other than that, I don't know. This sounds awful. So her mom, or his mom, Nellie, here to almost every week to visit him and um you know she would take a four-hour bus drive ride sometimes to him wow on uh several occasions she

arrived all the way there and found out that he was in solitary or locked down and couldn't get in to see him and she'd have to take him all the way back um yeah so ron said he trusted no one and tried to keep to himself. But when he was threatened, he said that he always gave at least as much as he got was the way he put it, which judging by later on, he could give. Trust me. At one point after a fight, he got stripped and thrown into quarantine and left there for 23 hours. And he said he got released into the yard and he was dazed and thought he was crazy and thought his mind was losing his mind and he's having problems in prison um the rules now like

i said here we go he said an old timer he talked to gave him three rules and told him he'd be okay quote first mind your own business that's number one right there. He said, Ron knew that rule from the start and was into it. He got it. Second, don't go into another man's cell. Okay. He's got you at his mercy there. Well, I mean, even if he calls you in there, maybe he's calling you in there to shank you to where he knows where everything is and you don't. So it's stay outside the cell. Don't go in there. And second, uh, he said, Oh yeah, second, don't go to another man's cell. And third, don't steal anything from anybody. Don't give anybody a reason where they're justified to want to stab you in the throat.

Right. Fair. Those are all fair. Just mind your own business there. And then don't take anything from anybody for free because now you owe them something. Now you owe them. Nothing's free in jail. I know way too much about prison rules.

Nothing's free in jail. No. That's the thing. Yeah. No, you owe them. Nothing's free in jail. I know way too much about prison rules. Nothing's free in jail. No. That's the thing, yeah. So he said, all of this. Also, don't have a teenager in your hit squad, I believe is the other one. Valuable. We all know that one from here.

So after 300 episodes, we get that. He said he followed all the rules, but he'd still get in trouble because he said he didn't take shit from anybody. He said, don't stick a stake in a lion's den, is what he said. He's all over it. He doesn't want to fuck around. He said, this is his friend, I believe, here. He said, quote, remember, he was pretty disillusioned and bitter. Ron had no reason to believe he would spend less than 15 years in jail,

maybe up to 25. Life seemed over before it could begin. He said, Ron said, I was a troublemaker for a long time. I didn't know how to live there in prison. It was the start of what lasted most of my life, trying to reconcile my Christian background with the code I learned in prison. So he wants to he fights a lot. He said then there was a lieutenant named Clifford Maddox. I learned in prison. So he fights a lot. He said then there was a lieutenant named Clifford Maddox.

And one day this lieutenant approached him and asked him if he'd ever played any sports teams because he just looks like an athletic guy. He said, I told Maddox I'd always been interested in sports but could never make the teams in high school because of my grades. I told him I played on a semi-pro basketball team. And he said that's where I should start then. He let me know that in prison, everything was up to me. I had to take the first step.

So after a while, I did. So he said at first, he didn't want to deal with this lieutenant guy. He said, I told him, man, you're a screw and I'm a convict. I came here by myself and I'll leave the same way. But then after a while, he got involved in football, baseball, and basketball.

The prison had teams. Wow. They had teams and he got involved in all of them. Yeah, he was really good. His first basketball season, he averaged 23 points a game. Coach Maddox coming through. He's a great athlete. He's really good.

When baseball came around, he batted 400. Wow. And they said he kicked long field goals for the prison football team. He would throw great athlete. He's really good. When baseball came around, he batted 400. Wow. And they said he kicked long field goals for the prison football team. He would throw touchdown passes. He had a gun for an arm. He was just an amazing athlete. But he said the football team is what brought him his friends in prison. He heard a guy named Doobie Vigil is his name.

Doobie. Like a brother. Doobie Vigil is his name. Doobie, like a brother. Doobie brother here. He said that he'd been in reform school with some guys and they'd heard of each other through reform school. He said that he was the toughest guy there and Ron had heard the same thing, but he didn't meet Doobie until they started playing football and they were really intimidating members of the team, apparently. So they were the tough guys together, basically. So they did so well, they were invited to play an exhibition game against a semi-pro team called the Colorado Colts. And they said, one of the Colts players said about Ron, we kidded around about playing the prison team at first, saying the referees should wear checks instead of stripes,

and the police wouldn't let the wide receivers go long. That's pretty funny. But after the game started and we saw Ronnie Lyle play, it was a different story. We won the game, but just barely. And afterward, everyone, including our team, voted him the MVP. So great athlete.

Just good at every sport. Really good. Excelling in prison. So far far except for the solitary all the time that's not good he said he went to his first prison boxing match on the 4th of july 1962 and watched and he decided he could compete he said i can do this and he ended up started boxing in 1964 he credits the maddox guy the athletic director with getting him into it he says that in high school boxing didn't interest me much mainly because I was always having to fight my way out of a lot of after-school scraps and when I had to fight I

didn't enjoy it uh he said he called those personal squabbles he said so you know never looked like fun to box I always had to box all the time. It's like a mechanic drives the shittiest car. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And the lieutenant won't take any credit for it. He says that I don't like to take any credit for what happened, but Ron turned into a real gentleman. He said he watched boxing on TV and said, I could do better than that. And then he said they had fight cards in prison.

I sat around watching them for a while and finally said to myself, I could do better than that. And then he said they had fight cards in prison. I sat around watching them for a while and finally said to myself, I can do that. And we've had a few guys start like this. Remember? How many? But usually they boxed before they got into prison. Yeah, it's very rare that they pick it up on the inside. It's so strange. His first match on the boxing team,

he was defeated by a guy named Texas Johnson. And then he never lost a match again he ended up like 25 and one in prison so he had to figure out what it was about problem is uh he tried to keep to himself a lot but he'd gained a lot of success doing all these sports and several of the inmates would fuck with him about that because they you know people are jealous that's all there is to it he said sometimes during meals they'd break his balls or in the yard or whatever he said some days it seemed that everyone in prison was mean probably most days i would assume everyone he said at least at least in the beginning it felt that way one guy in particular

was on my back almost every day and Ron kept telling him to leave him alone. He said he didn't want to fight. He wanted to play sports. He didn't want to be in the hole. He said finally at breakfast one morning, this guy challenged him to meet in the laundry room and Ron said, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to go beat the shit out of this guy and get this over with. It's tired. I'm tired. Maybe by the end of it, they won't find out and I can, whatever. So he said they squared off. He got ready to throw some punches.

Next thing you know, this guy pulls out a shiv and shanks Ron in the abdomen right away. The tip of the knife pierced an artery near his spine. Oh, no. That's how far back it went in there uh by the time the guards got to him he would he was bleeding they thought that he was gonna he died for the amount of blood that was there he went into surgery uh they tried to find the artery and stop the bleeding uh he was seven and a half hours of surgery oh my god and so much blood loss they had to keep you know keep him in there and look for it he had 35 pints of blood transfused into him that day what do you hold seven it just

kept pouring out yeah it was like they were filling a fucking glass with a hole in it the whole time they're just like he is he's the radiator of his old car yeah he's like bugs bunny with a bunch of holes in him and he drinks something it all sports out it's bad shit yeah yeah he's like his dad's car his dad's ford so he um he received they actually uh signed his death certificate he was twice declared clinically dead and um he ended up surviving it somehow he said fucking real man i guess there was one doctor who wouldn't give up on him and said gave him another shot and they ended up finding the artery and finally fixing it and saved his life he said and he said i survived because my mother saved me well i think it was a doctor there's a doctor didn't want you to die so uh he said he woke up after surgery

and the first thing he remembered was sliding down a long tube. He said, then my mother reached down and pulled me back. That's why I'm alive. She wanted me to live. What? Yeah, you were hallucinating due to blood loss and trauma. And your brain was giving you something comfortable, which was your mom saving you, which is what your brain would put to make you feel comfortable in a situation full of trauma. which is what your brain would put to make you feel comfortable in a situation full of trauma.

That's just science. To keep you from having irreparable damage of realizing that you are almost fucking dead. Then a dude who did a lot of fucking school about how to cut you open and fix shit. Found your arteries are located. Fucking artery and fixed it. And capped it shut. Wow. So he nearly died he said that um another he had a vision though much like his father while he was in this state he had a vision he said he barely closed his eyes and found himself in a vivid dream and that dream he was fighting for

the heavyweight championship of the world he said he when he woke up, he remembered every punch of the whole fight, every round. And he said, that's it. I'm going to do that. He said, I am going to be the heavyweight champion of the world. That's what I'm going to do. I had a vision in the hospital

and it's going to happen. So after he gets out of the hospital, after two months, he gets put in solitary confinement for 90 days for getting in a fight. Jesus, that's cold, man man that is literally insult to injury absolutely so he said he had nothing to do so he started doing push-ups sit-ups and squats and all sorts of other exercises anything he had room for it's all he did all day he trained regularly he said that he passed his time by doing a thousand

push-ups in an hour each day that's how he would do doing a thousand pushups in an hour each day. That's how he would do it. Just pump them out in an hour. That's insane. He said also while in prison, he enlisted the African-American self-help group named Black Cultural Development Society and coached the group's football team when leading led them to a championship among the interprison teams. He also played with the prison team himself. During the remainder here, he has, like I said, 25 more fights, only loses once. He's 25-1.

He won six different heavyweight titles for inmates. How big is this son of a bitch? He's doing well. How jacked is he? 6'3", 205 pounds or so. Not great. I mean, not staggering, but that's great. For the 60s, that's huge.

Offensive linemen were 240 back then. Literally, that was an offensive tackle, man. So that's big. 1967, he's up for parole already. So, yeah, he gets a parole hearing in 67, and he says that he wants to be a professional boxer. He wants to be heavyweight champion of the world. Lieutenant Maddox testifies for him, said he's got all this talent.

He's 20 is 125 straight fights. I think he could make it and do all of this. The parole board said, no, thank you, sir. They said they were not accustomed to releasing prisoners to become professional boxers. So they said that wasn't a realistic career plan. You need to come up with a job. So go back to jail or? Yes.

No parole. No, no. Oh, my God. No parole for you. Not this time anyway. He said, I went back to the parole board and they sent me back for a year or two. They said boxing is not a parole plan. The head of the parole board said he didn't think

I could fight my way out of a wet bag. They didn't think I'd make it. I told them that this is what I'm going to do when I get out, and they said, prove it to us.

So, finally... Also, violent criminal being paroled to go do violent shit, we can't allow that. At least it's controlled violence. Jesus Christ. At least it's, you know, not in an alley. alley there's no guns allowed but he didn't murder a man

he did murder a man you think we're gonna find you a gentle career what do you what do you think something in like say a cross stitching type of thing like that maybe maybe work at a pet store something maybe you know around the kittens how do you feel about goldfish and betta fish what do you think i mean i think that watching them swim would calm you probably be good for all of us so he was turned down twice 1967 1968 um all of that sort of thing 1969 they said that uh he would have been paroled if he had told the parole board that he would just take a low-paying job offered by people that have been offering him shit. But he said, quote, I was firmly convinced that I could succeed as a pro boxer and I wasn't going to lie to them. Because then when he got out, he would have had to do that job.

He has to do whatever parole job he said he's going to do. So finally, in November 1969, a guy named Bill Daniels, who we'll talk about here, he provided with the parole board the assurance they required. He said that he would guarantee Ron a regular job as a welder with a firm he owned while the guy worked on his boxing career. So November 22nd, 1969, Ron was paroled there. The day he left prison, he said paroled there. The day he left prison, he said he never looked back. He said, quote, even on the bus I never turned around to look at the place where I

had been for so long. Fuck out of here. Would you? Would you look back to see it going away? No, that's the rule. Don't look back. Fuck that place. I might look back to give it the finger and be like, fuck this place. Yeah, I think that would work. Like mouth fuck you to all of it. know what i mean suck it yeah yeah something maybe stick your ass out the window just don't wiggle your dick at it because i'll throw you right back i was

gonna say that nothing that can get you like arrested that's the problem you have to be very careful gotta be very stoic about the fuck you you can't throw the warden's golf clubs into the creek probably that's not gonna be a good idea so he serves seven and a half years of his 15 to 25 year sentence yeah he said i've been as far down as i can as a man can go i feel being isolated in an institution is as far down as you can go on earth i fought against a lot of odds and to look at the odds i've overcame gives me the much more drive to keep going i was there seven and a half years and i didn't enjoy one second of it but i maintained my sanity and said to myself that this boxing was what i was going to do when i got out and my first greatest ambition was to be a basketball player but i guess i wasn't good enough yeah so the this

whole thing from prison has he's gotten famous in den Denver as this guy in prison who's boxing and all this shit, like doing a good job. So there's a guy, the Bill Daniels guy who we talked about, he has a boxing team called the Denver Rocks. It was an international boxing team. Now, Bill Daniels is a TV executive and was the president of the American Basketball Association for a while, the ABA. And he was the owner of the Utah Stars basketball team for a while, which was a good team for a few years, the Utah Stars team. He's the guy who helped him out. We'll talk about Bill Daniels for a second. He was in World War II and the Korean War, where he was a naval fighter pilot serving time as the commander of the Blue Angels.

This guy's fucking awesome. He's a hero. He's fucking awesome. He's the commander of the Blue Angels, and he owns a basketball team and helps boxers. This guy's the coolest fucking guy. What a cool life he has. Holy shit. You want him as your grandfather.

Oh, God. This is when I was flying around introducing, introducing some of the other old pilots. You'd be like, this is amazing. Want to go out for a day? Sure do. This is crazy. Just with you. Holy shit.

No one else. So, yeah, that's who this guy is. A cool motherfucker. Yeah. So Ron said he asked around about the rocks and he said that they told him that they already had a heavyweight a couple of heavyweights there he said i figured i could whip him so i stuck around that's what he did i figured i could win he makes the team and uh does a lot of amateur fighting as we'll talk about here um he's given a full pardon by governor john arthur love at one point

really that's how much stroke bill daniels has in this area it's so awesome that's wow yeah he's like he just buzzed his he buzzed his house with one of those blue angel planes a bunch of times till he did it full pardon fine full pardon and does that expunge your record it's a pardon so i think it means it never happened. Of murder. Of murder. Yeah. Holy shit.

I think legally then you're pardoned. Yeah, done. So when he gets out, like I said, this guy's doing all this shit. Bill Daniels said, we talked to Angelo Dundee and then to Yancey Durham, who trained Joe Frazier. That's Ali and Frazier's trainers. Yeah. But decided Bobby would be the best who's some other guy here the others all just had big fighters and I would just be a

sparring partner with them they would have not taken the necessary time to develop my skills Ron says he says that um being a boxer he loves it he says that uh you know his trainer says uh or he says about his trainer I know Bobby isn't going to tell me something unless he knows I can do it. So when he says it, I go right out and do it. And he says, it's like all this had to happen for me to get where I'm going.

So, yeah. Yeah, that's how things work. Bill Daniels, like we said, he's doing all this type of shit. And he said, this is a weird comment. He said, quote, I've always been interested in ex-convicts

and penal systems, which sounds... Don't say penal he that's hilarious he just said ex-con ex-convicts and penal systems those two words together sound like you want to see ex-convicts dicks is what it sounds like i know it's not what you mean you want to see ex-con dicks. Yeah. Mm-hmm. In the shower, wet and soaped up. Yeah. He said, I helped Ron get a pardon, see, and financed him while he trained for a title bout. I've always felt if cons had a job waiting for them when they got out of prison, we'd solve a lot of crime problems.

Yeah. Another guy here named Jimmy Farrell, he got out of the army about the same time Ron's paroled. He's a fighter too. He says about Ron, he was more driven than the rest of us. In fact, I've never seen anyone trained so hard. And Ron says, I was a loner in those days. I stayed away from old friends in the neighborhood because I knew I had to keep my parole. Meeting the Nelsons was good for me, this family. Alfred kind of reminded me of Lieutenant Maddox, another white guy who seemed to just accept who I was. And gradually, I came to trust Dennis and Donnie, too, and some of the other guys.

And he's talking about the boxers, talking about his boxing team. So anyway, he does his quickly. His first amateur victory was a third round knockout over Fred Halp, who is the guy who's the last guy that Leon Spinks fought. That's interesting. The guy that beat Leon? The guy that beat Leon, the last guy that Leon Spinks fought in his career. He knocked him out. This guy, it was his first amateur victory for Lyle.

He ended up being the 1970 National AAU Champion, which is pretty goddamn good. The 1970 North American Amateur Heavyweight Champion and the 1970 International Boxing League Heavyweight Champion. Wow, he's kicking ass. He also became a member of the United States National Boxing

Team. He was still on parole, but given permission to leave the U.S. And he went all across Europe, visiting Italy, Yugoslavia, Romania. They didn't know they had a killer in their midst. Probably not. They just loved that he was a boxer. He wins all sorts of these titles. I see him. I'm not going to go over what he did here, but he ends up beating a lot of foreigners, beating a lot of local guys, beating a lot of everything. He fought his last amateur match was January 25th, 1971. He knocked out the Pacific Northwest Gold Gloves heavyweight champion, Jim Wahlberg.

And, yeah, he was one of, that's what he's doing now. So he ends up also visiting, this is during the time that Ali and Frazier were training for their big fight. Okay. So he visited both camps. He went to Miami Beach, Florida, where Ali was and sparred with Ali for a little while. Then he went to the Catskills to Frazier's camp. But Frazier's manager didn't approve of Lyle as a sparring partner. And he didn't end up sparring with him.

Who cares? Yeah, who cares? So, yeah, fuck you then. I just sparred with Ali. What do you think of that? I sparred with the guy that's going to beat you, so who gives a fuck? But it's money, though. He was 25-4 in his amateur career here outside of prison with 17 knockouts.

So pretty fucking good. not too shabby um he was never knocked down or cut in any of his amateur fights unbelievable and he's 30 yeah there's a 60 minutes episode about the national team and about him being in prison and he's the story i mean this is a fucking story and a half. He said he was overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and support from the community. And he said it was crazy. They highlighted him for being a tough guy with a gentle nature and all this type of shit. He was an obvious choice, it says, for the 71 Pan American Games and maybe the 72 Olympics. But he decided to go pro instead. So he signs a professional boxing contract with Bill Daniels at age 30.

He still hasn't had a pro fight yet. This is crazy. That's fucking crazy. So he also says that he still visits prison. He said he'll never forget. Yeah, I know. He never forgets what it's like behind the walls and he hopes that somehow he can help others overcome similar issues he said i can still go

back down uh there quite a bit i want to help those guys and show them there's some uh hope out there when they get out yeah so first fight we're not going to go over every single fight i'll kind of bunch them up in bunches but first first fights, April 23, 1971 in Denver versus A.J. Staples, 11-8 fighter. And TKO round two win for Lyle here. So 1-0. Now, he has a friend here, by the way, a guy from jail that he knows that's a buddy of his who got out also. A guy named Vernon Rip Parker. And he said that Rip was one of his buddies,

and Rip said he played defensive tackle at Colorado at one of the state pens while Ron Lyle was quarterback, so he knew him from football too. So Rip now then started helping out in Lyle's corner here. Just, you know, he hired him basically. Here's my guy from prison. I'm going to give him a job. So, yeah, and the guy, his friend here, Clark, said he believed in him because he said any man who can come back from the dead can get lucky enough to hang one on the champ's chin. That's what he said.

So what the fuck? Why not? So, yeah, he does this. By the way, Bill Daniels gave jobs to 32 alumni of that prison over time it's a nice way of phrasing it yeah alumni 32 of them 32 wow so he started as fuck man yeah i mean it's not gonna hurt him he's a multi-millionaire he started lyle out with a salary of 800 a month and now he's making two thousand dollars a month, and now he's making $2,000 a month to train. That's great.

Yep. He said, we're partners 50-50. This is Daniel's. He also has a trust account, but I don't want him spending it, so I don't tell him how much is in it. I won't tell him unless he threatens me with bodily harm. Oh, that's, I don't like that. That's nice.

He's put money in a trust for him. Yeah. He goes, don't worry about it. You're not spending it. This is for later. At least tell me the worry about it. You're not spending it. This is for later. At least tell me the balance. Yeah, well, that's true. In May 22, 1971, Boston, he fights Art Miller, who's known as Curly Arthur Clown Prince.

That's too many. He's a bald white guy. I don't know. He's got a 27 and 38 record also, and Ron knocks him out. So there you go. Next up, he beats a guy named Gary Bates in the third round, makes him 3-0. Goes to Sunnyside Garden in Queens. They used to have wrestling shows there in the 50s and 60s.

He fights some guy named Edmund Stewart, who he knocks out in the second round. He's 4-0. Goes July 24th, 71. The Playboy Club Hotel in Lake Geneva. He beats up a guy named Leroy Caldwell, 5-0. Now he's in Vegas in August of 71. He's doing a fight every month, too, this first year. I'm shocked with how his life has turned out. This is unbelievable.

It's wild. I'm completely stunned. It's fucking crazy. Why isn't this so famous? And it gets even crazier, Jimmy. You're going to go, but what? Well, it's even better now. He goes to the Silver Slipper in Vegas, which I assure you doesn't exist anymore.

I guarantee it. And he fights a guy named Frank Snakebite Niblet. His last name is Niblet. Oh, Niblet. And they call him Snakebite. His record, 16 and 42. That's right. Yes, 16 and 42.

You got to quit, sir. Yeah, Ron Lyle beats him up there. 6-0 for Ron. He fights a guy named Stoney Eddie Land. Beats him up also in September of 71. He is back in October of 71 in Denver, beating up a man named Manuel Ramos. It goes all 10 rounds, though, this fight. Really?

Unanimous decision win, though. He pulls it out. Pulls it out. Next up, he fights at the silver slipper again fights a guy named joe e lewis not joe lewis like l-o-u-i-s that's joe lewis this is l-e-w-i-s it's a great profession to get into when your name is exactly the same as someone else's yeah joe and he uses his middle initial e is like joe e lewis i'm not joe lewis everybody b jordan pick something else motherfuckers pick a different name he's got a one in six career he uses his middle initial E as like Joe E. I'm not Joe Lewis, everybody. Michael B. Jordan.

Pick something else, motherfucker. Just pick a different name. He's got a one in six career record, so not very good. Not exactly Joe Lewis-like. He fights a guy named Jack the Giant O'Holloran, who's six foot six, big square-headed white dude. Ron K.O.'s him in the fourth round,

bringing him to 10 and 0. He fights in denver a guy named bill drover who is 31 and 9 so that's his first kind of tough fight and ron knocks him out in the second round making him 11 and i'm so good at this that's his first year that's 1971 wow it's 11 fights a bunch of ass whoopings here. Not only that, he's recognized by the community as being like a valuable member. He is what they call him in this newspaper article, one of the Mile High City's most respected men. Certainly not a murderer. No. In 1971, the Denver Jaycees voted him the man of the year. Wow.

There. the Denver Jaycees voted him the man of the year. Wow. There. And this year he was named to receive a local organization's second annual humanitarian award for his interest and devotion to helping youths of all ethnic backgrounds. Two years ago he was in the hole. This is crazy.

This is crazy. He has a son during this time as well. So he does well there. Doesn't name it Ron. So he's batting 1,000. He's putting it all behind him. He's really coming around, getting on top. He says that he's an 18-month-old kid at this point.

Monnie, he calls him. M-O-N-N-I-E. I don't know what the fuck that's about. Monnie? Monnie. That could be Monnie. Monnie, Monnie. I think it would be Monnie if it was one n probably right it's two n's two m o n n i e yeah that's mony like jimmy but fucking with

n's and an m does he not know how to spell monty i don't know a nickname probably i'm thinking yeah ron says of his son i love him well no shit he means more to me than anybody and anything in the whole world i want him to have the best education available i want him to have a nice home and a bicycle and a swing on a tree made with an inner tube he's very specific he has visions mind you you want a tire not an inner tube go on not an inner tube he has very specific visions though he sees an inner tube we're gonna challenge specific visions, though. He sees an inner tube. Are you going to challenge the man? God puts these visions in his head. I need him to know that you can't do that with an inner tube. I don't think he's seen many of those is what I'm getting at.

I think he just saw it once on TV. Yeah. He said an inner tube, and I want him to have a treehouse to make scooters of roller skates. I want him to have a treehouse and make scooters out of roller skates. There you go. So he wants some suburban shit. All those things that you want are welcome to fatherhood, sir. You've done it. That's exactly what a father is. He wants him to have a bunch of leave it to beaver shit.

He said, and I want him to have a paper route when he's 12 or 13 to teach him the value of a dollar. Okay. He's lining up beaver cleavers life for his kid here he says that he wants his son to have more than anything is a father who's the heavyweight champion of the world okay now that's the selfish part that's the guy i've had to make up for a lot of lost time in a short period i have to have total devotion mentally and physically i want to be on top and when i finally get the match i think i can win it if i if i't die first, I'm going to win it all. Does that mean if he loses, the winner gets his son? I believe if he's murdered in the ring by an opponent, that's the prize.

Yes. He gets his gloves and his son. Whoever his heavyweight champion is, he wants his son to have the heavyweight champion as his dad, so you've got to give him over. I think that's the plan. He said, if I don't die, I'll be champion.

If I do die, I guess my son will have to get used to a new dad. He's got the belt son. Go with him. Go with him. I don't know. That's the rule son. What do you want from me?

It's what I want. Like, you know, nothing about boxing. Fuck. 18 months old. He should know something by now. This fucking kid's an idiot.

Monty. That's not even by now. This fucking kid's an idiot. Monty? That's not even a name, dummy. So, wow. January 22nd, 1972. Back to boxing. 72, he beats up a guy named Chuck Leslie. 12th, second round knockout. Iron George Johnson.

Old Iron George is 22 and 28 in his career. Well, it sounds pretty pliable to me. Yeah, that's pretty malleable. That's not iron. More like 10. Nine, that's a third-round knockout here. Back at the Silver Slipper, he beats up a guy named Mel Turnbow in the fourth round. In Omaha, he beats up a guy named Mike Jim Boswell.

His nickname is jim in boxing when your name is mike it's already your name is mike it's already one syllable hi mike jim boswell oh no not like your first name's like philemon or some shit it's very easy to pronounce that's my nickname mike's not confusing. Don't worry. Well, either way, he gets the shit knocked out of him because Ron beats him up, bringing Ron to 15-0. July 10th, 72, Mile High Stadium. Okay. He's in the main event here because in Denver, he's a celebrity.

He's fighting at the Broncos Stadium. Yeah, and this is just like a 10-match boxing card. He's the main event. He fights Vincente Rondon, who is 36-6 coming into this fight. So Ron's 15-0. So he's fighting a veteran here. Knocks him out in the second round. TKO round two. So Ron, 16-0.

Then he fights, in September of 72, Buster Mathis, who's a known fighter and a good fighter yeah he's 30 and three at the time buster mathis shit better than buster douglas put it that way buster mathis and uh this is in denver and ron knocks him out in the second round shit and that's a big name fighter so now people are really looking at him he's 17 and 0 october 28, 1972, he's in Denver fighting Luis Faustino Pires and beats him 18, or he's 18-8, knocks him out in the third round, 18-0 for Ron. Next up, here we go, he fights Larry Middleton. He was 20-2, beats him, knocks him out in the third round.

He's 19-0. There is talk about a fight soon after maybe one or two more fights with Muhammad Ali possibly for the heavyweight championship of the world. He was in jail for murder a year and a half ago. Grace. Yeah. This is grace. I mean, come on.

This doesn't happen. This does not happen ever um so february 9th 1973 madison square garden yeah he is in the mecca here he is fighting irish jerry quarry um known as the bellflower bomber okay he was he's a good fighter back then he was 44 and 6 coming into this fight so that tells you a lot there yeah fights a lot so um i guess this guy i guess quarry had knocked out a guy named mac foster so lyle says i won't be any mac foster i'd say he takes a punch better than quarry said i'd say he takes a punch better than mac foster but i don't think he throws him any better so it was like shit talking back and forth in this fight.

It was a lot. The fight goes all 12 rounds. It's a fucking war. Wow. They beat the shit out of each other. Unanimous decision loss for Ron, though. Uh-oh. That's a guy with a lot of experience that might know how to, you know, knows how to fucking get around some shit and get those points.

So 19-1. It was a big crowd, 16,571 people in the Madison Square Garden for that one. That's pretty fucking impressive. Quarry was guaranteed $25,000 against an option of 27.5% of all the income, and Lyle was guaranteed 15 000 against 15 so whatever's more so so yeah made some money that's a lot of money back then uh quarry says i told you that would make a difference when he walked out there and found out that he could be hurt so he heard him he said i know he I knew then he could be hurt. And I blame, yeah, Ron says, I blame no one but Ronnie.

All my life has been hard. And I'm the one who I have to blame myself. So blames himself. That's okay. A couple months later, he beats the shit out of some guy named Bob Stallings. Makes him feel better. Yeah, get him. Now he's 20 and 1.

This is the time when Ali and Foreman are going to fight and they have a press conference where they get in a big scuffle with each other and rip each other suits. And it's a big, you know, this is when that didn't really happen back then. There was shit talking, but that was considered beyond the fucking pale. Like you didn't do that. There's people with suits on and food. You don't fight. didn't do that with there's people with suits on and food you don't fight so he said that uh this is fucking lyle said apparently they forgot one thing that boxing's a very sacred sport to me and to many other guys in jail who look to it as a big part of their rehabilitation

foreman also shouldn't forget that there are many youngsters and the amateurs who look up to him as an inspiration to reach the heavyweight championship or any other championship. He's got too much talent to engage in a barroom brawl in public. I respect both Ali and Foreman, and I realize that building a gate is a part of the game to attract attention, but it's reprehensible that they should fight in public the way they did Saturday night. He is not happy about it. Holy shit, that's fucking crazy, night. He is not happy about it. Holy shit.

That's fucking crazy, man. Takes it personally. He said, I learned the hard way about barroom brawling in the penitentiary where you have to fight to survive. I know in one of these brawls I was stabbed and almost died. Do you know that? Yeah, I don't think Ali was going to take a blade out and

shank Foreman in the middle of their press conference. I think this shit was just wrestling. That's all. They were just doing wrestling promos. Next up, he's in Denver. He fights Gregorio Peralta, who coming into this fight is 96 and 8. What? That's a lot of fucking heavyweight fights.

How do I not know who that guy is? Because he's 96, 8, and 8. Yeah. You know. Who knows? This fight goes all 10 rounds. This is probably a veteran who knows how to last. And it's a unanimous decision win for Ron. Really? Yeah, he beats the guy.

So now he learned how to go the distance and now he learned how to go the distance and beat a veteran. So these are all things you need. 96 wins. Next up, he fights June 11, 73. He fights, this is the Philly Spectrum. Great old building, that is.

He fights a guy named Wendell. I shit you not, this is his nickname. Wendell Fig Newton. His name is Wendell Newton, and he goes by Fig. Not bad. I like it. Not bad. It's a delicious cookie.

And he almost beats Ron here. It goes to the whole distance. It's a split decision win, so there's a judge that voted for Fig to win that shit. The figs aren't the good ones. The strawberry ones are legit. That's much better. I just love the cookie part. It's so goddamn good.

I just want to scrape it all off and throw the inside away. It's goddamn good. Yeah, just give me this weird crispy cake cookie. i need it now give me all of that just sell me newton stop filling them put them in the put them in the package they're done that's it it's a bag of newton i'll just eat it with a handful i don't care if it's in crumbs and broken up i'll just eat it it's ice cream sandwiches throw the throw that bread in there i'll eat that too i'll eat all of that all of that shit where is it where is it quit hogging them so july 3rd 73 fairgrounds international building in oklahoma city he fights lou bailey who's a 19 and 37 fighter it goes all 10 rounds

but this is you just can't knock lou out he knocks bailey down seven times in 10 rounds this guy just kept coming up pulling his fucking tights back up pulling his trunks back up and coming for more like what a fucking after five you know you've lost the fight just stay down right you know unanimous decision win that's i mean what are you gonna do next up jose luis garcia whose nickname is jose miguel ramirez that's not a nickname that's just another name those are different names yeah um jose luis garcia okay any nickname jose miguel ramirez what which one is your name those are more spanish words yes yes they are sir uh anyway he's a 24 and 4 fighter though good fighter and uh ron knocks him out in the third

round clean knockout he how do we not know who he is that's right he knocks out a guy named jurgen blin in germ or a guy from germany who's a 30 and 11 fighter knocks him out in the second round he's now 25 and 1 by the way what the fuck by october's 4th 1973 he then fights in on halloween of 1973 in baltimore beats a guy named larry middleton who's a 20 and 3 fighter yeah unanimous decision he then goes over to frankfurt germany fighting overseas overseas to fight gregario peralta again the 96 win man there this fight goes all 10 again yeah and this time it's a draw wow that's so overseas bullshit that's bullshit called a draw yeah 26 one and one because it's in his house it's yeah that's ridiculous march 1974 he fights oscar ringo bonavina who's 51 and and 8 and goes all 12 rounds.

Unanimous decision win here. Very good. Ron fights good fighters now. Oh, yeah. No, Ron's trying to get a fight with fucking champ. He wants Ali. I mean, that's what he's trying to do here. So May 1974, he accuses his wife of not being supportive during the hard times here that he's been trying to work.

And she accuses him of neglecting the marriage. And, yeah, he's very upset here. They get into a physical altercation. Keep your mind on the fucking brass ring, sir. Oh, God. Apparently, they get into a physical confrontation where Nadine, his wife, hit him with a frying pan. Oh, my God. So they're doing like Three Stooges domestic violence here.

She hits him with a frying pan, so he takes her and shoves her toward an open window. Uh-oh. What is this? The cartoon violence? Is an anvil going to fall from the ceiling? Oh, no. I'm not mean to make light of it, but this is fucking ridiculous this the cartoon violence is an anvil gonna fall from the ceiling i'm not mean to make light of it but this is fucking ridiculous this is crazy throws him toward an open she he throws her toward an open window she fell to the ground not pissed but not hurt but fucking livid super angry yeah she gets up goes to the neighbors and calls the police that's what that's the story that goes on that he says okay so um

yeah um then there's an interview and during an interview he talked they asked him about what happened here and he said that um nadine is trying to become accustomed to marriage with a boxer you know he said quote i'm the onlyest guy she's ever been married to the onlyest yeah i'm the onlyest guy she's ever been that's i've never heard that word before have you ever heard anyone say the onlyest it's not my new favorite wow that is he said onlyest that's amazing i'm fucking shocked by that i'm the onlyest guy she's ever been married to, so she doesn't know any different. Why should she object to it? She's got to eat, doesn't she?

She used to get nervous before we were married, but now she takes it in stride. She believes in me like I believe in myself. My son knows what his father does. He's seen films of me fighting, and I explain what I'm doing. But I'd never take him to see me fight. He'd probably think Daddy was mad and that I was trying to kill the guy in front of me. So that's what it is. That's how he says, I don't know what that has to do with throwing your wife almost out an open window, but so he's fighting in Denver. He fights Jimmy Ellis, 39 and nine. He beats him. He's 28,

one and one, by the way, at this this point ron he beats a guy named boom boom burn a boom boom boone kirkland boom boom boone kirkland boom boom boone uh anyway that's fight stopped in the eighth round down in new orleans he fights uh a guy named al jones who has two nicknames uh he's either Memphis or Preacher, depending on his mood, apparently. I don't know. Depends on what he's doing, how he's dressed. He's 8 and 20, so I think he should probably be a Preacher

because he's not a good boxer. And in five rounds, Ron knocks Jones down six times. Jesus. Calling for much prayer and a return to Memphis that night because, fuck. 30 wins for Ron a return to Memphis that night because, fuck, 30 wins for Ronda.

Return to Memphis. That's his 30th win, though. Yeah. 30 now. So February 11th, 1975, in Honolulu, Hawaii, he fights Jimmy Young, who's a 13-4-2 fighter, Jimmy Young. This is a tune-up fight for muhammad ali that's the fight that's going to be signed this fight goes all 12 rounds oh no and he loses by unanimous decision god damn it come on ron i'm rooting for you ron what the fuck uh 30 wins two losses now so that's February 11th, March 13th, 1975.

He, uh, gets arrested. Um, here we go. He gets in an argument with his wife. Yeah. Cause she called him a bum.

She drove away and she was right. He got in a car and followed her. Oh, Ron, come on, Ron. Um, don't do this.

Let her go. He screamed at her out the window to stop she said no kept driving so he gunned it and rammed his car into the door of her lincoln oh he fucking t-boned her oh boy after that two shots were fired from a pistol uh-huh he fired two fucking buck two rounds at her bro after he t-boned her you can't fucking do that car yeah did it doesn't hit anything but fired two shots um they said that it was uncertain where the pistol came from in this article here but um the lyle's pardon in effect removed from the record as felony conviction and under Colorado law, anybody but a convicted felon can carry a firearm that's not concealed. So they're saying it might be legal that he had it anyway.

He said he'll voluntarily surrender himself after the charges are filed. He is freed on $3,000 bond, which is crazy. He's charged with second-degree assault and two counts of felony menacing. Remember when you bucked shots at people last time, man? Why would you fire a gun ever again? At your wife, especially. That's crazy. And run into her car?

That could have killed her right there. So there's a preliminary hearing to decide whether there's enough evidence to bring him to trial. He could be sentenced to 10 years in jail here for this there. His wife filed the criminal information charging on all that shit they talked about. He's 33 years old at this point. He is talked about shooting at his wife's car here.

Police said that they will be questioned about accounts given by three witnesses. This isn't his wife that said he shot at her. Three witnesses said they saw it. Yeah. They shot at his wife's car as she drove away after an argument. Police declined to identify the witnesses, and it occurred in the downtown area. He's doing this in the downtown area.

That is fucking crazy. Lyle, he denies it he said that uh you know there was a we got an argument but no shots were fired he said i don't even own a gun i don't know what you're talking about that's crazy so um yeah they will be questioned about all of this shit they're both kind of denying it now or trying to downplay it. April 1st, 1975, Ron signs to fight Ali for $110,000. Wow. Which is in today's dollars, $587,833.46.

Really? That's a payday, yeah. About five times from the mid-70s, yeah. Half a million dollars to fight Ali. Would you fight Ali for a half million dollars? No, but back then, this was on Wide World of Sports. You know what I mean?

Like ABC and maybe a little closed circuit. There was no, and it was the gate of the thing. There was no pay-per-view. No one was making $200 million off this fight is what I'm getting at. Okay, I get it. Yeah, there wasn't way less fight,

way less dollars. I don't care what the best money is is so even if he's getting the best money at the time i'm not taking a punch from ali for 500 000 not one punch let alone 10 rounds of them you also didn't get stabbed in prison and win 30 professional fights either so you might have a different his whole goal is to win the title you You got to fucking win the title. So a week later, all should be good. But a week later, his wife files for divorce. Oh, no. From him.

Started divorce proceedings. Obtained a temporary restraining order prohibiting Lyle from entering their residence or loitering near or about it. That's what it says in the document there. loitering near or about it. That's what it says in the document there. Also restrains him from disposing of any of the couple's joint assets, destroying any property or talking or communicating with Mrs. Lyle.

Her attorney said they planned to ask the court to issue a co-petition. They said the co-petition would ask for disillusion of the marriage restraining order, all that shit. She said it was only a coincidence that she he that she filed for divorce a day after he nailed down a title bout for 110 grand just a coincidence i

wasn't waiting for anything um maybe it was more about being shot at and t-bone possibly then i mean it happened too what is that a coincidence you know what i mean like a lot of coincidences going on here so ron confused, let's just say. He doesn't know where the fuck he's going. He doesn't know where he's been. He's got problems here. His wife's leaving him. He's got an Ali fight that he should be focusing on, and he's got to focus on.

Now he's getting divorced. This is not good. And why is it before everybody fights Ali, they get arrested while they're planning to fight him? It happens every time. How did he have any fights at all? He would make sure that I was crazy. I don't know, but he doesn't know what to do, Ron. All he does know is he has no wife now.

He said his wife used to cook for him all the time and kept him in shape and kept him being good. And now he has to find somewhere else to eat. Oh, no. He smells something delicious on the street, Jimmy. And he goes in the door and he finds before him, it's the shawarma man. There he is. It's the shawarma man. And he says, how is it you've come to arrive here?

Why are you here? I don't. Sign say, no, sign say closed. I say, no, sorry. Other people eat here. Other people don't have guns. Shoot that wife on street. You're fucking crazy. You T-bone my sorry. Other people eat here. Other people don't have guns. Shoot that wife on street. You're fucking crazy. You T-bone my car.

You come in here. You want lamb? I have no lamb for you. No lamb for you. Sign say closed. All right. Fine. I make for you. I charge double, though. I charge double. I have to make a dollar here. You're bad for insurance rate in restaurant. It's a problem.

So I have to do... Sign say closed. Get out of my place. I don't care. And then po restaurant. There's problems. So I have to do, ah, sign say close. Get out of my place. I don't care. And then poof, it's all gone in a poof of shawarma and pita. And he doesn't understand what's happening at all. Spices and all sorts of delicious things. Ron's confused, but he's still hungry. But he's going to be fed by fighting Muhammad Ali.

May 16th, 1975, Convention Center, Las Vegas, for the WBC and WBA heavyweight titles of the world. Oh, boy. Muhammad Ali, 46-2, coming into this fight. Oh, my God. This fight is scheduled for 15 rounds. Oh, my God. This fight is scheduled for 15 rounds, and this fight is stopped in the 11th round and called for Ali. Of course.

They count Ron out, but he is, to this, the rest, every breathing moment of Ron Lyle's life, he's angry about this. Really? He said he wasn't hurt and he didn't go down. So what the fuck are you fighting the goddamn, why are you stopping the fight for? Yeah. hurt and he didn't go down so what the fuck are you fighting the goddamn why you stopping the fight for yeah he said that uh when freddie nunez who's the referee stopped the fight he said quote i couldn't believe it you know i'm ahead on all the scorecards am i bitter forget about it i never took it personally uh if there don't be no ali you think you'd be sitting here talking about ron lyle about what you're talking to ron if there wasn't ali you think he'd even be talking to me no about what he said so no of course not so but yeah he loses the fight and what he thought was bullshit he thought he could he thought he was lasting and he could

really come and attack him in the next in the late rounds he thought he could have won the fight so next up he fights ernie shavers who is no slouch either he's a bad motherfucker 49 and 4 coming into this fight and a bad dude uh but he ko's ernie in the sixth real uh yeah it does a great job he's now 31 and 3 31 3 and 1 next up january 24th 1976 caesar's palace las vegas coming in fighting george foreman what peak of his career george foreman 40 and 1 george is at this point god he's gonna be exploded this is for the vacant nabf title and this fight if you can find it on youtube watch this fucking fight it is an all-out war it is it's only five rounds long and it's an all-out war it is voted ring magazine's fight of the year for war. It's only five rounds long, and it's an all-out war. It has voted Ring Magazine's Fight of the Year for 1976, and it's only four and a half fucking rounds. That's how good it is. Ron knocks George Foreman down in the fourth.

No kidding. Knocked him on his big fat ass in the fourth, and then in the fifth, George knocked him out. Yeah. That's the end of the story, and he's missed now. Dude, they were dropping bombs on each. This was two big guys going, well,

whoever goes down first is going down. I mean, it was just, wow, what a fucking fight. Really fun shit here. So 31, four and one.

So he's lost to two slouches and he lost to Ali and Foreman, which is no, yeah, no shame in that. Um, he said that, uh, um, about Foreman. He said, I saw his fight, talking about Lyle, with Muhammad Ali. Lyle jumped on him in spots but didn't have the ability to overcome Ali's boxing ability.

His reputation as a puncher really didn't concern me because up until then, I'd only struggled with guys who moved. Ali was hard for him. He'll hit you harder than you hit me. That's Foreman's deal. He said, I always said Ali is the only fighter to truly defeat me in the ring because the other guys just survived, which I agree with that. If you saw like a Holyfield fight, he just hung in there and hung on him the whole fucking fight. He said Ron Lyle was the one guy. Oh, they deserve the victory for going the distance.

Ron Lyle was the one guy who refused to run, refused to be intimidated, and stood there and had a fight. He physically hurt me, and no one else ever did that. Is that right? Yep. He said, my God, I was in the fight of my life. I had to get up and fire back when I was groggy, and I'd never been in that position. Lyle would point his right hand in my direction and hit me with it almost every time he let it go so he got a lot of respect from george foreman he was like he scared the shit out of me

yeah because he's a convicted murderer george that man's a killer it's fucking scary uh 1976 he's in a movie oh where he plays a bouncer it's called the duchess and the dirty water fox it stars george siegel and goldie hawn what yeah some weird little comedy movie from the 70s there and he plays a bouncer in it there you go um he beats a guy i'm gonna go through these quick september 11 76 he beats some guy named kevin is Isaac, who's some young guy who gives a fuck. Beats him 32-4-1. Then he fights Jimmy Young again. Remember that guy?

Goes all 12. Unanimous decision loss again. God damn it. How do you beat up George Foreman? You can't beat Jimmy Young up. George Foreman's scared of you. Yes, very. 32-5-1.

Then Caesars Palace, he fights a guy named Joe Bugner, who is from Hungary, who's got 52 wins, 52-7. Beats him, split decision. May 26, 77, his mom dies in a car accident. Oh, no. Yep, it's brutal. Apparently, a guy sped through an intersection and plowed into his mom and killed her. Oh, damn it. It was pretty bad.

Yeah. Ron Lyle was, damn it. It was pretty bad. Yeah. Ron Lyle was, Jesus Christ, that was terrible. They said that they suffered minor injuries in the crash. And, yeah, that thing. It's pretty fucking bad. So the guy is under investigation of vehicular homicide. The guy who plowed into him here. Mother of 19 children. Jesus Christ. That is fucking horrible he said

my mother died a saint the things i did broke her heart when i was in prison my mother traveled in the snow to see me so i decided i would do something to make her proud i decided to become heavyweight champion of the world well you decided that i decided it july 3rd 77 he has another son his name is david now david will eventually be he'll never see david he's completely estranged from david david uh will also he'll go on to be adopted and david will go on to play 12 years at linebacker in the nfl what his son david plays for green bay miami the jets in cleveland for 12 years. David who? Bowens. David Bowens.

He's a linebacker. I remember him. Yep. He played for a bunch of teams. Yeah. Green Bay, Miami, Jets, and Cleveland. Unbelievable. He played from, I want to say, like, 99 to 2011, somewhere in there. What are the odds?

No shit, right? That's his dad. He said he never met his biological father, Ron. Never even met his kid and his mother gave him up for adoption when he was three this poor kid so late oh that's so late to give a kid that's way too late to give a kid up for adoption you named that child and named that child knows your memory yeah he's gonna remember shit like that's there's a lot in there his adoptive mother uh was around and um but then his adoptive father died of a heart attack when he was uh nine so that was hard

um yeah bowens he said the kid the terrible thing about that was i had to watch him die when i was adopted i didn't just have a father i didn't have a father, and here I was getting close to one to watch him die like that was tough. No shit. Jesus fucking Christ, that's brutal. In 96, he set a school record at Michigan with 12 sacks. Really good. But shortly after the season, him and his sister learned for the first time about ron's whereabouts they never had met him before and they found out that he's alive and who he is and all that kind

of shit so he never met him um and all this but he found out who he was found out he fought muhammad ali and all this shit and then he played on the same team as fucking tom brady yeah he played on the team with brett farve there at the end yeah that's green bay he played on the same team as fucking Tom Brady? Yeah, he played on the team with Brett Favre there at the end. Yeah, that too. On Green Bay, he played on, yeah. His college team was quarterbacked by Tom Brady? Yeah, yeah, probably. This is crazy.

It's fucking insane, dude. It's wild. He said he had one phone conversation with Ron, and what it stirred within him was too much for him to handle. He said, I completely lost focus what i was supposed to be doing in school that all took a toll on me he wound up academically ineligible for the 97 season it fucked him this guy went from school record in sacks to can't even play that next season because it's he's so damaged in the head over talking to ron lyle here um so that

was the year that they won a national title, by the way, national championship in 97. He said he made up the credits and transferred to Western Illinois where he had 14 sacks. He had to leave school. He had 14 sacks in his senior year, and Denver ended up picking him in the fifth round of the NFL draft. No kidding.

What? Fifth, because he went and played for some second-rate school. So Ron single-handedly knocked this guy down from like a mid-first-round pick to a fifth-round draft pick. Worse than that, James. He knocked him down to a mid-fifth-round draft pick and then put him into the same town that Ron lives in. Yeah.

Wow. Yep. So, yeah, he said that he thought he was getting his life together bowens and then he squandered his 93 000 signing bonus uh away and he was just he wasn't doing good and uh but he ended up figuring it out when he went to green bay he said and it all all worked out for him but still hasn't talked to ron from what i understand so a minute. How long was he in Denver? Did he get a fucking Super Bowl ring too? No, he got there in 99 or 2000. Oh, too late.

They were done. Well done with rings by then. They were looking at Brian Greasy by then as a quarterback. Bobby Brister. Yeah, that's bad stuff. So September 14th, 1977, he fights a guy who's 8-0. Stan the Avalanche Ward. He beats him by decision. October 1977.

Okay. Apparently, there's a cop who lives a few doors down from him. A guy named Dial is his last name. Dial lives down the street from Lyle? Dial and Lyle are buddies and partners, except one's a cop and one's a convict. That sounds like a TV show. Dial and Lyle. One's a cop and one's a convict. That sounds like a, that's a, that's a TV show. Lyle and Lyle. One's a cop.

One's a convict. But together they solve neighborhood crimes. They solve like when someone's kid's bike is missing or something. The old lady died. They don't think it's natural causes. This April neighborhood watch neighborhood watch dial and Lyle. One has a badge. One has like a, just a 22 and a

fist. So he said that he testified. Later on he'll testify this police officer that Ron came over to his house in an excited state reporting that armed men were trying to break into his house. This dial said that he'd never seen Lyle

so upset as he did that night. So it was crazy. They couldn't find anybody, and that's how it went. They reported the break-in, couldn't find anybody. December 31st, New Year's Eve, 1977. Remember Vernon Rip Clark? No. From his prison days? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, apparently after the Shavers fight, this triggered the re-entry of rip clark into ron's life somehow they got together he showed up ripped it at lyle's house uh about a month after the fight professing saying you know he did such a great job against shavers and i've done really well because after they had been together for a little while there rip kind of went off and did his own thing and had some problems and legal issues. I mean, they met in prison. So, you know, he said at this point he's reformed himself and he's trying to, you know, get his shit together. Do you have any way you could help me?

Can you, you know, hang out? Can I have a job? Something, right? So Ron said that he invited Clark into his home. He said, sure, you can come in and we can hang out. So Clark began coming around all the time again and kind of just inserted himself into Ron's life. And then Rip would ask for loans sometimes. Yeah, he'd ask for loans.

And he said that, listen, if I give you if I help you, you can't come to the gym with drugs. You got to stay away from the kids and leave the drugs behind, do all that shit. They can't have you like coming around the gym being fucking drugs and shit. Not cool. So his wife now, his second wife, Patty, didn't like or trust this Rip Clark

and told her husband that she was kind of uneasy about having him in the home. And Bill Daniels also said, you got to get rid of that guy. I don't trust that guy. He said he's bad news doing drugs. And this is Bill who hired hundreds of convicts. And he's not a judgmental guy. You know what I mean?

But he's a great judge of character of convicts. He's hired 34 of them. Yeah. If I tell you don't hire that one, don't hire that one. If he says throw that one back, it's because it's bad. It's because he's bad. So he said, yeah. But Ron said his loyalty to the former prisoners had to take precedence.

And so he had to help him out. So he said that Clark and Lyle were friends. And he said that this is a guy who's a stockbroker who is a member of Lyle's entourage who did like his finances back in the day Mike Hayes he said it's true Lyle did owe money for Clark Clark was an ex-con like Ron they met in prison and became best of friends Rip loved him and even quit a job at $13,000 a year and that's pretty good for a guy who was in prison so he could join him as a trainer. Well, as an assistant trainer,

more of a gopher who would do anything for Ron. But Ron only paid him a little at the beginning, and then for weeks and weeks, he didn't pay him at all for some fucking reason. So in March 76, this is after he got knocked out by George Foreman, Lyle tried to get out of his contract with the Denver boxing club. He sued bill Daniels and shit.

So it was settled out of court. And bill Daniels said it was probably the biggest heartbreak of my life. We were partners and I was his best friend. I don't know what happened between him and rip Clark, but I Clark adored Ron. So there you go. Now, Ron soon learned at this point that, needed a guarantee of employment so he could stay on parole and out of prison.

So he said, please give me a job. So Ron said, OK, I'll use you as a road guy. You drive the car when I run in the morning and, you know, keep me supplied with sparring partners so I can spar. You do that. That's your job. Hire dudes, drive the car. He also with sparring partners so I can spar. You do that. That's your job. Hire dudes to drive the car. He also agreed to lend him some money as well. He said, I'll lend you some money to get on your feet and all that.

Clark never paid him back. So in the span of over three months, Ron had fired Bill Daniels and hired Rip Clark into his life. So that's what's going on. New Year's Eve 77. Back to that. Lyle's are having a small family gathering, including, you know, he's got family there. He's got his daughter there.

He's got, you know, people around. And everybody's celebrating in Ron's home. None of them are drinking. It's all a bunch of non-drinkers there. It's like a Christian-type thing. They ate dinner late and had a quiet of non-drinkers there. It's like a Christian type thing. Okay. They ate dinner late and had a quiet evening leading up to the new year.

They're just having a nice gathering. Do it slow and slow. Low and slow. Ron had trained that day and went upstairs to the bedroom to lay down and after the kids were put to bed and the rest of the family

was talking in the family room. About 11 o'clock, the doorbell rang and they walked through the front door and Rip was on the porch, Rip Clark. And he said, just wanted to wish you all a happy new year. So I guess his sister here backed up and didn't invite him into the house. Didn't say come on in, but called to Ron. Hey, Rip's at the door. invite him into the house didn't say come on in but called to ron hey rips at the door yeah so ron woke up came downstairs and he went to the front door and he told clark it's late man the party's over like yeah no you're not not hanging out so he said clark said i need to use the

bathroom ronnie and ron hesitated for a moment but then he stood aside and let him go in um so he said he passed by the bathroom and climbed the stairs to the master bedroom, apparently to use the master bath, even though he's been in the house a million times. Yeah, why are you going to my bedroom to shit? So Ron says, why the fuck did he go up there out of his way? So anyway, Clark comes back into the living room.

And what happened is apparently this is the story from everybody that Clark had taken a loaded nine millimeter pistol from upstairs that he knew that was up there. That's the story. OK, so he's in the living room. Apparently, he stood a couple of feet away from Ron and he raised the pistol and said, man, you owe me. That's Ron's story here. Now, Ron said, I looked at the gun and realized he didn't know how to operate the safety. I snatched it from him and looked him in the eye. in the eye imagine if you hold a gun on this guy who knocked george foreman to the ground with his fist and you he has now taken the gun from you you fucking run and climb out the nearest window he is gonna maul you like a fucking bear he's gonna beat you to death and be perfectly perfectly within his rights to do so he said i looked him in the eye he reached for the gun the safety went off and he grabbed my hand the gun fired and the bullet hit him in the head that's not how those work

that is a far too succinct perfect that doesn't sound right nope then in his story he says i believe in god oh boy i had a dream that was exactly like that night i can still see it happening in slow motion i've been training and when a fighter's in training and living right he finds a spiritual side he said god forewarned me and i didn't pay attention look what happened he said it happened just the way god told me it would so he kills rip rips dead he shoots him in the head with a fucking 9mm. He's dead on his living room floor. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year, everybody. He ends up going down to find his neighbor, the cop who helped him out with that whole thing. Yeah. He said that it's fucking crazy. By the way, his brother in the house said the argument, he heard the argument going on, but didn't take any notice of it because Rip Clark talks loud sometimes. That's it. So he got this Dial guy over and Dial saw him on the ground. He goes, oh, my God, did you hit him?

And he said, that's what he said. And Ron says, no, I shot him. He said that to a cop, mind you. And then his younger brother, Philip, said that Clark came to the home. And Philip said that they were watching television in the basement when they heard loud voices and heard a shot. He said, I noticed my brother sitting in his den chair. He was just sitting there. I asked what happened, and he didn't say anything.

That's after the shooting. So a bunch of the witnesses saw it. His brothers will testify later. They saw the gun in his hand. Like, you can't say he didn't shoot the guy. He's just got to say it's self-defense, which is a tough one. If you've looked at his record, that's kind of tough. So the Lieutenant David Dial, who's the neighbor here, he'll end up being the, you know, he's going to be the main witness for the prosecution saying, no, I've shot him and all this type of shit.

He said that Lyle talked in an unexcited, solemn manner during the conversation. Nope, I had to shoot him. And this is what happened. It was over money and we were arguing and um dial said he asked to see the gun and lyle picked him up picked it up and handed it to him there you go um he just i guess i guess if you got a buddy there you can call he also said that he decided that dial checked his pulse decided he was dead that was that um now he immediately Bill Daniels fired or not immediately gets him a lawyer. Really?

Got to get a guy named Walter garage who accepted the case for a $30,000 retainer in 1970. Fucking Jesus Christ. He went to work, visited him in jail, listened to his story of struggle and looked for, and he said he found bruises on the base of Ron's thumb. Okay. That's what he was looking for. He had photos taken and dated of Ron's hand, then contracted our contact with the pathologist for viewing of Clark's body. He said that the Clark had similar marks on his hand,

which were also photographed. And he said, that's going to be one of the most important pieces of evidence is they both have like the, like a gun was wrestled around in their hands. That's what they're saying. So the Lyles said that if he gets acquitted, it's going to be God's will. He is charged with murder, by the way.

Second degree murder here. And he tries to act like it's going to be okay. While it's happening, though, he's still got fights to make now. He's out on. They let him out on bond. So he fights a guy named Horace Big City Robinson and beats him up. OK, that's one fight. And then he gets arrested again.

Oh, my God. October 1978, he's arrested for assaulting his wife. He's arrested for assaulting his wife. He is charged with second degree assault on his wife, Patty Jean, who reportedly had to leap from a second story window to get away from him. He is a madman. If it's a window, you jump from it. And that's what she did. He offered no resistance when he was arrested. His wife was taken to the hospital where she had under undergo surgery for a ruptured spleen caused

in the fucking leap out of a goddamn fucking window she smashed through the window and fell onto the ground she didn't even have time to open the window she jumped out a closed window oh my god that's fucking crazy so he's arrested for that obviously um she's she said that he assaulted her she informed him that she was going to seek a divorce and, um, he apparently was not agreeable to that. So she was detached. She was, uh, it was a detached spleen. Jesus will not even rupture detached.

She told him she was going to live in Dallas with the children and she was, uh, but she would drop the charges because she said, I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of the whole mess. My daddy doesn't want her daughter or my daughter doesn't want her daddy in jail. So I don't want it either. So there he is now. He's back in court for assault charges, though, because they're still filed. His wife is seeking custody of their one and a half year old son.

And yeah, that's what ends up happening here. They also at this point, foreclosure proceedings on Lyle's home also begin because he owes thirty eight thousand dollars and he hasn't paid back. He says his financial situation is bleak, but he hopes he can forestall his creditors until he can earn some money fighting. He said, I've struggled all my life to make something of myself myself you just keep climbing that hill and the next one after that and then just when you think you've gotten to the last hill there's another hill there it is there's a yeah there it is found it so um he has been charged and everything like that 1978's the murder trial yep okay they get his lawyer has an expert that looks at jurors facial expressions

to tell how they feel and they strike according to this that's their way of going about a facial expression expert right with jurors okay okay he now there's preemptory challenge where you can boot a couple of jurors off for no reason at all. You don't have to state shit, right? Yeah, don't like their shirt. They found one man here that they wanted kicked off the jury. They said the guy who did it, the consultant said, he's a real bigot. Just look into his eyes. What?

Okay. He said he used a preemptory challenge to strike the man from the jury. When told about it later on outside the courtroom the man struck from the jury said quote i don't know why they struck me i like n words and said the word it is printed in the paper i don't know why they struck me that's what he said i like them they nailed it that's pretty incredible that's how facial expression yeah they said that's pretty fucking amazing um what did he make like a stink face when they brought him in the guy said i could tell by that juror's eyes that he was no good squinty close set eyes are a bigot's eyes what i

was looking for were sensitive open-minded analytical people in other words people with fine hair wide set eyes and lack of eyelid i don't know what the fuck that's about at all um yeah that's that's crazy so he saw him look down on him when he came in that's amazing said that's the one so they argued that the case should be dismissed because the police destroyed records of fudged uh smudged fingerprints on the pistol alleged to be the murder weapon um they said that could be crucial evidence supporting the defense contention that they had struggled for the gun but the defense lawyer said we can never resurrect that evidence which might have acquitted this defendant only remedy is dismissal and if this court doesn't

want to stick its neck out maybe the colorado supreme court will and they said no no we're gonna have a trial. What are you talking about? So they do this. It's much of the same evidence as the preliminary hearing, cross-examination of the pathologist to agree that the bruises on Ron and Clark's thumbs could be the result of a struggle over a gun.

Ron takes a stand in his own defense and gives passionate testimony in both direct and cross-examination. His lawyer said, I was almost worried. Ron was so emotional. I was afraid the jury might conclude that he could get out of control. Verdict comes in here, and they find him, first ballot of not guilty of murder. They find it self-defense based on Vernon Clark's record and the way they presented it. It was a little too murky, they thought.

Wishy-washy. He says, I worked all year to get my mental condition for the trial, and I'm tapering from that now. Then I can start working on the physical condition. Okay, so he's got to get his life back together. March 8th, 1978, his wife's charges are dismissed, too. Oh. So he's having a fucking ball here right now. This was first and third degree assault charges against him were dismissed.

These are all things that could have put him back in prison very easily. So there's that. Now, I mean, Jesus Christ, I feel bad for, like, he's got this kid that he hasn't seen. This is... His life has really become a quandary of it's a mess, man. How is this not a movie? Yeah. How is this somebody's actual life?

I don't know. It's a few people's actual lives because I feel sorry for all these people, Jimmy, but not nearly as sorry as I feel for Ron Lyle, director of sales at RBI Bearing. feel for Ron Lyle, director of sales at RBI Bearing. Ron Lyle, senior quality assurance analyst. Ron Lyle, IT help technician in Nova Scotia. By the way, the one guy's in Williamsport, Ohio, the one Ron Lyle. He's a bald white dude. It's funny as shit.

Ron Lyle, consulting clinical psychologist. Oh, my. And finally, Ron Lyle, field manager, business development and optimization at Enerfin Resources Company in Tecumseh, Oklahoma. So, there you go. He comes back here.

He fights. He beats a guy named Feely Mawala. He has a split decision win over Scott Ledoux. Remember Scott Ledoux? He's the wrestling referee who was in the Wrestle Rock Rumble song. He wants to beat up Larry Zbysko. That's him. He also fought Muhammad Ali and Ron Lyle.

Unbelievable. Split decision win over him. He fights at the Celebrity Theater in Phoenix in 1979. Who did he fight there? Fucking ring turning. That's weird. Bullet Lin Ball. And he loses in the second? Fucking ring turning. That's weird. Bullet Lin Ball. And he loses

in the second round. TKO. Oh, shit. The guy was 10-4. No one expected it. 1980, he beats a guy named Al Newman,

which just makes me think of Alfred E. Newman, which makes me think of Mad Magazine. TKO in the 10th. He's 38-6-1 at this point. He fights George O'Mara, 11-2. Knocks him out in the 10th. He's 38-6-1 at this point. He fights George O'Mara, 11-2.

Knocks him out in the 10th. He fights then-gentleman Jerry Cooney. Remember Jerry Cooney? Yeah. They called him the Great White Hope. There you go. That's what it is. He was the Great White get-his-ass-knocked-out-by-anybody-half-decent.

Anybody that comes around. He was 23-0 coming in, though. And he knocks Ron out in the first round. Really? Yep. 82, he sues his management company for $500,000. Says they're stealing from him? Says they must be stealing from him.

This is the same day that Leon Spink sues Don King, which is pretty funny. February 20th 1986 he is so he hasn't fought in five years now six years he took a job as a security guard in Las Vegas that's what he was doing in the ensuing few years so now he's retired for a few years 86

he is has a gym I guess here there's a boxing club where he works as a trainer it is Ron Lyle's ringside, but he doesn't own it. Somebody else owns it. He's the trainer, and they use his name, so people will come in there. He is accused of beating up the woman owner of the place.

Oh, boy. Do they have a reason? Well, apparently there was some sort of uh money out of this fracas i guess so he uh what he did was he beat her up allegedly then he beat up a guy that was there and then when the cops came he shoved a cop as well you can't do that so not having a good day uh they fired him from the gym after the incident and he's free on a $150 bond. So there's that. I guess the gym owner, Brenda Ferguson,

he allegedly struck her several times resulting in bruising, a head injury, and a black eye. He just whooped this lady's ass is what he did. 6'3", 230. Whooped her ass. So he's facing charges for that, obviously. July 2nd, he is uh this is

trial and he is acquitted of assault somehow i don't he's a cute it's fun he's accused of interfering with a police officer assault all this shit uh with the assault on charlotte not one of two women he had a dispute with during a business meeting. He had a business meeting turned violent. He's more Teflon than the Don. They can't get him. What the fuck is this? Nothing sticks.

Wow. And the one lady watched him beat the other one up and he still got off on it somehow. How the fuck did he get off on that? Self-defense? I don't know. She's tough. Let's let him explain the situation and see what he's got to say about it.

What do you say? Let's do a little in their own words here. I think it's time. Let's do in their own words. Quote, life is a river of no return for me. It is a sink or swim forever. I've been up that river to the very end, and anyone who goes back after that didn't take the time to look around the first time. It's hard up that river to the very end and anyone who goes back after that didn't take the time to look around the first time.

It's hard up that river. Real hard. What the fuck are you talking about? That is Chick Creek without a paddle, sir. He's been hitting the head a lot is what that says to me. In 1989 he's in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries where he

plays Sonny Liston. He's doing the reenactment? Yeah, he's a reenactment of being Sonny Liston. 1994, remember George Foreman coming back doing his big thing? Inspired by George Foreman, he's making a comeback at 52 years old. Great. He said, I would love to fight him again, meaning Foreman. My skills haven't slipped

that much i'm in good shape i fought at 220 pounds i'm 235 now so he fights again in april of 95 the peels palace in erlinger kentucky oh boy versus bruce johnson a 9 and 29 fighter knocks him out in the fourth round then he fights them uh what a month later he fights again uh at peels tim pollard knocks him out in the second round next up he fights the biggest loser in the history of sports july 9th june 9th 1995 ed strickland who's oh and 20 coming into the fight how do you how he finishes his career at oh32, Jimmy. Just sell the propane and move along, Mr. Strickland. 0-32. I'm going to go get the shit beat out of me tonight.

Wish me luck, honey. Hopefully my brain isn't damaged too much. I might be back. How much does he hate his life? God damn it. Knocks him out in the second round. Then he fights Dave Slaughter, who's another guy who fucking five is 17. Some garbage fighter knocks him out.

So he's 43, seven and one. But he can't get a fight with George Foreman because he's actually fighting like Vander Holyfield and people. And he's like an old man who's fighting in front of nobody. So he's working as a security guard again in Vegas. And he's training fighters on the side and all this sort of shit. And he starts training a bunch of kids. At some point, he had between 60 and 80 kids in the gym that he was fighting. The guy he talked to him is the city coordinator for the Salvation Army and the son of Bob Cox, a friend of Bill Daniels.

That's how it happened. and the son of Bob Cox, a friend of Bill Daniels. That's how it happened. So he ends up training like between 60 and 80 kids, and the guy who runs it said he's amazing with them. He's got a great spirit. He realizes where he comes from. If not for boxing, he often says, he'd still be in jail or out on the streets. So, yeah, he ends up doing this.

He's doing all sorts of shit with the kids. He said, I have my faculties i can talk i can put sentences together i can remember that's a blessing not too brain damaged low bar 2009 he appears in the documentary facing ali which was a good documentary 2010 he retires from training boxers he's done 70 years old at this point so he's retiring uh november 26 2011 he's having stomach ailments and he dies drops dead oh my stomach ailments um yeah this is why this is my like my worst nightmare i have the worst stomach on earth and i swear to god i'm just gonna drop dead one day he, though. We don't know what was going on in there.

There could have been a lot of other issues that we don't know about. I'm 43, man. I'm so close. You're not 43. 41. You're right. You're 41. How do I know how old you are and you don't?

I don't know. That is literally the third time I have done that. Not know how old you are? Said that I'm 43. That's amazing. His sister said he was the strongest man I've ever known inside and out. When he gave advice, it was solid. He will never know how much I loved him.

I will greatly miss him now that he's gone. I will never have a close friend like him again. His one friend said, I just saw him yesterday. You looked at him and he looked like he was ready to step in the ring, shake hands with him, and it's like shaking a piece of steel. So can't get enough of Ron. Like I said, do yourself a favor. Watch that Ron Lyle-George Foreman fight from, like, 76.

I can't believe this is real. It's really worth 15 minutes. And also, you can read his book, too, Off the Ropes, the Ron Lyle story. Check that out. That's a story. Sounds like I made up the entire story, doesn't it? I did not make that up one fucking word. I thought you were going to say that at the very end.

Just kidding. This whole thing's a fake for episode 300. Gotcha. No, I didn't get you. That's a fucking fact. Wow. That's why I saved it for a round number episode because it's so crazy. And I don't know how it hasn't been like five competing movies.

It's fucking nuts. It is crazy. So if you like that story, tell the world about it. Get on Apple Podcasts or wherever the fuck platform you're listening to. Give us five stars.

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You're going to have all these bonus episodes of access to everything. This week, we are going to do for crime and sports the fabulous moolah which will be very interesting we're going to talk about was she just a nice lady who helped young women get into the business or was she a terrible woman who pimped out her young charges while also taking cuts or was she somewhere in the middle we'll find out we'll talk about it here's some gross stories either way and then for small town murder we are going to talk about some very interesting factors that allow jeffrey dahmer to get away with what he did for as long as he did god and there's just some very interesting and gross details that really bring everything to light and we're going to

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yeah we can't fucking wait thank you and uh yeah thank you for being with us in all honesty for 300 episodes or however many you've hung with us for we really do appreciate it thanks for everything and uh we're gonna keep coming back and live from the crime and sports studios we will see you next week week. Bye. or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.