Teddy Atlas is a former world-class trainer and current boxing powerhouse who is a renowned boxing analyst.
Atlas was famously trained by the late Cus D'Amato, known for coaching some of the sport's legends, including a young Mike Tyson and the incredibly talented Wilfred Benitez.
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for his boxing exploits many years after he retired from the sport due to a back injury, but before that he won the Adirondack Golden Gloves title in 1976.
But he excelled most as a trainer, particularly as the American-born Puerto Rican Benitez, who won his first light welterweight world title at just 17 years old, and went on to win two more titles at welterweight and light middleweight.
In an interview with Ring Magazine, Atlas was full of praise for Benitez, saying that no one will ever be able to match his record.
“You could call him my student. The youngest fighter to ever win a world title. That record will never be broken. It's mind-boggling when you think about how great it is. He won a world title at 17 years old. What does a 17-year-old do? There's no way he's going to win a world title against a great fighter like Antonio Cervantes.”
And while he credited coaching with helping Benitez realise his talent, he also said another young, soon-to-be world champion, Mike Tyson, impressed him from the start.
“[Benitez] “Tyson was, without a doubt, the most accomplished, most talented guy I've ever worked with, but it was something that was cultivated. In terms of the purest, God-given, raw, earliest talent, it had to be Tyson at 12 years old, when he weighed 190 pounds and wasn't even fat.”
Benitez lost two of his last four fights before retiring at age 32. Tyson hung up the boxing gloves more than two decades after losing two consecutive bouts, but is scheduled to rematch Jake Paul in November in a two-minute, eight-round bout.
