The Baddest Man on the Planet
Big John Tate
When I was in my 30s, I opened a boxing gym to work with the youth in Middle Tennessee. I was a professional boxing manager and trainer, and was managing heavyweight boxer Keith McKnight. I had been developing him since he was a teenager. We had been working together for about nine years. We had traveled many miles together during his amateur and professional careers. He was a hot boxing prospect
His professional record was very impressive: 33 wins with only one loss. McKnight was on a roll and had won four consecutive bouts. His next fight was scheduled on national television on USA’s Tuesday Night Fights against the rugged Obed Sullivan, the No. 4- rated heavyweight boxer in the world.
While we were training for the fight at Horace Kent’s gym in Knoxville, Tennessee, Big John Tate, the former heavyweight champion of the world, walked into the gym. I had known Tate for almost 20 years. Ace Miller brilliantly had managed Tate’s career and developed him into the heavyweight world champion. He had earned about $2 million in boxing, but had squandered it all on drug abuse and petty crime. He had lost his money, house and cars. Even worse, he lost his wife, and his reputation was in shreds.
John found out that McKnight had a big fight coming up on television, and he asked if he could help prepare McKnight for the Sullivan bout. McKnight and I took a chance on John, and we took him back to our home in the Middle Tennessee area. John stayed in a little apartment in the back of the gym for several weeks before the fight. Most people lock their doors at night before they lay down to sleep. Not Big John; he slept soundly right next to a door standing wide open all night long.
Several people who knew John’s history asked questions like, “Why do you have that crack head working with you?”
I personally saw it as an opportunity for the former heavyweight champion of the world to give McKnight some insight on how to win the fight with Sullivan. I also saw it as an opportunity to help John get his life back on track.
Often someone would recognize Tate and ask, “Aren’t you Big John Tate, the former heavyweight champion of the world?”
John would reply, “Yeah! I was the baddest man on the planet for a minute.”
A couple of days before the fight, our team flew to the boxing venue in Connecticut for the weigh-in and pre-fight physicals. After the bout, with Sullivan we returned to the Nashville airport where my car was parked. John was not scheduled to leave for Knoxville for several hours so he asked me to drop him off in downtown Nashville.
John asked me to let him out at the housing projects on Lafayette Street. I asked him if he was sure, and he said yes. I was saddened because I thought he was going there to buy drugs. We said goodbye, and I never saw the champ again.
Six weeks later, Big John was driving a pick-up truck when a brain tumor compressed an artery at the base of his skull. The truck slammed into a telephone pole, killing him almost instantly at age 43.