There is a chance that the former fighter-turned-promoter Dmitry Salita doesn’t like what he hears during his next show tonight.
Because a familiar voice will be providing the soundtrack, and it won’t matter if Salita’s prospects win or lose, what Teddy Atlas thinks about them – returning to the live mic for the first time since parting company with ESPN – is what he will say about them.
Saying it like it is has been Atlas’s modus operandi as both a coach and an analyst.
It’s got him in hot water at times, but he’s always been able to take the heat.
He does, of course, have his own podcast and YouTube channel, The Fight with Teddy Atlas, where he breaks down present-day contests in boxing and MMA.
And when we spoke recently, he and his son were looking for premises in Brooklyn to open a boxing gym.
“We think we saw one that is right off the Tijuana Highway, the BQE [Brooklyn-Queens Expressway]. And it’s got a lot of cars that see it every day. And there’s a lot of good stores in the building,” Teddy said.
But he makes his return to the broadcast booth on Saturday, ready to do what he always does.
The truth has two sides, but Atlas only likes one
“See, the way I looked at it was the truth,” Atlas says of his job calling the action. “The truth has two sides to it. But I like the one side to it.
“It’s the truth. And at the end of the day, you can play with it all you want. But at the end of the day, people aren’t stupid. And the thing that kept Friday Night Fights [on ESPN] going for 18 years straight – and I was the only original one that was still there at the end – was that I’d go on the air and if it was a crappy show, I said, ‘This is gonna be a crappy show.’ And the people would come back because they said, ‘Well, yeah, I don’t like a crappy show, but at least Teddy told me it’s a crappy show. You know what? I’m gonna stay with him. And if he tells me it’s a good show, I’m gonna call my friends and say, hey, this is gonna be a good show. Because Teddy actually validated it.’
“So there’s worth. I remember the executives at that time, I had so much power at ESPN it was ridiculous. And I never used it, but I had it. Well, I did use it. I saved a few people’s jobs, but I used it in that way which I thought was a blessing.”
What wasn’t a blessing was Atlas’s exit, even though many an executive had told him that he gave “validation to our brand”.
They didn’t see his criticism as biting the hand that fed him. They felt it came from a place of honesty and experience. They paid for the authenticity. And now, of course, boxing is all Teddy has ever really known.
“I’m a lifer. I painted one house. That’s all I ever did other than boxing my whole life,” he added.
“I painted it really well. There’s a lot of shit to it [boxing]. But the special thing is two men getting in the ring. That’s honest. That’s honest. And I always felt like I had an obligation to that, to just tell it the way it was. I had an obligation to the guys that bleed in the ring and to guys that were really dedicated to the sport and for what it’s supposed to be, that I had an obligation to always shoot it the right way, you know? And not be compromised.”
A voice for those who couldn't speak for themselves
“I always felt like when I signed a contract, a new contract, whatever, I said, what comes with this that’s not in the contract that to me is worth more than the money is that it gives me a platform, an opportunity to try to make the sport a little better. I’m no angel. I’m far from it. But if you can do that, if you can be blessed where you could also, besides making a living, you can make the sport a little better, you could protect the guys that really need protection, the fighters. If you could do that, then that’s a gift. That’s really, truly icing on the cake, and even more so. So I always looked at it that way. And most people I work with, I’ll be honest, when I would see something that was controversial, they would hide under the table. I mean, almost literally.
“People used to laugh. They said, ‘Your partner was like moving himself away from you.’
“I said, ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with that guy.’
“And they laughed.
“They say, ‘Oh no, you wouldn’t.’
“’But we’d like to be in a foxhole with you.’
“I said, ‘I don’t want to be in a foxhole. But if I am, I know how to behave. I know what I’m not going to do.’
“And they would distance themselves safely.”
There would appear to be only a slender place in the market for Teddy’s kind of truth in 2026, but thankfully Salita has opened the door. For Atlas, though, there are other battles that have shaped him, and some of them have little to do with what happens inside a boxing ring.
“The fighters would come up to me years later and say, thank you. Thank you, you were the only one who said I got robbed. You were the only one who went into a freaking rant that probably got you in trouble,” Atlas continued.
“And some of them did get me in trouble. But it was temporary. It was worth it.”
Even the professionals came to Teddy for advice
It is Atlas’s ability not just to analyse what is going on in the ring, but also what is going on in the minds of the fighters, that has so often set him apart. And while it was well documented that Mike Tyson was not the finished article when Cus D’Amato died, one wonders whether Atlas was the finished product when he was banished from Catskill all those years ago.
Has Teddy had counselling since?
“Say that again?” he says, when I ask the question.
“Have you ever had counselling?”
