Micheal Bentt was the first person to be featured on the Netflix documentary, “Losers.”
Bentt was a young phenom who’d won multiple Golden Gloves, but was knocked out in his first professional fight on national TV.
Ashamed, Bentt returned to his Queens, NY neighborhood void of confidence and full of embarrassment.
Bentt went from untouchable to untouchable. As an amateur, no one could beat him, but now that he’d lost, no one was willing to sign him to another fight. Scratching to get work, Bentt ended up sparring with Evander Holyfield. At the end of the fight, Holyfield’s trainer told Bentt, “I didn’t know which one of you was the champ in the ring!”
Those words reignited a fire in Bentt. He signed on to do a “tune up” fight with The Great White Hope Tommy Morrison and ended up knocking Morrison out!
Suddenly Bentt was the Heavyweight Champion of the World!
Full of confidence, Bentt agreed to fight an unknown fighter Herbie Hind, but Hind knocked Bentt out so bad he was placed in a coma.
“You’ll never box again,” came the words from the doctor. All Bentt knew was boxing…what was he to do now? Bentt just so happened to connect with a director who hired him to give boxing advice on an upcoming movie.
Bentt found his home. He ended up playing a young Joe Fraiser opposite of Will Smith in the movie Ali. More directors, more work came pouring in. He advised in movies such as Million Dollar Baby & trained other A list actors to perform better in upcoming roles as well as just to stay in “fight shape.”
Sometimes it takes a long time to finally sound like yourself. ~Miles Davis
That was Bentt’s mantra that kept him going.
Bentt had to travel the painful road of being knocked out & ashamed to spar with Holyfield. The spar led to the “tune up fight,” which led to Bentt becoming the champ to getting knocked out and in a coma, to finally find his home.
Life is full up peaks and valley’s..twists, turns, and seemingly dead ends. Bentt’s ups and downs in life sound a lot like our path-similar road, different experiences…
But painful just the same.
I went from picked last on a sports team to getting a full scholarship, to being 5th on the depth chart, to becoming a 4 year starter, to becoming an All-American, to not going pro, to raising my son by myself, to living in a house with no stove or refrigerator, to getting a job in sales, to having my wages garnished, to getting promoted, having 3 more beautiful children, to having a custom built home, to becoming bankrupt, divorced, demoted…to The Sales Life today.
Sometimes it takes a long time to finally sound like yourself.
The fight you’re in, knocked down, or even out ….
you ain’t done. You have to take this road to finally find your home.
Sometimes it takes a long time to finally sound like yourself.
Stay in The Sales Life.
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When I’m pressed for time, I’ll run a quick 2 miles around the road that circles my house. (4 laps = 1 mile)
Whatever is considered “Best in the World” today is going to be obsolete tomorrow.
The Sales Life with Marsh Buice 