With Father’s Day coming up, it can be difficult to figure out what gift to get for Dad. You want to get him something that he’ll actually use, or perhaps something that will inspire him or let him know how important he is to you. Well, if you want to get him an inspirational book that takes the sport of boxing and uses it as a metaphor for dealing with life’s battles, check out John Oden’s “Life in the Ring: Lessons and Inspiration from the Sport of Boxing.“ In 12 inspirational short tales, Mr. Oden tells stories about elite fighters from Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Rocky Marciano, and Oscar de la Hoya, who all overcame hardships in life and in the boxing ring. Mr. Oden is also a competitive white collar boxer whose 13-year career was chronicled in his first book, “White Collar Boxing.” 
John, I love the concept of this book. You use the aspects of such a tough physical sport and use it to explain life struggles and how to bypass them. Why is boxing and life’s journey so similar?
In boxing, and in life, to succeed, one needs to have courage and confidence, the ability to overcome obstacles and setbacks and fear, the drive to prepare thoroughly, and to be able to challenge oneself constantly. But this is a description of so much of life. Life is full of battles, big and small. No one wins them all. This is also true of boxing, as even great boxers will typically lose several times during their career. It is no secret that losing is a part of life–whether in boxing , politics, business or any other human endeavor. How one handles losing can shape one’s character as much as winning. It was Vince Lombardi who said “The greatest accomplishment is not in never failing, but in rising again after you fall.” Boxing? Life? Which was he describing? The keys to the sport are commitment and focus. And these come with pain, long hours of preparation and continued sacrifice. So it is with life. I believe that boxing is a metaphor for life. In the words of Joyce Carol Oates from her book On Boxing, “At its (boxing’s) moments of greatest intensity it seems to contain so complete and so powerful an image of life–life’s beauty, vulnerability, despair, incalculable and often self-destructive courage–that boxing is life, and hardly a mere game.” Then, there is the aspect of what makes a good boxer, versus what makes someone succeed in life. My friend, Bruce Silverglade, the owner of Gleason’s Gym and the founder of white collar boxing, once told me: “boxing is 50% mental, 40% conditioning and 10% ability.” While those percentages may be thought of as extreme, the fact became quite clear to me early-on in my career as a white collar boxer that the mental part of boxing played a very significant role in all aspects of the sport. From the mental toughness necessary to make the training sacrifices, to the fear required to crawl through the ropes, to the tenacity required to continue to advance in the sport against the competitive challenges and physical pain that inevitably accompanies it on occasion……..most mortals need a determined mental attitude to participate in the sport. But I would draw a parallel to the percentages that Bruce Silverglade assigns to boxing above, to life itself , particularly if you substitute the words “work and preparation” for “conditioning” in his percentages cited above. The people who I think of as successful in life are workers and thinkers–they are people who have used whatever gifts were given to them and enhanced them through careful study, thought and preparation, and most of all, hard work.
Wall Street has never really had a positive reputation, but these days, it seems as though it can’t be worse. Considering your background in the world of Finance, what are your thoughts?
Wall Street, like boxing, goes through its ups and downs–its moments of favor, its moments of glory; its times of failure and despair. Wall Street is all about competition and winning. When it is winning, the world smiles back at it. Of course, we all live to win at whatever we do–everyone admires the champion tennis player, the fastest runner, the winning college debater, or successful politician. Winners are respected, revered. Losing at anything can feel embarrassing, frustrating and difficult to swallow. When Wall Street is winning, i.e., when capital and wealth are being created, those who are involved have great prosperity which can sometimes breed jealousy and distrust. When Wall Street is losing, i.e., when the economy is headed in the wrong direction, when the capital markets are not functioning properly for whatever reason, Wall Street becomes accountable, and criticized. In some ways it is a lose-lose scenario. But for many people, the “up periods” can be so high that they can live with the “down times”. But what in life goes smoothly all the time? Wall Street, or said differently, the process of capital formation and creation, has an essential role in the development of a strong economy. Indeed, our very existence is dependent on it. Therefore, it has a continuing role, and despite any criticism levied toward it–the world needs it, and it will survive and prosper again. I have always been proud to work on Wall Street, and enjoy its tough, challenging environment.
There are many people, myself included, who have their day job and also their passion job, which for you is boxing. Do you think that this quality is what makes you such a fighter in the ring and outside of it?
I have definitely had a fighter’s mentality for as long as I can remember. I was always willing to stand up for my rights and defend myself against others if I think I am in the right. That was ingrained in the culture of my West Texas roots. For me, that transferred to business and life in so many ways. Then, as I approached middle age, I discovered white collar boxing. For many years thereafter, boxing was an escape hatch for me, as I poured hour upon hour of training and sacrifice in preparation for competitive boxing matches. Through boxing, I dealt with my daily frustrations of life, and forgot about them for hours at a time, as I trained and worked at the sport. The concentration one must have to box, even at the bottom rung of the sport where I participated, is extreme. Boxing is the ultimate mano-a-mano sport. There is only you……..and him. All the training, all the experience, all the emotions, come with you out of the corner. But there is no ball, no bat, no racket, no protective shoulder pads for someone to hide behind. There is an alone-ness to boxing that is unique in sports. This, for me, added to the appeal, and made the escape hatch more secure. And the lessons I learned there spilled over to my “day job” and enhanced my success.
And Congrats on all success… We all have dreams, but a lot of times, life gets in the way. What is your advice to those out there still chasing them?
One must discipline oneself to do the things they really want to do in life. This requires good planning and time management. It requires sacrifice and the realization that no one can “be all things to all people.” To be really successful, one must find a balance–between work, relaxation, physical exercise, personal interests, and family and friends. To master life is to master the balance. People have different ways of dealing with this. I set goals and work at it every day. I rise early in the morning, as often as 4 a.m. to think, read, exercise and plan for the day ahead. By the time I get to work at 8 o’clock, I am fully prepared for the day. I take frequent vacations, long weekends, and read constantly. In short, I “work hard and play hard.” But the “play” is purposeful and leads to the accomplishment of other goals and knowledge. I never sacrifice physical conditioning. These things work for me, and help my dreams become reality–one day, one dream at a time.
If you had the chance to give advice to your teenage self, what would it be and why?
I would have told myself that life has no boundaries. I would have told myself that I can be anything I want to be, that I can do anything I want to do. All I have to do was decide that I was going to do it. I heard this lesson from the great minister Norman Vincent Peale many years ago, and have retained it ever since, and have done my best to carry it out in my daily life. I would have advised myself to see the world as quickly as possible, to live different places, to try different cultures, to be as open minded as possible , to challenge myself at all times. Then there is the last thing my father told me as he took me aside in his workshop the night before he was to drive me off to college, which ended up being some of the best advice I ever had, and advice I would surely pass on to a son of my own–”Son, don’t ever get caught with your pants down.” Not the most aesthetic advice, but “right on” in its meaning.
What is your “fight” music that you listen to when you’re prepping to get in the ring? What gets you pumped up?
There are two things I have employed in this regard. Before a fight at Gleason’s Gym or the New York Athletic Club, I would take the afternoon off from work, relax in my apartment and watch the movie Hoosiers. It is an inspirational true-story movie about an small town, Indiana high school basketball team which won the state tournament against all odds back in the 50′s. One can not watch that movie without being inspired to go out and take on the world. It always got me in a “David versus Goliath” frame of mind, and cemented my determination to win at the task ahead of me. Truly inspirational. In later years, I installed a world-class stereo system in my apartment. Particularly for my last competitive match in London in 2004, I became a huge fan of the music from the movie Rocky. Two cuts that really got me going were “Eye of the Tiger” and ” Gonna Fly Now”–these two simply can’t be beaten for inspirational fight music. I would listen to this music constantly for the last few weeks leading up to a fight. I would listen to this music before and after workouts; first thing in the morning; and the last thing at night.
You have huge names like Donald Trump and Senator John McCain touting your book and the inspirational advice that it contains…what is it about your book that resonates with readers everywhere?
As background to the quotes on my book, it was important to me that the people on the cover of my book be viewed as very successful–also as people who liked the sport of boxing and were viewed as fighters themselves in whatever chosen profession they had followed. I think Trump and McCain served me well in this regard. On the back of the book is a quote from Emanuel Steward, a former Golden Gloves champion who fought his way up from obscurity to make the Kronk Gym in Detroit world famous. Along the way, he developed a worldwide reputation as one of the greatest trainers and managers in boxing today, and now is also a leading announcer for HBO Sports. When people first see my book, they think of it as a boxing book. Is is actually more than that. I regard it as an inspirational book with a boxing backdrop. In my book you will read the stories of 15 extraordinary men from all walks of life, from different times and different backgrounds. These men chose boxing as their vocation. Each one brought his own unique contribution to the sport. Theri stories are profound and no two are alike. You will read of their hardship, struggle, defeat, comeback and victory. They capture the very essence of the human experience. I think this is a book for this era, i.e., with the financial meltdown of 2008, all of us have been “in the ring” to some extend. We’ve all taken some body shots. People have had to deal with severe economic disappointment, which led to business and personal failures–loss of jobs, loss of opportunity, and loss of self esteem. I think that people have been able to identify with some of the boxers in my book, and take inspiration with how they overcame extreme adversity by sheer perseverance and a will to win.
Father’s Day is coming up… what is the best advice that your father gave you about life, love, and following your dreams?
My father didn’t give me a lot of advice. He always showed me by example. He was a tall, lean man, very rugged looking, the type you used to see in Marlboro cigarette commercials. He was a working man all of his life. He grew up and lived on ranches until he was in his 30′s–working as a cowboy, a ranch hand, later marrying and moving into the small town of Pecos, Texas, where I grew up. What I remember most about my dad, as I watched him in his workshop after dinner, was the size and shape of his arms. He wore his khaki shirt during the day. On warm evenings, he would remove it and wear only a ribbed, sleeveless undershirt. He had extraordinary arms. Despite his thin stature, his arms had the largest bulging muscles I had ever seen, all cables and cords, surrounded by big manly veins that ran up and down beneath his skin. When he would pick up a pencil or a hammer, his muscles would double the size of his arm. I would sit in amazement. We did not have a television set when I was a small boy, but we had a radio. On Friday nights, there was a boxing program on the radio, and Dad and I would listen to it every week. As a little boy, my dad bought me two pairs of boxing gloves. When my friends would come over to play with me, my dad would bring out the gloves and have us box. I was always a little bigger than most of my friends, and can never remember losing a match. However, it seemed that, eventually, only rarely would my friends come over to see me when they knew my father was going to be there. I suppose that this was because they knew my father would put the gloves on us, and they thought I was a better boxer than they were! This gave me some confidence in my boxing at a very young age. My father never talked about himself. He was born at the end of another era–the “Old West”. He was born to be a ranch hand, a cowboy, which is what he was a good deal of his life. He was the epitome of the strong, silent type. I never asked him how much he had fought in his younger days–he got those arms from somewhere. He never went to the gym or lifted weights. The other thing he told me which has always stuck with me was “John, don’t ever get in a fight. You’re either going to kill someone or get yourself killed.” I always wondered what was behind that axiom, from his past. In any case, my boxing has taught me that in the real world, it’s not a bad philosophy.
Wow. Love those stories. Any inspirational advice for our readers who are still trying to find their dreams or are pursuing them now?
There are no rules about what you can do with your life–make your own, within the boundaries of our society. Every day is an opportunity–make every one count. Treat people fairly. Show empathy to others. The greatest human quality is forgiveness. Be respectful of your parents and your family. Give something back to the world you live in. And in the words of Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never, never give up.” John, you make me want to get in the ring and fight. Thank you for your time. For more information about John Oden and his book, “Life in the Ring,” CLICK HERE.
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Sep 4, 2010 
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meaghan townsend, UPdog Fitness, Yoga
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