It would be hard to find a fighter whose family was more involved with boxing than the Byrd family. His father was the head Olympian coach, his mother was also involved, his brothers, and his sister was three-time world champion, Tracy Byrd. Even his dog was a boxer. Chris was a silver medalist on the 1992 USA Olympic boxing team. He competed as a middleweight division at the time. In 2000, he was the first to defeat the tough Vitali Klitschko winning the WBO Heavyweight title, but lost it six months later to his brother Wladimir. Byrd had a great career in boxing with many notable wins over fighters like Evander Holyfield, David Tua, Jameel McCline, Fres Oquendo, and Maurice Harris. I'm glad Chris was able to come on to talk about his career. Check it out!

Check out my newest posted interview with special guest, Jim Lampley!

Before talking to him, I didn't know much about him personally. I always figured that because he had covered so many sports for all those Olympic games, that was how he was placed to cover boxing. With no real knowledge of the sport. I guess his old boss at ABC thought the same. Boy, were we wrong! In April, Mr. Lampley came on TheBoxingBar podcast for an interview just a couple of weeks after the passing of one of his fellow commentating friends, George Foreman. Just a few weeks after this interview, Jim's autobiography was set to be released in early May which had already been given the title with the opening words of "It Happened …", which was the phrase that he yelled out on TV the moment George Foreman knocked out Michael Moorer and became boxing's oldest heavyweight champion. "It's freaky to me", said Lampley during the interview while still in shock of Foreman's passing.

This was a fun interview for me listening to all the stories first hand from that all familiar voice. A special thanks to Mr. Jim Lampley!

Sam Firstenberg is an Israeli-American film director that was born in Poland and raised in Jerusalem. Firstenberg directed several low-budget films in the 80's and 90's such as the American Ninja movies, Revenge of the Ninja (my favorite), Breakin' 2 : Electric Boogaloo, and many more. The ex-director had so many great stories like when Muhammad Ali came out to hang out with the cast of Breakin' 2 while they filmed in one of the locations. He also brought up the fact that earlier in his career, he worked for KCOP-Channel 13 in Los Angeles and was the cameraman for many boxing and pro wrestling events from The Olympic Auditorium. It was a great honor to have had him on as a guest on our podcast, TheBoxingBar. Sam directed many films for the film company Cannon, and was interviewed for the documentary "Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films" which can be watched on YouTube. Awesome person! Check out the interview …

This past Wednesday evening, trainer Robert Garcia came on for his yearly interview with TheBoxingBar podcast. At that moment, he had just finished breakfast in Saudi Arabia where he is at for this afternoon's big fight between his fighter Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez (22-0, 15 KO's) and Fernando Daniel Martinez (18-0, 9 KO's). During the interview, Robert shared the news that Rodriguez's baby was born that morning in Texas and watched it all via video call. Congrats to the Rodriguez family! We also discussed things that are going on in his gym, his fighters, and the recent passing of long-time local Oxnard trainer Louie "Tiny" Patino. Today's boxing event will be on DAZN Pay-Per-View from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia headlined by "The Mexican Monster" David Benavidez taking on Anthony Yarde with the start time of 12:00 pm PT.

Check out our interview!

In the next few weeks, I will be bringing on some interesting people from Ventura County to interview for TheBoxingBar podcast. The first one is historian, author, and well-known local ghost hunter Richard Senate. Mr. Senate talks about many of the local hot spots for ghosts in Ventura County. Richard has written a number of books which can be found on Amazon or his website richardsenate.com. Ricky and I had a blast talking with the "Ventura County Ghost Hunter" Richard Senate. Check out this interview!

Here is our interview with 1996 boxing Olympian "Dangerous" David Diaz of Chicago, IL. He represented the United States in the Atlanta games on a terrific team which included Floyd Mayweather Jr., Fernando Vargas, and Antonio Tarver. Diaz debuted on November 30, 1996 in Albuquerque winning by unanimous decision. He won his first twenty-six straight professional bouts until losing to the crafty Kendall Holt in 2005. David took on some other very tough competitors in his career like Edner Julio, Emanuel Augustus, Humberto Soto, Erik Morales, and Manny Pacquiao. His last fight was in 2011, ending his career with a record of 36-4-1. Check out this interview!

Joel "El Platanito" Salas started his professional boxing career on June 25, 2000. Salas fought fifteen professional fights and stopped fighting in 2003. Joel is the son of Jose Salud "El Platano" Salas. Jose was from Puruandiro, Michoacan, Mexico but later trained in Mexico City and almost made the 1968 Mexican Olympic team for the games which were held there in Mexico City that year. "El Platano" trained under the guidance of legendary trainer Lupe Sanchez and fought alongside and got to know many greats like Ruben "El Puas" Olivares, Salvador Sanchez, Jose "Mantequilla" Napoles, Lupe Pintor, Rafael Herrera, "El Chango" Carmona, ect.. Great story! Listen to this interview and get to know former Oxnard fighter Joel "Platanito" Salas!