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scared, but not of the inmates. I was scared of my emotions. I was not sure I’d be able to contain them. When we were top amateurs, we trained with prisoners at a facility in Virginia. Being in excellent shape and very strong, they gave us quite a workout. Now, more than a decade later, Derrik and I would be together again in a similar environment. Except only one of us would walk out.
    Derrik, head of the prison’s boxing program, found a few middleweights to spar with me. I took on about three or four fighters, but what I’ll always remember is the smile on Derrik’s face. For one day, at least, he was among his friends again. What also stands out is the compassion he showed to his fellow inmates, particularly one fighter who I nailed with a hard right. Derrik was worried that if I knocked the guy out, he would be humiliated in front of his peers and reminded about it wherever he went.
    â€œDon’t worry,” I whispered to Derrik. “I won’t take him out.”
    The session was soon over and it was time to leave. Derrik was given permission to escort me and a few others to the gate. I gave him a hug and didn’t look back. The next thing I heard was the sound of the doors closing behind me. I started to cry. I didn’t see Derrik again for more than twenty years.
    During his first two years in the joint, Derrik felt sorry for himself, drinking a pint of liquor every chance he got, earning a new nickname, “Hennessy Holmes.” He was put in lockup seven times, and was well on his way to racking up enough extra time to make sure he never got out.
    It was a good thing he found the Lord. It turned his life around. He became an aide in the prison library and didn’t touch another drop of alcohol. These days, he’s in charge of a boxing and fitness gym in Capitol Heights, Maryland, teaching others not to follow his example. He is married to a lovely woman, Regina, and they have an amazing story. They were married before, in the mid-1990s, but the physical separation was too great for them and they got divorced. Derrik never stopped thinking about her. Three weeks after he was released, he called Regina and they got together. Soon they were back at the altar. If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.
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    T he sport turned me into a different person, afraid of no one. One day, a bully, probably about six feet two, threw me against a locker at Parkdale High. I was almost knocked out cold.
    The old me would have searched for any peaceful way to end the mismatch. The new me fired off a succession of left hooks, missing wildly. The bully began to laugh. Yet each hook kept coming closer and closer, until one put his butt on the ground. The guys who had surrounded us, expecting to see me get whipped, were speechless. For the rest of the afternoon, I walked around school as “the man,” everyone spreading the word: “Did you hear what Ray did?” I looked down at my fists, seeing them in a whole different light. I realized they could operate outside the ring as well as they did inside. As for the bully, he never bothered me again.
    The same went for Roger, who found out the hard way that I was not the same little brother he used to push around. The day I beat Roger up for the first time was a turning point in my life and we both knew it. He began to take such a routine whipping from me, he told Dave Jacobs that our mother did not want her sons to fight each other any longer. She never said that.
    Once he couldn’t beat me up, Roger realized he might as well take advantage of my new skills. With gloves hanging over his shoulder, he took me to visit others in the neighborhood. “My little brother will kick your ass,” he said. I suppose you might say Roger was my first matchmaker.
    This being the early seventies, when television and film still provided a lot of strong male role models, it was no surprise that I found one for myself: