Howard Davis Drive

A great early evening in Glen Cove, N.Y., capped a week when MMA Junkie was in UFC 100 lockdown and I spent it focused on baseball. I made my first trip to Citi Field on Wednesday for a feature on a Dodgers team with many similarities to the Yankees of the mid-1990s that grew into a dynasty. Joe Torre also discussed Hideki Matsui, the old Yankee Stadium and more, and I caught up with another former Yankee, Jeff Weaver.

Friday night I was invited to a ceremony where Mason Drive in Glen Cove was renamed Howard Davis Drive in honor of the 1976 Gold Medalist in boxing and his late father. The backdrop was the Glen Cove Housing Authority in Davis' old neighborhood, where many people who watched him grow up and run three miles up Robinson "Agony" Hill still reside today. He told the story about the day Howard Sr. took him to see a biography on Muhammad Ali when he was 15 years old. The next morning he woke up at 4:30 - on his own - and ran up and down Robinson. When he was asked what he was doing, Howard told his dad how the movie inspired him to want to become a fighter.

The rest, as they say, is history. Instead of being a phase, Howard Davis Jr. has lived boxing since that night as a 15-year-old. He neither chased women nor drank alcohol and today has evolved into a MMA trainer working at American Top Team and is promoting his first show set to debut in December.

"I was willing to die for it," Davis said on his goal of winning the gold. "It was kill or be killed."

Davis helped train Thiago Alves for his fight against Georges St. Pierre tonight at UFC 100. He asked me who I have winning. I had to be honest, so I told him GSP. Of course he's behind his student - with conviction. "He's a beast," he said. "He's going to steamroll through him."