With all of the people in Cuba who I met - many of them hugely heroic figures - I found learning about their complexity and richness and contradictions just really fascinating, and it was fulfilling to be able to offer a different side to them, to be able to have some kind of unique takeaway from the official narrative.

Hundreds of years ago, the most beautiful women of Havana were only glimpsed stepping in or out of carriages on this street. The first foreign writers who arrived and saw this could never get past just how incredibly beautiful their feet were.

Rigondeaux was Cuba's answer to Bobby Fischer who transformed into a kind of Lee Harvey Oswald traitorous creature in that society. He escaped on a smuggler's boat and toppled one of the best fighters in the world in 2013 with his obliteration of Nonito Donaire at Radio City Music Hall. He made it look so easy, his career has never recovered.

We're a long way away from someone like Willie Pep winning a round without throwing a punch.

My career has always kind of moved forward and upward. I've never had anything kind of stall out or go in the opposite direction. I've always kind of been moving in the right direction.

Ultimately, you know, I'm a grown-up, I've been in this business a long time. I've got kids. I've got to do my stuff. But I also need to keep it there so I can bring it up again the next day at work or whatever.

At one point in time in my career, it was like, 'Oh, he never finishes nobody.' Then, the next thing you know, I'm breaking peoples' arms, making them tap out, and knocking them out. Then, the next thing you know, it's, 'Oh, I don't like his personality.' It's like, 'Okay, well, if you don't like who I am, I can't help you there, buddy.'

I worked hard when I was a consultant. I worked hard when I was in graduate school looking at neuroscience. I worked hard as a teacher. But those are completely different career paths. And the lack of direction is why I didn't get far enough in any of those things.